Devlin Lynden

Under The bridge – Red Hot chili peppers

This song is about the lead man from The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anthony Kids and the time in his life when he was living in “the city of angles” ( Los angles) and walked around felt sad and very alone, Finding companionship in the streets, the hills and he wind. As he does this methinks about he dead friend and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak, And the heroin Overdose that took his life. The both them had a heroin addiction and use to ‘score’ together then sometimes would shoot up “Under The Bridge”, A traffic bridge in a seedy part of the city. The Red Hot Chili peppers almost didn’t realised this song. Anthony didn’t want to shear his feelings about the situation and didn’t feel it would fit the bands style. But the band producer found it, along with the rest of Anthony’s poetry and insisted on making it a song. The song got to number 2 on the American billboard charts, and is the song the sent the child’s to the mainstream.

When he talks about how he was feeling over that time period, it reminds me of how i felt when i first moved to Wanaka and started school. I had moved from Auckland, Tried to stay in a relationship with my girlfriend, but discovered it was much harder than i had thought it would be to stay connected to her and feel close to her when i was on the other side of the country. I had also lost a lot of my friends in Auckland and realised that a lot of people that you think are your friends forget about you shortly after you are gone. Then when i started school this year i felt like that i was struggling to fit in, something that i still sometimes feel, jumping from group to group. Fortunately I became close friends with someone and now have plenty of friends. During the start of the year I started feeling incredibly lonely and for a long period i felt as though i didn’t have a home.

In the greater picture, this song talks about drug overdoses and the devastating effect the uses and over use of drugs, like heroin, can have on the friends and family of people that abused drugs and potentially overdose on them. The fact that Anthony shears his feelings in this song might help people that are gong through something like a friend who has died, killed themselves or overdosed on drugs find something to connect to, Likely one of the meany reasons that the song was hugely successful.
Although this song is not my general music style of classic rock and jazz, I still think its an incredibly good song and deserves to be on my spotify playlist. Im sure a long with many other peoples playlists.