Red Hot Chili Peppers
It’s been well over three years now since we’ve heard anything new from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The release in 2006 of Stadium Arcadium, the band’s highly ambitious, Grammy Award-winning double album, and the extensive world tour that followed, resulted in the band calling an indefinite hiatus, a break that was intended to last for a minimum of one year. According to lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis, the Chili Peppers were completely burned out after working constantly since 1999s Californication.
Now comes word that the Chili Peppers have reconvened in the recording studio to begin work on what will be their tenth album. They’ve done so, however, minus long-time guitarist John Frusciante, who has quit the band for a second time. Although Frusciante says he left during the group’s hiatus to focus on his solo work, he only recently went public with the announcement of his departure from the Chili Peppers.
John Frusciante, once ranked eighteenth in Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarist of All Time”, was an up-and-coming guitarist when he was invited to join the Red Hot Chili Peppers at age eighteen after auditioning to replace one of his idols, original Chili Peppers guitarist and founding member Hillel Slovak, who died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Frusciante first appeared on the band’s 1989 album Mother’s Milk. That record was followed up with the breakthrough success of Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991, a record that made bona fide rock stars of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Frusciante was completely overwhelmed by the sudden success of the group. He felt the band's rise to popularity was "too high, too far, too soon” and longed instead to play clubs in relative obscurity the way the Chili Peppers had done early on in their career. Frusciante and Kiedis would frequently engage in heated discussions about the future direction of the Chili Peppers. Struggling as he was with his newfound fame, Frusciante abruptly left the Chili Peppers in the middle of the Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour in 1992 and fell into a depression that saw his recreational drug use balloon into a full-blown, life-threatening heroin addiction. Although he became a virtual recluse during this period and suffered significant self-doubt concerning his art, not to mention the debilitating effects of drug abuse, Frusciante managed to release his first solo recordings, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (1994) and Smile from the Streets You Hold (1997).
After Frusciante’s departure from the group, the Red Hot Chili Peppers tapped Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction to fill in on guitar. The reformed Chili Peppers recorded One Hot Minute with Navarro in 1995 and although the album was fairly successful, it failed to live up to the critical acclaim of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. After only one album together, there was a mutual parting of the ways between the Chili Peppers and Navarro, and the band found themselves on the verge of breaking up.
Then in late 1997, after quitting a 5-year heroin addiction cold turkey, Frusciante checked into a rehab facility to further addresses his addictions. He reemerged a month later a changed man, having adopted a more spiritual lifestyle that included a yoga practice and regular meditation. With his demons at bay, Frusciante rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1998 and the group returned to the studio to record Californication, which was released in 1999 and remains the band’s most commercially successful album to date.
Californication was followed up three years later with By the Way in 2002 and Stadium Arcadium in 2006, which included the singles "Dani California", "Tell Me Baby", and "Snow (Hey Oh)." Frusciante’s deep devotion to his music had inspired the band during the recording of the album and helped to restore some much needed morale among the band members. The critically praised Arcadium gave the Chili Peppers their first #1 album in America and earned the band a Grammy in 2007 for Best Rock Album. It would be the last Red Hot Chili Peppers album recorded with Frusciante.
John Frusciante
John Frusciante’s tenth solo album, The Empyrean, was released on January 20, 2009. The record is billed as a concept album and was recorded on and off for over a year. Frusciante is reportedly very happy with the record and says that, “I've listened to it a lot for the psychedelic experience it provides,” suggesting the album “be played as loud as possible and [that] it is suited to dark living rooms late at night.” Instead of embarking on a tour in support of the album, Frusciante opted instead to stay put and focus on writing and recording. The Empyrean peaked at #151 on the US Billboard 200 and #105 on the UK Albums Chart.
As for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, no replacement guitarist for Frusciante has yet been confirmed, though recording on their follow-up to Stadium Arcadium continues. The new album is set to drop sometime in late 2010.
