The Red Hot Chili Peppers self-titled debut album was released on August 10, 1984.
We decided to record the album at El Dorado Studios, which is right on Hollywood and Vine. El Dorado was a classic old Hollywood studio with nice vintage equipment. For our engineer, we hired Dave Jerden, a soft-spoken, experienced, and competent man behind the board. Andy Gill was much different than we had expected. He was approachable, but he was also very English, semi-aloof, clearly intelligent, but with no edge. We were these aggressive, volatile individuals, and then there was this soft, smarty-pants English guy. Even though we all liked him and he was interested in us, he wasn’t becoming the fifth finger on our hand. He certainly didn’t embrace our musical aesthetic or ideology. It was almost like it was beneath him. He had been there, done that, and that was fine, but let’s move on, go somewhere else. And we were like “Somewhere else? This is who we are!” So there was a little tension.One day I got a glimpse of Gill’s notebook, and next to the song “Police Helicopter,” he’d written “Shit.” I was demolished that he had dismissed that as shit. “Police Helicopter” was a jewel in our crown. It embodied the spirit of who we were, which was this kinetic, stabbing, angular, shocking assault force of sound and energy. Reading his notes probably sealed the deal in our minds that “Okay, now we’re working with the enemy,” It became very much him against us, especially Flea and me. It became a real battle to make the record.
We were in the middle of a heated argument with Andy one night in the studio when Flea said, “Let’s put this on hold. I’m going to take a big shiny shit.”
“Oh yeah, be sure and bring that back for me, then, won’t you,” Andy said drolly.
“Okay,” Flea said.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Andy said.
I followed Flea out of the room. All the way to the bathroom, we were saying, “Let’s really bring him the shit.”
So Flea defecated, and we put it in an empty pizza box that was in the studio, and we went running back down the hallway and delivered the shit pizza to Andy.
He just rolled his eyes and said, “How predictable.”
To this day, Flea points to that incident to demonstrate why we’re such a good band: because we brought shit to Andy Gill.— Anthony Kiedis, 2004
(Fuente: fanaticbychoice)
