Flea picks the perfect Red Hot Chili Peppers album: “Creating a vibe”
The adage goes that it takes ten years to become an overnight success. In the case of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they were right on the nose. Forming in 1982, they spent the first decade of their existence hammering down the debaucherous drug-addled reputation that would follow them around for the rest of their career without any real signs of successfully translating their talent to a studio record. That all changed, however when the madness was crystallised to create what is still an iconic modern funk-rock record.
Blood Sugar Sex Magik was a more polished showing than their previous work and saw them understanding the strengths in their own ability to blend funk sensibilities with a conventional rock sound. While the 1980s saw them experiment with heavy metal influences, Blood Sugar Sex Magik put Flea’s enigmatic bass style at the forefront of it’s sound and allowed an unrelenting sense of rhythm to drive it forward. Around that, John Frusciante’s guitar could explore intricate guitar melodies that pulled on classic tendencies but felt fresh in the context of the band’s funkier disposition.
No track typifies the newfound confidence injected into the record than ‘Give It Away’. Flea’s bass twists and bends through every verse, while Antony Kiedis’ vocals are both raucous and joyous in equal measures to create a four-minute chunk of sweet chaos. So it’s no surprise Flea regards it as the song that truly encapsulates the essence of the band:
“No matter how many millions of times we play it, every time we get to the end of it and we’re closing out a show, and me and Anthony are all vibrating and jumping up and down, and everything is alive, the idea of ‘giving it away’ is just such a beautiful thing.”
But perhaps where the band refined their abilities best on the record was the way in which they could traverse between a track like ‘Give It Away’ to something like ‘Under The Bridge’ so seamlessly. Every individual member of the band was bursting with talent, but on this record they understood that excellence wasn’t always achieved in having all four of them go hell for leather in unison. Instead, when Flea was pared back, Frusciante’s melody drew out Kiedis’ more tender side, and when the tides of delicacy rolled out, the rhythm section was on hand, ready to pull it back in with chaos.
Of course, Frusciante left and re-entered the band twice more after this to ultimately prove that the band’s best work will always be created with him on guitar. But not even the later albums Californiacation or Stadium Arcadium held up to their 1991 album, which was a lightning-in-a-bottle piece of work from a band working at their absolute peak.
And it’s a sentiment shared by Flea who despite all of his stellar work, regards their 1991 album as their finest hour. “To me, Blood Sugar is the first time that we got down on tape what we really do,” he said, in an interview with Guitar World. “We’d never done that before. In the past, we’d always been intimidated by the studio. It would be a tense and alien environment. But that album was more about creating a vibe for us to jam and do our thing in”.
