The Alternative Number Ones: Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “My Friends”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

This is the one where he's like, "Ah luhhhv awwwl of yew, hut bah the coal."

In the grand narrative of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, One Hot Minute is generally remembered as the moment where they almost blew it. Coming off of the gazillion-selling success of 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the Chili Peppers were playing with house money. They had a label that was happy to send them off to Hawaii for an extended songwriting trip, and even a random one-off track like "Soul To Squeeze," an outtake that made its way into the world via the Coneheads soundtrack, could become a radio smash during the long stretch between albums. The Chili Peppers were among the biggest bands of the early-'90s alt-rock boom, and unlike most of their peers in that moment, they actually liked being rock stars. The world was ready for them to come back with something triumphant, but that's not what happened.

What happened was this: John Frusciante, the brilliant guitarist who joined the Chili Peppers as a teenager, couldn't handle the group's sudden and overwhelming fame, so he quit mid-tour. The Chili Peppers replaced Fruciante with a series of fill-in guitarists without settling on a full-time replacement. Eventually, they brought in a ringer: Dave Navarro, formerly of Jane's Addiction, who'd declined a previous invitation to join up.

The combination should've worked. Jane's Addiction and the Chili Peppers, the headliners of the first two Lollapalooza tours, were about as intertwined as two bands at that level can be. They were friends. They came from the same LA scene, the drugged-out and glamorous goth-club weirdo universe that existed just outside the city's glammy sleaze-rock scene. Both bands combined extreme, vaguely predatory horniness with quasi-hippy cosmic-consciousness gibberish. Navarro was especially tight with Flea, and the two of them played together on a gigantic hit, Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." When Jane's Addiction reunited in 1997, Flea became their new bass player. On paper, it all made sense.

But there's no accounting for chemistry. Or drugs. There's no accounting for those, either. (Drugs, I suppose, are a kind of chemistry unto themselves.) Over the years, most of the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers had various episodes of deep, debilitating addiction. So did Dave Navarro. Navarro, used to working with the domineering bandleader Perry Farrell, had trouble settling into the the Chili Peppers' loose, jammy songwriting process. He also didn't really like playing funk music, which is those guys' whole thing. On top of all of that, Anthony Kiedis, who'd been clean for a few years, was deep in the midst of a heavy relapse when the Chili Peppers recorded One Hot Minute. He was smoking crack and heroin, dating a 17-year-old model, and trying to hide his drug use from his bandmates.

During the One Hot Minute recording process, Anthony Kiedis was in and out of rehab. His bandmates and past collaborator Rick Rubin eventually finished the instrumental tracks without him, waiting for him to write his lyrics and add his vocals. In his absence, Flea took over writing the lyrics and vocal melodies for a few songs, and he even sang lead once or twice. He sounded bad. On top of that, the Dave Navarro thing just didn't work. One Hot Minute has its moments, and I've definitely seen a few people try to argue that it's an underrated record. But as a general Chili Peppers skeptic, it's a real fucking chore. I had at least some lingering middle-school affection for Blood Sugar Sex Magik, but I'd never listened to One Hot Minute in full before writing this column, and I am not likely to go back and do that again. It's long and indulgent and full of "aw yeah aw yeah" bullshit, and Navarro's psych-rock shredding almost never matches the rest of the band's vibe. I can see why the record faded away as quickly as it did.

But this is a column about alternative radio hits, and even at their lowest, the Chili Peppers were all over that shit. Once they started racking up Modern Rock chart-toppers, the Chili Peppers simply never stopped. They will be in this column more than any other band, so get used to seeing these motherfuckers in this space. Mid-'90s alt-rock radio was especially hungry for big bands playing ballads, and One Hot Minute had exactly one of those. Naturally, that song got a lot of airplay and kept a bunch of better songs out of the #1 spot. Sometimes, that's just how it goes.

A few weeks ago, after I wrote my column on the Goo Goo Dolls' "Name," the chart-watcher and former Billboard columnist Sean Ross gave me a crucial bit of insight via Bluesky: "There were lots of ex-Top 40 PDs at the key Alt stations in 1995, plus the 'Modern AC' format was just about to emerge. 'Listen to the album and find the ballad' was definitely a programming strategy then. Those PDs had been through REO Speedwagon and Poison's trajectories, so they knew the drill." That's pretty depressing, right? It also makes total sense. The alternative format was growing at the time, so all kinds of seasoned radio professionals were jumping in and applying their own hard-earned wisdom to this type of music that, at least theoretically, was supposed to stand in opposition to all of that. It helps explain why "Name" could be so huge even though it didn't really sound like the other music that the Goo Goo Dolls were making at the time. It also explains how the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "My Friends" could dominate the Modern Rock chart for as long as it did, even if the album it came from was a dud, at least relative to expectations.

The Chili Peppers had played this game before. At alt-rock stations, the big song from Blood Sugar Sex Magik was "Give It Away," the track that arguably best conveyed the band's entire style. But the song that really blew the band up was "Under The Bridge," a heartsick power ballad that became completely inescapable even though it only reached #6 on the Modern Rock chart. (It's an 8.) "Under The Bridge" was a huge mainstream crossover hit, #2 on the Hot 100, and it's the main reason that album sold seven million copies in the US alone. "Soul To Squeeze," another ballad, topped the Modern Rock chart in between Chili Peppers album cycles. The smart thing for the Chili Peppers to do, commercially at least, would've been to make a whole record of ballads like that. I would've probably liked that hypothetical album better than what the Chili Peppers actually made with One Hot Minute. But I guess it's to the band's credit that they stuck to their guns, cranking out another record of flippity-dippity goofball party music.

In any case, "My Friends" wasn't the lead single from One Hot Minute. That honor went to "Warped," quite possibly the moment where Dave Navarro's glitter-Hendrix nipple-ring riffage best meshed with the Chili Peppers' whole deal, possibly because Anthony Kiedis basically did a Perry Farrell impression on that song. Navarro did not know what to do when Kiedis started rapping, and there's none of that on "Warped," though some of Kiedis' drug-life lyrics ("my tendency for dependency is offending me") totally could've been rapped. In any case, "Warped" was not a smash, and the song itself was probably overshadowed by a dumb backlash over the music-video moment where Kiedis and Flea kissed. ("Warped" peaked at #7 on the Modern Rock chart. It's a 7.)

One Hot Minute came out in September 1995, got mixed-to-dismal reviews, and debuted at #4 on the album chart, which must've been a disappointment after Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The band immediately kicked off a European tour, but the ensuing shows were often postponed because band members kept getting injured. But even amidst all that, the radio success of "My Friends" was pretty much preordained. It was money in the bank. I felt like I had to read Anthony Kiedis' autobiography Scar Tissue for the purposes of this column, so you're welcome. In that book, Kiedis doesn't have much to say about "My Friends" -- merely that Flea wrote the vocal melody while Kiedis was off on one of his rehab stays. As far as I can tell, though, the lyrics are all Kiedis. They certainly seem like they're all Kiedis. This was a particularly dark time in Kideis' life, and many of the songs on One Hot Minute are about his addiction. That's not really obvious on "My Friends," but it's definitely subtext.

Kiedis opens "My Friends" by singing that his friends are so depressed and he feels the question of their loneliness. Don't expect too many earthshaking insights from that guy, even if he admirably avoids lapsing into skitter-ditter rap voice all through the track. He sings that an ex-girlfriend called him on the prison phone, that they want to give her seven years for being sad. Maybe that actually is an earthshaking insight. It's definitely an evocative way to describe the anti-drug laws that the Clinton administration enacted so forcefully. But I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of this line: "I heard a little girl, and what she said was something beautiful/ 'To give your love no matter what' was what she said." Did he lose his train of thought in the middle of that one? That's not even a complete sentence. Next time, tell that little girl to finish her thought!

You get the point, anyway. Anthony Kiedis' friends are depressed. He's probably depressed, too. Drugs have ravaged everything around him, and he keeps finding himself pulled back into that world. (In his book, he says he relapsed hard after a dentist gave him painkillers.) The rest of the band captures that feeling by going straight into folk-rock mode. Dave Navarro comes in with some Zeppelin-style circular acoustic guitars, and there's a nice lift to the melody. I really like the way the song builds to its fuzz-drunk solo, which must be one of Navarro's best moments as a Chili Pepper. It's a pretty song, but it would be a whole lot prettier if almost anyone else was singing it. Only Anthony Kiedis would've written the "My Friends" lyrics, but he delivers them in an amelodic honk that mostly takes me out of the track. Meanwhile, Flea's high-pitched backing vocals are fucking atrocious. The song hits hardest when nobody is singing at all. That's the case with so many Chili Peppers songs.

I honestly don't remember hearing "My Friends" on the radio that often. It was definitely in rotation, but I don't remember my local station running it into the ground, the way it did with so many of the songs in this column. Maybe that's because "My Friends" was soft and inoffensive enough that I could comfortably ignore it. This was not the case with follow-up single "Aeroplane." I remember hearing "Aeroplane" all the time even though the song only reached #8, probably because the chorus is fucking annoying. I couldn't ignore that one. (It's a 4.)

Ultimately, One Hot Minute only went double platinum, a huge step down from Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The Chili Peppers took another four years to make their next album, and then that one turned out to be the biggest that they ever made. In retrospect, the mid-'90s were the Chili Peppers' wilderness years. After the One Hot Minute album cycle wound down, the band covered the Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" for the soundtrack of the motion picture Beavis And Butt-Head Do America. I did not like their version of that song, which reached #14 on the Modern Rock chart. It's got a pretty fun video, though. After that, the Chili Peppers basically took all of 1997 off, and then they fired Dave Navarro.

Navarro just turned out to be a bad fit. He went through his own drug relapse around the same time that Anthony Kiedis was constantly getting clean and then getting unclean again. But the real issue was that Navarro just didn't mesh with the band musically. On paper, it made perfect sense. In real life, that combination led to One Hot Minute. Once Navarro was gone, Anthony Kiedis and Flea invited John Fruciante to come back as a last-ditch effort to keep the band from breaking up. Frusciante had been on a real ride, going through his own addiction and recovery. For a while, he was living as a recluse, painting and making weird lo-fi solo albums. But once he went through rehab, he felt OK with the idea of becoming a Chili Pepper again.

I happened to be in the crowd at Frusciante's first big show after returning to the Chili Peppers. It was at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, DC. (Frusciante's return show was a secret warm-up gig at the 9:30 Club the night before.) The Chili Peppers were supposed to headline the first night of that fest. But during the first day, a thunderstorm blew in, and someone got struck by lightning. She was hospitalized, but she was OK. When my friends heard about the lightning strike on the radio, some of them worried that I was the one who got hit, since I would've been taller than just about anyone else at the show.

The Chili Peppers weren't rescheduled for the second day, but Pearl Jam played last, and they ended their set early so that the Chili Peppers could run out and play a couple of songs on their equipment. In his book, Kiedis write about that mini-set as some magical moment. I don't remember it that way. My friends and I were already on our way out of the stadium, and we stopped and turned around when we heard the big crowd roar. We were like, "Oh, huh. It's the Red Chili Peppers." We watched from the concrete stadium corridors. It seemed fine.

Given the circumstances of its creation, One Hot Minute has all the makings of an underrated fan-favorite album -- the one that doesn't sell that well but that the die-hards love. I'm sure some die-hards do love it. To me, it mostly sounds like a slightly shittier version of a regular Red Hot Chili Peppers record, and I wouldn't get all that fired-up over a regular Red Hot Chili Peppers record in the first place. "My Friends" is one of the better songs on One Hot Minute. It's got its problems, and it's nowhere near as good as "Under The Bridge," but it's kind of pretty. Right now, I'm mostly just staring into the future, wondering how I'm going to find things to say about all these other fucking Chili Peppers songs. At some point, I'll probably long for the days when I could be like, "I don't know, 'My Friends' is OK, I guess."

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will be back in this column so many times. Dave Navarro will be back, too.

GRADE: 6/10

BONUS BEATS: The Red Hot Chili Peppers haven't played "My Friends" live since John Frusciante rejoined the band. They haven't played almost any of the other One Hot Minute songs, either. Frusciante apparently once said he'd never even listened to the album. But in 2021, the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins played a one-off set with an all-star backing band at Eddie Vedder's Ohana Festival. He was joined by his Foo Fighters bandmate Pat Smear and by Dave Navarro, as well as all-star replacement bassist Chris Chaney, who played in post-reunion Jane's Addiction lineup with Navarro and in Alanis Morissette's backing band with Hawkins. Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith joined them for a version of "My Friends," and it was the first time Smith and Navarro played that song together since Navarro got bounced from the Chili Peppers. Hawkins was never a full-time rock frontman, but I think he did a better job singing "My Friends" than Anthony Kiedis did. Here's the video:

(Taylor Hawkins, Pat Smear, and Chris Chaney will all appear in this column in one capacity or another.)

THE 10S: The Toadies' oddly funky swamp-murder freakout "Possum Kingdom," one of the all-time great Guitar Hero songs, peaked at #4 behind "My Friends." It's a 10, so help me Jesus.

The ominous, slackjawed synths-and-breakbeats creep-drone death-groove "Natural One," which sounds like something Beck's evil twin might've made, somehow also reached #4 behind "My Friends" after Lou Barlow's Sebadoh side project Folk Implosion contributed it to the Kids soundtrack. Good news for an endless spree: It's another 10.

One more! Weezer/that dog offshoot the Rentals' deadpan fuzz-pop squiggle "Friends Of P" peaked at #7 behind "My Friends." If you're down with this song, well then you're down with me. It's a 10.