Whitney Gulden
The best of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers: Dani California. This classic was released in 2006, four years ago when it was on 20 charts for a total of 500 weeks. This included being #1 on the Modern Rock tracks chart for ten weeks and two weeks at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100.
So besides the music and guitar being just beautiful, the lyrics make the song. More specifically, the story behind the lyrics. The famed line “California rest in peace” is not celebrating the death of the state but that of a fictional character for whom the song was named, Dani California. Who died. Which is tragic because she pops up in a bunch of RHCP songs.
In ’99 she was in Califorication, “teenage bride with a baby inside/ getting’ high on information”. In ’02, she was “Dani the girl” in By The Way. Dani was also possibly the “Southern girl with a scarlet drawl” in Scar Tissue.
The lyrics of Dani California are pretty self explanatory, reading as an actual story combined with a love letter. Born in Mississippi to a poor cop and a hippie mother who moved to Alabama before becoming an outlaw in Louisiana for robbing a bank. On her way to Minnesota Dani was shot by a man in North Dakota, and now she has her lover Anthony Kiedis of the Peppers writing a song in her memory. Keep in mind this is fiction. Brilliant fiction, but fiction all the same. Dani is just a mix of all of Kiedis’ past girlfriends who developed into one girl through his music.
