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Red Hot Chili Peppers salute Chris Cornell In Indy

Rock band ends 17-year drought between local appearances

Singer Anthony Kiedis performs with the Red Hot Chili Peppers Thursday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers rolled back the years in multiple ways Thursday night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse

For starters, it was difficult to not think about 2000 — the last time the California band performed in Central Indiana. Seventeen years is a significant gap, especially when your songs have an unyielding presence on local radio.

The show opened with 2002’s “Can’t Stop” and 2006’s “Snow (Hey Oh),” two long-running FM fixtures making a live debut in Indianapolis.

Guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who joined the Chili Peppers lineup in 2010, had pronounced “new guy” status Thursday (despite recently reaching a milestone of 300 RHCP shows). He came through as the night’s MVP.

Klinghoffer connected from the outset, delivering the elastic punch of “Can’t Stop” after the first of many impromptu jams with bass player Flea and drummer Chad Smith.

Later, Klinghoffer stepped up to pay tribute to Chris Cornell, the Soundgarden vocalist who died following a Wednesday performance in Detroit. Time collapsed to the early ‘90s when Klinghoffer played a solo version of Cornell’s “Seasons,” a song that appeared on the “Singles” soundtrack of 1992.

It’s a bittersweet ballad inspired by the sensation of time racing by. Klinghoffer was 13 in 1992, a year in which the Chili Peppers and Soundgarden spent the summer together on the second Lollapalooza caravan. Other acts on that fierce bill: Pearl Jam, Ministry, Ice Cube and the Jesus & Mary Chain.

 

Flea paused before Thursday’s rendition of “Under the Bridge” to say, “Love to Chris Cornell.” Earlier, the most talkative Chili Pepper thanked Indiana for novelist Kurt Vonnegut, basketball icon Larry Bird and labor leader Eugene Debs.

Flea, the inventive bass master who spills out more music than can be contained in a conventional rock show, has a worthy running mate in Klinghoffer.

From air-raid tones to deconstructed Hendrix-esque solos, Klinghoffer aced every assignment. One of his highlights arrived with “Californication,” a song that came across as more tense and trippy than its studio version. Klinghoffer’s solo pushed an overdrive guitar tone until breaking like a wave, and then he stopped on a dime to snap back into a clean tone to serve the rest of the song and his band mate’s contributions.

Moving into the present and material Klinghoffer helped create, "Dark Necessities" from 2016 album "The Getaway" was one of handful of songs that framed the Chili Peppers as a smooth jazz animal with an underbelly of funk.

For a moment, it seemed as if Sade and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen were bigger influence on the Chili Peppers than George Clinton and Stevie Wonder.

"Dark Necessities" couldn't have been more stylish or effective, partially thanks to two anonymous keyboard players who flanked drummer Smith.

Overall, vocalist Anthony Kiedis turned in a workmanlike performance with no sense of mischief that's defined his band since its founding in 1983. Whether Cornell's passing hit Kiedis especially hard or Kiedis has matured beyond old-school antics, it wasn't a liability in Thursday's show. It was simply different.

Kiedis did throw himself (and jolt the near-sellout crowd) into a cover of the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog," a 1969 sonic eruption that did more than its share to move us toward the Chili Peppers' attitude-fueled funk and Soundgarden's no-nonsense hard rock.

Call IndyStar reporter David Lindquist at (317) 444-6404. Follow him on Twitter: @317Lindquist.