“I’ve gone from having the greatest time of my life, to wanting to kill myself.” An audience with a tired, homesick, and somewhat irritable Red Hot Chili Peppers on the final night of their One Hot Minute world tour

I'd been living in London for less than a month when one of the editors at UK weekly rock magazine Kerrang! offered me two tickets for a secret Red Hot Chili Peppers gig. The Los Angeles band - then featuring frontman Anthony Kiedis, guitarist Dave Navarro, bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith - were officially due to kick off a lengthy world tour in support of their new One Hot Minute album at Dublin's 9,000-capacity Point Theatre on October 1, 1995, but the secret show at the 600-capacity Subterania in west London four nights earlier would be a rare opportunity to see the Los Angeles band back in the sort of scuzzy club they've long since out-grown.

The Chili Peppers were on fire that evening. Casually kicking things off with Give It Away and Suck My Kiss, two of the defining singles of the decade, the quartet then knocked out what would be the first three singles from One Hot Minute - Aeroplane, Warped and My Friends. And within half an hour, their decision to recruit the second best alt. rock guitarist in Los Angeles (former Jane's Addiction man Navarro) seemed like the best idea that Kiedis and Flea had hatched since they added teenage guitar hero John Frusciante to their ranks back in 1988.

Within six months, however, rumours began to spread that all was not well within the Chili Peppers camp, and in June '96, Kerrang! printed a news story suggesting - much to the group's annoyance - that the quartet had agreed to split after recording one more record together. The magazine then asked for an interview with the group, not holding out much hope that the request would be granted. But word came back from their UK press office that the band were up for it: and would do 15 minute solo interviews ahead of taking the stage for the very last date on the One Hot Minute world tour, at London's Wembley Arena on July 11. Once again, I was given the assignment, which, honestly seemed like something of a poisoned chalice, not least when Flea's first words to me on the night were, “So are you gonna write something shit about us?”

Before sitting down with the bassist, I had 15 minutes scheduled with Chad Smith. As the drummer lit up a cigar as thick as my wrist, I asked if there was any truth to the rumours that the band were breaking up.

“It’s not just an ugly rumour, it’s true," he said with a shrug. "The Chili Peppers are a great band and I’m very lucky to have been a part of it, but I think we should go out on a high note and not flog a dead horse. We’re splitting after this show. It’s kind of a relief that the years of hell are finally over and I can get on with real life, instead of being a spoilt kid living in a bubble in a sea of retarded sexuality.”

At this point it might be appropriate to mention that Chad Smith likes to takes the piss. He’d chat about bands he admires (The Who, Beastie Boys, Neil Young), his love of scuba diving and motorbike riding, and his tentative plans to record soundtrack material with Axl Rose. But getting him to say anything vaguely serious about life in the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1996 was a tougher ask.

“I’m the one guy who loves touring and playing though,” he admited in a rare sensible moment. “We used to play 40 dates in 40 days and have a blast, but now were old farts we fly around doing two shows a week and then whinge about how tough it is. It’s bullshit. To be honest, some of the fun has gone and it’s more a job now. It’s frustrating when everyone’s not in sync, but generally we all have the same goals and…”

At this point, Dave Navarro sticks his head around the door to ask Smith for a light for his cigarette.

“Dave, what’s going to be the happiest day of your life?” the drummer asks.

“Tomorrow fucking morning when I go back to LA, get out of this stupid outfit, and ask Perry Farrell for a job,” the guitarist replies.

Like all true rock stars, Michael Balzary knows how to make an entrance. Shirtless, he skateboards into the room, and starts attacking the drumkit in the corner. So far, so Flea.

But then he starts talking about Irish politics, his love for his daughter Clara, his admiration for post-hardcore legends Fugazi, and his band's involvement in Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s concert for Tibet (“Someone called us the least political band in the world, but to me creating beautiful music automatically make you anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-war…”), and you begin to realise there’s a lot more to the man than his public persona.

He may pepper his conversation with LA-speak about “spirituality”, “beauty” and “artistry” but he comes across as an intense yet humble and intelligent guy. And it turns out that it was his refusal to do another US tour to promote One Hot Minute that fuelled the ‘Chilis to split’ rumours.

“I hate it,” he says. “It’s unbelievably unhealthy. You play the same shit every night and become a cliché of yourself. I want to play new music, not these songs over and over again. I never want to stop growing as a musician and that’s impossible when you’re on the road all of the time.”

So would you prefer it if the Chili Peppers became a purely studio-based project?

“No, we’ll always play concerts, but a bare minimum if I can help it. When we’re having fun and rocking it’s unbeatable, but a lot of the times it’s a drag. And this band should never be a drag.”

There are reports that you’re going to leave Los Angeles to move back to your native Australia.

“Well, LA is a pretty disgusting place,” he replies. “I’ve just built a house on a surfing beach in Australia, which would be a much nicer place to bring up my daughter, so it’s quite possible I’ll move.”

Could that make things even more difficult for the band?

“This band isn’t even close on a priority scale,” he laughs. “This is just a rock band, who cares? It’ll come and go. I’m proud of it. But it’s only a fucking rock band. My kid is way more important than this band ever was or will be.”

That sort of comment doesn’t do much to dispel the rumours, does it?

“Who gives a fuck? I could survive without the band, but I love the Chilis and have no intention of stopping.”

So for the record, Red Hot Chili Peppers are not splitting?

Flea grins broadly, and leans into my dictaphone's microphone.

“Of course we are.”

“Hey, dirtbag!”

And good evening to you, Mr Navarro.

“I saw Porno For Pyros a couple of weeks ago, by the way, and they were amazing,” I say, by way of an ice-breaker.

“That’s like me telling you I saw your ex-girlfriend with another guy and she looked beautiful.”

Awkward.

So how are you enjoying life at the moment?

“There are days I wish I wasn’t born and wasn’t in this band,” Navarro says, “and there are other days when I’m thrilled to be here. Sometimes I think it’s worked out better than I expected, and other times I reckon it hasn’t worked out at all. There’s always one area of what we’re doing - creatively, commercially, artistically - that I hate. At times, it’s just the money that keeps me going.”

That’s a pretty honest admission.

“I know it’s not cool to talk about money, we’re supposed to be tortured artists, but I’m just as fucking superficial as the next guy. When you’re lying in a hotel room, unable to sleep, missing your girlfriend and family, you start thinking, What the fuck am I doing?. But then you think, Okay, I’m getting X amount of dollars, and that pulls you through.”

Presumably, you’ve heard the stories about the band splitting?

“Well, Flea and I both want to pursue other creative musical ventures and I think people are assuming that we won’t do the Chilis anymore. But I don’t think that’s true…”

You don’t think it’s true?

“I’m completely open to the idea that this could fall from under me in a minute,” he says, “but I’m also open to the notion that I’ll be doing this for another couple of years.”

You don’t seem terribly optimistic about the future.

The guitarist shrugs and spreads his arms out wide.

“Whatever happens happens. We’ve hit some hard times in the past, but there’s no animosity between any of us. We just don’t need to be in each others’ faces 24-7 when we’re not on tour. We need a break, that’s the bottom line.”

It’s now 8.30pm and Anthony Kiedis has just entered the room. The singer has been seeing acupuncturists, osteopaths and massage therapists all week after landing on his back on a monitor during a recent gig in Prague, and it's safe to say that he's not in the best of moods. Asked how he's enjoying this closing leg of the One Hot Minute tour, he replies, “I’ve gone from having the greatest time of my life, to wanting to kill myself.”

It’s hardly an appropriate or sensitive moment to pose my next question, but the clock is ticking, and the singer is due onstage in 45 minutes. So... there have been rumours, that you’ve been using heroin again in recent weeks.

“In recent weeks? Not true.”

Recent months?

“Not true,” he says. “It’s well known that I have my ups and downs, but every time I’ve gone back to using, the same horrific detached life was waiting for me. I’ve been there and hated it. I’ve completely exhausted my capacity for drug and alcohol abuse, and when I do it now it makes me insane and unhappy, and I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”

“When I go into Flea’s hotel room and he has a guitar, we close the door, and the world disappears. That’s the best buzz I have in my life and the only one I need right now.”

Anthony Kiedis is not the world's most likeable man in an interview setting. Tonight, as he is in the habit of doing when faced with journalists from the UK, he delivers his answers in an 'English' accent that is painful to listen to. He only stops when informed that I'm Irish.

You’re not enjoying this are you?

The singer gives a bored shrug.

“I don’t care how I’m perceived by people who read magazines,” he says.

But fans of your band will buy Kerrang! this week because you’re on the cover. Doesn’t that matter?

“People are tuned into us through our lyrics and live shows, and they understand us as artists without the help of media knuckleheads.”

So why do interviews at all? Surely you're big enough to refuse requests?

“Because I get asked to do them and I’m too much of a pussy to refuse,” he cracks. “I like having conversations, but most interviewers don’t give a fuck what you’re saying. What’s the point of spewing up the same bullshit in another rigid, anal questionnaire?”

Don't let me detain you then...

Looking back almost 30 years later, it's easy to understand why the four band members weren't really in the mood to pour their hearts out on that night. They were tired, homesick, hurting, and not a little jaded, and facing a journalist from a magazine that had just pissed them all off probably wasn't top of anyone's 'To Do' list before they returned to Los Angeles.

But, to their credit, their show that night, which featured a cover of Fugazi's Waiting Room, and Navarro doing a solo take on - irony alert! - The Velvet Underground's Heroin, was a blast.

The following year, Navarro and Flea would take part in Jane's Addiction's archly-named Relapse tour. When Red Hot Chili Peppers next went on tour, John Frusciante was back in the band.

A version of this article appeared in Kerrang! issue 607 in July 1996