Chad Smith talks about RHCP’s induction into the Hall of Fame

Chad Smith recently spoke to Music Journalist, Gary Graff about the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio on April 14th, 2012.
Published March 29th, 2012.

Chad Smith talks about RHCP’s induction into the Hall of Fame in 2012

“It’s a humbling thing, man,” Chad Smith says, speaking by telephone from his New York apartment. “I’m really very humbled. I played all those clubs in (his native) Detroit for eight years, you know? Never in my wildest dreams … If you had come up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to move to California and join the Chili Peppers and sell millions of records and travel all over the world and then 25 years later you’re going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,’ I’d have said, ‘You are (absolutely) high!’

“But here we are,” he says. “So much has happened, it’s beyond me. I can’t really comprehend it too much.”

The Chili Peppers’ adventure began during the early 1980s.
The group got plenty of press attention, Smith recalls, but only as “kind of an underground, college band. They weren’t the Big Rock Band.”

The band’s big breakthrough almost never happened. The 26-year-old Slovak died from a heroin overdose in 1988. A grieving Irons quit the band, but Kiedis and Flea decided to soldier on, recruiting Smith and guitarist John Frusciante, then only 18, to replace Irons and Slovak.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, cool, they have a record deal. Great! I’d love to be in a band that has a record deal,”” Smith recalls. “We started playing, and right away we just hit it off musically. I was like, ‘Man, this is a blast! These guys are great!’ … We were just doing what we do. We just jammed, which is what we still do today. It’s very similar.”

The changes paid off big time. Mother’s Milk’ (1989), the new lineup’s first album, went platinum and sold more than 2.6 million copies worldwide. The success has not been without drama, however, due to health issues, substance-abuse problems and, most notably, Frusciante’s having left on two separate occasions, most recently in 2009.

The Hall of Fame announcement came while the Chili Peppers were hard at work on “I’m with You,” which made for an odd juxtaposition between the group’s past and its very active present.

The 32-year-old Klinghoffer will be Hall’s youngest-ever inductee, which pleases the Chili Peppers.