Update - 30th May 2019 – most of what I’m about to say is wrong. It was a good guess… but not correct. More to come.

Welcome!

Hello all, and thank you for subscribing to and supporting this newsletter. This is the first edition, and it’s a bit of an experiment at the moment, but I hope you’ll stick around while I find my footing.

As I’m guessing you know, I also run a website called the RHCP Sessions Archive. While my focus there is purely on the band’s studio sessions, this newsletter will be much more broad, and will focus on some of the RHCP-related things that have been on my mind the last few years.

Much like, for example, The Beatles, the Chili Peppers have such a varied history that each era of the band is like a band in itself. From album to album, they can change up entirely, and as a fan, you go through phases. A late-era John phase, an early-era John phase, a Navarro phase, a Hillel phase… Though I find it puzzling, there are even some fans who reject entire decades or eras (you know who you are), as if they were different bands entirely. This fascinates me, but I think it’s one of many reasons why they’re so popular; you can pick and choose which version you want, and there’s basically something for everyone (as long as they can put up with Anthony).

This newsletter will probably deal in eras. It will focus on specific moments. I won’t go on about my favourite songs or anything career-spanning.

The era I’d like to focus on today is the very first one. At the moment, I’m in the very beginning stages of writing a book about the Red Hot Chili Peppers in their first year, 1983. They didn’t do a whole lot – only 30-odd shows, one studio session – but they also did everything that year that they needed to do in order to propel them onward for the rest of their career. Everything that made the Chili Peppers, happened in 1983.

But there’s a lot of mystery surrounding that first year. It makes sense; they were nobodies at the time, and even they thought that the band was a joke that would never last. It took them three gigs to think of a proper name, and at the time nobody was thinking to write down dates, set-lists, take notes.

If the band go out tonight and perform a show, 10,000 people will be watching and filming, and the whole thing will be put up online. Not so for 1983. And one of the main mysteries, and perhaps one of the most interesting, is the date of the their first ever show. We have a pretty good idea when it happened, but we still don’t know exactly when.

(Bare with me: this is going to get very, very specific.)

Before I get into things, you might ask - why does it matter? It was early 1983. We know where it was, what they played. Isn’t that good enough?

Not for me. If I’m writing about the band in 1983, and just 1983, I want to narrow things down as much as possible. And to narrow down the exact placement of that first show also gives us a proper starting off point for the band. An anniversary to enjoy every year. That’s the kind of thing the sessions site was made for, and it’s even more relevant to the RHCP Live Archive, run by Leandro Cabo, which I’ve contributed to over the last couple of years.

Minutia is where I get my kicks, especially if I can help clear up a misconception or uncover some previously unknown detail.

Here’s an example: a few years back, I poured through a month’s worth of New York Times TV guide listings and some old Usenet databases from 1997, just to track down which day, exactly, the band had played on the Late Show with David Letterman. There used to be the (widely accepted) fact that they played “Aeroplane” on January 24, 1997. There was footage of it, sure, but no real proof that the performance did in fact take place in 1997. Which would be notable, because if they really did play that day, it took the amount of performances they did that year from 1 to 2.

But something seemed wrong about that report. Why would they be playing a track from a two year old album in the midst of a bunch of other cancelled shows? Hadn’t they already played Letterman twice?

Long story short, after a lot of digging around, I uncovered the fact that the “performance” on January 24th was actually a repeat of the February 13, 1996 show. There was no 1997 performance; that itch was scratched, and there was that little nugget of information secured. The world of Red Hot Chili Peppers live archiving was a little more accurate, and we could all sleep a lot better.

If only we could get so lucky with the first show. But we’re not only dealing something that happened 36 years ago, we’re also dealing with a lot of conflicting information. Even the band’s website is completely wrong, for reasons I’ll go into below.

Update - 30th May 2019 – most of what I’m about to say is wrong. It was a good guess… but not correct. More to come.

Let’s start with the easy facts: in early 1983, the band played at the Grandia Room, a club located at 5657 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.

*The Grandia Room in 1982. *

Opening for Gary Allen and his burlesque/cabaret act, they did one song: “Out In L.A.” It probably lasted about two minutes, and it probably sounded fairly close to the version we know from the demo the band recorded in May of 1983. They may have also done a “choreographed dance thing” just before playing.

The night they played, the Grandia Room went by the name “the Rhythm Lounge”, which was a R&B and rap night put on by Salomon Emquies and DJ Matt Dike. We know that the performance took place on a Thursday, because the Rhythm Lounge was only held on Thursday nights.

This means the date of February 13th (a Sunday), frequently referred online to as the band’s birthday and probably sourced from this interview with Anthony, is incorrect. But the band has never pretended they had any idea when the show was. In this interview, from 1990, Flea only has a vague idea of which month the show was. And that’s fair enough; they’ve got other things on their mind.

Thanks to Blackie Dammett’s autobiography, we also have the knowledge that their third show took place at the Cathay De Grande.

Anthony confirms in text of Scar Tissue that their third show was at the Cathay de Grande, but doesn’t provide an exact date. However, in his intro to the photo book Fandemonium, he says it was their fourth show, and in the photo section of Scar Tissue he says it was show number four as well.

I’m more inclined to side with Blackie’s recollection here, but I hope you understand now what I mean when I say there are conflicting facts around these early dates. At this point, we’ll have to take Blackie’s word here that it was their third show, and work from there.

An aside: Blackie says their Cathay de Grande show took place on the 5th of March. It was actually the 4th: in the Oral/Visual History, Anthony recounts a story about having to fight the show’s promoter and headliner, Wayzata De Camerone, for their share of the takings. According to Los Angeles Times concert listings, Wazata Band played the Cathay de Grande on Friday, March 4th. A different band, Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs, played the next night.

In the Oral/Visual History, Flea also refers to Anthony spinning around the dancefloor, flinging beer over the place, a story Anthony tells in Scar Tissue, so it’s definitely the same Cathay de Grande show they’re referring to.

The band shortly after their third ever show. March 4th, 1983.

Back to show #1. We know it took place 1) at some point before March 4th, 1983 and 2) on a Thursday night. But that leaves 8 possible days. We also have to leave room for the second show, which was either one or two weeks after the first. So when was it?

We can rule out February 10th. What Is This, the band that Hillel and Jack played in with Alain Johannes, had a performance that night. They played at the O.N. Klub in Silverlake with Fela Johnson and Lotus Lame & The Lame Flames.

We can also rule out February 24th: What Is This played at Madame Wong’s West that night, with Ju Ju Hounds, New Marines, and The Brat.

What Is This’ February 10th and February 24th concert listings

It’s highly unlikely that Jack and Hillel played for two different bands in the same night, especially when What Is This was their main focus at the time, so we can pretty firmly state that the first RHCP gig wasn’t on February 10th or February 24th.

The timeline at the back of the Oral/Visual History book says that the first gig was January 6. That was a Thursday, so that part’s right. But January? If their first gig was in early January, and their third was in early March, that’s two whole months in between gigs #1 and #3. That’s not the way the band have told it.

But it definitely could have been the 20th or the 27th of January. As far as I’m aware, there’s no evidence it wasn’t those dates.

Except for one little thing. On this page is the following sentence:

Flea made a comment on a gig with Fear he played with at feb.4 that this was just before the red hots.

It’s poorly worded, and I have no idea what the source of that information is (and their final guess of February 17 is wrong), but it’s too specific to not have some basis in the truth.

Fear did, in fact, play a gig on February 4, 1983. Part of it was even filmed, and you can see Flea sitting silently as Lee Ving is interviewed here. If Flea really did say this, and he meant that this gig was just before the first RHCP gig, then the only available Thursday after the 4th of February was the 17th. But that leaves no room for the second gig at the Rhythm Lounge, which needs to fall on a Thursday as well, and which can’t be the 24th, because as I’ve noted, What Is This played that night.

The story goes that they were asked back by Saloman Emquies the “following week” because the first show went so well, and when they returned they did “Out In L.A.” and “Get Up And Jump”.

But I don’t think the second gig came a week after the first, despite what all of the biographies say; I think it was two weeks. In the Oral/Visual History, Emquies himself says “when they were done I said to come back in a couple of weeks…”

Further, in an article in the Los Angeles Times from early 1984, Jeff Spurrier writes:

At their first show at Hollywood’s Rhythm Lounge, they had one song to play. The response was so good that they were asked to come back two weeks later.

I’m more inclined to believe something that was written only a year after the fact, instead of a biography written two decades later. And if Emquies says it was two weeks - he would know, wouldn’t he? He’s the one who said it to them in the first place.

Seeing the source of his quote will clear this up, but when Flea said that the Fear gig was just before the Chili Peppers, I think he meant it was just after. A single day afterwards in fact. That’s the only way the timeline matches up, and it’s perfectly natural to confuse right before with right after if a few decades have passed.

I think the first ever Red Hot Chili Peppers gig was on February 3rd, 1983. It fits all of the criteria. It was a Thursday night when What Is This or Fear weren’t already playing. It leaves space in the month for the second show, two weeks later, on the 17th of February. And it lines up with the Cathay de Grande performance being their third gig, on the 4th of March. One show every two weeks, enough time to write new songs.

Now, I’m fairly certain there’s a big piece of information that I’m missing here which would throw all of what I’ve just written into doubt. A flyer, an interview, a photograph. Perhaps What Is This cancelled their Feb 17 gig, but the show was still advertised. Perhaps the first gig was in mid January. I’m more than happy to be proven wrong about something if it means we get closer to the truth, and hopefully in the course of writing my book about the band, I’ll finalise things some more.

In the meantime, that’s is my best guess. February 3rd.

The band performing at Madame Wong’s in 1983 - date unknown. Photo by Fab Drouet.

Okay. That was long. Thanks for sticking with me. Hope you enjoyed it.

In the future, I think I’ll write a little about the band on their 1998 comeback tour, maybe talk about a recording session or two, maybe interview someone.

This is the first of many pieces. If you have any comments, ideas or suggestions - please get in touch!

(And, more importantly, if I’ve screwed up big time in this piece, please let me know - I’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks for reading,

Hamish x