Music

Which other representatives of that mid-’80s microgenre described as ‘funk metal’ have shifted 50 million albums? Could Fishbone – or Living Colour, or Jane’s Addiction, or Tackhead – have ever sold a third of a million gig tickets to British punters in a couple of hours? And how many fortysomething rockers still find themselves all over Radio 1 and ‘Top Of The Pops’ like cheap perfume, even as they enter their twenty-fifth year?

The Chili Peppers once famously announced that they wanted their music to give you an erection, something that eternally endeared them to a priapic adolescent fanbase. The thing is that the Chilis got much more interesting when producer Rick Rubin gave them the sonic equivalent of a brisk, cold shower. He got Flea to stop wanking with the slap-bass and John Frusciante to prune back his own axe-hero cock-rockery; he got Anthony Kiedis to stop doing his silly rasta-rap thing and sing properly; and he got them to stop jamming over funk riffs and introduced some proper structure. In the process, he reconnected West Coast rock with its long-lost R&B ancestry.

This mammoth collection of two hour-long CDs, again helmed by Rubin, should by rights be an act of monumental hubris. But, amazingly, all 28 tracks manage to hit the right buttons. Even the most schematic funk workouts come dressed in killer hooks, Beatles harmonies and Earth Wind And Fire -style horns.

Stylistically they hopscotch through four decades of rock: ‘Readymade’ is a Led Zep-sized stomper, while tracks like ‘21st Century’ and ‘So Much I’ add a Californian swagger to the jerky punk-funk of Franz Ferdinand. They even effectively revisit the Beasties-ish rap-rock of ‘Give It Away’ on tracks like ‘Storm In A Teacup’ and ‘Charlie’. It is, very probably, the Chilis’ best ever album, not that this will win over those who break into boils when the words ‘funk’ and ‘rock’ are mentioned in the same sentence. Otherwise, great throbbing erections are in order.