These Funky Monks Are Red Hot

by Scott Sterling
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are
doing their soundcheck inside the
cavernous MSU auditorium, a

bizarre venue to say the least. It
looks like a glorified high school
gymnasium, replete with a
scoreboard and fold-out bleachers.
The band positively blazes

through a fiery rendition of the
new song "Suck My Kiss,"
shaking the auditorium to its
very foundation. Anthony Keidis,
the Peppers' frantic frontman, is

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opeming!

gingerly testing his right leg, a
attempting various leaps and
kicks. It seems that he pulled a
hamstring during a pick-up
basketball game the night before.
Eddie Vedder, lead singer for
opening band Pearl Jam, fills me
in on the story. "He pulled it
driving to the basket, so he's
gonna have to mellow offstage for
awhile, so it doesn't affect his
stage antics... The guy just plays
so hard. He's just amazing live,
totally inspirational." Vedder
looks towards the stage in genuine
admiration.
There aren't many bands that
can elicit such praise from their
peers like the Red Hots can.
Members of Fishbone raved
about them in a recent article in
Guitar Player magazine, while
River Phoenix gushed over their
new album, Blood Sugar Sex
Majik, in an interview with Us
magazine. Spin even felt moved
to review the record after only
hearing it at a listening party. In
the last eight years, these tattooed
love boys from L.A. have become
one of the most influential and
revered rock bands in America.
Along with fellow L.A.
funkateers Fishbone, the Red Hot
Chili Peppers pioneered a totally
new sound. Blending snap 'n' pop
P-Funk basslines (courtesy of the
legendary Michael "Flea"
Balzary), rhythmic butterfly
guitar riffs, with the primal roar
and snot-nosed attitude of punk,
the Peppers quickly gained the
reputation as the new bad-asses
on the block. While inspiring a
whole generation of white rock
bands to buy old Parliament
records and wah-wah pedals, the
Peppers were always a step ahead
of their imitators. They didn't
have to try and be funky, they
just were. From their debut, The
Red Hot Chili Peppers, to the
George Clinton-produced follow-
up Freaky Styley, to the now-
classic The Uplift Mofo Party Plan,
the Peppers continued to evolve
and grow. Theytkept adding more
musical spices to their crazy
brew, touching on jazz, rap and
ska.
The band's rise to notoriety
didn't come without a price. lard
drugs were a major factor in the
Peppers' early days, often
marring performances with band
members too blitzed to play. The
party all came to a crashing halt
when original guitarist Hillel
Slovak died of a heroin overdose in
1988. A devastated Keidis hid out
in a fishing village in Mexico to
detox, while Flea contemplated
ending the band.
After deciding to carry on, the
band went through endless
auditions and temporary
members before finally hooking
up with 19-year-old guitarist and

Chili Pepper fanatic John
Frusciante. "When we called him
up on the phone to tell him we
wanted him, he started crying,"
recalled Flea in a recent interview.
They~met Detroit native Chad
Smith through the infamous
audition where he showed up
looking like a burned-out heavy
metal causality, right down to
the skin-tight, fluorescent pink
pants. Kiedis and Flea stopped
laughing when Smith literally
exploded in a barrage of kinetic
drumming and spastic screaming.
The first album with this line-
up, 1989's intense and cathartic
primal scream, Mother's Milk,
spawned the Peppers' first
genuine hit songs. "Higher
Ground" and "Knock Me Down"
quickly became staples on MTV,
exposing all of America to the
Red Hot Chili Peppers' unique
brand of sex-mad grooves. They
even sledge-hammered an
astonished Arsenio Hall show
audience when it didn't know
what to make of the freaky
foursome.
Blood Sugar Sex Majik looks
poised to push the Peppers into
mega-stardom. Produced by Rick
Rubin (the mastermind behind
Def Jam Records, and producer of
hits by the Beastie Boys, The
Cult, and Slayer, among others),
this record is a bona fide smash.
Not only is the first single, "Give
It Away," on the heavy rotation
merry-go-round on MTV, it's also
being heard on top-40 as well as
AOR radio constantly.
They recorded the album
secluded in an elegant Hollywood
Hills mansion. They set up their
own funk 'n' roll summer camp,
hiring a chef, plastering the walls
with Hendrix and Magic Johnson
posters for inspiration, and so on.
The only "outsider" allowed into
this funk hotel was Clara, Flea's
adorable 2-year-old daughter.
There's a real positive vibe to this
record, an organic flow, if you
will. You can actually hear
fingers hitting guitar strings.
The "space"~ of playing in a
large room is clearly audible. On
"They're Red Hot," which was
recorded outside, crickets and
distant traffic plays across the
speakers. The band credits this
unique environment for that
natural feeling that comes across
on the new album. "...The outside
forces of the world can really be a
distraction when you're trying to
focus purely on making music,"
Flea says in the band's recent bio.
"We could establish the vibe as
opposed to a studio where a vibe
already exists, with secretaries
and owners and lots of extraneous
undesirable individuals strolling
about the premises.
Continued on page 7

they just sort of, 'Ha, ha. Okay,
let's go back to work now."'
But quickly returning to his
earlier sour note, Craine warned,
"The competition's really stiff.
For the people who are thinking
of coming out here, Hollywood is
not waiting for you....
"There's always the exception
to the rule: John Singleton coming
right out of college and making
(Boyz N the Hood), but also, he
came out of USC, so he's working
with all these people that can
help him start out like that. They
have guest seminars by directors
and producers. They just get
exposed to a lot more and they're
right there and on their summers,
it's no big deal to go out and get a
job, or even during the year, a
part-time job...
"I got the well-rounded
education from U of M, and not
to say that it didn't prepare me at
all, but what they teach in classes
is a lot different than what it's
really like. It's not that (the
professors are) completely
disillusioned and they have no
idea what's going on in the
industry. It's just that (they are)
people who really aren't in the
industry, you know?"
"One of the most important
things I've realized," Craine
concluded, "is that people do have
a glamorized view of television. It
is a business - it's not loose and
laid-back and 'Hey, we're on TV.'
You do whatever they tell you to
do. You're selling a product."
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Michigan alumnus Joey Craine, working hard to find a career in Hollywood,
tries to get his foot in the door any way he can. Here, he is shown outside
of Jonathan Winters' dressing room.

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Continued from page 12
-- just being in the right place at
the right time. I'd certainly
consider myself lucky.
"Talking and working with
people is one of the most
important things in this business,
because you could really screw
yourself up by being a jerk. If
someone doesn't like you, they're
not going to hire you, and they're
gonna remember that they don't
like you, and they're gonna tell
their friends they don't like you,
so it's very important to just be a
likable kind of person and be able
to work well with people."
Craine's said that his own
work on the set of Davis Rules has
both its ups and downs.
"You can't get much lower on
the scale, aside from an intern,"
Craine said of being a production
assistant, which he described as
"the entry level position."
"It's a lot of office work," he
continued. "You're making
copies, a lot of copies... It sounds
so little, but it's important.
You're making sure that there's
coffee. We take care of all the food
and drinks for snacks or
whatever... It's a lot of shit work,
you know? I sort of laughingly
call it slave labor with pay, but
you're making decent money and
everybody has to go through it.
"Always have a smile and
never complain," Craine advised.

"Whatever job you're doing, it's
fine - you're cool with it. Just
accept it. Grouch and grumble at
home and say, 'This is a suck job.
I hate this."'
There is a bright side, however,
which Craine stressed. "I'm
working on the stage, we get to go
to production meetings and see
what goes on with all that. I'm
working on a daily basis with our
producer, with our associate
producer, people that have been
in the business for years that are
very successful," he explained.
And, of course, Craine has the
privilege of working with the
incredible Jonathan Winters.
"With Jonathan Winters, you
write a script, and by the end of
the week it's.., the revised script
says, 'Jonathan talks about
supermarkets,"' Craine said. "He
has all his lines, and then
everything changes, even on tape
night. You never know what's
gonna come out of his mouth.
"And he's getting up there in
years, and... I'd say 90 percent of
the time, ne's hilarious. Ten
percent of the time, you have no
idea what he's talking about. You
laugh just because of the way he
says it, but you don't know what
the hell he's saying.
"It's funny to watch even the
executive producers react to him,
because they don't wanna offend
him, but sometimes he goes into
these really bizarre things and

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November 22,

1991 WEEKEND

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WEEKEND

Novemi

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