With the Red Hot Chili Peppers set to begin a massive North American tour next month, they’re giving another promotional push to their most record, The Getaway. Today (Dec. 5), they released a video for “Sick Love,” which includes piano by Elton John.

It’s an animated clip created by Beth Jeans Houghton and deals with a young woman who leaves Sydney, Australia, to pursue her dreams in Hollywood. She soon gets sucked into the darker side of the city and it gets a bit grotesque — she is literally put through a meat grinder at one point. All four members of the band, in cartoon form, make appearances, although Anthony Kiedis has a slightly larger role than the others, which involves him getting busy with the woman, who then turns into a spider and cuts off his head.

The melody for the verses of “Sick Love” is reminiscent of John’s 1974 hit “Bennie and the Jets,” and John and lyricist Bernie Taupin were given a writing credit. The similarity was the impetus for asking John to contribute. “The song that he plays on was a song that we were working on for awhile before we started recording it,” guitarist Josh Klinghoffer said, “and it just sounded like Elton was involved somehow, someway, So we thought we should just invite him down and see if he likes it and wants to play on it.”

“He was kind of nervous, it was actually really kind of cute,” drummer Chad Smith said of the session with Elton John. “When he came in, he looked for somewhere to sit really quick, and he sat down.”

Coincidentally, another song built off of “Bennie and the Jets” was released this year. Last month, A Tribe Called Quest put out “Solid Wall of Sound,” which used a sample from the track and also featured a new piano and vocal contribution from John.

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