Red Hot lovers

Chili Peppers enter their romantic period

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, August 18, 2006

The idea wasn't to write and record three full CDs of new music for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium project. Just the opposite.

"We got in and had this idea of writing a short classic record," bassist Flea (born Michael Balzary) explains. "But once we got together and started writing, one thing led to another and we just kept writing. We couldn't stop writing."

So the quick-hit record turned to another plan: three full CDs to be released six months apart as the band toured.

Finally, they settled on their third alternative: a double-disc of 28 songs, with 10 or 12 more held in reserve to trickle out on B-sides, special editions and other formats.

So the band, which headlines the Pepsi Center tonight with the Mars Volta opening, found itself in an unprecedented creative flurry 23 years into its existence. The band's up-and-down history fraught with drug addiction has produced some of its greatest songs, but strife wasn't the catalyst this time. Happiness was.

"We're all pretty happy in this time. It was relaxed and a very fertile time for us. There was a lot of love in the air. We're all in love with women," Flea says from his kitchen in Los Angeles.

"Turmoil can be good for turning out songs. But peace and happiness and love can, too. Both John (Frusciante) and I completely and totally fell in love (with two separate women) wildly during the recording of the record. It's a very vulnerable feeling. It's not angst or turmoil, but it's a little scary, especially if you've been hurt before."

That can cause creative tension and rivalry as well, "especially between John and I," Flea says. "One guy comes in with a good riff one day, the other guy wants to come in with one right away. It's kinda the nature of who we are. We just kept writing."

So Flea, singer Anthony Kiedis, guitarist Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith ended up making an epic-length set of music buoyed by the hit single Dani California. It still contains some of the punk/funk fury that brought the band to national attention in the early '80s, but it also reflects the more mellow songwriting from later in the Peppers' career.

While some fans might find Stadium Arcadium overly long, when it works it smokes. On both Turn It Again and Storm in a Teacup, two of the most raging songs the band has done, Frusciante's guitar goes from restrained licks to roaring guitar rock.

As in past hits such as Give It Away and Under the Bridge, all songs are credited to all four members of the band, and it's not just for the convenience or fairness. The band's signature funk/punk/rock sound has always been communal work.

"We definitely made a decision at the beginning of the band that we'd split things four ways 23 years ago. It's a collaborative effort on every song," Flea says.

Someone always has a riff or germ of an idea, but "what we'll each do is change the dynamic of the song completely," he says. "It could become anything. It's like that with everything. We all write our own parts on every song."

Despite the tightest security on a major advance in years, someone tried to sabotage the band and deliberately leaked Stadium Arcadium to the Internet a week before its release date, infuriating Flea at first, who blogged a strong scolding to whomever did it.

"The morning I found out about it, I was really hurt. It wasn't about how much we sold - I like selling records as much as the next guy. It was a matter of the sound quality," he says.

"We took such care and time with every step of the recording process and mixing and mastering to achieve a beautiful sound that we thought was really warm and harked to the way records were made in the '70s, when they sounded so much better," he says. "For it to be taken and processed digitally to the point where it wouldn't have that warm sound we worked so hard to get - that was disconcerting to me"

A Flea in the blogosphere

His blog - Fleamail, linked from redhotchilipeppers.com - is a stream-of-consciousness set of thoughts ranging from that night's show to the state of the world, usually written in the wee hours.

"I used to be really ritualistic about it and do it every day. I'm gonna start back in on doing it. People like it," Flea says. "I like writing. A couple of times cool things have happened from writing blogs."

For example, a journalist once wrote that musician Nick Cave - whose work Flea loves - hated the Peppers' music. But Flea later found out via his blog and through one of Cave's band members that that wasn't the case.

He's still perplexed that music journalism has turned so ugly.

"I play with Patti Smith sometimes. She says it used to be that everyone was on the same team. Journalists write about stuff because they wanted to share something they really love with the rest of the world. It's not like that anymore. It's us against them," he says.

Smith and Flea share the same passion for playing live, jamming with other musicians and making music that means a little bit more.

"I would hope that that would be the case, . . . as opposed to a passion for making money and appealing to a demographic and all these things," Flea says. "What it's all about is people playing together and sharing and creating something beautiful that brings human beings together.

"We're all there to try and make a special night and try to do something that's beautiful and transcend our fear and our insecurities and our pain."

Blowing his own horn

Flea's original instrument was the trumpet, which he still plays from time to time on record. His jazz roots and the trumpet profoundly influenced his funk style of playing.

"There's definitely a similarity in that both of them are single-note instruments. You can play a chord on a bass, but it's kind of a muddy sound," he says. "I played trumpet first, and it definitely affected the aesthetic of my bass-playing."

His outside work influences him as well, such as acting and playing as a session man (it's he and Dave Navarro who gave Alanis Morissette's You Oughta Know such instrumental oomph).

"I try to do things as they come up. If I'm offered a part in a film and the Chili Peppers aren't working, I can accept it," he says.

But he turns down far more than he's able to accept.

"That has definitely been the case on different acting stuff," he says.

RHCP, after all, is a full-time job, one for which this new writing burst has refueled his passion.

"It's knowing what a rich and multidimensional thing music is. As hard as we work, we've barely scratched the surface of it. It's humbling, but it's very exciting," he says.

Not all the songs recorded for Stadium Arcadium are out yet, but they'll come, Flea promises.

"The problem is, we have to mix a lot of the songs we didn't put on the album. We've been touring so much that none of us wants to in our week off go in the studio and mix. That takes a little time," he says. "But with every single we will release unreleased tracks and improvisations that we do live. We've got lots of stuff lying around."

The Chili Pepper hot seat

If you're looking for job security, you won't find it as a guitarist alongside Flea and Anthony Kiedis. The band's history with guitarists:

• Hillel Slovak (1983): Slovak helped teach Flea how to play bass and got the band off the ground - only to leave as soon as the group got signed to EMI.

• Jack Sherman (1984- 85): When Slovak split, Sherman (who once worked with Bob Dylan) stepped in for the Peppers' debut. He didn't last long.

• Slovak (1985-88): Slovak's other band (What Is This?) bombed, so he returned to the fold for Freaky Styley, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and the Abbey Road EP. Then the guitarist died from a heroin overdose.

• Blackbyrd McKnight (1988-89): The former Parliament guitarist lasted three gigs with the Peppers. He says he was fired for not fitting in.

• John Frusciante (1989-92): The 18-year-old guitar prodigy ushered in the band's biggest era with Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik and then quit when he couldn't handle life as a rock star (read: battled heroin addiction).

• Arik Marshall (1992-93): Frusciante left midtour, so the Peppers called on Marshall to fill in for their headlining slot on Lollapalooza. As a bonus, his cartoon likeness also got to appear on The Simpsons.

• Jesse Tobias, Zander Schloss (1994): The band employed a revolving door of guitarists after Frusciante. Tobias quit his band to play with the Peppers, only to be ousted after just a few weeks when Dave Navarro agreed to join the group.

• Dave Navarro (1995-96): The ex-Jane's Addiction guitarist was kept around for but just one album, One Hot Minute.

• Frusciante (1998-present): After two solo albums (and an extended stint in rehab), he was invited back into the Chili Peppers' fold.

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674