So as you already know, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed on MusiCares event honoring Neil Young, and it’s their first performance with Josh Klinghoffer – a new guitarist replacing John Frusciante who has left the band.

Here are some pics from their rehearsal and performance

[Show as slideshow]

For more pictures, go to getty images and wire images (click on a thumbnail to see more pictures inside that category, but keep in mind that you have to log in/register first)

Enjoy!

It seems like the upcoming MusiCares event will be streamed live on grammy.com after all… At least one part of it! Like the source reveals Portions of the Person of the Year event this year will be streamed live for the first time ever at grammy.com

So we can always hope we’ll get to see Red Hot Chili Peppers performing, and if not, there is always good old youtube friend! So as you already know, this year musicians will honor 2010 MusiCares Person of the Year – Neil Young, and it’s going to happen on January, 29th.

There is also another bit of news you might want to know about, and you probably all expected to hear… Seems like Josh Klinghoffer will be playing with them, and it’s almost certain now, since Dave Rat – Red Hot Chili Peppers sound engineer has just tweeted the following:

Ooh, rehearse Chili Peppers 1st gig w/ Josh K on guitar. Musicares, pre Grammy’s in honor of Neil Young.

I’m looking forward to hear them play again, and am getting excited to see how Josh will play his part! So stay tuned for more news, pictures and videos, I hope.

Flea and Chad attended and performed at the Flebass Booth (Booth #3192) at the NAMM Convention at 1pm, January the 16th. You can read more about NAMM if you’re interested. And here is a video of their performance – jamm session! Enjoy!

So it’s official now,  after a whole year, John Frusciante finally announced that he left Red Hot Chili Peppers for real. And he is not coming back, because he wants to concentrate more on his own work:

I really love the band and what we did. I understand and value that my work with them means a lot to many people, but I have to follow my interests. For me, art has never been something done out of a sense of duty. It is something I do because it is really fun, exciting, and interesting. – John Frusciante

You can read the whole blog entry on his MySpace page as well as his official blog.

No one can tell for sure who is going to be his replacement as a new guitarist for the band.  As you already heard, it could be John’s apprentice Josh Klinghoffer. Feeling are mixed and I am not sure what to make out of this. I hope it’s for the best and as you can see he had his own reasons, and it wouldn’t be the way it used to if he forced himself to do something he didn’t feel like doing… It’s really sad to think they will never play together again though.

Let’s make a little break from all the rumors and what ifs, and while we’re waiting for official news, let’s enjoy Chad’s company. Here is yet another interview with Chad Smith done by Francisco Fernández, from Argentinian Red Hot Chili Peppers website – FunkyMonks.ar I am just going to post some parts of this interview, related to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and you can read the whole thing on Francisco’s website – FunkyMonks.ar, or you can also download and listen the whole interview here:

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Chad, we know that the Chili Peppers are performing on the 29th of January, Neil Young tribute concert… are you going to play a new song apart from Neil’s cover? Is there someting you can tell us about the concert?

CS: I think it’s for the Grammys and around that time they do as always, honor an artist, this year is Neil Young and a lot of people are going to be doing Neil Young songs, he’s gonna be there, obviously. So we’re just really honored to be able to play this great music, we’re just gonna do one song, ’cause like 20 people are playing, bunch of different people, I don’t what song we’re gonna do yet but ? wrote Neil.

I don’t want to bother you with questions of the Chili Peppers, but we have heard rumors about the band situation for almost three years and we would like to know what plans the band has after this concert

CS: Well, we’re writing songs right now, you know, we’re gonna make another record and it’s going really well, we have a great time, we just needed to take a break, we’ve been playing… you know, being a Chili Pepper is a full time job [laughs]. You know, we write songs, we record them and then we go on tour on tour for a long time. We did that for ten years pretty straight, and we just thought it was time to take a break and do other things and live our lives, be with our families and come back fresh with your batteries recharged and once again make new music. That’s why we took the time off, we’re not breaking up or anything, it was just a break and now we’re back and everybody is really happy to be back playing.

That’s great! Well we heard that you have recorded four new songs with the Peppers. By the way, congratulations. Some of them have pianos and it seems to be something different from what you have been doing all these years. What can you tell us about the new sound of the band?

CS: Well, I can’t talk too much about it because it’s really in a early stages, you know, we write music for a long time and get a lot of different things before we end picking what, you know, it’s going to be songs and what’s gonna end up on CD’s. So I don’t want to say “Yeah, there’s gonna be piano”, we’re just doing whatever feels right and whatever people in the group wants to bring to the table. You know, it’s gonna be different. Always different, a very honest representation of what we’re doing at the time. So that’s what I can say…

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