Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Red Hot Chili Peppers · S1 E3
Fairfax
The Hollywood high school where four teenagers meet and a band begins to form
Fairfax High School, Los Angeles, 1977. A hyperactive Australian kid with a trumpet walks into a classroom and sits next to a skinny boy from Michigan who's already been to parties most adults haven't seen. They become best friends within a week.
"Tell Me Baby" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, 2006). The music video features real people auditioning and telling their stories of moving to LA to chase a dream. Every one of them could be a teenage Anthony or Flea, arriving in Hollywood with nothing but ambition and nerve.
The School on Melrose
Fairfax High School sat on Melrose Avenue in the heart of Hollywood, and in the late '70s it was one of the most culturally mixed schools in Los Angeles. Jewish kids, Black kids, Latino kids, punk kids, and the children of Hollywood's fringe all shared the same hallways. It wasn't a prestigious school. It was a loud, chaotic, creative pressure cooker, and it produced a disproportionate number of musicians.
Sources
Kiedis, Anthony. "Scar Tissue." Hyperion Books, 2004.
Flea. "Acid for the Children." Grand Central Publishing, 2019.
“We were drawn to each other by the forces of mischief and love and we became virtually inseparable. We were both social outcasts. We found each other and it turned out to be the longest-lasting friendship of my life.”
— Anthony Kiedis, "Scar Tissue" (Hyperion Books, 2004)
TAP TO REVEAL: Who else went to Fairfax High?
Tell Me Baby, Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006)
"Tell Me Baby" is Stadium Arcadium at its most accessible: a bouncing guitar riff, a bass line that walks rather than slaps, and a vocal melody that Anthony sings instead of raps. The production, by Rick Rubin, keeps everything clear and bright, no distortion, no noise, just groove. Listen for how the bass and drums lock together in the verse, creating a pocket so tight that Frusciante's guitar can float on top without anchoring the rhythm. It's the sound of a band that's been playing together so long they don't need to think about it.
Sources
Kiedis, Anthony. "Scar Tissue." Hyperion Books, 2004.
Fairfax High School
The school on Melrose Avenue and Fairfax where Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Hillel Slovak, and Jack Irons met in the late 1970s. The four of them bonded over music, drugs, and the feeling that the world outside those walls was theirs for the taking.
The Fairfax Four
Me and My Friends, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1987)
"Me and My Friends" is the Chili Peppers at their most joyful and unfiltered: a punk-funk sprint about running wild with the people you love. It's from The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, the only album to feature all four original Fairfax friends. For an episode about how these four teenagers found each other, this is the song that captures what they were like before fame, before drugs, before grief. Just four kids from the same school, making noise.
Me and My Friends, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1987)
"Me and my friends are a band of desperados." The opening line tells you everything about how the Chili Peppers saw themselves in the early days: outlaws, rebels, inseparable. The lyrics are simple, almost chanted, and the energy is pure adrenaline. There's no irony, no distance, no self-awareness. Just friendship declared at full volume. When you know what happens to this group later, that innocence hits different.
Which Fairfax High classmate convinced Flea to switch from trumpet to bass guitar?
Four friends, one school, and a shared obsession with music. But Hillel and Jack are about to start a band without Anthony and Flea, and the rejection stings. Next: What Is This?, the band that almost prevented the Chili Peppers from ever existing.
0 XP earned this session