Red Hot Chili Peppers

It’s no mean feat being lauded as the ‘most successful band in alternative music history’, but that’s an honour Red Hot Chili Peppers can lay claim to. 

Synonymous with California (largely due to their most commercially successful album Californication), partial nudity, addiction, slap bass, and boundless on-stage energy, RHCP have bounced between funk, punk, rock, and psychedelia with humour and vibrancy for the best part of forty years. 

Renowned for their incendiary live performances, Red Hot Chili Peppers also toe the line with balladry and reflective, personal lyricism that draws upon their own colourful lives and drug addiction-related loss. 

Formed in 1983 by high school friends Anthony Kiedis, Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary, Hillel Slovak, and Jack Irons, the four-piece would see a revolving door of lineup changes recording their earlier albums (with founding member Slovak sadly succumbing to heroin addiction in 1988) eventually settling on the line we’re now familiar with: Kiedis upfront, Flea on bass, John Frusciante joining on guitar, and Chad Smith joining on drums. Albums Mother’s Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik came next, the latter yielding their biggest success to date with singles ‘Give It Away’, ‘Suck My Kiss’, and ‘Under The Bridge’ which expressed the impact of substance abuse on Kiedis and those close to him. 

Frusciante would soon leave, and later return after overcoming heroin addiction himself for the Chili’s most critically and commercially successful album Californication which is widely considered their magnum opus. It went on to sell 15 million copies worldwide, and produced singles ‘Californication’, ‘Otherside’, ‘Around The World’ and ‘Scar Tissue’ which won a Grammy Award. 

Later albums continued RHCP’s global success, with 2002’s By The Way and 2006’s Stadium Arcadium went on to sell millions of copies themselves, seeing the band accumulate six Grammy Award wins in total by the time Frusciante left the band once again in 2009. He’d return a decade later - replacing guitarist Josh Klinghoffer who was entered into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2012 - in time for their 2022 world tour which included headline dates at major European festivals like Rock Werchter and Firenze Rocks.

If you're dreaming of 'Californication' and seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers live, now's the time.