Red Hot Chili Peppers to play Lollapalooza as new album emerges

AFP March 26, 2016

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will headline Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival, it was announced last Wednesday, as the alternative rock greats complete work on their first album in five years.

The July 28-31 festival in Chicago, which is marking its 25th anniversary, also said that Radiohead would perform, in the latest date for the acclaimed British arthouse rockers whose small arena tour sold out within minutes.

See: Radiohead announces 2016 world tour ahead of possible new album

Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis last month told a radio station that the band had written “two dozen songs” and was “in the home stretch” of selecting and recording them for the new album.

Band members have said they were in the studio with longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich as well as Danger Mouse, a diverse producer with a background in hip-hop who worked on the latest albums by Adele and U2.

Lana Del Rey attends her "Freak" music video premiere at The Wiltern on Feb. 9, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Interscope/AFP

The album, whose release date and title have not been revealed, will be the first since the Chili Peppers’ 2011 “I’m With You,” which brought in new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer.

The Chili Peppers emerged in 1980s Los Angeles as they brought funk elements into punk rock.

Each of the band’s albums has entered the top five on the U.S. chart since “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” which came out in 1991 during a surge of interest for music outside the pop mainstream.

Lollapalooza was launched that year by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, who envisioned a traveling festival to celebrate music and alternative culture.

The festival declined as fans increasingly found it too commercialized, but was reborn in 2005 as an annual event in Chicago’s Grant Park.

Lollapalooza has since expanded internationally, with editions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Germany, with a Colombian version to debut in October.

For the 25th anniversary, Lollapalooza is expanding to four days in Chicago, one day longer than usual.

Other performers include LCD Soundsystem, the influential New York electronic act that is reuniting for April’s Coachella festival in California, as well as rappers J. Cole and Future, the wildly popular Lana Del Rey, and many others.