Red Hot Chili Peppers were “against the hair-metal scene”.
Red Hot Chili Peppers rose up through the Hollywood music scene in the mid-1980s where they focused on the art punk underground, and bassist Flea admitted there was a lot of “petty bullshit” at that time.
He told Classic Rock magazine: “We were definitely against the hair-metal scene. We were like, ‘Fuck them. We’re the underground, art-rock, get-weird east side guys; those guys are just rehashing Aerosmith and KISS.’
“In retrospect it was all petty bullshit. A lot of those bands were fucking great. Guns N’ Roses was a great band.”
There were also some similarities between Chili Peppers – completed by drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist John Frusciante – and their rivals on the Sunset Strip.
Frontman Anthony Kiedis said: “We were a party band, but you have to bring something to the party.
“Flea was instrumental in saying, ‘We have to be good, we have to write some new shit, we have to have osmething to move these people.
“We always came fully loaded.”
Meanwhile, Flea admitted there was a level of “arrogance” in their early years as they saw themselves as genuine rock stars.
Flea explained: “There was a certain arrogance. A ‘Fuck the world, fuck the system, fuck the authority, fuck the powers that be, we’re us and we’re doing our thing our way, we’re street kids’ thing.
“We were going hard and being wild.”
And Kiedis explained how the band – whose 12th studio album ‘Unlimited Love’ will be released on April 1 – didn’t have ambitious beyond the underground scene at that pont.
He added: “It didn’t dawn on us that there was something other than selling out clubs and making people happy and being original.”
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