Sometimes you just need one other artist to inspire you with a new sound to have the courage to try to do the same. Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante shared with Broken Record Podcast that Joe Jackson and George Michael’s shift in their music encouraged him to go in new directions in the band’s sound, resulting in ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik.’
“I particularly like that record at that time, ‘Beat Crazy’ that it’s on,” shared the guitarist, revealing that Jackson and Michael’s albums were a massive inspiration while writing the ‘Blood Sugar’ album. “I was listening to it a lot. There were certain records I was really into, the new George Michael record as well that ‘Listen Without Prejudice Volume I.’ When we were writing ‘Blood Sugar,’ I was listening to that all the time.”
“They were just examples of pop music where somebody was going in a direction that was different from what they were known for like Joe Jackson did that even more on his following album, but on that album, there are certain things on it,” added Frusciante about his fascination with the idea of changing their sound up and try something different to what they have done before with previous albums.
He continued, “He has this song called ‘One to One’ that’s like a ballad, a really strong kind of ballad song. It was just different than the kind of power pop. You could tell he was trying to go in a different direction, so I don’t know if it was conscious, but it was definitely worked out to be related to what we were doing, as far as you know with ‘Blood Sugar.’”
Whether it was conscious or not, RHCP’s attempt at shaking up their sound with ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’ did work in the end. The album peaked at number three on the US Billboard 200 charts and became a critically acclaimed and fan-favorite sound for the band. While it can be scary to try new things in case of failure, there is also the possibility that bigger and better things will open up in the future, so you might as well try and see what happens.
