The Strokes positioned in front of a brick wall

The Strokes in 2005

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For the Record: How The Strokes Revived Rock For A New Millennium With 'Is This It'

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Released 20 years ago, the Strokes' 'Is This It' became an instant classic by oozing effortless cool and providing a much-needed jumpstart to the rock world
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Oct 11, 2021 - 3:48 pm

If rock bands earned royalties every time someone declared "rock is dead," there would be no need to gripe about Spotify's payment structure. The claim is made. A lot.

At the dawn of the 21st century, popular music experienced yet another predictable "rock is dead" moment, the latest in a long line of allegations made by artists and the media almost since the dawn of rock and roll. That said, it was the last gasp of post-grunge, the era of Nickelback, Creed, and Three Doors Down battling nu-metal newcomers Linkin Park, P.O.D., and Crazy Town for airtime on radio and MTV. Not to mention, hip-hop was already well on its way to becoming the sound of American youth on the strength of titans such as OutKast and Jay-Z, while Beyoncé (not yet Mrs. Carter) was scoring major hits with Destiny's Child. To some, it seemed that "real" rock was finally circling the drain. 

How The Strokes Revived Rock On 'Is This It'

But then, in the summer of 2001, a quintet of pedigreed New York City college kids dressed in faded denim jackets, T-shirts, and Chucks, arrived like clockwork and reminded us once again why rock and roll mattered. The Strokes worshipped all the right hipster-rock bands—the Velvet Underground, Television, the Stooges—and even cribbed a riff or two from the classics (Tom Petty admitted he didn't mind them ripping off "American Girl" for "Last Nite"). They partied with Slash and Guided By Voices. They couldn't sell out because they went straight from Manhattan's Mercury Lounge to a major-label bidding war.

And just like Nirvana and the Sub Pop bands, the buzz around the Strokes mostly started overseas. The band landed the cover of UK magazine NME solely on the strength of a three-song EP, The Modern Age [Rough Trade], months before the release of their debut album, Is This It [RCA], which was released in the U.S. 20 years ago.

The first glimpse most people outside of New York and the UK saw of the Strokes was the video for "Last Nite." Shot on a faux-'70s television sound stage lit with day-bright bulbs, the band members look like they just woke up and picked up right where the party left off. Singer Julian Casablancas' thousand-yard stare and deadpan Stephen Malkmus-meets-Lou Reed delivery sound like a hangover in the best way, while the band bounces along on a jittery nicotine rush.

The Strokes' brand of rock wasn't much like the popular rock music of the era. Their guitars weren't tuned down to Z-flat, and they didn't seem angry about anything. They didn't need massive amplifiers or a DJ. Instead, they brought the lo-fi aesthetics of '90s indie rock to the mainstream. Paired with producer Gordon Raphael after early sessions with Gil Norton [Pixies, Foo Fighters] turned out too sterile, the crew laid down tracks in a DIY studio in New York. Casablancas sang through a small, overdriven Peavey practice amp to give his vocals a gritty texture.

Is This It was first released on July 30, 2001, in Australia, followed by Japan on August 22, and the UK on August 27, with cover artwork of a leather-sheathed hand resting on a woman's posterior that proved too controversial for US release. While the cover was being retooled for America, the 9/11 terrorist attacks compelled the band to remove the song "New York City Cops," as lyrics like "New York City cops … they ain't too smart" became controversial as the country rallied around its police, fire, and other emergency first responders. For the official US release, "When It Started" appeared in its place, and the album cover was replaced with a photograph of the tracks left by subatomic particles in a bubble chamber, striking neon-blue curlicues streaking across a bright-orange palette.

After lead single "Hard to Explain" started capturing alternative airplay attention in the States, "Last Nite" became the first hit of the great garage rock revival of the '00s, reaching top-five on alternative rock radio and earning platinum certification from the RIAA. And while follow-up single "Someday" rose up the charts and earned its own platinum plaque, the White Stripes, the Libertines, the Hives, and others soon emerged to share the spotlight—not to mention Kings of Leon, whose first two albums closely followed the Strokes' lo-fi blueprint.

Although Is This It is often considered the band's masterpiece, it peaked at No. 33 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart, while their five other albums have all since reached the top 10. Is This It was certified Gold in February 2002 and platinum in February 2011. Their follow-up, Room on Fire [2003], also went platinum, and their third set, First Impressions of Earth [2006], went Gold.

So, did Is This It live up to the hype? Well, the rock and roll revival it spawned was bigger than any rock movement to hit the mainstream in the intervening two decades. And while it may not fit everyone's idea of rock music, it's one of the rawest records to become a bona fide hit. Is This It not only rocks, it rawks.

Is This It At 20: How The Strokes Redefined Rock

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AC/DC posing with instruments in hand

AC/DC

Photo: Patrick Ford/Redferns

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For The Record: How AC/DC's 'Power Up' Continues Their Electrifying Legacy

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As one of rock's most iconic and influential bands nears their 50th anniversary in 2023, their 18th album proves that age is nothing but a number
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Jan 21, 2022 - 1:46 pm

The highest compliment a fan could pay AC/DC's 2020 album Power Up — the band's first without founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, the chief architect of their iconic riffs and their de facto leader — is that it sounds exactly like AC/DC. Power Up not only checks all the boxes, it also ranks among their finest work.

For nearly 50 years, AC/DC has sounded like no one except themselves. Sure, some of the members changed over the years, but the sound and look remained the same. You don't join AC/DC to bring your own flair to the mix; you assimilate into the hard-rocking style generations of bands have attempted to co-opt as their own.

Fortunately, Power Up holds its own among the highest peaks of their 18-album catalog. The 1-2-3 punch of openers "Realize," "Rejection" and "Shot In The Dark" are loaded with bone-dry, primal guitar riffs and Angus Young's lyrical guitar solos, with driving, four-on-the-floor drum beats hurling the songs forward. Leading the charge is Brian Johnson's throat-shredding screech, one of the most recognizable voices in rock.

Consistency has been AC/DC's strength through key member changes throughout the band's history. When the band lost beloved singer and showman Bon Scott in February 1980 amid their breakthrough success with Highway to Hell, it seemed unlikely they could recover.

Instead, the opposite happened: Back in Black, released just four months after Scott's death, made them the biggest band in the world. On the strength of classic songs like "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Hells Bells" and the title track — which boasts one of the most memorable guitar riffs in rock history — the album became the fourth best-selling album of all time in the U.S., eventually moving in excess of 25 million copies.

How AC/DC's 'Power Up' Continues Their Legacy

But when Malcolm Young hung up his battered Gretsch White Falcon guitar to treat his dementia in 2014, question marks hovered around the band again. Then in April 2016, with just 23 shows left on the Rock Or Bust World Tour, Johnson bowed out in an effort to save his hearing after suffering a punctured eardrum. Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose closed out the tour as his substitute, but when the dust settled, bassist Cliff Williams decided to retire. AC/DC was essentially done.

Malcolm's passing in 2017 brought the remaining Back in Black-era lineup — Angus, Johnson, Williams and drummer Phil Rudd — back to Australia, where they celebrated Malcolm's life and reconnected with each other. Rudd, who was healthy again after sitting out the Rock Or Bust Tour to sort personal and legal issues, was ready to rejoin the band. Meanwhile, Johnson was receiving experimental treatments to resolve his severe hearing loss, resulting in an in-ear device that allowed him to sing again. Williams was an easy sell at that point, and AC/DC, quietly, began plotting a comeback.

First, Angus had to reconcile the loss of his brother and songwriting partner. Their writing sessions for Rock or Bust had been especially fruitful, though, and Angus found himself sorting through riffs and song ideas that eclipsed what ended up on their 2014 release. The four original members (as well as Angus' and Malcolm's nephew, Stevie Young, who officially joined the band in 2014 after Malcom's departure) convened in Vancouver in August 2018. With their Black Ice and Rock or Bust producer Brendan O'Brien at the helm, the group began tracking Power Up.

"This record is pretty much a dedication to Malcolm, my brother," Angus told Rolling Stone in October 2020. "It's a tribute for him like Back in Black was a tribute to Bon Scott."

Power Up is loaded with anthemic choruses, fist-pumping sing-alongs and guitar riffs that pull from their bag of tricks, without sounding like retreads of their classic work. Song titles like "Money Shot" are delivered with a knowing wink, and Angus's fiery fretwork is inspired with swagger and urgency.

As they've done time and time again, AC/DC proved that consistency beats evolution in rock, as long as the well of ideas doesn't dry up. They rallied back strong as ever — because that's what they've always done.

Audiences showed up, too: Power Up debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 all-genre albums chart upon its November 2020 release, as well as the Top Rock Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums charts, and reached the top spot in 20 other countries. Lead single "Shot In The Dark" notched their first No. 1 rock hit in 20 years (since the memorable "Stiff Upper Lip" topped the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart in 2000), and marked their longest reign on the chart with five consecutive weeks on top; "Realize" also cracked the Top 10 of the same tally, peaking at No. 8.

AC/DC's latest effort also earned three nominations at the 2022 GRAMMY Awards: Best Rock Album for Power Up as well as Best Rock Performance and Best Music Video for "Shot In The Dark." They're the group's first nominations since 2010, when AC/DC won Best Hard Rock Performance for the Black Ice track "War Machine," their first and sole win; they now have a total of 10 career nominations including this year's nods.

Nearly five decades in, AC/DC's secret weapon is how they make it look so easy to sell 75 million albums in the U.S. with just a handful of guitar chords. Power Up is electrifying proof that their in-your-face sound endures — and that, through the trials and triumphs, they have too.

2021 In Review: 8 Trends That Defined Rock

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Led Zeppelin posing on a car

Led Zeppelin

Photo: Dick Barnatt

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For The Record: How Led Zeppelin Finally Conquered The World With 'Led Zeppelin IV'

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Three records in, Led Zeppelin had already solidified their place in rock history. But 50 years later, the English rock band's best-selling, bombastic, untitled fourth album, commonly known as 'Led Zeppelin IV,' still sounds like a revelation
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Nov 9, 2021 - 6:46 pm

It's the one with "Stairway."

That's all millions of fans have needed to know when picking up Led Zeppelin's best-selling fourth album, which was released 50 years ago this month. That's true in part because the record sleeve itself didn't give them much else to go on. The packaging was intentionally mysterious, without any words or insignias on the cover, only a peeling wall with a framed picture depicting a graying man hauling sticks on his back.

Colloquially known as Led Zeppelin IV, IV, or sometimes Runes in reference to the four runic symbols chosen by band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham to represent themselves, the officially untitled affair is a massive wallop of sound, the 1971 rock classic standing as a quintessential expression of the band's lyrical mysticism, folk leanings and bruising hard rock.

How Led Zeppelin Conquered The World With 'IV'

For the first three years of Led Zeppelin's existence, stretching from their formation in the summer of 1968 to the release of IV, the band was in constant motion, releasing three albums in a span of just 22 months. Led by former session and Yardbirds guitarist Page, fronted by a then-unknown Plant, and anchored by bassist Jones and drum-basher Bonham, the band built its fanbase by bringing its bombastic live show to concert halls across the U.K., Europe and North America.

Breaking in America was central to the band's strategy. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean seven times to tour the U.S. before releasing IV, building from opening for groups like Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly in 1968 to headlining a two-night stand at the 20,000-capacity Madison Square Garden in New York City in under two years. Not long after that September 1971 run, the quartet returned to Headley Grange, where they had recorded part of III, armed with a batch of new songs that would change their lives.

By the time the band parked the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio outside the eighteenth-century retreat in rural southwestern England, its four members were locked in like a machine. The band hired engineer Andy Johns, who had just worked in the studio while tracking the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, and as a result, the record's production values leapfrogged their previous albums, which were mostly recorded in various towns while on tour. The live-in rehearsal and recording situation at Headley Grange yielded more than enough music for their upcoming album, leaving them with extra songs that appeared on 1975's Physical Graffiti. The eight songs that made the cut, though, were stone-cold classics.

"Black Dog" opens the album with an explosive pentatonic blues-based riff in the tradition of Page's classic "Heartbreaker" [a highlight from Led Zeppelin II] and a shrieking vocal performance from Plant. Bonham deepens the groove with propulsive drumming that alternates between 4/4 and 7/8 time, providing the backbone to the call-and-response interplay between vocals and guitar. "Rock and Roll" follows, a straight-laced, up-tempo boogie inspired by Little Richard.

Zeppelin returns to the Celtic folk it explored on III for the mandolin-based "The Battle of Evermore," which finds Plant exchanging vocal lines with Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention [famously covered by Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson on the Singles motion picture soundtrack in 1992, billed as The Lovemongers]. Later, contemplative, fingerpicked acoustic-folk ballad "Going to California" mellows the vibe after "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Four Sticks," an off-time experiment played by Bonham holding two drum sticks in each hand.

Read More: Peter Frampton On Whether He'll Perform Live Again, Hanging With George Harrison & David Bowie And New Album Frampton Forgets the Words

The album's most famous experiment came on the hypnotic "When the Levee Breaks," originally composed by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, with Johns capturing the sound of Bonham playing drums at Headley Grange with microphones hanging from a nearby stairwell. Johns slowed down the tape when he recorded the rest of the band, giving the drums an apocalyptic scale.

And then there's "Stairway to Heaven," the eight-minute epic that pulled all the band's strengths together into one song. Page wrote the song's delicate, acoustic opening section while staying with Plant at a remote cottage in Wales, then assembled the middle and climactic third section at Headley Grange, with Plant writing vocals on the spot.

"Stairway to Heaven" has become a cultural touchstone thanks to its enormous popularity on FM radio in the 1970s and '80s. The song's descending opening guitar figure became so well known that it made a cameo as "the forbidden riff" in 1992's Wayne's World, which winked at the song's enduring popularity. In 2014, that same riff was the subject of a lawsuit claiming the band lifted it from the song "Taurus" by the L.A.-based Spirit. A jury cleared Zeppelin, and the lawsuit finally ended in March 2020 when an appeals court upheld the verdict.

With legal questions in the rearview, the song's legacy is undeniable. "Stairway to Heaven" has notched more than half a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it ranked No. 61 on Rolling Stone's 2021 redux of its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Page's fiery leads in the third section topped Guitar World's list of the 50 Greatest Guitar Solos in 2009.

The seven other songs on IV have earned similar legacies through another path: sampling. Bonham's beats became foundational to hip-hop, and nearly every track on IV has been sampled—including dozens of instances for "Black Dog" and "Stairway to Heaven." But the cavernous drum intro to "When the Levee Breaks" has been sampled more than 200 times, most notably in "Rhymin' & Stealin'" by Beastie Boys, "Kim" by Enimem, "Army of Me" by Björk, and "Don't Hurt Yourself" by Beyoncé featuring Jack White.

The popularity of Led Zeppelin's fourth album endures. At present, it is the fifth best-selling album of all time in the U.S. for moving 23 million copies. Worldwide, the album has sold 37 million copies and ranks the twelfth best-seller of all time. In 1999, the Recording Academy inducted it to the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.

The monumental success of Zeppelin's fourth album turned the band into a stadium act, and the momentum carried them through 1973's House of the Holy and 1975's double-album, Physical Graffiti. The band's pace slowed during the latter part of the decade, due to a car accident that left Plant in need of rehabilitation, as well as spiraling substance abuse with Page and Bonham that ultimately led to the drummer's death in 1980.

While their post-IV musical output only strengthened the band's legacy as one of rock's most potent forces, after five decades those eight songs still sound every bit as adventurous and groundbreaking.

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Artwork for For The Record episode on The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers'

The Rolling Stones in 1972

 

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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For The Record: Inside The Wild Ride Behind The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

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'Sticky Fingers,' the Rolling Stones' chart-topping 1971 album, is an essential and dangerous rock and roll project that marked a rebirth for the iconic band
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
May 16, 2021 - 3:58 pm

The succession of high-profile drug busts and tragedies that shadowed the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s came to a head with the 1971 release of the band's 11th U.S. album, Sticky Fingers.

Recorded amid the disastrous Altamont concert aftermath and between famously debauched concert tours of the U.S. and Europe, Sticky Fingers is every bit as raw as the band's lives were at the time. The smoky barroom swagger of "Sway," the twitchy riffs and raspy vocals of "Bitch," and the grooving yet grimy "Brown Sugar" reflect just how wild the rock and roll ride had become for the band.

A drug bust in 1967 that ensnared Mick Jagger and Keith Richards was a prelude to the years that followed. Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool two years later, less than a month after the Stones fired him for excessive drug use, which had led to dwindling involvement with the group; he barely showed up to sessions for Let It Bleed, the band's 10th U.S. album, which was released in the months following his death.

Eager for a fresh start and desperate for cash, the Stones played a now-legendary concert at Hyde Park in London and hit the U.S. for their first tour in two years during the latter half of 1969. Chaos followed the band, culminating in a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in the hills between Livermore and Tracy, California. Billed as a sort of West Coast Woodstock, with a lineup featuring Jefferson Airplane, Santana and the Grateful Dead, the concert instead punctuated the end of the hippie peace-and-love era.

Clashes between members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, which was hired as concert security at the event, and audience members created an atmosphere so charged, the Grateful Dead chose not to perform, even though they had helped organize the event. One biker assaulted Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin while others took aim at concertgoers like Meredith Hunter, who was stabbed to death in front of the stage during the Stones' performance.

The tragedy followed the triumph of the first recording sessions for Sticky Fingers, which had begun four days earlier at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Florence, Alabama.

Inside The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

Opened earlier that year by a group of session musicians known as the Swampers, who had backed Aretha Franklin on "Respect," the studio was hungry for its first hit. With the Rolling Stones, they got two: "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses," the album's two singles, were tracked at Muscle Shoals, alongside a faithful cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move," between December 2-4.

"Brown Sugar" has the distinction of being one of the most controversial songs to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked in May 1971. Musically, the song is a Stones master class that builds on a signature Richards guitar riff. By the time Bobby Keys blows his climactic saxophone solo, the guitars are playing off each other, percussion and piano are clanging away underneath, and Jagger is howling his head off.

The song's lyrics, however, are another matter. Although Marsha Hunt, a British actress of African descent, with whom Jagger fathered a child in 1970, is credited as the muse behind "Brown Sugar," the song is rife with allusions and outright explicit references to slavery, sex and drugs that were indefensible even half a century ago. In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger called the lyrics "a mishmash" that combines "all the nasty subjects in one go." He appears to have cooled on his lyrical concept over the years, though; in the same interview, he said he "never would write that song now."

At the other end of the spectrum, the country-tinged "Wild Horses" and the album-closing ballad "Moonlight Mile" show a more introspective Jagger, wistful and longing on the former and road-weary on the latter. Acoustic guitars provide the foundation for both songs, as well as "Dead Flowers" and "Sister Morphine," while tremulous guitars and ascending horns accent the otherwise sparse, pleading soul of "I Got the Blues."

Read: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

Sticky Fingers also marked several key personnel changes in the Rolling Stones universe. The ouster and subsequent death of Brian Jones led them to hire guitarist Mick Taylor, of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who refueled the band's energy.

Taylor stepped into the role fully on Sticky Fingers, providing nuances like the chiming harmonics on "Wild Horses" and setting the jam-band template with his extended guitar solo on the seven-minute "Can You Hear Me Knocking" over a single-chord vamp. He played all the guitars on "Moonlight Mile" after an increasingly unreliable Richards failed to show up to sessions at Stargroves, Jagger's English countryside home, and often nodded off while high on heroin when he did. Taylor would have to step up more in the coming years as his bandmate's habit grew.

The end of the group's relationship with record label executive Allen Klein and his ABKCO label also gave lift to the band and began the modern era of the Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers was the first album released on Rolling Stones Records, which debuted the iconic lips-and-tongue logo, designed by John Pasche.

Despite landing right in the middle of what many fans consider their golden era—the four-album run from 1968-1972 that also included Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St.—Sticky Fingers marked a rebirth for the Rolling Stones; the album's legacy and impact would continue to evolve in the decades to come.

Sticky Fingers reentered the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 in 2015 following a massive reissue campaign. The Deluxe reissue includes alternate takes, such as "Brown Sugar" recorded with Eric Clapton on guitar and an extended version of "Bitch," alongside live tracks recorded in 1971. The Super Deluxe reissue adds a bonus 13-song live recording from a gig at the University of Leeds that same year.

And while the band members' personal habits veered further off the rails in the Exile on Main St. period and throughout the '70s, "the Rolling Stones" as a corporation grew into a recording, touring, promotion, and merchandising machine. By the end of the decade, the Rolling Stones were a stadium act—and they haven't turned back since.

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Artwork for For The Record episode on Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium'

Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007

 

Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

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For The Record: Inside Red Hot Chili Peppers' Masterpiece 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

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Released in 2006, 'Stadium Arcadium,' Red Hot Chili Peppers' four-time GRAMMY-winning masterpiece, is an ambitious project from one of the most daring rock bands of their generation.
Jordan Blum
GRAMMYs
May 9, 2021 - 10:07 am

By the mid-2000s, Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) were deservedly enjoying the most commercially and creatively successful period of their 20-year career. After all, they'd triumphed over their tumultuous and tragic early years—which, however, musically venerated and influential, included multiple lineup changes and bouts with drug abuse—to achieve massive artistic and mainstream prosperity via Californication (1999) and By the Way (2002).

Admittedly, not all fans were pleased with the group substituting some of their beloved, raucous playing and risqué subject matter with more accessible approaches; yet, it's hard to deny that both albums were significant for their high quality and myriad industry accolades as well as for how they embodied the band's mostly shared sense of healing and growth. (This was particularly true for guitarist/backing vocalist John Frusciante, who'd conquered his heroin addiction and rejoined the group with newfound confidence and ingenuity in 1998).

Feeling immensely prolific and capable, the Chili Peppers, following the two-year tour for By the Way, reteamed with Rick Rubin, who produced their previous four albums, in September 2004 to embark on their most ambitious and diverse project thus far: Stadium Arcadium.

Recorded at The Mansion in Los Angeles, where the group also laid down Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991, Stadium Arcadium, a 28-song double album, incorporated virtually every style the quartet had ever done. Naturally, that flexibility and inventiveness led to some of the most extensive songwriting and captivating arrangements they'd ever made. As a result, Stadium Arcadium is best viewed as an incredibly rewarding and varied tribute to the group's history.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

Of course, double albums had been a popular music tradition for decades: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (1966), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), 2Pac's All Eyez On Me (1996)—the list goes on. It was almost inevitable that the Chili Peppers would issue one, too. (In fact, they'd intended to release Stadium Arcadium as a trilogy, dropping six months apart, before deciding to put out everything at once, the band told NME in 2006.)

In his July 2006 interview with Total Guitar, Frusciante revealed they had no reservations about attempting such a feat, either: "We don't just make music … for our own pleasure; we make music for our audience. We write 28 songs that we think are top-notch, that's what we want to give to the public … We're putting out what we believe is worthy." To his credit, every track on Stadium Arcadium earns its place and contributes to the greater whole.

It's also worth noting that making Stadium Arcadium was more congenial and collaborative than By the Way, due mostly to the repaired relationship between Frusciante and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Due to his melodic prowess and characteristically adaptable methods, Frusciante was often seen as the heart of the Chili Pepper's sound around this time. That was especially evident on By the Way, on which he desired to move further away from the edginess of the band's past and toward the harmonious arrangements of groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and his own fruitful solo discography. Consequently, Flea, who wanted to emphasize their prior funk and punk elements, felt somewhat uninvolved and unappreciated to the point that he contemplated quitting after the band finished their By the Way World Tour; the two worked out their differences by the time Stadium Arcadium got underway.

Speaking to Kerrang! in May 2006, Frusciante admitted, "It's more of a band now. I don't force my ideas on people as much as I did." Flea concurs, clarifying that creating Stadium Arcadium was a healthily democratic and communal process. In a 2007 chat with MTV News, vocalist Anthony Kiedis noted, "There was very little tension, very little anxiety, [and] very little weirdness going on … everyone felt more comfortable than ever bringing in their ideas."

Read: Nirvana's Era-Defining 'Nevermind': For The Record

Those creative peaks and compromises undoubtedly make Stadium Arcadium such an all-encompassing victory. In fact, it became the Chili Pepper's first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and earned them four GRAMMY Awards at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007: Best Rock Album, Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, and Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, the latter two for album opener "Dani California." (Producer Rick Rubin would also win the GRAMMY for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical that night.)

Fifteen years later, Stadium Arcadium endures as one of the quartet's most representative and striving projects. Divided into two parts—the engaging "Jupiter" and the comparatively esoteric "Mars"—it logically continues the contemporary rock templates and earworm songwriting of By the Way and Californication. Specifically, the ironically sunny elegy "Dani California," which centers on the same character from the title tracks off the aforementioned predecessors, is undeniably catchy and tightly composed, while "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Stadium Arcadium" are lovingly poppy and symphonic. Later, the acoustic guitar strums and radiant harmonies of "Slow Cheetah," "Desecration Smile" and "Hey" border on folk rock, whereas "So Much I" is peak alternative rock smoothness.

Of course, the real brilliance of Stadium Arcadium is how it peppers (no pun intended) more modern flavors with comprehensive doses of wide-ranging nostalgia. In particular, tracks like "She's Only 18," "Animal Bar" and "Turn It Again" harken back to the heavier funk and metal motifs found on earlier RHCP albums such as Mother's Milk (1989) and One Hot Minute (1995). Similarly, songs like "Charlie," "Hump de Bump," "Warlocks" and "Readymade" recall the frisky funkiness of Freaky Styley (1985) and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) via playful horns, resourceful percussion and Flea's trademark slap bass vigorousness. RHCP even recapture a bit of their early rap rock sound, a genre they helped define on albums like Blood Sugar Sex Magik, on "So Much I" and "Storm in a Teacup," among other tunes.

Although Kiedis, Flea, and drummer Chad Smith excel throughout the album's two-hour runtime, it's perhaps Frusciante who shows the most range and advancement throughout Stadium Arcadium. From start to finish, he implements some truly exploratory vocal and guitar techniques, retaining his recent minimalism while tapping into a newfound appreciation for double-tracked recording and the flashiness of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and the Mars Volta's Omar Rodríguez-López, the latter of whom he'd collaborate with throughout the decade. "We Believe" finds Frusciante employing angelic backing harmonies, quirky psychedelic licks and echoey progressive rock weirdness. His supplemental singing is also sublime on "Torture Me," "Stadium Arcadium" and "She Looks to Me." Meanwhile, he flexes his improvisational soloing skills on "Strip My Mind," "Wet Sand," "Hey" and closer "Death of a Martian" to conjure the emotional heft and fuzzy theatrics of Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have long been one of the most daring and diverse bands of their generation; each album and phase has its unique touch and deserves its own audience. Even so, Stadium Arcadium, an all-encompassing magnum opus, offers just about everything one could possibly want from a Chili Peppers record—and then some. It sees the quartet expanding upon their stylistic past while commemorating their newly restored bond; all the while, Stadium Arcadium amplifies the idiosyncratic essentialness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as both a collective force and individually distinctive musicians.

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