As they reunite for their 12th album, the punk-funk rockers are trying to age gracefully after a youth full of sex and drugs. So why does Anthony Kiedis hang up after a difficult question?
still are, last month they got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on the very streets they used to stalk as teenage punks. Here in Los Angeles, they are everywhere.
The guitarist had joined the band at 18, “and by the time he was 21, we went from this little club band to Under the Bridge,” says Smith. “It was a lot.” Frusciante’s second exit was different. “There was no animosity. My take is that he wanted to do his own thing, where you didn’t have to compromise and [deal with] photoshoots and interviews.” Indeed, he seems to have rejoined on the proviso that he doesn’t have to do much of the latter, and isn’t available for this piece.
Ah yes, that reputation. A 2004 NME profile once wagered: “If you need any decent reasons to dismiss the band for ever” it’s down to early “moronic” songs such as Mommy Where’s Daddy – about incest – and Special Secret Song Inside – go figure. To some disdainful critics, the band has never shaken off that image: puerile, sleazy, silly. Or, as Smith puts it: “Young Chad, early on in Chili Peppers, would have drank all your booze, done all your drugs.
Unlimited Love has a few songs that speak to this unbridled attitude; these songs tend to be heavier, whereas the album is also airier and wistful elsewhere. One track is called, bluntly, The Great Apes. On One Way Traffic, meanwhile, Kiedis laments: “When did life get so damn cautious?” – though he’s not up for expanding on it now. “I don’t really get into this self-analysis,” he sighs. “Maybe I was referencing the world around me, maybe a part of myself.
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