Red Hot Chili Peppers return today (October 14th) with their 14th studio set and second new album of 2022. Like last May's Unlimited Love collection, the new double-album Return Of The Dream Canteen album was also produced by Rick Rubin. Unlimited Love debuted at Number One, marking the band's first chart-topper since 2006's Stadium Arcadium and its second with returning guitarist John Frusciante.
When announcing the new set, the band posted on their social media platforms, “We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been. Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slip stream of sound and vision, we just kept mining. With time turned into an elastic waist band of oversized underwear, we had no reason to stop writing and rocking.”
The band went on to write, “It felt like a dream. When all was said and done, our moody love for each other and the magic of music had gifted us with more songs than we knew what to do with. Well we figured it out. 2 double albums released back to back.”
Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith spoke fondly to us a while back about guitarist John Frusciante's contributions to the band: “He really would come in with ideas and they were very definitive parts and like big riffs, and when John would come in with something, he'd be like, 'Here it is,' and bam! And he'd play it like he was playing it in front of 100,000 people — it was awesome. He's such a fantastic musician. I love the guy to death, just a great guy, and what an amazing musician.”
Not too long ago, Flea told us that their mutual love of music has kept the Chili Peppers going through good times and bad: “No matter what has happened, no matter how vulnerable and raw our pain, how much pain we went through or how much was good and we worked really hard and reaped rewards from it — no matter what happened, we've always, like the thing that has remained really earnest and really humble is our love for music and our willingness to be students of music.”
Red Hot Chili Peppers perform on Sunday (October 16th) in Austin, Texas at Austin City Limits Music Festival.