Fans divided over Red Hot Chili Peppers’ decision to cut hit songs from Australian tour

A fiery debate is raging between Chili Peppers fans ahead of this week’s Melbourne shows, with many slamming the US rockers’ “boring” performance.

IT is their biggest hit in Australia.

But the absence of the Red Hot Chili Peppers anthem, Under The Bridge, on the band’s 2023 Australian tour, suggests the much-loved song might just be … well, water under the bridge.

The Los Angeles-based band, forty years strong, and with hits including Give It Away, Scar Tissue, Dani California, By The Way, Soul To Squeeze and Californication, will perform two shows at Marvel Stadium, Docklands, on Tuesday and Thursday.

However, an online debate following their shows in Sydney and Brisbane, points to an age-old artistic conundrum: Which songs constitute the perfect set list? How much new material is too much? What hits are absolutely essential? And where the hell was Under The Bridge?

Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis delights fans at their recent Sydney concert. Picture: Jonathan Ng

So far, in Australia, the RHCP — singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist John Frusciante — have played all of the hits mentioned above.

Alas, Under The Bridge, a single from the band’s 1991 opus Blood Sugar Sex Magik, has only been performed once this year, in Dunedin, in deep south New Zealand, last month.

Last year, across the band’s US dates, Under The Bridge, was played 12 times.

By comparison, a new song, Black Summer, and classics Californication, By The Way, and Give It Away, have been performed on the Global Stadium Tour 42 times.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Anthony Kiedis on stage for their first concert at Accor Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Some fans have complained the band is playing too many tracks from its latest albums, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, which were both released last year.

Others claimed the band had “strayed from its roots,” and rocked up with a “boring set list” with “not enough hits.”

To date, of the 10 Unlimited Love songs featured in the tour, Black Summer, These Are The Ways and The Heavy Wing, are being played most nights. Six songs from Return Of The Dream Canteen have been spotlit on this tour.

Drummer Chad Smith belts out Chili Peppers’ hits at their first Sydney concert. Picture: Jonathan Ng

However, hits from popular albums Stadium Arcadium (Dani California, Snow, Tell Me Baby) and Californication (Californication, Around the World, Otherside) and By The Way (By The Way, Can’t Stop, The Zephyr Song) have been performed at most shows.

But the RHCP are prone to changing set lists night to night.

Reviews have been mainly positive.

Kathy McCabe, from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, said: “The gig had that feeling this was a renaissance for a band who exploded to global domination with … Blood Sugar Sex Magik.”

The Australian’s music critic Andrew McMillen cited two new songs as concert highlights, adding it’s “a rare feat … of a long-lasting rock band, where the demand to play only well-established fan favourites can occasionally become a nostalgia trap from which acts never escape.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea is a crowd favourite. Picture: Jonathan Ng

RHCP frontman Kiedis spoke of the dark inspiration behind Under The Bridge in his Scar Tissue memoir.

Kiedis said the song was about his struggle with heroin addiction. He was in a relationship with actor Ione Skye at the time.

“I’d had this beautiful angel of a girl who was willing to give me all of her love, and instead of embracing that, I was downtown with f---ing gangsters shooting speedballs under a bridge.”

He said that period “always sticks in my brain as a low point in my life.”

Asked what the Under The Bridge lyric “take me to the place I love” alludes to, a clean and sober Kiedis replied: “The place I love is where I am now.”