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The Sydney Morning Herald: national, world, business, entertainment, sport and technology news from Australia's leading newspaper.

Tracks of our years - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers ... BloodSugarSexMagik (1991) v Californication (1999).

Red Hot Chili Peppers ... BloodSugarSexMagik (1991) v Californication (1999).

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triplem.com.au
George Palathingal
December 30, 2009

IF EVER a band had a career so definitively marked by skyscraping highs and soul-crushing lows, it's the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Los Angeles four-piece started in 1983 as a bunch of immature buffoons with minimal talent before discovering they could actually write great songs that mixed up their love of funk, punk, hip-hop and rock'n'roll.

They began to realise their potential with 1989's Mother's Milk, when the prodigiously gifted John Frusciante replaced founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, who had died from a heroin overdose. But it was their next album, the ambitious, sprawling BloodSugarSexMagik that properly unleashed them on to the mainstream.

BloodSugarSexMagik worked so well because it had all the fire and irreverence of the young Chili Peppers but also clear signs of musical and emotional maturity. Yes, there were unsubtle perv-funk rockers such as Suck My Kiss but they were often followed with plaintive tales of heartbreak such as I Could Have Lied. On one hand, the simple but devastating likes of Give It Away provided instant pop gratification; on the other there was something more substantial to chew on in an epic jam such as Sir Psycho Sexy.

In a collection featuring some of the Chilis's tastiest funk (If You Have to Ask, Funky Monks), there were also unnervingly pretty tunes such as Breaking the Girl.

The “drug” songs, meanwhile, provided conspicuous highlights. You can feel the melancholy and frustration of singer Anthony Kiedis, also a former heroin addict, at the loss of Slovak on My Lovely Man. And was there ever a more explicit lyric in a classic rock anthem than Kiedis's “Under the bridge downtown/Is where I drew some blood”?

There was, of course, a horrible irony in Frusciante's subsequent descent into heroin hell. His replacement by Jane's Addiction's Dave Navarro for the next Chili Peppers album, One Hot Minute, did no one any favours, either. So everyone was happy to see Frusciante off drugs and back with his talent intact for Californication.

Now the Chili Peppers, mainly in their late 30s and with more life experience than they likely wanted, really sounded grown up. Sure, the explosive Around the World started Californication with a rock-rap bang and the album had other comparably feisty tracks but its standout moments were the tough but tender title track; the soothing campfire ballad Road Trippin'; and Scar Tissue, another subdued tune that sweetly seduced rather than tried to hump your leg like the Chilis of yore.

Californication became their biggest seller, shifting 15 million units worldwide, and it is a terrific record — perhaps the album they had to make then to see them through to their current position as one of the biggest rock groups in the world — but I still prefer BloodSugarSexMagik.

It remains the sound of a band at their most inventive yet still accessible, hitting their stride as a unit and practically salivating with world-conquering hunger.

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