The Red Hot Chili Peppers were a band that seemed to have a tremendous amount of energy, and a great sense of humor, when I was growing up. And so, they always had a certain strong appeal to me, even though I, like most people, admittedly, only really started to get hugely into them shortly after their Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic album. The band really reached their peak at this point, with that album, all of those television appearances and, of course, headlining the Lollapalooza tour that would greatly transform the musical landscape of the nineties, effectively completing what Nirvana had clearly begun.
Really, that was their huge, breakout album. At that point, they seemed to me to be a band that was possessed of an unknown, artistic quality, a band that, frankly, I should have been paying more attention to, instead of rather passively enjoying their stuff. Indeed, I could appreciate their humor, but they almost embodied an artistic spirit that seemed (to my teenage POV, at least) to be taking hold.
And, if I am being honest, that illusion began to itself be peeled away in the years and, hard as it is to believe that I can say this, the decades since. Their next album was good, but nowhere near as good as the prior one. And even though their next few albums also enjoyed success and considerable radio play, they did not have quite the strong imagination, artistry, and intensity of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic.
Then, I received a copy of Scar Tissue, the autobiography by the band's frontman Anthony Keidis, and this illusion was stripped away even further. Again, up to the point that I began to read the book, my impression of the Chilis was still that they had a lot of artistry and professional integrity, and the assumption was that these were very intelligent guys with a lot to say. But that book was an exercise in narcissism. It was all about him reaching stardom, becoming a big, huge rock star with a lot of money, and his having the ability to completely give himself to his lusts for sex and for material wealth and for drugs. He seemed almost to give a passing glance, at best, towards the motivations and inspirations behind the songs, often again resorting to rather crass narcissism in explaining them, and then would return to what seemed to be his favorite topic: himself, and the blind pursuit of his lusts for sex and material wealth and always, always for drugs.
While I can understand that on some level, he was revealing just how addicting drugs can be, and that this could serve as a warning, there were times when, frankly, he almost seemed to be bragging about other things, like an impulse buy to purchase an absolutely beautiful house in a gorgeous natural setting in New Zealand that he had visited on one beautiful day in terms of weather, only to find that the weather there was actually usually pretty bad. Cry me a river, Anthony. We should all have such problems.
And man, this guy loved to kiss and tell! He had no reservations about revealing details of his various affairs with numerous women, whom he would name, so that there could be no doubt about who they were, and pretty much exactly what they had done, and what they had meant to him (often times, nothing). It seemed both classless and catering to our popular culture's fixation on celebrity gossip, and shattered my own impression of this band, and this man in particular, as having some higher artistic integrity and intelligence.
That is not to say that he, and the band, do not have intelligence. indeed they do. It just seemed that, suddenly, that was not all that they were about. They were a successful band that was a little too much in love with themselves and the fame that, at least in their own mind, justified their own sense of greatness. It was a disappointment, to say the least, because by then, they were one of the few major musical acts left from the nineties that were still around.
All of this added a new element to an infamous episode that this band had gone through right as they were approaching the height of their success. The band's enormously successful album, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, had them exploding onto the public scene like never before. There were tons of TV appearances, including as musical guests on Saturday Night Live. But this would be a strange episode in the band's history, one which Keidis would mention in his book. Guitarist John Frusciante, who had written the music to this most well-known and iconic of the band's songs, Under the Bridge, had developed a tendency to play around with certain chords in this song, a habit that annoyed Keidis. He also felt that the band was getting too big for it's britches, something that, frankly, Keidis basically confirmed with his rather glaringly obvious narcissism in his autobiography.
In fact, it was in this autobiography that Keidis mentioned that Frusciante felt this way, that this success very well might have a detrimental impact on the actual guys in the band, and might develop a disconnect with their fans, and perhaps with reality in general:
“John would say, ‘We’re too popular. I don’t need to be at this level of success. I would just be proud to be playing this music in clubs like you guys were doing two years ago.”
Anyway, the first song that they played was Stone Cold Bush, which went over relatively well. All of the members had their shirts off and were playing intensely, and seemed to be into it. There was one small episode, but it is impossible to tell if this was deliberate or accidental, and that was Keidis at one point flailing around on the ground, and kicking Frusciante. I mention this, because when the band came out for their second musical performance, this time doing Under the Bridge, their most famous song by far, Frusciante once again played around with the chords, and seemed to play the song almost deliberately out of key, so that Keidis had to do some guess work with his singing, and sounded off key. Keidis felt that this was done deliberately to make a fool out of him, and perhaps it is not surprising that Frusciante was out of the band shortly thereafter.
Here was the first performance, Stone Cold Bush:
And here was the infamous version of Under the Bridge:
Guess you can understand why Keidis would feel that Frusciante sabotaged this performance. By this point in the band's history, Keidis and Frusciante were hardly even talking to each other. Keidis described it in his autobiography, Scar Tissue:
“Things deteriorated to the point where John and I didn’t talk on the bus, and if we ran into each other in passing, we wouldn’t even acknowledge each other.”
Keidis continues:
“I had no idea what song he was playing or what key he was in. He looked like he was in a different world. We were on live TV in front of millions of people, and it was torture. I started to sing in what I thought was the key, even if it wasn’t the key he was playing in. I felt like I was getting stabbed in the back and hung out to dry in front of all of America while this guy was off in a corner in the shadow, playing some dissonant out-of-tune experiment. I thought he was doing that on purpose, just to fuck with me.”
You can see that by the second song, Frusciante had put his shirt back on. Admittedly, he did not have the same impressive physique that the other guys in the band had, that same kind of musculature. And by the time that they played Under the Bridge, Frusciante was playing on a different wave length, if you will. Maybe he was deliberately sabotaging a high profile performance, one that was so important, in fact, that it is still remembered today, even many years later.
There had been other factors, as well. Frusciante had felt that Madonna had snubbed him the entire night, for one. And he had almost gotten into a physical altercation with a crew member just before the show, surely adding to the already clearly existing tensions. But it all came out in his performance during Under the Bridge.
Then, I received a copy of Scar Tissue, the autobiography by the band's frontman Anthony Keidis, and this illusion was stripped away even further. Again, up to the point that I began to read the book, my impression of the Chilis was still that they had a lot of artistry and professional integrity, and the assumption was that these were very intelligent guys with a lot to say. But that book was an exercise in narcissism. It was all about him reaching stardom, becoming a big, huge rock star with a lot of money, and his having the ability to completely give himself to his lusts for sex and for material wealth and for drugs. He seemed almost to give a passing glance, at best, towards the motivations and inspirations behind the songs, often again resorting to rather crass narcissism in explaining them, and then would return to what seemed to be his favorite topic: himself, and the blind pursuit of his lusts for sex and material wealth and always, always for drugs.
While I can understand that on some level, he was revealing just how addicting drugs can be, and that this could serve as a warning, there were times when, frankly, he almost seemed to be bragging about other things, like an impulse buy to purchase an absolutely beautiful house in a gorgeous natural setting in New Zealand that he had visited on one beautiful day in terms of weather, only to find that the weather there was actually usually pretty bad. Cry me a river, Anthony. We should all have such problems.
And man, this guy loved to kiss and tell! He had no reservations about revealing details of his various affairs with numerous women, whom he would name, so that there could be no doubt about who they were, and pretty much exactly what they had done, and what they had meant to him (often times, nothing). It seemed both classless and catering to our popular culture's fixation on celebrity gossip, and shattered my own impression of this band, and this man in particular, as having some higher artistic integrity and intelligence.
That is not to say that he, and the band, do not have intelligence. indeed they do. It just seemed that, suddenly, that was not all that they were about. They were a successful band that was a little too much in love with themselves and the fame that, at least in their own mind, justified their own sense of greatness. It was a disappointment, to say the least, because by then, they were one of the few major musical acts left from the nineties that were still around.
All of this added a new element to an infamous episode that this band had gone through right as they were approaching the height of their success. The band's enormously successful album, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, had them exploding onto the public scene like never before. There were tons of TV appearances, including as musical guests on Saturday Night Live. But this would be a strange episode in the band's history, one which Keidis would mention in his book. Guitarist John Frusciante, who had written the music to this most well-known and iconic of the band's songs, Under the Bridge, had developed a tendency to play around with certain chords in this song, a habit that annoyed Keidis. He also felt that the band was getting too big for it's britches, something that, frankly, Keidis basically confirmed with his rather glaringly obvious narcissism in his autobiography.
In fact, it was in this autobiography that Keidis mentioned that Frusciante felt this way, that this success very well might have a detrimental impact on the actual guys in the band, and might develop a disconnect with their fans, and perhaps with reality in general:
“John would say, ‘We’re too popular. I don’t need to be at this level of success. I would just be proud to be playing this music in clubs like you guys were doing two years ago.”
Anyway, the first song that they played was Stone Cold Bush, which went over relatively well. All of the members had their shirts off and were playing intensely, and seemed to be into it. There was one small episode, but it is impossible to tell if this was deliberate or accidental, and that was Keidis at one point flailing around on the ground, and kicking Frusciante. I mention this, because when the band came out for their second musical performance, this time doing Under the Bridge, their most famous song by far, Frusciante once again played around with the chords, and seemed to play the song almost deliberately out of key, so that Keidis had to do some guess work with his singing, and sounded off key. Keidis felt that this was done deliberately to make a fool out of him, and perhaps it is not surprising that Frusciante was out of the band shortly thereafter.
Here was the first performance, Stone Cold Bush:
And here was the infamous version of Under the Bridge:
Guess you can understand why Keidis would feel that Frusciante sabotaged this performance. By this point in the band's history, Keidis and Frusciante were hardly even talking to each other. Keidis described it in his autobiography, Scar Tissue:
“Things deteriorated to the point where John and I didn’t talk on the bus, and if we ran into each other in passing, we wouldn’t even acknowledge each other.”
Keidis continues:
“I had no idea what song he was playing or what key he was in. He looked like he was in a different world. We were on live TV in front of millions of people, and it was torture. I started to sing in what I thought was the key, even if it wasn’t the key he was playing in. I felt like I was getting stabbed in the back and hung out to dry in front of all of America while this guy was off in a corner in the shadow, playing some dissonant out-of-tune experiment. I thought he was doing that on purpose, just to fuck with me.”
You can see that by the second song, Frusciante had put his shirt back on. Admittedly, he did not have the same impressive physique that the other guys in the band had, that same kind of musculature. And by the time that they played Under the Bridge, Frusciante was playing on a different wave length, if you will. Maybe he was deliberately sabotaging a high profile performance, one that was so important, in fact, that it is still remembered today, even many years later.
There had been other factors, as well. Frusciante had felt that Madonna had snubbed him the entire night, for one. And he had almost gotten into a physical altercation with a crew member just before the show, surely adding to the already clearly existing tensions. But it all came out in his performance during Under the Bridge.
The strange thing is, though, that this version has a certain appeal to it. I remember watching it after reading about it in Scar Tissue, and thinking that, in fact, it added a certain element to a very well-known song that gave it a whole different feel, almost. Admittedly, at some points, it sounded strange, and not so great. But there are points when it sounded even more intense in a way, and when it was a very interesting version of the song.
In any case, it is an interesting story to the history of an unusual and, admittedly, still an interesting band. RHCP have always done things a bit differently, and always stood out from other bands in many ways. I do not want to give the impression that I cannot stand this band, because that is far from the case. Personally, I feel that Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic was one of the very best albums of the nineties. I might place it either as the best overall album, or the second, behind U2's Achtung Baby, in terms of musicality and originality. And that in a decade that was chock full of great and interesting works by new rock artists that seemed to be emerging from all directions, as compared to now, when it sometimes seems that there are few solid rock bands, to the point that some are already proclaiming that rock is dead.
So, I thought it would be interesting to add this video explaining this strange chapter in the band's history a bit further, as well as to add a couple of other links regarding the Chili Peppers.
Enjoy!
You Can Feel The Tension In Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1992 SNL Performance [Watch] Andrew O'Brien | Friday, February 22nd, 2019:
Here is another interesting link related to the RHCP, where they attempt to rank the best 50 or so songs from the band. Given the huge success of Under the Bridge, it hardly seems like a spoiler to mention that this is number one, which is as it should be. It was far and away the biggest and most iconic song for the band, and I doubt that anybody would even really argue that it deserves to be number one on this list. But other decisions seemed a little more questionable, and seemed to lean on their newer stuff, which I feel does not hold a candle to the brilliance of some of their earlier stuff. There are certain songs, like Soul to Squeeze and I Could Have Lied, which I would have ranked much higher, and other songs, like Aeroplane and Scar Tissue, which I feel are ranked too high. Of course, that is speculative, and everyone has their own opinions on the matter. But to my mind's eye, again, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic is far and away the band's best album, and when they truly reached their peak on every level. I mean, they were running on all cylinders, and I personally enjoy listening to some of the lesser known tracks on that album over many of the tracks on albums that they released since then. I Could Have Lied is a beautiful song, and if it had been cleaned up for radio play, which would never have featured a song like that which so prominently had some major swear words on it, this could have been another huge hit for the band. And even though Soul to Squeeze was not from that peak album, it still nonetheless had a certain quality from that still relatively early and young phase in the band's history, and just has a kind of free quality and pleasant rhythm to it. Take a look at the list, and see if you agree with this, or not.
Ranking: Every Red Hot Chili Peppers Song From Worst to Best Picking through the blandest Peppers and the songs that'll burn your tongue off BY DAN BOGOSIAN,DAN CAFFREY,DAVID SACKLLAH,WREN GRAVES,KYLE EUSTICE AND PHILIP COSORESON JUNE 17, 2016:
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