Video premiere: Robert Francis' 'Perfectly Yours'

 

 

Any musician who has his first guitar bestowed on him by no less than Ry Cooder has to have some serious musical karma going for him. And it certainly can’t hurt when you learn your craft with the help of a player on a par with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ former guitarist John Frusciante, who for a time took on budding singer and songwriter Robert Francis as his only student.

These distinctions give a sense of the forces that have helped shape Francis' approach to music along the way to making his new album, “Strangers in the First Place,” which Vanguard Records is releasing Tuesday.

His skill as a guitarist is in ample evidence on the collection, even though his intensely melodic pop-folk-rock songs often more strongly reflect other influences from U2, Coldplay and Snow Patrol. Even the ghost of the godfather of rock poets, Leonard Cohen, turns up in Francis' atmospheric, meditative song “Alibi.”

Cooder lends a hand on a couple of tracks, as does his son, percussionist Joachim Cooder, along with Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, Francis' sisters Carla and Juliette Commagere and drummer extraordinaire Jim Keltner.

Pop & Hiss is premiering the video for “Perfectly Yours,” a pulsing, gently soaring, pure-pop love song that has sonic traces of Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting scores composed at the behest of David Lynch.

To get things rolling for the new album, Francis will play a record release party on Wednesday for a hometown crowd with a gig at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. He's also landed a slot at this year's Bonnaroo Music 7 Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., running June 7-10.

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Donovan inducted, Chili Peppers teased at Rock Hall ceremony

John Mellencamp took a good-natured poke at the Red Hot Chili Peppers while giving his introduction to inductee Donovan.

Reading from the liner notes on the back of the first record he bought at age 14, Mellancamp invoked the word "ungimmicked," used in those notes to describe the Scottish singer-songwriter.

Mellencamp paused and said, "You know what a gimmick is, right? Like when you wear your hair all puffed up, cuss a lot onstage and maybe come out wearing socks," referencing the Chili Peppers' famed stunt years ago when the group would show up for a performance with only socks covering their private parts. "I'm just kidding!" Mellencamp added.

Photos: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies

Donovan then recited a poem he said the honor inspired, calling his induction "a singular honor ... the brightest searchlight on my music the world can shine."

Mellencamp, who brought Donovan on tour with him in 2005, joined him for "Season of the Witch," the  final number of his three-song set that also included signature hits "Catch the Wind" and "Sunshine Superman."

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Photo: Donovan speaks during the 27th annual Rock And Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland. Credit: Michael Loccisano / Getty Images

Rock Hall responds to Axl Rose, confirms Chili Peppers to play

This post has been corrected. Plase see note at bottom for details.

Guns N' Roses founding member Axl Rose had a message Wednesday for the the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which will hold its induction ceremony in Cleveland on Saturday without him.

"I strongly request that I not be inducted in absentia and please know that no one is authorized nor may anyone be permitted to accept any induction for me," Rose wrote in a letter unveiled on Pop & Hiss. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has heard Rose's declaration and now responded.

“We are sorry Axl will not be able to accept his Induction in person," read a statement from a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame spokeswoman.

So ... that settles that? Probably not, as the spokeswoman noted that "other members" of the band are still on the guest list. As of Thursday afternoon, Guns N' Roses slinger Slash was still planning to attend, and longtime bassist Duff McKagan will be in Cleveland promoting a book.  

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Despite the drama surrounding Guns N' Roses, plans for Saturday's induction ceremony continue, and today the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame unveiled additional performers and presenters. The announcement confirms that L.A.'s Red Hot Chili Peppers, who will be inducted into the hall by comedian Chris Rock, will be performing at the ceremony. 

Other members of this year's hall of fame class, including Donovan and pieces of English rock band the Small Faces, will also perform. The latter will appear as the Faces, with Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan joined by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, already on hand as presenters, have been added to a performance tribute to late blues inductee Freddie King, and LL Cool J will join Chuck D in inducting the Beastie Boys. 

John Mellencamp, Chuck D to welcome 2012 Rock Hall inductees

John Mellencamp, Chuck D, Steve Van Zandt, Bette Midler and Chris Rock are among the presenters who have been tapped to handle inductions for the 2012 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14 in Cleveland.

Mellencamp will welcome in Donovan; Public Enemy's Chuck D will give the speech for the Beastie Boys; E Street Band guitarist Van Zandt will bring in the Small Faces/Faces; Midler will salute singer-songwriter Laura Nyro; and Rock will do the honors for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Additionally, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill will introduce blues man Freddie King, and Carole King will give the remarks for her former Brill Building boss, publisher and TV impresario Don Kirshner.

Engineer-producers Cosimo Matassa, Tom Dowd and Glyn Johns will be welcomed into the Hall of Fame by the Band’s Robbie Robertson, and Smokey Robinson will introduce the newly anointed bands who are joining their previously inducted leaders: the Blue Caps (Gene Vincent), the Crickets (Buddy Holly), the Famous Flames (James Brown), the Midnighters (Hank Ballard) and the Miracles (Robinson).

This year’s ceremony will be held at the hall in Cleveland rather than its usual spot at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. A highlights special will premiere May 5 on HBO.

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Flea on Chili Peppers' induction to Rock Hall: 'It's very emotional'

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Chuck D addresses a crowd during a January 2012 concert. The rapper-producer is set to introduce Rock and Roll Hall of fame inductees the Beastie Boys as part of a ceremony on April 14.  Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times.

Red Hot Chili Peppers forced to postpone North American tour

Red Hot Chili Peppers' tour will kick off in March after frontman Anthony Kiedis recovers from foot surgery.

Frontman Anthony Kiedis' foot injury has forced the Red Hot Chili Peppers to postpone the start of their upcoming U.S. tour, the band announced Wednesday.

The tour in support of their Grammy-nominated album “I'm With You” was originally scheduled to kick off Jan. 20 in Sunrise, Fla., but has been pushed back to March after Kiedis injured his foot. The Chili Pepper recently underwent surgery to remove a crushed sesamoid bone and correct a detached tendon in his foot. He is expected to make a full recovery.

All the dates have been pushed back, some as far as eight months, as the band had a lengthy European leg already scheduled for summer and fall. The band's Feb. 26-27 dates at Staples Center, which were sold out, have been moved to Aug. 11-12.
 
Tickets will be honored at the rescheduled dates. Check out the new dates after the jump:

Flea on Chili Peppers' induction to Rock Hall: 'It's very emotional'

 

There was a time when members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers greeted any mention of the Rock and Roll hall of Fame with derision.

The upstart L.A. punk-funk-rock band wasn’t much of a favorite of the music critics and other tastemakers who make up the hall’s nominating committee, which has yet to welcome such popular but critically dismissed acts as KISS, Deep Purple, Rush and Yes. (Just check the reader comments with any Rock Hall nomination or induction story.)

So, it was with much surprise this week that Chili Peppers bassist Michael “Flea” Balzary greeted the news that his band had been named in the 2012 class of inductees. The Chili Peppers have been invited to attend the induction ceremony at the Hall of Fame in Cleveland next spring alongside fellow inductees Guns N’ Roses, the Beastie Boys, Donovan, Laura Nyro and the Small Faces.

“It’s very emotional, and I’m not sure where the emotions are coming from,” Flea said by cellphone while in Vienna on tour with the band. The group's latest lineup also includes guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who took over for John Frusciante; longtime singer Anthony Kiedis; and drummer Chad Smith.

Part of the mixed emotion stems from the 1988 drug overdose death of the group’s founding lead guitarist and Balzary's boyhood friend, Hillel Slovak.

“Hillel grew up loving rock and roll so much,” he said.  “He hasn’t been here for some time, but I know how much it would mean to him. It’s a powerful thing."

There’s also the departure last year of Frusciante, a mutual split instigated by his desire to try other avenues of expression.

“He left us so many great gifts," said Balzary. "He’s a phenomenal musician and songwriter who gave so much to our band. All the feelings I have for him not being in the band any more... He really took us to a higher level.”

As Balzary told me for the story in today’s Calendar section, “It’s always been easy for me to pooh-pooh these awards — the [Rock] Hall of Fame too. But I inducted Metallica a couple of years ago, and it was really a beautiful thing to see as all these people were being inducted. It made me love it. I love halls of fame anyway — the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“So I feel grateful for the recognition of what we have done," he said, "and for the hope and potential of what we’ll continue to do.”

However, he hasn’t fully abandoned his skepticism about joining a club that still hasn’t drafted some of his favorite artists.

“I can never claim to understand how anything of that works,” he said. “I think of some of the most important artists in the history of music who aren’t in, and it can make me feel like ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Nick Cave — he isn’t in, is he? He’s the greatest songwriter on Earth in the rock world, besides Neil Young, as far as I’m concerned.

“But I’m really grateful for it,” he added. “It makes me reflective about our career -- all the things we’ve been through, the love we’ve shared and how we’ve stuck to this thing. I feel choked up.”

And then there’s the bond Balzary feels with some of his fellow inductees.

“It’s really cool to be going in with the Beastie Boys, who I love, and Guns. When I was a little kid in my very first band with Hillel and Jack [Irons, the Peppers’s original drummer] and we were rehearsing in my bedroom, this kid who lived about a block away came climbing over the fence and sneaking in to my backyard. It was Slash. He lived one block away, but our bands came from very different scenes. We were more from the underground punk world. At the time, it was worlds apart.”

The Rock Hall recognition for the Chili Peppers couldn’t have come at a better time, Balzary said.

“Right now is a really great time for our band," he said. "We’re going through this rebirth and there’s a whole new excitement. We’ve been on tour for a few months, and these shows are feeling a lot like how it felt in the beginning, when we had all these new vistas in front of us.

“To have this come right now, it adds such a feeling of depth,” he said. “We’re always so caught up in the moment, we’re not always thinking of the last 28 years, or whatever it’s been. Everyone in the band might express it differently, but it feels poignant and beautiful and [the induction ceremony] should be a great, fun event. To be where we are right now, in a forward-looking place, it’s a really rich experience.”

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Photo: Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea performs in Stockholm in October. Credit: Jack Nackstrand / AFP / Getty Images.

Critic’s Notebook: Rock Hall honors the yin and yang of Los Angeles rock

They seem to be opposites, but strip away the hair metal and the funk, and Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are similar. Both evoke a sense of Southern California in the ’80s and an Angeleno sensibility that millions of fans the world over find appealing.

If Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction announcements mean anything in the scheme of things, other than a ceremonial recognition of excellence, it’s that the hall has shed a certain East Coast bias. Two of the most prominent Los Angeles rock bands of the last three decades, Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are being welcomed into the hallowed halls as part of the Class of 2012, and that in itself should make the city’s music tourism industry happy.

The two bands, which came up during the early and mid-’80s on opposite sides of Los Angeles, both literally and metaphorically, represent a kind of yin and yang of the city’s rock scene at the time, when the only thing that metalheads and punk rockers could agree on was Motörhead. The classic Guns N’ Roses lineup did its first gig on the west side, at the Troubadour, on June 6, 1985, and was fusing the first generation metal of Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath with the poppier, more hummable glam rock melodies of early Aerosmith and KISS. Within a few years, Axl Rose, Slash and company were kings of the Sunset Strip, lending much needed credibility to a uniquely Angeleno take on glam rock that became known as hair metal.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ early gigs were two miles east of the Strip in Hollywood, where small spaces such as Club Lingerie supported a different kind of outcast — punks and post-punks who were co-opting the energy, power and deep groove of funk music. Bands such as Minutemen and Fishbone were honoring bass and drums along with the guitar and throat, but none captured that potential like the Peppers. The band’s bassist, Flea, had gigged with first wave L.A. punk band Fear, had come up in the same scene that spawned the Germs, X and Black Flag. (Oh, wait — Black Flag, which released its first album in 1981 on the legendary indie label SST, isn’t in the hall? The band wasn’t even nominated? That’s weird. Not the Germs or X either?! Hmm.)

But dig beneath the surface and the differences between the bands get eclipsed by the similarities.

Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers among Rock Hall inductees

Others to be inducted include the Beastie Boys, Donovan, Laura Nyro, the Small Faces and Don Kirshner. Among those that didn't make the cut: the Cure, Donna Summer.

Three musical iron fists meet a pair of velvet gloves as Guns N' Roses, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys are joined by Donovan, Laura Nyro and England's Small Faces as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's slate of performer inductees for 2012. Hall officials announced the news Wednesday.

In addition, blues musician Freddie King will join the hall's roster of early influence honorees, while veteran pop star maker and erstwhile TV impresario Don Kirshner has been chosen as recipient of the Ahmet Ertegun Award, given each year to an influential nonperformer. Producers Tom Dowd and Glyn Johns and pioneering New Orleans engineer and recording studio owner Cosimo Matassa round out the new batch of inductees with awards for musical excellence.

“It's really nice to be part of a community of musicians we respect,” Chili Peppers bassist Michael “Flea” Balzary said from a tour stop in Vienna shortly after getting the news. “I feel very emotional about it, and it makes me reflective about our career. I think back about when we just started out as this little band and we kept it going, pouring our heart and souls into it. Pride isn't the healthiest thing, but I feel proud.”

Critic’s Notebook: Rock Hall honors the yin and yang of Los Angeles rock

Acts among the 15 final nominees that didn't make the cut were disco queen Donna Summer, Seattle rock band Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, goth-pop group the Cure, rap duo Eric B. & Rakim, and R&B groups Rufus with Chaka Khan, War and the Spinners.

Red Hot Chili Peppers announce 2012 North American tour dates

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming home to play for the first time in nearly five years. The band announced the first set of dates on its website for a 2012 North American tour, beginning in North Carolina in late January.

Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith and Josh Klinghoffer are currently in Europe, touring in support of their album "I'm With You," which was released in August.

Times pop music critic Randall Roberts said the album was "a mishmash, lacks a center, and way too often feels duct-taped together from various points in the band's career." However, the group is currently a nominee for the 2012 class of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Tickets for the first set of shows will go on sale Dec. 3.

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Photo: Flea rocks out during the band's show in Stockholm in October. Credit: Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP/Getty Images

Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers among Rock Hall nominees

 
Guns N’ Roses, the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eric B. & Rakim and the Cure are among the 15 nominees for induction as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2012.

In addition, ‘70s female-fronted rock acts Heart and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts are under consideration along with singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, disco queen Donna Summer, R&B collective War and British rock group Small Faces. Blues guitarist and singer Freddie King, R&B band the Spinners and Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan round out the latest batch of Hall of Fame nominees.

Inductees are typically announced in December, ahead of a ceremony that takes place in New York in March.

At least 25 years must have elapsed since a musician or group released its debut recording for the act to be eligible for induction. That makes Guns N’ Roses eligible for the first time because the L.A. hard rock outfit’s debut album, “Appetite for Destruction,” was released in 1987. Likewise, this is the first year of eligibility for rap duo Eric B. & Rakim, whose debut, “Paid in Full,” also appeared in 1987.

King and Donovan are the senior members of this year’s nominees, having released their first recordings in 1961 and 1965, respectively.

Because of the rancor over the years between Guns N' Roses founding member Axl Rose and former members of the band who have since departed, including guitarist Slash, the group's induction sets up the prospect of a dramatic reunion, if all parties opt to set aside their differences for the occasion. In a similar situation, Creedence Clearwater Revival singer, guitarist and songwriter John Fogerty refused to join with the Bay Area band's surviving members -- bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford -- when Creedence was inducted in 1993.

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Photo: Axl Rose performing with Guns N' Roses in 2006. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times.