Me and My Friends #45 - 6 thoughts about The Getaway on its 6th anniversary
The Getaway turned six years old today, which feels like yesterday but also feels like a worryingly long time ago. Six years? Obama was still President, we'd never heard of a coronavirus, and John was still in the wilderness. Look at how much has changed, and how much hasn't. Strange times.
I won't belabour the point: it's a real shame the band will never address this album's existence ever again, along with I'm With You and One Hot Minute, but I suppose there's no real point yelling into the void about this, so I'll just have to do the appreciation for them.
Here's six little thoughts about a beautiful piece of work.
One. Whether or not they look back on the experience positively is a whole other matter, but I very much appreciate how experimental this album is for the band, especially one 30+ years into their career. They'd made a name for themselves doing one "type" of music, recorded live in a room together, with certain aspects expected of them, and these sessions with Danger Mouse threw a spanner, a wrench, and a load of other tools into the works. Drum loops, separately recorded parts done into a computer, songs made up on the spot instead of laboured over for eight months (with overdubs lasting five more) - it was something that I'd always wished they had done, simply because they'd not done it previously. The results? Hit and miss, but mostly hit.
I adore "The Getaway," "Dark Necessities," "Go Robot" and "Encore." And I think "Feasting on the Flowers" is fun... until it just turns into a remake of the halfway point between "Happiness Loves Company" and "Even You Brutus?"
The other songs that existed before Danger Mouse got involved, like "Goodbye Angels" and "The Longest Wave," I think belong in the RHCP Hall of Fame. The latter is top 3 RHCP riffs.
Two. But there are other moments from those ~experimental~ sessions that fall extremely flat, like "We Turn Red," which feels like something the band would make if they had to write a song at gunpoint. I was very worried when this song dropped as the second "teaser." Very worried indeed.
Three. I'm a fan of Danger Mouse's production, but I'm not sold on some of the choices Nigel Godrich made during the mixing process. While I'm glad they went with him - I think it's wonderful to just hand your entire creative piece over to someone who is able to change it so considerably, especially the dude who has been behind the boards for Radiohead - but he seemed to have a bone to pick with Chad, and hide his drums behind a layer of flange and reverb. Clearly the band (i.e. Josh) felt a little disappointed with his choices as well, because when it came time to release "Goodbye Angels" as a single, they had Andrew Scheps (who did a lot of I'm With You) remix it. It's like night and day, suddenly Chad is there again. If only he'd had the chance to do "Sick Love" as well.
Four. Speaking of "Sick Love," the solo section on this song has quickly become one of my favourite little sections of Chili Peppers music ever. Not just the guitar, but Flea's bass behind it, and the wonderful drums which, again, I wish weren't reduced to washed out, tea-towel covered, neutered slaps (though I do enjoy how each cymbal crash pulses around your head).
Here's a wonderful video of Josh going over it backstage at a 2016 show. If I remember right, we hadn't actually heard the song when this was uploaded. (In a recent interview, Josh recalled that he had to record that solo the night before the album was sent to mixing.)
Five. As far as album art goes, I think The Getaway is second bottom for me in the band's discography, only beaten to the nadir by I'm With You. It's not bad, it just doesn't do it for me, and doesn't suit the music in my opinion. Does anyone else remember Flea tweeting the original painting and asking who did it? He found out, and it was quickly deleted, I think. A few months later, it showed up as the cover, and that tweet made sense. Here's the artist's website.
Six. I'd like to finish at the beginning. There's a Red Hot Chili Peppers album that opens with a hi-hat loop made by a mouth, drum machine (?) drums, with a really understated, supportive, intertwined bass and guitar part, that features a female guest vocalist, and wraps itself up in a few tidy minutes as this perfect little ditty. It's enormously catchy, delicate, poppy, mature, and... it just rules. It's not the version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers we were told to expect. When I'm With You came out, I loved it, but I couldn't help but notice it sounded just like a RHCP album was supposed to sound. Perhaps it was Josh doing his best to fill a position, perhaps it was Rick moulding the band the only way he knows how, who knows. When "The Getaway" started, and The Getaway followed, it was a beautiful sign that now the band was trying something really fresh and exciting. When you look at the band as they exist now - which I love as well - it's like the album didn't even happen. But it's there, and I'll keep coming back to it. It deserves it.
Bonus. A few months back, a Twitter follower got in touch and told me that he had seen a Youtube video featuring an instrumental version of "Dark Necessities." Normally I don't pay attention to things like this, because they're usually fan made (don't get me started on those fan-made remasters), but I had a listen and... hmm... this was real. I passed the video along to a few friends and they took the lead, striking up a relationship with the original uploader. Turns out this guy had a CD-R copy of The Getaway, sourced from, I think, the mixing sessions, that was full of instrumental and "TV" mixes. My friend asked if he could hear them, and this guy shared the whole disc with absolutely zero ego, asking for nothing in return. A real gentleman.
The instrumentals are a lovely curio, and occasionally revelatory - I had never heard the piano doubling the main riff of "Feasting in the Flowers," for example, and there's an alternate version of "Encore" that features a Neil DeGrasse Tyson monologue (which thankfully got edited out). The "TV" mixes are basically instrumental, but they have the odd backing vocal, usually from the chorus, pop up inexplicably. My guess is that they were shipped around to TV stations and production studios by Warner Bros. as a kind of backroom deal to get songs from the album played on shows and ad-breaks in sporting events. I have no real idea, but that's all I can think of when they're called "TV" versions.
Nestled inside these instrumental versions of the tracks, which are also unmastered (another win), were two other songs called "On The Bright Side" and "Outer Space." This was a surprise. These two tracks (thanks to another friend we know from Josh that "...Bright Side" was eventually named "Kaly") were scrapped at the last minute and removed from the album. With the band uninterested in looking one step behind them and John returning, we assumed there was zero chance they'd ever be heard. But here they were, and not instrumental, they were the full tracks, and they were the only full versions of any of the songs in the entire collection. It was like they had been set aside by someone knowing they wouldn't be available elsewhere.
These wonderful songs were released (fun fact: the person who asked Josh that question in the link above is the very same person who leaked it) and it was a strange but jarring time. This all happened in mid-March, meaning it was a week or two from Unlimited Love coming out, but here we were getting the last of the Josh era. You couldn't have timed it better. One door closes and another opens.
The good? "Kaly" and "Outer Space" are phenomenal songs, which I immediately adored from note one. "Kaly" in particular has been stuck in my head since the first time I heard it.
The bad? "Kaly" and "Outer Space" are phenomenal songs, which I immediately adored from note one. Why the hell did the band leave them off the album? Josh says shorter albums are better, which -- okay. But how did these two tracks lose to "Detroit" and "We Turn Red"!?
My only idea is that maybe "Outer Space" sounded too close to "The Longest Wave," and that the band didn't like Anthony's vocals on "Kaly"; they sound a little rushed and... I don't know, like he's crowding the mic a little bit? I have no idea.
They could have released a 7" to go with their US tour in 2017, and it would have been a dream come true. Money in the bank, people happy, their work gets put to good use. Instead a fan had to leak it.
They've been all over the internet for months, but if you haven't heard them, here's a link. The rest of the instrumentals are in here too.
Happy birthday to a beautiful album.
See you next month. Book news soon!