Plus, once the camera comes out, it’s like a virus. Now everybody else is going to get their camera out and you have to spend the next thirty minutes of your life saying, “Oh no, no, I’ve got to go.” While they go, “Oh, just one, just one, just one more. Just one for me, just this one.” I hear “Just one” fifty times a day. Why can’t we just say hello? I’m not saying that it happens to me every day of my life, but I’ve seen it constantly happen to, God bless him, Owen Wilson. You never saw a guy go from being so happy when a cute girl walks up to him and he’s like, “Yeah, hey, how are you, boy are you cute.” He’s about to make a funny joke and she says, “Can I have a picture?” His face falls off his head. It’s like someone pulled the plug. He’s like, “Ah, okay, a picture.” And then he’ll leave. It’s that dehumanizing.
Trick-or-treating with Everly Bear, on tour in Minneapolis.
I was in the farmers’ market last weekend with my girlfriend, checking out the dried fruits and these two cute girls—they looked a bit punk, they had on the heavy cat-eye makeup and singlet T-shirts—came over, and of course, they wanted to take a picture. And my thing now with the picture-taking is, I look at them right in the eyes with a lot of love and I’m like, “Thank you for the support, but I’ve retired from picture-taking.” And they look at me with a look of disbelief, like, “Certainly you must be joking.” And then I give them the next look, which is, “I’m not joking; it’s nothing personal; it’s really nice to meet you. Where are you from? How are you doing?” But I just can’t, because if I take a picture, A) It’s going to get weird and B) The person over there is going to come walking over and going to go, “Oh, picture-taking, well I’ll get one, too, while I’m here,” and then another one and another one. If you happen to be in an area where there are fans, then your day will revolve around taking pictures.
These girls were from Moldova and it was kind of cool to meet two young fans from Moldova, an obscure little spot that we’ve never been to. So I made a joke. I said, “Had you been from Albania, I would have gladly taken the picture.” And they started stomping around and said, “Well, my mother is from Albania!” I said, “Go get your mom, I’ll take a picture.” But that’s a moment that I’ve repeated many times and it’s amazing to see the reactions of disbelief when you tell someone you’ve retired from taking pictures, because there’s an expectation in the air that if you own a camera, you are entitled to take a picture of anyone or anything at any time. But the good news is my refusal usually starts a little conversation and then I end up feeling better, because I get to actually say, “Hello, what’s your name? How are you? What’s happening?” So at least a little real human interaction ensues.
What’s the worst is when you’re interrupted when you’re eating to take a picture or give an autograph. If a kid does it, it’s okay. But if you’re a large human being and you interrupt Flea while he’s eating his Mexican food to ask him for some autograph shit, you’re going to get the look of shame. “Really? Your getting an autograph is more important than me putting sustenance in my little body right now?”
I far prefer to celebrate the joyful and the earnest and the loving fan, but unfortunately for every hundred joyful fans there might be one slightly deranged fan, or bitter fan or mentally disturbed fan. And over the years we’ve had all of that and I don’t want to give too much energy or power to them, because that’s kind of what they live for. They just seek out any connection and they’d rather have the negative connection than no connection. I’ve had the weirdest people obsess or fixate on me.
I’ve never been threatened by these people, but I’ve had them spend all of their life trying to get to me by way of disturbing my very extended family. One time my stepfather’s father’s brother was in a hospital bed, fighting for his life in Michigan and his phone was ringing off the hook in the hospital with this woman from Italy who was looking for me. So here is a man who is ninety years old in the hospital who I have only met maybe once in my life, not even a blood relative, but she is stalking him to try to get to me. And God bless a good friend of mine who worked security, because she once flew into L.A. and he had let the L.A. airport police know to keep an eye out for this person. And they pulled her aside when she flew into LAX and they’re like, “Okay, we’re just going to make sure that she is mentally sound to enter the country.” And independent of me, they instantly assessed her to be mentally incompetent to enter the country. They put her right back on a plane and sent her home.
So I’ve had good luck. It’s an unfortunate thing that people don’t always acknowledge your need for privacy, especially when they have love for you or they have admiration for what you do, you would think that would be built-in. Like “I really like this person, I’m going to let them have their peace and quiet.”
I had people that flew here from Germany and they came to my door and they wanted to talk and take pictures. One time a father came with his daughter and he was like, “We have come all the way from Germany.” And I’m like, “Yes, but I cannot welcome you. I cannot pretend like it is okay that you came to my house. This is my family, I have to protect my family and my space.” And normally when there is a parent with a child, I really try to make an exception and go the extra mile to accommodate them. But in this instance, I felt like the best lesson was to show the girl that that’s not okay. You can’t just show up at someone’s house, because everybody needs a little sanctuary.
Thanks to the Internet, people find my address and phone number. I get texts like you wouldn’t believe from unrecognized phone numbers, a lot of not very nice stuff. Sometimes it’s just weird, perverted, freaky shit from men and women, including the most bizarre pictures you’ve ever seen, which just makes me go, “Ugh. Eww. How did that person get my number?” But sometimes it’s like, “Fuck you punk, you ain’t worth shit.” I’m like, well that’s nice. I don’t know why people waste their time, their breath, and their energy wanting to deeply disturb you.
I like people. I like interacting with people and I love watching people’s crazy transformations in their journeys and their struggles and their pain and their pleasure and their horrible defects of character and their amazing qualities and their expressions. I’m really a fan of fans. I look at these people and they knock me out because they are so enthusiastic about something. When I look at a person that can cry out of joy for what somebody else has done, that is pretty admirable. At the same time, it’s so easy to go through periods of life without seeing what’s around you, to get caught up in a small picture and for whatever reason get stuck seeing only that which you’ve decided is worth your focus. It could happen with a social life, an intimate relationship, a work situation, or God knows what other realm of restricted consciousness.
Well, it happened to me. The longer that we were in the band and the more difficult the schedule got and the more traveling we did and the bigger my life got, all contributed to it, and then I had a son that I had to dedicate a lot of time and energy to. As a result I became less connected with the people that love what we did, for sure. I can’t go out in the middle of our audience and hang out. It will be a bad experience for me. So I stay away and I concentrate as hard as I can on giving of myself and doing my best to have a moment with these people when we play our show. We don’t phone shit in, ever.
The realization of this separation happening to me occurred a few years ago while we were on tour in Japan. After reinventing our band the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Josh Klinghoffer as our guitarist and vocalist, after writing fifty-some odd songs, recording them, rehearsing them, and becoming who we were as a group, I had lost touch with some of the other essential elements of what it is to be part of a musical entity. Our second show of this new foray into touring with Josh was at the Sonic Festival in Osaka, Japan. We were still developing as a live act but I could feel in my heart and soul that we were on our way to discovering a new and beautiful power as a band. As is typically the case with us playing a large festival show, somewhere out there in this mu
sic-loving world, we were rather sequestered literally a half a mile away from the stage where the good people of Japan had gathered to hear music. We were in our backstage, air-conditioned cocoon universe with its fruit trays, stereo system, fine rugs for stretching on, separate rooms for stretching and doing vocal warm-ups, notebooks for set list writing, all of our tinctures and potions and lotions neatly laid out, all of this giving us the peace to prepare for us unleashing our passionate wrath during the show. But meanwhile, half a mile away there were a hundred thousand people in the sun raging and having this very communal experience together. But I didn’t see any of that; I was not feeling it, because I was in my own bubble.
AK’s taped foot in Spain, and a note to a loving fan.
Enter Dave Mushegain, a visiting friend of mine, who was known for taking photographs and traveling the world without much fuss. He was excited to be there and after chatting with me through his lively Armenian smile, he said, “Okay, I’m going to go out into the middle of the crowd and see what’s going on.” So off he went, in his oversized tie-dyed T-shirt and with his overweighted backpack full of camera equipment, into the summery throngs of the great festival unknown.
I didn’t see Dave again until after we played, about five hours later. He was a sweaty, dusty, sunburned mess with a memory stick full of pictures. With his distinct Los Angeleno sense of exuberance, he opened up his laptop.
“Look at some of these cool pictures I got,” he said.
He started showing some of the hyper-colorful characters from deep in the bowels of a big festival audience. I saw these and I’m like, “That’s here? Those people are like, camped out?”
I was immediately touched in a way that moved me more than I could have expected. In some weird way I had forgotten how much people really cared for and loved what we do as a band. There were families that had come with their babies and camped out together dressed in matching RHCP paint jobs; there were groups of teenage girls who looked like they were having religious experiences; and the loveliest bunch of Asian faces, some of which had “tears of connection” written all over their cheeks.
Their dedication and ecstasy blew me away. It’s not that I hadn’t felt their intensely warm energy during the show. It’s not that I had ever lost gratitude for them arriving en masse to sing along with tunes that were born in the back of a broken down garage. It’s that I hadn’t seen the up close and personal details of their experience in a long, long time. It made me wonder who they were and how they came to be here with us on this day.
I was particularly taken with a photo of a Japanese dad with a rad Mohawk holding up his adorable little baby. Just to see the love in that dad’s face, bringing his little daughter to experience our show caused a tiny, incandescent light bulb to flicker over my old beat-up head that proclaimed, “Whoa, this is the year of the fan. It’s time to honor these people, take the camera off our faces and put it on their faces and find out who they are, why they are here, where they come from, what brought them to this point in life, and what kind of an interaction we can have.” That was twenty thousand pictures and almost three years ago.
Anthony catching up with Scottish fan Nick Millson in Seattle.
Dave jumped wholeheartedly into the process. Our fans are like Deadheads. They assemble hours before the show to get their preshow mingle on. In fact, we actually wanted to call this book “The Redheads,” which is such a great steal from the Deadheads. And then frickin’ Sammy Hagar, of all people, throws an absolute tanty because I guess his nickname is Red or something. He’s like, “No! I call my fans the Redheads, you can’t do that. I am Sammy ‘Mr. Red’ Hagar.” And I’m like, “What!?” I never heard that. And then Chad, who plays with Sammy, is like, “Yeah, don’t do that, it would really upset Sammy.” I was like, “Well, Sammy is really upsetting me.”
Dave would show up at the venue early and put himself into the mix. He would start finding out, like, “Who are you? What is your connection to the Red Hots? Where do you come from? What songs do you like? What records do you like? Which lineups did you like? What do they do for you? Why do you care? What does it make you feel like?”
But he wouldn’t just confine himself to the venue. Like an anthropologist, he went to these fans’ houses and met the whole family. They might have come to a concert in Madrid, but he’d follow them eighty miles to where they lived and photograph them in their houses. A lot of times he did the portraits in their rooms, which were like shrines, decorated with a huge collection of memorabilia.
Dave was tireless during the whole two years he toured with us. And it’s awesome to shine the light on these people. They are so dedicated and so giving and loving and they’re so romantic about their enthusiasm for a band. Whether you like us or you don’t, you have to admire somebody’s enthusiasm. There’s this one girl, Julia, from Spain, who is a pauper. She has a minimum-wage job at best, but she has not missed a show for two years. It doesn’t matter if we play in Greenland, she’ll be there. She sleeps on park benches. Dave would go out in the middle of the night, clubbing or whatever and he’d be walking home and he’d find Julia on a park bench and go, “Julia, why are you on a park bench?” “Because I don’t have any money.” She had spent it all on a plane ticket. Now we comp her tickets because we know she’s coming, but it took us months to figure out that this young Spanish girl was following us around the world.
Doing this book literally connected us to our fans again. Dave would round up the most interesting of his subjects and bring them backstage or we’d meet them in a hotel or at a park. He was able to see their beauty, who they really were, and he wanted us to know that they weren’t just another face in the crowd. And so we took the time to start meeting these people, and it was great. It changed the energy, it made it even better.
Dave Mushegain emerged as an amazingly compassionate ambassador to people in dozens of countries around the world, from old to young, from mothers to sons. He diligently strove to get to know these enthusiasts at the expense of his own sleep, comfort, and energy. And, in the process, I had my own awakening to the fascinating kaleidoscope of people who give their love to our mission as a band, and I’m truly grateful for that experience.
Anthony
Chifumi (Al) Soga, 43 Fuuko Soga, 3 Japan
I ACCIDENTALLY FOUND MY FIRST RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS ALBUM AT A RECORD SHOP. IT WAS AN IMPULSE BUY BECAUSE I LIKED THE ALBUM COVER ART. BUT IT WAS NOT THE SOUND I EXPECTED. I WAS AN OLD-SCHOOL PUNK TEENAGER AT THE TIME. I LISTENED TO IT ONLY ONCE AT THE TIME. OF COURSE, NOW I HAVE THAT ALBUM AND LISTEN TO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.
LATER MY FRIEND RECOMMENDED MOTHER’S MILK TO ME AND THAT’S WHEN I MET THE CHILI PEPPERS AGAIN. I GOT TO GO TO THE “CALIFORNICATION” JAPAN TOUR AND AFTER THAT I BECAME A CHILI PEPPERS FREAK. I HAVE A TATTOO OF FLEA’S FACE ON MY ARM. FLEA IS MY HERO. IT IS THE SAME AS JIMI HENDRIX TO FLEA AND PROBABLY THE SAME REASON FLEA GOT HIS JIMI TATTOO.
ON THE “BY THE WAY” JAPAN TOUR I SAW ALL THE SHOWS IN THE FRONT ROW. AFTER THE TOUR FLEA WROTE ABOUT ME ON FLEAMAIL. IT WAS AN UNBELIEVABLE THING! IT WAS AWESOME! AT THE TOKYO “STADIUM ARCADIUM” TOUR I GOT A PASS AND SAW FLEA ON THE SIDE STAGE. THEN CAME THE “SUMMERSONIC” SHOWS, WHICH WAS MY DAUGHTER CLARA’S FIRST CHILI PEPPERS EXPERIENCE. SHE TOOK OUR PICTURE UNEXPECTEDLY. WHAT LUCK!
Lucrecia Fontes, Timeless San Francisco
WHAT FIRST CONNECTED ME TO THE BAND? FLEA’S BUTT. I NAMED MY GOLDFISH FLEA AFTER FLEA. DO I HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY? YES, BUT I’D LIKE TO WHISPER IT IN FLEA’S EAR.
Laura Gray, United Kingdom
I LOVE THE MUSIC AND THIS IS WHAT OBVIOUSLY SPURRED ME TO FOLLOW THE BAND ON TOUR. BUT NOW AFTER SIXTY GIGS, THE GREATEST GIFT I HAVE GAINED IS FRIENDSHIP. I HAVE MADE FRIENDS ACROSS THE WORLD, SOME OF WHOM I HAVE BEEN HANGING OUT WITH AND GOING TO SHOWS WITH FOR YEARS.
FLEA APPROACHING ME TO PLAY THE OPENING NOTE FOR “UNDER THE BRIDGE” WAS ONE OF THE MOST OVERWHELMING MOMENTS IN MY LIFE SO FAR. THERE ARE PLENTY OF FUNNY STORIES TOO, SUCH AS THE TIME CHAD
FOUND THE FINGER OF A RUBBER GLOVE IN HIS FRIED RICE AT A CHINESE RESTAURANT.
“ADDICTED TO THE SHINDIG” IS ENGRAVED ON THE BACK OF ONE OF MY IPOD. THE OPENING LINES OF “ROAD TRIPPIN” REMIND ME OF THE FUN TIMES I HAD DRIVING AROUND CALIFORNIA DURING THE “STADIUM ARCADIUM” TOUR. AND THE LYRICS TO “VENICE QUEEN” AND “I COULD HAVE LIED” MEAN A LOT TO ME FOR PERSONAL REASONS. OH, AND “EMMIT REMMUS” IS TALKING ABOUT MY HOMETOWN.
Valentina, 17 Argentina
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, THEY ARE NOT JUST A BAND, THEY ARE LOVE. I THINK ALL WHO HEAR THEM FEEL A MAGICAL CONNECTION. THEIR MUSIC IS GENUINE AND CRAZY, FULL OF FEELINGS, POWER, ADRENALINE, EMOTIONS THAT VIBRATE THE SPIRIT OF EVERYONE.
I HAVE FRIENDS I MET THROUGH THEM AND THEIR MUSIC, PEOPLE WHO I NEVER IMAGINED KNOWING, AND I’M GRATEFUL TO KNOW. WE’RE A GREAT FAMILY.
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS.
Roger Adrian Williams, 29 South Africa
I’VE PRACTICED FULL-CONTACT KARATE FOR TWENTY YEARS AND BEFORE TRAINING SESSIONS AND TOURNAMENTS I WOULD ALWAYS LISTEN TO THE CHILI PEPPERS TO BUILD ENERGY. THE MUSIC ALWAYS GOT ME INTO THE RIGHT HEADSPACE AND I BELIEVE IT ACTUALLY DIRECTLY HELPED ME TO BECOME PHYSICALLY FASTER AND STRONGER.
I’M AN ILLUSTRATOR, ANIMATOR, AND KARATE TEACHER. I’VE ALWAYS LOVED ART, MUSIC, AND MARTIAL ARTS. MY CHILDHOOD DREAMS INCLUDED COMPETING IN THE WORLD KARATE CHAMPIONSHIPS, TRAINING WITH THE BEST IN JAPAN, DOING SOLO ART EXHIBITIONS, AND ROCKING OUT WITH THE CHILI PEPPERS IN MY HOMETOWN OF CAPE TOWN. HAVING DONE ALL THIS BEFORE THE AGE OF THIRTY, I AM TOTALLY AMPED FOR WHAT’S NEXT.
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