Josh Klinghoffer: Why Time With RHCP Was ‘Enormously Stifling Creatively’

Josh Klinghoffer served as the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a ten-year period between the second and third tenures of John Frusciante with the band. It was a decade that had its ups and downs for Klinghoffer.

The guitarist tells Guitar World in a new interview that his time with the band was "a blessing and a beautiful experience." However, he also mentioned, "Obviously, it’s sad when something is taken from you. I did a perfect 10 years with them, but for as much as I love those guys and loved playing with them, it was also enormously stifling creatively. They’re an established band with an established sound, and I learned over time how little deviating from that was possible."

Klinghoffer added, "When I first joined, I wouldn’t use certain chords when I was writing if they sounded like something John would play. Or if it sounded like a choice they would have made on their last album, I purposely went the other way."

The guitarist also faced issues bringing new ideas to his Chili Pepper bandmates.

"I thought I was doing a good job of writing music with them, but it wound up not kind of becoming part of my story, or if it is part of my story with them, it’s a small part," Klinghoffer said. "As much as I thought they were up for experimentation, they generally stayed in their own lane."

For more than three decades, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have twisted rock, funk, punk and soul into new, surprising, usually fun and sometimes sad jams.

Singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea have kept the band together and have stayed relevant far longer than most of their peers or their idols. We took a deep dive into the hits and some album tracks to come up with this list of their 42 greatest songs.

We included every era, not to be fair, but because every lineup had at least a few classics. The early lineup of Anthony, Flea, guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons is some people's favorite. Anthony, Flea, drummer Chad Smith and guitarist John Frusicante created their most successful albums and songs. But credit is also due to former guitarists Jack Sherman, Dave Navarro and Josh Klinghoffer, and ex-drummer Cliff Martinez.

When Johm Frusciante rejoined the band, they showed that the most successful lineup still had something to say (and a lot of it: they released two double albums in a year). Take a look through our countdown of their 42 best songs (and yes, the list surely could have been much longer).