EARTHQUAKE IN CHILI
NEW YORK—Like their namesake food, there is nothing subtle about The Red Hot Chili Peppers. And like the spicy little devils, the band is a decidedly acquired taste. A weird hybrid of rap/funk and metal/punk, the band calls their music “bone crunching mayhem funk.”
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EARTHQUAKE IN CHILI
The Beat Goes On
NEW YORK—Like their namesake food, there is nothing subtle about The Red Hot Chili Peppers. And like the spicy little devils, the band is a decidedly acquired taste. A weird hybrid of rap/funk and metal/punk, the band calls their music “bone crunching mayhem funk.” Lead singer Anthony Kiedis (who looks like a cross between Jggy Pop and David Lee Roth) joined friends What Is This for a rap gig—“a one time joke.” They were so well received and had so much fun they decided to start another band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As time went on and label interest in both What Is This and the Peppers grew, it became obvious that the same members couldn’t continue to play in both bands. Enter Kiedis’s friend bassist Flea (who had played with Fear), Cliff Martinez on drums, Jack Sherman on guitar and the Peppers lineup was complete.
The marriage of funk and metal is an uneasy one at best, although as Flea says, "Energy-wise it’s the same.” Kiedis got turned on by a Grandmaster Flash show and Flea says the rap influence “comes from being a guy in the city. We’re a Hollywood band. Our influences are the streets of Hollywood.” After hearing their eponymous debut LP, I was prepared to hate them. It sounds like unhip white boys interpreting rap. Live, however, the band’s sincere, theatrical and very loud performance makes some sense. As Sherman says, they’re “a power trio with a white rapper” (although their funked-up version of Hank Williams’s “Why Don’t You Love Me” is still the ultimate travesty).
Asked about the relative weakness of the record, produced by ex-Gang Of Four Andy Gill, Flea says: “I liked the early Gang Of Four material. We wanted Andy Gill because we thought he could get a really good sound of funk nd rock intertwined. But then he wanted us to sound like the Thompson Twins or some real slick English kind of sound. But we’re not like that. We’re a rock ’n’ roll, balls to the walls, band. We’re not a fashion show. We’re talking about serious rocking out here. So every second in the studio was one big fight.” Sherman is kinder: “Andy worked his ass off.”
The LP “bubbled under” the top 200 for a while and it seems unlikely that it’ll go any further. But the Peppers are anxious to get cracking on the next one. The currents running through their music may be too far apart to reconcile commercially but if they can bring some of the energy and noise of their live act to vinyl, they just might have a winner.
Richard Fantina
