Me and My Friends #56 - Hank
When Flea and Anthony moved in with Bob Forrest in mid-1983, they received a lot more than a new place to rest their heads. Like any good new friend, Bob exposed Flea and Anthony to new experiences and new ways of thinking. He had a few years on them, and an expansive record collection as well. One of the new artists Bob exposed them to (along with, according to him, George Clinton) was Hank Williams.
By that point, Williams, the Hillbilly Shakespeare, had been dead for 30 years. A superstar in his day, basically permanently at the top of the US Country chart, he was one of those tragic stories, like Jeff Buckley or Buddy Holly, here and gone in a flash, whose short life seemed destined to be short.
But for the comparatively small amount of time he was here, he left behind a body of work that influenced Elvis, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and everyone else who wound up playing rock music. If you've played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas you've heard his song "Hey, Good Lookin'" I'm back in Palomino Creek just hearing that.
Hank's tale is one that's old as time and that tends to keep getting repeated: he took Black blues music and cleaned it up for a white audience.
In that sense, there's no wonder the Chili Peppers wound up covering him.
Here's Bob holding a copy of a Hank Williams' Greatest Hits compilation from a Scratch magazine in 1983:
You can't tell in the crop, but Bob's doing an impression of Hank there. Nestled on that compilation was a track called "Why Don't You Love Me."
Within a year, thanks to that introduction from Bob Forrest, the Chili Peppers - by which I mean Flea and Anthony - would go from ostensibly not knowing about Williams at all, to covering "Why Don't You Love Me" on their debut album.
And for all the strangeness of that first album, the dated sound, the odd musical choices, the uniqueness amongst its younger brothers - this song may be the strangest part. But that doesn't mean it isn't fantastic.
It's a WEIRD choice, even considering the complete stylistic difference between the two acts. It may have reached #1 on the Country charts 33 whole years previous, but by 1984, "Why Don't You Love Me" was almost a forgotten song. I'd say it was like a song from 1991 being covered today, but that's not quite right; these days we have far more familiarity with, and connection and access to music from the past. But if you didn't grow up with a country loving parent, listen purely to oldies/country stations or find yourself trawling through someone's record collection, this just wouldn't have meant anything to you. So high marks for the young band there.
It's an original choice, and it's original music too. Listen to an instrumental version (this was done with MVSep) and it's pretty much its own song, pure Chili Peppers. It's not difficult to imagine Anthony singing his own lyrics over this. In this sense, it's a little unfair that the band had to hand over all of their royalties (what little they were at the time) to the Hank Williams estate. Surely they should have able to keep 50% of them at the very least - the music doesn't resemble Williams' at all.
Now the song itself. The intro is "Can't Stop," "Dark Necessities" and "Tippa My Tongue" decades early. The verse is a fun romp - nothing stunning, but a good groove. In the early days, before Anthony became more used to the idea of singing, you can tell when he used to mask his discomfort by putting on a voice (live, this came across even more). In this track, one of the earliest moments in his career in which he moves away from rapping, he covers up any insecurities he might have had by putting on a silly voice through the whole thing (part of me wonders if he wishes he could re-do the part at 1.51, when his voice breaks as he says "curly"). But considering the unique nature of the song - the fact that the band are playing it at all - here the weird voice kinda fits.
But I'm not here for the verse. Where this song really takes off for me is the post-chorus, when Cliff starts to tickle the toms and things get really interesting and unique. The battle between Flea & Anthony and Jack Sherman & Andy Gill has been well documented; the younger men wanted thrashing punk, to essentially record a live show. The elder two wanted to create something more radio-friendly, yes, but they wanted something more interesting in general, to be allowed to add overdubs and moments of prettiness. Granted, that probably contributed to a lot of the album's dated sound, but that sound is sometimes its best feature.
In this track, Jack and Andy won out, and thank heavens they did. As Anthony starts to dwell on not feeling his lover's touch for "a long, long while," the toms settle into a gallop and the acoustic guitar, which has been countering the electric part throughout the verse, starts to be strummed more intently. The use of acoustic is sparing throughout the album; off the top of my head I can only recall it also appearing in "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes," but it's always used to sensational effect. A slide guitar, drenched in reverb, appears as well. Not something you usually equate with punk chaos.
And don't even get me started on the bouncy riff the xylophone adds that subtly backs everything up. I wouldn't say it starts to feel spooky, but this part is almost a different song altogether. What could have been pretty standard early Chili Peppers fare turns into one of their first instances of gorgeous studio over-the-topness.
And then when it goes back to the verse, the "regular" band come back, and the two juxtapose each other nicely.
The band haven't played this track since 1985 (although there's a slim chance it got played at a show in '86 that didn't get recorded), and in a catalogue full of forgotten songs this sits almost at the bottom of the list. In fact, it was the first song from their entire oeuvre that they stopped playing. Even "Baby Appeal" made it to the John era.
But upon The Red Hot Chili Peppers release, they were elated with the song. Anthony said that he considered it an honor to cover Hank Williams. They even used to open shows with it. Flea makes special mention of it in his liner notes for the album's reissue in 2003.
And so I wonder what caused it to be jettisoned not just from their regular rotation but their entire history, left on a stage one night in Nashville and never returned to again.
There are a couple of recordings of the band playing the song live. One is with Jack on guitar, in Columbus, Ohio in November 1984. It's a fairly faithful recreation, and after the first verse Jack plays what in the studio version is a horn line (in its second appearance he has a little fun with it). Listen also to that interplay between the drums and bass in the solo. That's a tight band. You only get this kind of telepathic closeness after sharing 60 stages in 60 days, which by this point they had.
The second recording worth highlighting is one from less than a year later, with Hillel in Jack's place. There's nothing particularly revelatory, but it's one of the rare instances of Hillel playing the song, and you can detect that he hasn't really put much effort into learning it. They play the verses much funkier, Hillel turns the horn line into a mini solo (I think he forgets what he has to do at first), and adds a wah-wah ooziness to the second section, where Jack had played it as it was on the record. It's a messier rendition, but it's different enough to take at least take a cursory look at it. I'm curious how John would have played it.
We all know that the self titled era of the band barely resembles the band today. And while I like to think that over the past few years, myself and a few other fans have put in the good work to try to improve this era's standing amongst the community, there's still a ways to go.
A lot of this is down to the line-up. Jack Sherman, God rest him, is still the black sheep of the family. And even the more universally accepted Cliff Martinez has been out of the picture for 30 years. Add that to their eventual change in sound, the Frusciante emergence, it's no wonder that this part of the story tends to be forgotten.
I won't be doing a sequel to my book (not just because the title "1984" is already taken). But there's more to mine from this era. It's an important part of the Chili Peppers story. If I can have one person a month reconsider the band's first two albums, I'll consider that a success. Maybe this letter will help.
H.