"By The Way" - The Latest News in A Nutshell : Listen to the full length tracks from the album and get the band commentary! Click on the album cover. By Fuxia

• Read a host of By The Way reviews and interviews here!

• The fourth & fifth single releases will be:
Universally Speaking - International only, release date UK: 16th June, Germany: 8th November
Radio aridate: May 5th
Video airdate: May 16th - see the clip streaming at redhotchilipeppers.com !

Dosed: US release only. No date set yet, no video will be made for this song.

• John Frusciante has been busy during tour breaks to record his new solo album in collaboration with Josh Klinghoffer and Chad on drums. It is expected tp be be released later this year followed by a promotion tour.

• "By The Way" debuted at the very top in over 16 countries on 5 continents. Having only just hit the shelves, the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album knocked off all established contenders, firmly claiming #1 chart position in: the UK, Ireland, Holland, Finland, Norway, Belgium , Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Brazil. By the end of 2002, By The Way achieved 7 times Platinum (Ireland) and triple platinum in several other countries.

•The Video for By The Way has been nominated for the most prestigious award in the industry: The MTV- VMA Award - Category: Best Direction - Only a few days after its release By The Way had already been nominated for the "Comet2002" Awards , hosted by music channel "VIVA" TV and ZDF Second German Television.
Awards ceremony will take place at the POKOMM Fair between 15th and 17th of August, underlined by special live performances by guests Alanis Morissette,Ronan Keating and others.
Tickets can be obtained online for € 15 from the VIVA homepage - TV airing times for those who cannot attend are :
ZDF: Sa, 17.8.02 14h
VIVA: Sa, 17.8.02 20h
VIVA PLUS: So, 18.8.02 20h

Some basic facts:
• Tracklist of "By The Way" - The Album, released 8th July2002:
01.By The Way
02.Universally Speaking
03.This Is The Place
04.Dosed
05.Don't Forget Me
06.The Zephyr Song
07.Can't Stop
08.I Could Die For You
09.Midnight
10.Throw Away Your Television
11.Cabron
12.Tear
13.On Mercury
14.Minor Thing
15.Warm Tape
16.Venice Queen


• The new cover was designed by the renowned NY artist Julian Schnabel and shows a stylized image of his daughter Stella. Julian Schnabel is also known for his work on "Basquiat" The Movie and is a close friend of John. According to Blackie, the cover is amazing and going way beyond anything they've ever had before - however, technical realization of producing it in large masses proved difficult for such an intricate design. Production are working hard on the solution.


• Touring is underway, with a first leg all over Europe followed by stints in Canada and Japan.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' New Single About Joy, Car Crashes, Playing Dice
MTV Online 05.24.2002
By Jon Wiederhorn, with additional reporting by Shari Scorca

To truly enjoy basking in the light, it's important to grasp what it's like to be alone in the dark. The Red Hot Chili Peppers know this. Having endured drug addiction and crumbling relationships as well as fame and great wealth, they've developed a respect for the dynamic between yin and yang, pleasure and pain, elation and despondency. And on their new album, By the Way, which comes out July 9, the band continues to explore the dynamic between such polar opposites.

While half of the album reflects a fun-loving, enthusiastic vibe, the disc is equally weighted with darker and more forlorn content. The first single from the record, the title track, is perhaps most indicative of the group's current mind frame.

"It's about a night in the life," frontman Anthony Kiedis enthused from New York's Times Square. "It's a landscape of L.A. — an evening that happens simultaneously across the entire city, and the feeling of anticipation and hope and joy of going out into the fray. Maybe you're going to meet some magical adventure partner that's going to warm the cockles of your soul and sing you songs and hold your hand and take you to places to go dancing. But it's also about people getting beat up, and drug deals happening, and prostitution going on, and car crashes and people playing dice. It's about all of this stuff happening at the same time."

Like many of the band's songs, "By the Way" pulses with charged guitars, funk-rock bass and soaring vocals as well as vocoder effects. Kiedis described it as one of the heavier cuts on the disc, which is otherwise sprinkled with less surging, more melodic fare.

" 'By the Way' encompasses a lot of different aspects of the record and a lot of different aspects of the Red Hot Chili Peppers over the years, and sums it up in one bombastic, yet melodic number that feels really good to play," he said. "Even though there seem to be more accessible songs we could have chosen for the first single, we chose to go for something more raucous and colorful."

The video for "By the Way" was shot last week in Los Angeles by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who directed award-winning clips for Korn ("Freak on a Leash") and Smashing Pumpkins ("Tonight, Tonight"). The clip, which guitarist John Frusciante described as "funny and scary at the same time," was influenced by a wild car chase in the Mexican film "Amores Perros."

"It has David Sheridan, one of the funniest guys ever, in the car chase," Kiedis said. "He kidnaps me and [bassist] Flea does his own actual human stunt-driving."

"I do a headstand on the hood of the car," added Flea. "And I have ropes tied to my toes that I steer the car with. It's incredible."

Because of the record label's concerns about illegal downloading of the single from the Internet, "By the Way" will not be sent to radio in advance of the album's release. The video for the song will hit airwaves in June.

See two new interviews with the band in streaming video on MTV .com !

The way forward - Hot Press album review

17 May 2002 - Hot Press was granted an exclusive preview listen to so-new-it's-not-even-finished-yet Red Hot Chili Peppers LP By The Way, due out on July 8th. Peter Murphy gives us the rundown

Ahead of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ forthcoming Lansdowne Road show on June 25th, Hot Press has been granted an Irish exclusive preview of the band’s new album By The Way.

The record, the quartet’s eighth, sees them drawing even further away from the graphic rap-metal fusion that spawned a million body-pierced imitators, a change telegraphed by the band’s 12-million selling 1999 sleeper Californication. Of the as-yet-unsequenced twelve tracks Hot Press has heard, only the flagship single ‘By The Way’ employs the polyrhythmic sex-funk of old, albeit tempered by a keen melodic sensibility and even the odd cheesy vocoder effect.

Elsewhere, on ‘Cabron’, the combo dabble in strumalong flamenco – sort of Joaquin Cortez in stackheels – as well as applying their legendary chops to the kind of heavyweight bluebeat more commonly associated with Fishbone (‘Lemon Trees On Mercury’) and even throwing some prime Motown shapes (‘Universally Speaking’).

Singer Anthony Kiedis’ lyrics are largely intro- and retrospective, and key tracks such as ‘Don’t Forget Me’, ‘Venice Queen’ and ‘Midnight’ rely on smouldering atmospheres, with the rhythm section of Flea and Chad Smith concentrating on subtle dynamics rather than funk-metal flash. Similarly, guitarist John Frusciante avoids fretboard pyrotechnics, contributing simple, repetitive chiming breaks and the occasional acoustic Jimmy Page-style flourish.

But among the album’s most surprising elements are the stacks of Beach Boys harmonies – indeed, one big money production number entitled ‘Tear’ comes straight from the Brian Wilson songwriting masterclass.

By The Way, due for release on Warner Music on July 8th, was again produced by Rick Rubin (The Beastie Boys, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash), who also helmed the band’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, One Hot Minute and Californication albums, and features photographs and art direction by Basquiat director Julian Schnabel.

Peter Murphy

Chili Peppers Want To Spank You, In A Good Way

By Corey Moss/ NME.com

There aren't any clever sex references in the title of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' follow-up to Californication, but that doesn't mean the music is without a kinky quotient.

"It's going to spank your ass ... in a good way," singer Anthony Kiedis said Saturday at the ESPN Action Sports and Music Awards, where the band was given the Artist Contribution Award.

By the Way, as the album will be called, was originally due in June, but the Chili Peppers have spent more time in the studio than expected and are now eyeing an August release date.

"We could be [done], but we're not," Kiedis said. "We just keep going. I mean, we have enough to be done and finished, but instead we just keep going further. Just because we don't stop. We can't stop."

Guitarist John Frusciante, who, along with Kiedis, contributed to Tricky's 2001 sonic opus, Blowback, said much of the studio time has been spent giving the songs multiple layers.

"It's much deeper, I would say, than the last record," Frusciante said. "There's a lot going on, I mean, [on] some songs. When it's the right thing, it's just the four of us playing, but there's a lot of overdubs and a lot of work has gone into the production of it."

Longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers producer Rick Rubin is again on board for By the Way, which Kiedis described as "rich." "There isn't really a definitive single screaming to be the first guy out of the block, but we'll find it" he said.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are hard at work on the follow-up to Californication, which is tentatively set for a June release, according to a spokesperson for the band.

Chili Pepper guitarist John Frusciante said freshness in the new Chili Pepper tunes was evident even in the first rehearsals and songwriting sessions for the forthcoming effort. "There was just all kinds of new rhythms and new sounds and nobody really sounded anything like themselves. We weren't playing the way we play on Californication. The energy, the whole energy was even more so whatever the energy on Californication is. It was that energy multiplied. That alone makes me really excited about the next record because we just have a completely new sound just because we've all given a lot of thought to music in the last year-and-a-half and we've gotten really tight."

The Chili Peppers have several European dates booked. The band will play two shows in France with Garbage on June 19 and 20. The Peppers are booked for the Southside Festival June 22 (Neuhasen, Germany) and the Hurricane Festival June 23 (Scheesel, Germany). The band will hit Dublin, Ireland and then will head to Denmark's Roskilde Festival in late June.

-- Darren Davis, New York