School Of Hard Rocks
May 2006, GQ (UK edition)
thanks to Caroline for typing it out
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Los Angeles, spring 2006, and the red hot Chili Peppers are at home. Home these days means some nice addresses in the hilly parts where LA's multimilionaire entertainers have traditionally parked up. Disappointingly for students of the Chili peppers' old life - threatening lifestyles - though hardly surprising given that three of the four are now in their forties - the comforts and responsibilities of middle age seem finally to have caught up with them.
It's not that there's no sex, drugs or rock'n'roll any more, just that the sex is monogamous, the drugs, if any, are class C and the rock'n'roll more a matter of careful craftmanship than posing with cock socks and generally going mental. Of the 45 milion album sales to their name, a quarter relate to their 1991 breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik, but half have come in the five years since they put out their 1999 blockbuster, Californication. The band that appeared to have collectively OD'd in the Nineties now vie with U2 for the title of world No.1.
Their three Hyde Park shows in front of over 250,000 fans in 2004 took more than L 9m, making it the biggest groosing event, as opposed to festival, in history. Their forthcoming ninth studio release, Stadium Arcadium, is a monumental 25-track double CD that speaks eloquently of hard-won maturity.
In his spread, up awindy road in the canyons abutting Malibu beach where he goes surfing most days, bass player Michael "Flea" Balzary, 43, and his new wife, model Frankie Rayder, are devotedly tending baby Sunny. The couple met at Hyde Park in 2004. Flea, "came off stage and fell in love, basically".
Over in Hollywood central, in a house that used to belong to Cary Grant, the group's token big bloke, drummer Chad Smith, also 43, and his wife, Nancy, have also become parents recently. As a result they are contemplating moving to an area with more green space, where their baby boy is less likely to be mown down by coachloads of Hollywood tourists.
Guitarist John Frusciante, the yougest at 36, is still living alone off Mulholland Drive in a sort of bungalow built mainly of glass that's crammed with musical paraphernalia and paintings by Captain Beefheart. But bachelor gear aside, he's happy at last with his new girlfriend, and though his arms still bear terrible scarring from his lost years as a junkie, he's on an intense creative roll. Frusciante released six solo albums in the six months up to January 2005 - no, really - and has contributed the lion's share of the music to the band's new opus.
