09/1995 RAW (183)

THE RAW PULL OUT

SIXTEEN PAGES OF CHILI ACTION

KIEDIS AND NAVARRO INTERVIEW BY SVEN HARDING

ALL-NEW PHOTOS

KILLER POSTERS
In-DEPTH ALBUM ANALYSIS
CHILIS’ HALLS OF FAME AND SHAME

“LIKE GIVING BIRTH”

BODY BEAUTIFUL

THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE NEW ’ONE HOT MINUTE’ ALBUM

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS vocalist ANTHONY KIEDIS reckons his guitarist DAVE NAVARRO has the “the most beautiful body of anyone I know”. Which is fine and dandy, but hasn’t he got more important topics to discuss out in LA? Like the band’ new album, `One Hot Minute’, inevitable drug talk and playing music under a Francis Bacon painting in the Tate Gallery? SVEN HARDING keeps his  shirt on.

IT’S THE  middle of July and Los Angeles, like the rest of America, is sweltering under a heatwave of epic proportions. Both the temperature (heading past 90°) and the heat-induced national death toll (300 in the past week alone) are displaying the kind of upward mobility unseen round these parts since the mid-1980s. Amidst all the traffic, and the smog, and the instant uncomfortable sweatiness, the outdoor pool at the centre of the Sunset Marquis, LA’s exclusive rock ‘n’ roll hotel – current guests include Bjork, Tricky and rock photographer/promo director Anton Corbijn – is a veritable oasis of moneyed cool and calm. Be-suited record company executives quietly power-lunch at shaded poolside tables, while skimpily clad wannabe-starlets tan themselves a few feet away. Everybody is subtly checking out everybody else, while at the same time trying to exude the air of south California poise that the mock-Spanish colonial surroundings, at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, demand. The tranquillity is suddenly shattered.

“Where do we go?” yells a booming, irreverent voice to nobody in particular. Every pair of eyes in the place swivels to the pool area entrance. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have arrived – a cartoon-like visual riot of punky hairstyles, tattooed, tanned flesh, Arnet sunglasses and boldly baggy skate and surf gear. The voice belongs to Flea, the Chilli Peppers’ wildman bassist, stripped to the waist, a full-face motorcycle helmet slung over his shoulder. The quartet – completed by vocalist Anthony Kiedis, guitarist Dave Navarro, and a newly peroxide-blond drummer Chad Smith – are here to talk about a new album chock full of their trademark rock-tinged, Californian punk-funk and, by the looks of it, they’re ultra-keen to get on with things. A suitably apologetic hotel employee scurries from somewhere to guide the vaguely surly gang on their way.

‘One Minute’ is the much-awaited follow-up to 1991’s ‘Bloodsugarsexmagik’, the Rick Rubin-produced album that catapulted The Chilis out of the rock spotlight and watched them land in the middle of the big, wide world as everybody’s property. It’s also the first album from the band to feature former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro in what must be the longest-awaited recording debut ever. It seems like Navarro has been a Chili Pepper for ever. In fact it’s been a mere two years.

Navarro’s contribution is immediately obvious. From `Warped’s shining, gilt-edged rifling and on to the blended funk chopping of ‘Aeroplane’, the synthesis of the Chills’ funk history and Navarro’s autonomous style breathes deep puffs of cool wind into the band’s approach. And there’s plenty of music to discover this on. Fifteen tracks with odd titles such as ‘Pea’ and ‘Coffee Shop’, again recorded with empathy by Rick Rubin. Which is all very nice. At the moment, however, Navarro isn’t interested in the finer aesthetics of music.

“Have you ever noticed how much bigger your penis looks when you look at it from the side rather than from above?” Axe-man Dave Navarro has just emerged from what Americans call the `restroom’ in the opulent suite that he and Anthony Kiedis are using for the interview. The perspective afforded to Navarro by the bathroom’s mirrored panelling while he was urinating has clearly impressed him.

“Have you ever noticed how a mirror can make your erection look even bigger?” counters Kiedis, before taking a sip from a bottle of Evian water.

“When I’ve got an erection I’m way too pre-occupied to be looking in any mirrors,” replies Navarro, sitting down beside the surprisingly diminutive singer on a chintzy pink sofa. “Well, you know you can get these convex mirrors that make everything look kind of weird – you wanna try looking at your erection in one of those things,” quips Kiedis,clearly relishing the penile ridiculousness of the conversation.

Outside things are getting even wackier. Flea can now be spied strolling across a well-manicured lawn wearing only a pair of sopping-wet black Calvin Klein underpants. Apparently he had noticed the existence of yet another pool, just outside the chalet belonging to the Warner Brothers press officer, and decided to spontaneously strip off and jump in, through an open window some ten feet above the water’s surface, to cool himself down. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, it would seem, are going out of their way to live up to their reputation as one of the last remaining standard-bearers of the full-on rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

“F**k the reputation,” states Anthony Kiedis as the interview proper commences. He and Flea have just returned from an 11-day outward-bound jaunt across the remotest regions of Alaska (“I really get off on wilderness, getting away from society, and just being with nature. It makes me as happy as anything else in the world”), but whereas the Australian-born bassist is expressing his renewed vitality by making daredevil pool-jumps, Kiedis is in an earnest mood indeed.

“F**k the reputation,” he repeats. “The reputation is all based on media interpretation. A magazine will get hold of one itty, bitty little slice of what we’re about and they’ll try to blow it up out of proportion as to what we’re all about. I think – not to sit here and stroke ourselves – we’re about so much more.”

THE RED Hot Chilli Peppers, formed by Kiedis and Flea (friends since High School) after they had performed a spoof one-song live show as ‘Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem’, have been around for a long time, 12 years to be exact.

“Blood transfusions,” answers 32-year-old Kiedis when quizzed about the secret behind the band’s longevity, tongue firmly-in-cheek, fixing me with a mock-serious stare across the hotel room coffee table. “Blood transfusions and changing blood with the guy standing to the immediate left every so often. We circulate our blood in the band, it seems to have some kind of a fusing effect. The Egyptians used to do it for eternal life.”

The LA-based group’s own life span has been riddled with the kind of rock ‘n’ roll (mis)adventures that seem like the work of an over-imaginative script-writer on Spinal Tap 2, events that would have pulled lesser musical alliances to pieces. Models/ actresses have been dated and dramatically split with, huge amounts of drugs ingested, guitarists and drummers have departed at crucial moments, with music paper headline-grabbing controversy never very far away.

Nineteen eighty-eight saw the death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak from a heroin overdose, while, two years later, Anthony Kiedis, himself a former heroin addict, was up in court, accused of indecent exposure and sexual battery (he allegedly dropped his trousers and jokingly asked a female student – who had volunteered to drive the RHCP back to their hotel – whether she was the girl who had come to suck his dick).

‘ONE HOT Minute’, the band’s seventh recorded effort, has taken over two artistically problematic years to record. “This record was like giving birth,” says Navarro. “It’s been problematic in the most beautiful sense of the word, full of glitches and pukes and all kinds of unexpected tragedies and unforeseeable dilemmas of every shape and size.”

“We’re taking two weeks to rehearse for our European tour,” adds Kiedis. “The options are to rehearse in Dublin – it’s a place we’ve always been very fond of – or in London…”

“I love London,” butts in Navarro. “The basement of the Tate (Gallery) – we’ll be down below the Tate.”

“Yeah,” says Kiedis, “I want to rehearse in front of Francis Bacon paintings.”

With the subject matter of the new album’s lyrics covering, according to Kiedis, “a gamut of remarkable tenderness and vigorous anger and disenchantment – it’s overall probably harder than our last record. It’s incredibly therapeutic to play music. To write songs and play music. It’s hard as hell and it has a million ups and downs, but it’s obviously kept us going. We don’t look at it as a cold issue. It’s a very warm and loving experience for the most part.”

I ask if it annoys him that, in Britain at least, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are probably still better known for their cocks -or to be more precise, wearing socks on their cocks during a photo session outside London’s Abbey Road studios years ago -than for their music.

“That’s really their problem,” replies Kiedis. “I definitely don’t regret it (wearing the socks) ‘cos it was so much fun and it was such a beautiful image. When it had its birth it was coming from such a natural and free-flowing place in our hearts. It was so exciting. We did it for pleasure and entertainment. I think it is really a British problem. In terms of magazines the British press always takes things at face value and latches onto the first penis they can get their hands around.

“Anyway,” he adds, “the record’s so much more well-equipped to deal with these questions than me sitting in a hotel room trying to explain what the record has to say. That’s said with guitars and drums and bass, percussion and horns.”

THE CHILI Pepper’s unashamed past championing of their genitals (“We’ve got big dicks so we’re the men for the job,” Flea once said during the ‘sock period’) and the sexually charged nature of their performances (at one time they’d perform with their ‘meat and two veg’ shoved – minus sock – through holes in paper plates) has led some to view them as being sexually belligerent.

“I’ve got two words to say to that,” says Kiedis, “Bend over. No, I’m kidding. I know myself, as do Flea, and Chad, and Dave, that there’s so much more than sexual energy. But sexual energy is something we’d never deny ‘cos that’s a big part of life – part of rhythm, part of music and part of people.”

With Kiedis now apparently totally drug-free (in direct confrontation with many reports that suggested that ‘One Hot Minute’ took an eternity to record precisely because of the singer’s renewed substance abuse), the legacy of his having fought off an addiction to heroin immediately after Hillel Slovak’s death (the hit single ‘Under The Bridge’ reportedly refers to the place where Kiedis would find his dealers), the singer insists that his illegal substance-fuelled partying days are long since over.

“Recreational drug use, well for me it’s not an option, ‘cos for me it’s just not recreational and I just contend with it on a daily basis. I deal with it as best I can. I can’t conceive of a life of any kind where I’m using narcotics.”

I ask Kiedis how he managed to stay in such great physical shape throughout his addiction.

“Well it’s not something I obsess on,” he replies. “We once had a drummer called Cliff Martinez – he was a great drummer -and he once said I was the buffest junkie he had ever known. He was bathed by it.”

Despite his intimate knowledge of the drug, Kiedis is reluctant to outwardly condemn the mooted revival of heroin as a widely used narcotic (the cover story of that week’s Barn, a free LA music magazine, was titled ‘Live Through This – Heroin – The ’90s Drug of Choice’).

“It’s not something that I can really say anything about, it’s a personal experience. I know what it did to me, and what it did to my friends, and it’s been a pretty destructive part of my life. It’s killed a lot of my friends and I don’t support it, but I don’t judge or condemn it. People do what they’re gonna do – hopefully they live through it and grow from it. Hopefully they don’t end up wasting their lives and killing themselves.”

If Kiedis is remarkably serious about drugs, then that’s because it is a serious subject. However… “Did I mention that Dave actually has the most beautiful body of anybody that I know?” Kiedis quips as a jovial parting shot. He hadn’t, but then again you’d hardly expect anything else of the newest recruit to the world’s buffest, shirt-shunning punk/ funk rock and roll band.

 

ONE HOT MINUTE REVIEW

HOWARD JOHNSON offers you an exclusive track-by-track walk through the pleasures of One Hot Minute’.

WARPED

Commencing with some eerie aural fudge, the Chilis soon crash in with an intense Dave Navarro riff that sets the tone for the track. A bizarre choice for the first single, which you might already have purchased, the track runs to over five minutes and certainly proves that the band mean business, darting under a welter of crazed drum fills from Chad Smith and Flea’s typically exuberant bass-popping. There’s nothing restrained about the majority of ‘Warped’; just a ton of hard rock crunch which tails off into a poised wind-down, Navarro pulling some beautiful guitar shapes into the fade.

AEROPLANE
FAR-MORE downbeat, filled with an insistent fat keyboard squelch that’s shamelessly nicked from the ’70s funk albums so beloved of the band. `Music is my aeroplane/Pleasure spiked with pain,’ explains vocalist Anthony Kiedis. Choppy Navarro riffs counterpoint Flea’s up-front bass work, resulting in a track with tons of commercial appeal, especially when some singing schoolkids add a boost to the end choruses. Not as bad as it sounds, actually. Of course the band shoot themselves in the foot as far as airplay is concerned by including a perfectly audible ‘muthaf”king’ early on.

ONE HOT MINUTE

A WEIGHTY title track of just under seven minutes’ duration, the insistent chorus of ‘One hot minute come and get it’ has a great, uplifting feel to it, but the band works the song’s ideas some way past their natural life-span. There’s an excellent breakdown towards the end of the number where the band lock into a riff and sit on it, bringing a mantra-like quality to the piece. Probably not destined to be a Chilis classic, however.

MY FRIENDS

ALREADY TOUTED as the natural successor to ‘Under The Bridge’, the comparison is actually inaccurate. The track is dominated by Navarro’s traditional acoustic work and is indeed blessed with the same instant beauty of ‘Under The Bridge’, but the feeling is less one of melancholy and more of relief that friendship has survived the band’s traumas. When Kiedis sings ‘I love all of you’ in a frail timbre, you can’t help but be moved by the tenderness of the sentiment. A hit.

COFFEE SHOP
AN ADVENTUROUS sonic soundscape, frenetic and furious with Kiedis leading from the front by delivering a user-unfriendly opening vocal melody. By the time you move into the chorus, however, madness of it all, especially when you’re treated to the line: `Meet me at the coffee shop/We can dance like lggy Pop’. The Chilis at their most whacked-out and Californian, but a lot of fun for it. Rock for your therapist.

PEA

SHORT, BASIC and just plain weird. Kiedis commences by singing a childish ode to naivety accompanied by Flea’s deliberately simplistic bass play. However, as the tune moves nervously along, we are accosted by a welter of swear words and a diatribe against a `homophobic redneck’. Kiedis asserts that this reactionary figure can certainly kick his ass, but counterpoints with the repeated line of ‘So f**king what?’. Very odd for a man of 32.

ONE BIG MOB

AN OVERLONG  workout with psychobabble lyrics delivered at breakneck speed. I am you and you are me’ and other such nonsense is delivered with conviction, but a paucity of real inspiration. Nothing much to raise this number out of the ordinary.

STRETCH
SEGUING directly from ‘One Big Mob’, ‘Stretch’ moves in numerous areas and really works, playing audio tricks with stereophonic vocal switching. Separate sections of music, which initially seem to have no common frame of reference, soon come into focus like a magic eye picture. It’s a track which will undoubtedly stand up to repeated scrutiny and will yield further rewards the more you listen to it. A standout moment.

DEEP KICK

OPENS WITH a spoken intro about exploring the ties of childhood, friendship and the redeeming qualities of music (a recurring theme throughout ‘One Hot Minute’) that sounds like a carbon copy of ’60s beat master Jim Morrison of The Doors. When the band finally hit their stride, the joy of their talents being given free reign is immediately apparent. The vocal lines meld with soaring guitar melodies to positive effect and push the song towards the gods. The tune then breaks down into a confessional (seemingly from Flea) about the band’s love/hate relationship with Hollywood, a bizarre coda to a highly entertaining song.

TEAR JERKER
A KIEDIS lament for unrequited love set to a musical accompaniment that is beautiful in its simplicity and contains a Hendrix-like flourish from Navarro. Not entirely bereft of regulation Chills madness, Kiedis asserts that `I like your whiskers/And the dimple in your chin’ as the music moves with assuredness and quiet authority. Beauty in sadness.

WALKABOUT

WITH A vocal delivered in a lazy. almost spoken drawl, the band recline into jazz cocktail lounge lizard mode and thoroughly enjoy the exercise in studied cool, dragging on an imaginary fag and only allowing them-selves to rev up a gear when Navarro goes into guitar overdrive. The song that makes a strong case for ‘noodling’ to be an acceptable musical style.

SHALLOW BE THY GRAVE

PRACTISING CATHOLICS beware. This is a vicious swipe at those whose religion is ruled by fear of damnation. Kiedis gladly offers himself up as a heretic against religious bigots. Hardly a new line of thought, but delivered with conviction. The tune, however, is a pretty standard Chills workout, offering nothing outside the usual pacey rock/funk hybrid and putting no new twist on a musical theme that the band have explored on numerous occasions.

FALLING INTO GRACE

IMMEDIATELY NOTICEABLE for its dual-chorus vocals with an unknown female, the tune features a couple of odd twists; a short, monk-like chanting section and a recurring wah-wah shift that’s buried pretty deep in the mix, but still makes its presence felt. As the track build its way towards the outro it sounds like someone has started up a hoover in the studio next door. The drugs must have been particularly bizarre the day `Falling Into Grace’ was constructed.

BLENDER

THRASH METAL alert. Unintelligible shouting for 20 seconds while the instruments fight it out against each other, fleeing in diametrically opposed directions. ‘Blender’ is wrongly credited on the advance cassette as running for five minutes and 32 seconds.

TRANSCENDING
USHERED IN by an urgent Flea bassline, ‘Transcending’ acts as a beautiful coda to ‘One Hot Minute’, a cool summer breeze illustrated in music. It’s the Chilis at their disarming best, understated and irresistible. However, their demons are never fully contained and the song suddenly lurches into the most intense section on the entire album. Howling feedback, distorted vocals and an overall feeling of utter madness takes over, invoking demons that only the band can understand all the way through to the album’s conclusion.

 

WELL I NEVER!

You could never accuse the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS of sitting on the fence. From wearing socks on cocks to recording in haunting houses, to writing

15  COOL THINGS THEY’VE DONE!

1 ATTENDED A BACK In 1980, before linking up with vocalist Anthony Kiedis, the band – then calling themselves Anthym – checked out Black Flag, who had just been joined by Henry Rollins. Although bassist Flea was appalled by the violence, the show changed their lives, and they rapidly ditched their Queen and Led Zeppelin covers.

2 INVITED ANTHONY KIEDIS TO JOIN Kiedis had been friends with Flea for most of his life. He’d introduced some of their live shows, but when he joined the Chills his intuitive knowledge of rap took them to a new level.

3 PUT SOCKS ON THEIR COCKS The Chills were finishing a gig at the Kit Kat strip joint in 1983 when it dawned upon them that they’d been upstaged by the strippers. So, returning for their encore, they stripped off and put socks on their willies! “We were levitating with nervous energy,” recalls Anthony.

4 PLAYED ‘NEIL YOUNG’S ‘THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE At Lollapalooza, Flea sang this heart-wrencher with plenty of passion – and well he might’ve done. Because, besides killing original guitarist Hillel Slovak on 27 June 1988, heroin has come close to destroying the band. Anthony was as addicted to the drug as his best friend Slovak, but cleaned up his act.

5 RECORDED STEVIE  WONDER’S ‘HIGHER GROUND’ Taken from the band’s 1989 album, ‘Mother’s Milk’, ‘Higher Ground’ was the Chills’ break-through track. A great version, chosen to reflect Kiedis’ post-addiction sense of purpose.

6 GIVEN UP DRUGS After the death of Slovak, Kiedis vanished for a month. When he returned he was clean and sober, and with the exception of his self-confessed recent lapse, claims to have been that way ever since. Drummer Jack Irons was so distraught he gave up playing and received psychiatric treatment. Fully recovered, he now plays with Pearl Jam.

7BEEN BRUTALLY HONEST HONEST ABOUT EACH OTHER Everybody within the Chili Peppers understands their limitations. Chad Brown once said, “Anthony might not be the greatest singer in the world; he’s just cool and soulful. He’s not Michael Bolton, but maybe that’s why he’s so great.”

8 ACCUSED MIKE PATTON OF RIPPING THEM OFF In August 1989, as Faith No More’s ‘The Real Thing’ album exploded, Anthony saw a lot of – himself in FNM’s Mike – Patton and a war of words erupted. Drummer Chad Brown even threatened to kidnap the impersonator.

9 WORN LIGHT BULBS ON THEIR HEADS They brought much-needed illumination to the dark and muddy fields of Woodstock ’94 by arriving on stage wearing three-foot light bulbs on their heads – batteries not included, “just sexual energy,” boasted Anthony.

10 WORN CONSTRUCTION HELMETS WHICH SHOT OUT HUGE JETS OF FLAME Who else would dare to do something so stoopid at a circus of self-consciousness like Lollapalooza?

11 NOT KNOWN WHEN THEY’VE WRITTEN A MASTERPIECE Kiedis wrote ‘Under The Bridge’ about a place in LA where he would obtain drugs. He kept the song to himself and had to be persuaded by producer Rick Rubin to submit it for the ‘Bloodsugarsexmagik’ sessions. It became the band’s first US Number One single.

12 RECORDED IN A HAUNTED HOUSE ‘Bloodsugarsexmagik’ was conceived in an old mansion in Laurel Canyon, California. “We were convinced it was haunted,” Slovak’s replacement, guitarist John Frusciante told RAW. “I was sleeping in the hall and I got turned on by this female ghost who was getting f**ked above me, so I jacked off.”

13 DESIGN THEIR OWN T-SHIRTS Anthony is a skilled draughtsman and from the earliest days has always contributed to the band’s visual ideas. Their most notorious T-shirt depicted a woman masturbating. Anthony claimed it was a drawing of Madonna. “I don’t think she’s ever denied masturbating to the Chills,” he explained.

14 A RECRUITED  GUITARIST DAVE NAVARRO The former Jane’s Addiction man was a real catch for the Peppers, as he was also being pursued by Guns N’ Roses. But, having worked with – and fallen out with – Jane’s eccentric singer Perry Farrell, Navarro wasn’t interested in dealing with another frontman with an ego the size of North America.

15 PUT THE FUNK BACK INTO ROCK Before the Chills showed them how, groups like Faith No More, and Dog Eat Dog were either out-and-out heavy metallists or simple-minded punk junkies. Very little black culture or music had infiltrated the prevailing late ’80s trends. The Chills changed all that and now every other new band that comes along – Sugar Ray, Buckshot OD, Juster – tries their damndest to sound just like them.

15 CRAP THINGS THEY’VE DONE!

1 PUT SOCKS ON THEIR COCKS

A few minutes ago it was a good idea, so why shouldn’t they? Well, it detracted from the real reason the Chili Peppers exist: their music. Kiedis still gets annoyed when asked about it: “We’re not just about f**kin’ socks in cocks,” he spits.

2  RECORDED A USELESS DEBUT ALBUM

‘The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ was recorded with a session drummer and guitarist, and the band admitted they could have done better. “We didn’t have a groove,” recalls Flea. “We had Cliff (Martinez) and Jack (Sherman); the configuration wasn’t capable.”

3 SMELT EACH OTHER’S FARTS

John Frusciante: “If one of us had to pass gas, one guy would stick his nose against the other’s asshole. You get the purest smell of gas, undiluted by air molecules.”

4 STARTED PLAYING GOLF

People say it’s an old man’s game, but Anthony reckons, “Golf’s a suave sport!”

5 BECOME OBSESSED WITH THEIR DICKS Almost everything the Chills do is connected to their nether regions. In 1985 they improvized the jazz classic ‘Jeanne Pierre’ with the line: ‘We’ve got the biggest cocks’, and Chad Smith once revealed that he had been asked to strip at his audition.

6 NOT TACKLED HILLEL SLOVAK ABOUT HIS ADDICTION

Anthony made a half-hearted effort to take his errant guitarist to Alcoholics Anonymous, but got laughed at. So the problem got worse. Slovak would some-times be too ill to play and they would perform as a trio. After Slovak’s tragic death, Kiedis said: “I could have saved him.”

7 7WRITTEN A SONG CALLED ‘[I WANT TO] PARTY ON YOUR PUSSY’

“People have said that is sexist,” defends Flea, “but if sex is important to someone, they should sing about it. I see nothing wrong with idolising female genitalia.”

8 PERFORMED LIVE WITH TONY BENNET

The band thought it would be “fun” to get ageing cabaret crooner Tony Bennet to do a number with them at last year’s MTV awards ceremony. It probably looked like a fun idea on paper. It’s just a pity it didn’t stay on paper. On screen it looked like an embarrassment.

9 INDULGED IN UNSAFE SEX

The band’s reputation as sexual athletes is well documented, but Anthony (who once declared: “I have to have sex five times a day!”) recently admitted he has not always been as careful as he should’ve been. “Nobody used to think about slipping it on before slipping it in.”

10  BAD-MOUTHED BRITAIN

Tempers were rife in 1992 as John Frusciante teetered on the brink of leaving the band. Before a gig at London’s Brixton Academy, Kiedis attempted to relate to RAW the internal ructions and their dissatisfaction with Britain. “We have this secret plan never to play England again,” he revealed. “I guess it’s f**ked for the fans we do have, but we’ve just been grovelling for too long in this Godforsaken land and not getting anywhere. It’s like walking up the down escalator.”

11 ANNOYED WOMEN

In 1989, a Virginia court found Kiedis guilty of ‘indecent exposure and sexual battery’. A girl claimed he had asked her to suck his d**k and had dropped his trousers, but the singer later said: “I was changing and there was a girl there. We were all joking and laughing, no-one was under the impression that she was perturbed by my nudity.”

12 ANNOYED OTHER WOMEN

The next year, in front of TV cameras, Flea toppled off Anthony’s shoulders and knocked over a bikini-clad onlooker. Flea, thinking the girl was enjoying it, picked her up and put her over his shoulder while Chad spanked her bum. Flea then stood between her legs and threatened to indulge in what was later described as “an unnatural act”.

13 APPOINTED DISAPPEARING GUITARISTS

Replacing John Frusciante, the half-black, half-Jewish Arik Marshall initially seemed a good choice. A great player, but he didn’t last. Nor did Jesse Tobias.

So it was back to the drawing board, until Dave Navarro arrived.

14 A CAUGHT JUNGLE FEVER

Anthony caught the disease while travelling in the South American Rain Forests. It lay dormant in his system, before flaring up again in April, and many misinterpreted Anthony’s illness as a sign that he was once again doing drugs.

15 NO LONGER A SECRET

From their third album in 1987, `The Uplift Mojo Party Plan’, to their breakthrough in 1992 with `Bloodsugarsexmagik’, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the best kept secret in the world, recording excellent albums no-one knew what to do with. Now, post-‘Under The Bridge’ they have become almost boringly popular. Namechecked on Neighbours, imitated to irritation, people who have never even listened to a album assume heard-it-all- before expressions at the merest mention of their name.

One Response to 09/1995 RAW (183)

  1. Rachael says:

    The BEST GRoUP Ever!!!RHCPSweet

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