The Red Hot Chili Peppers pay tribute to late friend Brenda Mullen in the new music video “Brendan’s Death Song” featuring the band in a jazz themed funeral.
The latest music video on the I’m With You album is a special heartbreaking song called ‘Brendan’s Death Song.’ The ballad was written for their late friend Brendan Mullen, founder of the late seventies Hollywood punk club The Masque. The club was shut down in 1978 due to the lack of permits to run it as a legal night club. Mullen started booking shows on the Sunset Strip Club Lingerie where one day in 1983 Anthony Kiedis and Flea showed up with a demo and a boom box and asked Mullen to listen to it. Mullen listened and offered them a gig to open up for Bad Brains. To this day, Anthony and Flea give Brendan credit for being a big support and giving them their start.
In an interview in 2009 Flea mentioned ” It was a huge step for us to get that gig , but in a much important way”. Flea said he felt profoundly validated to be “accepted and acknowledged by Brendan Mullen” who was a crucial part of the Hollywood scene, a scene for Flea to be “a mythological status”.
The band and Mullen have been friends ever since he booked them that gig back in 1983. Mullen passed away in 2009 while he was co-authoring the 2010 Red Hot Chili Peppers: An Oral/Visual History with the band.
The jazz themed video was shot in one day and directed by Marc Klasfeld in New Orleans,LA.
