Last week, Red Hot Chili Peppers rekindled their fire in a big way, unleashing new double album Unlimited Love into the world. Now, guitarist John Frusciante has shared further detail on how unlimited the love of this band brotherhood actually is, revealing that sessions yielded more material than meets the eye (and ear).
In conversation with Total Guitar, the returning Chili Pepper shared that while the final version of Unlimited Love sports 17 total tracks (18 if you pick up the Japanese CD release), writing sessions yielded over double that amount.
"We went into the studio with about 45, and then a few songs got written while we were recording the basic tracks, or while we were in pre-production," Frusciante shared with the magazine, noting that 48 total tracks were recorded during the sessions.
He continued: "You know, I was ready to stop when we had like 20 – I felt like that was good enough. And there were actually three points during the writing process where I thought, 'We've got enough songs; I'm gonna stop writing songs now.'"
However, Frusciante was encouraged to keep writing, "So, before we knew it, we had way more songs than we'd ever written for a record before. And [vocalist Anthony Kiedis] was writing over everything — I think there might have been only one song he didn't write the lead vocal for. For Stadium Arcadium, we wrote 33 songs or something like that. So it was quite a bit more than we'd ever done before."
Frusciante shared with Total Guitar that at the time of their conversation, he was mixing the rest of the material, describing some of it to the magazine as "more overdub-heavy" than what made the final cut for Unlimited Love.
"I definitely feel like we saved a lot of some of the best stuff for the potential next album, so I'm excited about putting that into ... shape," he teased. "We're still mixing the rest of it, so there is no concrete album. But we really love this stuff, so we can't help but think of it that way in our heads. But you know, I'm still working on it!"
Back in 2012, RHCP emptied the vault of material from recording sessions for 2011 album I'm With You, delivering that album's B-sides as a 7-inch singles series before they were collected as the 2xLP Record Store Day compilation I'm Beside You.
Of course, we know Frusciante wasn't paying attention to his old group during that time period. But could this Unlimited Love material get a similar treatment? Frontman Kiedis shared with NME in February, "We're gonna put out music by the handful. Literally. Don't be surprised if another wheelbarrow of songs comes your way in the near future. … We have a lot of shit to turn people onto."
Read Exclaim!'s review of Unlimited Love.
In conversation with Total Guitar, the returning Chili Pepper shared that while the final version of Unlimited Love sports 17 total tracks (18 if you pick up the Japanese CD release), writing sessions yielded over double that amount.
"We went into the studio with about 45, and then a few songs got written while we were recording the basic tracks, or while we were in pre-production," Frusciante shared with the magazine, noting that 48 total tracks were recorded during the sessions.
He continued: "You know, I was ready to stop when we had like 20 – I felt like that was good enough. And there were actually three points during the writing process where I thought, 'We've got enough songs; I'm gonna stop writing songs now.'"
However, Frusciante was encouraged to keep writing, "So, before we knew it, we had way more songs than we'd ever written for a record before. And [vocalist Anthony Kiedis] was writing over everything — I think there might have been only one song he didn't write the lead vocal for. For Stadium Arcadium, we wrote 33 songs or something like that. So it was quite a bit more than we'd ever done before."
Frusciante shared with Total Guitar that at the time of their conversation, he was mixing the rest of the material, describing some of it to the magazine as "more overdub-heavy" than what made the final cut for Unlimited Love.
"I definitely feel like we saved a lot of some of the best stuff for the potential next album, so I'm excited about putting that into ... shape," he teased. "We're still mixing the rest of it, so there is no concrete album. But we really love this stuff, so we can't help but think of it that way in our heads. But you know, I'm still working on it!"
Back in 2012, RHCP emptied the vault of material from recording sessions for 2011 album I'm With You, delivering that album's B-sides as a 7-inch singles series before they were collected as the 2xLP Record Store Day compilation I'm Beside You.
Of course, we know Frusciante wasn't paying attention to his old group during that time period. But could this Unlimited Love material get a similar treatment? Frontman Kiedis shared with NME in February, "We're gonna put out music by the handful. Literally. Don't be surprised if another wheelbarrow of songs comes your way in the near future. … We have a lot of shit to turn people onto."
Read Exclaim!'s review of Unlimited Love.
