Red Hot Chili Peppers Drummer Chad Smith Contemplates Touring Future + Eventual Retirement
Red Hot Chili Peppers have existed as a band for 34 years. That's a long time for anybody to be doing one thing, and drummer Chad Smith, who has been with RHCP for 29 years, may be feeling that duration if you check out his recent comments. The drummer revealed in an interview to SiriusXM's Eddie Trunk on his podcast that the discussion of retirement has been broached.
Smith recounted a story of riding with the band. “We were riding in a van after a gig and Flea was like, ‘How much longer do you think we should… How do you think we should end this?',” Smith said. “I was, like, ‘I don’t know!’ I want to make records, I still love making records, but the touring part… I don’t know if we can continue.”
He later added, “I mean, three of us are 54 years old — Anthony [Kiedis], me and Flea. Josh [Klinghoffer] is 38 or 39, so he’s a young man. But I don’t know if we can continue to do the long tours — the year, year and a half we normally do. That’s a good question. We all have families and different things, your priorities shift a little bit. You kinda see that what’s gonna work for you maybe doesn’t necessarily work for other bands. But again, we’re just so grateful that people want to come and see us play, and we love to perform. I don’t know in the future how that’s gonna look.”
Back in December, Smith joined the young rockers of Babymetal onstage to play some covers of Judas Priest's classics. He showed up in face paint, blending in with the rest of the band's aesthetic, taking his place behind the kit for a ripping rendition of "Painkiller."
Time will tell what the Peppers' future will be, but you can't blame Smith for wanting to take it down a notch.
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