Me and My Friends #65 - Blood Sugar Tape Questions
A few weeks back, an internal Warner Bros. cassette dated July 22, 1991 came into my possession. It’s an early, pre-release version of Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
Most remarkable about the tape is that it contained complete versions of “Breaking the Girl,” “Funky Monks” and “Sir Psycho Sexy.” Another track on the tape, “Under the Bridge,” is a sort of alternate mix that features additional guitar towards the choir part and coda. (Nothing else on the tape is unheard or really worth writing about.)
By complete, I mean the songs don’t fade out into silence like they do on the album. They’re as the band recorded them, on the day, coming to their eventual, hesitant (frankly odd-sounding) endings. We’d had a sort of preview as to what these proper endings sounded like with the Rock Band DLC a few years back, but these edits were, if this makes sense, a kind of edit of their unedited form. They’ve snipped off entire minutes of the complete thing to Frankenstein-in a suitable ending so the game could work better.
We’d had an even earlier insight into all this when the Sessions Tape (also known as the BSSM Rough Mixes) leaked in 2006, initially revealing the extended ending of “Funky Monks.” (This new upload is an upgrade, however, as the Sessions Tape version fades out before fading back in, and this one is completely unedited; more on that below.)
Still no news about the unheard VH1 holy grail, no, but hey, it’s 2025 and we’re hearing new music from the Blood Sugar era, so no complaints here.
What this also means, then, is that now we have another entry into the ever-growing list of alternate versions of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. A few years back, I wrote this letter begging whoever it was that leaked the Sessions Tape to either come forward, and/or help jiggle loose a better rip.
This new tape isn’t that. It’s a whole other thing, made (I think) later in the process.
We all know about Californication Unmastered, or, as they should be called, the Californication Rough Mixes. That album has a long, complicated set of “variants” that you can read all about here. But this new release has introduced some quirks into what I thought was a settled timeline of the BSSM era, so I suppose it’s time to sort out every variant of this album now, too.
Unlike Californication, these aren’t (in my opinion) “required” listening, nor are the additional bits of music all that essential. But they are a fascinating look into what an album goes through before it’s released. This is what it means to record for a big label, especially back in the day, with so many steps taken between the recording itself, and the plastic disc someone buys in a store a few months later.
These recordings go through so many different hands, hands that leak like sieves. Thirty-four years later, the leaks keep coming. Let’s take a look!
This is going to be a deep, deep dive into some really heavy minutia. Buckle up and put your nerd caps on.
P.S. follow me on Bluesky!
These are in what I think are date order.
“SESSIONS TAPE” (click to download)
This surfaced in 2006, and I’ve spent almost twenty years trying to figure out what it really is or where it came from (mostly because I’m the one that caused it to surface!). To me, it feels like what you’d receive if you walked into Mansion towards the end of the recording sessions, and asked the band for a copy of what they were working on. When journalist Lonn Friend is talking to the band about songs he’s heard during Funky Monks, it’s likely because they’ve given him a tape like this (or they’ve just played one to him).
Virtually every track recorded during the sessions is here, except for “They’re Red Hot”, perhaps because it hadn’t been recorded yet, the two Hendrix covers, perhaps because they never considered them for the album, and “Fela’s Cock,” because…? Well, because it was instrumental? Who knows. Most of the tracks are essentially complete, but there’s the odd little unfinished, unmixed section that reveals itself here and there:
no juice harp, guitar solo, or “Sweet Leaf” tease on “Give it Away”
no vocal effects, e.g. on the “Sikamikanico” bridge or the “Sir Psycho Sexy” scream
no rhythm guitar on “If You Have to Ask” (does that mean the basic track was recorded without guitar?)
unfinished mixes throughout; in one track the drums will be too loud, in another they’ll be too soft.
And so on. “Funky Monks,” which still has Chad counting-in the intro and is missing the “acoustic” guitar, fades out at essentially the point it does in the final album version… and then fades back in, which was a major revelation back in 2006. “Breaking the Girl” and “Sir Psycho Sexy” fade out. Not at the exact same point they do in their finished versions, but near enough that they’re basically matches.
Unfortunately, this only circulates in a 128kbps mp3 rip of what was already a fifteen year old cassette, and was possibly ripped incorrectly - hence my search for an upgrade. So the real joy of this thing is a little muted. People (myself included) have tried here and there to do some sort of dehiss repair to it, but the original rip is so low quality, with such a heavy buzz underneath, that, in trying to “fix it” you’re only going to introduce more artefacts than you’re trying to take out in the first place.
It’s a genuine curiosity, but the search continues (i.e. I’m hoping it just pops up in better quality one day; I mean if “On the Bright Side” and “Outer Space” can, this can too!).
“CHILI PEPPERS” TAPE
This one hurt. I was outbid at the very last second for this tape back in 2016; if I had won the auction, this would have all gone very differently. Imagine if the Hendrix covers hadn’t been released in 2006 - this would basically be the only clue that they existed!
Most of the intrigue regards “Me and Terry Teagle.” We know now that it’s “Sikamikanico,” even though we could have probably deduced that at the time: it’s the only song missing apart from “Fela’s Cock,” and the ever-absent “They’re Red Hot.” But there was still the thrumming hum of possibility that it was that mysterious VH1 song just waiting to be uncovered.
My only wonder now is that, seeing as the words “Terry Teagle” don’t appear in “Sikamikanico,” and they’re, you know - kinda specific - does that maybe mean that at one point it had alternate lyrics?
The phrase Me-and-Ter-ry-Tea-gle has the exact same amount of syllables as Sik-a-mik-a-nik-o, which is basically gibberish conjured out of nothing by Anthony anyway. Maybe they had to change the chorus, possibly because Teagle himself didn’t want to be referred-to like this in a song? (Or maybe the band were getting bored with naming songs after ball players.)
On the other hand, perhaps that’s not the case. The version of the song on the Sessions Tape has what we consider to be the final vocals: Anthony says “Sikamikanico” in the chorus, nothing about Terry Teagle. So maybe the song was just going to have that non-sequitur of a name at one point. 1991 was a time to celebrate the man; he became the NBA's all-time leader in career assists during the year.
The weirdness doesn’t end there. As we’ll see below, there were some additional changes made to these mixes before the album was released.
In the end, and unfortunately, a photo of the label of this one is all we have to go on here. Perhaps the person who bought it back in 2016 will feel like sharing it one day.
Or perhaps they’re even reading this…?
BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK “7/22/1991 TAPE”
The new arrival. As you can see, comparing this label to the tape above, they seem to be basically derived from the same source, but with a few songs taken off. The songs taken off are ones not on the final album, so it’s likely that this is a later, more refined “draft” of the finished thing, a round closer to completion. Take a look at that spelling as well. They’ve made the decision to spell it “Breakin’” but they can’t get “Righteous” or “Greeting” or “Monks” right? (Teagle is spelled wrong on the earlier tape, too.)
This resembles the finished album a little closer, which, according to the label, or at least the person who made the label, was apparently not titled yet. “Soul to Squeeze” is present, but again, “They’re Red Hot” is not, nor are any other B-sides. There doesn’t seem to be any order to the tracks, but maybe my brain is trying to find patterns here, because certain songs are lumped together the way they are in the final track list. Who knows.
My guess here is that this once belonged to some marketing or promotional executive at Warner Bros., and was provided to them so they could get their head around the upcoming release. It may have also been sent out to journalists, but I think that’s less likely; a label would usually sequence and master an album before the press officially heard it.
These seem like finished mixes, but there is the odd alternate moment: Anthony’s scream in “Sir Psycho Sexy” is different to the album version, and there’s that “Under the Bridge” difference I mentioned earlier. Otherwise the songs are in their complete, uncut forms. This is a guess, but this is probably because when Brendan O’Brien finished his final mixes (which is what this is ostensibly a tape of) some time in July, he didn’t incorporate any of the fades as we know them; that was something for Howie Weinberg to do during the mastering process a few weeks later.
So - why are there fades on the Sessions Tape? It stands to reason that it was made during the sessions itself, at an earlier point in time than this tape, because it’s missing certain parts of the recording. Why else would “If You Have to Ask” be missing guitar? Why else would the levels be completely out of whack in places? Why else would there still be Chad counting out pauses and breaks on his drum sticks? It’s like a movie having unfinished CGI - it’s just not done yet.
I would think they’d transfer the songs in their complete forms and worry about fades and such later, but maybe they already knew where and when the fades would be, so whoever compiled this little release incorporated a little pre-sequencing of their own. To keep the movie comparisons going, it’s like previsualisation. It’s hard to say for sure, but I think all three songs that have a fade were probably always going to fade out. Maybe “Funky Monks” could have kept going for its full six and a half minutes, but that’s a long time, no matter how good the bass line is.
A curio here is that, if you go back and listen to “Sir Psycho Sexy” on the Sessions Tape, it has what we consider to be Anthony’s final scream, the one on the album. The scream here, but mixed later, is different. (You can tell why they changed it.)
Then listen to “Under the Bridge” in the Sessions Tape. That extra guitar, heard on this tape, isn’t present - at least not to my ears. The guitar overdub in the very beginning, used as a kind of timer for John to record his intro piece, is mixed so loud it’s jarring - you wouldn’t really know there were two guitars hearing the finished version, but there’s no question about it here.
Shouldn’t the Sessions Tape version also have the additional coda guitar? Shouldn’t it have the alternate scream? Or were they done after the Sessions Tape was compiled, before this one was, then ultimately mixed out again? Maybe there was another small flurry of recording done in the last few days of the session. I guess it’s possible that on the day John recorded his rhythm guitar for “If You Have to Ask,” he also added an additional part to “Under the Bridge.” It explains why it’s missing from one and not the other.
(Just quietly, I’ve always wondered if they really recorded everything at the Mansion during May and June of 1991, but that’s a question for another time.)
Or maybe there were several mixes done of each track. A version of “Under the Bridge” done with that extra guitar, a version done without. “Sir Psycho Sexy” with Scream A and one with Scream B. Maybe John recorded a few overdubs during mixing. Maybe these tapes got compiled so everyone could listen, and then they decided to make a few further changes. Things get altered and fixed all the way up to mastering. You can see these kinds of decisions made elsewhere, like the 6/21/95 tape labelling a few tracks as remixes, or “This Velvet Glove” being (Bass Up Mix) on Californication Unmastered/Unsequenced.
I’m stumped. Answers on a postcard, please.
“UNMASTERED / UNSEQUENCED” (click to download)
If the other tape was dated 7/22, then this one feels like it’s 8/22. Everything is a little more complete, a little more like the album we know and love. All the tracks are present and accounted for, even “They’re Red Hot.” As far as fades go, they follow the album versions, and fade out where you expect them to. They’ve even added the late-night ambiance to the end of “Sir Psycho Sexy,” missing from other mixes.
When I ripped this back in 2011, the only differences I noted was that the pre-solo breakdown on “If You Have to Ask” lasted twice as long as it does on the final album, which it does in every other early version linked above. It’s also how the band plays it live. Look at your CD copy of BSSM and you’ll see that it’s 73:56 long - literally four seconds shorter than a CD could be in 1991. “If You Have to Ask” was probably only cut down so the song - and its sixteen brothers and sisters - could actually fit on the disc!
These are final final mixes. If there’s anything different from the final album, I haven’t picked it up yet.
This tape is “unsequenced” but you can clearly see an early version of the final running order here. “Power of Equality” is first, “If You Have to Ask” and “Breaking the Girl” are together. “Sir Psycho Sexy” and “They’re Red Hot” are last, and together. I can’t imagine “I Could Have Lied” being the penultimate song on the album, but they seemed to be contemplating it!
In short, nothing that revelatory, but one final stop in the journey towards the final album.
Phew.
I’ve spent a lot of time staring at, listening to, and ripping cassettes these last few weeks (in addition to staring at, listening to and ripping them in 2011 and 2023), so thank you for allowing me to think out loud here. If I’ve triggered any ideas or theories, please get in touch.
I’m slightly too young to have dealt with cassettes as a format when they were at their peak; when I started really listening to music, CDs were the go-to, and cassettes were the old-fashioned hissy thing that you’d find loose and unwound in an Uncle’s glovebox. I’m simultaneously impressed by how they can sound and disappointed by how they often actually do. I can forever hear, now, the sound of a spindle turning, a sort of slow whoosh that comes and goes every second or so. But it’s been a nice trip back in time a few years, to a different kind of world. To think it’s been almost 20 years since the Sessions Tape leaked. What’s next out of the archive?
See you next time, when I’ll go through the One Hot Minute variants.