Still Hot Chili Peppers
“His sense of what a melody is and his ability to come up with melodies to music that we write has improved so much, and it continues to improve,” Flea said. “That, more than anything else, has propelled us forward. As he improves that gives us more space to play around.”
Rubin puts an even finer point on the matter: He has noted that U2, Metallica and R.E.M. are other 1980s-era acts that are still making relevant rock music today but that the difference in quality between their earliest recordings and those of today cannot compare to the ascent of the Peppers.
“He is much more confident,” Rubin said of Kiedis. “On this new album he was incredible with the lyrics. Usually it’s like pulling teeth with artists. The music comes easy, the words come hard.”
The reviews have been strong. Josh Kun, writing in The Times, praised “Stadium” as “full of stories of destructive sunshine, dead dreams and water that will wash it all away.” Rolling Stone hailed it as a “late-career triumph that could pass for another, lesser group’s greatest-hits collection.”
“Stadium Arcadium” was not intended to be a double album, but Kiedis’ prolific writing and a year and a half of intense band cocooning produced a deep stack of material. One disc is titled “Mars,” the other is “Venus.” Kiedis said that’s an acknowledgment that the band is finding music in its love and in its battles. “It’s a very healthy time for us as a band.”
Flea points out how different that is from the not-so-good old days. “The band has been in danger many times. Our guitarist died,” he said of Slovak. “And John nearly died. And Anthony — I was always waiting and wondering when I was going to get the call that he had overdosed. It’s a terrifying feeling.”
At Irving Plaza, Flea stepped up to the microphone for a rare bit of singing. It was only a few lines and he warbled them in a thin voice. But it was a telling choice — Neil Young’s forlorn “The Needle and the Damage Done”: “I seen the needle and damage done, a little part of it in everyone, but every junkie’s like a setting sun….”
Turbulence and death
Drugs created years of storms for the band, and the most awful thunderclap was the death of guitarist Slovak at age 25 in summer 1988. In the weeks after his death, Jack Irons, the drummer at the time, didn’t so much quit the band — he fled from it. Another guitarist was brought in, but not for long. Then Kiedis and Flea, in their mid-20s, brought in a local teenager who was a powerhouse talent. His name was John Frusciante, a devoted fan of the band who idolized Slovak.
To celebrate, Frusciante got a tattoo of the band’s logo — a blocky, eight-point asterisk — on his arm. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to identify that original shape. Frusciante’s arms are mottled by his years with the needle. He wore long sleeves for a long time but now is back to T-shirts, a change that signals a comfort with his past.
Sitting on a couch in a Ritz-Carlton suite overlooking Central Park, Frusciante said he is running on fumes these days. The recording process and promoting the album have taken a toll. But he was clear-eyed and proud of the new music. (”It’s his freest work, absolutely,” Flea said.) The album is laced with reverse guitar solos, special effects and funneled sonics that create a wide palette for a band that once hung its hat (and, ahem, its socks) on funk grooves, testosterone and austerity.
Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips came to Los Angeles recently and the subject turned to the Peppers. “Those guys, I mean, you can tell with them it’s like they are brothers. All the things they have been through and they still want to be with each other and they care for each other. That’s pretty amazing.” When the quote was passed on to Frusciante he winced a bit. The band is focused on honesty and respect these days, but he said they don’t exactly run around like the Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night.”
“It’s not like we hang out together when we’re not working. We do our own thing. We don’t see each other unless we’re working on the music or playing. You have to have it that way because you do spend so much together.”
Bands that carry on past their second decade, like the Peppers, move away from the young wolfpack approach. “We all have different friends, very different,” Frusciante said. When Flea was asked how he would describe each member and their personalities, he thought for a long moment, then said with a knowing smile: “I don’t think I should do that.”
There are no “band meetings” to air grievances. Everybody knows how everybody feels pretty much all the time now. And right now, they all feel pretty good.
Frusciante has just bought a house with his girlfriend. Kiedis is in a new relationship that he says has him reevaluating his views on long-term commitments. Smith and Flea have children born during the recording of “Stadium Arcadium.” Even Rubin fell in love while making the album at the studio he built out of a Laurel Canyon mansion.
A few years ago it wasn’t so easy. Flea became angry with Frusciante’s no-negotiation push to take the band toward his stylized soundscapes. Flea was also at odds with Kiedis and thought about walking away. “That has happened before, but this was a serious thing. I wasn’t having fun.”
The difference now is that all four members say they are communicating with a new openness and honesty. Rubin also hears “a real respect for each other and their differences.” It probably doesn’t hurt that, with 28 songs, the new album has plenty of room for funk chunks such as “Hump De Bump” and the shimmer and wail of Frusciante’s guitar solos on songs such as “Wet Sand.”
Still, Frusciante is tightly wound. During their run through New York, the band dropped by Rockefeller Center to play two songs on “Saturday Night Live.” The band was generally chipper throughout a long rehearsal, especially after getting a TV in the dressing room to pick up an NBA playoff game. Kiedis and “SNL” cast member Tina Fey made baby talk to Flea’s infant daughter, Sunny Bebop, and Smith made small talk with host Tom Hanks (”Tom said I’m the Ringo,” Smith said afterward). Frusciante appeared the least relaxed. Maybe because the other time the band played “SNL,” in 1992, Frusciante was in a grim mood and on the eve of his two-year exile from the group. “That was a catastrophe,” Kiedis recalled.
This go-around went better but not perfectly: Frusciante’s pedals didn’t work so he was left high and dry twice where he had planned some dazzling accent work. He fumed afterward. The next day, though, he sent a note of apology to the rest of the band. He saw a tape and it wasn’t as bad as he had thought.
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