POWERLINE A.D.

POWERLINE INTERVIEW:
Red Hot Chili Peppers, March 1990

In an interview with vocalist Anthony Kiedis in the March 1990 issue of Powerline, the success of the album Mother's Milk was discussed. It was a time when the RHCP were just taking off. Now they are considered a classic band in modern rock.

On the album Mother's Milk:  The name Mother's Milk is a life-giving, nurturing, intoxicating, good-natured, health-building, loving, comforting, warm, soothing substance. And when you drink it, it makes you feel good and makes you grow up strong and healthy. It wards off infection and disease. And it's honest. It's pure and it's wholesome. And that's what we like to think our music represents. The other thing about Mother's Milk is, the only way to really get it, is to put your mouth to the nipple of Mother Earth and suck for all its worth.

On the natural progression of the band's sound:  There's been so many changes since our last album, The Mofo Party Plan. Obviously, it's the intention of us as a band to continually grow and change, and hopefully progress in some new direction or another, and improve in the process. After (guitarist) Hillel (Slovak) died, our old drummer Jack Irons left the band, and we got John Frusciante as our guitarist and Chad Smith on drums. Any time that you have a four man band and get two new guys, there's bound to be a fairly serious change in the sound... even though those guys joined the band and they knew what we were all about, and they knew what we wanted to sound like. And the sound has changed a little, it's kind of hard to describe it. It's easier to listen to it, and feel it, really. I think we sort of expanded in the direction of melody more than ever before with this record (Mother's Milk), even though there's still a lot of hardcore raps and stuff like that. A song like Knock Me Down, which continually changes verse melody, is kind of a departure for us, and that's one direction we're exploring now that we might not have looked so deeply into it in the past. I think it's a harder sound. It's possibly more of a metal/funk sound than in the past also. There's a lot of very metal sounding guitars, but still, with the ever present foundation of the funk, which is what we are based on.

On some RHCP songs getting tagged as Metal: You know, I hate talking about sound as far as descriptive terminology, because it has so much less impact than when you just feel the music with your body and soul. Usually when people ask me to give them a type of musical plan, I tell them we play hardcore, bone-crunching, mayhem, psychedelic, sex-funk from heaven. Which is more to confuse them. Basically, we play honest hardcore-funk music with a serious rock edge. And I think honesty is the key word. We just play music we believe in. We're not afraid to attack a punk rock song, or a crazy undescribable instrumental. We play whatever we believe in. Whatever we are inspired by. Whatever is reflected from the life that we are leading, we'll play it. What's the point in labelling, it just sets barriers and music is intended to shatter barriers. Especially music like the Red Hot Chili Peppers play. We know no barriers, no boundaries, we'll do anything. Anything we believe in, anything that's honest.

Inspirations?: The Red Hot Chili Peppers have never really listened to any one band or style and tried to copy that. We basically try to create the experiences that we have gone through in our lives, even if it includes the certain appreciation of bands. Just to tell you a few people who have inspired us, there's Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, James Brown, Billie Holiday. Also Bad Brains, Fishbone. Theese are the things we listen to, we get off on them, and they might inspire us to play music ourselves.

On the lyrics to Johnny, Kick a Hole In the Sky, about the oppression of the American Indian: I just feel a whole soul connection with the whole Native American Indian way of life and can't help but feel a deep sadness about the whole nature of the way they were dealt with by the Europeans when they came over. Seems like one of the biggest unpoken atrocities that the world has experienced. Johnny is basically about a modern day boy, a Native American Apache boy, born into a land where the knowledge of his forefathers and the culture are present, but he has to deal with a modern society where things like money and property, cars and televisions, are all the world seems to be revolving around. And here he is on the Reservation, living in a shack, doesn't make that much money to live, and he's just getting shit on by the government. He doesn't want to stay in this hell hole that they put him in. And he's wondering should he stick with his culture and his people or should he bust out and try to make it in the big city somewhere... to just accept modern society as it is and turn his back on the culture of his tribe. He's just in a dilemma about what he should do. So he prays to his forefathers for an answer and basically he learns that he's go to accept both because they a both there and there's no denying either. He's got to maintain the culture of his tribe but he's also got to accept the fact that he's living in the 1990s. So it's kind of a simulation of the two that he's forced to deal with. 

POWERLINE INTERVIEW:
Faith No More, May 1990

Faith No More was always popular amongst the critics as well as the fans. Music writers loved their vast musical influences. Bottom line: they were a hard band to categorize.

In May 1990, Powerline interviewed bassist Billy Gould after the release of The Real Thing album: 

On becoming accepted: "We're frustrated," said bassist Billy Gould. "When the press is so good and we play our asses off every night ... In the United States, touring from the ground up, it's a lot harder to be different. Maybe not in New York or Los Angeles, but in Texas, it's real hard to get popular acceptance.

On being categorized: "People tell me when you're hard to categorize in the short run, it's the biggest pain in the ass in the world. But in the long run, you create something for yourself that's your own niche, that you'll always have. To create your own category takes ten times the effort. (pause, then laugh). I don't even know if that's true or if people are lying to me to keep me working."

On their style of music being cloned: "I don't know if we could ever be cloned. Chemistry's such a big part of this band. It would be really hard to play like we do, as individuals." 

POWERLINE'S VAULT: Winger PT. I

People still remember Kip Winger. How could they not. Even though he faded into relative obscurity, he left a lasting impression on late 80s commercial hard rock.

In early 1989 we interviewed him about his immediate success with Winger and how he was handling it.

On picking his name as the band's moniker: "There's a lot of people that don't even know Winger is my last name! My last name was chosen because I basically put this band together. But everyone has their own identity in this band. This is a band situation, not a solo project."

On the future of the band: "I planned the whole thing out to a worst-case scenario before we (the band) began... thinking how we would try to make things work out again if everything does go wrong. But so far everything's gone right! And I consider this band to be something that turns out like Jethro Tull, Queen, Yes, or any of those classic bands. That's how we want to be classified in the future. We're not a heavy metal band. Heavy metal fans will like us though. And we're a lot heavier than the album when you see us live. But heavier in the sense of LOUDER. Some people will call us metal because of songs like Time To Surrender, but when you listen to Without the Night, you can't call something like that metal at all. It's good to have a metal base I think, but I grew up listening to bands that were played on the radio, so, of course, we sound commercial. But we don't target it that way."

On Winger's audience: "Our audience is very young. The age starts at about ten and it goes up to about 25, but that's as far as it goes. Mostly it's an audience for a good MTV response. Clubs are too small and smokey, plus the audience has to be over 21 in most of them. (The thing is) right now a lot of places we're playing are clubs where you have to be over 21. Unless we have a support slot in an arena tour, like we did with the Scorpions (in 1988). We do get people over 20 who come to really listen to our music. But you'd be surprised at the percentage of young kids that go to see the shows, and it's fine with me. Ya know what I mean?"

In continuation of our early 1989 interview with Kip Winger:

On covering the classic rock song Purple Haze: "To tell you the truth, I actually got the idea when I heard the song in a taxi cab riding in downtown New York City, and right there I kind of wrote the whole arrangement in my head. Plus, I was on the way to the studio to finish the record (first LP). The whole idea was to take the song and bring it up to what our band is all about. There's no other eason to do a cover in my eyes. We arranged Purple Haze the way we would do it if it was our own song. But it's definitely something different than a song like Madalaine."

On whether the song Madalaine is fictional: "Madaliane isn't a fictional character, I'll tell you that much! I haven't talked to her in about three years and I really don't want to! She knows that. I'm sure she must have heard the song by now."

On the record In the Heart of the Young and future recordings: "(In the Heart of the Young) is more adventurous ... better, because we've been on tour for so long. And whatever happens in the future is fine with me. We're a good band. We don't suck. So people will always buy enough of our records. And I'm not the kind to get freaked out about sales. I don't sit around and count the sales as they come in. Plus, our albums could stop selling today and we would still be considered a successful band. Believe me, this band will be around for a long time."