All grown up — almost
They may have retired ‘The Sock’ but Chili Peppers still bring da funk
Alan Sculley

Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith isn’t one to presume that every album the band makes is destined to be a hit.

But, during the making of the band’s new double CD, Stadium Arcadium, Smith saw telltale signs that the group was poised for another round of major success.

“We felt really good about all of this music,” Smith says. “We wrote so much of it and we wanted it all to be together, hence the double record. And that, to me, when things are flowing like that and everyone’s getting along and everyone is happy and healthy, to me that’s a sign that we’re not labouring over it. It’s coming real naturally and real organically, and for our band that’s when we do our best stuff.

“That’s been our track record just within the group. So I had a feeling that... people were going to dig it.”

It didn’t take long for Smith to see that his instincts were right. Stadium Arcadium became the first album in the Peppers’ 23-year career to debut at No. 1 on Billboard magazine’s album chart. It grabbed that spot with first-week sales of more than 400,000 copies and has since gone platinum.

Indeed, these are some of the best of days for a band that has seen its share of peaks and valleys.

Formed in 1983 by singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea (real name Michael Balzary), guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons, the band was rocked in 1988 by the death of Slovak. The next year guitarist John Frusciante filled the slot, while Smith replaced the band’s second drummer, Cliff Martinez.

With Frusciante bringing more of a pop sense to the band’s hard-hitting funk rock sound, the Peppers broke through in a big way with the 1991 CD Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which spawned the now-signature hits Give It Away and Under the Bridge.

The band survived the temporary departure of Frusciante from 1992 to 1999 and struck multi-platinum again with the 1999 CD Californication, but the band’s sometimes volatile chemistry became strained during recording sessions for the next CD, By the Way.

Flea, in particular, felt Frusciante had become too possessive of the music-writing process and ignored his ideas — a sentiment that, as Flea recently revealed, nearly caused him to quit the band.

Smith says he was surprised by Flea’s revelations but that the situation made sense in hindsight.

“I didn’t feel a big tension, but there was some,” Smith says of the By the Way sessions.

“He (Frusciante) had a real preconceived notion of how he wanted the stuff he was coming up with to sound,” Smith says. “He kind of had more of an idea of what he wanted prior to (the recording) and (didn’t) let everyone do his own thing to it. I think that he knew, not at the time, but afterwards. He was like, ‘That’s kind of a selfish way of being and I’m not using these other musicians to their fullest.’”

So a team ethic returned, and Smith says life outside of the band also helped improve the chemistry between the four musicians. Today Smith is married, Flea is engaged, and Kiedis and Frusciante are in long-term relationships.

“I think that we’ve found a balance,” Smith says. “And if you’re happy at home and in your home life then that’s going to carry over into your, if you want to call it your workplace, or whatever it is that you do.”

When the jam sessions for Stadium started, quality song ideas flooded out and the band realized the album had to be a double CD.

For consistent quality the new release rivals Californication, and on prime cuts such as Dani California, Torture Me and Tell Me Baby the band delivers some of its sharpest melodies yet.

Stadium Arcadium also brings back more of the funk influence that defined the band’s early albums. Hump de Bump, Charlie and Readymade deliver plenty of slamming beats to go with a good deal of melodic impact.

With so much material, Smith says it’s tempting for the band to stock its live set with new songs — but the outfit has too much sense to do that.

“You can’t just do that,” he said. “You have to play some of the old chestnuts that people come to enjoy and are part of the reason they come to see us play. So we do play about six or seven new songs a night, and we switch those up from town to town and night to night. It’s been great.”