January 9, 2020

Me and My Friends #14 - Revenir

Hello friends, both old and new.

Still doesn’t feel real, does it? I’m still waiting for the pinch, the correction, the jolt back to reality. But who knows what 2020 will bring?

One thing definitely coming are a handful of live shows. ¹ The earliest confirmed dates are at the Hangout Fest, BottleRock and Boston Calling, all lined up for May but with their exact dates yet to be confirmed. As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, I think there will absolutely be a warm-up show somewhere in Los Angeles before these festival dates, but whether these happen in very late April / early May or sometime well before then – i.e. in a couple of weeks – who knows.

Flea will be appearing with George Clinton at a symposium in early February. If that were a concert, it would be a perfect moment to welcome John back into the fold. But I have a feeling it'll just be a talk. We'll see.

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John probably has his work cut out for him relearning his old parts while at the same time writing new music. And I couldn’t even begin to guess how long it would take him and the rest of the band to feel comfortable together again. Maybe it's immediate, or maybe it's a difficult process that takes a while to get past. We know that in the band's history there have been chemistry problems between entering members, and there's no reason this couldn't be the case now - even if John has already been in the band twice.

Funnily enough, over the past decade a question I’d always wanted to ask John was – if you had to, could you play a Chili Peppers song live, right now?

This was, of course, back when it was completely insane to think he would ever rejoin the band, and the idea was that we'd never see him with a Strat in his hands ever again. I’d always wondered if that kind of thing either evaporates from your mind basically immediately, or if regardless of his return, John would have been able to play "Californication" with his eyes closed until his final days.² Did he ever just sit there and play "Scar Tissue" one day in 2015, because it popped into his head?

When you perform this task so often for so long, does it just become a rote-learned muscle memory? I've played and written music before, and I've forgotten how to play 99% of it, but I didn't tour the world playing those songs five hundred plus times... so I don't really know what it's like. I gather it’s probably somewhere halfway between the two ends of the spectrum.

If John doesn’t play live until mid-May, that’s about six months between his re-joining and his stage re-debut. How does that compare with the other members that have joined in the past?

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Dix Denney, Cliff Martinez & Jack Sherman

Joined: ... not sure.

First show: .... not sure.

A lot of people forget that when Hillel left in 1983, he wasn’t directly replaced by Jack Sherman. Dix Denney, formerly of the Weirdos, joined the Chili Peppers at the same time Cliff Martinez replaced Jack Irons. But, as Anthony says in Scar Tissue, they had to let Denney go after things didn't gel during rehearsal.

But Jack Sherman says he didn't actually join the band until around Christmas. Flea and Anthony were in Europe during -- I think -- late September and early October. Meaning... the run of shows that started October 29 until the end of the year were actually played with Dix Denney on guitar.

That's not the way band's various biographies say it. This frequent blindspot is another one of those slight course corrections I want to make with my book, which is still plugging along nicely...hopefully by the time it's done I'll have nailed down the timeline a lot more concretely. Or maybe I'll be buried under an avalanche of Chrome tabs.

Hillel Slovak

Joined: Late February 1985

First show: March 2, 1985

Hillel rejoined the Chili Peppers in February 1985 and only played one show before going into the studio to record Freaky Styley.³

The best guess is that Jack Sherman's last show was February 16, and Hillel's first was March 2nd. I'm really curious what they played at his first show back - a bunch of Freaky Styley stuff, or just the originals that Hillel had written? Did he have to spend weeks relearning songs?

Jack Irons

Remember, it wasn't just Hillel or John that returned to the band after splitting once. Jack Irons returned to the fold in July of 1986, toured a heap, recorded Uplift Mofo, toured a heap, then left again.

But Cliff's exit wasn't smoothly followed by Jack's return. Chuck Biscuits most likely played about five or six shows with the band in May of 1986, and then Jack returned after What Is This wrapped up their run.

1986 and 1987 is a total minefield. I've tried countless times to try to create a timeline of all the comings and goings, and the demos recorded, and the Set it Straight sessions, and the kicking out of Anthony, but it's been completely impossible. One day, when this is my full time job, maybe I'll nail it down :-)

Blackbyrd McKnight

Joined: August 1988

First show: September 1988

Blackbyrd rehearsed with the band for a few days when Hillel was kicked out briefly in May 1988, but they decided to take him back just before their European tour, which would, sadly, prove to be his last. After dear Slim Bob Billy passed on, McKnight joined the band permanently, playing his first show in early September, only to be kicked out when John appeared on the scene.

John Frusciante

Joined: mid-September, 1988

First show: October 5, 1988

John joined (the first time!) in mid-September of 1988, and his first show was on October 5.

(As a side-note, I wonder if he'll grow out another one of those mohawk ponytails for his first show this time?)

Arik Marshall

Joined: June 1992

First show: July 4, 1992

John quit on May 7, 1992, and the band went on to Australia without him, trying to quickly slide Zander Schloss into the guitarist's position after only a few day's rehearsal. That didn't work, but when they went back to Los Angeles, they basically did the exact same thing with Arik Marshall, though in this case they gave him a month to prepare.

Dave Navarro

Joined: September 5, 1993

First show: May 30, 1994

Dave joined the band in 1993, but didn’t appear onstage until the following year. Much like Josh's entrance to the band, he split his time between learning old songs and writing new ones, and with no shows booked when Dave joined, there was no reason to cart him out on tour immediately. I wonder if it was at about this point that Flea and Chad got sick of teaching someone "Give It Away"?

John Frusciante

Joined: April 18, 1998

First show: June 5, 1998

I’ve detailed John’s (first) return in other entries of this newsletter, and it’s one of the only times we have a fairly detailed timeline available. I would, of course, enjoy something with a lot more detail... we have info, but we don't have enough.

Josh Klinghoffer

Joined: July 21, 2009

First show: July 27, 2011

On July 21, 2009, Flea called Josh while he was at a Dodger game, asking if he'd like to join the Chili Peppers. Josh actually declined to answer that day, but we know what his answer was eventually, so we'll use that date as a guide.

He didn’t play live with the band until January the following year, doing "A Man Needs A Maid" in honor of Neil Young. By then, it hadn't been announced that he was even in the band, though it was fairly obvious to all involved. That wasn't a typical Chili Peppers show, and they didn't play any of their own songs, so I'll put down his first "real" show -- almost two years to the day after he joined the band -- instead.

Aside from his time as a touring musician in 2007, Josh had also played live with the band in June of 2009, at a MusiCares benefit for Anthony. That he was asked to join the band a month later is probably not a coincidence.

The news of Josh's entry to the band came over a period of months, and went hand in hand with rumours that John had left. Someone working at the Alley rehearsal studio - where the band were writing what would become I'm With You - leaked the news on stadium-arcadium.com, but that was met with a lot of disbelief and stunned anger that John wasn't around anymore.

Come to think of it, the band did such a bad job announcing John's departure that we shouldn't have been surprised that they did a bad job announcing Josh's ten years later. I might dedicate a whole newsletter to this period, because it was fascinating and frustrating period that played out in real time on various forums and blogs, and it would be nice to lay it all out clearly somewhere.

John Frusciante

Joined: December 15, 2019

First show: No idea (yet).

There are rumours floating around that John's re-re-entry into the band has been a long time coming; almost a year, in fact. Various hints that looked like pure fantasy a few months ago now seem like they had an air of truth about them. But I'll wait and see what the band members say when, or if, there are any in-depth interviews before making any wild guesses.

It seems bizarre and a little cruel for the band to have been secretly preparing for John to come back, when at the same time they were writing new music and playing live with Josh, and even making a documentary featuring him.

But -- Flea's answers at a couple of those book tour Q&A's, especially regarding John, were interesting knowing what we know now... especially when they were followed by this Instagram post.

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I've said elsewhere that this band is so special because it keeps changing. That continues to be the case. I figured they'd stick with Josh for the rest of their careers, but whatever happened over the last few months must have felt serious enough that they needed to shake things up again, and now their trajectory has completely changed. Again. We're into a new era.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but one of the (many) things I dislike about Anthony's befuddling mustache is that he had it throughout the I'm With You and The Getaway era... in ten years, there won't be a clear delineation of what time period it is when you're looking at a photo of him, unless he's got that OFF! hat on. For the rest of his career, there's always been a defining change.

But this letter has gone on long enough. I'll wrap things up by saying that I've learned two things over the past couple of months: expect the unexpected, and stop making predictions. I'm excited for the future. Are you?

H.