Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers , preeminent white funk band of the late 1980s. Membership:Anthony Kiedis, voc. (b. Grand Rapids, Mich., Nov. 1, 1962); Flea (real name, Michael Balzary), bs. (b. Melbourne, Australia, Oct. 16, 1962); Jack Irons, drm. (b. Los Angeles, July 18, 1962); Hillel Slovak, grr. (b. Haifa, Israel, April 13, 1962; d. Los Angeles, June 25, 1988); John Frusciante, gtr. (b. N.Y.C., March 5, 1970); Dave Navarro, gtr. (b. Santa Monica, Calif., June 7, 1967).

The four original Chili Peppers—Flea, Slovak, Irons, and Kiedis—met while attending Los Angeles’ Fairfax H.S. Kiedis’s father was an actor and Kiedis himself had played Sylvester Stallone’s son in the 1976 movie Fist. They started working as Anthem School until Flea left to join the punk band Fear (and also to accept an acting role in the film Suburbia) in 1983. Irons and Slovak formed What Is This?, leaving Kiedis groupless. However, Flea soon left Fear, and the band began performing again. Unfortunately, Slovak and Irons were already signed for What Is This? and could not participate on the group’s debut album in 1984. Cliff Martinez and Jack Sherman replaced them on an album produced by Gang of Four drummer Andy Gill. Both the What Is This? project and the Chili Peppers’s debut didn’t do especially well. Irons and Slovak returned to the group in time to tour. Often, the band went on stage wearing nothing but sweat-sock codpieces. Their music was, and continues to be, an amalgam of funk, hip-hop, skatecore metal, and punk.

The next year they went into the studio with George Clinton to make Freaky Styley. Clinton brought along

members of his P-funk mob, particularly his Horny Horns (Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker). The album was more cohesive, and certainly funkier, than their first outing, but again failed to chart. Their next album finally cracked the charts, but just barely; The Uplift Mofo Party Plan reached #148, its sales mostly a tribute to the band’s relentless touring and the inclusion of the frat anthem “Party on Your Pussy.”

Before they could celebrate, disaster struck. In 1988, Slovak died of a heroin overdose; Kiedis was also having serious problems with opiates; Irons left the band. Rather than disband, Flea and Kiedis initially toured with P-Funk guitarist Blackbyrd McKnight and Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro, but the combination didn’t work. John Frusciante was a fan and guitarist they knew and asked to join. They wound up auditioning drummers, hiring Chad Smith. With the new players, the band went into the studio and recorded 1989’s Mother’s Milk, the band’s breakthrough album. Videos for a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” and the single “Knock Me Down” were intriguing enough to get serious play on MTV. The group’s popularity increased when they appeared in spring 1990 as part of MTV’s Spring Break festivities. However, during their performance, Flea and Smith entered the crowd, grabbing a comely coed, whom Smith proceeded to spank. Flea was found guilty of committing an unnatural act, battery, and disorderly conduct; Smith got off with a battery charge. This only increased the band’s standing among its fans.

The band signed with Warner Brothers and retreated to the Sharon Tate mansion with producer Rick Rubin, living there together for the months that it took to make their next album, BloodSugarSexMagik. The album broke the band pop, with the single “Under the Bridge,” an uncharacteristic ballad, zooming to #2 on the charts, going gold. The album rose to #3 on its way to triple platinum. The band suddenly was a star attraction, headlining the 1992 Lollapalooza festival.

The band’s lifestyle proved a little too much for Frusciante. The guitarist had hardly had a drink and never did drugs before he joined the band, but teetering on the verge of rock stardom, he found himself with a drug problem. He left the band and after a series of guitarists who didn’t make the grade, former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro replaced him. Over the course of the next four years, the group released a greatest hits album, aptly titled What Hits?, which went platinum. They contributed the song “Soul to Squeeze” to the Coneheads soundtrack, which rose to #22. Flea and Kiedis acted in the movie The Chase together and, respectively, in Private Idaho and Point Break. When they finally got back to music, they cut 1995’s One Hot Minute. With the rock hit “My Friends” the album went platinum, but that was considered a major comedown after the success of BloodSugarSexMagik.

Another long hiatus followed. Flea and Navarro joined with Navarro’s old bandmates Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins for the grueling Jane’s Relapse tour. It proved to be too much roadwork for Navarro, who left both Jane’s and the Chili Peppers to put together his own project. The Chili Peppers brought back a clean, sober Frusciante, and cut the 1999 opus Californication. The album rose to #3 on the charts, going double platinum based largely on the single “Scar Tissue,” which won the band a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song.

Bibliography

Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984); Freaky Styley (1985); The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987); Mother’s Milk (1989); BloodSug-arSexMagik (1991); Out in LA. (1994); One Hot Minute (1995); Californication (1999).

—Hank Bordowitz