Chili Peppers to play Lollapalooza – Dealing with loss helped Raitt tackle songwriting

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A model presents a creation by ‘Kye’ during Seoul fashion week at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul on March 23. Seoul fashion week runs from March 21 to 26.
A model presents a creation by ‘Kye’ during Seoul fashion week at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul on March 23. Seoul fashion week runs from March 21 to 26.

NEW YORK, March 24, (Agencies): Red Hot Chili Peppers will headline the Lollapalooza festival, it was announced Wednesday, as the alternative rock greats complete work on their first album in five years.

The July 28-31 festival in Chicago, which is marking its 25th anniversary, also said that Radiohead would perform, in the latest date for the acclaimed British arthouse rockers whose small arena tour sold out within minutes.

Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis last month told a radio station that the band had written “two dozen songs” and was “in the home stretch” of selecting and recording them for the new album.

Band members have said they were in the studio with longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich as well as Danger Mouse, a diverse producer with a background in hip-hop who worked on the latest albums by Adele and U2.

The album, whose release date and title have not been revealed, will be the first since the Chili Peppers’ 2011 “I’m With You,” which brought in new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer.

The Chili Peppers emerged in 1980s Los Angeles as they brought funk elements into punk rock.

Interest

Each of the band’s albums has entered the top five on the US chart since “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” which came out in 1991 during a surge of interest for music outside the pop mainstream.

Lollapalooza was launched that year by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, who envisioned a traveling festival to celebrate music and alternative culture.

The festival declined as fans increasingly found it too commercialized, but was reborn in 2005 as an annual event in Chicago’s Grant Park.

Lollapalooza has since expanded internationally, with editions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Germany, with a Colombian version to debut in October.

For the 25th anniversary, Lollapalooza is expanding to four days in Chicago, one day longer than usual.

Other performers include LCD Soundsystem, the influential New York electronic act that is reuniting for April’s Coachella festival in California, as well as rappers J. Cole and Future.

After back-to-back tours and albums, Bonnie Raitt said finally finding time to deal with the deaths of her father, mother and brother helped her break writer’s block and craft songs for her latest album and tour.

“I don’t write often and easily …This particular time after a period of about 10 years when my family — my parents and my older brother — were all ill and passed away in a short period of time… I was pretty fried, and I took 2010 as a complete break from thinking about what I wanted to do next,” she said. “(I did) some grief work with a support person and I just really felt all the things that had been pushed aside by all that loss and trauma. And I came out of it really grateful.”

“Dig In Deep,” released last month, features a number of personal songs Raitt co-wrote as well as her signature guitar. She also said she got a boost from her last album, 2012’s “Slipstream,” which won the Grammy for best Americana album.

“I was rejuvenated by ‘Slipstream’ … and I co-wrote a song on that one with my guitarist …The words didn’t go, so it forced me to write some songs that went with what my experience was, and that kind of got the wheels greased,” she said. “I kind of wrote on assignment. …After all that loss, to finally have the time and freedom and not have to be worrying about family members, I had more opportunity to write.”

Upbeat

On the new album, 66-year-old Raitt co-wrote five of the 12 tracks, including upbeat album opener “Unintended Consequence of Love” and the political “The Comin’ Round Is Going Through.” The album also includes her versions of INXS’ “Need You Tonight” and Los Lobos’ “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes.”

She said the second verse of the piano ballad “The Ones We Couldn’t Be,” which she co-wrote, is “really about family members.”

“I know they were sorry they couldn’t be what I needed and I was sorry I couldn’t live up to the expectations,” she said. “And at the time when the relationship’s not working or you’re under stress, you tend to put blame not necessarily where it’s really accurate — it’s all about them, if only they acted different — so the reckoning that happens years later is your realize you both just did the best you could.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, whose hits include “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” “Something to Talk About” and “Love Sneakin’ Up on You,” said she’s thrilled to be touring with the new songs. The “Bonnie Live in 2016” tour kicked off last week and will visit New York City, Oakland, Austin and Nashville, Tennessee. She will also play international dates in the summer.

Raitt also said there was some anxiety when she began writing for her new album.

“It made me nervous knowing I was going to be writing more of the songs and I was saying, ‘Oh my God, I know so many people out there, they’re gonna say, ‘This one unfortunately is not as good,’” she said. “I don’t like to be compared (to myself), I just wish everybody would say, ‘She’s doing the best she can’ — especially because it was more risk with my own tunes. But so far everyone’s relating to them so I’m really smiling a lot these days.”

Raitt also wants more people outside of her fan base to gravitate to the new music: “I hope people can relate to it, no matter what age they are.”

Though it’s hard to tell, Raitt said she started to play guitar and write songs as a “hobby.” She recalls getting her first guitar for Christmas and playing some much her fingers bled.

“I just played till I had calluses and my fingers bleed and I just learned every Joan Baez song I could learn, and I became the camp fire counselor that sang the songs at my camp,” she said. “And I just thought music can change the world, and I still feel that way.”

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