Me and My Friends #50 - What If Stadium Arcadium were weirder?
It's May of 2006, and the weather outside is miserable. Black clouds ink out the sky, and when thunder and lighting aren't cracking the day in half, the drizzle is relentless. The ground is a soggy bog, and news of flooding elsewhere in the state dominates the news.
Luckily, the mailman - cheery somehow, despite his wet socks and shoes - has just delivered a new LP, a sorely anticipated one from your favourite band. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been all over the world in the last four years, and you've rinsed their latest album By the Way completely. Last year they entered the studio, the same one they recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magik in, and have finally emerged with something new. You pre-ordered it immediately, of course. But four years is a long time. Lots can change in four years.
As you crack open the cardboard, and peel out the matte-finished record, you wonder where they've been. What they've got to say. What kind of things have happened to them, and how that's going to come out in the music. By the Way was interesting, different, smaller in scale and less popular on the radio than 1999's behemoth Californication. The early press-reports for this one are interesting; apparently it's quite epic, with lots of guitar overdubs and a wide range of influences, from Krautrock to the dreamier aspects of Jimi Hendrix.
But there's nowhere else to be, and so you pour yourself a glass of wine and stoke the fire some, and see what the oddly-named Stadium Arcadium is all about.
First impressions: the cover art is strange - is that an out of focus feather boa, or is the sky on fire? Hell, the last album was pretty bleak at points, but this looks downright apocalyptic (although of course it still manages to reference Los Angeles). The back cover shows the band splattered with feathers, also red.
Stadium Arcadium is probably the band's most varied album, if only because of how much of it there is. "Tell Me Baby" sits on the same album as "If" and the same album as "Readymade." Add in the b-sides and you start getting straight reggae and "metal" (or at least the closest the RHCP ever get to it). But like every double, it benefits from a bit of culling. Even the White Album has bloat.
Now, I'm glad it's a long album. The more the merrier. All long albums, especially double albums, are a treat for fans, and they're usually the ones that attract the most prolonged debate about what needs to be done with them and what could be done with them. But it's more of a buffet than a meal, especially in this age of streaming, where even in shorter works you just pick what songs you like, and the flow of an album means a little less (see Rick and John's recent conversation on Broken Record).
Sure enough, everyone's plate looks different in the end. There are some people out there who think "Especially in Michigan" is an essential RHCP song. They're wrong, but they're out there, and that's wonderful. Unlimited Love and Canteen are going to wind up having the same thing. In fact, it's already happened; we've all already seen those custom "one album" versions. A million different Unlimited Dream's already exist.
It was fun to try to skew By the Way into a different kind of thing just with a re-order and the addition of a few B-sides, so let's take a trip through universes and see what it would look like if Stadium Arcadium were w e i r d e r... Cue up a playlist, light a fire (in a fireplace) and join me.
I've come to realize, the short version of this newsletter is: what happens when you take most of the radio friendly pop songs off SA. All of the funk, too.
I love those songs. "Dani California," "Snow," "I'll Be Your Domino" - hell, I've even come around to "Hump de Bump," but sometimes that feels like Stockholm Syndrome. But the band are so much more than that type of music. This is them in the Twilight Zone, with the lights down low and the venues smaller.
Side A
Animal Bar
She's Only 18
Hard to Concentrate
Desecration Smile
Lately
Slow Cheetah
So Much I
Torture Me
The stylus lands, there's a few moments of that wonderful gravelly pop hum, and Side A begins with "Animal Bar." At the start this song feels like a peaceful stroll through a forest clearing, but it actually winds up being heavier (especially towards the end), than you might think. It begins as a Neu! pastiche and turns into a King Crimson freak-out with pummelling choruses. I've made my love for it known elsewhere.
The heaviness continues with "She's Only 18," which is a beautiful mix of sludge metal, syncopated riffing from Flea and John, and problematic lyrics from Anthony. What makes it interesting is that it's a lot slower than it could have been; the band lean all the way back and don't get ahead of themselves. But after that explosion, we're given a breather for the next entry. "Hard to Concentrate" sounds like jellyfish floating through the stars and involves some wonderfully restrained guitar work from John. Chad's kick drum and the percussion drives it more than one might realise.
"Desecration Smile" is next, and it's probably the lead single in this universe. A poppy, driving, McCartney-esque song that uplifts you as you nod your head to the beat. In this universe, I'd hope that the band get a few bars just to drive by themselves once the drums kick in.
This is the beginning of a triptych of acoustic songs, and it's something that I think wold be a very rich vein to mine for the band in the future: John playing acoustic guitar, Flea on electric bass, Chad on drums. They do it occasionally (the chorus in "Bastards of Light" is a recent example, but it comes out a little too country there) but it's rare when a song is actually built around it. This is three in a row. "Lately" is a heart-break headbanger with some of John's coolest guitar work, and is extremely economical: over in under three minutes. And when "Slow Cheetah" ends with its psychedelic, reverb-heavy, backwards coda...
(If I could change anything about "Slow Cheetah," I'd probably wipe John's solo from the final chorus. Sacrilege maybe, but I feel like it just gets in the way.)
Bang. You're shocked back into things with "So Much I" - a really unique, bass-driven song that shows John at his most complimentary. And that chorus is a winner. No wonder they treated it as their sort of final single for the album, playing it a bunch of shows towards the end of 2007, including at the globally broadcast Live Earth, and in this moment of delightful foreshadowing.
"Torture Me" follows, a song that explodes out of the speakers almost uncontrollably, and featuring a John solo that should really praised up there with his other classics. Flea brings his trumpet out and the band pull off another one of their perfect "overcast" songs (I won't be explaining that - it either makes sense or it doesn't). This song was played live before the album came out (in our universe, that is) and I remember the response to it being quite tepid. The bootleg wasn't a great recording, and it sounded a big dreary and ballad-y. Was quite a shock to hear the final thing.
As that final "Torture me please..." disappears into the ether, the needle pops off the wax and goes back to its home, you try to process the first side of the album.
Processing can wait. All you need is a refill. Side B is calling.
Side B
Turn It Again
Hey
Strip My Mind
21st Century
Wet Sand
We Believe
Death of A Martian
There aren't any track times on the back cover of the album, and the disc is too far away to see how wide those grooves are, but wow - "Turn It Again" just keeps going. It starts off as a funky, almost Talking Heads style ode to dancing, a sort of mature progression from the days of "Get Up and Jump," but then the outro comes along and John really runs with it. It's a hell of a thing, an absolute master-work of one man (and his engineers) completely taking over a track and turning it into an orchestra of guitar (conversely, I'd love to hear what the basic track sounded like before all those overdubs). Recently John said that he wasn't prepared to have to tamp down his ego for a tour after making this album. I can see why.
Before you can straighten your wig, "Hey" starts, a light and jazzy number that is the type of track that could be played almost any way. Heavier, with a focus on the downbeat of the drums, giving it a heavy, rollicking feel, or even lighter: give Chad some brushes, lean back a little bit, and Madeleine Peyroux could do a great version. John's solo (supposedly flown in from another take of the song) again takes centre stage, but really it's Anthony that shines here - the man can sell that heartache when he puts his mind to it. This is a great, all-time RHCP song, and it's the perfect counter-piece to the chaos that is "Turn it Again."
The respite doesn't last very long. The stabbed opening chords of "Strip My Mind" brings the pulse straight back up. There's a lot to love about this song, whether it be John's backing yodel-vocals or the solo, but one of my favourite under-rated moments is the guitar line that arrives after the first chorus. I think it's one guitar that's been put through an octave pedal, but it sounds like it's swimming through the song, from speaker to speaker and the inside of your head. And then that end arrives, and the needle is just about to jump out of its groove.
"21st Century" follows - perhaps the earliest song written for the album - and it's maybe the funkiest the band get on this entire disc. Scratchy guitar, wobbly bass, but in the choruses that heavy metal aspect comes back, and at the end John soars once again. Have the words "oral sex" and "bird migration" ever been put together before? Probably not.
"Wet Sand" seems as if it's going to be a quieter, reprieve of a ballad, but nope, they build on and on and on. In fact, each song here seems built to be as epic as possible. By the Way was epic in an orchestral sense. This is epic in the headbanging, overdub-overdose, arena sense. This is the band doing a cross between "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Burning of the Midnight Lamp." And it feels like a very different band from the last album.
Another bit of sacrilege: I think Flea is too busy in this song to the point of distraction. There's not just playing the root notes, and then there's basically soloing in the middle of a song. I'd settle it all down a little bit. But maybe that's just me.
The final stretch. "We Believe" and "Death of a Martian" are the only natural closers, especially when we've already gotten a few of the other contenders out of the way. "We Believe" is another groovy song that builds and builds to an epic outro, and utilises what is becoming a bit of a repeated technique for Flea; the children's choir. I love how the song and the band seem to shut down like a faulty machine at the end, Anthony's vocals swimming in phaser.
And what needs to be said about "Death of a Martian" - this is the only place it could go, it's destined to be the final song on the album in any universe.
If I were making a documentary about the band, a bit like the Behind the Music special, I think Anthony's spoken word bit in "Martian" would accompany a final career-wide montage. From wild, young things up on a tiny club stage with Hillel by their side, to shots from the "Higher Ground" video, to John leaving and Dave arriving and Dave leaving and then John leaving again - bootleg footage and photos and everything all interspersed - this epic outro would be the perfect soundtrack. It's uplifting but chaotic, a little dark but a little light.
Now, you know "Death of a Martian" is the final song, but the needle hasn't lifted off the groove yet. Or perhaps if this was a CD, you wouldn't have heard that wonderful (probably nostalgic to lots of people by now) sound of the player doing that thing as it ends, with the disc slowing down and the laser turning off. There's a few seconds of warm, popping silence... and the music starts up again.
Huh?
"A Certain Someone" isn't my favourite Chili Peppers song. A few years back I made the case that it was actually the least consequential song, whatever that means, in the band's catalogue.
But in the spirit of "Her Majesty" and "Endless, Nameless" the band have put it here as a bonus track. It's a pretty, slight little ditty that shocks you back into focus after the draining end of "Death of a Martian." It's the perfect kind of bonus track. One that (and I'm sorry to say this) you wouldn't miss if you didn't know it was there. But who would reject it as a bonus?
A few minutes later the needle finally lifts, and your thoughts are all over the place. Fourteen (really fifteen) tracks that go from heavy metal to acoustic, from weed-tinged Laurel Canyon pop to a dying satellite crashing into a faraway moon. A very reasonable hour and ten minutes spread over two sides. That was your first listen to Stadium Arcadium. Or at least it was in this universe.
No slap bass. Very few silly lyrics (I think Anthony only says California once). The occasional dirty groove but nothing really in the way of pop-funk the Chili Peppers are known for. The sequencing is intentional and gave me more grief than you might think; Side A is the lighter part, Side B is when the "epicness" really amps up. It mirrors the real-world album in a sense. But this is a wholly different thing. No "Dani California" or "Storm in a Teacup." I could see "If" on this album, but not "Hump de Bump." It's a classic rock album.
This album has existed the whole time, of course. But with a little rearranging and some playing God, it's a whole other look at what is possible. The band gave us so much back in 2006 that we could tinker endlessly and make our own little worlds. Here's one of many. What do you think?
I'd put all this in a Spotify playlist so you can listen along at home, but as it's the 50th (!) instalment of this newsletter I thought I'd make it special and actually create the album as if you're really visiting my weird little universe.
DOWNLOAD HERE. (If this goes down, please get in touch.)
This is a v0 mp3 copy of my version of Stadium Arcadium. Fully tagged with artwork, and sourced from a very high quality rip of the vinyl copy of the album, which sounds far, far, far, far superior to the CD version (blast it in headphones and you'll see). "Lately" and "A Certain Someone" are from CD sources, but I've integrated them and adjusted the volume so they don't sound too out of place. I've normalised the audio, tagged it fully, and it should be playable in any music player, on your phone, etc. Yes it's piracy, but you all own the album anyway. This ain't hurtin nobody.
Thanks for reading, and indulging me over these past 50 letters. It's been a delight.
See you next time.
H.