Flea on the band who “take humour seriously”
Humour and rock and roll don’t always make for the best combination. Even though it might be acceptable to have the odd lighthearted track on an album filled to the brim with heavy material, toeing the line between seriousness and buffoonery does tend to get in the way of artists reaching their full potential. While Flea may have seen both the light and the dark sides of the music industry with Red Hot Chili Peppers, he credits one band for throwing away the rules regarding humorous material.
When looking at the genesis of Red Hot Chili Peppers, though, the whole thing was created as an in-joke between a bunch of musicians. Even though Flea had been making a name for himself in the punk scene with the group Fear and Hillel Slovak had his own group What Is This?, the addition of Anthony Kiedis onstage for an impromptu jam session birthed the band, playing the song ‘Police Helicopter’ before getting a positive reception.
As the band started writing more material, it became much more than just a joke. With the release of albums like Mother’s Milk following Slovak’s tragic passing, Kiedis would write tracks that had a more pointed subject matter, talking about the dangers of turning to drugs on songs like ‘Knock Me Down’, which would serve as the beginnings of classics like ‘Under the Bridge’.
Before the band had started putting together funk and rock under one roof, the California rock scene was still indebted to the sounds of new wave. After the punk scene crashlanded on the West Coast, other outfits were looking to make songs about the nervy side of rock, one of which was brothers Ron and Russell Mael.
Putting together the band Sparks, much of the group’s early material practically birthed the new wave movement without trying, including Russell singing in his now-signature high falsetto. In addition to their strange approach to music, their songs toed the line between lighthearted and serious perfectly, making tracks like their hit ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’ or the infamous piece about an uneventful one-night stand, ‘Amateur Hour’.
Although many fans didn’t know what to think of Sparks on first listen, Flea thought that their material was the ideal way to blend both aspects of music, recalling in The Sparks Brothers, “Something that’s always confounded me in popular music is people’s inability to take humour seriously. I think that’s why a band like Sparks isn’t as big as the biggest bands in the world. Because they’re fucking funny.”
Although Sparks would eventually get even more surreal and humourous across albums like Indiscreet, Flea would be taking notes when making material for the early Red Hot Chili Peppers records. Since most of the band’s early records were formed from jam sessions, hearing them try their hand at Hank Williams’s ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ and a sped-up version of ‘They’re Red Hot’ have the same nervy energy Sparks had at their best. Even though many artists like to treat their craft like the more important thing in the world, it’s important to have an outfit like Sparks that can play great music while also taking the piss out of themselves.
