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Red Hot Chili Peppers · S1 E4
What Is This?
Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons start a band, and Anthony and Flea watch from the wings
A rehearsal space in Hollywood, 1980. Anthony Kiedis and Flea sit in the back row watching their two best friends, Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons, play in a band they weren't invited to join.
"Fortune Faded" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, 2003). A song about things slipping away before you can grab them. Before the Chili Peppers existed, their future singer sat in the audience watching his best friend's other band, wondering if he'd ever get his own shot.
The Other Band
Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons started a band called Anthym while still at Fairfax High, later renamed What Is This?. They were the musicians of the group: Hillel was a serious guitarist studying Hendrix and Zeppelin, Jack was a disciplined drummer with jazz chops. Anthony couldn't play anything. Flea was a trumpet kid who'd barely touched a bass. So the two guys who could actually play formed a band, and the two who couldn't stood in the crowd and watched.
Sources
Kiedis, Anthony. "Scar Tissue." Hyperion Books, 2004.
Apter, Jeff. "Fornication: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story." Omnibus Press, 2004.
“Hillel, Jack, and Alain Johannes had a real band called Anthym, later What Is This?. Flea joined them on bass after Hillel taught him the instrument, but Anthony had no musical skills at all. He was the friend who came to every show, stood in the front row, and cheered the loudest. The guy who couldn't play a note was the one who'd eventually need a band the most.”
— Based on accounts in Flea's "Acid for the Children" (2019) and Kiedis's "Scar Tissue" (2004)
Fortune Faded, Red Hot Chili Peppers (2003)
"Fortune Faded" is one of the Chili Peppers' leanest recordings: a driving beat, a stabbing guitar riff, and a vocal that sounds genuinely frustrated. Frusciante's guitar plays against the rhythm rather than with it, creating a tension that never fully resolves. The production is dry and direct, no effects, no studio tricks. Listen for how stripped back the arrangement is compared to their album tracks. Every note earns its place because there's nowhere to hide.
Sources
Apter, Jeff. "Fornication: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story." Omnibus Press, 2004.
TAP TO REVEAL: Did What Is This? actually get signed before the Chili Peppers?
The Troubadour
The legendary West Hollywood club where What Is This? played some of their earliest gigs. Anthony and Flea watched from the crowd, absorbing everything about how a live band works before they'd ever stepped on a stage themselves.
What Is This? vs. Chili Peppers
Wet Sand, Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006)
"Wet Sand" is a Stadium Arcadium deep cut that builds from a gentle verse into one of the most explosive endings in the Chili Peppers' catalog. Frusciante's guitar solo at the climax is raw, unpolished, almost desperate. For an episode about being left on the outside, watching your friends do the thing you want to do, this song captures that ache of wanting something just out of reach. The patience of the buildup mirrors the years Anthony and Flea spent watching before they finally got their chance.
Wet Sand, Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006)
"You don't form in the wet sand, you don't form at all." The lyric is about something fragile that can only exist under the right conditions. The verses are quiet, almost whispered, while the final section erupts with Frusciante screaming over crashing chords. Fans consider it one of the greatest RHCP songs never released as a single. That gap between what the public knows and what the diehards worship is part of what makes this band so layered.
What was the original name of Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons' band before it became What Is This?
Anthony can't play guitar, can't play bass, can't play drums. But he can talk, and he can perform. One night in 1983, he writes a poem, Flea writes a riff, and they ask Hillel and Jack to back them for one song at one show. Next: the night the Red Hot Chili Peppers are born.
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