‘American Ghost Dance’
For their second album, 1985’s Freaky Styley, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ original guitarist and founding member Hillel Slovak rejoined after focusing on his other band, What Is This?, and Peppers’ idol George Clinton took over production duties.
The result was arguably their funkiest album to date. Clinton recruited Parliament hornsters Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Benny Cowan to join on six tracks, including highlight ‘American Ghost Dance’. Irresistibly funky, it’s still one of Flea’s grooviest bass lines decades later. So good, in fact, that it was revisited and tweaked for 2006’s ‘Hump De Bump’. Early on in the band, Flea’s penchant for filling space with breathless flurry of notes provided energy but lacked variations in rhythm. Here, though, he plays with a maturity that would be developed further on 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
Anthony Kiedis’ lyrics are similarly mature. While even the Chilis’ debut had deeper moments like ‘Green Heaven’—a tribute to the beauty of nature and protest against racism and brutality—’Ghost Dance’ was a progression on Kiedis’ early efforts. Rallying against white people’s invasion and slaying of Native American land and people, Kiedis sing-raps with bustling energy, almost growling the line “But the burning flame, it turns to burning pain.” He emphasises certain syllables in time with Flea’s accents, and his vocals add extra bite to an already great groove. With Wesley’s horn arrangement providing extra spice, some restrained but deliciously funky guitar from Slovak, and Cliff Martinez meshing perfectly with Flea, ‘Ghost Dance’ was one of the Peppers’ finest 1980s originals. (For more groovy goodness, check out this great video of Clinton joining the band for an early version of the song.)
‘If You Want Me To Stay’
Before Clinton got on board, Kiedis had only rapped, shouted and squealed. Initially enjoying his friends’ jams as a listener only, after seeing Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five he was inspired to transform his poetry into raps. Clinton encouraged him to expand his range, and the first track he sang with a real melody was Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘If You Want Me To Stay’. It was a difficult song to tackle, with Sly’s one-of-a-kind, unpredictable shifts in vocal rhythm, and Kiedis does justice to the original. With slight changes in the lead vocal melody, and the original outro’s wistful trumpet melody transposed to backing vocal “doo-doo-doo”s, Clinton and the Peppers artfully found their own arrangement of a weird and wonderful song.
Flea’s bass playing matches the great line likely played by a combination of Rusty Allen and Sly (original bassist, and inventor of the electric slap technique admired by Flea, Larry Graham had left the band by release of 1973’s Fresh). Flea plays a little harder, and characteristically seems to lead the band, while Slovak is careful not to overplay, embelling the groove with tasteful, reverb-laden sustained chords and occasional funky strumming. Martinez’ drumming, too, is a little heavier than the original’s.
It belongs in the category of rare covers that rather than merely paying tribute stand on their own as great songs. ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ is one of the finest Peppers’ covers, from an era when they still included covers on albums (the last being 1991’s ‘They’re Red Hot’, written by Robert Johnson, which closed Blood Sugar Sex Magik).
‘Quixoticelixer’
‘Quixoticelixer’ didn’t make the Peppers’ 1999 classic, Californication, but it’s a wonder why.
Frusciante’s backing vocals are made up of multiple ‘aah’s in the first chorus, before towards the end of the second they swell into a pleasing, dizzying collage. The guitar throughout is characteristic of the minimalist style he found on his return to the band. After losing his chops during years without playing, he found inventive ways of doing huge amounts with a handful of chords or notes (or sometimes just two notes, as in the case the verse part in ‘Emit Remmus’.
The verse’s strumming is like laying back on a deck chair by a pool, while Kiedis’ vocals have a touch more sadness to them. It has plenty of ‘Around the World’ and ‘Scar Tissue’'s summer vibes though. The lyrics are full of internal rhymes, subtle enough not to get in the way of the lovely flow. Kiedis, typical of his post-Blood Sugar writing, alternates freely between more concrete ideas (“Dedicated mind in a medicated state is a highly overrated fate,” presumably a nod to his drugged days) and abstract ideas (“Do you know that you glow when you go from winter into spring”).
‘Gong Li’
Another track from the Californication sessions, ‘Gong Li’. is one of the most beautiful, gentle songs in the Chilis’ vast discography. It reportedly started life as a Flea solo track (he was working on a solo album prior to Frusciante’s rejoining), while other sources claim the lyrics were written by Kiedis about Frusciante. The track is largely instrumental, which makes the two choruses (or verses) with lyrics more powerful. From a delicately picked guitar part with something of a childhood innocence, the sung section begins after a final note of guitar hangs out a hand, waiting for Kiedis’ gentle vocals to join it in the chorus.
The chorus’s strumming guitar is fairly lively, but the chord progression suggests melancholy. The bass here simply follows the chord changes. In fact, it’s probably one of Flea’s most non-descript parts. It serves the song in a humble, almost hidden manner. He plays a little more noticeably in the instrumental sections, dovetailing with Frusciante’s guitar in an unusual, almost hypnotic manner. It was during the writing of Californication that the two found what would become a recurring compositional theme, where they would play a chord between them (as on tracks like ‘Scar Tissue’ and ‘Otherside’, and later ‘By the Way’, and later still ‘Eddie’).
‘Gong Li’ is one of the rare Chilis compositions where there are no drums for more than just the odd bar. Chad Smith comes alive for the chorus, and his kick drum gives a power that contrasts brilliantly with the gentle instrumental sections.
‘Bunker Hill’
How fertile the Californication sessions were. ‘Bunker Hill’ features what one YouTube commenter called “the best Red Hot Chili Peppers chorus the world hasn’t heard”. It is mighty indeed, with Kiedis’ cries of “Lordy, Lordy” capable of lodging in a brain for decades. The rest of the track, too, makes a mockery of the b-side concept. Flea’s rumbling, rambling bassline and some delightfully satisfying strummed chords in time with Smith's kick contribute to a bustling energy.
Kiedis’ lyrics don’t paint an entirely followable narrative but there’s an urgency and not-quite-graspable restlessness to his words. ‘You don’t even know my name,’ he half-snarls. Does he hate the ‘you’? He sounds like he’s infatuated in the chorus. In this era, Kiedis was more prone to subtly twisting his vowels into oddly captivating sounds. The “you” in “You don’t even” is sung unlike how anybody else would sing it, and similarly the later “brain” is made into a much more complicated sound than it would ordinarily be.
The aforementioned “Lordy, Lordy”s, as well as the “take your body” at the end of the preceding line are treated with beautiful Frusciante falsetto harmonies. This was the first album where Frusciante’s backing vocals were made into integral parts of the songs. Initially reluctant to add many harmonies, on producer Rick Rubin’s suggestion Frusciante sprinkled “ooh”s and “aah”s aplenty, making songs like the title track and ‘Scar Tissue’ so much richer. Frusciante thought of his harmonies as “passable” (as he called them on Rubin's Broken Record podcast) until Guy Picciotto of Fugazi complimented them, which prompted reconsideration, and on By the Way Frusciante’s harmonies were sometimes like a lead vocal.