“Me, neither,” John agreed.
Flea was expecting to get a report of some daylong deliberation deal, of all this animosity dredged up, but neither of us was feeling it. The major problem was John didn’t even have a guitar to his name. So we went over to the Guitar Center, and I bought him a great old ’62 Stratocaster.
John was thrilled by the idea of being back in the band, but he was also scared, because he hadn’t played a guitar for a very long time. We decided to make his return low-key—nothing mattered other than playing music. We didn’t give a fuck about record deals, or the fact that our manager had quit, or that our record company had lost interest in us. None of that mattered. We just wanted to get in a garage and rock out together.
Flea was living in an incredible Mediterranean superstructure in Los Feliz, a famous old house because tons of musicians like Bob Dylan and Lou Reed had lived there. We assembled in Flea’s garage, a portion of which he had converted to a rehearsal space. Chad had set up his drums in the corner. Flea had this look on his face like “Okay, no great expectations. Let’s just play music.” We had some shitty little PA system set up. John wore a look of uncertainty, but he plugged in his guitar, and we started playing. And it was us again. I think I might be the only one who thought so, but the room filled up with heavenly music, made for no motive other than to see what it sounded like when we banged our instruments together.
For me, that was the defining moment of what would become the next six years of our lives together. That was when I knew that this was the real deal, that magic was about to happen again. Suddenly we could all hear, we could all listen, and instead of being caught up in our finite little balls of bullshit, we could all become players in that great universal orchestra again.
Chapter 14
Welcome to Californication
Despite my elation at our reunion, it took awhile for us to find the groove. John was rusty, both mentally and physically. I was a pile of rust dust, too, but slowly and surely, things started getting better. There was a lot of joy emanating from Flea’s house. He had two dogs, a mastiff named Martian and a feisty boxer called Laker. Every day we’d make tea in the kitchen, play with the dogs, and then go out to the garage and work. Flea had set up the rehearsal space like a recording studio, so at the end of the session, I’d leave with tapes of the new music to lyricize.
Although he’ll tell you it took years for him to get his chops back, I loved the way John was playing when he didn’t have the technical capacity to do everything. He toned down and developed an incredible minimalist style. Every day he came up with something spectacular. I had a notebook filled with lyrics that I was dying to turn into songs, so besides the rehearsals, I’d go hang out with John at his apartment in Silver Lake. In typical John fashion, there was no furniture at all, just records and a turntable and a bed and a blender. He was going through a smoothie phase, so there were smoothie materials on the walls and the refrigerator and the stove. It was like Jackson Pollock lived there. We’d sit and smoke and smoke and work. It was incredible to once again have one of the great musicians of our time so telepathically connected to me. He’d play me a complicated, weird instrumental piece of music that he had stayed up all night recording, and I’d be like “Oh yeah, I know exactly what I’m supposed to do with that.”
John seemed truly humbled by life. He had been beaten down, and I think the clouds had lifted, and he saw what he had been through and felt like “Holy fuck. I can’t believe I’m alive. I’m not going to blow it this time.” He hadn’t been back long enough for people to tell him how wonderful he was. It’s always nice to be around someone who’s that talented and that excited about life and music, and whose ego hasn’t been inflated by other people yet.
Everyone was having fun. It was as if we had nothing to lose, nothing to gain. We didn’t care; we were making music for the sake of making music. Compared to Blood Sugar, One Hot Minute wasn’t nearly as successful, so people had lost faith in us. There was a feeling within the record industry that we’d had our day in the sun. But the more we played, the more we started creating stuff that we believed in and wanted people to hear.
It was really hot when we began rehearsing, so we would leave the garage door open. After a few weeks of work, I ran into Gwen Stefani of No Doubt. She was Flea’s distant neighbor across the ravine on the opposite mountain. “I hear you guys play every day,” she said. “My friends come over, and we sit around and listen. It sounds great!” It was nice to get the compliment, but it was a bit embarrassing, because we thought we were in this private world, working out our ugly spots.
At the beginning of June, we took a break from rehearsing to play our first gig since John had rejoined the band. I had promised the Dalai Lama that we would be available if we got the call from Adam Yauch, and we did. The Tibetan Freedom Festival was a two-day event at JFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. The night before, we did a surprise gig at the 9:30 Club, just to get our sea legs. Come the day of the show, the area got drenched with a thunderstorm, and halfway through the concert, a girl got hit by a lightning bolt, forcing the evacuation of the entire stadium and the cancellation of the rest of the show.
That night there was a logistical meeting. The Beastie Boys camp obviously didn’t have our back, because the organizers told us that due to the previous day’s storm, some groups would have to be canceled. Since we were the last band booked, we wouldn’t be able to play. I couldn’t believe it. We’d come all the way from California and were pumped to play our first big show with John back in front of ninety thousand people. Thankfully, Pearl Jam was scheduled to close the show that day, and Eddie Vedder got wind of our dilemma and threatened to pull out unless we were given part of their allotted stage time. It was an amazing show of support from them, and we never forgot it.
It was still light out when we assembled backstage. We stood behind the backdrop, surrounded by amplifier cases, and got into a soul circle, bowed our heads, and did a collective group hug. Then we went out there and completely rocked out. The audience was 100 percent behind us, and it was such a joyful moment to be back onstage with John.
The next day I figured everybody had forgotten about the poor girl who’d been hit in the head by lightning, so I went to visit her in the hospital. She was in bed but awake, and she showed me all her burn marks. Her worst burns were where she had metal on her body—a bracelet, her underwire bra. But the really ironic thing was that she was talking on her cell phone when she got hit—that’s probably why the lightning hit her—and her last name was Celfon.
Back in L.A., the songs were coming fast and furious. Except for one. The first song that John and I worked on, even before we convened in Flea’s garage, was a song called “Californication.” I’d written the lyrics when I was on that cleansing trip to Thailand, when the idea of John being back in the band was still inconceivable to me. While I was on a boat in the Andaman Sea, the melody had crept up on me, one of those simple melody structures that lends itself to flying words into. One of the things that struck me on my travels to exotic places, including the Sea Gypsy Village in Thailand and the bazaars of Indonesia, was the extent to which American culture had permeated all these places, even to the time of bootleg Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirts. When I was in Auckland one time, I ran into a crazy lady on the street, and she was ranting about the fact that there were psychic spies in China. That phrase stuck in my mind, so when I was back home, I started writing and writing, and they became my favorite of all the lyrics that I’d collected over the last year.
I showed “Californication” to John, and he loved the lyrics and started writing some music. But for some reason, even though there was a perfect song in there, we couldn’t find it. We tried ten different arrangements and ten different choruses, and nothing ever worked. All these other songs were pouring out of us. We’d been working for a few weeks when someone started playing an ultra-sparse riff that sounded like nothing we’d ever done before. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was our n
ew song.
Around that time, I had met a young mother at a meeting. She was living in a YWCA with her baby girl, trying to get sober but failing miserably. The beauty and sadness and tragedy and glory, all wrapped into one, of this mother/daughter relationship was evoked by the vibe of that music.
From “Porcelain”
Porcelain
Do you carry the moon in your womb?
Someone said that you’re fading too soon
Drifting and floating and fading away
Little lune
All day
Little lune
Porcelain
Are you wasting away in your skin?
Are you missing the love of your kin?
Nodding and melting and fading away
By late June, we had completed about twelve songs. “Scar Tissue” was another song where you open up the top of your head and it comes dusting down from outer space. Rick Rubin and I had been talking about sarcasm a lot. Rick had read a theory that it was an incredibly detrimental form of humor that depresses the spirit of its proponents. We had been such sarcastic dicks that we vowed to try to be funny without using sarcasm as a crutch. I guess I was also thinking of Dave Navarro, who was the King of Sarcasm, faster and sharper than the average bear.
All those ideas were in the air when John started playing this guitar riff, and I immediately knew what the song was about. It was a playful, happy-to-be-alive, phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes vibe. I ran outside with my handheld tape recorder and, with that music playing in the background, started singing the entire chorus to the song. I’ll never forget looking up at the sky above that garage, out toward Griffith Park with the birds flying overhead, and getting a dose of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I really did have the point of view of those birds, feeling like an eternal outsider.
From “Scar Tissue”
Scar tissue that I wish you saw
Sarcastic Mr. Know-it-all
Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you ’cause
With the birds I’ll share this lonely view
With the birds I’ll share this lonely view
Push me up against the wall
Young Kentucky girl in a push-up bra
Fallin’ all over myself
To lick your heart and taste your health ’cause
With the birds I’ll share this lonely view
Blood loss in a bathroom stall
Southern girl with a scarlet drawl
Wave goodbye to Ma and Pa ’cause
With the birds I’ll share this lonely view
We finished another song called “Emit Remmus,” which had been inspired in part by my friendship with Melanie Chisholm of the Spice Girls. Around that time, the Spice Girls were a raging phenomenon, especially among young girls, like Flea’s daughter, Clara. Even when I’d go to New Zealand, all the little girls there would know the Spice Girls’ lyrics and their dance moves. The tunes were pretty good pop songs, especially when you had five different-colored crayons out there performing them.
That spring I got a call from Nancy Berry, who ran Virgin Records. She told me that the Spice Girls were coming to L.A., and both the Melanies wanted to go out and have some fun and get some tattoos. Being the resident fun- and tattoomeister, I was enlisted to show them the Hollywood ropes. I arranged to have my friend keep his tattoo parlor open after hours to accommodate them. I became friendly with Mel C (Sporty), and we stayed in touch for months and months. It was nice, because I got to take Clara to the show and bring her backstage so she could meet these incredible characters she’d been worshipping for the last year.
Fast-forward to September and Clara’s tenth birthday. Flea had been arguing for months and months with Clara when it came to the background music in their house, because Flea wanted to hear Coltrane, and Clara had the Spice Girls on a nonstop loop. So Flea decided we were going to pull a stunt at her birthday party. He dropped the hint to Clara that the Spice Girls themselves might show up at her party. And, of course, we would be the Spice Girls.
The likenesses were obvious. Flea would be Baby Spice. John was Sporty Spice. Chris Warren, our drum technician, was enlisted to play Scary Spice, and I would be Posh Spice. Thank God Ginger Spice was already out of the band and we didn’t have to fill her shoes. With the help of Flea’s assistant, Sherry Westridge, we got the right clothes and the right wigs and wore the right makeup. We each studied the personality and the body language of our Spice Girl, and learned the dance moves. We even had some rehearsals.
Come the day of the party, Clara had her whole clan of ten-year-old friends over, all of whom lived and died for the Spice Girls. Everybody was whispering about the possibility that the Spice Girls were coming because Clara had actually met them at their show. So it came time for the surprise, and we were all up in Flea’s bedroom, putting the final touches on our outfits, while the girls were in the living room one floor below. The music started, and the little girls all freaked out, screaming “Oh my God” as we walked down the giant staircase and they caught a glimpse of these fabulous costumes. Then something slowly started to filter into their little minds.
“Wait a second, these are not the Spice Girls. In fact, these are not even girls, these are men dressed like the Spice Girls. EEEEWWWWWWWW!”
We sauntered down and never broke character and put on an immaculate performance. Scary Spice was phenomenal, Baby Spice was terrifying with her gap Flea tooth, and John absolutely nailed Sporty, working on it morning, noon, and night until his character was there. Posh was easy; she was just an aloof, uptight, narcissistic shopping girl. We took our little vocal solos and did our dances. I had on a really short skirt, because Posh wears her dresses too short, but I forgot to take into consideration that I was a man in front of kids. I don’t think any of them have ever recovered, because we didn’t shave our legs.
Now that it was clear our foursome was a viable configuration once again, it was time to get management. Two months earlier, we hadn’t cared if we had a manager, because nothing was going on, but we were more passionate than ever about the music we were generating. A few years before, Rick Rubin had been extolling the virtues of Q-Prime Management. Q-Prime was run by a duo, Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein, and in Rick’s mind, they were the brightest managers in the rock business, bar none.
These two guys flew in from New York to meet with us in Flea’s living room. Cliff looked a lot older than he was, because his hair and his long Merlin-the-magician beard were all white. He was small and delicate and purposeful and mystical-looking. He wore glasses and looked super-intelligent. He was like a walking think tank, an organic computer man with a competitive nature that belied his appearance. Peter, on the other hand, was a gruff, loud, obnoxious bundle of muscles who alienated and was brash. He was also very smart and, in a bizarre way, very loving.
These guys were very New York. They’d been in the music business forever, having managed acts as diverse as Metallica—whom they raised from inception—AC/DC, Madonna, Courtney Love, the Smashing Pumpkins, Def Leppard, and Shania Twain. Cliff and Peter operated at a different level of professionalism than we’d ever dealt with. We were not exactly coming off a year of greatness, but we did feel that with John back in the band, we held a pretty good hand. Flea had a laundry list of concerns like “Are you going to get us on the radio?” Peter was countering that by barking, “And don’t think we’re the kind of managers who are going to take care of your little candy asses. If you’re on tour and you’re up in Alaska and you forgot your winter coat, don’t call us to FedEx you a winter coat, because you’re going to end up freezing to death.”
I was like “Okay, make a mental note to bring my coat when we tour Alaska.”
At the same time, I was sure they were wiping Madonna’s ass if she was asking them to; maybe that was why he said that. But there was some chemistry in the room, and we were attracted to each other, so we signed with them.
With all this newness in place, we thought that maybe it was time to get a new pro
ducer. Every time you make a record, it doesn’t matter how good it was working with a producer, and even if you know you’re going to end up making a record with that same person again, there’s always a day when someone says, “Do we want to get a new producer?” That was how we felt then about Rick Rubin. We considered our options. We had asked Brian Eno to produce us three times already, and he always said no, so we asked him again, even though that “no” was inevitable. We didn’t know it, but he was doing us a favor by turning us down.
We even considered David Bowie, who wanted to work with us but finally sent a gracious note explaining that he had too many other commitments to take on another project. Another reason why we were reluctant to go back with Rick Rubin was that he was always working on six things at once, plus being CEO of his own record label, and we thought we should find someone who would work only on our project. While this process was going on, we contacted Daniel Lanois, who had converted an old movie theater in Oxnard, California, just up the coast, into a wonderful old-school recording studio. Lanois couldn’t commit to producing us because he was on hold with U2, but he did graciously offer us the use of his studio to do a demo of the eleven songs we had finished. We went in and set up and recorded all of the songs in a row, all in one day. It was a soulful, smoking demo, not unlike the first demo we ever made.
A couple of weeks went by, and we talked to Rick. He cleared some space in his schedule, so we decided to work with him again. It was as if we had come to our senses and realized, “Why are we dicking around with all these other guys?” The next day I got a call from Daniel Lanois.
“I heard the demo tape you made at the studio,” he said. “I’ve reconsidered, and I’m interested in working with you guys. Those songs really caught my attention. I haven’t heard anything like them in a long time.”
Scar Tissue Page 43