Two of the Kerrang! magazines featured in this special edition, are scanned in full on the site:

June 1990 Kerrang! ‘Mister Muscle’ – full scan HERE

July 2002 Kerrang! ‘Extreme Generation’ -full scan HERE

 

2002 Overview article

BEFORE 1999 the Red Hot Chili Peppers were floundering — their previous album, ‘One Hot Minute’, hadn’t exactly set the world alight. Then the band released ‘Californication’ and, it seemed, the revival was on.

Still, no one quite believed they could maintain it… until 2002’s follow-up, ‘By The Way’, made them the biggest band in the world. Fifteen countries found the album at the top of their charts, and it led to the band setting off on a massive worldwide tour —featuring a particularly special secret gig at the 600-capacity Garage in North London, followed by a slightly larger show in front of 12,000 at the London Docklands Arena. The plaudits and awards rolled in — including a Kerrang! Award for ‘Best Band In The World’ — and it became very clear that the Chilis were, once again, a force to be reckoned with.

“EVERYTHING I did during that year had a purpose and it got me to a very special place,” recalled singer Anthony Kiedis to Kerrang!.

“All our hard work and attempts at discipline were all coming into a good thing. “I was shocked at how well the songs went down. I thought the song ‘By The Way’ was an uber-bombastic assault of non-commercialism. It was so well received; it’s a good feeling when that island of yours embraces our band.

“For us, the true experience of an album is the days and weeks and months we spend throwing music around the studio. After that we’re kinda like, ‘The world can do with this what it will’.

“Playing at The Garage was heaven; that was about as much fun as you can have playing a show. And I loved playing Docklands; it felt like 150° on that stage but I had a bunch of friends there and I had a great night. It was exciting and fun and made me really happy.

“2002 was a really good year and I didn’t realise it until the end. Sometimes you get so devoured by your own struggle that you fail to realise how many beautiful things are going on.”

This is taken from a full article published in the Kerrang! Yearbook of that year. Full article HERE

 

APOCALYPSE NOW

Woodstock ’99  Goes up in Flames

THEY MAY have shared a name, but Woodstock ’99 had very little to do with Woodstock ’69. Gone were the peace and love ideals of the original festival, replaced by corporate sponsors, mass marketing and high ticket prices. It was also moved from the original site to a disused airforce base – not entirely in keeping with attitudes of love and harmony. Worse was to come. The alcohol-fuelled crowd -upset by the mounting piles of rubbish, the poor sanitation and having to pay $4 for water in 90′ heat – started rioting. They ripped down lighting towers, attacked medical staff, and looted or burnt anything they find. The worst moment comes during Limp Bizkit’s set. It was reported that singer Fred Durst actively encouraged the crowd’s violence, urging people to “Smash stuff, c’mon y’all, c’mon y’all, c’mon y’all.” It’s something he later denied, saying: “Trouble just waits for the chance to put Limp Bizkit’s name on it.

“I mean, at Woodstock all we did was play a normal show and we came off – the next thing is we’re told that we’ve started a riot. When those guys were surfing over the crowd’s heads on plywood, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever fucking seen – I didn’t know that they’d ripped a damn building down to get it.”

Still, 10 people were hospitalised during his band’s set. More worryingly, eight sexual assaults were reported over the weekend, including gang rapes. The police were called in as the raging fires (started, ironically, with free festival ‘peace candles’) spread across the site while the Red Hot Chili Peppers were onstage, “It looks like ‘Apocalypse Now’ out there,” said singer Anthony Kiedis.

As Kerrang! journalist Don Kaye, at Woodstock to review the festival, put it: “Woodstock ’99 could have been mind-blowing. Thanks to the idiotic behaviour of some of the crowd, it will, sadly, be remembered for all the wrong reasons. As the State Troopers are called in, it becomes clear that ‘peace and love’ are most certainly not on the menu.”