10 Best Red Hot Chili Peppers Albums - Ranked!
4. Mother’s Milk (1989)
Mother’s Milk was the first album to feature the most well-known Chilis line-up.
After Hillel Slovak’s tragic death in 1988, and the grief-stricken departure of drummer Jack Irons, Flea and Kiedis once again had to find new members. Enter a teenage John Frusciante – already sought-after on the LA music scene, he chose the way of the funky monk.
With a guitarist secured, the band held open drum auditions, with the last person to rock up being a 6-foot something biker, toting a glam metal hairstyle, complete with bandana. After what was later described as the most frenzied energetic jam of the sessions, Chad Smith was offered a place in the band on the condition that he change his hair style and lose the bandana. Smith turned up the next day having done neither.
The opening track, Good Time Boys, gives you a solid indication of what’s in store with this album, and it really is the perfect example of what funk-punk rock fusion can be. Say that again, FUNK-PUNK-ROCK-FUSION. A souped-up cover of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground was also featured, with a slap-bass intro that’s enough to make even the most conservative of dancers bust a move.
This album demonstrated a growth in Kiedis’s song writing, with the track Knock Me Down being an in-your-face reflection of his friend Hillel Slovak’s death and Kiedis’s own struggle with addiction.