Song: Police Helicopter (Listen)
Album: The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984) (Buy)
I am a huge Chili Peppers fan. They were the first band I saw live, and Under the Bridge might just be my favourite song ever. However, I’ve always known deep down that I wasn’t a true fan: I’d barely listened to any of their earlier and somewhat funkier music. Higher Ground, which is admittedly incredibly funky and incredibly brilliant, was the closest I’d ever come, and that’s already 3 albums into their catalogue, meaning I was still always a long way from their roots. It’s a secret I’ve tried to hide for years, and one I’d refused to acknowledge, but a few weeks back I confronted my inner demons and set about finding me some old school Chili Peppers (thanks Spotify!)
The result of my search was Police Helicopter, one of the first songs they ever wrote. The quickest way to describe this song to you is to show you what Anthony Kiedis (the singer, in case you’re THAT uncultured) thought about the song, and also what their producer at the time thought of it:
Anthony Kiedis: “It embodied the spirit of the band which was the kinetic, stabbing, angular, shocking assault force of sound and energy”
Andy Gill: “Shit”
Suffice to say, Andy Gill was not their producer for long.
Anyway, when I first listened to the song, having already read about it 2 years prior in Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography, it was a case of not really being sure what I thought about it. I knew that a large amount of people would probably agree with Andy Gill; it’s certainly a world away from songs such as Californication. However, for all its simplicity and repetitiveness, there was an undeniably vast amount of energy in the song, and it’s all condensed into a very small amount of time. It’s over before you even know what’s hit you, but once it’s done you know that something big has definitely not just hit you, but rather completely done you in with a baseball bat. It’s a burst of funky energy, and now that I’ve learnt the bass line I can’t stop listening to it and jamming along. I think the best way I can put it is that the song has a bloody infectious groove, and once it sunk in after a few listens in I was hooked.
Also, man can Flea write a great bassline! Simple, but it’s definitely got its hooks in me, and it refuses to let go.
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