This week, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium turns 20 years old. We celebrate by looking back at one of their “funkiest numbers”.
‘Charlie’ was written about “that little twinkle”, your imagination. But, said lyricist and singer Anthony Kiedis, “It could be your girl, it could be your drug, it could be whatever.”
After 2002’s By the Way, which in the main left funk behind in favour of melodic experimentation, guitar parts more inspired by ‘80s British bands, and Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies, the Peppers returned to earlier inspirations. Drummer Chad Smith said, “It’s one of our funkier numbers, I must say”, while guitarist John Frusciante enjoyed the fact that the time signature of his guitar part (3/4) was different from that of the drums and bass (4/4). The guitar and bass emphasising different beats during the verses makes their shared emphasis of the One in the chorus more impactful.
It’s one of Stadium’s catchiest choruses, not least due to Kiedis’ vocal melody. Frusciante was complimentary of how Kiedis had grown as a songwriter: before, his vocal melodies were found in the music (most often written beforehand, with many Chilis songs born out of instrumental jams); now he was forming his own melodies.
Like the other songs on the album that combined funk and rock—‘Hump De Bump’, ‘She’s Only 18’, ‘Warlocks’, ‘Tell Me Baby’, ‘21st Century’, ‘Tell Me Baby’—‘Charlie’ is unlikely to convert any Chilis haters and it’s likely to delight any fans. There are the things naysayers resist and/or poke fun at: a bassline that doesn’t just follow a guitar’s chords, unabashed enthusiasm, and seemingly unrelated lyrics (“Sit tight, get square / You could do it in the hippodrome / Slide back, trombone”) that likely prioritised flow and sound over literal meaning.
There’s also a guitar solo (from 4:04, as well as guitar-led bridges). Stadium won Grammys but it was released at a time when solos were already very out of fashion. Frusciante had largely forgone solos on By the Way but, as he freely admits, he’s ever contradicting himself and was excited by musicians “doing off-time stuff”. Though his playing sounded influenced by Jimi Hendrix (generally a primary inspiration), the solos were more directly inspired by “singers like Beyonce, Alliyah and Brandy and rappers like Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem and Eric B and Rakim”. (Frusciante named Brandy’s Afrodisiac as a favourite.)
He told Total Guitar:
“I would translate the rhythmic phrasing and bluesy kind of things that they do to the guitar and it would come out sounding like Jimi Hendrix. I was playing a Strat through a Marshall with a wah-wah pedal and Fuzz Tone, and it quickly became apparent that the result of trying to do this off-time stuff led to an unexpected parallel to what a lot of blues influenced people were doing back in the 1960s.”
In ‘Charlie’, the Hendrix-style uncontained nature of Frusciante’s playing is most evident in those pitch bends from 4:07. The By the Way Frusciante generally shied away from such extroversion.
Preceding that solo, Kiedis makes an interesting choice to start some lines on the fourth beat (“My heart, your skin“; “You’re right, I'm wrong“), rather than the One as some trained musicians might choose. He used to joke that the band should be renamed Idiot and the Three Geniuses, but Kiedis’ naivety leads to some great moments.
Top image from Discogs.