The second of my "music video essays", I'm exploring the single from Red Hot Chili Peppers' newest album, The Getaway, "Dark Necessities". As I did before, I'm posting the video and the lyrics here on the essay, and encourage you to watch and read along. In the case of the Peppers, it's always a good idea to have the lyrics handy, as the lead singer, Anthony Kiedis, has a tendency of mumbling and/or pronouncing words uniquely to create a particular effect--or he's super high, either possibility is there.
The Set Up
Here's the video:And here are the lyrics:
Coming out to the light of day
We got many moons than a deeper place
So I keep an eye on the shadow's smile
To see what it has to say
You and I both know
Everything must go away
Ah, what do you say?
Spinning off, head is on my heart
It's like a bit of light and a touch of dark
You got sneak attacked from the zodiac
But I see your eyes spark
Keep the breeze and go
Blow by blow and go away
Oh, what do you say?
Yeah, you don't know my mind
You don't know my kind
Dark necessities are part of my design
Tell the world that I'm falling from the sky
Dark necessities are part of my design
Stumble down to the parking lot
You got no time for the afterthought
They're like ice cream for an astronaut
Well that's me looking for weed
Turn the corner and
Find the world and show command
Playing the hand
Yeah, you don't know my mind
You don't know my kind
Dark necessities are part of my design
Tell the world that I'm falling from the sky
Dark necessities are part of my design
Do you want this love of mine?
The darkness helps to sort the shine
Do you want it, do you want it now?
Do you want it overtime?
The darkness helps to sort the shine
Do you want it, do you want it now?
Pick you up like a paperback
With the track record of a maniac
So I'm moving in and we unpack
It's the same as yesterday
Honey where we roll
Everything must go away
Ah, what do you say?
Yeah, you don't know my mind
You don't know my kind
Dark necessities are part of my design
Tell the world that I'm falling from the sky
Dark necessities are part of my design
Written by Josh Adam Klinghoffer, Michael Peter Balzary, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Gaylord Smith, Brian Joseph Burton • Copyright © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group
The Intro
Parallel stories as the song begins: We have the band--a bunch of aging rockers in a trashy apartment from the '70s. The Peppers carry with them a lot of rock history, from their psychedelic-funk roots to their mainstream singles, but they've always had a penchant for the weird, too. This comes through in their location, but also what they wear. Or don't wear,* as the case may be. Either way, each personality of the band is represented, perhaps more because we expect them to look a particular way (Flea with loud pants, Chad Smith drumming with his hat on his head...and, yes, he knows that he looks like Will Ferrell) than for any other reason. That's conjecture; the point is, they're identifiable. Even if you aren't a fan of RHCP, the guys playing the instruments are pretty clearly the band. Of course, it starts off with them sandwiched into a tacky couch, the swelling of the music building toward an explosion of energy. Intercut with the band's tension and poise is the parallel.The first non-band person we see is a close up of a woman, lying in her bed. Her face is slightly obscured, enough that the quick glimpse we get isn't enough to identify her later on--assuming she shows up later on. Is the woman in the bedroom/tanning bed (?)/swimming pool moments throughout the whole piece one of the crew? Is she simply another player, creating a third, shorter, more chaotic angle to the story? I think we're supposed to assume she's one of the four skater girls who comprise the feminine counterpoint to the band. We get a "mugshot" style of introduction to each, the women all giving straightforward expressions to the camera, and the last one we see before the song begins in earnest (at about the :38 mark) is a dark haired woman.
A major portion of this part of the song is the build up, the increasing energy as the piano swells and Smith begins to twirl the drum stick. Flea's enthusiastic finger picking, Kiedis' covering of his face and bouncing--indications of growing energy, expectation, and (perhaps) angst all tug at the music and its growth.
Meanwhile, the women of the video (the "skaters") fill in the gaps with a pent up fury. It's not a genuine rage, but there's a distress. The shots don't linger sexually on the women, despite them being in various states of undress, but instead make sure it's clear that they're injured women. This isn't an abusive thing, unless you want to classify "falling over a lot while doing something you love" as abuse, and the video will explain where these injuries (taped toes, scabbed legs, roadrashed arms) come from. However, there are a couple of additional psychological twists that underscore the purpose of the song: The bedroom woman stretching against the bed, her back to the camera; and the same woman, her hair intertwined with her fingers as she rocks forward. Both of these actions evoke a sense of frustration and distress that, coupled with the music, propels the music out of the intro and into the first verse.
Musical Choices and Skateboards
The crescendo of the intro builds toward a peak of musical expectation, which could go in any variety of directions. The choice on the part of the band to drop musical gears, as it were, into a funky bassline to carry the entire song forward is matched on screen by the demonstration of what happened to give the skaters their injuries. We aren't fully surprised by this--we saw skateboards in a couple of other shots, setting us up for this revelation. Similarly, any exposure to RHCP teaches us that funk is a part of the band's DNA. Indeed, this bassline has been compared to "Can't Stop", another, older song by the Peppers. Much like the skaters having skateboarding injuries--and that the women are skaters--isn't a shock, neither should be Flea's distinctive style coming out as the most distinctive part of the verse's musical tapestry.That first note is focused on Flea, but very quickly moves to the skaters. They're accelerating, swinging their legs and propelling themselves forward. Now that the introduction is over, they can begin moving; the tension is released. The band gets into the music--Josh Klinghoffer, having little to do at this point on his guitar, keeps time with a clap or two; Smith works his drums like a pro. Kiedis becomes a focal point as his vocal points begin to establish the themes of the song.
Now that the players are released, the skaters begin to scour a California night, cruising effortlessly down essentially empty streets. The band, however, will never leave the confines of the apartment, pushing their music outward as the women explore the world around them. In some ways, the video alternates between the freedom of the skaters' movement with the freedom of the band's music: The boys can speak but never leave, while the girls can leave but never have their voices heard.**
The production of the song itself is well done, giving the music a smoothness and professionalism that one would expect from such a storied band. The girls' ability to skateboard, however, is rocky. Throughout the piece, they alternate between competency (like when they soar through a grocery store) and painful inadequacy (like all the times it shows the skaters falling). I'm not necessarily saying this communication is sexist, but the women struggle much more than the men do in what they're doing--even their drinking is sloppy and messy. Age could be a factor, with most of the band old enough to be the skaters' dads.
What'd He Say?
When it comes to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' lyrics, it's most often easiest to consider the words as a sonic palate, rather than a logical one. Verbally, Kiedis tends toward abstract poetry, throwing words together to let them clash or blend in unexpected ways. While he has a point to his songs (sometimes), they can be rather opaque. But, as so often happens with good poetry, the title helps to unlock some of the greater mysteries of the lines below it. And, in this case, the music video adds additional possibilities for interpretation.The song is called "Dark Necessities", which is part of the chorus. To refresh you, here's the words to that section:
Yeah, you don't know my mindFirst of all, the "Yeah" in the lyrics, as printed, feels out of place when heard in the song. It's a punctuation mark, almost like drawing a line across the middle of a paper to show the break between one thought and another. This is emphasized in the video by having the suntanning woman (I'm guessing that's what the box is for...I don't really know) drop onto her stomach. The timing and direction of this--on cue and downward--helps show a shift toward the less positive things that Kiedis is exploring.
You don't know my kind
Dark necessities are part of my design
Tell the world that I'm falling from the sky
Dark necessities are part of my design
The idea, for instance, of "you don't know my mind" is fraught with the concerns of any relationship. "You don't know me" is the mantra of teenagers and existential crises everywhere, but there's a really strong possibility that you don't know you, either. And there's an expectation of continuity that we all suffer from--that we know one person in a certain situation, but then are surprised when that person behaves differently in another. Not only that, but stereotypes are frustratingly insufficient for explaining why people behave a certain way.
Kiedis emphasizes this with the title of the song and the point that he's exploring in his roundabout manner: "Dark necessities are part of my design." We all have a darkness within us, and there are thoughts and hopes, needs and desires that are within our own vaults locked and unexpressed. This is why a community is shocked when they find out that a neighbor has a stash of porn, despite appearing the perfect family man, or why a politician's hypocrisy with discriminatory legislation is made sharper when it comes out that he had a tryst in an airport bathroom. Not everyone's darkness is of the same type...but isn't that already established? "You don't know my (m)kind"...
The timing of the skaters' exploration coincides with this darkening twist; daylight fades as the band plays about the darkness that lurk inside. This is somewhat condemnatory for the men, as they are the ones who are inside--the ones who are part of what's hidden. Perhaps that's the reason why they prance behind a glass wall at certain moments of the song, allowing a peek into that necessity.
An exception to this timing observation: When we get to the bridge, it's when Kiedis sings
Do you want this love of mine?As he asks this question, the woman falls into the swimming pool, and then the skaters all begin to fall. It's daylight, but only just, as they skate through an old canal. The questions come, the women fall--and, tellingly, they stop to help their fallen friends. The phrase "the darkness helps to sort the shine" is a positive way of rendering the entire problem, allowing those dark necessities--again, those not as tragic or pervasive as the ones I mentioned earlier--to be accepted. This, perhaps, is the great message of the piece, the area that resonates with me personally so much. I don't know how to square the circle of who I am inside, who I want to be, and who others think I am. And while I'm leery of definitions rendered in their negativity (explaining what something is by defining it by what it isn't), there's some meaning there. We put diamonds on black velvet to help "sort the shine"--maybe what makes us good is seeing how we understand our bad.
The darkness helps to sort the shine
Do you want it, do you want it now?
Do you want it overtime?
The darkness helps to sort the shine
Do you want it, do you want it now?
One final piece to this: The second chorus begins with that ambiguous "Yeah!", this time with Kiedis throwing an illuminated lamp into the air, letting it unplug and, therefore, go dark. When listening to the different rhymes and concepts in the lyrics, it's clear that darkness in many forms plays at the edges of the song's imagery. "Shadow's smile", "touch of dark", "zodiac" (and its associations with the star-drenched sky); even the phrases of "pick you up like a paperback" and "no time for an afterthought" are both indicative of a callousness or ambivalence to those around the singer--in short, the reflection of that darker necessity, the darker drive inside.
Out and Outro
The song concludes with a solo that I absolutely adore. While often RHCP solos are technically straightforward, they're always done with a great proficiency and power, and I feel like this one, though not particularly complex, is masterfully done. The video intercuts between the boys and girls, switching back and forth with a frantic energy that's matched by the different players. I don't think it's a coincidence that there are four of each gender, and while it isn't the case that each skater matches up with each band member, the masculine/feminine, feminine/masculine dichotomy flipping back and forth shows the parallel stories starting to fuse.Two points that fascinate me: One is the bedroom woman. She flings pillows around, rotating her body back and forth viciously. At one point, she leaps into the air, puts her feet against the wall, and pushes off, back onto the bed. This is at the point where the outro solo and the band all have gained their maximum energy and synergy, turning the entire video into a rapid montage of moments, yet in some ways returning to the pent up emotion of the beginning. While what has been released will never be fully returned, those aspects of the women that were left inside--the woman in the bedroom--is still thriving on the power of freedom. Because she's isolated and remains inside--perhaps we could call her the Dark Necessity--she is unhappy, frantic, and powerful. Maybe she can't get out now, but she knows what it is to be out and wants that again.
Lastly, is seeing Anthony Kiedis breathing heavily, his eyes closed, only to have them pop open as the final image of the video. We see little of his eyes throughout; he wears those weird glasses instead. The result is that there's a distance between us and the singer--we aren't brought into the fold, as it were, we aren't invited into the area inside of him where his dark necessities lurk. His final seconds feel to me as though he's putting back those things which he'd exposed, the darkness that he shared being tucked away.
And it looks like it was hard to do.
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* We can be grateful that the band, as a whole, seems to have moved past the "play a concert in our underwear" stage. Still, Kiedis and Flea seem to be allergic to wearing shirts in almost all of their music videos.
** It's obvious that they communicate; there are shots of them talking, laughing, and even begging the late night tattooist to do one more job. But we're never privileged enough to hear them.