Chad Smith recently joined Drumeo to hear Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Can You Feel My Heart?’ for the first time and try to play along. While doing so, the drummer reflected on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ songwriting process:
“Everyone’s thing and what we do and how we do it is embraced. It’s great. There’s no ego. We try everything even if we think it’s going to suck. You just try it because sometimes when you’re open to new ideas, it changes.”
He explained:
“Like, I’ll play something, and someone will suggest, ‘What if you do it like this or more toms,’ ‘What if it had less this,’ or whatever. And then I do my own version of it, and then that triggers them to play something different, and that triggers the other person to play something different. It’s all part of the creative process that we’ve come to embrace and know that you have to be open to all different kinds of ways of having music.”
Smith Believes RHCP Is A ‘Great Place’ For A Drummer
The Red Hot Chili Peppers hired Smith in 1988, and they ‘hit it off musically’ right away, according to the drummer. The band has released ten studio albums since then, with the latest, ‘Unlimited Love’ and ‘Return of the Dream Canteen,’ coming out in 2022.
Smith noted about their creative process:
“And there’s nothing off the table. Anything you might think [that] sounds like a lounge band playing bad jazz or like something funny or country sounding, whatever. We always just try everything. Because we’re always trying to grow and change as a band and come up with new stuff. And at the end of the day, it always ends up sounding like us anyway.”
He added:
“So, that’s how you can keep growing and challenging yourself as a musician and as a band. [It] is to just keep trying anything. For a drummer, it’s a great place to be in. A band like that where I feel I can do anything. With Chili Peppers, we play all kinds of music; fast, slow, hard, medium, whatever.”
They Use ‘Simplicity’ And ‘Space’ In Their Music
RHCP kicked off a world tour to support their 12th and 13th albums a couple of years ago. Chad Smith also delved into their music in a chat with Mixdown Mag back then. He shared about how Anthony Kiedis’s vocals in records created space to work in the mix:
“The tendency is to fill it up. But I think you learn over time that often the simplicity and the space is what makes things really special. Live, we tend to play a little bit more because we’re kind of a bunch of show-offs, but on the record, there’s going to be other elements whether that’s John’s [Frusciante] guitars, percussion, horns, keyboards, whatever we feel the song calls for.”
The drummer went on:
“Some of our favorite bands were a three piece with vocals, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. There’s no hiding though, you can’t layer a bunch of sh*t over it, pan seven guitars, what you hear is us playing. I think that connects with people. If you’re a good band and you can play well together, that’ll come across. We haven’t lost that perspective in today’s modern day of recording where you can have 64 tracks of sh*t – it doesn’t make it better.”
The band has no plans to be on the road next year. But Smith says they will soon start writing music for a new album.
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