December 15, 2019. A small story appeared on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’s Instagram account. A few words in white with a black background. The form can’t be more basic. But the message itself is huge… Josh is not the guitarist of the band anymore and John Frusciante is fuckin’ back! Nobody saw it coming but it’s true. John is back, a new album is coming and they’ll tour again together. Some shows in Summer 2020 ? Maybe. But then the Covid hit us and you know what happened next. Until June 2022. Finally!
After a few small shows in the US and one festival performance – to replace Foo Fighters cancelled due to Taylor Hawkins passed away -, they started their proper world tour in Europe with 2 shows in Spain. Seville on the 4th and Barcelona on the 7th. We’ve been to the second one and you can read our live-report of the Barcelona show here. Let’s see how both shows can be different on the same tour… or not!
GOFFERTPARK (R.I.P. FORTAROCK)
For those who don’t know the place where the show take place, it’s in a huge park in Nijmegen called Goffertpark. Many big events happen here and this is where the FortaRock used to happen. A metal festival that is unfortunately over now. But events are still taking place here, promoted by Mojo Show.
It’s a pure festival vibe we’ve then today: big park in a very small city with cosy neighbourhoods, shuttle from the station to the field, tons of food places and bar, tokens needed to buy stuff, tons of plastic cups on the ground and a huge crowd trying to left to the same place.
Opening act for the whole tour, Thundercat arrived on stage at 6.30pm to try warm-up the audience. Unfortunately, the sound wasn’t so good – especially the drums – and the crowd wasn’t really in the mood for his music. Too bad as he provided a groovy set, even if he was a bit tired – he announces during the show that he haven’t slept the last 2 days. Too much party in Amsterdam with the Red Hot Chili Peppers where they were during the 2 days-off between both Barcelona and Nijmegen shows?! Maybe…
NAS: “THERE’S NO BETTER PLACE TO BE THAN HERE”
After Thundercat, we got the rap legend NAS and he got way more response than his predecessor! During about 45 minutes, he delivered his most famous hits to a crowd who enjoyed it a lot – at least in the golden circle. More than once, he took a few seconds to thanks the audience. Especially before his final song when he took the time to thanks the crowd, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, all the people involved and remembered that there was not better place to be than at this show right now. We couldn’t be more agree!
The only bad thing with his set is that once again the sound wasn’t the best. Fingers crossed that it was only the case for the 2 opening acts and not for the Red Hot Chili Peppers arriving on stage at 8.45pm tonight (instead of 10pm in Barcelona)!
Set-list: Death Row East, N.Y. State Of Mind, The Message, I Can, Got Ur Self A Gun, Halftime, The World Is Yours, Hate Me Now, The don, If I Ruled The World (Imagine That), Represent, Made You Look, It Ain’t Hard To Tell.
NEVER THE SAME SET-LIST
Tonight show is soldout and so there’re about 60k fans ready to have the time of their lives. But not only Dutch: people are coming from Belgium (like us), France, Poland but also Brazil and USA! They still have a strong fan-base, even more with the comeback of John Frusciante. And the fans know what to expect from a RHCP show: many jams, ton of grooves and never the same set-list twice! From Seville to Barcelona, they change 7 songs of the 17. Tonight, compared to Barcelona, we got 4 songs played for the first time on this tour and 3 songs already played in Seville: so, once again, 7 new songs. They have so much hits that they could change almost the half of the set-list every night!
Tonight opening’s jam was a killer rock one, stronger than the opening in Barcelona. Proof the band still has to take their marks. Until the end of the tour, they should be in their better mood: luckely for us, we gonna us 3 of their last 4 shows (Werchter and Paris twice)!
What other song than Can’t Stop could they play to open the proper show? No other. Followed by Dani California, the crowd is on fire, singing every parts. It was only the beginning as they provided us with a rare song then: I Like Dirt, from the legendary album “Californication” which hasn’t been played since 2004 (at least, with John on guitar). That’s what we can call a surprise!
New album promotion tour, they had to play new songs obviously. The very first single Black Summer, One Way Traffic which was played live for the very first time, Here Ever After and the pop-punk vibes These Are The Ways. They all had a great response from the crowd – especially Black Summer – but nothing compared to the oldest songs. And as they don’t play any songs from both albums written with Josh (“I’m With You” and “The Getaway”), the old songs really are as they are at least 16 years old!
SUNSET AND SURPRISES ON THE SETLIST
After the classics Scar Tissue and Snow, Anthony Kiedis and his mates gave us not one but two surprises – songs not really expected – with Hard To Concentrate and Suck My Kiss! The album “Blood Sugar Sex Magic” really has a strong place in the heart of the fans: a fact we already saw during the show in Barcelona. But the band can also provided “bad news”: Under The Bridge was noted on the setlist for the encore but they played I Could Have Lied instead. Still a beautiful song of course but we would have prefered to hear Under The Bridge.
With a show starting at 8.45pm and a sunset officially at 9.55pm, we knew we could have a beautiful view. Sadly for us, the stage was full east. But the band had the most amazing view ever from the stage: imagine playing in front of 60k people singing your own songs with a gorgeous sunset behind. That’s what they had.
As usual, Anthony is on fire and seems high when he dances all over the stage during the songs or jams, when he doesn’t have to sing. He still asked a few times to Chad (drums) if it was the good time to sing or to make sure when the song started but he didn’t make any big mistakes. Beside that, the four guys has still tons of energy and have so much fun on stage. Like we had on the floor.
The new important change on the set-list since John is back is to play Give It Away before the encore and finish with By The Way. Killer song of course. Big hit of course. But ending the show with a longer song and a jam was much better! Maybe they’ll change it until the end of the tour but we seriously doubt about it.
That being said, the Red Hot Chili Peppers proved tonight they’re still one of the biggest rock band right now, even after almost 40 years of carrer! The most surprising thing is the energy, the groove and the happiness to play they still have. The cohesion between John and the 3 others let us forget they’ve been playing live together more than 10 years. “Unlimited Love” is not their best studio album but one thing sure: the fans still have unlimited love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers!