Red Hot Chili Peppers’ original drummer Jack Irons recently spoke to Rolling Stones and revealed the secret behind his long-lasting friendship with former RHCP bandmates.
When Irons attended Bancroft Jr. High School, he met his future bandmates Flea and Hillel Slovak. Moreover, in Fairfax High School in LA, Irons, Flea, and Slovak became friends with Kiedis. As teenagers, they formed a band named What Is This? and started playing together.
In 1983, Flea, Kiedis, Slovak, and Irons formed the band Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem. After a successful performance, they decided to continue as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. After six months, they made a record deal with EMI and began making their first album.
Jack Irons played drums on the band’s first demo tape and their third album titled ‘The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.’ Following Slovak’s death from a heroin overdose on June 25, 1988, the drummer decided to leave RHCP because he was dissatisfied with drug abuse in the band, and Slovak’s death affected him deeply.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Jack Irons revealed how he stayed friends with his former RHCP members after all those years. He sarcastically said that all they needed was not to sue each other, implying that some bands have issues around money, which affects their friendship.
About his former RHCP bandmates, Jack Irons told Rolling Stone the following:
“Well, I love everybody as friends. You make sure you don’t sue your friends. That’s a bad joke. In other words, things get very sticky around money and finances. I’m not saying I understand any of it.
I know things go south when the business part of it really steps in. I think there’s a fair way for everything. I’ve always truly loved my friends, and I treated them as friends, and I talk to them as friends. I think they do the same for me.”
According to Jack Irons, he has truly loved his friends and treated them as friends since the beginning of their friendship. Moreover, Irons thinks that the secret of their long-lasting friendship is not putting financial issues between each other.
