Malena

September 16th 2017

"Speech, speech!" calls Smith. Frusciante considers this and takes a step backward.

"Ummmmn, nah," he declines.

"I'll make a speech for him!" Flea volunteers and switches into a deep, nineteenth-century-orator voice. "On this day…" The room dissolves into laughter.

The affection for Frusciante, the band's sometimes-wayward little brother, is palpable. “Coming into early teenagerhood," Flea says, “Anthony and me and some close friends, we really raised each other." The Red Hot Chili Peppers were brought together by friendship, pulled apart by heroin, reunited by music. They all still live a ten-minute drive away from one another; after seventeen years as a band, they find themselves an improbable but inseparable family.

It all began one night over dinner. “We’re talking and listening to music and hanging out and talking like friends,” Flea recalls. At one point, Flea’s wife and Frusciante’s girlfriend left the room, and suddenly the two old bandmates were alone. “And I was just like, ‘Dude, just from my heart, I fucking miss playing with you.” Tears began streaming down the bass player’s eyes after the admission left his lips.

“I hadn’t said that to him, because I wanted to respect what he would want to do,” Flea says. “He was very respectful about what we were doing, even though I imagined it wasn’t always easy for him.” And yet, Frusciante apparently felt the same. His eyes began watering, too, as he stared back at his old pal. “He responded to me saying, ‘I really miss playing with you too.’” The conversation continued from there. Shortly afterward, Flea approached Kiedis and laid it on him: “I was like, ‘Dude, I feel like John might want to come back to the band.’”