MOJO WORKING
IN THE STUDIO THIS MONTH…
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Title: Stadium Arcadium
Due: May 9
Production: Rick Rubin & Red Hot Chili Peppers
Songs: Tell Me Baby, Wet Sand, Snow, So Much I
THERE IS a downside to being over-productive. “It was excruciating,” says Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis of wheedling down from 38 to 25 the songs on the band’s forthcoming 2-CD set, Stadium Arcadium. Kiedis, his three bandmates and producer Rick Rubin gathered in Rubin’s library for close to three hours and voted on the 25 tracks to be used. “We actually didn’t spend so much time trying to convince each other that one song should make it over another, but there was a lot of guffawing and ‘You’re kidding me. I can’t believe that…”‘ Kiedis says. “So it was more like disgrunded acceptance rather than a petition.”
As difficult as the editing process was, it was all “worth it” according to the singer. “I don’t know that we’ve ever been so enthusiastic about a record of ours,” he says. “Everyone was feeling confident and comfortable in their skin leading up to the recording process. None of us had been undergoing any personal, psychological bummers in our lives. It’s hard to get four people that are all kind of peaking in the same place at the same time and all of us were. And once you start a fire it gets contagious.”
That vigour is carrying over to plans for the subsequent tour. Among those songs Kiedis says he’s most looking forward to playing live are Wet Sand, Snow which he says is “made for live”, and So Much I, a tune he describes as “a bit more explosive than some of these other tracks”.
At press time, Stadium Arcadium was still in the mixing stage. As a result, Kiedis found his favourite songs constantly changing. “What happens is some songs come up and some songs kind of plateau. There’s a song called Tell Me, Baby, which is a very bizarre tune ‘cos it’s this real busy, unconventional kind of funk verse with a very pop chorus, but after the mix it just became quite simply one of the best songs on the record.”
With 25 songs spread over two discs, the music covers a wide range of styles, but for Kiedis the end result of Stadium Arcadium is about the emotional connection he finds with the songs: “I listen to it almost every day because there are such a wide variety of emotions, textures, ideas, and little adventures going on in this record; some of it’s comical, some of it’s deadly. And I listen to it ‘cos it connects me with a feeling I want to have.”
Steve Baltin
The Buzz. ” Every song is completely different. There’s heavier stuff than the band’s ever done and there’s a lot of beautiful soaring melodies, and there are also light things that are really beautiful.” John Fnuciante