David Bowie Turned Down a Collaboration with Red Hot Chili Peppers 3 Times

You already knew David Bowie turned down collaborations with Coldplay and Foo Fighters, well now you can add Red Hot Chili Peppers to the list.According to Consequence of Sound, front-man Anthony Kiedis was just on Steve Jones’ “Joney’s Jukebox” and said that the band asked Bowie to produce more than one of their albums.

“Every record we ever made, we had the band discussion. ‘Who should we get to produce this record?’” ‘I don’t know, we have to try someone new!’ ‘Let’s get David Bowie!’ ‘Okay, let’s call him.’”

“So in the beginning we would call him, and he would say no, respectfully. Then later we would write long e-mails explaining everything, and why it was time for us to really get our ships on, and he always respectfully declined. For two minutes I was heartbroken, and then I would hear Chad Smith play drums, and I’d be like, ‘We’re good, we could do something else.’”

“We asked him to produce By the Way as we were writing By the Way, and then we asked him again for our next record, which was Stadium Arcadium. He said no to us two or three times, but his mate [Brian] Eno, who we’ve also been asking our entire career to produce a record for us, has said no 8 times.”

The Chili Peppers have a new album coming in 2016 with a new producer… Danger Mouse.