Red Hot Chili Peppers on why a rock album hitting No. 1 still matters

Flea charts the Australian connections of the new Chili Peppers album Unlimited Love and how it feels to rocket to No. 1 not only in Australia, but the US, the UK, New Zealand and dozens more.

Every pop star on the planet posts about landing a No. 1 album.

Flea worries it may be perceived as arrogant for him to mark the occasion of Unlimited Love, the 12th studio album from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, achieving that feat in the US, as well as Australia, the UK, New Zealand and a dozen other countries.

“I was sitting with my wife, wondering whether it was arrogance to post on Instagram that the Chili Peppers are No. 1 … I decided to do it anyways,” he says from his Los Angeles home.

“It’s a little bit arrogant. Bragging about business success, I don’t know.”

His eventual post quotes The Sugarhill Gang’s iconic Rapper’s Delight and thanks the fans.

‘“I don’t like to brag, I don’t like to boast, but I like hot butter on my toast.’ To those of you who care about our music, thank you so much for listening,” Flea wrote.

That legion of listeners has been amassed across almost four decades since Flea and his high school best friend Anthony Kiedis adopted their signature funk-rap-rock hybrid on second album Freaky Styley in 1985, produced by legendary funk master George Clinton.

The Chili Peppers are back with their first new music in six years. Picture: Getty.

The audience hasn’t always stayed the course with the Chili Peppers since their phenomenally successful 1991 Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, their first with longtime producer guru Rick Rubin; critics have found them inconsistent and there were eras when drug addiction and tensions within the ranks threatened their survival.

Yet Unlimited Love, the first new music in six years from the Californian quartet which includes drummer Chad Smith and prodigal son and guitar god John Frusciante, is clearly pressing all the right buttons for the fans and most of the critics.

The Californian sons are now immortalised on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Picture: AFP.

It’s not lost on Flea that nailing No. 1 again – their seventh chart-topping album in Australia – signifies people still want to hear them in the streaming era, when rock music has re-assumed its underdog status and the Chili Peppers defiantly remain wedded to the romantic nostalgia of old-school analog recording.

The feat coincided with the band receiving their star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“It means something. We were just a couple of street kids from Hollywood who grew up running around wondering how we were going to get lunch,” Flea says.

“And the fact that we’re a rock band, that we record live to tape, all of us jamming out in a room together and no computers and wow, we’re still able to connect with people’s hearts in a real way. You know, it makes me happy.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers, still freaky after all these years. Picture: Clara Balzary

Much of the fuss around Unlimited Love has centred on the return of guitarist Frusciante, whose third round of membership in the Chili Peppers came after he and Flea eased back into a jamming partnership as the band members were individually working on new material in 2019.

His return forced the exit of Josh Klinghoffer, who filled the position for a decade from 2009 and is now a touring guitarist with Pearl Jam.

Flea said there was a sense of creative disconnection in the initial stages of working on new songs for the record before the comeback of Frusciante, whose songwriting has been as pivotal as his signature riffs to the Chili Peppers’ canon.

“In retrospect, I did feel a sense of the unit being a little disconnected. We all live rich, creative lives and family lives … but maybe when we were together we didn’t have this sacred connection, and that might have felt a little bit scattered,” Flea says.

“And when John came back, there was this real sense of we are together. You never know what’s going to happen in this life and we might not get to do this again in this way so when the four of us are in a room, we make every second count.”

For every in-built singalong moment peppered throughout the arrangements of their 12th album, frontman and lyricist Kiedis maintains his deliberately obtuse, often absurd and mostly esoteric approach.

The album’s opening track and lead single Black Summer could not have failed to prompt Australian fans to wonder if it was connected with the horrific 2019-2020 bushfire season. The Chili Peppers, of course, had experienced similar horror in their native state – and musical muse – California, with Flea losing a Malibu home to the devastating Woolsey fire in 2018.

The bassist, who was born in Melbourne, almost lost his beachside home on the NSW south coast during the 2019 fires.

Flea is one of the world’s most respected bassists. Picture: Getty.

“I didn’t know that you called it Black Summer, wow … I thought my house was gone for sure in those fires; it came right there,” he says.

“The song is more about Anthony’s yearning to connect; when I first heard the title, I did think of the fires but then we had Black Lives Matter and civil rights marches, and it was very much on my mind what it meant to be a black person in the United States, given the history of oppression and white supremacy.

“I love the way Anthony writes lyrics like that. You know it’s about something, but he doesn’t pin it down in a way where the words lose their mystery of what it can mean to you.”

The band jams at the core of their work offers each member their time to shine whether it be Frusciante’s deft, restrained solos, Smith’s dynamic percussion or Flea’s jazz-anchored bass slaps.

But he also gets to wail on the trumpet on Unlimited Love. When I mention my love of trumpet was sown by my parents’ flogging their Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass albums when I was a child, Flea shares that the legendary trumpeter had gone to the same high school where the original Chili Peppers members first met.

Alpert had written his name on the music scores the future rock star would play along to in the school orchestra.

“Because you’re Australian and I’m Australian, let me tell you this quick tale. The first thing I did, like 30 years ago when I first made money, was build a house in Australia,” Flea says. “There was a guy who lived there, in this little town, who was very eccentric, and I was playing trumpet one day and he came walking by – he might have been drunk or something – and he said ‘Mate, my favourite trumpet player is Al Herbert.’

“For a long time my music publishing company was called Al Herbert Music – that’s where that comes from.”

The band kicks off their world tour in Europe in June, then North America from July to September.

Flea suggests the Down Under leg may not happen until 2023.

“I don’t know the schedule, but we’re definitely coming. Actually I think I do know when we’re coming to Australia but I also know that if it hasn’t been announced, there’s probably a reason for me not to announce it,” he says.

“I think if you look at our schedule, you’ll see that we’re all booked up until the end of this year. So I don’t think we could get there this year.”

Unlimited Love is out now.