The most ferocious: the punk icons that Flea almost joined instead of Red Hot Chili Peppers
The kind of brotherhood of Red Hot Chili Peppers is the kind of relationship bands only dream of. Even though there have been more than a few periods of bad blood between everyone, Flea and Anthony Kiedis seem as close to brothers as any two people could be without blood relation. For a brief time in the 1980s, there was a good chance that Flea would give everything up to join the punk outfit Fear.
When Flea first started getting his first taste of music, there was a good chance that he might have laughed at any of the newer punk bands. The bassist always had a far more eclectic music taste than funk rock, and his background listening to jazz made the sounds of Sex Pistols sound closer to dissonant noise than actual music.
Once Flea started digging under the surface, he knew the power of what these bands were doing. It was all about emotion, and suddenly, a song that stayed on only two chords throughout its entire duration meant just as much to him as the kind of freeform improvisations that Miles Davis would do.
Quickly adopting the punk rock mentality in his own bands, Flea brought in influences from every rock genre he could get his hands on, putting together the genesis of the Peppers with original guitarist Hillel Slovak in his outfit, Anthym. Despite being a punk rock figure with Bootsy Collins’s sense of rhythm, that energy didn’t translate to the greatest-selling gigs, which led to him auditioning for the group Fear when the group struggled to get off the ground.
Fear had already been known as one of the most ferocious bands to come out of the LA punk scene, and the musician went from subbing in on bass for a few shows to being asked to join the group by leader Lee Ving. Whereas any musician who knew they had to eat would have taken a steady job, Flea knew he had unfinished business with his old outfit.
Forming a band with Kiedis under the dreadful name Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, Flea found the perfect middle ground between his funk rock roots and his punk rock energy. He may not have been able to play with the same ferocity he played on songs like Fear’s ‘I Don’t Care About You’, but the same intensity has stuck with the bassist to this day.
It didn’t come without some hardship for a band that he gave it all up for. Throughout their time together, Flea eventually threatened to quit the group again to join another act because of Kiedis’s drug problems before being convinced to return when Kiedis said that he was going to be the 1980s equivalent of James Brown.
One can only keep the punk spirit at bay for so long, and the bassist would ultimately find himself playing in different heavy acts as the years went on. While juggling Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea would work on whichever heavy band came his way, either serving a subdued role for legends like Johnny Cash or laying down the heaviest grooves with The Mars Volta. Considering how much work the Red Hot Chili Peppers put out, God knows when he slept.
Still, Fear was always the group that gave Flea his first exposure to what the big time looked like. He wasn’t meant to stay there for long, but it’s fun to imagine the alternate universe where the Red Hot Chili Peppers were traded in for the funkiest hardcore punk band the world had ever known.
