Across the album, the band were in a subtler, more intricate mode that yielded a consistently beautiful, lush sound.Įven Kiedis was in a more reflective mood. And while it certainly kept on forging ahead into the new territory the group had explored on Californication, that critique is a disservice to how striking By The Way is in the grand scheme of RHCP’s catalogue. In 2002, some detractors said By The Way didn’t showcase enough development relative to Californication, that it just continued the softer direction of its predecessor. Name-checking new wave and post-punk acts, Frusciante’s drive was to bring the band to a new place, rather than retreading the funk-punk he thought they’d already nailed. Fueled by a Beatles/Beach Boys/doo-wop phase, he pushed Kiedis in a more consistently melodic direction and then draped those vocals with all kinds of his own harmonies. It’s known as the RHCP album where Frusciante seized almost complete creative control. If Californication was an album on which Frusciante had to relearn how to be a Chili Pepper, he was firing on all cylinders for By The Way. And yet, whether in spite of or because of that, it might just be their best. It is far from the album that would encapsulate everything core to the band’s identity. By The Way was in some ways an extension of what began on Californication, in some ways an outlier. It sits in the middle of that trilogy, almost right in the middle of the band’s existence, and in a strange position in terms of their overall output. Following up the blockbuster Californication was By The Way, which arrived 20 years ago tomorrow. The band’s peak lineup was intact, they were spinning out hits, and they were beginning to evolve artistically.Ĭalifornication would kick off a fruitful and ambitious period for RHCP, a new trilogy of Frusciante-era albums with sprawling tracklists in which the band began to seemingly try just about any idea that came their way. Then, Frusciante rejoined the fold, and they returned with Californication in 1999, their second massive, definitive album bookending the ’90s along with BSSM. They hired Dave Navarro for 1995’s darker, strung-out One Hot Minute, which was regarded as a commercial and critical failure (despite accruing its defenders in the years since). Their wunderkind guitarist John Frusciante left the band and battled addiction Anthony Kiedis relapsed himself. After the massive success of 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the fortunes of the Peppers took a dip in the mid-’90s. By the early ’00s, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ comeback was in full swing.
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