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The Wonders of Live Music, part 1 – ‘Don’t Forget Me’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Wonders of Live Music, part 1 – ‘Don’t Forget Me’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Wonders of Live Music, part 1 – ‘Don’t Forget Me’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers
'Don’t Forget Me’ appeared on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2002 album, By the Way. It is among the Peppers’ moodiest tracks. Devoid of the frenetically slapped bass lines with which Flea made his name, he instead strums repetitive chords, coming about as close as he ever has to monotony. Over the bass chords in the verses, John Frusciante’s atmospheric guitar is only a trickle of electricity. In the instrumental passages Frusciante focuses more on melody, with his third solo (after the second chorus) the most hummable part he plays.
Anthony Kiedis paints abstract images—“I could show you to the free field”—and makes statements—“I’m a meth lab, first rehab”, “Now we know it all for sure”—without explicitly elaborating on them. The lyrics seem to hold something back and add up to a feeling that matches the dark and ethereal music.
The fourth verse is perhaps the most poetic of his career: “I’m the rainbow in your jail cell / All the memories of everything you’ve ever smelled / Not alone, I’ll be there, tell me when you want to go”.
The chorus is a release after the tension built up by the verses. Flea’s bass chords give way to more intense, sliding lines. Kiedis and Frusciante essentially share lead vocals, singing different lyrics in contrasting rhythms – Kiedis with an urgency to match the drums and bass, and Frusciante with a epic mysticism often felt in his solo work in songs like ‘Going Inside’ and ‘Dying Song’, and much of his The Empyrean album.
It is a good song, but performed live it is elevated into something extraordinary.
There's greater dynamic range, the instrumental passages exploding with heavier drumming from Chad Smith, freer and hungrier bass-fills from Flea, and breathtaking guitar playing from Frusciante.
The contrast between the verses and heavier sections is magnified. The whole band ramps up the volume in the way a studio setting is less likely to encourage.
Did it ever get any better?
2006 at La Cigale theatre, Paris
The finest live performance is so renowned among some Peppers’ fans that its YouTube title - “Frusciante is incredible” - is referred to as though the video is as essential to their canon as ‘Under the Bridge’ or ‘Give It Away’.
Playing in Paris in 2006, the band captured something that the studio version never managed.
Following the release of their Stadium Arcadium album that year, Frusciante’s playing was at its flashiest and most virtuosic. His contributions on that tour sometimes veered towards exhibitionism, with wah-wah pedal and whammy bar displays imposing on songs rather than enhancing them.
Here, though, Frusciante serves the song beautifully. His honed technique allows the double-handed tapping he returned to on last year’s ‘Eddie’, and his solos are a great display of his unique sense of rhythm and melody.
As they often do when playing live, the band introduce the song with a jam, Flea and Frusciante improvising as they do for large parts of every show.
The studio version was produced by Rick Rubin and his preference for prioritising the lead vocal means that other parts are sometimes downplayed. When the song is performed live, each instrument shares more equal billing.
Frusciante said in 2004, “You should try to hear a live version of that song because on the record Rick made the harmonies much louder and turned the guitar down in the chorus.” The live version features “the original intention of that section”.
In the second chorus here, Frusciante’s strumming on the high frets is faster and harder; Smith plays urgent drum beats; and Flea lets loose. Frusciante and Kiedis both improvise with their vocals, the former screaming a ‘Yeah!’ and Kiedis growling a ‘Lord!’ - a go-to word of his whenever he’s feeling it.
The solo following that chorus is so much more intense than any part of the studio recording that the song essentially becomes something else entirely. Frusciante’s guitar wails as he furiously picks high up on the neck, playing exclusively past the twelfth fret. He follows intense rhythmic playing with a new melody that an entire song could be based around.
Smith wallops his drums, his furious fills perfectly timed before he crashes hard on the first beat of most bars. Flea alternates between the composed chords and riverfuls of improvised notes.
It is such a dramatic instrumental passage that the transition into the final verse verges on comical. It's this contrast and dynamic range, together with the brilliant improvisation, that make the song feel a hundred times more alive than the studio version.
Kiedis revels in the atmosphere. Having danced with abandon during Frusciante’s solo, he manages near-breathlessness to enhance the intensity of his final verse. He snarls in his rarely used baritone, giving the last lyric a menacing nature at which the studio recording never hinted.
Frusciante plays a final solo, somehow conjuring another handful of melodies that most guitarists would treasure as their greatest composed works. He walks towards his water bottle and gives a single strum as a sort of signing off gesture, letting the echo ring out with a swaggering confidence. It’s the noise of a man who knows he has done something special.
Flea strums the final few motif chords, and a few audience members are probably reminded that they were listening to ‘Don’t Forget Me’, utterly transformed.
Bonus: three more performances
2002 at Hollywood Center Studios
This version is a little looser and less rehearsed. This was the year By the Way was released, and so early on in their days of playing the song live. Flea’s use of the fuzz pedal during the choruses and instrumental sections is more obvious. Frusciante’s solos have a sadder, more aching feel, the first with a delicious, watery tone and the penultimate full of bending wails. Kiedis snarls much of the first chorus and his singing is a little angrier throughout.
Flea begins with a delicate excerpt of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor’, then quickly starts shredding an array of furious fuzzed notes, before landing on ‘Don’t Forget Me’’s strummed chords. The rest of the performance is as intriguing for the mistakes, rawness and improvisation as it is for the brilliance. After Flea’s covered as much ground as you could hope for in a little over one minute, a problem with his bass forces him to switch instruments and miss a few chords. Kiedis looks over, concerned, before forgetting his lyrics and mumbling much of the second verse. In place of Frusciante’s final solo, he laces flowery, Hendrixy chords and licks over Flea’s wandering bass lines. Over the final few strummed chords, Flea lets out a wild, primal ‘WOOOOOOO!’ It’s a weird, at times raucous performance of a once-restrained song.
2017 at The Meadows Festival, New York
This performance features Josh Klinghoffer, who was the guitarist for ten years between Frusciante’s second and third spells. Whereas some of the tracks composed during his era with the band suffered from a lack of chordal guitar parts, this song suits Klinghoffer’s textural leanings. With Flea taking care of the chords, Klinghoffer is free to dance on the fringes. He delivers something more off-kilter than Frusciante, less thrilling but intriguingly unsettling. Klinghoffer alternates between improvisation and parts of Frusciante’s original recording - as at the most explosive section at 3:15.
'Don’t Forget Me’ appeared on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2002 album, By the Way. It is among the Peppers’ moodiest tracks. Devoid of the frenetically slapped bass lines with which Flea made his name, he instead strums repetitive chords, coming about as close as he ever has to monotony. Over the bass chords in the verses, John Frusciante’s atmospheric guitar is only a trickle of electricity. In the instrumental passages Frusciante focuses more on melody, with his third solo (after the second chorus) the most hummable part he plays.
Anthony Kiedis paints abstract images—“I could show you to the free field”—and makes statements—“I’m a meth lab, first rehab”, “Now we know it all for sure”—without explicitly elaborating on them. The lyrics seem to hold something back and add up to a feeling that matches the dark and ethereal music.
The fourth verse is perhaps the most poetic of his career: “I’m the rainbow in your jail cell / All the memories of everything you’ve ever smelled / Not alone, I’ll be there, tell me when you want to go”.
The chorus is a release after the tension built up by the verses. Flea’s bass chords give way to more intense, sliding lines. Kiedis and Frusciante essentially share lead vocals, singing different lyrics in contrasting rhythms – Kiedis with an urgency to match the drums and bass, and Frusciante with a epic mysticism often felt in his solo work in songs like ‘Going Inside’ and ‘Dying Song’, and much of his The Empyrean album.
It is a good song, but performed live it is elevated into something extraordinary.
There's greater dynamic range, the instrumental passages exploding with heavier drumming from Chad Smith, freer and hungrier bass-fills from Flea, and breathtaking guitar playing from Frusciante.
The contrast between the verses and heavier sections is magnified. The whole band ramps up the volume in the way a studio setting is less likely to encourage.
Did it ever get any better?
2006 at La Cigale theatre, Paris
The finest live performance is so renowned among some Peppers’ fans that its YouTube title - “Frusciante is incredible” - is referred to as though the video is as essential to their canon as ‘Under the Bridge’ or ‘Give It Away’.
Playing in Paris in 2006, the band captured something that the studio version never managed.
Following the release of their Stadium Arcadium album that year, Frusciante’s playing was at its flashiest and most virtuosic. His contributions on that tour sometimes veered towards exhibitionism, with wah-wah pedal and whammy bar displays imposing on songs rather than enhancing them.
Here, though, Frusciante serves the song beautifully. His honed technique allows the double-handed tapping he returned to on last year’s ‘Eddie’, and his solos are a great display of his unique sense of rhythm and melody.
As they often do when playing live, the band introduce the song with a jam, Flea and Frusciante improvising as they do for large parts of every show.
The studio version was produced by Rick Rubin and his preference for prioritising the lead vocal means that other parts are sometimes downplayed. When the song is performed live, each instrument shares more equal billing.
Frusciante said in 2004, “You should try to hear a live version of that song because on the record Rick made the harmonies much louder and turned the guitar down in the chorus.” The live version features “the original intention of that section”.
In the second chorus here, Frusciante’s strumming on the high frets is faster and harder; Smith plays urgent drum beats; and Flea lets loose. Frusciante and Kiedis both improvise with their vocals, the former screaming a ‘Yeah!’ and Kiedis growling a ‘Lord!’ - a go-to word of his whenever he’s feeling it.
The solo following that chorus is so much more intense than any part of the studio recording that the song essentially becomes something else entirely. Frusciante’s guitar wails as he furiously picks high up on the neck, playing exclusively past the twelfth fret. He follows intense rhythmic playing with a new melody that an entire song could be based around.
Smith wallops his drums, his furious fills perfectly timed before he crashes hard on the first beat of most bars. Flea alternates between the composed chords and riverfuls of improvised notes.
It is such a dramatic instrumental passage that the transition into the final verse verges on comical. It's this contrast and dynamic range, together with the brilliant improvisation, that make the song feel a hundred times more alive than the studio version.
Kiedis revels in the atmosphere. Having danced with abandon during Frusciante’s solo, he manages near-breathlessness to enhance the intensity of his final verse. He snarls in his rarely used baritone, giving the last lyric a menacing nature at which the studio recording never hinted.
Frusciante plays a final solo, somehow conjuring another handful of melodies that most guitarists would treasure as their greatest composed works. He walks towards his water bottle and gives a single strum as a sort of signing off gesture, letting the echo ring out with a swaggering confidence. It’s the noise of a man who knows he has done something special.
Flea strums the final few motif chords, and a few audience members are probably reminded that they were listening to ‘Don’t Forget Me’, utterly transformed.
Bonus: three more performances
2002 at Hollywood Center Studios
This version is a little looser and less rehearsed. This was the year By the Way was released, and so early on in their days of playing the song live. Flea’s use of the fuzz pedal during the choruses and instrumental sections is more obvious. Frusciante’s solos have a sadder, more aching feel, the first with a delicious, watery tone and the penultimate full of bending wails. Kiedis snarls much of the first chorus and his singing is a little angrier throughout.
Flea begins with a delicate excerpt of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor’, then quickly starts shredding an array of furious fuzzed notes, before landing on ‘Don’t Forget Me’’s strummed chords. The rest of the performance is as intriguing for the mistakes, rawness and improvisation as it is for the brilliance. After Flea’s covered as much ground as you could hope for in a little over one minute, a problem with his bass forces him to switch instruments and miss a few chords. Kiedis looks over, concerned, before forgetting his lyrics and mumbling much of the second verse. In place of Frusciante’s final solo, he laces flowery, Hendrixy chords and licks over Flea’s wandering bass lines. Over the final few strummed chords, Flea lets out a wild, primal ‘WOOOOOOO!’ It’s a weird, at times raucous performance of a once-restrained song.
2017 at The Meadows Festival, New York
This performance features Josh Klinghoffer, who was the guitarist for ten years between Frusciante’s second and third spells. Whereas some of the tracks composed during his era with the band suffered from a lack of chordal guitar parts, this song suits Klinghoffer’s textural leanings. With Flea taking care of the chords, Klinghoffer is free to dance on the fringes. He delivers something more off-kilter than Frusciante, less thrilling but intriguingly unsettling. Klinghoffer alternates between improvisation and parts of Frusciante’s original recording - as at the most explosive section at 3:15.
'Don’t Forget Me’ appeared on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2002 album, By the Way. It is among the Peppers’ moodiest tracks. Devoid of the frenetically slapped bass lines with which Flea made his name, he instead strums repetitive chords, coming about as close as he ever has to monotony. Over the bass chords in the verses, John Frusciante’s atmospheric guitar is only a trickle of electricity. In the instrumental passages Frusciante focuses more on melody, with his third solo (after the second chorus) the most hummable part he plays.
Anthony Kiedis paints abstract images—“I could show you to the free field”—and makes statements—“I’m a meth lab, first rehab”, “Now we know it all for sure”—without explicitly elaborating on them. The lyrics seem to hold something back and add up to a feeling that matches the dark and ethereal music.
The fourth verse is perhaps the most poetic of his career: “I’m the rainbow in your jail cell / All the memories of everything you’ve ever smelled / Not alone, I’ll be there, tell me when you want to go”.
The chorus is a release after the tension built up by the verses. Flea’s bass chords give way to more intense, sliding lines. Kiedis and Frusciante essentially share lead vocals, singing different lyrics in contrasting rhythms – Kiedis with an urgency to match the drums and bass, and Frusciante with a epic mysticism often felt in his solo work in songs like ‘Going Inside’ and ‘Dying Song’, and much of his The Empyrean album.
It is a good song, but performed live it is elevated into something extraordinary.
There's greater dynamic range, the instrumental passages exploding with heavier drumming from Chad Smith, freer and hungrier bass-fills from Flea, and breathtaking guitar playing from Frusciante.
The contrast between the verses and heavier sections is magnified. The whole band ramps up the volume in the way a studio setting is less likely to encourage.
Did it ever get any better?
2006 at La Cigale theatre, Paris
The finest live performance is so renowned among some Peppers’ fans that its YouTube title - “Frusciante is incredible” - is referred to as though the video is as essential to their canon as ‘Under the Bridge’ or ‘Give It Away’.
Playing in Paris in 2006, the band captured something that the studio version never managed.
Following the release of their Stadium Arcadium album that year, Frusciante’s playing was at its flashiest and most virtuosic. His contributions on that tour sometimes veered towards exhibitionism, with wah-wah pedal and whammy bar displays imposing on songs rather than enhancing them.
Here, though, Frusciante serves the song beautifully. His honed technique allows the double-handed tapping he returned to on last year’s ‘Eddie’, and his solos are a great display of his unique sense of rhythm and melody.
As they often do when playing live, the band introduce the song with a jam, Flea and Frusciante improvising as they do for large parts of every show.
The studio version was produced by Rick Rubin and his preference for prioritising the lead vocal means that other parts are sometimes downplayed. When the song is performed live, each instrument shares more equal billing.
Frusciante said in 2004, “You should try to hear a live version of that song because on the record Rick made the harmonies much louder and turned the guitar down in the chorus.” The live version features “the original intention of that section”.
In the second chorus here, Frusciante’s strumming on the high frets is faster and harder; Smith plays urgent drum beats; and Flea lets loose. Frusciante and Kiedis both improvise with their vocals, the former screaming a ‘Yeah!’ and Kiedis growling a ‘Lord!’ - a go-to word of his whenever he’s feeling it.
The solo following that chorus is so much more intense than any part of the studio recording that the song essentially becomes something else entirely. Frusciante’s guitar wails as he furiously picks high up on the neck, playing exclusively past the twelfth fret. He follows intense rhythmic playing with a new melody that an entire song could be based around.
Smith wallops his drums, his furious fills perfectly timed before he crashes hard on the first beat of most bars. Flea alternates between the composed chords and riverfuls of improvised notes.
It is such a dramatic instrumental passage that the transition into the final verse verges on comical. It's this contrast and dynamic range, together with the brilliant improvisation, that make the song feel a hundred times more alive than the studio version.
Kiedis revels in the atmosphere. Having danced with abandon during Frusciante’s solo, he manages near-breathlessness to enhance the intensity of his final verse. He snarls in his rarely used baritone, giving the last lyric a menacing nature at which the studio recording never hinted.
Frusciante plays a final solo, somehow conjuring another handful of melodies that most guitarists would treasure as their greatest composed works. He walks towards his water bottle and gives a single strum as a sort of signing off gesture, letting the echo ring out with a swaggering confidence. It’s the noise of a man who knows he has done something special.
Flea strums the final few motif chords, and a few audience members are probably reminded that they were listening to ‘Don’t Forget Me’, utterly transformed.
Bonus: three more performances
2002 at Hollywood Center Studios
This version is a little looser and less rehearsed. This was the year By the Way was released, and so early on in their days of playing the song live. Flea’s use of the fuzz pedal during the choruses and instrumental sections is more obvious. Frusciante’s solos have a sadder, more aching feel, the first with a delicious, watery tone and the penultimate full of bending wails. Kiedis snarls much of the first chorus and his singing is a little angrier throughout.
Flea begins with a delicate excerpt of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor’, then quickly starts shredding an array of furious fuzzed notes, before landing on ‘Don’t Forget Me’’s strummed chords. The rest of the performance is as intriguing for the mistakes, rawness and improvisation as it is for the brilliance. After Flea’s covered as much ground as you could hope for in a little over one minute, a problem with his bass forces him to switch instruments and miss a few chords. Kiedis looks over, concerned, before forgetting his lyrics and mumbling much of the second verse. In place of Frusciante’s final solo, he laces flowery, Hendrixy chords and licks over Flea’s wandering bass lines. Over the final few strummed chords, Flea lets out a wild, primal ‘WOOOOOOO!’ It’s a weird, at times raucous performance of a once-restrained song.
2017 at The Meadows Festival, New York
This performance features Josh Klinghoffer, who was the guitarist for ten years between Frusciante’s second and third spells. Whereas some of the tracks composed during his era with the band suffered from a lack of chordal guitar parts, this song suits Klinghoffer’s textural leanings. With Flea taking care of the chords, Klinghoffer is free to dance on the fringes. He delivers something more off-kilter than Frusciante, less thrilling but intriguingly unsettling. Klinghoffer alternates between improvisation and parts of Frusciante’s original recording - as at the most explosive section at 3:15.