UPDATE October 27, 1997
Jane's Addiction with Dave and Flea perform live on MTV's 10Spot Show Friday October 31 at 10:00 PM and on NBC's Saturday Night Live November 8.
-- Oct 24, 1997 -- by Michael Goldberg
Chili Peppers In And Out Of Recording Sessions
Anthony Kiedis and company plan to get to work on new LP in December; may play New Year's gig in San Francisco.
The bad luck band recently ducked into a studio to nail down a tribute song to a Pakistani singer.
Addicted To Noise Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports : The Red Hot Chili Peppers are alive and well, according to bassist Flea. Though it may have appeared to some that the group was dealt a final career blow by the temporary defection of guitarist Dave Navarro and the bassist to the reunited Jane's Addiction, that just isn't the case, Flea said.
Rather, the band is back up and recording, according to Flea, who despite currently preparing for a tour with Jane's sounded extremely pumped about the Chili Peppers' forthcoming releases.
"We were just in the studio last week," said Flea, adding that he is committed to the band and its future projects.
In between bouts of rehearsals for the soon-to-be-launched Jane's tour, for which Flea is standing in for original Jane's bassist Eric Avery (who declined to be involved), the Chili Peppers' brain trust ducked into an L.A. studio to record a new song with the working title "Circle of the Noose," he added.
The trancey song is a tribute to qawwali devotional singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the popular late Pakistani singer who received acclaim in the West through his work with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Peter Gabriel, before his death in London on Aug. 16 of this year. In the meantime, the band is said to have about 20 other new songs in the works.
One more good piece of news for Chili Peppers fans, who have been dealt a series of hard luck stories from the band as of late, is a still-unconfirmed New Year's show in San Francisco, the details of which should be announced within the next two weeks.
Flea also said the band would continue work on its still-unscheduled seventh album in December, following the Jane's tour. The band's recording schedule has been shuffled several times over the past few months due to motorcycle injuries sustained by both singer Anthony Kiedis, who severely injured his wrist on July 15 and drummer Chad Smith, who dislocated his shoulder in a motorcycle accident a month later.
As if that wasn't enough, the one show the Chili Peppers did manage to play in the past six months, with Kiedis performing in a sling, was interrupted by no less a force of nature than a typhoon. Typhoon Rosie struck after the band took the stage at the Mt. Fuji Festival (July 25-26), forcing an early end to their set and the festival.
"I love the Chili Peppers," Flea said by phone from L.A. "How can I not love something that's been so good to me? And so rough." That sentiment was echoed by Navarro, who said that when people ask what band he's in, he always responds with the Chili Peppers. "This is the band I'm dedicated to," Navarro said. "Even though sometimes I feel fully integrated into it and sometimes I don't."
Navarro had previously said that the Chili Peppers have 20 ideas for songs recorded in rough form. "A lot of the writing in progress takes place in the studio," Navarro said. "So the songs aren't done until they're done. There might be songs that (singer) Anthony (Kiedis) has lyrics for but we don't have grooves for, or it might be the other way around."
Another project thrown on the back-burner, for now, is the side band Spread formed by Navarro and Smith after some free time following the last Chili Peppers' burst of touring. "We had a lot of down time, after the last Chili Peppers tour," Navarro said, "with Flea working on some movie things and Anthony in India. So Chad and I were hanging tight, sitting around in L.A. When I do that I tend to write sappy, depressing songs, where I'm real honest about my fears as a human being."
Navarro said the pair "just ended up having some songs" they worked on together, so they went into a studio with Dave Schiffman, who engineered and co-produced the effort, which is still not scheduled for release. "It was a real low-budget, self-made thing that we want to put out on Warner [Bros., the Chili Peppers' label] just for fun. Neither of us are really necessarily interested in getting it out there to have more product on the shelf," Navarro said.
If anything, he added, the record, tentatively titled Pelican, was "a challenge for me and Chad to completely have the reins in the studio." [Thurs., Oct. 23, 1997, 6 p.m. PDT]
See the Jane's concert review at Addicted to Noise http://www.addict.com/