Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California

The music video for "Dani California" premiered on MTV on April 4, 2006. Directed by Tony Kaye, acclaimed director of American History X, the video is a quasi-chronology of the evolution of rock music; the band performs the song on a stage, but in a variety of outfits representing important figures and movements in the history of rock music.

However, in the June 2006 issue of UK Classic Rock magazine, Flea was quoted as saying, "We mainly did eras, not actual people: rockabilly, British Invasion, psychedelia, funk, glam, punk, goth, hair metal, grunge, and ourselves being the sum of all those parts". The clip finishes with the Red Hot Chili Peppers as themselves again, with flashbacks to the imitated artists featured earlier in the film.

In one of the video's scenes, the Chili Peppers are featured in a scene alluding to Nirvana's famous 1993 MTV Unplugged performance (MTV Unplugged in New York). During the scene, Anthony Kiedis, dressed as Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, recites the lyrics "...gone too fast..." as the screen pans to a candle which is snuffed out. This is likely a tribute to Cobain, who died shortly after the Unplugged sessions were recorded, and also a close friend of Kiedis (the Red Hot Chili Pepper's song "Tearjerker" was written in Cobain's memory).

Guitar Tab for the Solo. (click to enlarge)