Half-naked escapades through Los Angeles. Connections to Canadian pop stars. A secret
album? From their majestic origins to their on and off-stage battles,
keep watching for more untold truths about the Red Hot Chili Peppers!
Before the Red Hot Chili Peppers
achieved their four-piece formation influenced by funk and punk rock, they had a vastly different
lineup and a name that was even sillier and longer. According to Flea's memoir
Acid for the Children, the original 1983 lineup consisted of Jack Irons on drums,
Hillel Slovak on guitar, Flea on bass, and Anthony Kiedis on lead vocals.
“Upon first meeting? We were antagonistic.”
Kiedis combined singing with rap and spoken word, and also contributed to the group's first moniker:
Tony Flow and the Majestic Masters of Mayhem. One of the first pieces the band performed was
a song based on a loosely structured poem Kiedis wrote called "Out in LA,"
so even from the beginning, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were grappling
with the meaning of living in their home state of California.
Flea is a major fan and student of jazz, and according to Ohio State University,
that may have influenced the band's permanent name. The first "Red Hot
Chili Peppers" was the nickname of jazz great Louis Armstrong’s 1920s-era quintet.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers isn't
the only creative, musical outlet for its members, past and present. Ever since the band's formation
in the early 1980s, the musicians in the Chili Peppers split their time with other projects.
According to Guitar World, before any of them
would be affiliated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers,
future members Flea, Hillel Slovak, and Jack Irons formed a band as classmates at Fairfax High School
in Southern California. They cycled through a few names before finally settling on What Is This.
The trio of instrumentalists got together with Anthony Kiedis to form the band that
would become the Red Hot Chili Peppers, although Slovak and Irons considered What is This to be
their main band. In fact they even left the Red Hot Chili Peppers temporarily.
"It got too hard to be in both bands at the same time,
cuz we were both being approached by companies at exactly the, exactly the same time."
The band released two albums, the Squeezed EP
and a self-titled full length record on MCA Records. According to Diffuser,
the pair eventually left the project to connect with Kiedis and Flea full-time.
After Slovak's death in 1988, Irons quit the Chili Peppers in grief.
He would go on to play with a number of groups, including Pearl Jam for a time.
According to Kiedis' biography, Scar Tissue, this prompted Kiedis and Flea to hire their former
bandmate, D.H. Peligro, with whom they performed in a group called Three Little Butt Hairs.
According to Diffuser, the Red Hot Chili
Peppers have cycled through a number of drummers and many guitarists over their four-decade career.
The only continuous members of the group have been bassist Flea and frontman Anthony Kiedis,
and even Kiedis quietly dropped out of the band for a little while in the 1980s.
While recording the 1987 album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan,
producer Michael Beinhorn told Produce Like a Pro that he fired an unreliable and inconsiderate
Kiedis because the vocalist was making recording extremely difficult. Beinhorn explained,
"I actually kicked him out of the band, which is not my position at all,
but I was like, 'You know, you're disrespecting the rest of your band.
This can't go on. This project's going to fall apart. Get out.'"
Kiedis took the firing as a sabbatical, heading to Michigan to sober up. During his 6-week absence,
the remaining Red Hot Chili Peppers auditioned several replacement singers, none of which were
up to their standard. Kiedis asked if he could return, and Beinhorn allowed him to do so.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock,
John Frusciante was the fourth guitarist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers overall.
He joined the band in 1988 and played on the albums Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
After the latter brought the Chili Peppers to mega-fame,
Frusciante bristled. According to the Scar Tissue biography,
the guitarist soon began voicing his frustration with their widespread popularity.
Fusciante's attitude led to palpable tension in the band
and, according to Kiedis, he and Frusciante stopped speaking to each other.
This tension came to a head when the guitarist seemingly tanked the group's February 1992
performance on Saturday Night Live. Recounting the performance in Scar Tissue, Kiedis reflected:
"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."
Rolling Stone reports that Frusciante left the Chili Peppers later that year,
only to return in 1998 when things didn't work out with his replacement,
Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro.
Frusciante would go on to play on the band's massively successful millennium-adjacent records
Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium, before leaving for the second time in 2009.
Guitar World reports that he returned once more, taking over for one-time replacement Josh
Klinghoffer in 2019. Since Frusciante's return, the band has recorded and released the 2022
full-length Unlimited Love, and embarked on a world tour.
"It seemed like I'd changed and grown enough as a person, to where
it felt like it would be a beautiful thing to have another chance to do it right."
As rising stars of the Los
Angeles rock scene with a reputation for being a wild live act, MTV invited the Red Hot Chili
Peppers to show off to a national television audience by performing at a Spring Break event
in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1990. According to the Orlando Sentinel,
the Chili Peppers got so amped up they were driven to break the law.
During a taping of the dance show Club MTV, the band lip-synced to their song
"Knock Me Down." At some point, Flea started to smash his bass against Chad Smith's drums.
Before long the two had thrown stuff all over the stage,
and then headed into the audience of swimsuit-clad beachgoers. According to a police report,
Flea grabbed a 20-year-old Virginia woman, picked her up, and threw her over his shoulders.
Smith then came over, tried to pull down the woman's bathing suit, and slapped her rear end.
After she fell into the sand,
Flea allegedly climbed atop the woman and requested she perform a sexual act on him.
MTV acted quickly and ejected the entire band from its beachside facilities. Local law
enforcement later arrested Flea and Smith, and, acting at the behest of their victim, charged
both musicians. Flea faced misdemeanor counts of battery, disorderly conduct, and solicitation to
commit a lascivious act; Smith was charged with battery. Both men posted bail and were released.
Aside from Frusciante, a number of
other musicians have played lead guitar for the Chili Peppers. During Hillel Slovak’s
absence from the band from 1983 to 1984 he was replaced by Jack Sherman, and following the death
of Hillel Slovak in 1988, the band saw a brief tenure from DeWayne McKnight. In Scar Tissue,
Kiedis mentions that, just after the end of John Frusciante's first stint with the group,
Los Angeles-based session musician Arik Marshall also became a Chili Pepper.
His time with the band was brief, but also eventful. Marshall came on board in 1992,
while the band was touring behind Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Thanks to hits like "Give It Away"
and "Under the Bridge," this was one of the band's most commercially successful eras.
Marshall dutifully performed with the band and made public appearances,
but he never actually recorded anything for a Chili Peppers album. He did, however,
appear in Frusciante's place in two videos, for the singles "Breaking the Girl" and "If
You Have to Ask". He was immortalized in animated form when the Red Hot Chili
Peppers appeared in the 1993 episode of the Simpsons, "Krusty Gets Kancelled".
In 1992, the soaring "Under the Bridge",
an uncharacteristic ballad for the funky Red Hot Chili Peppers, became the group's biggest
hit ever when it went to #2 on the Billboard pop chart. According to the man who wrote it, "Under
the Bridge" wasn't even supposed to be a song in the first place. The track came about while
Kiedis was processing the effect his struggle with heroin addiction had had on his life.
"Everything that was beautiful and precious and sacred to me sort of took a back seat."
The lyrics came to him as he began to improvise a poem about his addiction while driving.
Before long, he added melody to the lyrics,
and even wrote down the verse to mimic the structure of a song.
Flash forward to the early '90s, during the production of Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
The group hired producer Rick Rubin, who went to Kiedis's house to see the singer's writings.
While scanning a notebook, he discovered "Under the Bridge."
Rubin inquired about the song, and Kiedis explained that it was never
meant for the Chili Peppers. Rubin persisted, eventually convincing Kiedis to see past his
usual funk-rap lyrical approach and turn the piece into a full-on song.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers were
absolutely massive in the early 1990s. Not only did "Under The Bridge" chart well,
the frenetic and funky "Give It Away" hit #1 on Billboard's alternative rock chart as well.
That kind of popularity, coupled with the band's memorable music videos and wild,
semi-clothed public personas, made parody almost inevitable, and "Weird Al" Yankovic,
the master of musical satire, obliged. In 1993, he created Bedrock Anthem, a parody that combined the
intro of "Under the Bridge" with the whole of "Give it Away," but with lyrics of a boastful,
first-person rundown of a day in the life of cartoon character Fred Flintstone.
Not a fan of "Bedrock Anthem", Flea took a moment to thoroughly take down Yankovic's
parody of his songs in the Red Hot Chili Peppers' episode of Behind The Music, saying:
"I didn't think it was very good. I enjoy Weird Al's things, I found it unimaginative. It wasn't
that great. [...] I like Weird Al and everything, but, you know, everyone's hit and miss."
Since forming in the mid-80s,
the Red Hot Chili Peppers have churned out 12 studio albums and several dozen EPs and
singles. And yet, many prominent singles from the band followed a very strange and
nontraditional release pattern. After notching four hits from multi-platinum bestseller Blood
Sugar Sex Magik throughout 1991 and 1992, the Chili Peppers issued "Behind the Sun."
It reached #7 on Billboard's alternative rock chart, despite being a 5-year-old song,
originally appearing on the 1987 LP The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and featuring the sitar playing
of late Pepper Hillel Slovak. It was meant to promote the 1992 best-of collection What Hits!?
In the summer of 1993, the Red Hot Chili Peppers topped the Billboard alternative
chart with "Soul to Squeeze," a cut from the soundtrack of Coneheads. That same song,
recorded for Blood Sugar Sex Magik but left off the final mix, had previously been used
as the B-side for the album's two biggest hits, "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away."
According to Diffuser, after working
with Arik Marshall and a few other musicians, the Red Hot Chili Peppers found a more permanent
lead guitarist in Dave Navarro. Having played in the popular alternative band, Jane's Addiction,
Navarro turned the Chili Peppers into a supergroup. Navarro officially joined in 1994,
according to MTV News, and his very first performance with the group
was a massive and important one: a set at the Woodstock '94 festival.
What's more, Navarro had to play while wearing a silver jumpsuit with a gigantic working light
bulb on his head, a concept devised for the band by frontman Anthony Kiedis. Navarro told SiriusXM
Volume Kiedis had drawn up the blueprints for the costume and given them to an artist to
assemble. No one in the band saw the finished product until minutes before they performed.
"It was an idea—" "Get it?"
"... and it came over our heads and it went on."
Months later, the band played The Late Show with David Letterman, which taped in a studio kept
chilly, per the host's liking. The band dressed appropriately, in hooded, fur-lined coats,
along with mirrored shades. Despite joining a band that got its start playing almost completely nude,
it seems Navarro had to deal with quite a few wardrobe complications.
The year 1995 was a big one for the
Red Hot Chili Peppers. That's when the band released One Hot Minute,
their first full-length album in four years. The record debuted a darker,
moodier sound thanks in part to the influence Dave Navarro had on their songwriting and sound.
While the Chili Peppers were extremely successful, arguably nobody was bigger in
rock in 1995 than Alanis Morissette. Once a teen pop star, the Canadian musician released the raw,
confessional Jagged Little Pill in June of that year. According to RIAA,
the record sold 16 million copies and generated six hit singles.
Despite their fairly different sounds, there are some surprising overlaps between the Red
Hot Chili Peppers and Morissette. According to Rolling Stone, prior to hiring Navarro,
the Chili Peppers briefly employed the services of guitarist Jesse Tobias.
While the band let Tobias go after just a month, the guitarist found a gig
playing on Morissette's blockbuster tour in support of Jagged Little Pill.
What's more, Jagged Little Pill's breakout single, "You Oughta Know",
featured guitar and bass work from Dave Navarro and Flea.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers were
very active throughout the 1990s, recording soundtrack cuts and other standalone singles
when they weren't making albums or touring. About the only year in the whole decade that the Chili
Peppers took some time off was 1997, a period so disastrous it almost undid the band entirely.
According to Exclaim, bassist Flea nicknamed it the "Year of Nothing,"
on account of how the Chili Peppers only played one concert throughout all of 1997.
What's more, that one show, a set at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan,
was cut short upon the arrival of Typhoon Rosie according to MTV News.
While the band attempted to keep playing, few fans could hear the music
over the sounds of extreme weather, and eventually the Chili Peppers had
to run off stage for cover before the roof collapsed on top of them.
Other shows the band was scheduled to play in the coming months were also canceled.
The reason for these cancellations was that Anthony Kiedis was in no state to perform.
In 1997, he got into a motorcycle accident and broke his wrist and arm,
requiring surgery and nine months of convalescence. According to Rolling Stone,
the painkillers he was prescribed also drove him to relapse on heroin.
After four years and just one LP,
Dave Navarro parted ways with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in April 1998,
according to MTV News. At the time, Navarro said there was no animosity behind his departure,
and that he wanted to spend more time on Spread, a band he formed with Chili Peppers
drummer Chad Smith. However, his actual reasons for leaving were far more complex.
In 2018, Navarro said on his Dark Matter podcast that he'd relapsed in his sobriety
from drugs while on a Jane's Addiction reunion tour in 1997. He believes this rattled Flea,
as Hillel Slovak had passed away from a heroin overdose. When he reported to a
Chili Peppers rehearsal, Navarro says he could barely stand, let alone play his instrument.
"I fell into a bunch of boxes, basically. And it was, like,
pretty clear that I wasn't gonna be able to get it together."
Around that time, John Frusciante had begun making overtures to get back into the band.
Since Frusciante was sober and Navarro was not, they chose to allow their old friend to rejoin.
As of 2022, the Red Hot
Chili Peppers have released 12 studio albums, but they've recorded a total of 13 full-length LPs.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, in 2003 the band booked some time to
record a couple of songs to be used as bonus tracks on a greatest hits album.
Instead, they recorded 16 songs, and only used just two of them,
"Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population", for their intended purpose,
while versions of other tracks appeared on later releases.
That means there's likely more than enough unused material leftover for
an entire album. Chad Smith told Modern Drummer:
"Twelve of them were probably good [...] we were going to come back and write some more
songs, and I was like, 'Let's just write another 10, take maybe seven out of that,
add it to the others we'd previously done, and we'll have a record.'"
Guitarist John Frusciante nixed the idea. Nine months after recording
that first batch of abandoned songs, he'd moved on to a different kind of
playing style and didn't want to move backwards creatively. For this reason,
there remains an album's worth of Chili Peppers music that may never see the light of day.
After a years-long hiatus,
the Red Hot Chili Peppers stormed back in 2006 with the double album
Stadium Arcadium. The release was launched by the Top 10 hit single "Dani California."
Inspired by the groovy instrumentation generated by his bandmates,
frontman Anthony Kiedis started to compose the lyrics to a song about a young woman named Dani.
He soon figured out that the Dani he was writing about was the same ill-fated fictional character
he'd sung about on previous releases. In a band interview, he explained how "Dani
California" completed a trilogy of hit songs that spanned across three albums, saying,
"I realized that Dani in 'By the Way' was about the girl in 'Californication,'
the 'teenage bride with the baby inside.' And so it sort of revealed itself to me."
According to UPI, the content of "Dani California" was familiar to more people than just Kiedis.
In fact, it shared a chord progression, tempo, melody, and lyrics about an uneasy
Southern woman with "Mary Jane's Last Dance," a 1993 hit by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
An informant close to the situation told the New York Post that Petty
was looking into litigating the matter, but he ultimately decided against it.
Petty told Rolling Stone he didn't think the Chili Peppers had any malicious intent
when creating the song, and he was no longer worried about the similarities.
While the Red Hot Chili Peppers avoided
a potentially expensive and embarrassing legal battle with Tom Petty over "Dani California,"
they also filed a lawsuit against the producers of a TV show,
alleging several intellectual property crimes.
In August 2007, Showtime debuted the dramedy Californication, starring David Duchovny,
a hard-drinking, serial adulterer and novelist living in Los Angeles.
The title is a portmanteau of "California" and "fornication," and it's also the name of a 1999
Red Hot Chili Peppers album that sold more than 7 million copies, according to the RIAA.
According to MTV News, the Chili Peppers sued Showtime Networks In November 2007.
They claimed dilution of the value of the word "Californication" and unfair competition,
as the name is, quote, "inherently distinctive, famous, and immediately associated in the mind
of the consumer" with the rock band who came up with and used it first.
Kiedis announced in a statement that the band felt the network had taken from the band's personality
and brand without their permission, and that the group was deeply offended by this act.
Californication the series further cribbed from the Chili Peppers with the inclusion
of a character named Dani California. It's unclear what happened with the suit,
but since the show didn't have to change its name, it may have been settled out of court.