Californication is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on June 8, 1999, on Warner Bros. Records. It was produced by Rick Rubin. Along with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Californication is one of the band's best-selling albums.
Californication marked the return of guitarist John Frusciante, who'd previously appeared on Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and shifted the band's style. The lyrics incorporated the sexual innuendos already associated with the band, but added themes including death, California, suicide, drugs, globalization and travel.
Californication is the Chili Peppers' most commercially successful studio release to date, with more than 17 million copies sold worldwide, and more than eight million in the United States alone. As of 2002, the album had sold more than four million copies in Europe. The record yielded several hits for the band, including "Otherside," the title track and the Grammy Award-winning "Scar Tissue." Californication peaked at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200.
The record marked a significant change in style for the band: Rolling Stones Greg Tate noted that "while all previous Chili Peppers projects have been highly spirited, Californication dares to be spiritual and epiphanic". Another critic, Billboards Paul Verna, mentioned that the album brought out "the group's softer, melodic side", as opposed to their previous six albums.
Background In 1991, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their breakthrough album Blood Sugar Sex Magik on Warner Bros. Records. The album sold seven million copies in the United States, and became a seminal component of the alternative rock explosion in the early 1990s. After the release of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, guitarist John Frusciante left the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as he became overwhelmed by the band's newfound popularity. Dave Navarro was hired as his replacement, and incorporated elements of heavy metal and psychedelic rock on the band's 1995 album One Hot Minute. The album failed to match the critical and commercial success of its predecessor, and Navarro left in early 1998.
In the years following his departure, Frusciante became addicted to heroin and cocaine, leaving him in poverty and near death. Friends convinced Frusciante to enter drug rehabilitation, and in 1998, he rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the insistence of bassist Flea. While in rehab, Frusciante came to terms with rock stardom; in a Rolling Stone interview, he said: "It got into my head that stardom was something evil. If you were a rock star, you were trying to put people on. I don't see it that way anymore." With Frusciante, the Red Hot Chili Peppers began brainstorming ideas for a new album. Flea suggested the group record an album with electronic influences, akin to Zooropa by U2. When the band was turned down by multiple electronic music producers (including David Bowie), they decided to instead pursue an alternative rock direction with throwbacks to their roots.
Writing and recording
The majority of the music for Californication was written at Flea's makeshift garage studio in the summer of 1998. It took Frusciante several weeks to readjust to playing with bandmates, especially while recovering from drug addiction. Singer Anthony Kiedis noted that as a result of this readjustment period, Frusciante adopted a minimalist approach to guitar playing. According to biographer Jeff Apter, the Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote between 30 and 40 songs for the album, which would eventually get distilled to 15 for the release. The band members took on a laid-back approach to writing music. As Kiedis said: "Everyone was having fun. It was as if we had nothing to lose, nothing to gain. We didn't care; we were making music for the sake of making music."
Californication was recorded at Cello Studios in Los Angeles, and took a little over three weeks to complete. The band chose Rick Rubin to produce the album. Rubin had worked with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their two previous albums, and Kiedis noted that there was some hesitation to reenlist him. "We thought that maybe it was time to get a new producer. Every time you make a record, it doesn't matter how good it was working with a producer, and even if you know you're going to end up making a record with that same person again, there's always a day when someone says, 'Do we want to get a new producer?'" About a week into the recording sessions, Jim Scott was brought in as a replacement audio engineer, as the band was not happy with the original production. The band was timely and professional, in comparison to what Rubin described as the "day-long pot sessions or sexual indulgences" that had plagued the recording sessions for previous albums.
Recording the songs took five days. All four band members recorded their instruments at the same time within the same room. Rubin and Scott wanted the audio to be "dry and punchy", and thus placed numerous microphones directly next to the instruments. Among the microphones used were Shure SM57s, Neumann U47s, and Sennheiser MD 421s. Californication was recorded using Neve 8038 desk on two Ampex 124 24-track tape recorders. Scott induced significant equalization using Neve 1073 EQs. There was minimal overdubbing. Once the songs were recorded, the tracks from the second 24-track machine containing vocals were transferred over to Pro Tools to allow easy experimentation to establish a "map" of how various portions of the vocals would fit together prior to analog assembly of these portions. Continuing on the theme of making the album sound "dry and punchy", most of Californication was mixed using monaural sound. Scott felt the initial recordings were already good, and thus very little was altered during the mixing sessions. The album was mixed separately on various digital formats (including Digital Audio Tape and DA-88) to compare the sound, and Scott eventually used an analog 2‑track at 30 inches per second.
Additional material
Many songs recorded during the Californication sessions were not commercially available until later releases:
+Californication outtakes Title Source "Gong Li""Scar Tissue" "Instrumental #1" "Teatro Jam" "Around the World" "How Strong" "Otherside" "Slowly Deeply" "Universally Speaking" "Fat Dance"iTunes bonus tracks "Over Funk" "Quixoticelixer" "Instrumental #2" Californication bonus disc "Bunker Hill" "Fortune Faded"
Teatro sessions In September 1998 the band went into Daniel Lanois' El Teatro studio in Oxnard, California to begin their rehearsal and record demos for the album that would eventually become Californication. The sessions, which were dubbed the Teatro Sessions, remained unreleased until 2014 when they leaked to the internet. The sessions featured early versions of songs that would eventually appear on the album however some were much different than the final versions that appeared on the album. Songs such as "Californication" and "Purple Stain" contain vastly different instrumentation and are essentially different songs. "I Like Dirt" and "Bunker Hill" have different bridges. Many songs also feature unfinished or different lyrics from their final studio versions. The sessions also featured seven songs that never made it past the demo stage and went unreleased and unheard until the leak. These songs included "Tellin' a Lie", "Mommasan", "Andaman & Nicobar", "Sugar Sugar", "Trouble in the Pub", "Boatman", "Plate of Brown" and also various instrumental jams. Of the songs recorded during these sessions, the instrumental "Teatro Jam" and the demo for "Parallel Universe" were officially released on the "Around the World" single.
Composition
Most of the material and lyrics throughout the songs in the album came from the "personal and professional turmoil" that different members of the band went through or were currently going through at the time. This resulted in the "sensitive approach that one might not expect from a band whose followers are skate-punks and fraternity boys". Kiedis's main point behind this album was to "tell tales of wandering souls who've lost their way searching for the American dream in California".
Californication's lyrics were derived from Kiedis' ideas, outlooks, and perceptions of life and its meaning. "Porcelain" resulted from Kiedis' meeting with a young single mother at the YMCA, who was attempting to battle her heroin addiction while living with her infant daughter in Los Angeles during the summer of 1998. Regarding the meeting that inspired the song, Kiedis said in 1999, "[the] Mum's in a haze, strung out on heroin, but the little girl's this beaming-wide sunball of an angel. The woman loves her daughter, but the juxtaposition of their energies is profound." Kiedis also had a love interest in Yohanna Logan, a fashion designer whom Kiedis met while she was working in New York City. Kiedis' involvement with Logan influenced his examination of love throughout Californication, in songs such as "This Velvet Glove". Sarcasm was a concept that Kiedis had dealt with in the past, and he ultimately crafted a song around it. He was inspired by Navarro, whom he considered to be the "King of Sarcasm". Frusciante approached the guitar line present in "Scar Tissue" as an attempt to use two notes that are played far apart, but produce a "cool rhythm".Blackett, Matt (September 1999). "Return of the Prodigal Son." Guitar Player. He had explored this technique on his first solo album, 1994's Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt. Frusciante considers "Scar Tissue" to be a "very simple example of the technique, but I think it's a style that sounds like me". The guitarist made use of slide guitar-playing for the solos in the song. "Emit Remmus" was inspired by Kiedis' brief relationship with Melanie C of the Spice Girls.
"Get on Top", a song which contains significant use of a wah pedal, was formed after a jam session conducted shortly after Frusciante had listened to Public Enemy: "I came up with [the rhythm to the song] on the way to rehearsal—just tapping it out with my foot." The understated guitar solo played in the middle of the song was originally intended to be more noticeable, according to Frusciante, who was playing screaming guitar solos. He changed his thought process after listening to Steve Howe's guitar solo on Yes' "Siberian Khatru": "the band sounded really big—and they're playing really fast—and then this clean guitar solo comes out over on top. It's really beautiful, like it's on its own sort of shelf. For 'Get On Top' I wanted to play something that contrasted between the solo and the background." "Savior", a song found towards the end of the album, features heavy effects, most notably an Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth with 16-second delay. Frusciante notes that the sound is "directly inspired by Eric Clapton's playing in Cream. If you listen to the actual notes, they're like a Clapton solo—they just don't sound like it because of the effects."