‘Freaky Styley’: The Red Hot Chili Peppers album Flea called “too obscure” to be a hit
The omnipresence of Red Hot Chili Peppers has felt more expected as the years go by. As much as their brand of funk, rock and hip-hop seemed like a novelty when they got the ball rolling, their overabundance of hooks and practical worship of California has unofficially made half their songbook the state anthem. Flea knew that there was only going to be so far that fans could go, and he admitted that Freaky Styley was never going to please everyone.
Before the band even got started on their sophomore effort, it’s not like they were in love with how their first album turned out. The idea of having someone like Andy Gill from Gang of Four as the unofficial member of the band behind the producer’s chair sounded like a good idea, but his insistence on making his version of the record led to the entire sounding muted.
Since the demos of Red Hot Chili Peppers ended up sounding better than what we actually got, the group decided to lean into their strengths for album number two. After all, they had Hillel Slovak back on guitar, so they shouldn’t have anything to worry about, especially when they found out they could get someone like George Clinton as a producer.
Clinton was already a funk maestro while most of the members were still in diapers, so him getting a groove behind the record was never going to be an issue. Flea’s bass, in particular, sounds absolutely ferocious throughout the entire project, so why doesn’t the rest of the band actually measure up?
Well, it’s not like their best material turns up on the record. Regardless of the great songs like ‘Jungle Man’ and ‘Brothers Cup’, there are more than a few too many joke tracks to make it feel anything other than amateur hour. There are good ideas on the record, to be sure, but given the context of the time, the less said about a song like ‘Catholic School Girls Rule’, the better.
It’s not like Flea could see where the naysayers were coming from, detailing in the reissue’s liner notes, “I know the music on this record was just way too obscure to ever be popular in a mainstream kind of way, but to me, it really holds its own as a definitive and substantial musical statement…the songs were very far away from any pop format; I realise it is/was not just the racial segregation at radio that precluded it from being a popular record”.
The production also may have had a little something to do with it. The background of this record saw every member of the band and Clinton getting blitzed out of their mind on drugs, to the point where the snippet of the album saying ‘Look at that turtle go, bro’ is said by Clinton’s drug dealer because the funk-meister couldn’t afford to pay him at the time.
Although the album does have its bright spots, everything on the project feels like it’s done so much better on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. The band were firing on all cylinders there, and compared to their sophomoric humour here, they seemed to be happy to be playing together and making songs that could stand the test of time. This funk-ified version of the Peppers wasn’t meant to last forever, but it’s always a shame when the band sounds like they’re having more fun than the audience is listening to it.