 |
| BACK TO NEU! PRESS |
 |
 |
 |
Hamburg's
show of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers saw
them team up with NEU! guitarist Michael
Rother.
Accompanied
by 'Omar' the former 'At the drive
in' and present 'Mars Volta' guitarist
, they collectively jammed on stage
for 20 minutes.
Kiedis
and Smith took a backseat for a duration
of the session allowing Frusciante, Flea,
Volta and Rother to lose themselves in
their amazing sonic capabilities. The
audience in Hamburg were left in complete
awe, accepting that they experienced
a moment of true genius.
JOHN
FRUSCIANTE met up with NEU! guitarist
Michael Rother whom he quotes one of
his main musical influences for a talk
for German music mag "Musikexpress".
RHCP
musical mastermind of such records as
Blood Sugar Sex Magic or Californication
invited Rother on stage for a 20 minute
session much to the delight of the 15'000
fans! Relaxed, racy, ironic, chaotic,
brilliant! The otherwise predictable
Red Hot Chili Peppers surprised their
audience in the Color Line Arena with
adorable improvisations.
by
Stefan Krulle. |
|
| |
By the
end of it, we were crying tears of happiness.
And one colleague speculated that he might
well wake up next morning and wonder what had
really happened the night before. The simple
answer "a concert by the Red Hot Chili
Peppers" is hardly an adequate response.
The band has always been good, but at the same
time, always predictable: 20 hits in 75 minutes
and goodbye. Even in Hamburg's Color Line Arena,
it was only the support act which initially
hinted at this being a special evening; the
Texan group Mars Volta brought back sunny memories
among the more senior members of the audience
of the good old Krautrock days; of ten-minute
numbers, wah-wah guitars and perhaps a few
soft drugs. A good support act, not one of
the usual advertising campaigns for some untalented
newcomers. |
| |
 |
|
Then
came the entrance of messrs Kiedis,
Frusciante, Flea and Smith; they lined
up in front of a snow-white scaffold
and later in front of large-format
screens with giant-size projections
of their pictures, and played an inspired
set of their repertoire. Albeit not
the band's entire musical history,
since history - even one's own - is
something the Peppers do in original
American manner: they unfailingly ignore
anything that would make them seem
too old, and that's why there were
no songs from the first four albums
in the programme.
As things seemed to be moving towards the
finale, while fetching beer from the lobby,
we came across a couple of German studio
musicians who were having a good old moan.
Too little in the middle sound range, and
not enough from the nether regions either.
Just blah-blah, we thought to ourselves,
from people who understand too little because
they know too much. Who at this rock concert
is going to worry about little |
|
| |
| things like a minor
sound imbalance? A little down in the mouth
we went back towards the arena, where the Peppers
were giving encores starting with an old song
by the Stooges. It was after that that things
really started to take off; little by little,
if you can say it this way, we were transfixed. |
| |
At ten
to eleven, in the ninetieth minute of what
had anyway been a fantastic concert, the Red
Hot Chili Peppers began playing a number which
was to end at twenty to twelve. A beacon to
all that is good and great in rock 'n' roll,
a hysterical, relaxed, racy, ironic, chaotic,
brilliant, noisy, delicate, exhilarating and
intoxicating whirlwind back to such forgotten
sources as the jam session. |
| |
When Kiedis
felt he couldn't sing any more and the drumming
became too much for Smith, they both sat on
the loudspeakers, while the other two band
members got together with Mars Volta guitarist
Omar and later even with Michael Rother from
Krautrock legend Neu!, who had surely been
sent from heaven, and sat on the floor playing
divine music, the like of which we had never
before heard from the Peppers and may well
never do again. This made the whole evening
into a priceless gift. Frusciante, the magician,
played for us from another world, Flea combined
brilliant playing with wonderful bass lines,
and at some point, when all the rest were well
out of breath, Chad Smith began to drum again.
It was unbelievable. What rock millionaires
can come up with in front of 15,000 people
in a concrete bowl of a building. And the fact
that even today, you can fall in love with
music all over again. Will there be concerts
after this Saturday? There must be!
Article
printed on March 24, 2003 |
|
 |
|
