10 Best Red Hot Chili Peppers Albums - Ranked!
2. Californication (1999)
After their 1995’s One Hot Minute album – which you’ll note does not appear on this list, being a confused, choppy affair, as the band tried to come to terms with various addictions and new guitar player, Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction) – the band needed a miracle.
Cue the second coming of John Frusciante. After a prolonged battle with heroin addiction which left him penniless, toothless and near-death, 'Guitar Jesus' returned. Fresh out of rehab, with scarred arms and no guitar, he was visited by Flea who asked him to rejoin the band.
In the 2001 book Scar Tissue, the story goes that Frusciante broke down in tears saying, "Nothing would make me happier". The band bought Frusciante a new Fender Stratocaster and set to work at writing.
Flea opens up this album with some truly wild bass playing, full of the crazed energy that gives credence to his nickname. As well as other high-energy tracks like Get on Top and Parallel Universe, the album features some of the Chili Peppers’ most well-known ballads, with the five-minute-plus love/hate letter to California: Californication.
Other notable tracks to feature include Otherside, which further explores the death of Hillel Slovak, and Scar Tissue, one of the band’s most successful singles to date. The album really feels like a band resurrected, but to describe the sound of these songs feels like a wasted effort at this point, if you still haven’t heard this record: YOUTUBE THAT SH*T.