Nick Cave apologises for “uncharitable remark” about Red Hot Chili Peppers
Nick Cave has apologised for a historic cutting remark he made about the Red Hot Chili Peppers and explained how it led to his friendship with the band’s bassist, Flea.
Cave famously once said in an interview: “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” Now, many years later, he has clarified his comments on his The Red Hand Files newsletter and explained that he never wanted to offend anyone.
In response to a question by a fan, he wrote: “About twenty-five years ago, I made an offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There was no malice intended, it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off. I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant.”
Cave also noted “that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century” and expressed his remorse for causing any offence for the statement.
However, some good did come from the unwanted saga. Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, was saddened to hear Cave, an artist that he truly admired, and took to Facebook to express his feelings but also discussed his love of the Bad Seeds leader’s music in the same post.
Cave recalled: “He wrote a profoundly generous and open-hearted love letter to Nick Cave. I remember being genuinely moved by his words and thinking what a classy guy Flea was, and feeling on some subterranean level that I was unable to fully grasp at that point in my life, that Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order.”
Since then, Cave has “run into” Flea on many occasions at music festivals when their respective bands have shared a bill and the bassist has also been backstage whenever he plays Los Angeles. “Although we didn’t become close friends, my encounters with him were always pleasant – there was a presence to Flea that felt genuine and oddly affecting,” he shared.
Cave then detailed their music partnership, which started when Flea assembled a children’s choir for The Bad Seeds set at Coachella. He also performed with Cave and Warren Ellis on the Carnage tour, he reminisced, “Watching Warren and Flea perform together with such heart and mutual regard was a glorious sight.”
Excitingly, Cave shared: “Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals. It was for a ‘trumpet record’ that he is making. It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to. I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals.”
He continued: “The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology.”
Flea has previously discussed his plans to make a trumpet album during an interview with GQ, but he’s yet to announce official details of the project. It would mark his first full-length solo release.
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