Cover Story: The Red Hot Chili Peppers

In truth, bad vibes and the repeated personnel changes had taken their toll. "We were like Spinal Tap," says Smith, "except it was the guitar player that kept exploding." On Oct. 31 1993, the band lost yet another close friend to drugs, the actor River Phoenix. (He was one of the most beautiful and loving guys I ever met," says Flea.) The pileup of catastrophes forced the Chili Peppers to reconsider everything they did — everything that is, except their goony, not-so-wholesome stage persona (remember, this is the band that made its name performing frank sex romps like "Party on Your Pussy" and "Sir Psycho Sexy" totally naked except for strategically placed athletic hose). (The socks on our dicks, the way we jump around onstage," says Flea, "all that shit has always been a natural extension of the music."

In that light the Chili Pepper legend was daunting even for Navarro, a veteran rocker and recovering addict himself. "I just told myself that if there was some crazy thing that I didn't want to do, I just wouldn't do it," the guitarist says. True to form, the band tested Navarro's limits almost immediately by electing to don oversize light-bulb head masks for his first major live gig — Woodstock '94.

"When Dave first started playing with us, it was awkward," says Flea. "That had a lot to with the fact that we grew up listening to different music. It took us a while to get to the point where we each just did our thing and did them together — but that's when we started creating a new sound."

A three-month working holiday in Hawaii didn't hurt, either. Through Iron John-like bonding activities like scuba diving, motorcycling and hiking, the Chili Peppers lit upon a new communal verve. As Kiedis lovingly describes it, "We ate a lot of food together, drank some coffee, smelled each other's farts." They also wrote three-quarters of the music for One Hot Minute.

Unfortunately, Kiedis hit a creative impasse upon returning to Los Angeles. became heavily surrounded, wrapped up and engulfed in a personal unsolved tragedy," he says cryptically. Although he was writing throughout this period, difficulties arose in "chiseling out the ideas and the sounds that I wanted to add" to the new songs. It's a credit to Kiedis' artistic mettle that he was able to work through his problems in song. Whether it's the soulful sprawl of One Hot Minute, the funk smorgasbord of "One Big Mob" or the Led Zeppelin-meets-a-snake-charmer thud of "Coffee Shop," the new album finds the brash frontman looking inward.

"I don't think the 'Under the Bridge' people are going to be so thrilled with the new album," says Navarro, referring to fans who came to the band by way of its most radio-friendly single. "This is a darker record," Flea confirms, "and it's a pretty sad record." Aside from a few slower, plaintive songs like "Tearjerker" and "My Friends," One Hot Minute is also the groundbreaking hard-rock album that longtime Chili Peppers fans have heretofore only dreamed about.

Considering how many times rock's canvas has been painted over during the last few years, it's not surprising that the Chili Peppers sat on One Hot Minute for more than a year and a half. In 1992, when they shared the charts with raging upstarts like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the Chili Peppers were unwillingly cast as alternative's peppy but poppy elder statesmen. Acknowledged as innovators, one of the first white acts to mix funk and rap with heavy metal, they were nonetheless pegged as hopelessly shallow party animals. But in comparison with 1995 superstars — watery Uberwimps like Hootie and the Blowfish and the Gin Blossoms — the Red Hot Chili Peppers seem heavier than plutonium.

Over time, the Chili Peppers' unfashionably upbeat approach (wearing silly outfits, mugging for the camera) has served them in good stead, somehow transforming them from cavorting buffoons into consummate entertainers. That show-must-go-on Pepper professionalism surprised Tony Bennett, the veteran crooner, when he swapped outfits with the band for a comedy bit during the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. "They rehearsed it over and over again before we went onstage more so than a lot of my contemporaries would have," Bennett says. "Then they made it look completely spontaneous."

"We really like to have fun — that's probably why people like our band," says Smith. "People have this image in their minds of what the Chili Peppers are like, but Jimi Hendrix was the mellowest, most soulful, soft-spoken, coolest guy, and then you'd get him onstage, and he'd go wild. You'll find that, too, with Flea and Anthony — they're articulate, smart people who are cultured, not just knuckleheaded funk guys with funny hair jumping around."