Californication (song)

"Californication" is the Red Hot Chili Peppers' fourth single from their seventh studio album, Californication. Released in 2000, the song only reached #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA, and #16 on the UK charts, but reached #1 on both US Modern Tracks and US Mainstream Rock Tracks. It is notable for its sparse combination of guitar and bass notes in the intro, and its unique music video.

The song is about the dark side of Hollywood. The track makes references to the decline in western society, and other topics such as pornography and plastic surgery and even some pop culture references including Star Wars ("Alderaan's not far away"), Star Trek, ("Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement"), Celebrity Skin magazine ("Celebrity Skin is this your chin", although this could also be a reference to Hole's song, "Celebrity Skin"), Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain ("Cobain can you hear the spheres"), and David Bowie's Station to Station ("Songs off Station to Station"). The line "teenage bride with a baby inside" refers to the fictional character Dani California, who is also mentioned in later songs By the Way and the eponymous Dani California. The song's riff closely resembles the song "Elevation" off of "Marquee Moon" by Television.

Californication is a unique video in that it takes the form of a video game from the point of view of the player. The video itself bears resemblance to many games, including Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Crazy Taxi, Panzer Dragoon, SSX, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and the railcar level of Donkey Kong 64.

The following statistics are presented for each member of the band at the beginning of the video.

Guitarist John Frusciante starts off on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He bumps into a celebrity, and jumps over three security guards, then picks up an asterisk. The action pauses and cuts to a shot of the band playing on top of a hill for a few seconds. This happens each time a band member picks up an asterisk, which is the logo of the band.

Chad Smith, the Chili Peppers' drummer, is seen snowboarding down a hill (although he has never ridden a snowboard in real life). He falls into a ravine, but lands on a train.

Lead singer Anthony Kiedis starts off swimming in an ocean, passing sharks and swimmers and picks up an asterisk. He gets out riding a shark and lands in his car. The registration plate on the car says "GERMS", which is a reference to The Germs, the band that Kiedis listened to as he grew up.

Flea, the bassist, is seen in Muir Woods, and is about to pick up an asterisk, but he can't get past a bear guarding it, although he helps it out by kicking down a hunter about to shoot it. He goes on a mine-cart ride, and goes to another asterisk, but it's guarded by a pregnant teen (Dani of Dani California and By the Way, also mentioned in this song as "getting high on information"). He then gets surrounded by a horde of lumberjacks, but he jumps on top of a tree and sees all the other trees fall.

Meanwhile, John goes to a movie set, and ducks and weaves through a sci-fi film, a porno, and stops in a set apparently filming a biographical film about Leonardo da Vinci (John has an interest in da Vinci and his works). He sees a theorized flying machine being used.

Chad is meanwhile seen snowboarding on the Golden Gate Bridge, using it as a grind rail.

Anthony is in the same scene, driving around San Francisco. He drives underwater, and then jumps through the hole of a giant doughnut (A reference to Randy's Donuts shop in LA) His car falls off a cliff and he lands on a giant dragonfly, being harnessed by Flea, who rides it to the sky, where John is riding the da Vinci flying machine, and Chad is doing snowboarding tricks. Anthony eventually falls off, and lands in a poppy field, and the flowers grow huge, but he finds an asterisk.

Much later, there is a big earthquake, and a city is falling apart. All the band members narrowly escape death from falling buildings and car crashes. The video ends with all the band members falling into the center of the earth, finding a cube, touching it, and turning from computer graphics to real people. (Flea falls through an asterisk while falling to the center of the Earth)

The video is directed by the prolific husband-wife directorial team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

There is a link between this video clip and the experience of relapsing into a drug addiction that Anthony describes in his book, Scar Tissue:

"... The chase is always exciting. There are cops and bad guys and freaks and hookers. You're diving into a big insidious video game, but again, you're being tricked into thinking that you're doing something cool, since the price is always bigger than the payoff. You immediately give up your love and your light and your beauty, and you become a dark black hole in the universe, sucking up bad energy and not walking around putting a smile on someone's face..."

            Californication is a play on the words “California” and “fornication”.   Fornication is a phrase that refers to sexual intercourse between a man and a woman not married to each other.  It originates from the Latin word ‘Fornix’ which means an archway or a vault or more directly speaking ‘fornicatio’ which means “done in the archway”. The song is about how California or Hollywood for that matter is fornicating the world with the ideal look of a human, how they make decisions on what is cool or what’s not, with complete disregard to all morals. I would now like to expand on the lyrics of the song in brief.
             In the first part of the song, he sings about racism and how America is full of itself and really could care less about other nations. "The sun may rise in the East but at least it sets in a finer location...” the finer location referring to California, because it is the heart of American culture (being the West of America, the sun sets in the West).”Little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotations" could be talking about how the media is so much livelier in North America than it is in foreign nations, and that it seems appealing from a view. "It's understood that Hollywood sells Californication", is quite literal in the fact that Hollywood sells all of it's media to become even richer. First born unicorn could suggest that, a unicorn being a rare, mystical, beautiful, and from the legend of the unicorn, vain, Hollywood is ideal in it's own views, and more special than the rest, especially because it is the first area or region of it's kind. Hard-core soft porn could be talking about how much Hollywood desensitizes us, to the point where what was once hard-core in our mind becomes soft. The second verse, regarding the girl, could be referring to how much we are pressured to love one another, to find that perfect match, and how much we think we have found someone, but it is actually just strong infatuation. Media also pressures young adults into sex before marriage, showing the "teenage bride with a baby inside" meaning the "couple" got pregnant before marriage. The "...baby inside gettin high on information" could refer to how much pressure is put on young people to learn, know the most, and the more you know the more successful you become. "Buy me a star on the boulevard" is, quite obviously, referring to Groh man’s Chinese Theatre, which showcases different stars' handprints and name, and how all you need is a lot of money to get in there. "Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement," refers to the ever-popular theory that the "first landing" on the moon in 1969 was staged, because of various mixups. "Alderaan's not far away, it's Californication" could be referring to the fact that Hollywood shows that paradise, which is Alderaan in the Star Wars series, is not far away, in fact, it's in your television, down your street, and on your radios, it's Californication itself. "Born and raised by those who praise control of population" is talking about how we are all raised up with the media closely around us like a parent, and the media controls us on our lifestyles everyday. "Everybody's been there and I don't mean on vacation," is saying everyone has been to, or experienced, Californication, not the actual going to Hollywood on a vacation. "Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation", I think, is saying that destruction does in fact bring about bad things, but that it cleanses what was once there to create what the destroyers want. In this case, media destroying any opposers(i.e. religion) and planting what they want (brainwashed humans) in their place. "Earthquakes are to a girl's guitar, it's just another good vibration", I think, is trying to say that any girl with good vocals and a guitar can cause earthquakes in the media, no matter how good at guitar she actually is, she's beautiful and supposedly has a good singing voice, so she's amazing. This could also be referring to the San Fransisco earthquake, although I can't make a connection. "Tidal waves couldn't save the world from Californication" is saying that even if a tsunami or something were to hit California, it wouldn't change the effect that Californication has absorbed and brainwashed the media, and that if such a natural disaster occurred, nothing would come of it's "attempts to save us" because it's past the stage of keeping a stable place, Californication is everywhere and taking out the home of it wouldn't do much. "Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging" is pretty self-explanatory. "Sicker than the rest, there is no test, but this is what you're craving" means that yes, Californication does have some of the most disturbing and sick things you will ever see or hear, without doubt, but it doesn't matter, you still want to see it, and it's what you're craving to have