Before they were respected scene elders, all about yoga, meditation, and harnessing the vibrations of the universe in order to bring harmony to a troubled planet, Red Hot Chili Peppers were a bunch of cocky, shit-stirring, party-loving, mildly obnoxious Hollywood brats with more energy and testosterone than they knew how to handle.
That much was already evident when the LA four-piece - then featuring guitarist Jack Sherman and drummer Cliff Martinez alongside founding members and band mainstays Anthony Kieidis and Flea - appeared on entertainment TV show Thicke Of The Night on March 16, 1984, almost five months ahead of the release of their self-titled debut album.
The band would perform two songs on the broadcast, True Men Don'T Kill Coyotes and Get Up And Jump, and conduct a rather chaotic interview with host Alan Thicke.
"We rock out with our cocks out," Flea, then 21-years-old, enthuses to the host. "We slide, we glide, we move, we groove..."
"Let's show him how to pick up girls," the 20-year-old Anthony Kiedis interrupts, and the bare-chested pair puff their cheeks out and wobble around a bit, in what was undoubtedly the height of comedic sophistication in 1984.
"We were tiny little puppy dogs," Anthony Kiedis recently recalled to Classic Rock's Dave Everley. "I had a hard time looking at that broadcast in the moment: ‘Oh my god, we can be so much better than that.’ But now I see it and I think: ‘Holy shit, we were on fire.’ We did not have limiters of any kind."
"There was a certain arrogance,” Flea admits. “A ‘Fuck the world, fuck the system, fuck the authority, fuck the powers that be, we’re us and we’re doing our thing our way, we’re street kids’ thing. We were going hard and being wild.”
Watch the quartet going hard and being wild below:
The older, wiser but still frequently bare-chested Chili Peppers are set to begin a European tour this weekend.
The LA quartet will visit:
Jun 04: Seville Estadio La Cartuja De Sevilla, SPA
Jun 07: Barcelona Estadi Olimpic, SPA
Jun 10: Nijmegen Goffertpark, HOL
Jun 15: Budapest Puskas Stadium, HUN
Jun 18: Firenze Rocks (festival), ITA
Jun 22: Manchester Emirates Old Trafford, UK
Jun 25: London, London Stadium, UK
Jun 29: Dublin Marlay Park, IRE
Jul 01: Glasgow Bellahouston Park, UK
Jul 03: Leuven, Rock Werchter (festival), BEL
Jul 05: Cologne RheinEnergieStadium, GER
Jul 08: Paris Stade de France, FRA
Jul 12: Hamburg Volksparkstadion, GER
