“This Time My Fortune Faded”
The Movement of Time in the Career of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Lives of Romeo and Juliet
In 1983 Anthony Kiedis, Michael “Flea” Balzary, Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons, high school students in LA, started a band. Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem played their first set for an expected 30 people. This was a show that would change their lives for better and for worse. “I fear too early, for my mind misgives/Some consequence yet/ hanging in the stars / shall bitterly begin this fearful date” This monologue performed by Romeo before he enters the ball, that he was not invited to, expresses his concerns and fright. “…By some vile forfeit of untimely death. / But he that hath the/ steerage of my course, / Direct my sail. On, lusty gentlemen.” (1.4.5). Romeo fears that something will happen to him tonight that will end his life prematurely. He still went, but his life was never the same after.
The song “Fortune Faded”, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers is a song that shows the band’s rise and fall in fame. Not only do the lyrics illustrate their timeline, but one could even draw comparisons in the melody and the instrumentals of the song. The song opens with a crescendo of the drums and electric guitar. As more instruments kick in and become louder the song comes in full swing with a tempo of 120 beats per minutes. That is their 39th fastest song out of 166. An odd little detail that draws a little bit of light to speed that the play and the band’s career grow.
An underlying theme of the play is how time affects the outcome for the lovers and the rest of the characters. Romeo notoriously falls head over heels for girls. “Not mad, but bound more than a madman is, / Shut up in prison, kept without my food, / Whipp’d and tormented and…” (1.2.3) He describes his frustration and torture of what it
feels like to be in love with someone and not loved back, Benvolio gave a speech to him on how he should find someone to help him get over Rosaline. Romeo protests this idea and refuses to get over her. A few hours later he meets the next “love of his life”. That same night he vows to marry her, they get married the next day. Roughly three days after they get married they both take their own lives for each other. As an audience member or a reader, it is frustrating to see these two very young kids not see how many ways they could solve the problems surrounding their relationship that did not end in death. The characters did not have the time to think through every action that they took and the action’s outcome. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are faced with the same problems.
“Never mind, the consequences of the crime this time my fortune faded.” this lyric shows us what Anthony Kiedis and the band is thinking when they take actions that could be harmful to them individually and as a band. Selfishness is a trait that both the band and Romeo and Juliet possess, they disregard the norms and the consequences and do what they think will benefit themselves as a couple or a band. For Anthony and the band, it is heroin and other drugs, for Romeo and Juliet it is rushing into a relationship and then marriage.
Drugs played a significant part in the timeline of the band. The song Under The Bridge is about his friend and band member who died of a heroin overdose.
He talks about his love for LA and how when he falls into states of depression, especially after his friend’s death. “At least I have her love, the city, she loves me. Lonely as I am, together we cry”. Romeo is known to be incredibly dramatic, as mentioned before he often feels out of love. When he did find love and ended up killing Tybalt he gets banished instead of being put to death. “There is no world without Verona walls / But purgatory, torture, hell itself. / Hence “banishèd” is banished from the world,” (3.3.17–19). Romeo is distraught because of the news that he is being banished from Verona. Romeo states that there is nothing but Verona to him. His love for the city is not the only reason that he is so devastated to be banished, he also lost Juliet. Anthony’s addiction to heroin also caused him to lose two people he loved. The first person was his band member and best friend Slovak. The other person he lost left him because he couldn’t walk home at night, his girlfriend refused to put up with him and his addiction after she tried to get him to quit.
The band was formed in 1983, Romeo and Juliet met on a Sunday night and later that night Romeo expresses his love for her and vows that they will be married. The band began to grow in fame as Anthony and Slovak struggled with drugs. In 1988 Slovak died and Anthony’s grief was so bad his drug addictions became worse. On the Monday afternoon that Romeo and Juliet were married, Romeo murdered her cousin. Two days after that night Romeo and Juliet both end their own life. After the death of their two children, the families in the feud put their differences aside and moved on in harmony. After the death of Slovak, Anthony recruited two other band members, dropped his bad habits and their fame and their fans never died. It is rare to find a story that reflects Romeo and Juliet that does not have to do with forbidden love. There is a lot more depth to the play and a lot more themes that have very interesting aspects. The life of Anthony and the band really reflects their story.
Abstract
While looking through spotify for inspiration I stumbled onto an old album, RHCP greatest hits. I listened and went on genius to figure out the meaning of the songs. I really got lucky that so many comparisons could be made with the song F ortune Faded . The more I dove into the history of the band and focussed on the timeline, the more little details popped up that helped me to understand and draw conclusions. A difficult part of this paper was the fact that none of this was meant to be, I was not discovering some theory that the RHCP may have worked with Shakespeare and time traveled to 1983 to write their songs. I had to create conclusions that had to have been backed up with enough evidence that someone could believe it. I had to somehow prove that because the song moves at a fast pace that they wanted to express the speed that they experienced life. However difficult, it helped me broaden my perspective of how two different things could somehow relate back to each other, a taunting task that I was willing to bring on.
Works Cited
Parker, Olivia. “Red Hot Chili Peppers: a Timeline.” The Telegraph , Telegraph Media Group, 7 June 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/8561725/Red-Hot-Chili-Peppers-a-timeline.html .
“Running Songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers by BPM (Page 1).” Jog.fm , Blendlist , jog.fm/workout-songs-by-bpm?artist_id=red-hot-chili-peppers.
“Romeo and Juliet.” SparkNotes , SparkNotes, nfs.sparknotes.com/romeojuliet/. ** **for the translation while working on the project
