Really interesting review/interview. Different from the usual album review. Thought some of you might be interested:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19078766-16947,00.html
Rehab rock
Contrary to expectations, Robert Sandall finds the Red Hot Chili Peppers alive and well
13may06
THAT which didn't kill them has made them stronger. With today's release of the ninth studio album, a double CD whose title Stadium Arcadium only hints at their popularity, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are in miraculously good shape.
Creatively, commercially and, perhaps most important, physically - given the drink and drug-ravaged pasts of singer Anthony Kiedis and guitarist John Frusciante - the band that appeared to have self-destructed in Los Angeles's fast lane enters its 24th year as the most determined demon slayers in rehab rock, as well as the hottest live ticket after U2.
The statistics tell part of the story. Of the 45million albums the Chili Peppers have sold, far more than half are accounted for by their recent 21st-century offerings Californication and By the Way .
Their triumphant shows in London's Hyde Park in the summer of 2004 were the biggest grossing concerts staged by one band in one place. Not that the fiercely independent Chili Peppers have ever worried about cash. As Kiedis says: "Our record company does not mess with us. We don't talk to them for years at a time and it has always been like that. By the time they started throwing large sums of money at us we could throw it back at them."
At this point, the force is very much with them and their music. They are the longest serving exponents of one of rock's most fashionable sub-genres, punk funk. When Franz Ferdinand explained they were trying to make rock music that girls would dance to, they were merely parroting the Chili Peppers' manifesto. Girls have been enjoying this band, on stage and off, since Franz Ferdinand were in short trousers. Yet as recently as 1997 - dubbed by Australian-born bassist Michael "Flea" Balzary as the "year of nothing" - the Chili Peppers were in total disarray, effectively broken up.
Their last album, One Hot Minute, had dramatically underperformed their 1991 12million-selling breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik, partly because the guitarist who really pulled their songs into shape, Frusciante, had left to become a junkie.
The vocalist, Kiedis, was all over the place. In New Zealand on his new ranch; having his picture taken with the Dalai Lama in Tibet; or, most often, back in LA checking into cheap downtown motels for week-long drug binges.
His high-school buddy Flea and replacement guitarist Dave Navarro had decamped back to Navarro's old band, Jane's Addiction.
This left drummer Chad Smith, the Chili Peppers' phlegmatic anchor and the last of the classic line-up to join, with nothing to do.
Somehow they managed to claw their way back from the brink to reunite with a cleaned-up Frusciante and release their most successful album to date, Californication.
Shortly after, about Christmas 2000, Kiedis embarked on a rehab program that he has stuck to, then cured himself of the needle-borne liver disease Hepatitis C through herbal remedies. The wonders have not ceased since. A band famous for laddishly posing naked, bar the long socks drooping from their privates, has finally become domesticated.
Flea and Smith are happily with partners and new babies. Frusciante has a long-term girlfriend; Kiedis hasn't quite settled down yet: he broke up with the latest model girlfriend recently. But for most of the making of Stadium Arcadium, according to Smith, "we were all in love, in happy, healthy relationships. And that was pretty much a first for us."
Review was able to put that claim to the test in separate interviews with the band members.
ANTHONY KIEDIS
KIEDIS lives alone in an elegant, Spanish-styled, 1930s villa in Benedict Canyon, LA. It is, unmistakably, a bachelor pad. Along with his two rhodesian ridgeback dogs, Katie and Sammi, Kiedis shares the place with a lot of art, books and music and not much else. The car in the garage is a Porsche Carrera.
For a 43-year-old man who started shooting hard drugs at 14 and once complained that in New Zealand "there wasn't enough cocaine in a small country like that to keep me satisfied for any length of time", he is looking good.
The muscly torso beneath the tight white T-shirt and black jeans suggest that Kiedis has swapped the crack pipe for the gym, a very LA transition for an LA enthusiast such as himself.
"I will never leave this place," he announces firmly. "This state and this city are so full of mysticism and creative juice. Because people like to label things, it has become the capital of what is considered a more artificial reality, but that's not how I see it."
He says the first single from the new album, Dani California "is about the misconceptions surrounding west coast culture".
Kiedis came to LA at the age of 11 to live with his natural father, a drug dealer, womaniser and part-time actor whose lifestyle his son took to like a fish to water. Dad, another surprise survivor, is the band's biggest fan.
Kiedis Jr talked at length of his past indulgences in an autobiography, Scar Tissue, published in 2004. "The book started out as a desire to tell a story about a father and son growing up in southern California in the 1970s because it was so colourful and crazy. But then I didn't know where to stop, so I told the whole thing," he says.
Once was enough, however. A thoroughly professional entertainer, Kiedis is keen to focus on his new album. A 28-track marathon, it is by far the largest collection of new material the band has released.
"I went in with the intention of making something far more concise and digestible, like an old rock'n'roll record that had 10 or 11 songs," he says.
"But the songs kept coming, and after John [Frusciante] wrote me a 10-page letter insisting we keep them all, I knew there was no point in having an unhappy John in the band, 'cause that was how we lost him in 1992."
For a man who has often referred to himself as a "control freak", this sounds very accommodating, particularly given the oodles of extra space allowed on Stadium Arcadium for Frusciante to wig out with his guitar solos.
"There was a lot less friction this time than on any of our other albums," he says. "On By the Way there was a lot of bickering, a lot of struggling to dominate the writing board. Which is stupid because we know our greatest value is as a team.
"I really feel that the stars aligned for us on this new record. There was a definite and perceptible love in the room driving us forward. The universe has tested us in every way possible in the past. This was payback time."
JOHN FRUSCIANTE
FRUSCIANTE joined the band after founder member Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988. It was his virtuosity that spurred a group of rowdy punk funkers to mature into serious songwriters.
Frusciante left when he was just 22. Confused and overwhelmed by the international acclaim garnered by Blood Sex Sugar Magik, he dropped out and took up painting and hard drugs.
While Kiedis appears unmarked by his years of drug abuse, Frusciante's scrawny arms are covered in burns dating from the day he set himself on fire freebasing cocaine.
Seven years younger than Kiedis and Flea, he remains very much the fragile, sensitive, slightly bonkers one. He talks nervously and fast on subjects ranging from old 1970s guitar solos to Alastair Crowley: "To me he's like a spiritual teacher."
The son of a classical pianist, Frusciante is an obsessive musical omnivore. On the afternoon of our interview at his low-rise pad off Mulholland Drive, Mozart is pouring out of vast hi-fi speakers in a living room stuffed with records, sound equipment and paintings by Captain Beefheart. "Hendrix loved Mozart," he offers by way of explanation, before proudly showing the 24-track mixing desk that takes up most of the spare bedroom and was once used by John Lennon.
On the new album, Frusciante is, for the first time, in the driving seat. "I'd be in the studio 'til five in the morning most nights. First I'd cook dinner for the engineers, and then we'd have a night of overdubs and experimentation. It was the freest feeling I've ever had in the studio. All the solos were completely spontaneous."
This is in marked contrast to his minimal approach on By the Way. "I didn't want to have any solos or blues influences on that album. I wanted it to be along the lines of Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Smiths. I was inadvertently repressing myself and Flea as well."
Frusciante attributes his change of attitude to his new girlfriend, Emily, who has forced him to open up as a person. "I also do a meditation where the brain tries to heal itself."
His six years as a heroin and crack addicted wannabe painter taught him a lot, he says. First, that "if all you do is go after being creative all the time, you're not gonna be creative at all". Second, he realised that playing guitar in the Chili Peppers wasn't such a bad job and that only he could do it.
"When I wasn't in the band I knew that they'd never find somebody to replace me, they'd hire people or whatever, but I felt it meant more to me than it could to anybody else. When I rejoined there were loads of freedoms I was appreciative of that I hadn't even noticed first time around.
"Now I have a studio in my house. I have Captain Beefheart paintings on my wall. I have to be friends with people I respect, like Brian Eno. People I would never run into in my life as a drug addict."
CHAD SMITH
SMITH is a different type of person from the others. For one thing he is about twice their size. For another he is schooled musically in the classic rock of the Led Zeppelin era rather than indie, punk and funk.
While the rest of the band have nested in groovy hideaways, he and his family live in Cary Grant's old house in Hollywood central, where coach parties regularly stop outside to take snaps.
When Smith auditioned for the band in 1989 he barely knew who they were. "They were this underground college band. Not in my consciousness at all."
They liked his drumming but hated his long hair and told him he couldn't join unless he shaved his head. "I was like, 'F--- you!"'
A couple of months later, when they asked him along to pose with one of their notorious "cock socks" for a photo session, he knew he'd got the gig.
As something of an outsider, Smith has a balanced perspective on the band's ups and downs in the 1990s.
He speaks with authority on the subject of drugs: "They are not a creative tool, particularly for Anthony. He is not a party drug-taking animal. When he takes drugs, he disappears."
Without Frusciante, he feels they were rudderless. "The chemistry was never there.
"Navarro was more of a reactive player. He didn't initiate anything." Smith credits Flea with the band's renaissance. "He's the one who went round to ask him to rejoin."
Of his own role he says: "Musically we hit it off straight away. Personally it has taken longer. But now we are connecting pretty well. I don't need to meditate with John or play golf with Flea. Though I do."
jag
Thank you for that article, jaguarr.
