Anthony Kiedis says he’s concerned about ‘not having enough days to practice.’ By Gil Kaufman Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis Photo: MTV News When MTV News sat down with legendary Los Angeles punk-funk icons the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Wednesday, they talked about a lot of things very confidently — their new video, fond memories of L.A.’s Forum , pygmy scientists and the state of music videos today. But the one thing they were clearly nervous about was the upcoming tour in support of their new album, I’m With You . It’s not performance anxiety: that much you can tell from the loose vibe of the just-unveiled “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” video. The Chili Peppers have seen millions of faces over the past 28 years, and rocked them all (or at least 99.9 percent of them). No, it’s the challenge of playing the new songs from the album in front of their adoring fans without enough time to get them into fighting shape. Also, they’re planning to play the new album in its entirety, top to bottom, on tour. Regarding his concerns about performing the songs, singer Anthony Kiedis said, “Not having enough days to practice. It’s very dynamic, so we really have to focus on letting each song exist unto itself with all of its beauty. There’s a lot going on.” How did Flea’s hour-long bass groove turn into “Rain Dance Maggie”? The band wrote a lot of new material for their 10th studio album, and while Flea said the tunes that made the final cut are not necessarily better than those left on the floor, “it was important to us that each song stood on its own emotionally and aesthetically, that held its own spot,” he said. “So we really have a lot of territory to cover in terms of emotional [ground].” Besides, the simple fact is they’re new songs and the group — including new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer — just don’t know them as well as classics like “Give It Away” and “Under the Bridge.” They’ve done some of the requisite prep work, according to Kiedis, who said a string of three club shows before their recent Summer Sonic fest headlining set in Japan helped loosen up the muscles. “Maggie” director Marc Klasfeld explains how the “simple and iconic” video was made. “It was so fun … it was wildly fun,” Kiedis said of the gigs. “We really didn’t know exactly what this would be like, a) because it’s been a long time and b) because we now play with Josh. We felt pretty good about everything that we had done in terms of writing and recording, but no one really knew and it was just as good as one could have ever dreamt of … It was like being 21 years old and not being able to sleep the night before a show.” Check back on MTV.com for highlights from the Q&A, including the band discussing the early inspiration for their iconic videos, where they feel they belong in music history, whether Anthony Kiedis will ever join Twitter and more! Related Videos MTV First: Red Hot Chili Peppers
We drop in on the band during rehearsals at the iconic Forum and see parallels between the two, in Bigger Than the Sound. By James Montgomery The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis Photo: MTV News The Forum — the slightly decrepit, strangely Roman arena on the corner of Manchester and Prairie in Inglewood, California — first opened its doors on December 30, 1967, and has, in the years that followed, played host to both the “Showtime” Lakers and the Gretzky Kings, not to mention just about every L.A.-area concert you’ve ever heard of, or were too drunk to remember. Parts of Led Zeppelin’s live How the West Was Won were recorded here, as were live albums by Cream, Steppenwolf, the Bee Gees and P-Funk, to name just a few. Over the course of its existence, it’s been known alternately as “the Fabulous Forum,” “the Los Angeles Forum” (even though it’s in Inglewood) and, in a move of corporate branding so subtle most locals didn’t know the difference, “the Great Western Forum.” Now, it’s mostly just an oval located in the center of an asphalt ocean in a less-than-desirable part of town. The Lakers and the Kings bolted for the shiny new Staples Center in 1999, and the live shows dried up soon after. A church owned it until last year and now people just jog around it. It is a fate unbecoming of such a legendary venue, really — a slow decline into obsolescence and calisthenics — and yet, this is how these things tend to go. Michael Balzary and Anthony Kiedis — the slightly graying yet strangely sculpted half of the Red Hot Chili Peppers — first opened their doors (or, you know, were born) on October 16 and November 1, 1962, respectively, and have, in the years that followed, arisen from the L.A. punk scene to achieve the kind of heights few in the music business can dare dream of: 65 million albums sold worldwide, nine Hot 100 singles in the U.S., and seven Grammy Awards, to name just a few. Over the course of their existence, the pair have been known as Flea and, well, Anthony (or maybe Sir Psycho Sexy). They have recorded some of the most celebrated albums of both the alt-rock heyday — namely, Mother’s Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, — and the uncertain times that followed (1999’s Californication ), and they most certainly do calisthenics. And yes, you can probably see where I’m going with this. Because it’s not exactly difficult to draw parallels between the three entities: The Forum, a grandiose (and somewhat gaudy) monument to ’60s idealism and the excesses that followed, Flea and Kiedis the poster children for the decay that set in once that idealism gave way to cold hard fact, when those excesses devolved into plain old addictions. All three grew preternaturally old beneath the hazy sunshine of Southern California, and all three proudly wear the scars that came with that aging. They have each witnessed incredible highs and crushing lows, triumphs and tragedies, and they are all still standing. And because of that, both the arena and the Chili Peppers, which Flea and Kiedis formed in the obtuse shadow of the arena back in 1983, have become Los Angeles icons, the kind with pock marks on their faces and dirt beneath their fingernails; the real kind. In fact, about the only difference between the Forum and the Peppers seems to be that the latter is still fully operational. Other than that, they belong to each other. And yet, it is perhaps due to nothing more than grand cosmic coincidence that the Peppers have chosen the Forum as the rehearsal spot for their upcoming world tour, a very big endeavor in support of their very big I’m With You, the first new Chili Peppers record in more than five years. Or at least that’s what they told me on Wednesday when I stopped by to host the premiere of their brand-new “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” video. “We just got the call to show up to the Forum for rehearsal and were like, ‘Yes, that’s a good place to do it!’ ” Kiedis said. “They needed space to goof around with our stage and our lights … [but] I was warming up in one of the cavernous bowels of this beautiful institution, and I looked up and there was a great old photograph of [former Lakers’ guard] Nick Van Exel, charging me with the ball, number nine, looking me down, big head, big heart, big eyes … remember the time he got the ref?” Of course, I got the feeling, based on the second part of that statement, that it wasn’t mere coincidence that brought the Chili Peppers to the Forum, nor was it a love of Lakers ball (though, to be fair, Flea did point out that “This building is the home of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Byron Scott, Norm Nixon [and] many, many Bob McAdoos”). Instead, it was something much bigger; a love for the old building, or even a sense of purpose. After all, the Forum was where they learned how to be musicians, much like the long lost Club Lingerie, the punk spot operated by the late Brendan Mullen, who is eulogized on I’m With You ‘s “Brendan’s Death Song.” It is where they underwent several passages of manhood. In a way, they grew up here. “The second rock show I ever saw here was with [Anthony],” Flea laughed, peering up at the vaulted ceiling. “We came in here to see the Who, we snuck in, and we snuck in to see Queen here, too.” “We used to not have any money was the thing, but we wanted to go to the shows,” Kiedis smiled. “So we’d get right up to where they let you in at the turnstile, and we’d get down and go [through], and if they’d catch us, God bless ’em. But they never could.” So, in a sense, without the Forum, there probably would be no Red Hot Chili Peppers. Which is why they treat the place with such reverence, why, during rehearsals, they joined drummer Chad Smith and new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer to tear through old songs with a fury usually reserved for the actual live shows. It was almost as if they were paying tribute to the old ghosts that haunt the twisting corridors, or, more probably, to the bands that have brought the roof down over the past four-plus decades. It was an amazing thing to watch, and I couldn’t think of a more fitting setting. After all, the Forum and the Red Hot Chili Peppers share a bond much stronger than you could possibly imagine. They are both survivors. And to witness the band still operating at their peak, nearly 28 years after they first began, well, it somehow fills you with hope for the venerable old venue too. After all, the Forum deserves a comeback too, or at least a better fate than folks jogging around its perimeter. And maybe, in some small way, the Chili Peppers’ rehearsals — buoyant, fun, funky and, most important of all, loud — can help breathe new life into the old place, to lift it up and set it back on its feet. You get the feeling Flea and Kiedis feel a sense of duty to at least try. After all, it’s the least they could do. Related Videos MTV First: Red Hot Chili Peppers Related Artists Red Hot Chili Peppers
New single started life as an hour-long jam session, Anthony Kiedis tells MTV News. By James Montgomery Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis Photo: MTV News On Friday, the Red Hot Chili Peppers officially ended their hiatus with the premiere of “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie,” the first single from their upcoming I’m With You album. About a month before the premiere of “Maggie,” MTV News sat down with RHCP’s Anthony Kiedis and Josh Klinghoffer in Venice, California, to talk about the band’s new album (and the lengthy break that preceded it). We’ll be rolling out more of the interview as we get closer to I’m With You ‘s August 30 release date, but we’ve already given fans a taste of what they can expect, when Kiedis and Klinghoffer explained the genesis of the album’s title. And now, with “Maggie” officially out of the box, we figured it would be time to pull the curtain back on a second portion of the chat, in which Kiedis revealed the origins of the song itself — origins that began with an hour-long jam session and exactly one classic bass line. “When I first heard [‘Maggie’], I didn’t know it would be a single. [But] I knew that I loved the jam, ” Kiedis explained. “My first recording of that, I don’t think it had many vocals on it. It was kind of mostly instrumental, about an hour long. Flea brought it in as a very specific exercise to write a classic bass line. He woke up, had his tea, sat down: ‘I’m going to write a classic bass line. You can’t stop me.’ Played his bass line until he felt it was cooked into a classic, brought it to us and said, ‘This is Classic Number One.’ On a good day, you just know if there’s music to wrestle with and get with, and it was one of those moments.” So Kiedis sat down and listened to the track and was immediately struck by the propulsive groove Flea had laid down. And things just took off from there, with Klinghoffer adding a winging guitar line and drummer Chad Smith providing a loose, limber backbeat. But even if things were taking shape, Kiedis said he never thought “Maggie” would be anything more than a B-side. If that. “I took it home and it felt so fun to listen to at length that I literally left it on in my driveway, opened the door and danced with the tree next to me for quite a while,” he said. “I had no idea that it would even be a song, I just thought, ‘Oh, this is a great dance track. Let’s put it on as a B-side, [an] hour long.’ And then, as fate would have it, people heard it, and they were like, ‘Oh, that’s your best thing right there. That’s your best thing.’ ” And so, eventually, “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” made the leap from jam to official first single. And now that it’s out there, Kiedis knows he’s going asked plenty of times just who this Maggie is. Unfortunately, he’s not about to reveal his inspirations. “It’s just a collection of memories and people along the way that had maybe left my consciousness until I heard that music, and then they kind of came dancing back into my consciousness, and out the old pen onto the paper,” he smiled. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Although there is a Maggie, I realized later. There’s two Maggies, actually.” What do you think of the Chili Peppers’ new song? Let us know in the comments! Related Artists Red Hot Chili Peppers
New guitarist Josh Klinghoffer came up with album title, which has become a rallying cry for Chili Peppers fans. By James Montgomery The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I’m With You Photo: Warner Bros. Records By now, you’ve probably seen the cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I’m With You, a minimal, macabre work by British artist Damien Hirst that’s a long way from the hyper-color, freak-out cover of The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, to say the very least (and, as any art major can probably tell you, sort of recalls Hirst’s own “Lullaby Spring” too). Now that you’re familiar with the artwork that will adorn the album, you may be wondering about that title — after all, I’m With You is the first Chili Peppers effort since 1989’s Mother’s Milk not to take its name from a song on the album. So why did they decide to break from tradition this time out? Well, as they told MTV News last month (in an interview you’ll be seeing plenty more of in the very near future), it had everything to do with new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and a single scooch. “We thought of calling it a song title off the record, and when I mentioned that to [producer] Rick [Rubin], he said, ‘That just makes it seem like we don’t have enough ideas, ‘ ” RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis said. “And I didn’t even stop to think of the fact that every one of our records is like that, and I don’t think ‘shortage of ideas’ was ever our primary dilemma, considering the mountain range of scraps we left behind. So, as an experiment, I started making lists of titles, and all of them, in retrospect, were quite lame, and none of them really captured the spirit of this record, which we had all very much fallen in love with. “And then Josh showed up one day, maybe a day before there was some sort of deadline for a title, and he wrote [‘I’m With You’] on a piece of paper,” he continued, “And very subtly scooched it [in front of me], and I was like, ‘What’s that ?’ And we all kind of put our eyes on it at the same time and went: ‘ That is the title of our record.’ ” Klinghoffer said the title came to him almost out of nowhere but that it seemed perfect — not just for the band’s new album, but for where they are at this point in their careers too. “It seems pretty open, pretty apropos to where the band is, what the band’s doing, how the record wants to be related to, or related with,” he explained. And, though it may not be the most traditional Chili Peppers title, I’m With You has already taken on new life as a de facto rallying cry for the band’s fans. And that’s an added bonus no one in the band could have ever predicted. “It’s open, and there’s not really a negative connotation. It’s inviting. The first time I heard a non-one-of-us mention it, it gave me the best feeling you could imagine,” Kiedis said. “Unbeknownst to me, the news [of the album’s title] had hit the radio, and some kid came up to me and he shook my hand and he said, ‘I’m with you!’ And I was like, ‘Why are you saying that? Where did you hear that?’ He said, ‘I’m with you!’ And then I realized that he must’ve heard it on the radio or something, and it was just a great feeling.” What do you think of the album title? Let us know in the comments below Related Artists Red Hot Chili Peppers
MTV News spoke to director (and rapper) on the set of the Chili Peppers’ ‘The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie’ clip. By James Montgomery, with reporting by Matt Elias Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea and Anthony Kiedis (file) Photo: Karl Walter/Getty Images When MTV News first broke the news that up-and-coming “Gucci Gucci” rapper Kreayshawn had been tapped to direct the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” video , the reaction from most seemed to be “her?” Yes, despite the fact that she went to The Berkeley Digital Film Institute — and has directed clips for the likes of Lil B — most couldn’t believe that the Chili Peppers had gone with the Bay Area Based Goddess for the first video from their much-anticipated I’m With You album. But RHCP fans weren’t the only ones feeling that way: Turns out Kreayshawn couldn’t believe it either. “My manager hit me up. He was like, ‘Oh, Warner is looking for somebody to direct the new Red Hot Chili Peppers video. They want you to do a treatment.’ So at that time, I was like, ‘Oh sh–! I’m about to do it, ‘ ” Kreayshawn told MTV News on the set of the “Rain Dance” video earlier this week. “Later, I found out that [my treatment] was picked out of a whole bunch of them. … So I was like, ‘Oh, that makes it even crazier. ‘ I went to film school and stuff, but, like, I never thought it was going to translate into something this big.” Though she was overwhelmed, Kreayshawn said any doubts she had disappeared after speaking with RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis and discovering that the two shared similar visions for the clip. “I talked to Anthony a couple times, and he was like, ‘I want to do a couple changes to the video,’ but all the changes he had were, like, stuff we were already doing with the video, like slow-motion and stuff. So I was like, ‘We’re dialed in,’ ” she said. “Everyone was completely ready and they came here, they’re excited, which makes me even happier. … There’s a good vibe everywhere.” Of course, while she was more than willing to speak about the vibe of the video, Kreayshawn didn’t want to reveal much about the actual plot — though she did say that, well, certain groups of the Chili Peppers’ fanbase will definitely be happy with the end result. “It’s got that organic feel, but it still gives the band a great shine and they look f—ing awesome, ” she laughed. “They are looking off the chain, man. Anthony’s in there looking like a swimsuit model.” What do you think about Kreay getting behind the lens for the Chili Peppers? Let us know in the comments! Related Artists Red Hot Chili Peppers Kreayshawn
Filed under: Mel Gibson , Oksana Grigorieva , Celebrity Justice TMZ has obtained the last photos of Mel Gibson in public — taken at a Chili’s restaurant in Texas —
Link: http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/02/co… A handy guide for cooking with Peeps. This Peeps and Chili recipe has been handed down in my family for centuries. Read
I thought I'd check in on an old friend…little did I know they had already checked out! Never underestimate the deep lasting bonds of a friendly meal at Chili's. Contribute: Add an image, link, video or comment
If you’re Red Hot Chili Pepper’s drummer Chad Smith, you don’t want to hear kids and adults alike asking for your autograph… because you’re Will Ferrell. But if you’re Barbara Mori, getting the Megan Fox treatment every now and then is not such a bad thing
