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Red Hot Chili Peppers Feature


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( Extrait du magazine "Mtv Headlines" (8 juin 1999). )
Some say that the depths of hell and the streets of L.A. are one and the same. One thing we can all agree on: the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been to both and back.

The band's history plays like a miniseries just begging to be televised : deaths, near-deaths, various addictions, broken bones, ever-changing guitar players, motorcycle crashes. Pick any bandmember, and chances are he's the stuff rumors are made of.

Sounds like we might all be able to get past that... for now, at least.

Following the Chili Peppers' divorce from its last guitarist, Dave Navarro, the band has reunited with John Frusciante, the axe-wielder from the band's multi-platinum heydays of "Mothers Milk" and "Blood Sugar Sex Magik"

Cleaned up and startlingly pre-Raphaelite-looking, Frusciante's mere presence has giddied and funked up the band in a way that's making everyone sit up and care about them all over again. Not to mention that the band's latest LP, "Californication", finds the guys sounding fresh and invigorated. It could be their best work since (surprise) "Blood Sugar Sex Magik". (Here come the new Peppers, same as the old Peppers?)

MTV News' Kurt Loder recently sat down with the band to discuss the new album. Between slap-fights and impromptu wrestling matches, the guys got serious about the politics and emotions behind Frusciante's departure (and return), addictions and rehabilitations, the thrill of hitting the road, and that Navarro guy.

Get ready for some serious Californication'.

Kurt Loder : What is "Californication" ?

Anthony Kiedis : It's not a sexual reference. "Californication" is really just the act of the world being affected and saturated by the art and the culture being born and raised in California. Travelling around the world, no matter how far I go, I see the affect that California has on the world. It's about that good and bad, beautiful and ugly.

Flea : This is our greatest and best album, thank you.

John Frusciante : Yeah. Yeah, it's my favorite.

Flea : The truth is that only once have we made two records in a row with the same lineup, and that was "Mothers Milk" and "Blood Sugar [Sex Magik]." We liked "Mothers Milk" at the time but "Blood Sugar" was leaps and bounds beyond it. I don't know if it's going to happen again, but we just made "Californication" and we just think that it is the greatest thing that we have ever done.

Would you say this is the classic lineup of the band ?

Anthony : In the last ten years, it's certainly the classic lineup. Having, you know, Hillel [Slovak] was also an amazing lineup for us, because Flea and Hillel had a certain brand of telepathic communication that only happens once in a lifetime. John is kind of the other classic lineup.

So let me start back seven years ago. What was the feeling in the group when John left ? Were you, like, devastated or --

Anthony : Yeah, I was devastated. I was confused and it hurt, because you know, for one thing, John and I had gone from being very best friends... to just being completely alienated from each other. Now seven years later I see that it all made perfect sense and it had to happen that way.

So John, what where you thinking when you decided to leave this group seven years ago ?

John : I told Flea that there was nothing I was enjoying about being in the band anymore. All I know is we hated each other, we didn't make each other feel good as people, we didn't like being around each other. It was lame. I mean, we were good and were tight on stage and deep down we loved each other, but we all reacted differently to the various personal problems that we had throughout that year.

Was this like a drug thing ?

John : No, not a drug thing. It had to do with the way we responded to being successful.

Flea : I don't know. I think it was different for all of us, and [at] that time, we weren't getting along good. I can only speak for myself. It was terrible.

John : It was. At first I wasn't quitting, because I loved Flea so much and dug what we had together and playing together that so much that I wasn't going to quit the band and leave Flea without me. But then I realized I was making Flea miserable. There was no reason for me to stay in the band at that point, when my love for him was the only thing keeping me in the band and the only thing making me feel good. I started to realize he was going to feel better without me.

Did you feel better when he left ?

Flea : Yeah.

Of course then, you didn't have a guitar player.

Flea : [Laughs] Yeah. Actually I was really sad when he left, and it was terrible and I didn't even know what to do. But then after that we went on and did some tours, though it may not have been... well, definitely we were just playing stuff we created with John, and the hardcore magic that helped us create what we created wasn't there. It still was a lot easier to work with John. The separateness of what was happening was so hard. It was just a lot less stress, and maybe it was not as deep, but I was more relaxed.

Did it ever occur to you to say, "Gee, this might be the end ?"

Anthony : I think we were too freaked out to consider the end. We did all we could to kind of carry on, but it was a bit forced and tortured, really.

Flea : During the whole time that John wasn't in the band, I was in contact with him and we were always friends. I was always aware of what he was going through with everything, and I was really worried about John. I was worried John was going to die.

From what ?

Flea : From doing drugs. But John did what John needed to do, to live John's life, and right now John is the most focused, inspiring person that I know.

So the band helped John out with rehab and stood by him--

Anthony : Yeah, definitely.

Chad Smith : We are more concerned about him than being in a band. [After John left we were] all kind of doing other things just to keep busy, but Chili Peppers is really the main thing that we really cherish, and to a lot of us, it's the most important thing. To do it again with John, it's really like a rebirth. It was so inspiring for us to play with him again and still is. Once we started playing again it was like, "Ahh, this is great. We're smiling and having a great time, and that's the way it's always been."

Anthony : He went from being such a wild card, such a kind of unpredictable, potentially volatile, mysterious, "oh God what's going to happen" character to being really probably the most disciplined in consistence, musically inspired pillar of this band right now. In any moment of doubt or concern we kind of focus on John, because he's so into this and nothing else, because he is giving all of his energy to this and it's contagious that way.

John and I had our pow-wow get together before we played, and we sat down and for a minute I thought we were gonna have to go through the resentment and trash and the pain and all that stuff that happened, but we kind of looked at each other and we both just understood that it's all done and there's no reason to discuss it because it's over with and we still love each other. So when we got to the garage and John plugged in and Flea plugged in and Chad sat down, it wasn't just like old times. It was better new times.

It must have seemed like a long shot, getting John back in the band. I mean, when did this seem like it could be done ?

Flea : Well, we got to the point with Dave Navarro where it just wasn't working, and we all knew that. Just chemistry and personality things weren't working out, and we definitely did not fire him, and he definitely did not quit. It was one of those things where we kinda threw our hands up in the air.

I remember speaking to Anthony, saying, "What do you think if maybe I should talk to John about joining back with the band ?" And he's like, "Well I don't know, that's kind of heavy. I don't know if we should do that." And I said, "I'll go feel him out." And I went and asked John, and he was happy and all excited to do it.

John : It also comes back to the reasons why a person should be in a band. Our friendship started to be in a really good place. Me and Flea had always been friends, but all of a sudden it seemed like we were all on the same page. All of a sudden it seemed like we were doing the same thing inside ourselves.

And Anthony as well. All of a sudden this guy, who I had not had friendship with a long, long time, all of a sudden he was now a new friend in my life and had done a few things to make me know that he loved me and had very much cared about me. I had been struck very much by his charm and what a great person he had become, so these things are good reasons to spend every day with people and make music with them. That's how it sounded when Flea asked me to be in the band. It just seemed like the perfect thing to do.

So did the material on this record flow out pretty naturally ?

Anthony : It did. It did. It was falling like apples from the sky.

Flea : Rick [Rubin] is a great producer for us, and he understands the magic within our band is the interplay we have between each other and letting those feelings flow within the moment.

The songs seem to be about drug problems. Is that reading too much into them ?

Anthony : [Smirks] I think they're about everything under the sun but--

Including drug problems.

Anthony : Including drug problems but not in the lyrical sense of "I picked up a pile of drugs" but more ethereal and poetic-sounding, and open to a variety of interpretations. But Rick -- getting back to Rick Rubin -- he used to look at the lyric sheets day in and day out, and he would say, "This song is about drugs." "This song is about sex." "This song is about California."

Chad : He likes to break it down to the common denominator.

Anthony : And I was like, "No there's so much more being said here." [But] if you ask Rick, he would say this is the album about sex and drugs.

"Savior" -- is that a religious song ?

John : No. Anthony appears to be denying that that song has a spiritual significance for him, but we don't really force our personalities on the music so directly like that, to where we don't feel that what it means to somebody else isn't the right thing, you know. I personally don't feel that any piece of art is done until the audience sees it or hears it. What they get out of the lyrics is at least half of the meaning, and so for him it doesn't mean something spiritual, it's not about something spiritual to him --

Flea : I thought it was about you.

John : I did too, to be honest with you.

Anthony : You know...

Chad : [Laughs]

Anthony : There are a lot of songs that could be thought of as being inspired by John on a lyrical level. Sometimes you write a song and you're not even sure where it came from, and it turns out that those feelings were possibly about John, but you know, maybe about other things as well.

Is everybody getting along on the road ?

John : That's the really great thing about being in the band now. We get along so well, you know, the four of us. We all appreciate each person's role in the whole organization of the band.

What was the idea for this tour you're doing now ? This all-ages tour. I mean, was it strictly solely prompted by Littleton ?

Anthony : It wasn't prompted by that. My roommate kept bugging me. He heard our record and said, "This is such a great record, you have to do something before it comes out to let the world know that you made a great record." And I thought we should just go play high schools. And then all that crazy psychotic sadness happened in Colorado, and I thought, oh s***, this is going to somehow mess up our thing to play at schools. Instead it turned into [playing] under the banner of tolerance. And I thought, music is like that already, so we'll go and bring the naturally musically positive vibes to schools and show them that there are better things to do than, you know... mowing people down.

I know a lot of people have, you know, come out of drug problems. Do you ever... worry about going back on the road and being exposed to all this stuff ?

Anthony : I don't worry about any of that because right now it's not happening. And to waste my energy thinking about it or worrying about it would be a waste. Whenever I've been clean and this band has been on the road, we just don't attract that kind of element.

And how are the people responding out there ?

Anthony : People seem to be happy about us playing. We played a show the other day and it was very touching. There was an audience, naturally, and they were holding up these signs that you would see at sort of a Green Bay Packers football game that said --

Chad : Instead of "John 3:16" it was "Welcome back, John."

Anthony : "Welcome back, John."

Chad : Very nice.

You still talk to Dave Navarro ?

Chad : Yeah. Well, he said to me, "You know, it's not working out, I don't know what you guys are going to do, but the only guy you should get is John Frusciante." So I think he understood that there is a chemistry thing that is very important and really important in our band. John is the guy that, you know, he's the missing cylinder, so we're on fire in all of them.

Anthony : That's funny, because he mentioned to me we should get the guitar player from Metallica.


par Kurt Loder


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