Everyone has their limits and personal boundaries. Famously, Meat Loaf once declared that he would do anything for love, but he wouldn't do that. Fair enough. And for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band not known for their lack of... adventure, the red line not to be crossed is shaking hands, apparently.
Or at least, that was the take-away implied when The Black Keys met with podcast host Joe Rogan earlier this month, and shared an anecdote about their encounter with Chili Peppers duo Flea and John Frusiciante in Madrid last summer.
By coincidence, vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney found themselves seated beside the two Californian musicians in a Madrid restaurant in early July - The Black Keys being booked to play the Mad Cool Festival on July 7, while the Red Hot Chili Peppers were scheduled to headline the event on July 8 - and Carney decided that he would introduce himself to his fellow Americans. A decision which wasn't met with the reaction he had hoped, its fair to say.
"They were sitting there having the most nerdy conversation," he recalled. "Like, 'If you augment the 7th...' [We were] kind of like, 'Whoa, they are just such nerds!'."
"I was like, I'm going to go say what's up," Carney told Rogan. "I went over and I shook Flea's hand, and then I went to go shake John Frusciante's hand and he's like, 'I don't do that.' And then Flea was like, 'Excuse me, I'm going to go wash my hands.' And they're like, 'We're germaphobes'."
Somewhat ungraciously, Carney rounded off his anecdote by adding, "Aren't these guys legendary ex-heroin addicts and shit?"
- “There was no malice intended; it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then.” Nick Cave once famously dismissed Red Hot Chili Peppers' music as “garbage”, now he's working with Flea on a song with “arguably the greatest lyric ever”
- "Our motto is always play like you have a big d**k." In 1984, MTV introduced its viewers to Red Hot Chili Peppers, a hot new 'cutting edge' band whose try-hard 'wacky' antics suggested they might also be Hollywood's most insufferable brats
Rogan appears to have had his mind blown by the idea that a world famous musician might not wish to touch the hands of a complete stranger while eating in a restaurant in a foreign city in the wake of a global pandemic, but then Joe Rogan has some beliefs of his own which don't necessarily chime with logic or science. But that's a whole other conversation...
