Anthony Kiedis said, ‘It’s not a Red Hot Chili Peppers stuff’
In the early nineties i Red Hot Chili Peppers They had four albums behind them and a good sequel to the public, but what would have happened shortly thereafter would have changed, in much better, the trajectory of the Californian band.
What happened is a song called “Under the Bridge”. The song actually, in the beginning, was a poem by the singer Anthony Kiedis. He was the producer Rick Rubin To find the text in Kiedis’s notebook and to convince him to share it with the rest of the band. Rubin, who witnessed the creative process, revealed that, as reported by Musicradar, it was “crazy” to attend his birth. Speaking with Rick Blessed in 2024 he said: “They had never made such a song before. It was a poem that Anthony had written. I asked him: ‘What is this?’ And he replied: ‘It is not for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’. And he: ‘That’s not what we do’.
Fortunately, Rubin eventually convinced Kiedis to propose the text to others
Red Hot Chili Peppers
: the guitarist
John Frusciante
to the bassist
Flea
and to the drummer
Chad Smith
. Kydis’ hesitation derived from the fact that the band was known to play festive music, noisy and rhythmic. He could not understand how a ballad so full of feeling could exist within the group’s sound orbit. Rubin said again in Blessed: “Historically, they were a band that played funk with rap voices. That was the sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I said: ‘What do you say to sing it to the others?’, But he was shy. He sang her for John, who invented the guitar part. John and Anthony sang it to Flea and Chad, who said they had adored it, A song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. ”
It was a crucial moment in the evolution of the group, Rubin continues: “For this reason, he split the frame of what the Red Hot Chili Peppers were. They could have been anything. Knowing that they were more than a sound, if they liked the four what they did, here’s what the Red Hot Chili Peppers were.”
The text of
“Under the Bridge”
He talks about the years in which Kiedis was a heroinomaniac. He speaks of the solitude and isolation that accompany dependence. The title of the song refers to the place where Anthony was going to get drugs and getting talked about. As he revealed in his 2004 autobiography,
‘Scar Tissue’
,
Anthony Kiedis
He recalled a period in which “I had this beautiful Angelica girl (Io Skye, Donovan’s daughter, editor’s note) willing to give me all her love, and instead of embracing her, I was in the center with fucking gangsters to shoot me Speedball under a bridge”.
“Under the Bridge”
He also talks about his relationship with the city of Los Angeles. In Goldamine in 1996 he declared: “I really repugnant in these days. Aspire that toxic cloud of infernal smog every day that I live … it is not a pleasant thought. But I have a strong family bond with that city that I probably never be able to cut out”.
“Under the Bridge”
He was released as a second single from the album
“Blood Sugar Sex Magik”
.
