The album Flea said had everything he wanted to say: “The band we always wanted to be”
It’s hard to argue that the finest moments of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ discography can all be filtered through the moments when John Frusciante was on guitar. After his first exit in 1992, Dave Navarro valiantly filled the position, but there wasn’t quite the same alchemy within the songs that existed when the original lineup was there. Frusciante’s mindblowing technique and Flea’s versatility on bass were the bedrock for a Chili Peppers sound that could fluctuate from funk to punk.
The release of their fifth album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, marked a new dawn for the LA band, which presented the world with a polished, experimental, and raucous band. Between Flea’s twisting bass line on ‘Give It Away’, Kiedis’ charisma on ‘Suck My Kiss’ or Frusciante’s tenderness on ‘Under The Bridge’, it established a clear sonic identity for the band who at that time, were operating in their own lane.
“With that album, we really grew into being the band that we always wanted to be,” Flea said to Guitar World in 2011, adding, “It was like we took what was great about us and just gave a lot more depth to the instruments and structure. The album really captured a space and a time that was exciting and fun.”
It was also a record that marked the genesis of their relationship with legendary producer Rick Rubin. The barefooted master of Shangri La took the drug-addled four-piece to a reportedly haunted house in Hollywood, where he created a sort of live-in studio for the band.
“When we recorded in this house we were also living together, which made for a really relaxed environment, and that was the key to the album. The key to being a great band or a great musician is to be able to relax enough so you can be aware of what’s going on around you and it can flow through you, and you can pick up all the energy,” Flea said in a 1991 documentary from the making of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album.
So when the Blood Sugar Sex Magik line-up reunited, with Frusciante once again in the fold to make their 2006 double album Stadium Arcadium, no one could argue with Rubin’s decision to adopt the same approach and head back to the haunted mansion, what followed was a record that follows the lineage set out from its trailblazing predecessor, with the band’s signature funk melodicism anchoring a palette for Frusciante’s breathtaking guitar contribution to shine.
The sprawling double record included standout tracks like ‘Hey’ and ‘Slow Cheetah’ which could feasibly be argued as some of his finest guitar parts to date. While Flea regards the record as “the sum of everything that we are as a band”, Kiedis spoke about the record to Spin in the same 2006 interview:
“Those egos—and when I say ‘those egos,’ I mean all of us—were feeling decent and confident, respectful, as excited about the other guys’ stuff as we were about our own. If someone came in with a great chord change for a song or a great rhythm or a great groove, by the time it was finished, everybody had jizzed all over it, and it had become a real community piece of property.”
