Product Description

An exploration of the creative genius and insane chemistry of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fired up by 1970s funk, rock, ska and soul, the band fought, split, kissed and made up, then fought again. This work tells their stories through their hugely popular songs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #496169 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 143 pages

Customer Reviews

Lack of real info or enthusiasm for the chili peppers
First, I feel I should give you a comprehensive insight into the author of the book:
Rob Fitzpatrick is a writer for NME magazine; a magazine that rarely covers the chili peppers other than reviews of their albums, which is surprising considering how popular the band are.

A recent review he wrote of the band playing live at murrayfield describes the peppers as "four attractive, tanned millionaires up there who patently feel there's somewhere else they'd rather be." I could go on (read the review here - http://nme.com/reviews/11688.htm), but the evidence provided shows that Rob Fitzpatrick is NOT a chili peppers fan; his reasons for writing this book is more for love of money than love of music.

The book itself is very well presented and designed, plenty of bold pictures that represent the chili peppers well (albeit the captions are completely false!)

This book is split into biography sections and sections that go through every song. The biography sections are comprehensive and cover the band well, but fans will already be familiar with re-treads of the sock antics of the chili peppers. The individual sections for each song vary in quality. Some are quite interesting reads, describing how the songs came about. Others only seem to offer a bored Fitzpatrick enterpretation of the song.

It should be noted for fans that none of the quotes in the book are new - they are all taken from older interviews, so for fans such as myself there is little new information on the band.

Overall the book is a well-presented comprehensive chili peppers read, but the false information and lack of enthusiasm for the subject really brings this title down. You can work through the book in a couple of hours, but if your a chili peppers fan don't expect any new information.

Good for the pictures and little else.
As a huge Peppers fan I'd like to think I'm pretty wised up on the foursome and their work over the years, and this book really does them no justice. Song meanings are formed from misquoted lyrics, assumptions and mere guesses. The writer even has the gall to criticize the band just to fill up voids in his knowledge of the songs. Barely any exclusive insight is provided.

Photos are mislabelled, as Fitzpatrick clearly can't tell the difference between any person holding a guitar, and ordered almost randomly.

That said, the pictures are good and varied, so I'll probably be cutting up my copy of this sometime soon.

Sort out the photo inaccuracies!
A fair few of the photos were not 'chronologically' correct (i.e. showed old photos aginst new albums and vice versa) and often the note saying who was in the pic was totally wrong (i.e. current line-up described as Slovak, Irons, Flea, Kiedis).

I also expected a better insight into what the songs are about & the inspiration that brought them into existence, but you just get the author's (sometimes incorrect) synopsis (i.e. 'Cabron' is actually about befriending LA gang members, not a boy meets girl love story).

If these inaccuracies are sorted out for a future revised edition, it'll be a good fans/collectors piece.