Me and My Friends #48 - Arik the Freak
Physically, Arik Marshall seems an unlikely candidate for Pepperdom. He’s tall and gangly—not a pumped-up pectoral in sight. And although he’s just in his early 20’s, his black hair is thinning on top. Searching eyes look out from deep sockets. There’s something both familiar and exotic about his angular facial features.
Guitar World, November 1992.
In countless other letters, I've mentioned that one thing about this band I adore is that they've taken so many different forms over the years. There's been the core, immovable duo of Flea and Anthony, and Chad has obviously had his spot on the drummers' stool for longer than I've been alive. But that permanently-changing guitarist position, well... it's what keeps them fresh when they feel themselves grow stale. It keeps them nebulous.
Besides, what else would we argue about if they'd had the same guitarist this whole time?
John left the band on May 7, 1992 and on July 4 of that year they were playing a festival show in Belgium with Arik Marshall. 58 days. Take into account that there was about 10 days in which Zander Schloss was going to be the guitarist, the short period in which they had to audition other guitarists (including Buckethead) and then settle on Arik, travel days, weekends, and that's what...30 days? Three weeks? Imagine finding out back in early August that today you had to play a show with a band you were only vaguely aware of, who had a five album back catalogue, and that the first show would be to sixty-thousand people. Same amount of time. Inconceivable.
He dealt with all this pressure by sleeping. The motherfucker would sleep all day and all night, then get in the van on the way to the show and sleep some more. But he never let us down in concert. He just stood up there and played his ass off.
Scar Tissue, pg. 299
If you're unfamiliar with Arik's playing, a good place to start would be the two pro-shot shows from his time with the Chili Peppers. At least I think these are the only two. His whole period with the band was tenuous as it was overexposed. He was there and then he was gone. There are periods of hyperfocus, and then there are weeks at a time where we have nothing.
The first show is in Auckland, New Zealand, on October 28, 1992.
The second is in Rio de Janeiro on January 21, 1993. His solo on "If You Have to Ask" in particular is all fireworks; it's easy to see why they were so impressed with him. He's got a liquid way of playing, very effortless seeming. Dave had the same thing, which - for all his talents and positive qualities - John never did.
In later years, Arik played with Macy Gray, and was her touring guitarist as she blew up in the early 00's. And he's had a few solo albums.
"...with the Chili Peppers it was sticking to what had already been done by Hillel and John. My strong point is not what I play, it's how I play it."
Fornication, pg. 254
Arik did play things virtually the same, sticking to John's parts basically as he had played them, and the same goes for Jack and Hillel's parts. Someone in the crowd who had no idea about all the dramatic goings-on behind the scenes could reasonably assume that the guy on stage was the same person who played on those five albums.
There was the occasional person who did it know it was a new guy, though:
Though I was slightly dissapointed in their song picks and the
lack of enthusiasm of their new guitarist Arik Marshall(sp.?)
I wouldn't say Arik was unenthusiastic. For one, he was probably overwhelmed with what was happening. Who wouldn't be? But at the same time, he was a little cooler, a little more aloof; a laid-back player that stood in one spot and swayed to the music, keeping to himself as opposed to jumping all over the stage. He said that he had been told that with him, things had a bit more swing. I can see that.
But not everything Arik did was a 1-for-1 copy of John. Take a look at the last recording we have of John playing "Give it Away" before his first departure: he keeps to that twangy, clean sound from the album that he still uses to this day. But Arik, and in the years afterwards Dave, occasionally added an almost metal component to it. It wasn't just that they played with distortion, but they slowed the whole thing down. It sounds like as if Tommy Iommi was playing instead, and going off the connection that Black Sabbath already has with the song, that's a nice fit.
One thing he did which I adore, and which Dave also continued to do: taking Flea's bass part and doubling it towards the end of the song.
Arik's a lot like Jimmy Nicol, in one sense. There during a very busy time but completely replaced on either end, and so when you look back at photos of this period, something sticks out as looking off.
At Adelaide Town Hall, there's a picture of the Beatles replicating their visit to the balcony there, when 350,000 people turned up to see them. In one corner of the picture, there's an explanation for curious visitors as to who this other guy is: Where's Ringo?
Looking at these pictures, one can't help but wonder: where's John? Where's Dave? We become so familiar with one version of the band it's jarring to be reminded that there was another that existed for around eleven months, that played more than 50 shows, that, had Flea's chronic fatigue and Anthony's dengue fever not interfered, would have played a lot more. When I see a photo of the band with Hillel, Jack, John, Dave, or Josh, it's a familiar thing - I know that band. But when Arik's there, it's like a peek into an alternate dimension.
The Arik Marshall era of the band - June 1992 to May 1993 - was very important. It kept them together, laid the ground work for the rest of the 90s, and ensured that they had the rest of their career. They were big before John quit, but the later months of 1992 is when the real explosion happened, even if it was the kind of explosion whose fuse had already been lit. It's like they were an ocean liner by that point; it took a few months for the noticeable change to happen.
During those months, the band were on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, won a Grammy, were on The Simpsons, headlined Lollapalooza, toured in Europe, America and Oceania, and sold millions of records. And it was all piggybacking on work he didn't do.
But he did do some work. He showed up for fifty-odd shows, and played amazingly at every one of them. He wore those fire helmets, which by his own admission scared the shit out of him. He filmed the "Breaking the Girl" video, which - and I could be wrong about this - might technically have been his first actual appearance with the band, before he even played a show. The video premiered in September 1992, but by that point the band had been on tour for two month's straight. The only free time they had was pre-Lollapalooza, and pre those European festivals. Add the time needed to edit and animate, and it could only have been filmed in late June.
I can't even imagine the overwhelming surreality that he must have been feeling in those few weeks.
He gets one entry in the Oral/Visual History. In the index, he's mentioned the same amount of times that Spinal Tap are.
We only have setlists from about half of the shows that Arik played with the band, and so there's a chance some of the facts below aren't 100% accurate. However, once the Lollapalooza tour got into full swing, there was almost zero variation in their choice of songs from show to show, so we have a pretty good idea of the bulk of what he played.
The songs he performed the most: "Give it Away," "Higher Ground," "Nobody Weird Like Me," "Magic Johnson," and "Stone Cold Bush."
The songs he performed the least: "Blackeyed Blonde," "Out in L.A.," "Backwoods," "Freaky Styley" and "Subway to Venus."
That "Out in L.A." performance, on July 19, 1992, is the last time the band played the song, unless you count this performance, which I have a feeling was only a short tease, and not the full thing.
That's the song that started the band; their entire impetus for being, their opening song for about nine straight years of performing. It all ended here, with Arik on stage.
Songs from Blood Sugar Sex Magik that Arik (and by that I mean the band) never played, even though they were ostensibly on a tour to support that album:*
The Power Of Equality
Breaking the Girl
Funky Monks
I Could Have Lied
Mellowship Slinky In B Major
The Righteous and the Wicked
Naked in the Rain
Apache Rose Peacock
The Greeting Song
Sir Psycho Sexy
They're Red Hot
*Unless, of course, they were played at shows where we don't have the setlist. I doubt they played a sneaky version of "Mellowship Slinky" only the once.
Arik told a great story on his Facebook page about one of the last shows of the Australian tour in 1992. The band intended on doing the socks as an encore; something to blow off steam, perhaps, after a few busy months of turmoil. Arik, the shy one who kept to himself, and just wanted to play guitar, refused to do it. But he kept that fact from the rest of the band until they got on stage. The daggers from Anthony were just as vivid twenty-five years later, and he was given the cold shoulder for the rest of that trip.
I have a feeling he's either blocked me or deactivated his account, but his Facebook was quite interesting when it was active a few years ago. The majority of his posts were about the band, and the majority of his friends (including me) were Chili Peppers fans who were only there because he'd played a bunch of shows with them two decades previous. But he pretended that wasn't the case, or at least he tried to. He had interesting things to say; he was clearly sick of talking about the band, but totally aware why we were all there, so there was this begrudging acceptance every few days. Questions were answered, impressions given, and none of them very positive. I remember him saying once that all Anthony wanted to be was Iggy Pop, which interested me. I guess I can see that, but I think Anthony thinks of himself as more of a Bowie than an Iggy.
But what do I know?
"With the Chili Peppers," he explained, "all you've got is the bassline and the drums and Anthony going 'ta-ka-ta-ka-ta-ka-ta-ka' - you've gotta come up with a lot of shit to make him sound good."
Fornication, pg. 254
Arik's last performance with the band was playing "Give it Away" during a Grammy ceremony in February 1993.
Here's that performance, which features all 237 members of the George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars (including, I think, Blackbyrd McKnight, playing with the band for the first time in five years). Pretty easy to miss Arik. He just fades into the background.
A few minutes after this performance, he'd win the award for that very song, which obviously, again, he had absolutely nothing to do with. I wonder if it was ever sent to John, and if John was in any state to appreciate it or accept it.
In April of 1993, the band recorded some demos featuring Arik on guitar. Rumour has it an early version of "Falling Into Grace" was worked on here. These recordings are right up there with the rest of the holy grails for me. Early "...Grace" aside, there's either a bunch of completely unique Chili Peppers songs there, or there's a bunch of embryonic versions of stuff that ended up on One Hot Minute. Let's hope they haven't burned up in a warehouse fire.
"The tour went well [...] but when we got back and it was time to start rehearsals for the new record, Arik seemed really aloof and removed, not really into it. Showing up late and stuff. He could jam, but when we started writing, for whatever reason, he didn't really flow. [...] So one day we sat down with him and said, 'Arik, are you in and committed to this band, or are you feeling like neither here or there about it?' We got a lukewarm here-and-there hand wiggle in his reply. We were like, 'Okay, we'll get a new guitar player.'
Afterwards he was really bummed - he said he just meant he wasn't happy about some things, but if they got better he'd be so into it.
No one's fault - just the situation. Arik is a great guitar player. We sure were lucky to have played with someone of his stature as musician.
Flea, An Oral / Visual History of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, pg. 60
There's a million universes out there where Arik's hand wiggle never happened, and he stayed with the band for... well, the whole time, possibly. He could still be their guitar player today. Or perhaps they'd have broken up in 1993. Who knows.
Then again, I can't help but think every time Flea looked over at him during the Lollapalooza tour, he wished John was standing there instead.
And don't get me started on how thankful I am for the Dave Navarro era of the band. What wound up happening was fantastic, and I don't think the band would be playing in Charlotte tonight without it.
But Arik was there for a year, for over fifty shows, for a period that was just as long as the Jack Sherman era or the first Hillel era, and just as much a piece of the puzzle as any other member of this wonderful band.
And he is a hell of a guitar player. What a ride it must have been.
H.
P.S. I found this completely by accident during the course of writing this article. Going off the description, Arik's nephew was a student at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Too funny not to share - and he's a great player! I wonder if he and Flea ever had any fun conversations...