Months later the band were spotted by EMI/Capitol, who wanted to sign them. The young men decided they needed a new name, something that people would remember, and came up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

So more gigs were played and the young people of LA were embracing the group and their fun-loving mentality. The band received a pleasant surprise: the club’s owner and the audience loved them so much that they were invited to play again the week after. Flea, Slovak and Irons jammed an improvised piece of funk music whilst Kiedis spat out a rhyme he’d written earlier called “Out in LA”, which would be the first Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Under the moniker “Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem”, the boys rocked the shit out of the club and got more than they bargained for. None of the boys thought anything of it, until one night the gang supported a band at the Kit Katharina Lounge in LA purely just for fun. Known for his popularity and wild behaviour, Kiedis was regarded by his buddies as a born entertainer and so would invent wacky poems and opening lines to get the crowd going before the show. Flea, Slovak and Irons already played in a band called What is This? (previously called Anthym) and Kiedis would occasionally jump on stage and introduce the guys before they kicked into their set. The kids shared a love of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and other legendary rock music of the time, and bonded through pot-smoking and general misbehaviour. Kiedis, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, Michael Balzary aka Flea (a talented trumpet player who was raised in a jazz-loving household), Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons spent their time at school skateboarding, getting into trouble and chasing girls. The Red Hot Chili Peppers met in Los Angeles, California in 1983, after 4 bright, outgoing and lively characters happened upon each other at Fairfax High School and decided to become a gang. And so began the journey for me the research, the biographies, and the obsessive collecting of the band’s seven previous albums. I knew there and then that this was my favourite band in the world. All these elements came together to create something that I’d never heard or experienced before in my 12 years of being on this earth. Flea’s basslines ebbed with blistering funk and Chad Smith’s powerful drumming filled my ears and ultimately blew me away. I went home and instantly listened to it cover to cover, embracing the rich textures of John Frusciante’s seductive guitar licks and Kiedis’s brilliant hybrid of tender vocals and tongue-twisting rap. It was, and still is probably one of the best ten pounds that I’ve ever spent. So, confident that I was gonna love this record, I went to Woolworth’s and bought “By The Way”. I grew up on David Bowie, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Joy Division etc thanks to my musically switched-on parents, but I’d missed these guys along the way and was starting to notice, big time.

I’d heard “Under The Bridge” and “Californication” of course, but at this point I hadn’t made the connection to these crazy LA punks that had been on one of the most colourful and at times harrowing journeys in the history of rock music. Not long after it I heard another slice of gold from this band, still relatively unknown to me, called “Can”Ëœt Stop”, which again came with an exciting and entertaining video. Not only did the video display an excellent sense of narrative and humour, this song was fucking incredible. I’d been hearing a great song on the radio called “By The Way”, and was fascinated by the video which featured the singer Anthony Kiedis being kidnapped by a crazed stalker in a Los Angeles taxi. I was 12 years old when I bought the 8th album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: 27 years of blood sugar sex magik”¦ A defense of the Red Hot Chili Peppers by Luke Allen

New red hot chili peppers album