The Red Hot Chili Peppers song ripped from Jimi Hendrix
The money behind the music business feels like it’s more driven by lawyers these days than actual musicians. For all of the bands trying their hardest to make a decent living, there are just as many human leeches looking to squeeze as much money as they can out of people for stepping on their copyright. It’s a fierce legal battle for anything to sound original, but Red Hot Chili Peppers were never shy about ripping off Jimi Hendrix for one of their first breakout hits, ‘Breaking the Girl’.
If people had to account for how much they had been influenced by Hendrix, though, there’s a good chance that rock fans would have to throw out a handful of their favourite records. Hendrix was practically an alien sent down in human form to melt people’s minds with music, and everyone that has come after has practically just been trying to reach what he already did.
Hendrix may have been a musical oddity, but are we going to act like the Peppers were the peak of sophistication? Throughout their first shows, these are the same people who wore anything they could get their hands on and, more often than not, found themselves coming onstage for their encores clad in only socks covering their naughty bits.
While they may have sounded promising with Hillel Slovak behind the fretboard, getting Frusciante was the greatest blessing the band ever had. Since Frusciante was already a superfan, his knowledge of other eclectic artists like Frank Zappa led the band to go in an entirely new direction on Mother’s Milk.
Once the alternative revolution started, the band’s brand of weirdness was just peaking with ‘Breaking The Girl’. Although a lot of the song tends to revolve around Frusciante’s smooth acoustic guitar playing, drummer Chad Smith admitted that a lot of the main groove was pinched directly from Hendrix’s ‘Manic Depression’.
When speaking to Rock 105.3, Smith said the entire thing came about almost by accident, saying, “We were sitting on a couch with [producer] Rick Rubin [during the making of the song]. He had a bunch of old bootlegs, and they were so great, and we were watching Zeppelin. But ‘Breaking the Girl’—the drums on that I stole that from ‘Manic Depression’ and Mitch Mitchell. Does that make sense?”.
If the phrase “geniuses steal” is to be believed, though, the band practically needs to be studied and have their brains preserved. Compared to the Hendrix tune, the transition between the two songs is seamless, sounding more like Smith just started playing along to Frusciante’s guitar lick without even thinking.
While Hendrix’s estate never pursued any legal action, this may have been a bit of testing the waters for their next albums. Throughout the 2000s, the band would continue to pull from classic rock on nearly every song, even quoting the lead guitar lick of ‘Purple Haze’ in the song ‘Dani California’. There’s normally a fine line when it comes to homage and stealing, but Red Hot Chili Peppers somehow found a way to pinpoint the exact location of the line and step all the way up to it without going over.
