The Red Hot Chili Peppers song Flea struggled to record: “Everyone didn’t like it”
There don’t seem to be too many songs that aren’t out of Flea’s area of expertise. As much as he may have funk rock down to a science whenever he works with Red Hot Chili Peppers, his time as a session player for everyone from Johnny Cash to The Mars Volta to Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace is proof enough that he knows his way around the fretboard anywhere. There are stumbling blocks along the way, and Flea wrote one bassline that he could barely play correctly on ‘Cabron’.
For the first half of Flea’s development, though, you would swear that he would have grown up to have been a jazz cat. The bass may have been his instrument of choice, but his getting stuck with a trumpet did have its perks in learning the beginnings of music theory, especially when he put it to use when jumping onstage with Nirvana.
When he got the bass in his hands, he reacted to it like a fish in water, practically devouring any type of music he could hear. Since he had the ability to create the funkiest grooves of all time, the fact that he decided to work with an amateur vocalist like Anthony Kiedis was the kind of warped idea that was just crazy enough to work.
Even though the band kept working at it throughout their time in Los Angeles, the death of Hillel Slovak was bound to do a number on all of them. But what do you do when you lose a guitar genius? You get a new one.
Bringing John Frusciante on board, the group became one of the biggest forces in music once Blood Sugar Sex Magik exploded. Although Frusciante would be out of the fold one album later, this was the start of the band trading in their funky sound for something a bit more melodic on tracks like ‘Under the Bridge’, which was blown wide open when the guitarist returned for Californication.
Once everyone was newly sober and overcame their other demons, By the Way was the musical equivalent of a ray of sunshine, blending their melodic side with a Beach Boys-like approach to production. That meant a lot of different techniques, though, and Flea was thrown for a loop when ‘Cabron’ was put in front of him.
Since the entire song has a slightly flamenco-style strumming pattern, the bass part Flea used didn’t suit the track that much, later recalling in Rick Rubin in the Studio, “That song was a little frustrating for me; it took me a while to find the right bass line. Basically, I had a bass line that I love, but everyone else didn’t like it. Then John said, ‘Use a capo, it’ll make it sound completely different.’”
Frusciante had already been using a capo to give the guitar a more jangly sound, so putting the bass in a higher register makes it really jump out of the mix. Instead of the usual basses that Flea was known for, he played the Hofner bass that was most associated with being used by Paul McCartney, which gives the song a bit of a retro feeling.
If anything, this kind of artistic move proves what can be done when everyone leaves their egos at the door whenever they play. Flea could have easily asserted his power as a musical monster on the bass, but by listening to the other musicians playing with you, you’re only going to make the track better.
