We got in the studio to demo a few things with Keith Levene, the great guitarist from P.I.L.. That was an intense chemistry of people working together, he was far from the babysitting type figure we might have needed at the time. What a bunch of freaks we were. (He used to yell at the bewidered engineer angrily „Just mash it up! Mash it up i say! I want to move air!”) Our working relationship did not last too long, i wonder whatever became of the tapes we recorded with him. Meanwhile, Cliff Marinez was seemingly not happy with the new stuff we were writing, he thought it was heading in too conventional type of rock sound, had distanced himself from us somewhat (at least i think thats why he was distancing himself from us) and was last seen making grooves with sounds of babies crying on his sampler. (I mean last seen in chili pepper world, Cliff has continued on having a vibrant and interesting music career). Cliff was a great chili pepper. We parted ways with Cliff and Jackie 1. came back to his brethren. We hooked up with a professional type of producer guy called Michael Beinhorn.

We got into rehearsals with Beinhorn over at E.M.I. on Sunset between La Brea and Highland. We spent a lot of time int hat place, we actually rehearsed int here for Freaky Styley too. There was an engineer who worked int here called J.B. Bauerlein who was always very helpful to us and actually did some mixes of some songs which we released over the years in that little studio. J.B. died in a motorcycle crash a few years later he was a great guy. There was another guy who worked there as a security guard who looked exactly like Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies. He had come to Hollywood to be a star planning to bank in on his Apollo Creed looks. He had a gnarly ass chip on his shoulder and he and Anthony nearly came to blows one night over something. Jackie said „I’m gonna get that guy fired” I said „Ah just let his khama take care of itself” Jackie said „Yeah his kharma is I’m gonna get his ass fired”….. So we rehearsed away. I recall it as a kind of gloomy time of our career. Drug use int he band was really beginning to make a morose stand. It began to seem ugly to me and not fun, our communication was not healthy. As I recall, before we got int here with Beinhorn, we met Rick Rubin for the first time. He came by wist the Beastie Boys, they were riding high and happy as I recall and they came partying into our little room. We rocked a little bit, they took our instruments and rocked some, but the vibe was just weird and we did not connect with Rick, he told me that walking in to that studio that day was walking into one of the most depressing feeling rooms he had ever been in.

Anyways, we kept at it and came up with some pretty funky shirt. Hillel started playing that riff for Behind the Sun one day, that was dope! We slugged away in there and wrote the record. After mishaps and nearly breaking up and some good inspiring moments we headed off to record the thing. It wasn’t all bad, we did have a lot of fun too.

We recorded at Capital Studios on Vine. Jaxk peed next to David Lee Roth int he bathroom one day. At it turns out, UPLIFT is probably the rockingest record we ever made. I don’t mean the best, though to some it might be, i just mean in terms of straight up rockin and not giving fuck, making some art. Though we definitely refinded things when we made BLOOD SUGAR a few years later, this record really brings the rock funk and art in just the way we wanted it to at the time. We were crazy as shit and on a highway to hell, but we did it, we pulled off, we made a record we are proud of. Me And My Friends is still a nightly stalwart in our show and Backwoods slams deep and hard. I was so excited when i first heard the vocal on Love Trilogy. It was such an obsurce piece of music and AK really brought it together with love and intensity.

Oh shit! I just remembered a very funny episode related to this record… I nearly forgot! We heard that Malcolm Mclaren was interested in producing us, we love Bow Wow Wow and Sex Pistols so we were psyched. I really looked to this guy as someone who could make us huge and cool and famously rad. I think it might have just been me and Swan and Pete Weiss sitting there int he parking lot at E.M.I. when Malcolm excited a grandiose Rolls Royce, adorned in flowing white robes and majestically strolling up travelled by cute blonde boy, soiling the bottoms of his shoes in our parking a lot. We sat with him in a room and he started pontificating about how we would play simple Chuck Berry style rock and roll and Anthony would be the star and the rest of the band would stay in the  background playing music that was forty years old. As he was talking us boys us boys were smoking weed, i remember holding the joint for a long time just smoking artist guy. Malcolm started i non how he was gonna dress us up in his new ’skate punk’ fashion and we would be the skate punk guys and i started feelin real dizzy and freaked out and not cool artist guy anymore and i passed out cold in to noddy blinkum dreamy world. Hit the deck! Ha! Ha!! In any event, his talk about getting back to the roots of rock and roll partly inspired the song Backwoods.

Overall it was a strange time in our career but i really see it as begin a rock solid  booming and interesting record. It is the record with the original Chili Pepper lineup and nothing in the world could have stopped that love groove. We were the boys from Hollywood, the boys from Fairfax High, the boys who are spaghetti in the hot tub on Laurel Avenue. The only thing that is lame on it is those stupid triggered drum sounds that rob the drums of their dynamics. I feel very happy about the songs and it is obvious to me that we were still growing and changing at a good rate.

We toured the fuck out of that record.

Remember…….. If you catch him in your soup please don’t shoot!

He’s the skinny sweaty man in the green suit!

FLEA