Chad Smith Makes Music For Sinatra's Dirty Deeds

Posted on Aug 27th 2009 10:00AM by Steve Baltin
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Red Hot Chili Peppers and Chickenfoot drummer Chad Smith wasn't quite sure how to categorize his new instrumental band, Chad Smith's Bombastic Meatbats. "We'd always end up playing this kind of funk, kind of Meatbat-sounding music. I don't know what it sounds like," Smith tells Spinner.

Fortunately, Smith found a kindly Southern gentleman to help him define the style. "'You know what it sounds like to me, Chad? Sounds like music that Frank Sinatra would be listening to while he was snorting coke off a hooker's ass,'" Smith repeats hilariously in an older southern accent. "I go, 'That sounds good to me. File it under that category.'"

Smith is hoping iTunes will set up that section in its store. "Yeah, iTunes will make a special category, alternative, rap, R&B, funk, blues, Frank Sinatra's coke-whore sniffing-ass music," he says. But to be a category, it has to have some other entries to keep Ol' Blue Eyes interested, as Smith understands. "There's got to be other stuff because he'd have to have a wider repertoire. He couldn't just have the Meatbats over and over -- that would get pretty old," he says.

However, Smith is understandably taking this question seriously. "I got to let it sit though. You don't f--- around with Frank Sinatra, that's serious. Chairman of the Board you don't just throw out names," he says. We agree, but after some thought Spinner was able to come up with Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew,' which Smith happily concurred with. "Yeah, that'd be good," he says. "I like that, a little Miles in his electronic phase. That would work. I would go with that; Meatbats and 'Bitches Brew, that's good s---."

For Smith, though, there's only one problem with this description. "I got a visual, man," he says. "I'm just like, 'S---, that's just some whacked-out stuff.'"