Ten Days Back In L.A.
Ten Days Back In L.A.
...to audition for the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Last week I saw by accident a Musicians Institute post about the New Student Orientation on Instagram and it threw me right back to April 1990, when I arrived in L.A. and I got ready to have one hell of a year, that kick-started my life as a working musician.
Back then M.I. just opened up their new building around the corner of Hollywood Blvd. on McCadden Place and a new era began with kids flooding the hallways and you could hear so many languages from all over the world. What an experience!
I made so many friends there and music is really THE ONE THING, that brings the world together. If you can jam with students from Colombia, Japan or Sweden, even though you can barely speak with each other, that’s an incomparable vibe. I guess you’ll be reading many anecdotes from back then in my future substack posts.
A couple of years later in 1993, I was already back home in Liechtenstein getting my musical projects going, I got a phone call from the management or someone associated (can’t remember anymore) with the Red Hot Chili Peppers about the upcoming auditions for a new guitar player, because John Frusciante quit the band in 1992. Their Blood Sugar Sex Magic album was on heavy rotation in my base camp.
That call came so out of the blue, that I was dumbfounded and totally flabbergasted. So I brainstormed the possibility of going back to L.A. for ten days and discussed it with my family.
Okay, I got my ticket from ZRH to LAX, went to that rehearsal room and it turned out to be quite the cattle call. No member of the band was present and the process seemed awkward, to say the least. I wouldn’t try to find a new band member like this. I would scan my address book for musicians I know and even ask them for someone they would recommend. Flea showed up for a quick minute, but that was about it with RHCP. There and then I learned that my Ten Days Back In L.A. was not really about the Chili Peppers. It was more about being back and enjoying all the great things of the west coast like being with friends, revisiting music clubs, great restaurants and of course the Pacific Ocean and then realising that Hollyweird is not my place to create my music. Afterwards I wrote a song about it and there’s not even a word about the RHCP in it.
I had a great time back in L.A. and as we all learned later on Dave Navarro got the job. I met old and new friends and I didn’t regret to fly over there.
But here’s one weird thing though, the song ‘Break It Down Again’ by Tears For Fears will always pop back into my mind when I think back to my Ten Days Back In L.A.