Give It Away

Frusciante and Flea made the main riff and bass line while playing in a side project, H.A.T.E., with members of Fishbone. When the project ended they thought the idea would suit the Chili Peppers. Kiedis heard the band play it and began chanting the refrain. It came from the singer Nina Hagen, who told him to keep a jacket he admired, and the lyric is about selflessness. The song was recorded at the Mansion in 1991. The bridge was missing, so Flea and Frusciante each wrote a part on their own and the band chose between them later, a method they called a face-off and kept using on later albums.

Frusciante recorded the backwards solo in one take, and Pete Weiss plays Jew's harp. One radio station refused to play the single and told the label to come back when there was a melody, but KROQ-FM in Los Angeles put it on heavy rotation. It reached number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart on October 26, 1991, the band's first, and number nine in the UK in February 1994. The video, directed by Stéphane Sednaoui, was shot in black and white with the band painted in silver acrylic, and it won two MTV Video Music Awards in 1992 including Best Art Direction. The song also won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocal. Kerrang! ranked it fourth among the band's songs, and Tom Moon of Rolling Stone said it set a template for rock with the relentless beat of hip-hop.

Live

The first performance was on October 7, 1991 at The Music Machine in West Los Angeles, at a benefit show. The band has played it more than 1,000 times, more than any other song, and often closes the main set or the encore with it.