Concert review: Red Hot Chili Peppers on fire in Brisbane to start Australian tour
On the first night of its six-date Australian stadium tour, the presence of guitarist John Frusciante at stage left had the three other Peppers popping in sync.
Few individuals stepping into Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium have received a hero’s welcome as loud, sustained and deserving as the one that greeted John Frusciante on Sunday night, with about 48,000 voices in full effect.
As guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers, he has tattooed his influence as a beautifully melodic player and gifted songwriter on popular culture since he joined in 1988, and helped propel the Los Angeles-born quartet from outsider weirdos running their own race to a firmly established mainstream act.
Having left the band twice, most recently in 2009, he is clearly a flighty creative soul. Yet his decision to rejoin singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith in late 2019 is one that has resulted in vitality, potency and a hunger returning to this well-travelled band, which this year marks 40 years of service.
On the first night of its six-date Australian stadium tour, all memories of the band’s underwhelming and strangely lacking visit in 2019 – before Frusciante’s return – were swiftly vanquished, as it was abundantly clear that the presence of the guy at stage left, wielding a weathered Telecaster, had the three other Peppers popping in sync.
A few songs in, Flea (aka Michael Balzary) spelled out his impact directly, saying to the capacity crowd that he had spent much of the day saddened by the news that Tom Verlaine, singer-guitarist of influential New York rock band Television, had died at 73.
Noting his lifelong love for Verlaine’s playing style, Balzary said that the only thing that lifted him from his funk was a welcome realisation: “My favourite guitar player in the world is right next to me,” he said, gesturing across the stage to the man wearing a light collared shirt and black shorts. “It makes me so f..king grateful, because he’s the best.”
And then the band launched into 1999 single Otherside, which is perhaps the shiniest jewel in a chest brimming with musical treasures. The giant LED screens streaming imagery behind, above and beside the group showed the four men performing in deep-etched white outline, as this gripping tale of surviving addiction wound its way to a towering conclusion, with Frusciante’s harmony vocals blending perfectly with Kiedis’s lead.
Having released two albums last year comprising 34 songs, the band is bursting at the seams creatively; yet in concert, that decision to dump so much material on the public was undercut somewhat by the crowd’s unfamiliarity with the new stuff.
Two highlights of the show were new songs – a true, rare statement when writing 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.
These songs were Eddie, a tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen that saw Frusciante reaching deep into his kit bag for extended solos, whammy bar in hand, which offered a glittering showcase of his peerless skill and melodic sense.
And The Heavy Wing, a great song whose powerful chorus vocal is sung by the guitarist, and which has the potential to become one of its best singalong moments if it sticks in the setlist.
But the quartet’s preference for improvisation extends to its song choices, which vary greatly night-to-night. Very few acts performing in stadiums take this approach: most are content to drill a setlist in rehearsals, sync it to video and pyro, and allow for little variation while attempting to recapture lightning in a bottle each night, no matter the location.
There’s plenty to admire in that mindset, but it’s simply not how this group operates.
Its frequent diversions into instrumental musical interludes – sometimes with only Flea and Frusciante facing off, listening carefully to one another; sometimes with Smith in the mix, intuitively driving the rhythm with his superbly adept playing – gave this massive show the occasional feel of a band working things out in a small rehearsal room somewhere, just as it has done for four decades.
Of this decision to jam mid-set, no matter the size of the crowd before them, Flea said in a podcast interview last year: “We might completely fall on our faces, and it’ll suck – or we might play the greatest thing we’ve ever played in our lives in that moment, and all of it’s worth the risk. If you don’t take the risk, you don’t get it. Period.”
Those moments between the risks, as it were, were filled with hit songs that have been radio staples for decades: Dani California and Scar Tissue appeared early, while later, the likes of Californication and By The Way saw Kiedis’s distinctive vocals matched by the crowd.
The two-song encore started delicately, with the exquisite non-album single Soul to Squeeze, and ended at full tilt, with Smith’s sticks blasting his skins to tap out the rolling rhythm that drives 1991 single Give It Away. Flea’s calloused left fingers explored the extent of his fretboard as Frusciante filled the spaces between bass notes with playing that alternated gently-plucked and fiercely-strummed.
There was a brief moment in that final song where Kiedis and Flea chased each other in a figure-eight shape on stage, caught in the goofy fun of the arrangement. It was easy to forget that both shirtless men were aged 60, and had been doing this sort of thing together for 40 years. That 48,000 people were rocking to the sound of this great band of surprise survivors seemed momentarily superfluous.
Last week, before the band touched down in Australia, I asked Kiedis what it feels like on a good night, when he’s on stage in the middle of a performance.
“Most nights are good nights,” he replied. “Even if there are moments of insecurity, or moments where you feel like a song was too fast, or I sang out of tune, or I couldn’t hear the bass guitar – you have to deal with that stuff, and know that everything’s gonna be okay, and not get into an emotional spiral.”
The singer spoke of the sensation where, if it felt like the band really climbed inside the spirit of a song and nailed the landing, at its conclusion he would look across at Frusciante, and they’d share a wordless exchange that acknowledged the perfection that had just occurred.
There were plenty of those looks of approval being shared between all four members, as they covered a 19-song set that approached two hours.
But the singer said something else that captured the sense of a job well done, and a stadium rock ‘n’ roll show done right, which neatly summed up what took place at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday night.
“There are so many good moments,” Kiedis told me. “There’s times that you drop your guard, and for just a couple of minutes, you realise that there are all these human souls that you’re standing next to, and they’re all happy, and they’re all dancing, and they’re all singing, and they’re all with their friends. And you’re like: ‘This is f..king amazing.’”
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ tour continues in Sydney (Thursday and Saturday), followed by Melbourne (February 7 + 9) and Perth (February 12).
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