Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey y'all. Today we're continuing our run of episodes
Speaker 1: celebrating the release of the Red Hot Chili Pepper's new album,
Speaker 1: Unlimited Love, produced by Rick Rubin. We left off our
Speaker 1: episode last week with Anthony Keatis popping in to join
Speaker 1: Rick's conversation with guitarist John Frushonte. Today we have part
Speaker 1: two of that conversation between Rick, John and the band's
Speaker 1: iconic frontman. We'll hear Anthony talk about how some of
Speaker 1: the new song lyrics came together, the lengths he went
Speaker 1: to commute to the studio in Hawaii where he and
Speaker 1: Rick were recording vocals, and both Anthony and John give
Speaker 1: their accounts of John's third return to the band. This
Speaker 1: is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin, John Frushonte, and Anthony Keatis.
Speaker 1: How you feeling, Anthony, You're pretty good. God, It's very
Speaker 1: nice to see you. I wish this was in person
Speaker 1: because I've been looking forward to this moment for quite
Speaker 1: a while, but it's nice to see you on a
Speaker 1: big screen in front of me in your Shangrila. Anyways. Nice,
Speaker 1: you look very beautiful there in the in the environment,
Speaker 1: bringing back good memories of our last endeavor there. Yes,
Speaker 1: the memories are intense. Um, it's much less crowded here now.
Speaker 1: My fondest memories are from Kawaii. Yeah, it was incredible.
Speaker 1: That process was unlike anything I've ever been a part
Speaker 1: of and necessary. I would have never been able to
Speaker 1: get that quantity of work finished in any other environment.
Speaker 1: We've had a good run of interesting places, like I
Speaker 1: remember us doing vocals at Chateau Marmont for an album,
Speaker 1: and that was an interesting, you know, unusual circumstance, getting
Speaker 1: to go there every day and hang out and record.
Speaker 1: We've had some good ones over the years. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Laurel Canyon House, the Chateau. John also had a room
Speaker 1: at the chateau during the writing of Californication, and John
Speaker 1: and I got a ton of good songwriting done in
Speaker 1: his room at the chateau. But Kauai was you know.
Speaker 1: I showed up with this forty some odd tracks of
Speaker 1: music that I had to write for and figure out
Speaker 1: melody for and arrangements, and the idea of waking up
Speaker 1: every day and just taking hours to write and think
Speaker 1: about lyrics and ride my bike and let melodies come
Speaker 1: to me and then show up at your humble little
Speaker 1: abode with not a lot of pressure, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: this pandemic could last for another week, or it could
Speaker 1: last for ten years. We don't know. But until we're
Speaker 1: done with this record, we'll just keep showing up to work.
Speaker 1: And that ambiance was magical. It was great, and it
Speaker 1: was I feel like we it was probably three or
Speaker 1: four months easy of just focusing on writing and singing
Speaker 1: five wow, five months, yeah, close to fifty songs. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of work, it is, and it was so
Speaker 1: nice to roll up and see you every day and
Speaker 1: get some of your your calm and your take. And
Speaker 1: it's nice not to be distracted. You know, in La
Speaker 1: we have lives and kids and people and traffic and
Speaker 1: a whole different feeling in the air. These days we
Speaker 1: did have. I remember we had a few windows where
Speaker 1: you had to take a boat to get to the
Speaker 1: house because the road washed out or bridge closed. Remember that,
Speaker 1: I do. So that was that was once in a
Speaker 1: few days. It was it was at least a month.
Speaker 1: And wow, you were super helpful and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to figure this out. You know, we have
Speaker 1: friends that live on the river and you can, you know,
Speaker 1: use their boat ramp and YadA YadA. And so I
Speaker 1: was showing up at an off time because the locals
Speaker 1: had set up a ferry service to cross the river
Speaker 1: and then these ATVs that would go up the muddy
Speaker 1: mountain to a road that would access your house. And
Speaker 1: I was showing up after the ferry had closed, but
Speaker 1: there were still these food barges with farmers. So in
Speaker 1: the beginning, I would just jump on a boat full
Speaker 1: of terror route and literally hundred year old sort of
Speaker 1: you know, ancient Hawaiian farmers and that barely spoke English
Speaker 1: because they were of you know, mixed ethnicity and had
Speaker 1: come over from Asia a long time ago. And and
Speaker 1: I loved it. I was like, this is really putting
Speaker 1: me in the right frame of mind to go to work.
Speaker 1: But then we we pivoted and we got a local
Speaker 1: surfer to just meet me at the mouth of the
Speaker 1: river and take me sort of along the coast. And
Speaker 1: then I had to hike up a hill next to
Speaker 1: a giant old hotel which was being refurbished, and that
Speaker 1: was psychedelic and jungle like, and I had to walk
Speaker 1: through a little mini river on my own and I
Speaker 1: had a backpack full of lyrics, and you know, running
Speaker 1: into all kinds of you know, people in bikinis, people
Speaker 1: that are you know, chopping down trees and forest and
Speaker 1: so it was kind of epic way to get to work.
Speaker 1: Do you remember if any if any of the either
Speaker 1: things that you saw on the boat or on the
Speaker 1: trip or on the hike worked their way into lyrics
Speaker 1: at all. So not exactly on the boat ride or
Speaker 1: that particular walk, but I would, prior to coming to
Speaker 1: your house every morning, I would ride my bicycle from
Speaker 1: my house to the end of the road, which was
Speaker 1: also through rivers and past beautiful trees and mountains. And
Speaker 1: in the song She's a Lover, which used to be
Speaker 1: called zapp, I had that song going through my head feverishly.
Speaker 1: The melody, the music, and that bike ride completely inspired
Speaker 1: the entire lyric the flowers pink on the tree but
Speaker 1: if you pick it to see will she be wild
Speaker 1: and free? Because I used to drive past the tree
Speaker 1: every day that was covered in pink flowers, and it
Speaker 1: seemed like a metaphor for a relationship. It's like you
Speaker 1: admire this thing as it is, but once you try
Speaker 1: to dominate it or pick it or make it, you know,
Speaker 1: adhere to your agenda? Will it still be wild and free?
Speaker 1: Probably not. Let's listen. Let's listen to unlimited Love you
Speaker 1: up for that? Yeah? Play? What is it? What is
Speaker 1: it now called? That particular song is called She's a Lover?
Speaker 1: She's a lover? Can we hear she's a lover? I
Speaker 1: will think on a chreamer if you pick it to
Speaker 1: see with the wild and free? You say you wanna piece?
Speaker 1: Is it for selor polies out after easy bullies outside
Speaker 1: the world? Within you been to the world, your team,
Speaker 1: to the breathe, the hume through the sun, to wonder
Speaker 1: what you want to do today? I'm your favorite kid.
Speaker 1: Let's be dedicated to the ones with She's so full
Speaker 1: of learning. She love she love, she love, she love
Speaker 1: love love. Man where coming? Okay? I will be a
Speaker 1: tory bet you needing me them when squeezing the mosquee
Speaker 1: day and when I'm falling asleep, Please get me something
Speaker 1: to keep me warm and kind of long time to
Speaker 1: do without your trust to know what out your form?
Speaker 1: Now is my batter? Less time before? Please look? Can
Speaker 1: I have a teas? I just want to live your
Speaker 1: feace any of the day, and I would say your
Speaker 1: Atlantismanta lover, she love, She's a lover, she love, She's
Speaker 1: lover on the men in love again, Rive, Amen, in
Speaker 1: love again, she loves Limon in love again, Love again,
Speaker 1: love Man, Where man, I will be at all, believe
Speaker 1: your knee, and where come and sweet and most fee
Speaker 1: I will be a me. I will, I will. That
Speaker 1: was great, so much fun to listen to. That guitar
Speaker 1: solo really put an unstoppable smile on my face. There's
Speaker 1: a tiny story worth mentioning about that song, which is
Speaker 1: when we were recording the vocal in Kauai, you were
Speaker 1: looking at the lyric sheet and much to my surprise,
Speaker 1: you you isolated the lyric unlimited Love, which really hadn't
Speaker 1: jumped off the paget at me, I was too involved
Speaker 1: in too many pages. You're like, that's a really good title,
Speaker 1: Unlimited Love. I was like, oh you think so, And
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a really good title.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay. I made a mental note, and
Speaker 1: then I was keeping a small list of possible album titles,
Speaker 1: of which that was my least favorite. Unlimited Love. It
Speaker 1: was for me, it was at the bottom of the list.
Speaker 1: I had these other more Chili pepper esque titles, and
Speaker 1: when the day came and we were mixing the music
Speaker 1: and I went to visit John and Flee at the
Speaker 1: mixed studio in Hollywood. I was like, guys, do you
Speaker 1: want to hear some possible album titles? And they were
Speaker 1: like yes, and I read them my favorites and I
Speaker 1: was like, there's also this title that Rick was kind
Speaker 1: of keen on, which was Unlimited Love. And both John
Speaker 1: and Flee were like, oh, well, that's that's the title
Speaker 1: right there. Like are you sure because these other ones
Speaker 1: they're very interesting. They're like Nope, nope, Unlimited Love. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's funny too, because I imagined it as the song title.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I was. I was that was the
Speaker 1: pitch was for the song title. Yeah, so then then
Speaker 1: the pitch became but we can't now, we can't call
Speaker 1: the song that because we don't want to draw all
Speaker 1: of the attention to that song, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: something we considered more of an album track than a
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, look at the song track. Although I must
Speaker 1: say it sounds good in headphones. So now I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask John tell me about the process of coming
Speaker 1: back to the band this time. What tell me about
Speaker 1: what was the first talk of it this time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, which time? Which time? For those people who
Speaker 1: don't know, John left the band, rejoined the band, left
Speaker 1: the band and has now rejoined the band. So this
Speaker 1: is the second time you've rejoined, Yeah, second time you've
Speaker 1: reached joined, second joint. Yeah, yes, yeah. It didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about it until Flee and I were standing in
Speaker 1: my kitchen and chat. Had said something to me when
Speaker 1: I saw him at Flee's wedding. It's like, he misses
Speaker 1: playing with me. Me and him and Flee should jam sometime.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned it to Flee and just because you know,
Speaker 1: practicing guitars something I'm I was always doing even though
Speaker 1: I'm making electronic music, it seemed like it would be
Speaker 1: a nice soul cleansing thing to do. And it was
Speaker 1: within seconds after I suggested that that Flee was like,
Speaker 1: do you ever think about being in the Red Hot
Speaker 1: Chili Peppers again? So we started hypothetically discussing the idea.
Speaker 1: But there were plenty of reservations and things like that,
Speaker 1: But but Yeah, started to open up the topic then,
Speaker 1: and then he talked. He said he'd talked to Anthony
Speaker 1: about it and then, and Anthony seemed to find the
Speaker 1: idea interesting. So then the three of us got together
Speaker 1: and talked about it. Then Flee and Chat and I
Speaker 1: got together and talked about it about a week or
Speaker 1: two weeks where it was just sort of a possible outcome,
Speaker 1: but we weren't. I wasn't sure if I was going
Speaker 1: to do it. They weren't sure if if they were
Speaker 1: going to do it. It was just we were just
Speaker 1: trying to talk about it from every angle. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be sure that we were communicating and seeing it
Speaker 1: from every angle, just to make sure that none of
Speaker 1: us were going to wind up regretting it later. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the first time you guys jammed together again,
Speaker 1: you know, in this new incarnation. Yeah, by then I'm
Speaker 1: already in the band. That was the thing I was
Speaker 1: talking about, Well, let's play together and see if the
Speaker 1: old magic is still there or whatever, you know, But
Speaker 1: we went right past that. He was just like he
Speaker 1: wanted to concentrate on the topic of whether or not
Speaker 1: I was going to actually join. Wow. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't play together until maybe a month later or something.
Speaker 1: At rehearsal. So it's so interesting for me to hear
Speaker 1: what John just said because I was not really privileged
Speaker 1: to those conversations. And I'm not exactly sure how it
Speaker 1: lines up, but I will say that John coming back
Speaker 1: to join and play music with the band was very
Speaker 1: much in the air, because Flee had not mentioned anything
Speaker 1: to me at all, not a peep, no, nary a
Speaker 1: mention of John f Chantey or that he was communicating
Speaker 1: with him or even thinking about that as a possibility.
Speaker 1: I knew that Flee was in a mood, in a
Speaker 1: disposition where he wasn't feeling his best self in the
Speaker 1: previous incarnation. For whatever reason. It just like he wasn't
Speaker 1: he wasn't on fire. And I started getting a sensation
Speaker 1: that I wonder how John is. I wonder if he
Speaker 1: would ever think of participating in any way in our music. Again,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard, I haven't spoken to him, haven't you know,
Speaker 1: really heard what he's up to. But I just got
Speaker 1: this sensation, like, God, it would be really nice if
Speaker 1: John would get involved. And I didn't think that he
Speaker 1: was interested in joining or playing guitar, but I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if he would like write a co write
Speaker 1: a song or produce a song or I just didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where to go with this feeling that
Speaker 1: I had, so I said to Flee, I was like,
Speaker 1: when we're when we're done doing what we're doing right now,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you afterwards. Kind of important.
Speaker 1: And I was going to bring up this idea of
Speaker 1: John participating, and he said to me, He's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I actually have something more important that I have to
Speaker 1: tell you. And I was like, no, no, no, let
Speaker 1: me since I brought it up, I'll just tell you
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. He's like, well, I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to hear what I have to say. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, can it wait until after I tell
Speaker 1: you what I was going to say? And basically we
Speaker 1: were both saying the exact same thing at the exact
Speaker 1: same time, which was what do you think about John?
Speaker 1: And when I presented my thing, he's like, well, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of taking a little further and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe saying if he wanted to come back to the band.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what, I don't know? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, have you spoken to him? Do you
Speaker 1: know where his head's at? Yeah? And He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've actually jammed with him, and I was like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a little a little behind here. And that opened
Speaker 1: the door to all of this. And I remember going
Speaker 1: to see John at his house where he lived, where
Speaker 1: he's lived for a long time, where he lived when
Speaker 1: he used to be in the band, and walking in
Speaker 1: and sitting on the couch with him and just trying
Speaker 1: to get a real sense of you know, is this
Speaker 1: coming from a place of love and and creation or
Speaker 1: does he still have a like any kind of bitterness
Speaker 1: towards me or us? And I did not feel any
Speaker 1: of that. I felt a great deal of resolution. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's ever one hundred percent resolution because
Speaker 1: in a way, as people have too many folds in
Speaker 1: our brain to like tweak out on stuff. Speaking for myself,
Speaker 1: but I felt like whatever sort of animosity or resentment
Speaker 1: or all this stuff had had more or less been resolved.
Speaker 1: And it felt very nice sitting next to him on
Speaker 1: the couch. And then he said one thing to me
Speaker 1: which really made me feel like, this is a done deal.
Speaker 1: I have no choice. Come what may for better, for worse,
Speaker 1: for a disaster or wonder and He's I don't know
Speaker 1: if he looked at me or if I looked at him,
Speaker 1: or if it was just said, but he said I
Speaker 1: was born to be in this band, and I was
Speaker 1: just I was like, he is telling the truth, and
Speaker 1: there's no fucking way on earth that I'm going to
Speaker 1: stop that from happening or do anything other than get
Speaker 1: out of the way and just let it, let it flow.
Speaker 1: Because if someone feels like that, then that's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And it was, you know, it was. Of course, it
Speaker 1: was terribly exciting a little bit. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: vulnerable feeling because, like John said, is the old magic
Speaker 1: still there or are we just going to be you know,
Speaker 1: some weird guys in a room trying to make it happen.
Speaker 1: But I guess, you know, I felt more confident that
Speaker 1: I did concerned. And then when we got back together,
Speaker 1: it was so raw and basic and starting from scratch
Speaker 1: that it just felt right. It felt like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we we have a lot of work to do to
Speaker 1: like figure this out, but what a nice place to be.
Speaker 1: And you know, John made some really wise suggest in
Speaker 1: the very beginning. He was like, you know, let's learn
Speaker 1: some old blue songs and let's learn some really old
Speaker 1: red hot chili pepper songs. So instead of like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get back into where we had left off
Speaker 1: or anything like that, it's like, let's go all the
Speaker 1: way back and just learn, you know, how to play
Speaker 1: some really beautiful, somewhat challenging but basic, you know, rock
Speaker 1: and roll kind of building blocks. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was so smart because I needed to do that. And
Speaker 1: then the rest, the rest of the writing and the
Speaker 1: playing together started to happen way more naturally. And I
Speaker 1: think because John hadn't written a lot of rock music
Speaker 1: songs for quite a while, he had in him a
Speaker 1: reservoir of ideas and chord progressions and arrangements and vocal
Speaker 1: melodies and all these things that he must have been
Speaker 1: kind of quietly keeping in his back pocket. That started
Speaker 1: to flow and and the process was on. It's like
Speaker 1: every time John would bring a gem into practice, you know,
Speaker 1: Flea would feel like, okay, I'll bring a gem, and
Speaker 1: then I would be like, oh, these guys are bringing gems.
Speaker 1: I better, you know, go for a very long drive
Speaker 1: and my Chevy and figure out, you know, something to
Speaker 1: add to the stew, which is, you know, part of
Speaker 1: our creative process, and it felt it felt really natural.
Speaker 1: It felt really natural and like no pretense or you know, expectation.
Speaker 1: It's just like, let's go all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning and just start from zero. That that's what
Speaker 1: it was like from my perspective, But I didn't know
Speaker 1: all these other things were going on. It's interesting. That's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found fascinating about doing
Speaker 1: this podcast is that even when I talk to people
Speaker 1: who I know well, we know each other for thirty years.
Speaker 1: We made our first album together thirty years ago, and
Speaker 1: we even met before that, and in the process of
Speaker 1: talking about stuff, we learn things that we never knew
Speaker 1: about each other. Even though we sit in a room
Speaker 1: together every day, we never really interview each other. We
Speaker 1: never ask questions, we never go back. There's no reason
Speaker 1: to because we're always moving forward. But it's it's fascinating to,
Speaker 1: you know, hear the person who who you're in a
Speaker 1: band with have a different experience leading up to the
Speaker 1: experience of joining than yours, which makes sense because they
Speaker 1: had their own, but all you know is your perspective.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to talk about these things. And for me,
Speaker 1: it's interesting when I get to talk to people that
Speaker 1: I don't know, but when I talk to people that
Speaker 1: I do know, I learned so much. It's amazing. It's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: that's part of your gig these days. It's just it's
Speaker 1: crazy because unlimited love. I was there the day that
Speaker 1: you brought in the song, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: that you saw the pink flower from the tree. I
Speaker 1: had no idea that's where the words came from. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. Riding bikes with my son and he
Speaker 1: was probably trying to talk to me, and all I
Speaker 1: was doing was hearing this song play over and over
Speaker 1: again in my in my head. That that thing that
Speaker 1: I said to Anthony about being born to be in
Speaker 1: the band, by the way, like that was something that
Speaker 1: I that I always felt It was said more as
Speaker 1: a statement of fact than any kind of attempt to
Speaker 1: sell myself or something, you know, like no, like yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was definitely like a feeling that I
Speaker 1: just had to live with, whether I was going to
Speaker 1: you know, rejoin or not. That was just a reality
Speaker 1: of my existence that it felt like that, that that
Speaker 1: was on a on a universal scale, that was that
Speaker 1: was the purpose to my life, you know, Yeah. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we don't know it until we're outside of it or
Speaker 1: looking back on it that we realized, Oh, yeah, the reason,
Speaker 1: the reason I've been doing this all this times, like
Speaker 1: this is my reason to be alive. This is the
Speaker 1: reason I'm here. I can do other things, yeah, but
Speaker 1: the but my purpose is to do this. And it's
Speaker 1: a great feeling to acknowledge that, you know, like to
Speaker 1: feel it and to know I'm doing it, like I
Speaker 1: get to do it. And on the days when it's
Speaker 1: hard to do, which it's hard sometimes it makes it
Speaker 1: not easier, but it helps the challenge of understanding, well,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my life's work. Even though I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to work today, I'm doing my life's work.
Speaker 1: I get to do this. This is my contribution. I'm
Speaker 1: showing up. I'm going to do the very best I
Speaker 1: possibly can because this is why I'm here. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's a great feeling to have. It's a great feeling
Speaker 1: to recognize it. And I think it's a very powerful
Speaker 1: frame when you recognize it, because you can't make it up.
Speaker 1: It's like you recognize you get to eventually recognize it.
Speaker 1: But once you recognize it, it is like a superpower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's ways, you know, I love challenging myself in
Speaker 1: different ways in life, whether it's with a type of
Speaker 1: book that's difficult for me, or whether it's learning music
Speaker 1: that's beyond a little beyond my ability or whatever. But
Speaker 1: there's something about being in the band that it feels
Speaker 1: like I'm trying from a place that doesn't require that
Speaker 1: much effort. I can be exactly what I am and
Speaker 1: try specifically within that set of limitations and not try
Speaker 1: to push myself outside of them. But I can get it.
Speaker 1: I can be in touch with the part of myself
Speaker 1: that was there when I was five years old, six
Speaker 1: years old. That's the energy that can go into the band.
Speaker 1: I don't have to try to be something that's taken
Speaker 1: a lot of effort, like I have to just be
Speaker 1: in touch with it feels like with the essence of
Speaker 1: who I am. It's beautiful. Yeah, And it probably speaks
Speaker 1: to the longevity, like when you're not trying to be
Speaker 1: something that you're not, you can just do it for
Speaker 1: a lifetime because that's what you are. And just just
Speaker 1: to be transparent about a conversation on the couch before
Speaker 1: you joined the band. I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that it was such a successful conversation is nobody was
Speaker 1: trying to sell anybody anything, Like I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: convince you to do something. You weren't trying to convince
Speaker 1: me to do something. We were just you know, putting
Speaker 1: it out for what it was. And when I share
Speaker 1: that very intimate story, it's it's it's out of like
Speaker 1: love and emotion. Because that really struck a chord inside
Speaker 1: of me when you said that, it wasn't like he's
Speaker 1: trying to talk me into something. It was like he's
Speaker 1: being honest with me, and he's telling me something that's
Speaker 1: at the essence of his core and it's the truth.
Speaker 1: And you know, that was just something that it meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me that you were, you know, willing
Speaker 1: to tell me that, and I certainly didn't feel like
Speaker 1: you were trying to sell me anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's there's a feeling of comfort for me with Anthony
Speaker 1: and Fleet that I really don't have with anybody else.
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with so many things.
Speaker 1: It has to do with with going to that depth
Speaker 1: of musical connection and many at so many different times,
Speaker 1: and it might also have something to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that we went from being a club band to
Speaker 1: playing arenas together and nobody but us shared that experience,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a pretty real thing because that
Speaker 1: can make you feel very separate from other people. And
Speaker 1: so even if you're at odds with each other or
Speaker 1: going through some sort of personal disconnection, you're connected in
Speaker 1: this deep way despite all of it. It's impossible to
Speaker 1: have that kind of connection with with anybody else. You know,
Speaker 1: whether Anthony and I have talked over periods of time,
Speaker 1: he's always I'm always aware that like that who I
Speaker 1: am and what every every detail of my life the
Speaker 1: result of it. It is the result of that connection
Speaker 1: that I have as a soul with him and with
Speaker 1: Flee and with Chad. You know, it always felt like
Speaker 1: they were close to me. And sometimes that's a painful
Speaker 1: feeling because because you realize that that in some ways
Speaker 1: you were at fault in a certain area of the relationship,
Speaker 1: or in some ways at a different time, you might
Speaker 1: be bitter and see that it's the other person's fault.
Speaker 1: But when you put all those kind of blame things
Speaker 1: aside and just live with the reality of what it
Speaker 1: was that I have a closeness with those people. That's
Speaker 1: its own thing that's completely separate from all other human
Speaker 1: relationships I could possibly have on this earth. I will
Speaker 1: add even to go even further that in addition to
Speaker 1: it being unlike any relationship you could have with anyone else,
Speaker 1: it's probably unlike a relationship that anyone else can even understand. Right,
Speaker 1: that's how unique being in a band on and off
Speaker 1: for thirty years with a group of people and going
Speaker 1: to those emotional places of creation together. Yeah, you make
Speaker 1: yourself so vulnerable when you do it, especially if you
Speaker 1: try to dig deep into yourself in the way that
Speaker 1: we always have, you make yourself so vulnerable to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. It's only with each other that
Speaker 1: you have this level of comfort. And sometimes that means
Speaker 1: that you have some sort of an ugly outburst with
Speaker 1: each other, and sometimes it means that you have the funniest,
Speaker 1: funnest times that you could have with anybody. It's a
Speaker 1: level of closeness that I mean, I guess family is
Speaker 1: the only thing that I could really compare it to,
Speaker 1: But but it's so much more limited than family because
Speaker 1: it's really just those four people you know. Well, I
Speaker 1: would just for a moment like to speak to what
Speaker 1: John just said briefly, because that was really very clearly expressed.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's hard to put words to those experiences
Speaker 1: and those feelings of having the brotherhood and the friendship
Speaker 1: and the experience of being in a band, because it's
Speaker 1: certainly something like you with your biological family, whether you
Speaker 1: like them or not, or love them or not, you
Speaker 1: can never really quit it because there's this biological connection
Speaker 1: and the dynamic of parents and children and brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: It's like you may want to divorce yourself, but really
Speaker 1: there's a there's an invisible tether word you can't. And
Speaker 1: and the same as kind of true for the family
Speaker 1: that you choose when you have a deep, lifelong experience
Speaker 1: with Like like John said, even when we were not
Speaker 1: in a band together, our destinies and our lives are
Speaker 1: completely shaped by one another forever for you know, lots
Speaker 1: of good purposes. But when John had left the band,
Speaker 1: most recently for a large chunk of time, you know,
Speaker 1: over ten years, it never left my reality or my
Speaker 1: awareness that everything I was doing was largely and part
Speaker 1: of what John had contributed to my life. So whether
Speaker 1: I was right music or whether I was going on
Speaker 1: tour without John. Every time we had that experience, I
Speaker 1: was like, I would not be here if if not
Speaker 1: for my experience with John, and you know, my successes
Speaker 1: and failures and everything in between. I was always had
Speaker 1: an awareness that, you know, John is a part of
Speaker 1: why this is happening. And there was always a sense
Speaker 1: of gratitude that came along with that, because there is
Speaker 1: a weird, beautiful nonverbal closeness that comes with playing music
Speaker 1: with somebody. And sometimes I watched John jam with Chad
Speaker 1: and what they share together in that moment where nobody's
Speaker 1: talking but they're just playing. I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: They have like a relationship that's based on sound and
Speaker 1: it fills their hearts. And the same thing when John
Speaker 1: is playing with Flee, you know that intercommunication of melody
Speaker 1: and everything. It's it's as profound as any other you know,
Speaker 1: verbal communication, or going a chip together, having a sandwich together.
Speaker 1: It's like they bond so heavily over that moment where
Speaker 1: no words need to be spoken, but we're just in
Speaker 1: this invisible space improvising together. And I look at them like, damn,
Speaker 1: you know that is a connection, a real powerful connection.
Speaker 1: So yes, John, I want you to know that whenever
Speaker 1: we're a part and I'm doing music and like, I
Speaker 1: never forget you. Yeah. Yeah. I also I also want
Speaker 1: to explain one thing that relates to what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is this band is not a band who comes
Speaker 1: in and plays their parts. This is a band that
Speaker 1: are always looking at and communicating with each other musically,
Speaker 1: much more like jazz. Even though the form isn't jazz,
Speaker 1: the relationships are more like the way jazz players interact.
Speaker 1: It's a different thing. So we think of a rock
Speaker 1: band or a funk band as people who play their parts.
Speaker 1: That's not what this is. This is a much more organic, dynamic,
Speaker 1: living thing that comes from you guys playing together. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's it's helpful for people to understand.
Speaker 1: It'll make sense the things that you're saying makes sense
Speaker 1: when you understand this is not people playing their parts together.
Speaker 1: That's not what this is. It's a communication and an
Speaker 1: interaction all the time between the members. Yeah, it often
Speaker 1: feels to me like like Flees bass part makes my
Speaker 1: guitar part. It doesn't feel like I'm coming up with
Speaker 1: something to go with what he's doing. It feels like
Speaker 1: there's a guitar part attached to his bass part, and
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going to play. And the same thing
Speaker 1: has happened with Chad playing a drumbeat, just walking into
Speaker 1: rehearsal playing a drum beat, like we had that song Stadium, Arcadium.
Speaker 1: I remember clearly he was playing that drum beat I
Speaker 1: walked into the studio. That was the guitar part that
Speaker 1: was attached to it. It wasn't something I'd come up
Speaker 1: with or contrived. And in the same way, like no
Speaker 1: matter how far along a song is instrumentally, it's never
Speaker 1: till Anthony comes in with the vocals that, now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I know what to do when it
Speaker 1: changes the guitar part in all kinds of ways, And
Speaker 1: that happens immediately the first time he sings it. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the guitar part becomes fully formed and
Speaker 1: in the context of the whole song, and it's just
Speaker 1: this immediate thing. So it happens in the songwriting process,
Speaker 1: it happens in improvisation, but it never feels like it's
Speaker 1: a decision about, Okay, how would I like to approach this.
Speaker 1: It's always it's always as if the other members formed
Speaker 1: whatever it is that I'm doing, which I think for
Speaker 1: jazz musicians, the good ones who were great listeners, that's
Speaker 1: how it was for them. They're not super concerned with
Speaker 1: what they're doing. They're listening to the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: there's this automatic response that's made by the bigger context.
Speaker 1: I remember when Chad was playing that drumbeat, and I
Speaker 1: remember when you started playing guitar to stadium arcadium right
Speaker 1: at the alley. Yeah, it was a good feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, let me, let me just record this
Speaker 1: real quick. We have to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then we'll be back with more from Anthony Keatis, John Fuschante,
Speaker 1: and Rick Rubin. We're back with more from Rick Rubin's
Speaker 1: conversation with Anthony Keatis and John Fuschante. We're talking about
Speaker 1: jamming at the North Hollywood rehearsal space, the Alley. I
Speaker 1: want to tell a quick story about one of the
Speaker 1: things that happened at the Alley that was always entertaining
Speaker 1: for me was when we'd be working on a song
Speaker 1: and there was we needed a new part and there
Speaker 1: would be the face off where we would have we'd
Speaker 1: have a whole song, except there'd be a missing element,
Speaker 1: and John and Flee would walk to the center of
Speaker 1: the room, press their faces together, kind of like angry
Speaker 1: boxers before a match, and then they would both retreat,
Speaker 1: and then a few minutes later they would both come
Speaker 1: back with the idea of what a new part could be,
Speaker 1: and it was always interesting. They were always radically different,
Speaker 1: and more often than not, both of the new parts
Speaker 1: made it into the song, maybe one as a chorus,
Speaker 1: one as a bridge, one as an outro, but it
Speaker 1: was not unusual for both parts to make it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: one would just win the original solution to the problem,
Speaker 1: but sometimes both would work their way, and it was
Speaker 1: always funny to see the cartoon aspect of the faces
Speaker 1: coming together making a mean face and then retreating to
Speaker 1: make their music. When we were writing Mother's Milk, when
Speaker 1: DH was in the band, that's when we first started
Speaker 1: doing those face offs, and it was this brand new
Speaker 1: musical skill that I was having to learn how to develop.
Speaker 1: You know, did you guys do those before I was
Speaker 1: in the band, Anthony not as such? Like there may
Speaker 1: have been a much more subtle variation on that theme.
Speaker 1: Nothing as defined as we're gonna go face to face,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go in separate, like I'll go outside, you
Speaker 1: stay inside, and then in five minutes, whatever happened happened,
Speaker 1: and it's time to get down to breast acts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've never I've never written from that perspective of
Speaker 1: like there's a song, but it's incomplete, we need a chorus,
Speaker 1: write one in five minutes, you know. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: By the time of Blood Sugar, I was better at it,
Speaker 1: like for a while, like it seemed like Flea was
Speaker 1: really like like so far ahead of me in terms
Speaker 1: of just being able to do some automatic, awesome thing
Speaker 1: because yeah, you get to learn like what's you know,
Speaker 1: what's going to really connect with people in the room.
Speaker 1: A lot of the time, it's the simplest thing you
Speaker 1: could do. It's not something you need to try super hard,
Speaker 1: you know, for you need to make something that's going
Speaker 1: to make it possible for the other people to come
Speaker 1: up with cool parts. Like and I think initially I
Speaker 1: was thinking of it too egocentrically. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: it is what's a part that's going to dazzle people?
Speaker 1: And the better way to think of it is what's
Speaker 1: a part that those guys are going to say that
Speaker 1: Anthony would want to write to that. Chad and Flee
Speaker 1: are going to come up with good parts too. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the new album. Whoever wants to start? And Anthony,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I just cut you off. What will you
Speaker 1: say now? That's all right, that's all right. I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say, it's a pretty exciting moment when you
Speaker 1: get to listen to the face off materials, and like
Speaker 1: you said, more often than not, they all have value.
Speaker 1: And sometimes one of the contestants would come back with
Speaker 1: two or three ideas, and several of these ideas would
Speaker 1: make their way into that song or some other song.
Speaker 1: But I'm interested to hear what John has to say
Speaker 1: about the early phase one of writing Unlimited Love. It
Speaker 1: was interesting for me because there is definitely about a
Speaker 1: ten year period where everything I did with the guitar
Speaker 1: was in learning other people's music. I've been making progress
Speaker 1: doing that since I was ten years old, and I
Speaker 1: never stopped making that progress. As far as some artists
Speaker 1: where it was hard for me to understand what they
Speaker 1: were doing, and like, I didn't really get my head
Speaker 1: around the Beatles until I was in my early thirties,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't really start to get my head
Speaker 1: around Genesis until I was in my late thirties. There's
Speaker 1: certain artists who were really challenging, you know. For that
Speaker 1: year before I rejoined, this time, Charlie Christian. I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with his playing, and I learned every solo that
Speaker 1: he recorded just about and that was actually some of
Speaker 1: Fleet and mis jamming the year before was playing Benny
Speaker 1: Goodman Charlie Christian tunes together. So I'd been practicing a lot,
Speaker 1: but I'd stopped making I'd stopped making rock music, and
Speaker 1: what guitar playing I had done in my music was
Speaker 1: meant to be as different from what I did in
Speaker 1: the Chili Peppers as it could possibly be when we
Speaker 1: when we started writing, it was interesting because though I
Speaker 1: hadn't tried to write rock music for a long time,
Speaker 1: I had built up all this new all these new
Speaker 1: ways of seeing the guitar and new ways of seeing
Speaker 1: chord changes that weren't part of my vocabulary in the
Speaker 1: other times i'd been in the band. You know, Normally,
Speaker 1: practicing guitar and playing in the band had been an
Speaker 1: everyday balance, and at one had always fed the other.
Speaker 1: You know, my every song I wrote in the band
Speaker 1: was generally inspired by something I'd learned on a CD,
Speaker 1: but now there was this ten year period where I'd
Speaker 1: been taking in all the information without doing anything with
Speaker 1: it because my expression was on machines and computers and
Speaker 1: not through the guitar. So that was another reason why
Speaker 1: I was a lot more comfortable starting out playing other
Speaker 1: people's music, because I didn't want to force anything, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want anything to I didn't want to feel
Speaker 1: that pressure of having to live up to what we've
Speaker 1: done before. As time goes by and I'm playing along
Speaker 1: with music that I'd like to be influenced by and
Speaker 1: remembering what this feels like to play with these people,
Speaker 1: playing the early Chili Pepper songs and cover tunes, stuff
Speaker 1: is going to start to come out and I'll start
Speaker 1: to want to write for this context. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: songs started coming out slowly, and gradually we phased out
Speaker 1: the playing other people's songs and playing early Chili Pepper
Speaker 1: songs and writing music came out pretty steady. It was
Speaker 1: a certain way of listening to music that I hadn't
Speaker 1: done for a long time, which is play along with
Speaker 1: things that are going to inspire you to come up
Speaker 1: with guitar parts. When you're playing when you're jamming with
Speaker 1: the band, and yeah, we just kept writing songs and
Speaker 1: it just kept building and building. I think I thought
Speaker 1: we would stop when we had twenty songs, but we
Speaker 1: just kept going and going. Several times I stopped writing
Speaker 1: songs because I thought, we have enough, let's just work
Speaker 1: on these, and then something or other would happen and
Speaker 1: I'd start At those points, I'd start concentrating on guitar playing.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking there was going to be a phase
Speaker 1: where I was just going to focus on the technical
Speaker 1: part of guitar playing and get away from this studying
Speaker 1: people who come up with good ideas for songs, and
Speaker 1: only stayed in those periods for short periods of time,
Speaker 1: because if I would stop writing songs, Flee would just
Speaker 1: keep coming in with songs, and then I would go like,
Speaker 1: all right, if he's going to come in with songs,
Speaker 1: I'm going to come in with songs. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's that it's kind of a soft kind of competition
Speaker 1: that Flee and I have with each other where where
Speaker 1: we bounce off of each other like that like Anthony
Speaker 1: was talking about. And so that just kept happening all up,
Speaker 1: even while we were in pre production with you, What
Speaker 1: would you say your biggest guitar influences are. Can you
Speaker 1: answer that question? Is it do wide well? Right now?
Speaker 1: It seems like throughout throughout making this record, the main
Speaker 1: people for me we're Freddie King, Johnny Guitar Watson, Clarence
Speaker 1: Gatemouth Brown. These are all electric blues players from fifties
Speaker 1: and early sixties. Forties and then Jeff Beck and Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendrix have always been big for me, but they were
Speaker 1: particularly big, especially Jeff Beck while we were making this record.
Speaker 1: And as far as guitar parts like that John mcgeek
Speaker 1: from Susie and the Banshees and John Carruther's Valentine as
Speaker 1: well from Susie and the Banshees, particularly the album Tinderbox,
Speaker 1: I find them extremely inspiring. As far as people who
Speaker 1: give me good ideas for making other people sound good,
Speaker 1: those are the big one. Kurt Cobaine's guitar playing also
Speaker 1: I've found really inspiring throughout the making of this record,
Speaker 1: The Reckless Abandoned. I think I had an idea that
Speaker 1: by the time I wasn't sure what the direction the
Speaker 1: album was going to go was or where how my
Speaker 1: playing was going to go, but it seemed like by
Speaker 1: the time we were recording it, it seemed to have
Speaker 1: naturally come to be because I'm always playing along with
Speaker 1: all kinds of guitar players. But I got to a
Speaker 1: point where I was realizing that what was happening in
Speaker 1: my playing was that I was trying to bridge a
Speaker 1: kind of a gap between someone like Jeff Beck, who
Speaker 1: has all a lot of very interesting techniques that are
Speaker 1: very lyrical and expressive, make the guitar almost like it's
Speaker 1: a singer or something. It seemed like I was bridging
Speaker 1: a gap between that and someone like Kurt Cobain, who,
Speaker 1: especially in his improvisational playing, it's not so much about
Speaker 1: techniques per se. It's about putting a lot of energy
Speaker 1: into the instrument and playing in a way that has
Speaker 1: reckless abandoned. So I would think of those as guitar
Speaker 1: players as being contrary to one another, because Jeff Beck
Speaker 1: is very in control and Kurt Cobain is completely out
Speaker 1: of control when he's when he was at his best
Speaker 1: on guitar, and I felt it felt like that that
Speaker 1: was the best that was going on with my guitar playing.
Speaker 1: By the time we were recording, was I was trying
Speaker 1: to blend that kind of expressive lyricism that I was
Speaker 1: also getting quite a bit of from the blues players
Speaker 1: that I was talking about about just really every note
Speaker 1: having its own personality, every note having its own kind
Speaker 1: of attitude and sound coming from your fingers, combining that
Speaker 1: with the wild, reckless, abandoned that that comes when you're
Speaker 1: playing through a marshal really loud and you're standing in
Speaker 1: front of it and you're trying to just put a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of energy through the instrument. More
Speaker 1: so than that you're trying to play something that you've
Speaker 1: that you've thought of in advance. It's more like like, uh,
Speaker 1: you're listening to what's coming out and and you're trying
Speaker 1: to respond to it and make the thing explode, you know,
Speaker 1: which is my favorite thing to do. Whether I'm on
Speaker 1: a computer or a machine or whatever, that's always the
Speaker 1: object is make the machine sound like it's going to explode,
Speaker 1: you know, make them machine sound like it's got a
Speaker 1: lot of energy coming through it. So now I was
Speaker 1: just doing that with the guitar, and those people really inspiring,
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Hendricks was also kind of a He was
Speaker 1: that way as well. Like he had a to some degree,
Speaker 1: he was kind of a combination of those two things,
Speaker 1: because he sounded very in control in some ways, but
Speaker 1: he'd also have those those aspects of his playing where
Speaker 1: it just sounded like he didn't know what was going
Speaker 1: to happen next. He's just like playing with the feedback
Speaker 1: and surprising himself, you know, And that's that's what keeps
Speaker 1: it interesting for me. So I like it when guitar
Speaker 1: players don't sound too much like they know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: or like they have too much of a preconceived idea
Speaker 1: of what they're going to do. I like it when
Speaker 1: there's a lot of energy coming through their playing, and
Speaker 1: sometimes that's because of they're really good at all those
Speaker 1: techniques that make the guitar speak in a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways, like Jeff Beck or Randy Rhodes or Eddie
Speaker 1: Van Halen, who were also people I was playing along
Speaker 1: with a fair amount, But you know, I was mainly
Speaker 1: listening to hardcore punk by the time we were recording it,
Speaker 1: and that was the energy that I wanted to be
Speaker 1: in all the music, no matter how soft it was,
Speaker 1: no matter what the style of music was, I wanted
Speaker 1: it to feel raw, and I wanted it to feel
Speaker 1: feel like it was the spirit of punk, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily the sound of punk. Beautiful, Anthony, do
Speaker 1: you want to pick up where John talks through the
Speaker 1: writing process. Do you want to start with preproduction and
Speaker 1: then recording what the experience was like, what it felt
Speaker 1: like being in the room with everybody? Any thoughts? No,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed listening to John's description there. He articulated
Speaker 1: in a way that I think about it. I was
Speaker 1: thinking of, this is not some great secret, but musicians
Speaker 1: that learn the academics of music and the technique of
Speaker 1: music in the you know, all the different theory and everything,
Speaker 1: and then they really kind of put all that aside
Speaker 1: to just let the explosion in the chaos and the
Speaker 1: moment be a part of what's being played, rather than,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of meticulous, preconceived approach. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think John's an interesting example of that, because when
Speaker 1: we're playing live, it is explosive and it is dangerous
Speaker 1: and it is unpredictable. But I know how much time
Speaker 1: and effort and you know, songs that he's learned how
Speaker 1: to play of other people's and techniques that he's taken
Speaker 1: the time to figure out because John is a unique
Speaker 1: individual and that he is much less distracted than the
Speaker 1: average human being on earth today in the way that
Speaker 1: like Leonardo da Vinci, was able to think clearly and
Speaker 1: put in all this great work with what he loved
Speaker 1: to do because his telephone wasn't ringing and the cell
Speaker 1: tower wasn't pinging off his head. And John has found
Speaker 1: a way to do that in the modern age where
Speaker 1: he can really focus and concentrate and apply himself to
Speaker 1: his craft in a way where the noise of the
Speaker 1: world has less of an impact, less of a distraction.
Speaker 1: But I love that. I love it when when musicians
Speaker 1: just get so good and then they can throw it
Speaker 1: away and just you know, be So that was cool
Speaker 1: to hear. Like John said, when we got into a
Speaker 1: room together, it was it wasn't trying to live up to,
Speaker 1: you know, where where we had left off, and nobody
Speaker 1: felt like that. You know, I didn't walk into the room.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, we have to be this now because
Speaker 1: we were that ten years ago. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like let's just reinvent and start from ground zero. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was super slow, like in a good way,
Speaker 1: like we didn't go in there and you know, try
Speaker 1: to write a hit or anything. We just went in
Speaker 1: there and tried to feel each other out. And the
Speaker 1: feeling was nice because it was relaxed and it was
Speaker 1: devoid of expectation. And we've always had the luxury of
Speaker 1: playing anything under the sun, whether it's you know, a
Speaker 1: little beatbox grew that we want to turn into a song,
Speaker 1: or something that was inspired by jazz, or something that
Speaker 1: was inspired by funk, or something that was inspired by
Speaker 1: the Marx Brothers. That was like, whatever feelings we have,
Speaker 1: they're they're all welcome at the table when when it
Speaker 1: comes time for us to write. And we had those
Speaker 1: great experiences of learning blue songs, which were freaking challenging
Speaker 1: for me because for John that's a that's a big
Speaker 1: part of his vernacular and for me, I've never really
Speaker 1: taken the time to go and and what sounds so
Speaker 1: simple and the blues world is so full of nuance
Speaker 1: and you know, rhythmic innuendos that that don't come natural.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of fun for me. And there
Speaker 1: was actually a moment where we were hell bent on
Speaker 1: going to this daytime blues club down in South Central
Speaker 1: which is like an active one. I think maybe the
Speaker 1: only active all blues all the time clubs left in
Speaker 1: LA where these these elder statesmen of blues still like
Speaker 1: play out of a storefront or an open garage or something,
Speaker 1: and it's a club. And I don't know if we
Speaker 1: ever really got good enough with our with our blues song,
Speaker 1: mainly me to go down there and play. But we
Speaker 1: were like, we're once we get these songs together, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go play the blues club in South Central. And
Speaker 1: it was a nice little aspiration to kind of fuel
Speaker 1: the fire for a while. And then I just remember
Speaker 1: John playing a couple of songs on guitar that that
Speaker 1: he had formed arrangementally, and and one turned out to
Speaker 1: be a White Braids and pillow Chair, and it was
Speaker 1: so laid back and so simple, but so emotional and
Speaker 1: so interesting, and it had this um, this unique arrangement
Speaker 1: because it had the outro was almost as lengthy as
Speaker 1: the actual song, which ended up not being the same
Speaker 1: ratio once the song was finished, but it started off
Speaker 1: that outro, you know, the outro to White Raids, that
Speaker 1: was half the tune, and it just kept rolling like
Speaker 1: a horse running off into the woods. So there was that,
Speaker 1: and that was emotion. I was like, oh jeez, I
Speaker 1: hope I can like find the right colors for this song.
Speaker 1: And then Black Summer, oddly enough, which is now like
Speaker 1: our single off the record, was one of the first
Speaker 1: things that I remember John playing, and it was had
Speaker 1: such a beautifully sparse verse. I was like, wow, I
Speaker 1: am going to be naked and exposed trying to get
Speaker 1: my voice on this. But I'm pretty sure that John
Speaker 1: had for the verse of that song the basic vocal melody,
Speaker 1: Am I right? John? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, the verse is
Speaker 1: what you're doing on the verse is pretty similar to
Speaker 1: what I originally wrote. I realized recently what you're doing
Speaker 1: on the chorus is it probably was inspired by what
Speaker 1: I did, But what I did couldn't have been more
Speaker 1: different in terms of the feeling of Yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to recreate your melody in the chorus. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was something that I thought was just a new part.
Speaker 1: But but but it may have been seated by whatever
Speaker 1: you were doing. It starts on the same note. That's
Speaker 1: the only similarity, Like like like, uh, yeah, the chorus,
Speaker 1: my chorus was so different. It just popped into my
Speaker 1: head the other day, I was like, wow, that was
Speaker 1: the original chorus. There's this girl Kate from Wales who's
Speaker 1: a folk singer that I admire, and and when you
Speaker 1: wrote that that verse and it came with that kind
Speaker 1: of folkush melody, I was like, yeah, I get to
Speaker 1: like try something new and very exposing, which was hard
Speaker 1: to sing in the beginning, because you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of this free floating melody in space there. Maybe not
Speaker 1: her for you, but harder for me. That the inspiration
Speaker 1: for you almost have a bit of an accent at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a song. It's not almost, and it's
Speaker 1: not almost. So is that inspired by Kate? Yes? So
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to be Welsh. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: be Irish or Scottish or English or a pirate. But
Speaker 1: I did feel like I need to be in character
Speaker 1: to sing this verse. This doesn't have to be like
Speaker 1: my normal me. It can be you know, a variation,
Speaker 1: a version of character. And it was just quite simply,
Speaker 1: it was easier to sing with a little bit of
Speaker 1: that amalgam accent than not for whatever reason. And I
Speaker 1: also feel like that's the right flavor for the verse
Speaker 1: from when Anthony first started singing it, he saw it like,
Speaker 1: there's different ways to interpret the song, you know. There
Speaker 1: was like, in some ways it could be seen as
Speaker 1: sort of a Nirvana type song with a soft verse
Speaker 1: and an explosive chorus, and but there was another way
Speaker 1: of looking at this that was like Anthony, what Anthony
Speaker 1: heard in it, which is that it's more of a
Speaker 1: folk song. It's amazing. That's one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes collaboration so interesting is that you'll start with one
Speaker 1: idea and someone will add something, and at first it'll
Speaker 1: seem weird, and then you can come around to like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's really I can't imagine it a different way now.
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating the process. Yeah, I don't think that
Speaker 1: there was that there's a right way to sing that
Speaker 1: verse or not, like now. I remember John's early stylings
Speaker 1: were more in the Nirvana mode, and that also felt
Speaker 1: right it certainly it certainly didn't feel wrong. But but
Speaker 1: I feel the same about the kind of folk approach,
Speaker 1: Like in this case, both work, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I gravitated towards the folk rather than the Kurt styling
Speaker 1: or John's interpretation of that. But I remember liking the
Speaker 1: way John sang it, and and that felt just as
Speaker 1: right as anything. Fascinating, you know, it's fascinating how it works.
Speaker 1: Like the way things change when you're making it happens
Speaker 1: too when we're recording, Like things will evolve in the recording.
Speaker 1: They'll even change in the mix sometimes where the whole
Speaker 1: feel of a song comes alive in a way that
Speaker 1: it didn't since the first time you played it in
Speaker 1: the room and it was really exciting. Then you can
Speaker 1: hear a mix where it like it's back, like it's
Speaker 1: back to that energy that doesn't always happen naturally. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes massaging to get it to do what it
Speaker 1: can do. I have a question about white Braids, because
Speaker 1: you mentioned it earlier. Do you guys mind if we
Speaker 1: listen to it? Sure, I'm an angler dagger and I
Speaker 1: wanna rim it dot to shwintz a while I can
Speaker 1: ask it why she's a loaded cobra and she wanted
Speaker 1: to be with me for the ride In a Sunday dinner,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded there's no final place to kiss than unl this.
Speaker 1: But day I can't see what's right with you? Why
Speaker 1: Prisonlin I couldn't spend my night with its busy Lovaina.
Speaker 1: I can't see your side of why braising chair. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I would without your below. She's a
Speaker 1: Bobby Daring singing too, the fishing, heaving, sacrifice, all that's
Speaker 1: a night. There's a common about the backing. We believe
Speaker 1: it's a lie. You can see the ribble running through
Speaker 1: my devastated concrete eyes. Don't Denis, but I can't see
Speaker 1: what's right with you? Wh prisonlow chain. I could stand
Speaker 1: my nights with thelow fain. I can't see your sides
Speaker 1: w resent pillow share. I don't know d time cattle
Speaker 1: Lifonio say things. Take cattle, liponia, same, beat them to
Speaker 1: a style rot and by God then do a sky
Speaker 1: and by sound to be baker something sound to be so.
Speaker 1: I love that song. That song is based on a
Speaker 1: true life couple who I didn't meet, but some years
Speaker 1: ago I was with my girlfriend Helena, and we were
Speaker 1: in Ventura at a coffee shop having a snack, and
Speaker 1: this couple showed up, and they were probably in their
Speaker 1: late seventies, and the man had the most beautiful white
Speaker 1: braids you'd ever seen down to his waist, and she
Speaker 1: came with her own pillow to the coffee shop and
Speaker 1: she sat that pillow down on her chair so she'd
Speaker 1: be just a little more comfortable, and they had their
Speaker 1: lunch together and I looked at him and I was like,
Speaker 1: that is the most beautiful couple I've ever seen. And
Speaker 1: I ended up referring to them as white Braids and
Speaker 1: pillow Chair for the rest of the day when talking
Speaker 1: to my girlfriend at the time, and it just stuck
Speaker 1: as they need a song to be written about them.
Speaker 1: Many years later, John shows up with this cool idea
Speaker 1: for a song, and White Braids was born. So you
Speaker 1: had the idea, never knowing it would be a song
Speaker 1: for years. Yes, it was just just a memory from
Speaker 1: years earlier. It was. It was an emblazoned memory, but
Speaker 1: it was also probably a jotted note. I'd probably made
Speaker 1: a note to self somewhere and some phone that was
Speaker 1: dead in a drawer somewhere. White braids and pillow chair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was very touched that you were feeling the song,
Speaker 1: because sometimes in the middle of fifty songs you can
Speaker 1: lose perspective and then to see it have an effect
Speaker 1: on you and you would come in and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I took my walk on the beach today and all
Speaker 1: I could sing was white braids. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the song is correct. If Freak is singing it, the
Speaker 1: song is correct. It's true. It definitely would hit me
Speaker 1: on the beach. And John used to talk to me
Speaker 1: about walking around his house singing the outro because that
Speaker 1: was the vocal in the outro is John's melody. And
Speaker 1: do you remember that, John? Yeah, that I just kept.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had the guitar part and which is
Speaker 1: always playing a few notes at once, but I had
Speaker 1: a melody that I was it was sticking in my
Speaker 1: head as being certain notes in the chords basically. So
Speaker 1: that's been an interesting kind of collaboration, is the melody department,
Speaker 1: because that's the fun of writing music with other people,
Speaker 1: is to see where where a very simple idea becomes
Speaker 1: fleshed out by other people. So like usually when I'd
Speaker 1: write some core changes, I have to have a melody
Speaker 1: in my head to know that there's any value in
Speaker 1: the chord changes. Like it it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: just write the chords by themselves, Like I need to
Speaker 1: know that it's going to be fun for Anthony to
Speaker 1: write a melody over it, to want to bring something in,
Speaker 1: So I figure, if it makes me write a melody,
Speaker 1: it's going to make him want to write a melody.
Speaker 1: So that's that's sort of part of my criteria for
Speaker 1: stuff that I bring in versus stuff that I don't
Speaker 1: bring in a lot of the time, so quite a
Speaker 1: bit of the time I had a melody, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell it to him unless he asked, so in
Speaker 1: that case, I believe that was one of the ones
Speaker 1: where he said, do you have a melody for the
Speaker 1: ultra white Bread? You know it's I never felt any
Speaker 1: kind of sense of attachment to the melodies that I
Speaker 1: came in with. Sometimes i'd sing it to him the
Speaker 1: day I brought into the guitar part. Sometimes i'd maybe
Speaker 1: sing him one of the melodies and not the other.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'd interpret the melody in his own way and
Speaker 1: turn it into something else. Sometimes he'd completely come up
Speaker 1: with his own melody. Sometimes he'd do exactly pretty much
Speaker 1: the melody that I'd wrote, or very close to it.
Speaker 1: You know, it was always up to him. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I brought in a tune like that
Speaker 1: to him, I made it clear after I performed it,
Speaker 1: like I don't give a shit the melody, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, if you like it, great, but
Speaker 1: like I'm just I'm just throwing it out there just
Speaker 1: because this is the way it came to me. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the time I'd specifically withhold the melody
Speaker 1: unless he asked about it, because I'd just make a
Speaker 1: different judgment for different pieces of music. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back after a break with more from Anthony Keatis and
Speaker 1: John Fuschante. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's
Speaker 1: conversation with Anthony Ketis and John Fushante. John, let's talk
Speaker 1: about how Flea brings in songs also and he brings
Speaker 1: in they seem to be two categories, but maybe that's
Speaker 1: not right. I think it was two categories. Ones that
Speaker 1: he's written on piano and one that he writes on bass,
Speaker 1: and those are two whole different avenues in for his songs.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the experience of hearing a new Flee
Speaker 1: song and then reacting to it. How do you know
Speaker 1: what to do in reaction to what he brings in
Speaker 1: the piano ones? In some cases, like I'm thinking particularly
Speaker 1: it's only natural. Yeah, like that song it was just
Speaker 1: him on piano for for a long time, and it
Speaker 1: kept kind of falling apart. It wasn't really naturally developing
Speaker 1: into something, but he kept bringing it in. He kept
Speaker 1: reminding us of it over and over, and he would
Speaker 1: sit down on the piano and he would go like,
Speaker 1: dun du du du du du du dent dun dun
Speaker 1: dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
Speaker 1: dun du du dud. It was. It was just the
Speaker 1: basics of the chord progression played like that. And so
Speaker 1: I started playing bass since he was playing piano, and
Speaker 1: I came up with this bass line. And I remember
Speaker 1: we had been throwing the song around for a while
Speaker 1: and like I said, it wasn't really going anywhere, but
Speaker 1: it started to feel like it was going somewhere when
Speaker 1: I made up this bass line to it. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of playing the only way I really can
Speaker 1: play bass, and kind of a Paul McCartney style, kind
Speaker 1: of sliding around and the chord changes and being kind
Speaker 1: of fancy in a guitar player kind of way. And Anthony,
Speaker 1: who was making jokes like you know who was that
Speaker 1: John aink Whistle on the bass? You know, everybody was
Speaker 1: saying what a great bass line it was. Chad was
Speaker 1: really into the bass line. Anthony was really into the
Speaker 1: bass line, and as I remember it, the next day,
Speaker 1: Fully came in with the idea that now he's going
Speaker 1: to play it on bass, you know, like like like,
Speaker 1: and so it was one of those little competitive moments
Speaker 1: that like he did not like like everybody being excited
Speaker 1: about my bass line. So he came in and he
Speaker 1: did an even better bass line, and I switched to guitar,
Speaker 1: and that's when the song started to really feel like
Speaker 1: it had a really real life, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the piano ones came together and you just
Speaker 1: never knew where they were going to go. He learned
Speaker 1: how to play piano while I wasn't in the band,
Speaker 1: So that was a brand new aspect of the collaboration
Speaker 1: that I was adjusting to. Let's let's play It's only natural.
Speaker 1: It's one of my also one of my very favorite songs.
Speaker 1: I had no idea the history of it. The beauty
Speaker 1: is I get to come into the rehearsal room and
Speaker 1: I hear the songs after they've already turned into pretty
Speaker 1: much what they are, and we talk about them from there,
Speaker 1: how we can make them better, But they're pretty much
Speaker 1: what they are, So you'll now hear it's only natural,
Speaker 1: not so different than how I heard it when I
Speaker 1: walked in the first time. She was learning new the
Speaker 1: PA did itself. He was side them more night in
Speaker 1: the spier Shokud she was a dady girl briddle the
Speaker 1: brick stone with dragonside, but she came home in that
Speaker 1: Jerling Love show, you have to break it down in
Speaker 1: spite of attraction. Well in doling that jeling people with
Speaker 1: show you have breake it down. In Spider Steady up
Speaker 1: they were perfect. Bless you you beauties and the rest
Speaker 1: of babe. Nobody knows just fair landing with strike but
Speaker 1: always game. And she came home. She came. It's on
Speaker 1: in that jewerl and Love will show you how to
Speaker 1: break it down in spiral attraction when it's only in
Speaker 1: that jewel and people will show you how to take
Speaker 1: it down. Inspiral steady of General show you how to
Speaker 1: bring it down inspirer traction that general and people were
Speaker 1: shown you not being it down inspirer lovel and Loose
Speaker 1: show you have to breaking down the traction when Insolingling
Speaker 1: people show you have been down inspired love Steadio. I
Speaker 1: love that song. I love that song, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know any of that story. I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: song came in on piano, and I didn't know any
Speaker 1: of the history of it. Yeah, and then the chorus
Speaker 1: was the result of a face off. Wow. And yeah.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things like I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: like I was into what we came up with instrumentally,
Speaker 1: but Anthony came in with the vocal, as I remember it,
Speaker 1: very quickly. Once we once it finally sounded like a song.
Speaker 1: And that excitement that I feel I kept saying to
Speaker 1: him while we were making the record, like those those
Speaker 1: were the most exciting parts for me in the whole
Speaker 1: writing process, was those days that Anthony would come in
Speaker 1: with a vocal because I didn't know what to expect
Speaker 1: and and it just all of a sudden, it would
Speaker 1: sound like a record to me, you know. And before that,
Speaker 1: it just sounds like an idea for a song, you know.
Speaker 1: And that excitement that I feel when I hear him
Speaker 1: singing it, I don't have to think about anything. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I know, Okay, I'm gonna play this
Speaker 1: guitar part at this part. I'm gonna play this guitar
Speaker 1: part at that part, like the way I'm switching guitar
Speaker 1: parts in the verse. That all just happened automatically once
Speaker 1: I heard Anthony coming in with what he was going
Speaker 1: to do. You know, it's a really exciting kind of
Speaker 1: osmosis that takes place between us when that happens, because
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's just something gets transferred to me, completely
Speaker 1: separate from the actual melody that he's singing, you know,
Speaker 1: in the words that he came up with. It's just like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, my own part comes completely into focus,
Speaker 1: and it couldn't be any other way than what it
Speaker 1: is right at that moment that I'm first hearing his vocal. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1: That's a nice memory I have of that one, because
Speaker 1: because I hadn't thought much of that song throughout its
Speaker 1: various stages leading to what it became. And I remember
Speaker 1: that night because we were recording every rehearsal and listening
Speaker 1: to them at night, and when that song came on
Speaker 1: with his vocal, I was just I danced all over
Speaker 1: my living room, like multiple times to it. I was
Speaker 1: so excited. It feels like a quintessential chili pepper song.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. I love it. I can't imagine another artist
Speaker 1: making that song. It's just such a signature part of it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like any chili pepper songs I've heard before,
Speaker 1: yet it's so represents what the band does that it's
Speaker 1: just scratches the chili pepper itch in a new way,
Speaker 1: and I love it, Anthony. Before we Go, John spent
Speaker 1: a good deal of time talking about punk rock because
Speaker 1: he started in punk rock. It's an energy he brought
Speaker 1: to this project. And tell us about your relationship to
Speaker 1: punk rock and from your perspective, the band's relationship to
Speaker 1: punk rock. Well, I'm pretty sure that it defies any
Speaker 1: sort of a verbal description, since it is such a
Speaker 1: visceral experience. I mean, my relationship to punk rock is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. It happened, It certainly happened without me
Speaker 1: being conscious of it. Was I never thought to myself, oh,
Speaker 1: this is punk rock. I just show up and was
Speaker 1: very kind of peripherally a part of something that was
Speaker 1: happening in la that felt good and scary and fucked
Speaker 1: up and in the moment and of the time, and
Speaker 1: oddly enough, my father, who would visit London regularly in
Speaker 1: the seventies, came back with the English girlfriend and a
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols record and maybe nineteen seventy seven or seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and he tried to get all punk rock on me,
Speaker 1: but really I think he was just trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: play with young people were into at that moment. And
Speaker 1: so I remember hearing the sex Pistols, you know, come
Speaker 1: from out of my living room when I was getting
Speaker 1: ready to go to high school. And I didn't really
Speaker 1: make the connection at that point, Like I noticed it,
Speaker 1: and I noticed how cool the girl was that he
Speaker 1: was dating, but I still hadn't you know, become part
Speaker 1: of that mix, like the British version didn't sweep me
Speaker 1: a wave away in a wave. And then I went
Speaker 1: to a daytime show at the Palladium where the Germs
Speaker 1: played before I got there, and then by the time
Speaker 1: I got there, Devo was playing and these girls were
Speaker 1: coming out of the backstage and they were putting safety
Speaker 1: pins through their face as adornment, and I remember kind
Speaker 1: of connecting the two things, like, oh, this music and
Speaker 1: these girls like wanting to feel alive go together, and
Speaker 1: so that kind of caught my attention. But I was
Speaker 1: in no way a punk rocker. I was like a
Speaker 1: little i don't know, at very best, like a little
Speaker 1: new wave kid in high school, you know, listening to
Speaker 1: the Talking Heads and David Bowie and a few other things.
Speaker 1: But when Flee and I started wandering up to the
Speaker 1: Starwood and really getting a true taste of the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles punk rock scene, I started feeling semi connected. And
Speaker 1: then it just became a lifestyle. Like the minute we
Speaker 1: got out of high school and became homeless and lived
Speaker 1: on the street. Everywhere we went and everyone we met
Speaker 1: and everything we did revolved around punk rock clubs, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of the tail end of the Circle
Speaker 1: Jerks and the mid level of Black Flag. And I
Speaker 1: remember seeing the Black Flag logo on spray painted on
Speaker 1: buildings and going be very careful at those Black Flag shows,
Speaker 1: like something could go south in a hurry. Those guys
Speaker 1: will kill you. But it was just like from gossip
Speaker 1: and talk that, like, you know, seventeen year old people
Speaker 1: would say. And then Bob Forrest of Thelonious Monster started
Speaker 1: djaying in a crash pad that Flee and I lived
Speaker 1: in that had no door, and he was playing us
Speaker 1: Black Flag Records on vinyl, and it was pretty profound
Speaker 1: because it was they were rewriting what was possible, like
Speaker 1: of something that had never been done before, and that
Speaker 1: energy and then fully ended up joining Fear. So I
Speaker 1: went to a lot of Fear shows. But at that
Speaker 1: time punk rock in LA did not have this definition
Speaker 1: of it has to be one thing. It was really
Speaker 1: about anything goes. Anything goes if you're expressing yourself and
Speaker 1: you're doing it in a way that does not pay
Speaker 1: attention to the musical norms of that day. It all
Speaker 1: went together so you could have a lounge punker like
Speaker 1: how Negro and the Satin Tones on the same bill
Speaker 1: with the Bad Brains and you know, so now when
Speaker 1: people think of punk, you know, they think of a
Speaker 1: mohawk and combat boots and aggression. But when we grew up,
Speaker 1: it was it was like X was punk, you know,
Speaker 1: the like the most storytelling, poetic kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know what they music is based in, but their presentation
Speaker 1: was so fresh that it was considered punks, as would
Speaker 1: the Minutemen, which you know had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: any kind of violence or dominance. It was just let
Speaker 1: it all out, you know, whoever you happen to be
Speaker 1: just let it all out and do it with your friends,
Speaker 1: and do it for free, and do it when no
Speaker 1: one's looking. You know, the Minutemen, We're probably one of
Speaker 1: our biggest emotional inspirations growing up during the formation of
Speaker 1: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and we were lucky enough
Speaker 1: to plan bills with them because that's how that's how
Speaker 1: the punk rock bills were would be like Red Hot
Speaker 1: Chili Peppers, Fishbone, and the Minutemen, you know, none of
Speaker 1: whom really sounded anything like each other. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering what that time was like. The clarity of
Speaker 1: punk rock then was different than we think back on
Speaker 1: punk rock now is interesting. It's helpful if you watch
Speaker 1: the Decline movie, the first Decline movie, we get to
Speaker 1: experience all forms of punk rock, Alice Bag Band, it
Speaker 1: was a wide variety. And I remember being in New
Speaker 1: York because in New York punk rock was not that
Speaker 1: And I remember seeing the Decline movie and thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: punk rocks really different in Los Angeles than it is
Speaker 1: in New York. In New York it was, you know,
Speaker 1: minor threat, and it was just different in New York City.
Speaker 1: Trying to claim Minor Threat, Well, it's what we thought
Speaker 1: of It's what we thought of it. But you also
Speaker 1: had like the Ramons as your as your punk rock template,
Speaker 1: and yes, to some degree, like the New York Dolls
Speaker 1: and you guys were definitely early. And I never understood
Speaker 1: like the competition or the like I'm East Coast punk,
Speaker 1: I'm West Coast punk. Grow I was like it all
Speaker 1: was so meaningful and so different and so wonderful, and yeah,
Speaker 1: shout out to Minor Threat, who was definitely life changing,
Speaker 1: very much so for Flee. When we lived in that
Speaker 1: same house listening to Black Flag, Flee discovered Minor Threat,
Speaker 1: and it was an awakening for him. Asked to how
Speaker 1: to want to like be as a human being. And
Speaker 1: the first time we ever played DC, we were opening
Speaker 1: up for the English Beat at the theater and again
Speaker 1: I was going through this kind of heavily drug addict
Speaker 1: a time in my life, and the great Ian Mackay
Speaker 1: attended the show and I was so attracted to him
Speaker 1: as as a human being that I felt terrible about myself.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, Ian came to see
Speaker 1: the show and you know, on backstage, like you know,
Speaker 1: shoving chemicals in my brain, and he was the least judgmental,
Speaker 1: most loving, complimentary, like even though he was mister straight
Speaker 1: edge and you know, proclaiming his path. He came up
Speaker 1: to the van window as we were driving away, and
Speaker 1: I was like sweating toxins and he came up to
Speaker 1: me through the little crack in the van window and
Speaker 1: he's like, that was a really great show. I'm really
Speaker 1: happy I was here for that. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Good luck on the rest of your tour. I was like,
Speaker 1: what a sweetie. Like he stands for everything that I'm not,
Speaker 1: but he can appreciate something that he's not, and also
Speaker 1: embracing the kind of punk funk from the West Coast
Speaker 1: that was so different from the the established East Coast
Speaker 1: punk scene. Just a happy memory, just like my introduction
Speaker 1: to Ian, Like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna judge
Speaker 1: you in the slightest beautiful No, he did. He always
Speaker 1: did his thing, whatever it was, and would share what
Speaker 1: it was that was his thing, but he never expected
Speaker 1: it of anyone else. Yeah, John, do you remember when
Speaker 1: we went to see Fugazi? Yeah in San Francisco, you
Speaker 1: mean no, at the country Club? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: early Yeah, Oh my god. Yeah, no, that was great.
Speaker 1: Unfour gets a Bowl. Yeah, man, yeah, so that would
Speaker 1: have been like eighty nine or ninety or something ninety.
Speaker 1: I think it was nine. Yeah, Yeah, that was really something. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: those guys have been a huge influence on me on
Speaker 1: guitar as well. Like when when that album Repeater came out,
Speaker 1: there was there was things about the there's lots of
Speaker 1: points when the Red Medicine album came out. When Repeater
Speaker 1: came I remember, I was just felt like I was
Speaker 1: putting my own guitar style together in nineteen ninety, Like
Speaker 1: it was where I really started to feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: the combination of starting to work with you and and
Speaker 1: being more comfortable in the role of guitar player in
Speaker 1: the band and stuff, and I really just felt like
Speaker 1: there was some there was new directions being pointed to
Speaker 1: for the guitar on on that stuff that really had
Speaker 1: had a big impact on me. And and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always stayed that way. I always think of them when
Speaker 1: we're writing tunes and play along with their stuff. It's
Speaker 1: just like they've done so many creative things with the
Speaker 1: with the guitars in particular, Yeah, like taking taking the
Speaker 1: essence of punk rock and turning it into all these
Speaker 1: unexpected directions and that sound thing that attracted me and
Speaker 1: Adrian Blue when I was a kid. In certain ways,
Speaker 1: they would just make all these sounds with the guitar
Speaker 1: and put all that reckless abandon into the instrument as well.
Speaker 1: That just like I've had many epiphanies at the moment,
Speaker 1: at moments when their new album had just come out
Speaker 1: throughout their career, you know where it's just like where
Speaker 1: it just completely changed the direction that I was going. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Do you guys want to pick a song for us
Speaker 1: to end with? Something? Anthony, what's your favorite track on
Speaker 1: the album? It's a third way type for last place.
Speaker 1: Between these are the Ways, Herever After and Bastards of Light. Wow, John,
Speaker 1: if you were picking between those three, which would do DJ?
Speaker 1: I guess here ever After seems like a good one
Speaker 1: for this. Let's do it. I was bathing. I love
Speaker 1: my cousin. She was waving. I told man, though, bang
Speaker 1: the mind because I see no feature Saturday down when
Speaker 1: I want that tea, I don't know, because I got
Speaker 1: a big temper stick to to my rainbow side candy corner.
Speaker 1: That damn sing lepper. That's all bo, that's all. She's
Speaker 1: kinda get and make you wanna do fast. Now she's
Speaker 1: kinna get to make your still up time. She's kinda
Speaker 1: gis he in a feelings dance crying hill being out
Speaker 1: down then I know, but if finally just want my
Speaker 1: mouth features of food and even after that bumpy stop
Speaker 1: at the call of the boss from the Blacktop, che's
Speaker 1: your range. I better at the big style we danced
Speaker 1: that teetot girling back. Now she's go solo. He's kinna
Speaker 1: get and make you wanna go faster. Now she's kinna
Speaker 1: get make it steal up time. She's kinda guess he's
Speaker 1: in a hearing around then it's by hill being out
Speaker 1: down down, get out, give it up. She's that drumstone
Speaker 1: lows so you need get out leave it up to
Speaker 1: that liqua stone goals in the long bequeen bullistick meanjee
Speaker 1: beast with the mess up lipstick. My thing is blacktop locos.
Speaker 1: W get this is now, take my photo. She's gonna
Speaker 1: get and make you wanna go faster. Now she's gonna
Speaker 1: get and make it steal your kid. She's kinda gets
Speaker 1: in in a healing around. It's by hill being out down.
Speaker 1: Then I don't banging out with those daddy issues, hanging
Speaker 1: out with that chevron me doctor ross. So I let
Speaker 1: her kiss you that nick bit talk. Look at he's
Speaker 1: bit you big box covering on beat talk fasto cash
Speaker 1: when you're living in the boot box, kiss me out
Speaker 1: like boo tell food, dude, but bout now that's my Bootoo.
Speaker 1: She's canna get it makes you wanna go fast. And
Speaker 1: then now tee's canna get and make it. Tell you
Speaker 1: he's gonna be GISs. He's inn here down this by
Speaker 1: hill being out down. And I don't beautiful that I
Speaker 1: felt the influence of the of the fifties blues and
Speaker 1: the guitar solo it and I never did before you
Speaker 1: said that. But the the efficiency of notes and making
Speaker 1: every note really count and getting the most out of
Speaker 1: every note was perfect. It was a perfect example. Yet
Speaker 1: when I listened to it for all these over a
Speaker 1: year now, I never would have made that connection. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating to hear the roots. There's definitely not just the
Speaker 1: blues influence, but a fifties rock and roll influence. For me,
Speaker 1: that that was a lot of the main music that
Speaker 1: I was playing along with for a long time during
Speaker 1: the writing process. There were other times, like By the
Speaker 1: Way time, where I was listening to that kind of
Speaker 1: music and trying to write stuff like that, But this
Speaker 1: time I was just listening to stuff like that and
Speaker 1: studying it, but trying to think of it as if
Speaker 1: I'm in the sixties. I'm I'm after that, Like what
Speaker 1: do I do now? I'm trying to do something different
Speaker 1: from this, you know. And so the influence ended up
Speaker 1: coming through in unexpected ways because that song was like
Speaker 1: a Joy Division inspired thing. But when Anthony heard it,
Speaker 1: he heard it, I didn't think it had a chorus,
Speaker 1: and Anthony heard it as being a Buddy Holly kind
Speaker 1: of thing where the verse and the chorus are right
Speaker 1: up next to each other, almost as if they're part
Speaker 1: of the same section, you know. And so he wrote
Speaker 1: to it in a way that was fifties inspired, because
Speaker 1: that's that's what he heard in the music. But for me,
Speaker 1: that was unintentional, you know, the song had that. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that I was writing something that had a
Speaker 1: chorus built into the built into the verse, which is
Speaker 1: a fifties format. Anthony, do you remember the first time
Speaker 1: you heard the groove, I sure do. First of all,
Speaker 1: that the solo that you spoke to at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this is my favorite moment of that song. It's like,
Speaker 1: all this tribal drum tension and the real release happens
Speaker 1: that for some reason, that solo punch as a hole
Speaker 1: in the giant hot air balloon and you can just
Speaker 1: let it all go at that moment. I love that feeling.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to do that song live because I
Speaker 1: want to feel that live. I remember hearing it and
Speaker 1: hearing my chorus melody immediately, which is always a lessing
Speaker 1: and a gift and a pleasure and a relief because
Speaker 1: at least I know what the hell I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing on this song. And then I remember I
Speaker 1: think asking either probably John, like do you mind if
Speaker 1: I if I rap on the verses? I know that's
Speaker 1: kind of out of context with this fifties thing, but
Speaker 1: and he was like, no, no, no, that's great. You
Speaker 1: know do that. That'll that'll that'll be good. And so
Speaker 1: then I felt free to just paint a picture with
Speaker 1: words and not worry about melody in the verses, which
Speaker 1: felt really good because it is kind of an odd
Speaker 1: rub of rhythms, like an unexpected rub of rhythms. And
Speaker 1: when it was all written, you know, there's so much
Speaker 1: going on that really nobody paid attention to the lyric
Speaker 1: in the band, you know, because we keep moving forward.
Speaker 1: And then a year and a half later, you know,
Speaker 1: John is mixing and he's like, I just read the
Speaker 1: lyrics to here ever after, and I really liked them
Speaker 1: in it minds me exactly of what it felt like
Speaker 1: to move to Hollywood. When I left the Valley, I
Speaker 1: was like, WHOA, finally you know the picture that I
Speaker 1: painted got noticed by the right person at the right time. Beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the time I read the
Speaker 1: lyrics when I was singing backing vocals, but I didn't
Speaker 1: feel that that song needed backing vocals, so I hadn't
Speaker 1: so I didn't really look carefully at that one until then,
Speaker 1: and it so it epitomized a kind of a feeling
Speaker 1: that made me so excited to be alive about the
Speaker 1: sort of sketchiness and dirtiness and you never know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next kind of CD side of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I for me, I at that time, in the late eighties.
Speaker 1: That was It was really the feeling that I hoped
Speaker 1: to be able to put into music one day, you know,
Speaker 1: And it makes me really happy to hear the way
Speaker 1: those lyrics go with that music. It worked out. I
Speaker 1: love that song. Well. Thank you gentlemen so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thank you for bearing your soul and sharing
Speaker 1: what goes on behind the music, you know, like what's
Speaker 1: what got us to what we get to listen to.
Speaker 1: I feel like you did a great job of filling
Speaker 1: in some color in the process that we never get
Speaker 1: to hear. We rarely get to hear. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It's the bearing and sharing hour with Rick Rubin.
Speaker 1: Nice to see you. Hopefully I'll see you on that
Speaker 1: mountain that you're sitting on soon. Great Please come. I
Speaker 1: miss you. I love you, miss you. I love you, John,
Speaker 1: I miss you, I love you, Love you. Rick. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for this. Thank you, see Anthony, see you guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks Anthony Keatis and John Fusciante for sharing so much
Speaker 1: about their creative process as a band and the stories
Speaker 1: behind the making of their newest album, Unlimited Love. You
Speaker 1: can hear the new album and all of our favorite
Speaker 1: red Hot Chili Peppers songs on my playlist at broken
Speaker 1: record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our
Speaker 1: you two channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we post all of our new episodes. You can
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, and Shangra Law Studios. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is mil La Belle. Broken Record is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others
Speaker 1: from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
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Speaker 1: on your podcast at Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.
Speaker 1: I'm Justin Richard.