RHCP Interview in Loaded (UK Magazine)

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Squitherwitch

An interview (with mostly Anthony Kiedis but Flea also talks about the track Ethiopia) has been published in Loaded magazine in a feature on the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s new album? I’m With You? in the latest edition.

Here’s an extract:

And there’s no missing the most distinctly named bassist in the world. With his turquoise hair and matching tracksuit he dicks around on his guitar while talking at several million words an hour. Before we’ve even asked the obligatory question about the new album? he’s off. “There is a song called Ethiopia on the new record?” he starts. “Did you know I got lost out there?” It’s crazy? right? But I totally did.

“Damon Albarn has started his African Express Project? where basically a group of musicians go to a different country in Africa and jam with Africans? listen to African music and trip around. It was fucking amazing. So? Josh and I decided we’d go to Ethiopia. One day? we got the bus somewhere? before I got out to check this little side road. I turned around and the bus was gone. I was totally lost. I walked around this little town for about an hour. No one speaks English there and it was kind of crazy. I started getting really scared.” He looks scared even now? telling us about it.

“People were coming up to me and speaking to me? but I didn’t understand. I was tripping out with all these people staring at me and speaking to me. Eventually I managed to track down this guy and started screaming at him that I didn’t understand. But then? I thought? hang on so I do. So he found my friends and was totally nice. I told that story to Anthony when I got home? he wrote some lyrics and it became the song. To me it reflects the feelings of never letting fear dictate anything? only love.”

Full scans and transcript HERE

If you can please buy a copy of the magazine- I picked it up yesterday so it should be available for people in the UK to buy

New Magazine Scan Added

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Squitherwitch

I’ve just added the scan and full transcript of an Anthony Kiedis interview from 7 Nights which is a supplement with the Sunday Mail, a newspaper from Scotland (UK). Here’s an extract:

But after the group’s tour of last album Stadium Arcadium in 2007 (the album became the group’s first US number one and also went to the top in Britain), John quit and Josh joined in 2009 after a self-imposed two year hiatus.

Anthony said: “One of the bits of karmic joy was that at a point in time where maybe it would be difficult to keep it fresh, along comes a shift in our lives, whereby John decided that he wanted to do something else, creating an opportunity for us to be fresh again.”

There was no fall-out with the band that includes other founding member Flea on bass and drummer Chad Smith – and it seems Anthony doesn’t have a real reason, or one he’s giving us, as to why John quit.

He said: “Maybe he wanted to start off by doing something fresh on his own and maybe somewhere in the recesses of his mind he wanted to create an opportunity for us to do something fresh without even knowing it.

“It wasn’t even a divorce, it was like ‘mission accomplished, go rock out, we’ll see you somewhere along the way!’”

The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie, the group’s first single in four years following the 2007 release of Hump de Bump, is now on the radio ahead of the album I’m With You, Josh’s first with the band.

He fills Chili guitarist shoes that include John, Dave Navarro and Jesse Tobias – but Anthony doesn’t think Josh should be intimidated.

He said: “Josh has played with PJ Harvey, The Sparks and Cee Lo Green of Gnarls Barkley, so really I had some flipping big shoes to fill.

“Those are like a whole gang of strong vocalists that he’s accustomed to playing with.

“But does anybody care about the shoes I had to fill? No, I didn’t think so.”

Anthony is excited about the new Chilis line-up. He said: “It feels fun and like a good fit, and I think more will be revealed when we start playing live and doing things like that.

“Musically I think we’ve reinvented ourselves in the best way possible where it’s still The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but it’s the Josh Klinghoffer era of Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Full scan and transcript HERE

RHCP Article in The Sun (UK)

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Squitherwitch

The Sun has done a follow up to yesterday’s interview with Anthony Kiedis about Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album, I’m With You.

John Frusciante Being Stalked

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Squitherwitch

Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante believes he’s being “stalked” by an obsessed female fan … claiming “I am worried that she is unstable and that she could snap at any moment.”

Frusciante filed the request in L.A. last week, saying a 32-year-old woman named August Elizabeth Thomas approached him in 2010 in the hopes of writing a screenplay about his life … but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

In the docs, Frusciante claims Thomas began firing off aggressive emails and letters — described as “long, rambling and overly emotional — and in some cases, she would admit that she is ‘often drunk.’” He claims Thomas also showed up to concerts where his rocker wife Nicole Turley was performing to talk about her script.

Frusciante — who played off and on with RHCP since 1988 — says the final straw was when Thomas showed up to his home on July 28 … and AGAIN on July 29. Frusciante explains, “I feel like I’m being stalked.”

He adds, “I fear both for my safety and for my wife’s safety. Given that my wife and I are musicians and often play at venues around the world, it is hard for us to avoid Ms. Thomas if she is free to continually show up to harass us.”

Both sides are due in court later this month. Calls and emails to Thomas were not immediately returned.

Source

RHCP Secret Gig! SPIN Review

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Squitherwitch

SPIN have now posted their review of the secret RHCP gig at Big Sur on the 27th July; it also includes a FULL set list

Here it is:

On Wednesday night, Red Hot Chili Peppers debuted new songs to an intimate audience under the stars in Big Sur, California. Their appearance at the Henry Miller Library was announced only three hours before the band took the stage, and it was free for the 300 lucky fans and friends who made it through the worn wooden gate.

Rounded out by guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who replaced John Frusciante, as well as a percussionist and keyboardist, RHCP performed five songs from their long-awaited, Rick Rubin-produced tenth album I’m With You (due out August 30), interspersed with a handful of crowd-pleasing classics.

“We got new songs, we got old songs in the deadhead redwoods out here,” said Anthony Kiedis cooly, wearing a tuxedo jacket and an OFF! trucker cap. A towering pine behind him was lit by a pink strobe. The air smelled green and felt damp. It was a surreal space for the band’s iconic funk-punk.

But Flea apparently lives nearby and visits the library frequently. According to the show’s presenter, coastal promoter Britt Govea of (((folkYEAH!))), the bassist called him personally to set up the gig about a month ago. The venue’s executive director Magnus Toren said RHCP paid for the entire thing.

A shirtless, blue-haired Flea joked at the beginning of the set: “Anybody who knows where I live, now’s a good time to rob me. Because, you know, I’m here.”

They opened with one of the Afro-funk-influenced new ones, “Monarchy of Roses,” a darkly burbling high-energy pop song spurred forth by a barrage of percussion. The audience embraced the unfamiliar song without any prodding.

The same was true for the fittingly titled “Ethiopia,” which was inspired by a trip Flea and Klinghoffer recently took to Africa at the behest of Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn. Congas and scatted vocals prevailed over a jittery groove reminiscent of Talking Heads.

“Look Around” too seemed to be made of a dozen slight interlocking parts, suggesting a more subtle musicality than heard on RHCP’s last album, 2006′s Stadium Arcadium (from which they played the slap-happy “Charlie”).

As befit the mood, and Klinghoffer’s artful, melodic guitar style, the band favored songs from 2002′s By the Way, swaying through the epic-yet-subdued “Universally Speaking,” vamping (aurally, of course) for the slow and sexy “Don’t Forget Me,” and quietly building to a furious funk crush with the album’s titular single.

The coziness was the real draw — at one point, the guys took turns playing parts of the new single “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” to Flea’s 6-year-old daughter, Sunny Bebop Balzary, as she danced on the edge of the stage — but the Chili Peppers saved a little spice and hellfire for their encore, when they surprised all by launching into “Give it Away.”

The sylvan wonderland seemed an odd place for slam-dancing, but a devoted few gave it their all from the grass in front of the band, while the rest rocked, rapped, and thrashed along a bit more quietly. But by 11 p.m., the forest seemed to have swallowed every sound as the lights faded and the crowd trickled out to Highway 1.

Setlist:
Monarchy of Roses
Charlie
Ethiopia
Universally Speaking
Look Around
Californication
Factory of Faith
Throw Away Your Television
Parallel Universe
The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie
By the Way

Don’t Forget Me
Give it Away

Thanks to Brendan & Andjelka for this

RHCP in Rolling Stone

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Squitherwitch

A brief write up about Red Hot Chili Peppers is in the current edition of Rolling Stone:

Transcript:

Chili Peppers Restart the Groove Machine

Red Hot Chili Peppers

“The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie”

It’s reassuring to realise how little the Chili Peppers have changed in the five years since their last album- or in the two decades since Blood Sugar Sex Magik for that matter. So what if John Frusciante quit (again) during their most recent hiatus? The remaining members seem to be the same lovable goofballs as always. Their big comeback single, from August 30^th’s I’m With You, has everything you want from the Chilis. Flea and Chad Smith cook up a juicy funk-pip groove with plenty of cowbell, new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer kicks in some rangy riffs and Anthony Kiedis woos a wild child with the type of come-ons only he can deliver with a straight face (“Ticktock I want to rock you like the Eighties”) before leaning into a huge, pleading hook. Welcome back, dudes.

Thanks to Melanie for the scan

New Issue of Q Magazine 2011

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Squitherwitch

I know things have been kicking around from this for days e.g. a cover (this was the limited edition cover with less text than the general release edition; I now have both and the covers for both are scanned in high quality; other sites were using the advert photo for the limited edition cover taken off the eBay advert) and a transcript (which isn’t the whole thing btw) but we now have the WHOLE magazine interview scanned and FULL transcript available on site.

Here are a few extracts:

Q:If the Chili Peppers’ story were a movie, what would be the dramatic high point?

AK: Oh, Jeez, come on! So much drama! But obviously Hillel’s death was the biggest loss and turning point of our young lives at that point. To be 26 years old and lose your left heart ventricle was probably the most dramatic thing that’s ever happened to me in my life… But I love our story, for better or worse, for the pain and the gain. We’ve all been little bitches from time to time, and we’ve all grown up along the way too.

F: All the stuff that’s gone down, it’s been difficult. But because of that difficulty there’s also been great opportunity for rebirth, each time. I have learned to be grateful for challenges, because I know, as hard as it is, something great always comes. The two things cannot exist without the other.

CS: What I do know is that I would not want Will Ferrell to play me in that movie.

Q: How was it for you, Josh- joining a band with such a shared history and having to fill someone else’s rather imposing shoes?

Josh Klinghoffer: I couldn’t begin to think that I’d ever replace [Frusciante]. So I could only resolve to and do something new with these guys.

AK: As beautiful as John’s shoes were, I don’t think that we ever expected Josh to be like him – just bring out some new shoes. Josh has incredible footwear.

There’s also a full page interview with Anthony Kiedis talking about Brendan’s Death Song, a track from I’m With You, in depth.

Enjoy

Full Magazine Scan is in our scan collection HERE

If you live in the UK, this new issue of Q went on sale TODAY so please buy a copy from newsagents. You can also subscribe to Q and find out more at Q Magazine’s website

RHCP I’m With You Interviews and Articles

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Squitherwitch

Obviously, lots of the world’s music press are running news features on Red Hot Chili Peppers and their forthcoming album, ‘I’m With You’. This is a round up of what’s been released in the last couple of days:

RHCP: Rolling Stone July 2011:

In-depth article by Rolling Stone Magazine with all members of the band; song details, information on Josh Klinghoffer and his role in the band, etc.

Full scans, download link and transcript: Rolling Stone July 2011

Rick Rubin Interview:

Billboard also ran an interview with Rick Rubin; he talks about his current projects and obviously there is mention of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album:

Red Hot Chili Peppers: The group’s “I’m With You” comes out Aug. 30, following 2006′s “Stadium Arcadium” and marking the debut of new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. “Josh is fantastic,” Rubin says. “He played with John Frusciante for many, many years and he actually toured with the Chili Peppers before, so he’s sort of part of the extended family. He’s stylistically very close to John but has a completely different trip. It sounds like the Red Hot Chili Peppers that you’ve never heard before.” Rubin says the group was prolific during its sessions and could well have done another double-disc like “Stadium Arcadium” but ultimately “felt like we did that. It was painful not to share all of the material that we had, but we felt it would be too much. We really wanted it to be 12 songs but it ended up being 14 just because nobody could agree on which 12.”

Full interview on Billboard here

Kerrang Article:

Kerrang! July 2011 Full transcript in link

Article from Israel:

I’m With You Israeli Style: A very detailed article from Israel- full scan and translation.

Thank you to Andjelka, Ofek and Shalhevet for helping keep us informed!

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Not totally connected with the new RHCP album, but I’ll add the links here anyway. The current edition of UK magazine Q, is number 300 and to celebrate Q have done a look back at the previous editions and put together several features on them e.g. yearly summaries, etc. and RHCP are mentioned in them a couple of times:

RHCP mentions for 2002 and 2007

John Frusciante interview about drug use (1999)

I’m With You Album and Tour Latest News

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Squitherwitch

I’m With You …

The interviews continue to be released e.g. An Argentinean radio station posted about their interview with RHCP’s Chad Smith and Anthony Kiedis and added four photos taken during the interview e.g.

(The I’m With You TCS image gallery has been updated with all of the photos released today)

so we’re expecting even more interviews/photos to be released over the coming days. Although we might have to wait slightly longer for the other RHCP interviews conducted over the last couple of days; I was in the car earlier today listening to UK radio station Kerrang! and the presenter, Loz Guest, mentioned that he’d been out in LA interviewing the Red Hot Chili Peppers about their new album and then went on to say the interview wouldn’t be aired on the station until closer to the ‘I’m With You’ release date in August.

BTW If you buy any music magazines over the next few weeks and there’s a RHCP interview in it and you can scan/photograph it, we’d really appreciate the scan to add to our RHCP magazine scan collection.

I’m With You Release dates

The official RHCP site has posted that the album will be released on the 30^th August 2011 but other websites worldwide are posting slightly different dates e.g. several prominent UK based music sites are giving a release date the day before on the 29^th August and apparently the German branch of Warner Bros is giving a date of the 26^th August for the release of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album in Germany. New albums tend to be released on different days of the week worldwide and it seems the varying dates being given are probably a reflection of this so therefore, some countries might see a release of ‘I’m With You’ a couple of days before the 30^th August date scheduled for the US!

John Frusciante Returns?

It seems that the somewhat expected rumours of John Frusciante appearing on the album have started to surface; apparently one source is stating that Frusciante makes a guest appearance on the title track, ‘I’m With You’ but this is currently unconfirmed from any other source (the evidence for believing this person seems to be that he rightly predicted the album would be released on the 30^th August; however, Chad had already stated the album would be out in the last week of the month and new albums in the US are always released on a Tuesday so working out an accurate date, wouldn’t be that hard) but we’ll keep you updated if we find out any more – but for now it is just an unconfirmed rumour.

EDIT: There is no title track on the album so JF can’t be appearing on that; a reliable source informs me that that the person posting this rumour has no insider knowledge and the fact they said JF appeared on the title track when there isn’t one seems to confirm that- think the album date was a lucky guess as was explained.

RHCP Tour Updates

Dave Rat has posted on his blog that the Red Hot Chili Peppers tour is scheduled to last until 2013 which is much longer than anyone expected!

Transcript:

Here comes summer sunshine and time to jump back in to making the world a louder place to live in. Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album coming out at the end of August directly followed by a world tour schedule that keeps rolling through 2013. Bye bye home. well, not really as Peppers tend to travel a 3 week on, 2 week off pattern so I wont totally disconnect from the world I currently live in. Plus with my daughters now 15, I am planning to have them take turns coming out to visit on and get in some travels and adventures. Oh, and the first gig is in Hong Kong, never been so its always cool to go to a new city.

Australia RHCP Tour Update

Chad Smith mentioned ages ago in an interview that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were going to play Australia on their world tour but this was confirmed by Flea in an interview released yesterday; he also said he thought they would be playing Oz in 2012:

“I think some point in 2012,” said Josh, before Flea jumped in saying “We’re not ready to announce shows yet because we’ll probably get beat over the head with sledgehammers by our managers if we say the date but we are doing a whole world tour and Australia is in the plans.” If it was the beginning of 2012 could there be a Big Day Out appearance, possibly? “I don’t know if we’re doing that or what we’re doing but we’re coming to play Australia for sure and we can’t wait to get there. [We're] looking forward to it,” Flea reiterated. (See earlier post for full interview, links and audio)

I’m With You News Video

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Squitherwitch

From Artisan news; a short video about the RHCP, with an old interview clip of Anthony Kiedis, talking about the completion and release of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album, ‘I’m With You.’

Interestingly, it has some footage of the Chilis performing at the MusiCares gig back in January 2010 and it’s the best footage of that I’ve seen but unfortunately there was no sound- Give it Away played was playing in the background of the whole clip

Red Hot Chili Peppers fansite, news and forum – thechilisource.com

Red Hot Chili Peppers fansite, news page and forum with dedicated RHCP magazine scan and articles section featuring Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Flea Michael Balzary, Josh Klinghoffer and John Frusciante.

Category Archives: John Frusciante