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"Brendan's Death Song" is a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers from their 2011 album I'm with You and is slated to be the album's fifth single released sometime in 2012.

In an interview with Billboard, published March 6, 2012, Chad Smith announced the song would be the band's next single.

Despite getting no radio airplay nor yet been released as a single, fans voted the song tenth best of the year in the Rolling Stone Top 10 Reader's Poll of 2011.

The song made its live debut on the I'm with You Tour on March 29, 2012 during the opening night of the U.S. tour, although Kiedis couldn't remember lyrics and the song was actually left off the offfical bootleg of that performance. It had previously only been performed once live over seven months earlier in August 2011 during the full performance of the album which was prior to the tour.

Song background
The song is about Brendan Mullen, founder of The Masque, a small punk rock club which was an important part of the early L.A. punk scene. Mullen was also a longtime friend of the Chili Peppers and one of the first music promoters to give the band their start. In 1983, Anthony and Flea had a demo tape and took it to a popular L.A. club, Club Lingerie. There they had their first encounter with Mullen, who was the booker for the club. They played Mullen their tape while they danced around to the song an a opening spot for the Bad Brains, who were an influence to the band and kings of the punk rock scene at the time. Mullen was working with Blackie Dammett on the Chili Peppers biography, Red Hot Chili Peppers: An Oral/Visual History when he died suddenly after suffering a stroke in 2009 and was unable to complete work on the book though it eventually was finished by Mullen's long-time companion Kateri Butler and designer/musician John Curry, who had been friends with Brendan since the Masque days and was a member of The Flyboys. The book was released in 2010. Flea responded to Mullen's passing by writing a two-page article in the Los Angeles Times.

According to a July 2011 interview with singer Anthony Kiedis, Mullen died on the first day of rehearsals for the album. Kiedis said he received a text message about the death and he informed the band when he got to rehearsals. Without talking, the band quickly started to play music and the jam, which was the basis for the song, came right away. Kiedis stated that the song has the feel of a death march but ultimately "the song is more of a celebration than a bummer." Kiedis describes his favorite part of the song being the bridge, which is much darker and there is a feeling of falling into the unknown abyss of dying. Guitarist Josh Klinghoffer described the song as being part acoustic mourning, part galloping hard-rock send-off.

Structure
The song is written in 4/4, beginning with an acoustic guitar introduction, which is then sung over by vocalist Anthony Kiedis. The song gradually builds, introducing electric guitars, drums, and bass, reaching full instrumentation in the first chorus. The drumbeat makes heavy use of tom-tom drums. In the chorus following the bridge, bassist Flea plays an improvised melodic bassline.

Personnel

 * Flea – bass
 * Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
 * Josh Klinghoffer – guitar, backing vocals
 * Chad Smith – drums