When the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover The Bee Gees song ‘How Deep Is Your Love’
Red Hot Chili Peppers were one of the most explosive bands of the 1980s and ’90s. Bursting into an alt-rock scene that took itself incredibly seriously in the decade prior, Anthony Kiedis, Flea and the rest of the band put the idea of serious rock and roll to the sword with every naked performance. While undoubtedly connected to their art, the group have maintained this sense of fun throughout their career, brandishing their own fragrance of punk funk with abandon.
Over the year, the group have regularly delivered performances that range from standing in front of thousands of people with nothing but an Adam and Eve range of hosiery to their costume to powerhouse stadium-sized sing-a-longs. But, through it all, the brevity of their position is rarely forgotten.
One such moment arose when the group took on a classic cover of The Bee Gees hit ‘How Deep Is Your Love’. The band have taken on the track several times over the years, with guitarist John Frusciante also delivering his solo rendition too. It is the mercurial axman who leads this performance too, as the group deliver a somewhat faithful performance of the 1977 hit for the Australian vocal group.
The song was written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb as part of the Saturday Night Fever record. Keyboardist Blue Weaver remembers the moment: “One morning, it was just myself and Barry in the studio. He said, ‘Play the most beautiful chord you know’, and I just played, what happened was, I’d throw chords at him, and he’d say, ‘No, not that chord’, and I’d keep moving around, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s a nice one’, and we’d go from there. Then I’d play another thing – sometimes, I’d be following the melody line that he already had and sometimes I’d most probably lead him somewhere else by doing what I did. I think Robin came in at some point.”
“Albhy also came in at one point,” continued Weaver, “and I was playing an inversion of a chord, and he said, ‘Oh no, I don’t think it should be that inversion, it should be this’, and so we changed it to that, but by the time Albhy had come in, the song was sort of there.”
Barry Gibb said of the track’s undeniable allure: “A lot of the textures you hear in the song were added on later. We didn’t change any lyrics, mind you, but the way we recorded it was a little different than the way we wrote in the terms of construction. A little different for the better, I think, the title ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ we thought was perfect because of all the connotations involved in that sentence, and that was simply it”.
Of course, the Red Hot Chili Peppers covering a song is nothing new. The band has taken on the tracks of everyone from Neil Young to John Lennon. However, it is hard to ignore the juxtaposition of The Bee Gees’ unique sound and the murky music of the Chilis.
However, when you hear the tenderness with which John Frusciante performs the song, the connection he clearly has with both The Bee Gees and the tune, it feels entirely at home in this 2006 set.
