Remembering Red Hot Chili Peppers’ disastrous ‘SNL’ performance: “Hung out to dry in front of all of America”
On this side of the pond, it’s hard to truly grasp the gravitas of SNL. We’re acutely aware it’s a bastion of modern entertainment, but never have we bought into it as a classroom for our comedic learning. Largely because of the vacuum of difference that sits in between our respective countries’ senses of humour, but one thing that can unite us is the musical performances.
Ironically, the only sketch that has made its way into my lexicon is the iconic “More Cowbell“. If I ever see the farmyard instrument whipped out a gig, which is more often than you might think, the phrase passes by my mind like a giggling tumbleweed before I can proceed to enjoy the song.
Aside from that moment, my SNL consumption comes mainly in the form of its musical performances. Given the magnitude of the show, it’s one of the first pit stops for any artist rolling out a new album campaign. The silent anticipation of what the next record may sound or look like is broken with the emergence of the artist underneath the classically glamorous set design.
Some of the greatest include The Strokes’ ‘Hard To Explain’, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘i’, and Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘I Know the End’. But of course, there have been some duds over the years, and despite their studio record dominance with Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1992, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were unfortunately one of those bands.
The album thrust the band firmly into the limelight, with their enigmatic brand of funk rock dominating the airwaves of a musical decade in limbo. But for an outfit already struggling with serious levels of substance abuse, the bright lights of fame simply compounded the issues.
While the band bonded through their shared struggle on the same journey, at its worst, it pitted them against one another. Altered states didn’t unite them in the sanctity of music; instead, it made each individual member insular and imprisoned in their own performance. An idea which, after all, acted as the antithesis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ethos, for they were a band when, at their very best, were locked into an unrelenting sense of groove, losing themselves in the higher power of whatever sound their shared performance made.
During this fateful SNL show, their dynamic was of the former. John Frusciante descended into his own guitar lick, in spite of the song, which left the remaining members of the band completely at odds with their own timing. As Anthony Kiedis explained, it was like “getting stabbed in the back and hung out to dry in front of all of America while Frusciante was off in a corner in the shadow, playing some dissonant out-of-tune experiment”.
It was merely a few months after the performance when Frusciante quit the band for the first time in order to properly grapple with his blooming heroin addiction. It was a sad but necessary performance for the band straddling the line between brilliance and chaos, and perhaps without the public humiliation on one of America’s most treasured shows, they may not have salvaged it.
