The iconic and funky Red Hot Chili Peppers have been rocking fans for decades, but their
history is filled with struggles, pain, and even death, as everyone in the group has struggled
with their own demons.
This is the tragic real-life story of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers that most people know are singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea,
drummer Chad Smith and whoever happens to be their current guitarist.
From John Frusciante to Dave Navarro to Frusciante again to Josh Klinghoffer to a revolving door
of lesser known names, guitarists have always been the Peppers' equivalent of Spinal Tap
drummers.
The reason behind that revolving door, though, is rooted in the tragic loss of the band's
original lead guitarist, Hillel Slovak.
In 1988, the 26-year-old Slovak was found lifeless in his apartment.
The cause of death was a heroin overdose.
Understandably, this shook the rest of the band, since Slovak was not only a founding
member, but also a massive influence on the others.
"I don't think any of us ever really thought that that would happen even though, you know,
we were pretty messed up at that point."
Slovak's signature funk-rock style essentially established the band's sound, and original
drummer Jack Irons decided to leave the band shortly after his passing.
Flea has even said that he only picked up the bass instrument because Slovak asked him
to.
It's easy to assume that a man professionally known as Flea didn't have the most conventional
of childhoods, but few could believe just how rough things really were for him.
The musician basically grew up in one of the seedier episodes of Breaking Bad, as he was
raised in a violent, alcoholic household.
His father left the family when he was only six, and his mother and stepfather left the
young boy terrified.
This less-than-optimal start in life created a snowball effect that took Flea to some very
dark places.
By the time he was 11, he sought solace from his turbulent home on the streets, where he'd
routinely hang out until 4 a.m.
This was also when he started smoking marijuana, and soon enough, he started abusing virtually
any drug he could get a hold of.
He got in trouble with dealers and cops alike, and gun-toting criminals started lurking around
him.
Overdoses were a part of life, and Flea lost three of his best friends before they turned
26.
It was a brutal way of life that he couldn't quite shake until his thirties, and he was
40 before he could consider forgiving his parents for the environment they raised him
in.
"I stopped doing drugs, drinking alcohol, when I was about 30, and then I started feeling
everything, and sometimes it was a river of pain."
"Under the Bridge," released in 1992, is arguably the Red Hot Chili Peppers' most beloved song,
and its lyrics are famously about Anthony Kiedis' struggle with drug addiction.
But it turns out that the true story behind the song is actually somewhat more complicated
than that.
"Under the Bridge" depicts a period in time when the freshly drug-free Kiedis felt growing
alienation from his bandmates who were still using drugs, and from society in general.
He sought to deal with this by roaming all around Los Angeles, and he ended up developing
a fairly interesting connection with the city.
As he explained,
"I felt an unspoken bond between me and my city.
I'd spent so much time wandering through the streets of L.A. and hiking through the Hollywood
Hills that I sensed there was a nonhuman entity, maybe the spirit of the hills and the city,
who had me in her sights and was looking after me."
While this strange state of mind contributed to the general feeling of the song, the darker
references came from a very specific memory.
In his anguished need to score drugs, Kiedis once attempted to enter gang territory under
a particular bridge, rumored to be the one in L.A.'s MacArthur Park.
He supposedly wormed his way in by pretending that he was engaged to a sister of a gang
member.
Understandably, he ranks this desperate maneuver as one of the worst depths he's ever sunk
to.
In 1990, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were wild up-and-comers, and sometimes their crazy onstage
antics got more than a little inappropriate.
Such was the case with their MTV-filmed spring break performance in Daytona Beach, Florida,
which led to half the band getting arrested.
During the performance, Flea and Chad Smith decided to kick things up a notch by leaping
off the stage and assaulting an audience member.
The band had already whipped itself into a furious state when Flea unexpectedly pounced
a female spectator and started spinning her on his shoulders.
Smith joined the fray by pulling her swimsuit aside and slapping her rear end.
It got even worse when Flea then got on top of the woman and started to simulate a vulgar
act.
The shocked woman called for help, and the Peppers were swiftly escorted away.
Smith ended up getting charged with battery, while Flea's list of misdeeds included battery,
disorderly conduct, and solicitation to commit an unnatural and lascivious act.
Chad Smith prefers the occasional drink and joint to hard drugs, and he's referred to
his childhood as "blue-collar" rather than "tragic."
This has helped him to keep his feet mostly dry even during the years when the rest of
the band kept rocking the boat.
But that doesn't mean he has no notable weaknesses.
In fact, he used to be a self-confessed serial relationship-ender.
Over the years, he's had six children with four different women.
When The Guardian asked him about this in 2003, he grudgingly admitted this particular
flaw in his personality, noting,
"I'm the dumper.
I fall in love easily, but...I get restless.
I'll figure it out one day.
Can we talk about something else?"
To be fair, it appears that Smith indeed fulfilled his promise of figuring it out in the end,
as he married his second wife, architect Nancy Mack, in 2004, and they've been together ever
since.
In 1992, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were on the cusp of true greatness, only for tensions
inside the band to almost tear them apart.
They were riding high on the wave of their 1991 smash hit album Blood Sugar Sex Magik,
and superstardom was there for the taking.
But John Frusciante, who was a relatively recent addition at the time, felt uncomfortable
with the sudden fame.
He started arguing with Anthony Kiedis about the direction of the band.
Kiedis remembers Frusciante telling him,
"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."
The tensions between Frusciante and the others kept growing, and it didn't exactly help that
Kiedis was a recovering addict at the time, while Frusciante was increasingly into drugs.
Frusciante botched an important Saturday Night Live performance, which Kiedis called intentional
sabotage.
Things finally came to a head during a trip to Japan, when the disconnected guitarist
unexpectedly informed the band's manager that he was out.
The other Peppers managed to talk him into playing the show they had scheduled that night,
but after that, Frusciante was gone.
His departure was so swift that Rolling Stone had to hastily scrub him off the cover photo
of an upcoming issue.
"I remember thinking, you know thinking, before John left, that there was just, that could
happen, that he would leave, or just cause it was, things were kind of feeling dysfunctional."
After Frusciante left the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the first time in 1992, his life went
downhill so fast, it's almost a miracle that he managed to return to the land of the living.
His exit was largely fueled by his desire for creative freedom as opposed to the "performing
monkey" act he believed the Red Hot Chili Peppers were becoming.
But when he actually left the band, his creativity was soon curbed by depression, and, later,
all the heroin and cocaine he could get his hands on.
He voluntarily embarked on the path of a full-time junkie, with all the nasty trimmings that
entailed, to the point that Flea, who had spent his life around drug users, soon drifted
away from him.
Even when his friend, actor River Phoenix, died of an overdose at the age of 23, Frusciante
didn't stray from his path.
In 1998, Frusciante eventually realized that he was marching towards an inevitable death,
and after a few false starts, he ended his years in the wilderness by becoming stone
cold sober.
Later that year, he rejoined the struggling Peppers at Flea's behest.
At this point, he had suffered five near-fatal overdoses, and his teeth were so utterly destroyed
that the dental bill was $90,000.
However, he was undoubtedly back, and he stayed with the band until 2009.
Every rock star worth their salt has feuded with a colleague, and Anthony Kiedis is no
exception.
His particular opponent of choice was Mike Patton, Faith No More's thousand-voiced frontman.
In the 1980s, both bands had a similar funk metal sound, and Faith No More had even played
as an opener for the Peppers.
However, when both bands started breaking big, Kiedis saw Faith No More's video for
the song "Epic" and took offense, as he felt Patton was copying his mannerisms.Kiedis started
taking public potshots at Patton, but when the Faith No More frontman declined to respond,
things calmed down.
Unfortunately, though, the animosity started anew in 1999, when Patton and his other band
Mr. Bungle were removed from various festivals.
They discovered that this was apparently at the behest of Kiedis, who threatened to pull
the Peppers out if Patton's group stayed in the lineup.
Why this happened is anyone's guess, though it's worth noting that Mr. Bungle had an album
called California coming out at roughly the same time that the Peppers' Californication
was released.
Regardless, this prompted Patton to start publicly ripping into Kiedis, and another
one of his bands, Fantômas, even ruthlessly mocked the Peppers onstage.
Fortunately, things seem to have mellowed out since then.
In a 2010 interview with Bizarre Magazine, Patton said about the feud,
"I've no idea what it was about then and I don't know now.
But I bet we'd have a warm embrace if we saw each other now."
Many bands have found it difficult to work on their new albums, but when it comes to
the Red Hot Chili Peppers, their troubles have been a little more serious than the usual
the-guitarist-wandered-off-again variety.
In 2018, the Peppers were working on their new album when their efforts were suddenly
halted by the monstrous Woolsey Fire, which the Los Angeles Times noted was the most destructive
wildfire on record in Los Angeles and Ventura County.
While the house the band was working in was ultimately untouched by the flames, both Chad
Smith and Anthony Kiedis lived in the Point Dume area, which was badly damaged by the
fire, with 70 houses burned down in the community.
The band later did their part in rebuilding by playing a benefit show for the victims
of the fire at the Hollywood Palladium.
In 2018, Flea wrote an essay for Time Magazine in which he railed against the opioid crisis.
It came from a very personal place, as the musician had broken his arm while snowboarding
and had to have surgery.
He's grateful to his doctor for fixing the damage so well that his ability to play remained
intact, but he also believes that he was prescribed more Oxycontin than he really needed.
The supposed dosage was four pills a day, but one Oxy every 24 hours was enough to kill
the pain and to turn him into an emotionless, depressed zombie.
Flea ultimately kept his dosage low and stopped popping pills after a month, but he claims
that could've easily gotten a refill.
The experience made him realize that the supposedly trustworthy doctors of America prescribe such
brain-numbing medication to people from all walks of life, potentially leading to addiction
and death.
He told the world about this, along with his own, darker history with substance abuse,
in an effort to raise awareness of the opioid crisis.
"I still, you know, wrestle with a little numbness in there, and I got this real weird
lump on my arm, but, um, everything's rocking."
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