Frusciante, earnest and clean-shaven, is exuberant. Believe what you will.)įunky Monks, a documentary capturing the whole operation, presents an interaction between Frusciante and Kiedis that sums up the pull-and-push between their newfound artistic focus and their irrepressible sophomoric fuckery. (Drummer Chad Smith commuted from his nearby Los Angeles home, because he was spooked by rumors the house was haunted Frusciante reported once hearing a woman scream in some coital outburst, while Anthony Kiedis said psychic mediums had detected “ sexual energy” in the house. Instead of recording in a studio, the band decamped to a spacious house in Laurel Canyon, where most of the members lived in between sessions. Unlike early producers, who gave the Chili Peppers specific direction and sounds to shoot for, Rubin allowed them to relax. As producer, they brought in Rick Rubin, who by 1991 was already a monastic, perma-bearded guru with a reputation as band whisperer, having made high-profile career-best records with Slayer, the Cult, Danzig, and half the rap world. Part of this smoothing process was also due to their newly signed multi-million record deal with Warner, which pretty much necessitated they try to release something approaching a blockbuster. “I was trying too hard to be like what I thought a Chili Pepper should be rather than just being myself… musically on guitar and in my personal life.” “The first year or so I wanted to be in the band so bad, I wanted to do a good job so much,” he said in an oral history of the group.
He found his footing following an up-and-down recording for Mother’s Milk, which forced him to shed his identity as a kid playing with his heroes. His melodic instincts were languid and expressionist-a counterpunch to a rhythm section that wrote funk for moshing, allowing them to write open-hearted songs for the first time in their career. They’d never recorded two records with the same lineup, forcing them to continually jel on the fly. On those records, the Chili Peppers sounded like a live band trying to rein it in, with varying success. Slovak rooted the band in their early sped-up punk-funk sound, a slurry molding of acts like Gang of Four, Jimi Hendrix, and Parliament-Funkadelic ( George Clinton produced their second album, Freaky Styley). Teenaged guitarist John Frusciante had been hired after the untimely death of Slovak, who passed away from a heroin overdose in 1988. In its title-a phrase as ridiculous as their name-were the irreducible elements of their previous records, distilled into a declarative statement. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released on September 24, 1991, the same day as Nevermind, a neat coincidence for historical records, and perfect timing for their attempt at fitting into a broader cultural milieu. Their success allowed a fomenting alternasphere of bands who didn’t adhere to existing mainstream norms to rise up: Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden… and suddenly, the Chili Peppers. But it also set the tone for a decade more permissive of what a popular rock band could sound and look like, in ways that would reverberate far away from grunge or flannel obsessives.
By now, the hagiography about Nirvana’s Nevermind* *has been well-repeated: It terraformed the radio into new, unfamiliar shapes, it sparked a 10,000% rise in flannel sales it broke pained groaning as a pop sound, etc.
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