Just Water Under the Bridge

Ho-hum, another Red Hot Chili Peppers album--they crank them out like clockwork every four years or so. That means a different guitarist in the band (the seventh, but who’s counting, especially since it’s the second time through for this one), and a new batch of narrow-escape stories involving drugs, personal clashes, artistic frustration and near-breakups.

In other words, business as usual for a band that seems to be simultaneously blessed and cursed. But despite a snail’s-pace record release timetable that would have a normal audience drifting away, despite the perpetual question of who is actually in the group this time, the Chili Peppers have managed to hang on to their standing as one of the pillars of modern rock.

Part of it might be the fascination of that close-to-the-edge M.O., but the appeal ultimately comes down to basics--a handful of alt-rock standards (including the pummeling “Give It Away” and the melancholy ballad “Under the Bridge”) and an undiminished capacity to stir up a concert crowd--when they’re all in shape and they don’t have to cancel tours after guitarists walk out.

As it was in the beginning. The Chili Peppers started stirring things up in L.A.’s clubs in 1983 with their funk-informed rock and hyperactive, uninhibited shows, and as they progressed to the big time they became the carriers of rock’s dionysian spirit. Rock’s head-banging plus funk’s booty-shaking equal freedom and release. It’s a message that ages well.

So here they are, basking in the sun in the scruffy parking lot behind a Hollywood rehearsal complex, all apparently right with the world. The album, “Californication,” is finished, and they’re gearing up for a round of promotional activity. As part of this year’s renewal, they’ve also signed up with one of rock’s premier management teams.

“They’re a great band,” says Cliff Burnstein, whose New York-based Q Prime firm took on the Peppers last fall. “There aren’t great bands available very often.”

Burnstein isn’t predicting that “Californication” will return the band to the 4 million sales plateau of 1991’s breakthrough “Blood Sugar Sex Magik.” But he says that the Chili Peppers’ status as what radio programmers call a “heritage band” guarantees the group’s new record a spot on the airwaves.

They figure they’ve made the album they want, so if people get a chance to hear it, things will take care of themselves. They’ll also raise their profile with some high school promotional concerts in the Northwest, special club dates in Europe, some U.S. radio station festivals (including the KROQ Weenie Roast on Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre) and a spot at Woodstock in July.

Given the band’s history of instability, though, you have to wonder whether Burnstein--who coped with a headline-making overdose tragedy in the camp of then-clients the Smashing Pumpkins--received assurance that things had changed.

“You can never be sure, and they have their own lives to lead,” he says. “But when we talked to them, it was as clear to us as it could be that not only were the drugs out of the picture at that time, but that there was a clear intention to keep them out of the picture. [Singer] Anthony [Kiedis] is always very aware of walking the tightrope, and he has no intention of falling off.”

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Someday people might stop being surprised that the Chili Peppers are still together, but at the moment each new episode in the band’s saga has the feel of a hard-earned miracle.

Not that it looks that way from inside.

“We just go through things the way that we go through them and deal with them the way that we deal with them,” says Flea, the animated, affable bassist who co-founded the band in 1983 with his Fairfax High School buddies Kiedis and guitarist Hillel Slovak.

“It’s almost like having an emotional crisis in your life,” he continues. “You deal with it. . . . I really think in order to be real you got to go through that [expletive], and that might mean not making a record for a while.”

Adds Kiedis, “It became almost better than ever in a way, because we had made it through all that stuff. . . . Why waste your time and energy worrying about other people’s perceptions of whether it’s volatile or not? ‘Cause right now it’s just a gas.”

The primary cause of this euphoria is pacing around the parking lot like a pent-up John the Baptist while Flea and Kiedis sit for an interview at a patio table. Guitarist John Frusciante is impatient for the media moment to end so the band--which also includes drummer Chad Smith, who came aboard in 1989--can go inside and pick up their instruments.

“He’s the most pure artist I’ve ever known,” says Flea, 36. “This is really all he cares about, this and watching old movies. . . . He thinks about it and he lives it and he breathes it, and after we play he goes home and plays some more, and after he plays some more he listens to music and then he’ll write music. . . .

“That’s part of why he left the band before. . . . He saw our success as something contaminating this beautiful, childlike thing. He doesn’t ever want anyone to [expletive] with that.”

Frusciante, a local boy who grew up idolizing the band, got to join his heroes in 1989. He played on “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” but the following year he bailed out.

“I don’t know, we just stopped talking,” says the guitarist, 29, referring primarily to the rift between him and Kiedis.

“We just responded to success differently. . . . Anthony seemed to be going more from the standpoint that we had done a great album, and now we were gonna get the rewards from it. And I wasn’t interested in the rewards. They weren’t gonna do anything to make my artistic energy better, they were only gonna make it less.”

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The reconciliation, mediated by Flea, came last year, after Frusciante had kicked his own post-Peppers heroin habit and after another frustrating chapter for the band--a three-year stint with former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, who recorded 1995’s “One Hot Minute” with the band and then left by mutual agreement, the Peppers say. Good friend, wrong chemistry.

Rick Rubin, who produced the last three Chili Peppers albums, thinks Frusciante’s style is more attuned to the Peppers’ core aesthetic.

“John is a minimalist,” says Rubin, who has worked with acts ranging from the Beastie Boys to Johnny Cash. “John’s writing and playing is all about space, whereas Dave’s writing and playing is much more about density and volume. Dave’s more of an orchestral player. . . . If the space is there, it sounds like the Chili Peppers, and without space that kind of goes away.”

“Californication,” which came out Tuesday, has its share of hammering, rock-rap-funk hybrids, but like “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” the last album this lineup recorded together, its heart is in more reflective, bittersweet material such as the new single “Scar Tissue.”

“A lot of the lyrics came from damage and pain and sadness,” says Kiedis, who writes all the words. “To me, nothing makes me feel better than to write sad lyrics or to listen to somebody else’s sad song. That’s like a real good feeling.”

Before Frusciante’s return, the band was also slowed by a Kiedis motorcycle accident, and its internal conflicts were complicated by drug intake.

Says Kiedis, “During that time, I contributed to the lack of focus and the lack of unity because I was going back and forth from being loaded on drugs and being clean.

“Right after Dave was no longer in the band, Flea was very unhappy, and I understood why. His level of patience and tolerance with me was kind of at its end.”

Is there a pattern here?

Original guitarist Slovak died of a drug overdose in 1988. A few years later, following their biggest success, Kiedis’ heroin addiction and a cycle of pressure and excess intruded again.

“When we made ‘Blood Sugar,’ ” Flea recalls, “we made a record that we really loved, . . . and we went on the road and fell apart emotionally.”

Against expectations, then, the Chili Peppers are reconstituted and revitalized. It’s an old story, but their new focus has been obvious to people around them.

Manager Burnstein, who with his partner Peter Mensch handles Metallica and Def Leppard and has also worked with Hole, Madonna and the Smashing Pumpkins, was encouraged when the band played a series of shows last September in small California cities.

“It was to see how the new songs sounded and play with John. This was a good sign, that they would take weekends off and go to Chico and play . . . just to get the vibe back. So we thought they had a great work ethic. When they went in, in January, to cut the album, they were done by the first week of March. By our standards, that’s unbelievably, extraordinarily efficient. I was really impressed.”

Says producer Rubin, “They seem the closest that I’ve seen them to the time before we made the ‘Blood Sugar’ album. They were in a creative high point and comfort among themselves that I haven’t seen since then, until now.”

Does that mean there is finally some stability in sight?

“You can never really say,” Rubin says. “I mean, I’ve learned from my relationship with these guys to never expect anything. . . . They seem to be in a great place now, but there’s no telling what that means.”