On June 8, 1999, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Californication, their Grammy-winning seventh studio album. Though chart-toppers like Scar Tissue, Otherside, and Californication mark the project’s enormous success alongside career-high international revenue, massive public reception, and a slew of accolades, many fans may be unaware of the compelling history that ultimately brought the band together and led to the realization of one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
Though a 2012 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame may have cemented their legacy, an elite discography spanning three decades and a sensational act to match had already secured their spot in rock history. From an outsider’s perspective, the extraordinariness of the Chili Peppers might make it hard to believe that such seismic rockstars came from such humble American beginnings. Anthony, whose parents divorced when he was three, split time between Michigan, where he lived with his mother, and California, where he’d visit his father. Falling in love with the state from an early age, Anthony convinced his mom to let him move to California to attend high school. While the change was promising for Kiedis’ blooming artistic career, California seduced Anthony for reasons he couldn’t tell his mother.
Despite living with his father, John Kiedis, after the move, the soon-to-be-rockstar spent less time with him than he did with Blackie Dammett, his dad’s film and television personality. Acting brought Dammett to Hollywood, but drug dealing was his more consistent source of income at the time. Most days, Anthony wouldn’t see him at all since his father was usually passed out from whatever party he’d been at the night before; when he did, though, he’d assist Dammett with his business - sometimes carrying suitcases full of drugs to his father’s customers (a list including members from bands as prestigious as The Who and Led Zeppelin). This lifestyle introduced Anthony to the frenzy of the L.A. party scene and laid the groundwork for what would soon lead to a vicious drug addiction. The Chili Peppers frontman reportedly began smoking marijuana and doing “child-sized” bumps of cocaine at 12 years old, graduating to heroin only two years later at the age of 14.
While California started Anthony on a dangerous path of addiction, it also brought him together with lifelong friend and RHCP bassist Flea. At Fairfax High School, the two met and became friends with Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons. Though the four didn’t record their debut album together because of Slovak’s membership in another L.A. band by the name of What Is This?, they would soon comprise the original Red Hot Chili Peppers following Hillel’s growing disconnect and eventual departure from his other group. As the early Chili Peppers gained traction in the L.A. scene, Anthony’s off-stage activities grew intrusive to the point where the band briefly kicked him out to detox. Despite Anthony relapsing not long thereafter, he rejoined, and the band released The Uplift Mofo Party Plan in 1987. The album wasn’t a smash hit, but it reflected the foursome’s promise and was their most critically and commercially successful up to that point, an achievement punctuated by their first appearance on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Unfortunately, their newfound success was very short-lived. Shortly after returning home from The Uplift Mofo Party Plan tour, Slovak tragically overdosed on heroin. His death shattered the band, forcing Anthony, Slovak’s dear friend and spiritual brother, to check himself into a rehab center and Irons to leave the group altogether. The band was left without a vocalist, guitarist, and drummer. The future seemed very dark for the up-and-coming California musicians, yet even though Anthony and Flea were unaware of it, their saviors were soon to come.
The somber task of replacing the lost Chili Peppers weighed heavy on the heads of Flea and Anthony following his time in rehab. They underwent a temporary slew of lineup changes, but their prayers were answered when John Frusciante and Chad Smith auditioned. The group immediately recognized their chemistry and knew it’d create the sound they were looking for. Though the loss of Slovak was a battle moving forward, the Chili’s thrived off the addition of John and Chad, garnering even more attention from the media and fans alike with their next studio album, Mother’s Milk.
A continued increase in popularity quickly solidified Frusciante and Smith as integral band members. Their rapport, combined with the incorporation of the now-renowned producer Rick Rubin, skyrocketed the Chili Peppers from the edge of the spotlight into stardom. The Chili’s fifth studio album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, sold more than four million copies and would eventually go seven times platinum in the U.S., peaking at number three on the Billboard 200. To most rock stars, this and a collaborative tour headlined by rock and roll legends Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and The Smashing Pumpkins would be a dream. But to John Frusciante, it was a nightmare. His discomfort with the unexpected fame manifested not only in the growing separation between his band members but also in the beginnings of a rapidly spiraling heroin addiction. The distance grew until Frusciante abruptly quit the group mid-tour, forcing the band to cancel the final leg and leave them without a guitarist again.
Nothing seemed right for the group after Frusciante’s departure. Following a prolonged audition period, the trio selected Dave Navarro as John’s substitution. This replacement was short-lived due to the failure of One Hot Minute to match half the financial success of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, on top of the lack of chemistry between Navarro and the other band members. As this was happening, Frusciante was physically and mentally on his way to becoming a ghost after diving fully into his heroin addiction. Thankfully, John was receptive to help and eventually convinced to check himself into rehab, where he successfully detoxed. Flea played a crucial role in encouraging John to seek treatment, and the two maintained correspondence throughout his return to health. In the aftermath of Navarro’s departure, Flea convinced John to return to the band upon confirmation of his successful rehab.
Even though the Chili Peppers had the band back together, their path was still ripe with uncertainty. It was 1998, and the group hadn’t made a commercially successful album in seven years. They knew that the next project they made was their chance to extend themselves into rock and roll history or confirm suspicions that they were just the college funk-rock band that managed to hit it big with Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Regardless of the future, they'd undeniably gained profound wisdom from the rollercoaster journey that got them there. Having already undergone the formative experiences of stardom, loss, and drug abuse often associated with prolific rock bands, the group sought to shape their learning into music. If any, there were few sonic engineers better suited to help the Chili’s conquer this project than Rick Rubin. And with their newfound insight, the Chili’s decided to re-hire him as the producer for what they soon would discover to be Californication.
This move ended up paying off big time for the group, but they almost didn’t end up with Rubin. When Frusciante rejoined the band, a rush of creative inspiration led the members to seek out new producers, one of the first on their list being David Bowie. But Bowie and the others respectively declined, which turned the Peppers back towards Rubin to extend his career with the band. They likely turned away from him initially because of the failure of One Hot Minute (which Rubin produced). Still, they returned to him when remembering Blood Sugar Sex Magik, their most popular and first commercially successful album to date, which he ironically produced after turning down previous requests by the Chili’s to do so. Rubin spoke in an interview about seeing the group perform in their early years, stating how he immediately noticed their potential and knew his presence would give the band a structure that could shape their voice for the masses. That said, he also recognized a lack of trust in the band that he surmised came from their drug addiction. Though this held him back from working with them in their raw stage, it allowed him the opportunity to flourish on Blood Sugar Sex Magik when they were less involved with drugs and especially on Californication, where their sobriety prioritized their focus on their music.
One of the breakthrough moments came when Rubin discovered Under the Bridge, a poem of Anthony’s at the time about the loneliness of addiction. Anthony didn’t want to share it with his bandmates because he felt it didn’t match the funk vibe of their previous work, but Rick convinced him that he should, and when he did, the band started jamming to it immediately. This is what made Rubin so valuable to the Chili Peppers; the group was in a position of uncertainty, not sure where to go in the aftermath of their drugged-out stardom. But just as he fearlessly transformed their sound with Under the Bridge, Rubin knew how to help them translate their style into a sound that’d better fit their new material. The understanding of hip-hop lyricism and flow that he’d fine-tuned over the years with rap legends like LL Cool J, Run-DMC, and the Beastie Boys combined with his wealth of rock knowledge to make him the glue holding the RHCP together sonically.
Californication’s first track, Around the World, introduces listeners to the album and the new Chili Peppers, who, even after maturing and suffering, retain their optimistic outlook on life, singing “I know, I know for sure/That life is beautiful around the world.” Another lingering aspect of their roots evident on the track is the resilience of the Chili’s funk sound, which simultaneously offers newcomers a glimpse into the band’s general aura while reassuring fans that they’re still listening to the Chili Peppers as opposed to some band whose energy’s been irreparably changed by their past trauma. The changes that have occurred are audibly for the better; Anthony’s strides as a singer and songwriter are evidenced by an improved vocal range, allowing him to stretch syllables rhythmically like they were play-doh. Additionally, the high-energy chemistry between Flea and John, previously absent since Blood Sugar Sex Magik, is displayed in this love ballad to life. Add Chad’s grounding consistency on the drums, and the unison is achieved. Besides being one of the album’s more popular tracks, Around the World indicates the gradual evolution the work reflects: the same energy-refined, new experience.
Along that line, Parallel Universe is the first hint that this project will differ. It ventures from the path Around The World’s laid out, but not far enough to raise concern about a seismic shift in the traditionally funky style of the Chili Peppers. The song shrinks the project’s initially universal scope, bringing listeners back to California and the vices that have and continue to influence the band members. Anthony impresses again with his vocals, but the song would be hollow without Chad’s tempo-driving rhythm that flourishes in the context of Flea’s upbeat bassline.
If Parallel Universe hints at the group’s evolution, then Scar Tissue, a peaceful coming to terms with the dark past they’ve survived, is confirmation of it. Frusciante’s majestic opening riff provides a melancholy backdrop on which Kiedis poetically stories his experience with addiction. The melodic repetition of the song’s chorus, “With the birds I’ll share this lonely viewin’,” instills in the listener the sense of isolation associated with addiction. The track also reminds us that Anthony isn’t the group’s only member who’s struggled with substance issues. The lyric “soft-spoken with a broken jaw” references the dental implants John wears on account of the degradative symptoms of his heroin use. “Step outside but not to brawl/Autumn’s sweet and we call it fall/I’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl”; a beautiful yet tragic tribute to close friend River Phoenix who fatally overdosed outside of a club on Halloween night in 1993. “I’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl” reflects the extreme and, at times, devastating lengths they were willing to go to to get high, a sentiment likely shared by each band member considering their collective struggles with addiction. This line, in particular, and the song in general, embodies the band’s heightened vulnerability on Californication. The group’s joint echo of “With the birds, I share this lonely viewin’” reinforces their enhanced unity and sonic chemistry.”
Scar Tissue spirals further into the darker consequences of addiction both lyrically and sonically on Otherside, exploring the nightmarish recovery process inherent in sobriety and the lifestyle’s troubling familiarity with death. “I hear your voice through a photograph/I thought it up and brought up the past” alludes to the paradoxical difficulty brought about by Anthony’s memory of their dead friend Hillel Slovak and his subsequent inability to ease the pain with heroin. The following line, “Once you know you can never go back,” depicts the battle for sobriety as a lifelong process. That Otherside’s chorus (“How long, how long will I slide?”) remains the same despite conceptual progression with each new verse reaffirms the persistent struggle to resist backsliding into addiction. In this context, the lyric “Pour my life into a paper cup/The ashtray’s full and I’m spillin’ my guts” sensationalizes the inability of detox supplements like methadone, cigarettes, or marijuana to ease the mental and physical anguish of recovery. And while each addict’s journey to sobriety is very isolating and personal in its own right, the group’s collective expression surrounding the topic is part of what characterizes their uniqueness. Reverberated vocals from Frusciante and Flea continue to sonically impress the strength the band finds in its unity, even on divisive topics.
The project’s causal coherence is muddled slightly by Get On Top. The album’s flow up to this point suggests the atmosphere will remain melancholy if not plunge deeper, a direction confirmed by the proceeding track, Californication. But it is instead Get on Top, whose high energy funk tempo and animalistic sexuality contrast the substantial melodic ballads preceding it. That said, even if the transition isn’t perfectly seamless, the track is terrifically produced and exhibits the group’s prowess as artists of funk-rap fusion. This spirited, lustful energy also aligns with the motif of vice explored throughout the project. Even when they're not on drugs, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are rockstars and want their listeners to know it.
Californication, the record’s sixth track, is rightfully self-titled. It heavily involves California, a cultural-geographical stamp inseparable from the group’s aura and their exploration of the American Dream California makes available. “It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication.” And what is Californication? It’s whatever you can buy, or buy into, to make your reality into a dream. For some, this is plastic surgery (“Pay your surgeon very well/To break the spell of aging”); for others, it’s fame (“And little girls from Sweden/Dream of silver screen quotation”). However, while the Chili Peppers often glorify California, here they criticize it, or, ironically, its glorification since the state is fabled as the capital of the American Dream’s realization. And while some achieve ‘Californication,’ many more fail to do so. The song’s success shedding light on the frequently unadvertised underbelly of the American Dream is part of what marks it as the lyrical peak of the album. Anthony presents a three-dimensional portrait of Los Angeles that deconstructs the fantasized image of the so-called city of angels and contrasts it with its grim reality (“Space may be the final frontier/But it’s made in a Hollywood basement”). He continues to include vices commonly associated with the American Dream, such as toxic consumerism (“Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind’s elation”), degradative vanity (“Celebrity skin: Is this your chin or is that war you’re waging?”), corrupted innocence (“First born unicorn/Hardcore soft porn”), premature sexuality (“A teenage bride with a baby getting high on information”), and more. The continued syncopation of Anthony and the band is again on full display as his lyrics weave seamlessly into the vibe of their instrumental backup.
John’s evocative yet paced guitar riff serves as a sonic re-iteration of Anthony’s spoken message; the storytelling doesn’t stop with Kiedis but instead picks up instrumentally where he leaves off and vice versa. When he plays, you can feel the emotion of the guitar seeping through its strings and into the air. What’s particularly special about the song that’s not readily apparent on the first listen is that the term “Californication” they popularize refers more to a state of mind than an actual geographical location. The term successfully inverts the self-fulfilling iconography of the Californian-American Dream by portraying it metaphorically as a problematic manifestation of the American hunger to turn fantasy into reality. In this sense, it becomes clear that ‘Californication’ isn’t merely relegated to the sunshine state but to the universal greed that the country embodies (“Well, everybody’s been there/And I don’t mean no vacation”).
Moving forward, Easily offers Anthony a breather in a nonliteral sense. Chad, John, and Flea arguably command control of this song about the ease with which someone in love lets go. Right off the bat, Chad and John set a fast-paced tone that drives the cadence of Anthony’s delivery. The song’s highlight is the nuance of John’s chord progression on the outro, a true crescendo of the dynamic interplay between his melody, Chad’s drum line, and Flea’s anchoring bass. Californication’s sound swings back to soothing with Porcelain, one of the album’s most underrated tracks. The group’s sonic translation of the track’s formative experience of Anthony’s encounter with a single, pregnant mother trying to get clean at an AA meeting flawlessly expresses the culmination of tragedy, beauty, sorrow, and glory embodied in the inspirational mother/daughter relationship. The group trades their high-paced tempo for a laid-back sound euphorically accentuating the poetry of Anthony’s storytelling, “Porcelain/Are you wasting away in your skin?/Are you missing the love of your kin/Drifting and floating and fading away”. On top of the evocative patience of his reverbed guitar melody, John provides background vocals as he often does, once again reinforcing the project’s motif of unity while impressing the relevance of the subject matter to him as a recovering heroin addict. While a track this relaxed would be very challenging for most high-octane rockstars and even perhaps the Chili Peppers of old, Porcelain is evidence of the band’s eclectic versatility, their newfound cohesion, and a testament to the extraordinary benefit of Rick Rubin’s direction as a producer.
From here, the group returns to a rendition of the more familiar, lighthearted, funk-driven Chili Peppers. Emit Remmus is an update on Anthony’s relationship status and an ode to summer relationships driven by a strong bassline from Flea. In a similarly funky vein, I Like Dirt embraces the “dirty” side of life (girls and drugs especially) that the Chili Peppers both enjoy and struggle with. This Velvet Glove departs from the funk line the preceding tracks followed in favor of a more traditional rock sound, helping Anthony detail the struggles of resisting addiction in California. Savior is Anthony’s account of his experiences with his father, John Kiedis, and the forgiveness he can find for him in his sobriety. By “dusting off his savior,” he pardons John for raising him in a chaos-filled environment overcrowded by drugs and all of the resulting suffering it caused. While this song is more personal to Anthony, it fuses the band’s stylistic tendencies and subtle growth each member has undergone, thus charting their subtle evolution as musical expressionists within the project’s overall context; yet another sign of excellence that Rubin’s panoramic vision elevates the Chili Peppers to.
Though tracks like Around the World, Scar Tissue, Otherside, and Californication define the new sound the Chilis are moving towards, Purple Stain is emblematic of the group’s lingering funk tendencies in consideration of Californication’s message and mindset. Anthony raps about his fear of succumbing to the wicked temptations of the Hollywood lifestyle. Flea’s groovy bass steers Anthony’s delivery from verse to verse and eventually into the song’s prolonged outro, a traditional approach common in the group’s style since it allows them to embellish musically on the song’s lyrical content as it has in the past on songs like One Hot Minute, Sir Psycho Sexy, and Under the Bridge. Flea’s rhythm-holding bass line remains an integral piece of Right On Time, which extends Purple Stain’s funky energy. By replicating their earlier style while admitting all their life events are arriving right on time, the group is once again coming to terms with the past trauma that’s colored the chaos of their lives. In the context of the band’s resilient unity, Right on Time’s penultimate positioning on the album is crucial. It informs listeners that no matter what happens or how confusing things may seem, this is a natural part of life’s journey. The point of importance they highlight is maintaining presence with your loved ones on life’s rollercoaster of adversity.
Right On Time transitions seamlessly into the album’s finale, which concludes beautifully with Road Trippin’, a symbolic expression of the resilience of the band’s friendship and harmony despite the life-threatening past struggles they’re now leaving in the rear-view mirror. John’s guitar works in tandem with Anthony's figurative lyricism, evocatively canvassing the words with a stroke of the Chili’s euphoric paintbrush. Frusciante also lends his voice again, reiterating the theme of brotherhood present. Despite the near-identical subject matter Road Trippin’ shares with Right On Time, the track’s sound returns to the melancholy tone more prevalent at the beginning of the record. Rubin’s mix of the outro is particularly effective in this regard, referencing the song’s title in both form and function by invoking a feeling of the listener’s own drugged-out trip similar to the actual experiences the Chili’s weave through on the record. Even though the song doesn't feature Smith as a drummer and explicitly references Anthony’s “Road trippin' with my two favorite allies” (presumably a reference to John and Flea since they are the ones included in the majority of the music video), it is itself an acknowledgment of the group’s collective camaraderie in the context of their harrowing travels. The line “Now let us drink the stars, it’s time to steal away” reflects this collective growth because it infers that where they once might have associated the phrase in the context of champagne, they now refer to the vitality they gain from the earth’s natural energy. In this sense, the album’s final note is selfless, an articulation that the group has, for the time being, cast away the narcissism that’s hampered them in addiction most of their lives in the name of a universal purpose. Repetition of the chorus, “These smiling eyes are just a mirror for the sun,” re-affirms this and sensationally concludes that salvation lies in optimism towards life’s natural beauty and rejection of the selfishness that America’s vice-ridden society inspires.
Though emotionally loaded tracks populate Californication, I still consider it a relaxing project and a definitive testament to their unique musical provocativeness. Anthony’s poetic lyrical style mixed with the laid-back sound of the band behind him allows them to dissect heavy topics while avoiding a depressing sound that might curb the attraction of those who wish to separate their real problems from the music they enjoy. I refer to this as the Scar Tissue Effect. To illustrate the concept, I want to return to their Blood Sugar Sex Magik hit single, Under The Bridge. The track isn’t as aurally relaxed as Scar Tissue; the material behind it is arguably more harrowing than the track would suggest. Anthony’s cryptic lyrics allude to what he’d go through to score and inject heroin back in his younger days, a process involving him going under an undisclosed bridge that was free from the eye of the L.A.P.D. to shoot up on a dirty, piss-soaked mattress. He was only able to get into this ghetto by lying to the Mexican mafia, telling them that he was married to his junkie partner Mario’s sister. Kiedis deemed this the lowest point in his life, yet he channeled it into a song that quickly became an anthem sung by Chili Pepper fans of all ages and afflictions.
Under the Bridge previewed their ability to comfortably transform their tragedy into exceptional music without diluting the emotional substance at the heart of the song. The story goes that Anthony initially didn’t want to share the poem with the band because it didn’t fit their positively funky blueprint of the RHCP at the time, but what came as a result of Rubin’s persuasion was the freedom to move sonically in a direction more befitting of their subject material. Without this, neither Californication nor the Scar Tissue Effect would have been possible.
Californication isn’t great solely because of its standalone quality but because it also allowed the Red Hot Chili Peppers to realize themselves as a band truly. I don’t mean to imply they found the sound they stuck with for the rest of their career, but rather that their newfound wisdom and stability paved the way for their proceeding four studio albums. The versatility of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has kept them relevant for three decades, yet they’ve remained recognizable and in touch with their audience. This change wouldn’t have been possible without Californication or Rick Rubin, who has now produced six studio albums for the Chili Peppers.
Retrospectively, the band’s discovery of their true identity may be Californication’s most impactful contribution to the Chilis themselves, but what makes the album an American classic is the resiliency of hope it provides drug abusers battling their addiction. In an era where the media negatively bombards us on a daily basis, drug-related overdoses have soared to their highest point in this country’s history, with over 70,000 deaths in 2017, a number that rose 10 percent from the previous year (Hedegaard, Miniño, et al.) Americans are still using to “have it all,” chasing the feeling of Californication they’ll likely never find in the material terms they’ve been encouraged to seek it out in, be that drugs, money, sex, status, etc… And as they do, with each day and each death, Californication moves further away from its physical definition and more clearly becomes the timeless concept the Red Hot Chili Peppers meant it to be. But just as timeless as the concept of Californication is the album itself, and with it, the message Anthony, John, Flea, and Chad epitomize. Though their struggle is ongoing, the band’s expression of Californication is an enduring victory that echoes inspirationally through time to assist other addicts seeking greener pastures. They serve as shining survivors of their vices, inspiring fans worldwide to regain the positive remnants of the life we’ve all known before our scar tissue as they have.
Hedegaard H, Miniño AM, Warner M. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 1999–2017. NCHS Data Brief, no 329. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2018.
Kiedis, Anthony. Scar Tissue. Compiled by Larry Sloman, Hyperion Books, 2004.