The Red Hot Chili Peppers song aimed at Dave Navarro
A rock and roll band is usually dysfunctional, even at the best times. While it might be easy to get a group of friends together to play the kind of music that everyone can enjoy, there are just as many chances that a famous rock group could be populated by members who can’t stand the sight of each other from the minute they get onstage. Although Red Hot Chili Peppers may operate like a brotherhood half the time, one of the biggest stumbling blocks in their early days usually came at the expense of their guitar players.
When the band first got settled, their longtime friend Hillel Slovak seemed like the ideal fit for the group, putting funky grooves underneath Anthony Kiedis’ trademark vocal raps. Once Slovak started seeing success with his band What is This?, he had to leave the group to focus on his primary outfit, leading to a wilderness period where the band played with various guitarists in tow.
As soon as Slovak got the chance to reenter the fold for the album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, the musical family reunion would be far too shortlived, with Slovak passing away of a drug overdose shortly after touring wrapped up. While the band had another creative golden ticket drafting in John Frusciante, the aspiring guitarist would only be around for two albums.
Becoming desensitised to fame, Frusciante left to focus on his drug habit, leaving him to wallow in his addictions for the next few years. While the group may have been lost without someone behind the fretboard, they didn’t wait long to find a replacement, getting Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction for One Hot Minute.
While Navarro was able to shred unlike anyone in the band’s ranks until that point, the album would prove to be the most aptly titled record of their discography, with the guitarist leaving in favour of Frusciante in 1999. Even though Frusciante always felt at home with the band, some tension between Navarro and Kiedis may have contributed to his downfall.
In the book Scar Tissue, Kiedis remembered various moments where Navarro went down the same road as Frusciante, usually coming to rehearsals either hungover or strung out on heroin. Even though Kiedis insisted that the guitarist needed help, one more botched rehearsal led to him being booted from the band.
Aside from his drug intake, Kiedis also took note of Navarro’s attitude when putting together a single for the band’s next record. While most of the song ‘Scar Tissue’ reflects on Kiedis’s time lost to his addiction, he also said that the song contains a few lines pointed squarely at his former bandmate.
When talking about putting together different phrases, the line about “sarcastic Mr Know-It-All” was directed at Navarro, who Kiedis remembered being incredibly sarcastic whenever he turned up in the studio. Even though the band didn’t look back fondly on the record with Navarro, it has since developed a cult following, with fans interested in seeing the band getting angrier following Frusciante’s departure on songs like ‘Warped’. As much as Navarro was competent enough to be a member of the Chili Peppers, those words in ‘Scar Tissue’ are the perfect example of personalities clashing in place of musical collaboration.
