Me and My Friends #30 - A Hot Minute: Walkabout
When you think about it, “Walkabout” really is quite a strange song. It has a traditional verse, chorus, bridge and breakdown structure, but it also stays at the exact same place throughout its entire duration. There’s no soaring chorus, or abrupt shift into different territory. Anthony stays in one place, taking the role of outback crooner. It’s almost spoken word. Maybe Dave was right to cringe at it from time to time, because it definitely feels like the band playing a specific part – acting, in a sense – but it’s also home to a variety of high points. A lot of which can be heard in the opening minute.
Occasionally I’m going to write about a certain minute-long section of the RHCP catalogue. Here’s the first of (hopefully) many entries.
Chad’s drumming is incredible in the opening section; especially his tom-work. His sense of time is, as always, impeccable. It’s maybe my favourite little piece of work of his. The band feel like they’re leaning all the way back into their parts. This is opening credits music.
Speaking of acting, and film, the song’s genesis is from Flea’s viewing of a movie. After seeing the film Crooklyn in May of 1994, he was inspired to write the bass line. The band obviously worked quickly, because it was played at Dave’s first ever shows later that month. At Reading in August, they teased it to an unknowing crowd. (Watch Flea try to convey a direction to the rest of the band just by nodding his head and lifting his eyebrows. If you’ve ever been in a band, you’ve been there.)
There’s a moment in the Stadium Arcadium commentary when Anthony enthuses about “Desecration Smile” as it moves from its opening to the first verse:
When you pull out of the intro, and you just start driving? I am jumping in that vehicle with you guys.
I agree with him re: Desecration Smile. But this kind of feeling, of a song hitting its second gear and really getting started, occurs for me in the closing seconds of that opening minute of “Walkabout”. Also of note: the unmastered version of the song, which extends the opening and bridge. It’s an undeniable groove, slow but thick. Chugging, swaggering. And once we hit the verse? We start driving.
Flea’s verse bass line feels like a natural progression from the Blood Sugar Sex Magik days. And it’s one of the rare songs on One Hot Minute in which Dave seems to be playing the part of “Chili Pepper” as opposed to being himself, and maybe that’s why he never liked it. He never really fit in, but that doesn’t need to be a problem. That they lost John and replaced him with a nipple-pierced, metal-inspired, goatee-sportin’ goth is a wonderful thing, because it gave us songs like “Warped” and “Shallow Be Thy Game”. And yet sometimes he was backed into a corner and had to do his scratchy funk impression, and do it as someone who had (by his own admission) never really listened to funk before. You can do interesting things when you play in the style of something that doesn’t come natural to you. Josh did something quite similar.
(That said, I think it’s potentially eye-opening to take a look at how often Dave falls back on the E7 “Hendrix” chord in his playing with the RHCP.)
I would never make a song I love my alarm clock, because it’s a surefire way to immediately start resenting the song. But if I could start every day the way the start of “Walkabout” feels, that would be a nice way to live.
I really like that opening minute.