The label wanted the obvious ones: Give It Away , Under the Bridge , Suck My Kiss . The MTV bones. But Anthony had a different knot in his stomach. He was forty-one. He had buried Hillel Slovak. He had fired Jack Irons. He had watched John quit, descend into heroin’s abyss, nearly die, and then resurrect himself like a ghost who remembered how to play guitar.
“They’re the best we’ve done in years,” Anthony said. “And that’s the problem.” greatest hits red hot chili peppers
When they finished recording, the engineer played back the two songs side by side. Flea started crying. He didn’t know why. John stared at the floor. The label wanted the obvious ones: Give It
The second new track came from a darker place. John played a riff that sounded like a siren, and Anthony wrote about a friend who’d just relapsed—a man who called from a payphone, voice wet and shaking, saying he’d lost everything again. Save the Population . The chorus was a desperate prayer: “I want to save the population / But I can’t save myself.” He was forty-one
That became Fortune Faded . A song about chasing the dragon of success and finding only your own reflection.
“We’re neither,” Chad said.