Red Hot Chili Peppers' latest guitarist jibes with the band

``The first time, it was hard to say no,'' says Navarro, the former Jane's Addiction guitarist, who embarks on his maiden U.S. tour as a Chili Pepper at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, Tuesday, with Aussie teen grungers Silverchair opening.

``They're such talented musicians,'' Navarro says of bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith and frontman Anthony Kiedis, a trio that has gone through guitarists the way Spinal Tap went through drummers.

``But I was tied up with Deconstruction,'' a project he was doing with Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery. ``The Chili Peppers were about to headline the second Lollapalooza tour, and I had just done the first (with Jane's Addiction). I didn't want to be a hired hand without any creative input, playing a band's old songs in arenas.''

In 1993, after John Frusciante left the Chili Peppers, Navarro was offered the job again. Here was an opportunity ``to really be a member of the band,'' and he took it.

For ``One Hot Minute,'' the band's first album since their 1991 boffo ``Blood Sugar Sex Magik,'' Navarro was fully involved in the creative process. Most of the album was composed on a four-month working vacation in Hawaii.

``We visited volcanos, played tennis and ate pineapples. Anytime you spend that much time on an island with three other people, you come out of it with intense relationships.''

``One Hot Minute'' integrates Navarro's aggressive, metal-edged guitar with the locked-in tribal punk-funk that's the Chili Peppers' calling card.

Navarro has never owned a Chili Peppers album. ``I'm not a fan of a lot of contemporary rock music,'' he says. ``My personal space is very sacred to me. I keep it separate from my work life. Bringing a rock record home, to me, would be like urinating in church to some people.''

He is a huge film buff, though. With his cousin John Navarro, he writes a tongue-in-cheek movie review column in Bikini, the pop-culture monthly. (``Waiting to Exhale,'' directed by Forrest Whitaker, got a two-word review: ``Forrest Dump.'') ``It enables me to have fun in a creative medium that I'm not related to.''

When he joined the Chili Peppers, Navarro was concerned that he wouldn't jibe with the jocular image of a band known to perform wearing nothing but strategically placed socks. ``I don't watch sports and I don't want to hang around the locker room bragging about the girl I bagged last night,'' he says. ``But I was glad to see that these guys aren't like that.''

For the group's gig at Woodstock '95, Navarro gamely wore a giant lightbulb helmet on his head. But he's not much for hijinks.

``For the Rolling Stone photo shoot, the photographer wanted us to wear giant Afro wigs, and I said `No way.' I'm very moody. Some days I'm in the mood for an Afro wig, some days I'm not.''