MTV: Are you amazed by your status in the music world now?
Anthony Kiedis: I sort of felt that way when John came back to the band. I realized how vibrant we were feeling and how current our music is today, even though it started 15 or 16 years ago. It's not like I analyze it or mull it over, but I'm always aware of our history. I didn't need VH1 to make me think about our place in the world, but "Behind the Music" was interesting because they had footage from a long time ago. I was like, "Oh my God, look at the way we were acting back then. We were weirdos!"But, you know, those shows are also sort of sensational, focusing on extreme elements in people's history -- the death, the destruction, the darkness, the downs.They sort of missed the fact that through all the chaos, the biggest part of this band is that we've always put out something that's incredibly uplifting.
MTV: And it's cool that despite its wild history, the band is still doing new things, stuff it hasn't done before.
AK: Right. We've never been to Russia, for example. We were riding in an airplane and someone handed me a paper saying that Russia was starting a brand new music television network, and they wanted to know if we'd play live outdoors somewhere in or around Moscow. We were thrilled with the concept of playing for Russian people outdoors in the middle of summer. What could be better? I said yes halfway through reading the paragraph. But more immediately, I've been on the phone all morning with the director for the video of "Around the World," which we should do before we leave for Russia. Paul Hunter, he's a rocker, he's a roller.
MTV: Why did you pick him?
AK: He's just an incredibly competent director, and he likes us, so it seemed to be a good combination. You know, we've asked all kinds of movie directors. We aimed for Terry Gilliam and didn't really get anywhere. We aimed for Spike Lee one time and never heard back from him.
MTV: Do you get a lot of offers for movie and book deals?
AK: Well, Scorsese keeps calling, but I don't return his calls. There have been a bunch of books put out, but none that were necessarily authorized, or even true, for that matter. Some are more interesting than others, and some are just a pack of wild fabrications, lies, and half-truths that I found mildly amusing.
AK: We used to approach people about making movies, but we just got sidetracked with making music. The Beatles made good movies while they were making music. But it's hard to do both at the same time.
MTV: How bout movie soundtracks?
AK: Possibly. But this time around we didn't want to compete against the sales or distract people with a single from a movie, because we want people to just sit with this record. As for the leftover tracks, we might just end up using them for B-sides of singles. Unless something weird happens, like Stanley Kubrick comes back to life and suddenly needs a song.
MTV: Let's talk about Woodstock. What happened?
AK: When we hit the stage, some good vibes were happening, and because we did Lollapalooza a few years ago, we were completely used to giant fires in the middle of an audience. During the second Lollapalooza, we saw fires every night. So when it started happening I was like, "Oh, must be about time for those fires." I didn't think these were larger or more potentially dangerous fires, but it turns out that at Lollapalooza there were about 20,000 people, and at Woodstock there were 200,000 people, and it was a lot harder for fire engines to get in.
MTV: When you guys got off the stage, did someone let you know what happened?
AK: Yeah some guy with a radio attached to his head said, "We need your help, there are fires out there. We need to get the fire engines in." So I expressed the need to the crowd for a fire engine path. Coincidentally enough, right before we are about to go on stage, someone knocks on the door and says Jimi Hendrix's sister is there to see us. We didn't even know he had a sister. Turns out she was supposed to put together that Hendrix tribute where 11 or 12 different guitar players were going to come out and play a Hendrix song. It fell through, and she came by and asked if we'd mind ending with a Hendrix song. Jimi was the spirit, he was the bomb, and we wanted to pay respect to him, but how could we possibly end our set with a Hendrix song? We said okay, f*** it, we'll go learn this song real quick, and we ran to where our little amps and drums were set up and thought we'd try to play "Fire," and we realized right away that we knew it perfectly, and we didn't even need to rehearse it! And right when we went out there to play "Fire," the fires were 50 feet tall and completely raging, like it was all meant to be.
A friend of ours just did a book which is primarily photographs from a European tour. It's called "Body Parts." That was when Dave Navarro was in the band and he and this friend of ours went with us on tour and took these arty-looking, upscale pictures and wrote this kind of agonizing poetry along the way. Dave isn't in the band anymore, so he had trouble getting a publishing deal for the book, but I guess it's being put out.