Magic Johnsons
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are grossly underrated hardcore funkrap band from California who—just because they come out onstage wearing nothing but a tube sock over their sex organs and expose themselves whenever possible —are often accused of being obsessed with their penises.
It’s widely believed that the only thing the Chili Peppers ever talk about is their penises. But as you will see from a conversation with bass player Flea Balzary and lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis just prior to the release of their brilliant fourth album, Mother’s Milk, this charge is totally without merit. In fee, they start off talking about music.
“We could have been in the Jimi Hendrix Experience,” says Anthony “Or Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five, or perhaps Billie Holliday’s band when Lester Young was in it or even Led Zap, P-Funk, or the Skidmore Stravinski Orchestra of 1982 while on a European tour.” He does not mention either the Dicks or the Butthole Surfers.
“But none of these bands,” says Flea, “match the power, emotional release or the hardcore passion and wild explosion of…” not his penis, as some would expect him to say, but, ” … Milli Vanilli.”
Nor are their penises listed among the biggest influences on their music. Magic Johnson of the LA Lakers and Traci Lords, “the greatest porno star the world has ever known” (who can twirl one breast clockwise and the other counterclockwise simultaneously) are credited with that.
“Her orgasms ore so incredibly musical,” they say,” we had to include one of them in the guitar solo on the song ‘Stone Cold Bush!”
“I’d have to soy her bush is warm,” says Anthony.
“No,” says Flea. “It’s hot.”
The most touching experience that ever happened in Anthony’s life was when “this unknown Los Vegas stripper bent over in front of me at the strip counter, plucked a single pubic hair and blew it towards me like a kiss.” The closest either Pepper comes to mentioning the sex organ in question is when Anthony says, ‘The fruit the band most associate ourselves with are bananas. We’d love to have a little oval slicker of our faces appearing on every one.”
The conversation turns to how much they would like to be on “The Cosby Show” as the adopted sons of the Huxtable family. Then they offer a few tips for girls who want the Peppers to like them: “Treat us like dogs, ignore us, turn your noses up at us. And if we ask to call you, say ‘Oh, I’m not feeling very callish.”
“The last girls in the world we’d ever want to be,” says Flea, “are the Bangles.”
It isn’t until 21 minutes into the conversation that “penis” is finally mentioned. “My favorite form of torture,” Anthony reveals, “is the old shattered glass tube up the penal shaft.” But this admission is hardly as indictment of penis fixation. If anything, the Peppers have an anus fixation. Flea’s favorite form of torture, by the way, is having to look on Milli Vanilli’s “ugly anus face.” Last year, the band the Peppers most liked to pick on was the Pet Shop Boys. “Those guys,” says Flea, “are truth and soul personified”
lt isn’t until the very end of the conversation, when penis envy comes up, that Anthony finally hits the nail on the heed: ‘All women wish they had one,” he exclaims. “And we’d Ike to say that ours are available.”
Are the Red Hot Chili Peppers really obsessed win their penises? “No, though on exact reproduction of ours, cost in gold, can be soon hanging from the neck of LL Cool J in his upcoming video:”
—Scott Cohen