The Red Hot Chili Peppers album Anthony Kiedis admitted he could forget: “It was a troubled time”
Every rock and roll band will have periods of their lives where everything becomes a blur. For all of the great music they have made together, there comes a point where everything starts to fall apart, either through business decisions or just losing the initial love that you once had for playing together. Although Anthony Kiedis may have seen the bright spots of working with every single lineup of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he admitted that he doesn’t care to look back on one aspect of their career.
Throughout their formative years, though, Kiedis almost joined the group by complete accident. When working out their first lineup, Kiedis came onstage to perform a freeform rap as the rest of the members jammed something behind him, resulting in them getting invited back for another performance.
Even though the outfit were still in rap-rock mode throughout their first handful of albums, they began to set their sights on melodic songs once Hillel Slovak returned to the fold. Once their longtime friend passed away from a drug overdose, the arrival of John Frusciante behind the fretboard led to them having the biggest hits of their career on tracks like ‘Under the Bridge’ and ‘Give It Away’.
Once the band began to see mainstream success, Frusciante ended up following in the footsteps of his predecessor, becoming hooked on heroin and struggling to function whenever working with the rest of the group. As much as he wanted to get the right vibe for the group, Frusciante eventually quit for a solo career, leading to them carrying on with Dave Navarro on guitar for One Hot Minute.
Although they could still play to the best of their abilities, Kiedis remembered the album as an emotionally dark time for them, thinking that most of the work they had done was birthed out of pain. Since many of the members suffered drug relapses during the making of the project, much of the lyrics delve into dark subjects as well, like the condemnation of religion on ‘Shallow Be Thy Game’ and descending into the abyss on ‘Warped’.
It didn’t take long for the group to find their footing again, though, with Frusciante returning after getting sober and eventually rising as one of the biggest guitarists of his generation on Californication. While the band was back on top, Kiedis still considered One Hot Minute a document of those dark times.
Of all the Chili Peppers’ albums, Kiedis said he would much rather forget the time that Frusciante quit, saying, “I could forget that he had ever been gone. But, I mean, I get reminded of it all the time. I’ll run into Dave Navarro out in front of a restaurant, or some kooky kid will come up to me on the streets of San Francisco and say, ‘Oh, I love One Hot Minute’. That was my favourite.’ And I’m like, ‘Really?’. It was a troubled time for me.”
While Kiedis may have had emotional scars from working on that period of the band, it’s still a fascinating insight into what they were going through. Even if it wasn’t the most pleasant album, One Hot Minute is an important record when looking at the big picture of what the Chili Peppers were about.
