The story behind Blood Sugar Sex Magik

In 1989 Mother's Milk took the Red Hot Chili Peppers to number 52 in America, their highest chart position up to then. Two years later they were at number 3, with an album on which they sounded like a different band. This is how that album came about.

A new producer they weren't sure about

The band moved from EMI to Warner Bros. and chose Rick Rubin as producer. Kiedis had his doubts at first: Rubin came from bands such as Slayer and Danzig.

Those doubts soon went. Rubin went on to produce One Hot Minute, Californication, By the Way, Stadium Arcadium and I'm with You, and later Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen.

Living in the Mansion

Rubin suggested recording in a large house in Laurel Canyon, built in 1918, instead of a studio. According to Guitar World, the amps were in the basement, the drums in the ballroom and the mixing desk in the library. The bedrooms served as booths for vocals and acoustic guitar.

Kiedis, Flea and Frusciante moved in for the sessions. Chad Smith didn't: he had heard the place was haunted and rode home on his motorbike every night. Flea said in November 1991:

Director Gavin Bowden filmed the sessions in black and white. That became the documentary Funky Monks (1991); you can also see footage from it in the video for Suck My Kiss.

Flea started playing less

On the first four albums Flea plays fast and busy, with lots of slap. For this album he went the other way. He told Guitar Player in 1991 that he had almost stopped slapping, apart from on Naked in the Rain. An interview with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth had set him thinking, and to Guitar World he named Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction as an example of simple, beautiful bass lines.

Give It Away nearly didn't happen. Flea thought his own line was too ordinary; the others wanted to keep it. Rubin wanted the line even simpler, and that led to a clash.

Frusciante: two takes, old gear

The band recorded most songs live, many of the guitar solos included. Frusciante played a solo two times at most; if he didn't like the first, he played a completely different one. He mainly used a single Fender Stratocaster, sometimes a small Fender practice amp, and sometimes went straight into the desk. On Mellowship Slinky and in the Suck My Kiss solo you hear a Stratocaster he'd had the frets removed from.

He was hard on the album before it. Mother's Milk didn't suit the kind of guitarist he was, he said. You can read the whole conversation in our archive piece on the Guitar World interview.

The stories behind the songs

• Give It Away. Kiedis took the idea from a conversation with the German singer Nina Hagen: hold on to everything and your life gets very small; give things away and the world is a better place. It became the first single and their first number 1 on the US Modern Rock chart. In 1993 it won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal.
• Under the Bridge. Kiedis wrote the lyric as a poem about loneliness in his first years without drugs. He didn't want to show it to anyone. Rubin found it in a notebook and had him sing it to him. It became their biggest hit in America: number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• I Could Have Lied. Kiedis and Frusciante wrote it in a single night, after Kiedis's brief relationship with Sinéad O'Connor ended.
• Breaking the Girl. A song in 6/8 with a twelve-string guitar. The band played it once on the whole tour, on the opening night in Madison, and then not again for years.

25 songs, one CD

The band recorded 25 to 27 songs; 17 made the album. Rubin wanted a double CD, Warner Bros. didn't. Some of the rest came out later as B-sides or on soundtracks, such as Soul to Squeeze and a cover of The Stooges' Search and Destroy.

What the album brought

Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out on 24 September 1991, the same day as Nirvana's Nevermind. It reached number 3 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than twelve million copies worldwide. The fame was a problem from the start: Frusciante was unhappy with it and left the band on 7 May 1992, in the middle of the tour of Japan. He didn't return until 1998.

In our ranking the album is number 1. Find out why in every album ranked. Which of its songs we play is in our repertoire.

De Peppers editorial team

Written by the editors at De Peppers, the Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band from Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. Every fact is sourced at the bottom of the piece. Spotted a mistake? Email info@mia-automation.com and we will check it.

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