Few rock groups of the '80s broke down as many musical barriers and were as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Creating an intoxicating new musical style by combining funk and punk rock together (with an explosive stage show, to boot), the Chili Peppers spawned a slew of imitators in their wake, but still managed to be the leaders of the pack by the dawn of the 21st century. The roots of the band lay in a friendship forged by three school chums,
Anthony Kiedis,
Michael Balzary, and
Hillel Slovak, while they attended Fairfax High School in California back in the late '70s/early '80s. While
Balzary and
Slovak showed great musical promise (on trumpet and guitar, respectively),
Kiedis focused on poetry and acting during his high school career. During this time,
Slovak taught
Balzary how to play bass, while the duo encouraged
Kiedis to start putting his poetry to music, which he soon did. Influenced heavily by the burgeoning L.A. punk scene (
the Germs,
Black Flag,
Fear,
Minutemen,
X, etc.) as well as funk (
Parliament-
Funkadelic,
Sly & the Family Stone, etc.), the trio began to rehearse with another friend, drummer
Jack Irons, leading to the formation of Tony Flow & the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, a group that played strip bars along the sunset strip during the early '80s. It was during this time that the quartet honed their sound and live act (as they stumbled across a stage gimmick that would soon become their trademark — performing on-stage completely naked, except for a tube sock covering a certain part of their anatomy). By 1983,
Balzary had begun to go by the name "
Flea," and the group changed their name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Word spread quickly about the up-and-coming band, resulting in a recording contract with EMI. But before the Chili Peppers could begin work on their debut,
Flea and
Kiedis were dealt a disappointing blow when both
Slovak and
Irons announced that they were leaving to focus more on another band they were in,
What Is This. With replacement members
Jack Sherman (guitar) and
Cliff Martinez (drums) filling in, the Peppers released their self-titled debut in 1984. But the absence of the two original members showed, as the album failed to capture the excitement of their live show. While the album didn't set the world on fire sales-wise, the group began to build a dedicated underground following with college radio buffs. By 1985,
What Is This was kaput (after issuing a single self-titled album), as
Slovak and
Irons returned back to the Peppers, resulting in the
George Clinton-produced
Freaky Styley. While the album was an improvement over its predecessor, it still lacked the fire of the band's in-concert experience, a problem that would finally be solved with their next album, 1987's
The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. The album was the group's first to make an impression on the charts, and they followed it up a year later with stopgap five-track release,
The Abbey Road EP, in 1988. But just as the world was warming up to the Peppers, tragedy struck when
Slovak died from a heroin overdose on June 25, 1988.
In the wake of
Slovak's death,
Irons left the group for the second and final time, while
Kiedis (who was also battling drug addiction at the time) and
Flea decided to soldier on. After a new lineup consisting of former
Parliament guitarist
Blackbyrd McKnight and former
Dead Kennedys drummer
D.H. Peligro didn't work out, the duo found worthy replacements in newcomers
John Frusciante and
Chad Smith. The new-look Chili Peppers hit pay dirt straight away, as their first album together, 1989's
Mother's Milk, became a surprise hit due to MTV's exposure of their videos for a cover of
Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" and a song about their fallen friend
Slovak, "Knock Me Down," as the album was certified gold by early 1990. The group knew that their next release would be the most important one of their career, so they moved into a mansion-turned-recording studio with producer
Rick Rubin to work on what would become their most successful release yet, the stripped-down
Blood Sugar Sex Magik (their first for the Warner Bros. label). The album became a monster hit upon its September 1991 release (going on to eventually sell a staggering seven million copies in the U.S. alone), as it spawned such hits as "Give It Away" and the group's first Top Ten single, "Under the Bridge."
But not all was well in the Chili Peppers camp. Like his predecessor,
Frusciante had become addicted to hard drugs, and abruptly left the band mid-tour in early 1992. Undeterred, the band enlisted new member
Arik Marshall, and headlined Lollapalooza II in the summer. When the band returned to the studio to work on their sixth release overall, it quickly became apparent that
Marshall didn't fit in, and was replaced by
Jesse Tobias. But before
Tobias could record a note with the group, he was handed his walking papers as well, and former
Jane's Addiction guitarist
Dave Navarro signed on. After a layoff of four years, the Peppers' much-delayed follow-up to
BSSM was released in 1995,
One Hot Minute. While the album was a sizeable hit, it failed to match the success and musical focus of its predecessor, as it became apparent during the album's ensuing tour that
Navarro wasn't fitting in as well as originally hoped, and left the band in early 1998.
After
Frusciante had left the group, he released a pair of obscure solo releases, 1995's
Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt and 1997's
Smile from the Streets You Hold, yet rumors circulated that the guitarist was homeless, penniless, and sickly with a death-defying drug habit. After checking himself into rehab and putting his demons behind him,
Frusciante emerged once again refocused and re-energized, and promptly accepted an invitation to rejoin the Peppers once more. The group's reunion album, 1999's
Californication, proved to be another monster success, reconfirming the Chili Peppers as one of alternative rock's top bands. The band put in a quick guest appearance on
Fishbone's
Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx before hitting the road to support the album. The following months found the band getting involved in bizarre situations and controversies. First, their refusal to play songs from
One Hot Minute during the tour was an unpopular decision with some fans and a sore spot for
Dave Navarro. Next, they reignited a personal feud between
Kiedis and
Mr. Bungle singer
Mike Patton by refusing to play a series of European concerts with
Bungle.
Patton responded with a "tribute" show for the Peppers, where
Bungle mocked their stage moves, faked shooting up heroin, and imitated
Kiedis' comments about
Patton. They also played the ill-fated Woodstock '99 festival, where their headlining performance was met with piles of burning rubble and a full-scale riot. Tours with
the Foo Fighters and
Pearl Jam brought them into the next year without problems, but they stepped off the road after a planned stop in Israel was halted due to security worries. They returned to the studio in November of 2001 and by the summer of 2002 they had a new album ready to drop,
By the Way. Warner Brothers released a
Greatest Hits compilation in 2003, followed by a chart-topping two-CD album of all-new material,
Stadium Arcadium, in 2006.
Little Richard had been making records for four years before he rolled into Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans and cut the epochal "Tutti Frutti" in the fall of 1955, but everything else he'd done -- and much of what others had recorded -- faded into insignificance when Richard wailed "A wop bop a loo mop a lomp bomp bomp" and kicked off one of the first great wailers in rock history. In retrospect, Little Richard's style doesn't seem so strikingly innovative as captured in 1956's Here's Little Richard -- his boogie-woogie piano stylings weren't all that different from what Fats Domino has been laying down since 1949, and his band pumped out the New Orleans backbeat that would define the Crescent City's R&B for the next two decades, albeit with precision and plenty of groove. But what set Richard apart was his willingness to ramp up the tempos and turn the outrage meter up to ten; "Tutti Frutti," "Rip It Up" and "Jenny Jenny" still sound outrageous a half-century after they were waxed, and it's difficult but intriguing to imagine how people must have reacted to Little Richard at a time when African-American performers were expected to be polite and the notion of a gay man venturing out of the closet simply didn't exist (Richard's songs were thoroughly heterosexual on the surface, but the nudge and wink of "Tutti Frutti" and "Baby" is faint but visible, and his bop threads, mile-high process and eye makeup clearly categorized him as someone "different"). These 12 tunes may not represent the alpha and omega of Little Richard's best music, but every song is a classic and unlike many of his peers, time has refused to render this first album quaint -- Richard's grainy scream remains one of the great sounds in rock & roll history, and the thunder of his piano and the frantic wail of the band is still the glorious call of a Friday night with pay in the pocket and trouble in mind. Brilliant stuff.
