March 28, 2019

Me and My Friends #3 - Rising again in 1998, part 1

Hi folks,

First up - apologies if the banner that used to accompany this letter was too wide, and made it hard to read the text. It's gone now - and if you want to read those old entries without having to scroll so far to the left and right, you can do so here.

When I first started writing this, I thought I'd focus purely on the band in 1998, after John's return. But the words just kept coming and coming, and I got to 1300 words before he was even back in the band. This will be part 1 of a 2 part newsletter. Look out for part 2 in a week or two.

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The Red Hot Chili Peppers began the year 1998 in a state of complete inactivity, over the hill and on the verge of breaking up. But by the end of the year, they were refreshed, ready to be on the top of the world again. Their biggest album was about to arrive, and with it a truly Lazarus-like rise from the bottom.

This is, of course, due to John Frusciante's return after Dave Navarro left the band, and the refocusing of Flea and Anthony's attention. But did the year really unfold exactly how we were told it did? Let's take a closer look...

We have to start in 1997. It has famously been called the "year of nothing" for the band, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Thirty or so concerts all over the world had been lined up, but they were mostly cancelled after Anthony shattered his wrist in a motorcycle accident in July. ¹ It was another piece of bad luck for the band that had suffered greatly; Chad had broken his wrist playing softball only two days before their fall 1995 tour of the US was due to start, crippling One Hot Minute's fortunes in the process. By the time they reconvened in 1996, things were never quite the same.

They did play one gig in 1997, the Fuji Rock Festival, on July 26, just a few weeks after Anthony's accident. But as (bad) luck would have it, that was abandoned after only eight songs after a typhoon hit the mountain earlier that day. As an aside, I find it puzzling that they didn't play their planned show in Korea on July 30, and elsewhere in Asia afterwards. They were already in the area, and were obviously capable of playing, so why the cancellation? Perhaps the fee for Fuji Rock was just too good to pass up (Anthony suggests this was the case in Scar Tissue).

Once back in the United States, they unraveled further. Anthony relapsed again, and in the later half of the year, Flea and Dave toured with Jane's Addiction and put the RHCP on the backburner entirely.

After being in and out of rehab, Anthony met up with Flea and Dave after the November 22 show in San Francisco.² You can see him in the Three Days documentary at the 1:02.51 mark. Also present was John Frusciante. He would later say:

I saw Anthony at a Jane’s Addiction show. He was really nice, I liked him a lot. He wasn’t on drugs, but I was, and he wasn’t judgemental. He used to give you a bad vibe about pot and drinking, but then he was just cool. He came to visit me a few times in the hospital and he was really nice. Things had changed…

Rock Sound, July 1999

John being at the Jane's Addiction gig made sense; he loved the band, even if there was the awkward ex-girlfriend thing going on. During his time out of the RHCP, he was around his ex-and-future bandmates more than one might imagine: Anthony visited him in rehab in December 1995, Flea, Chad and Anthony were all present at a solo show he did at the Viper Room in January 1997, he and Flea had played together at a Thelonious Monster show in March 1997... the list goes on, and these are just the meetings we know about.

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Once the Jane's Addiction tour was over, it was time to think about the RHCP again.

Three shows, previously postponed from July to September because of Anthony's accident, had been lined up in Las Vegas, Alaska and Hawaii. This time, however, Chad had the motorcycle accident, and the shows were moved to late December. Rehearsals took place, and some work was even done towards a new album, but the band cancelled the shows again on December 22. In January of 1998, Dave, after several weeks of being openly derisive about the upcoming shows, admitted that they were unprepared for them anyway (he also admitted that he had been taking heroin again).³

Those aborted rehearsals were the scene of the Dave-falling-over-the-amp story, as can be read in Scar Tissue. Dave recounts that story himself here, also stating that he could barely play a note at the time. I mention all this because it's interesting to read the official, press-friendly version of events from those contemporary interviews, then look back on them knowing what we know now. The drama has been completely glossed over.

After that final cancellation, which was probably the last time the Navarro-era RHCP were all in the same room together, the band took some further time off in January. Flea and Anthony went on vacation for a month, while Dave and Chad worked further on the Spread side-project they had been toying with.⁴ By that point, Flea was also thinking about doing a solo album.

Here’s where Frusciante comes back into the fold. The timeline gets fuzzy here, but bare with me. Most of this is me thinking out loud, and digging through old news reports, trying to find a coherent thread. John's return was hinted at several times, and news of it even leaked ahead of its official announcement.

John entered rehab for the final time in January of 1998, and left in February, renting an apartment in Silverlake. While he was in hospital, Anthony visited and they rekindled their friendship somewhat. Shortly after that, Flea and Anthony went on their holidays to the southern hemisphere.

This report from February 1998 states that Anthony and Flea "settled their differences" while in Australia together. I wonder what differences they might have been? Had they decided to fire Dave by then? Was the band on the verge of imploding, and this "settlement" saved them? Perhaps this holiday was the scene for the discussion about John's return, which Flea had been considering. Anthony has recounted the story, in which Flea brings up the idea of John returning, several times; in the Oral/Visual History, in Scar Tissue, and elsewhere.

Also in February was the news that John was going to team up with Perry Farrell for his Gobbelee project. As far as I'm aware, this never ended up being released, but it shows that he was forward thinking at the time, and willing to be a part of the industry.

By March, Dave was stating that the RHCP weren't his priority any more. And throughout that month, Flea said he was planning on focusing on his solo record instead of the RHCP.

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Long story short, at some point in the first few months of 1998, Dave was fired. The news was announced on April 3, but I have a feeling it really happened a lot earlier. The initial press releases said that it was a mutual parting, but later, both Flea and Dave admitted that he was, in fact, asked to leave. Dave was also quite open about the fact that he thought John should return to the band.

After Dave left, Flea took (another!) holiday, this time to Costa Rica. While he was away, Anthony bought John his '62 Strat. In this article, Flea says that he went away after asking John to join the band.

I went off to Costa Rica for 10 days just to get away.

and here, in this interview:

I went off to Costa Rica because we had to fix things with Dave and I didn’t feel good. I came back thinking I’d make a solo album and the day I got back my doorbell rang and there was John holding a guitar Anthony had just bought him.

News of Flea being in Costa Rica is also given on this update on the official RHCP page (which hints at the upcoming news). That's dated to April 18, and if Flea was spending ten days away, then he left the country in early April, just after it was announced that Dave left the band. Which means that he asked John to join pretty much immediately. Or, perhaps, there was a little bit of an overlap.

This is a complete guess, but I actually think that they only released the news about Dave leaving so they could proceed with John. I think the move to get John to join the band happened in March, not April, and they kept it under wraps for the first few weeks just in case it didn't work out.

(Or perhaps, they only fired Dave once they realised John was available.)

Take a look at this article from the May 28th edition of Rolling Stone, which would have been written in the period between Dave's firing and John's hiring:

It highlights John's availability, as if they have some insider information. Why bring him up if there wasn't some reason to? Was there perhaps some leak from behind-the-scenes?⁵

Here's some more insider information, thanks to the legendary, and now sadly defunct Been Insane website. An April 18, 1998 post, which is sourced from their message board, states:

...it's going to be a bumpy ride as of this evening John is officially back in the Peppers! Anthony and Flea and John just had dinner together and it is 100% on. Personally I prefer John's solo work but the Peppers are certainly at their best with John in the mix. so congradulations to all who were wishing for this

This is ten whole days before the official announcement, and it's also sourced from April 18, when Flea was apparently still in Costa Rica. Remember, in those days, the news didn't hit the internet immediately; it took days for it to reach down phone lines and onto creaky slow desktop computers.

Separately, on April 22, All Star had this piece of gossip on their website:

A little birdie told us that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been tossing around the name of John Frusciante, the band's former guitarist during their Blood Sugar Sex Magik heyday, as the possible replacement for the recently departed Dave Navarro. One source close to the band says it's happening, while a source somewhere within the world wide web of Warner Bros. says it had been discussed but that it won't happen.

Not only is there a confirmation within that, there's another source that says it isn't happening, which is interesting. It means that the news was out there, being spread around and shifted and misheard.

The anonymous source returned to the Been Insane message board a few days later:

"Anthony told me that John and the Peppers have been playing together everyday for the past three days. He says that it feels good, and sounds exciting and new (almost like a garage band) I haven't asked John his feelings about it, but I can say that when I saw him on Monday, he was in the the best spirits I've seen him in ages."

I have no idea who that source is, but I'd love to speak to them. How were they so close to the action? I also need to say how much it breaks my heart that the Been Insane message board has been lost to time and server deletion. There was a lot of incredible information there that can't be retrieved...same goes for the Stadium-Arcadium forums. If you've got any stories from those times, please get in touch.

The news that John had rejoined was finally announced on April 29, and they (Blackie) state that they've known about his return for "a month or so". Perhaps they've just exaggerated the three week period in between April 3rd and April 29th, or perhaps this is more evidence to suggest that he was asked to join in late March.

The news was also broadcast on MTV. Anthony mentioned that it was spring, that the birds were out, that the bees were fucking, and that John was back.

Video footage of this little promo is supposed to be circulating, by I've never seen it, only this image (he still wears that shirt, painted by Clara, to this day).

There was also this set of quotes from the CEO of Birdman Records, who put out John's second solo album:

It's great to get him in a room and hear him play the original version of 'Breaking the Girl' ... it's beautiful.

(Now what the hell does that mean?)

So there you have it. From inaction, to the depths of drug abuse, to motorcycle accidents, to desperate holidays on the other side of the world, to a possibly sneakier-than-they-let-on switch in guitarists, they were back. Bruised but not broken. On April 21, 1998, John, Flea, Chad and Anthony got together and started playing music again. What happened next? Stay tuned...

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I understand that to the average fan, this is all boring minutia. But there are a couple of interesting aspects. Firstly, it's fascinating to watch the band crumble and reform in almost real time, especially when we get to look back on several incidents with the knowledge of what actually happened. It's also incredible to dive back into the internet as it existed in the late 1990s, even if it is a completely hair-pullingly frustrating experience, full of 404 messages. Thirdly, I think the band are good at creating their own narratives, cleaning things up and misremembering their history, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. I think I might have uncovered a slight case of that happening here.

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If you were at one of the shows on the 1998 tour, or if you were on the RHCP-internet back in 1998, please get in touch! I'd love to hear from you!

Love,

Hamish