"Are you more of a rock band now than funk?” I asked Anthony Kiedis as we sat having lunch by the pool at the Sunset Marquis hotel in Los Angeles. He looked at me askance. “We see ourselves as this hardcore, bone-crunching, psychedelic sex-funk band from heaven,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman replied, like, ‘duh’.
It was 1990 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers had finally broken through to the mainstream with their fourth album, Mother’s Milk: their first gold album in the US; first hit single in the UK with Taste The Pain. But their audience was essentially white, rock/alternative, punk/indie fans. The Chilis had even spawned a musical progeny: funk-metal.
