And Finally Artist News

David Bowie didn’t want to work with Red Hot Chili Peppers either

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 1 February 2016

Don’t worry Coldplay, you’re not the only occasionally good but mainly tedious rock outfit to be turned down by the late David Bowie. Oh no, those Red Hot Chili Peppers were turned down too. Multiple times. They wanted Bowie to produce a record for them.

Speaking to one time Sex Pistol Steve Jones on his radio show in LA last week, Pitchfork notes that RHCP’s Anthony Kiedis revealed: “Every record we ever made, we had the band discussion: ‘Who should we get to produce this record?’ ‘I don’t know, we have to try someone new. Let’s get David Bowie!'”

“So in the beginning we would call him, and he would say no, respectfully”, Kiedis goes on. “Then, later, we would write long emails explaining everything, and why it was time for us to really get our ships on – and he always respectfully declined… For two minutes I was heartbroken, and then I would hear Chad Smith play drums, and I’d be like, ‘We’re good, we can go do something else'”.

Though if Bowie was pretty keen to not work with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, his sometime collaborator Brian Eno is even keener. “[Bowie] said no to us like, two or three times, but his mate [Brian] Eno, who we’ve also been asking our entire career to please produce a record for us, has said no eight times. All good. You gotta ask. And by the way, ‘no’ is a reasonable answer. It’s one of a couple of answers you could get, and it’s acceptable”.

I sort of wish I’d asked David Bowie to sub-edit a CMU article at some point now, so I too would have a “I was turned down by Bowie” anecdote to wheel out at times like this. I might start sending out subbing requests to every ageing pop legend, to assure future anecdotal goodness. I’ll start with Eno, the apparent king of the sensible “no thanks”.