Red Hot Chili Peppers played a charity show in Hollywood, where they broke out performances of some Hillel Slovak-era songs for the first time in decades. Check out footage below.
The gig took place at the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday night (October 17) and helped raise funds for the nonprofit music school Silverlake Conservatory Of Music, which was founded by the band’s bassist Flea alongside touring member Keith “Tree” Barry.
To celebrate 25 years since the school opened, a huge non-profit show was held in Los Angeles, hosted by comedian Marc Maron and featuring performances from RHCP, Dave Grohl, and Vince Staples.
Red Hot Chili Peppers broke out an 11-song setlist for their performance, kicking things off with their usual improv jam followed by classic track ‘Can’t Stop’. However, as the set progressed, they introduced some deep cuts into the mix for the first time in decades.
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These included the first performance of two Hillel Slovak-era tracks since 2000: ‘Organic Anti-Beat Box Band’ from 1987’s ‘The Uplift Mofo Party Plan’ and ‘Blackeyed Blonde’ from 1985’s ‘Freaky Styley’.
Other rarities on the night included a scarcely seen cover of Carole King’s ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ performed by guitarist John Frusciante, and the first performance of ‘Nevermind’, which the group haven’t played with the guitarist since 1992.
The rest of their set also featured newer tracks including ‘Black Summer’, ‘Eddie’ and ‘Whatchu Thinkin’’ as well as more fan-favourites like ‘Hey’ and ‘Give It Away’.
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Haven’t seen anyone post the Eddie solo yet!
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Also at the Hollywood Palladium show, Dave Grohl broke out Foo Fighters’ songs for the majority of his seven-song set including ‘Times Like These’ and ‘Hero’, and he also brought his daughter Violet Grohl out for a portion of the set.
Covers he played included X’s ‘Nausea’ and Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’, and Grohl also introduced his Foo Fighters bandmates for their first time covering ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty since 2007.
The decision for RHCP to revisit their early catalogue comes following a documentary airing on Netflix earlier this year which traced their early days and the huge impact of founding member and late guitarist Hillel Slovak.
The members distanced themselves from the documentary creatively, but shared that they did “agree to be interviewed out of love and respect for Hillel and his memory”. After it came out, Flea said that he was “so grateful it exists, and that more people will know how much he meant and continues to mean to us as a friend and bandmate.” There was also some debate over the use of AI to replicate Slovak’s voice in the project.
The band also spoke about their former member’s legacy in a cover interview with NME back in 2022, with frontman Anthony Kiedis sharing: “The energy of Hillel Slovak has never truly faded.”
In other RHCP news, back in May the funk-rock icons sold their recorded music catalogue to Warner Music Group in a deal worth more than $300million (£220million).
Their last studio albums ‘Unlimited Love’ and ‘Return Of The Dream Canteen’ were both released in 2022 and were both commercially successful, with both landing in the top three in both the US and UK albums charts. While there hasn’t been any hint of new music on the way yet, Flea did recently release his debut solo album ‘Honora’ which retraced his jazz roots.
