Red Hot Chili Peppers Top Album Sales Chart For Second Time This Year
Red Hot Chili Peppers have scored their second No. 1 album on the US Billboard Top Album Sales chart in 2022 with Return Of The Dream Canteen. With 63,000 equivalent album units earned, the LP also landed at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 behind Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me and Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti.
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Back in April, Chili Peppers reunited with longtime guitarist John Frusciante (and producer Rick Rubin) for Unlimited Love. The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 and became the band’s first No. 1 album since 2006’s Stadium Arcadium, which had been Frusciante’s previous LP with the Chili Peppers. Unlimited Love also became the best-selling rock album since Paul McCartney’s McCartney III in January 2021 with 97,500 equivalent album units earned.
System of a Down was the last rock group to reach No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart twice in one year. Back in 2005, they topped the chart with both Mezmerize and Hypnotize.
Also this week, Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis recalled the moment in 1985 when producer Rick Rubin attended a rehearsal and became convinced “somebody was going to get murdered” in the room. In a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Kiedis said his band was in a dark place at the time, and the negative energy was on display when Rubin brought his proteges Beastie Boys to the jam.
“I was basically a junkie, but still showing up to work from time to time, which was the basement of the EMI studios on Sunset Boulevard,” the singer explained. “They gave us a little basement to rehearse in. They had signed us, but we were going nowhere very slowly – couldn’t get out of our own way. But we were still making a buzz; there was still something exciting about us that caught people’s attention, and it caught Rick Rubin’s attention.”
Kiedis went on, “Rick brought the Beastie Boys to our dingy little rehearsal spot, and he sat there, and we rehearsed while they watched. They’re on these little dirty couches, watching us, and we went through our songs. And Rick stood up and said, ‘We’re gonna go now.’ I was like, ‘OK, do we talk again? What’s going on?’
“He was like, ‘I thought somebody was gonna get murdered in that rehearsal space. I thought somebody was gonna die. I had to leave.’ That’s how dark we had become. That’s how dark I had become, he was afraid someone was gonna die and it was time to leave. That’s what he said. He’s like, ‘You guys were terrifying, you were scary and it felt like somebody was gonna die. We had to go.'”