The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ songs Flea still struggles to play: “I really need to warm up”
Before he became known as Flea, Michael Peter Balzary was a young kid who was ravenous about jazz.
Fixating on the trumpet, he became obsessed with the greats: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. As a teenager, ‘Flea’ (as he became known for his inability to sit still) was an outcast on account of his eclectic music taste. Still, his range would fare well when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were honing their sound.
His love of jazz shifted into an immersion in his punk rock and hardcore scenes, leading him to join his first band, Fear. Soon, with his friend Anthony Kiedis, they built the foundation for what eventually became Red Hot Chili Peppers, where Flea was renowned for his slap bass technique and his frenetic style of playing. His approach to the instrument became the defining factor of the band, never strictly adhering to a “traditional” rock sound but instead, reimagining how he could blend classic rock, jazz, hardcore and funk in a new, inventive way of musicianship.
Even as his sound has shifted into less experimental territory, there is a spirited style to his playing that remains his signature. He plays with a passionate, almost maniacal drive, venturing into his own world where the bass becomes its own form of communication.
As Flea told Bass Player in 2006, the bass did not matter so much as the intention behind it: how hard he hit each chord and how much emotion he poured into it. “Any instrument is just a vehicle to express who you are and your relationship to the world,” he said. “No matter what level you’re doing it on, playing music is an opportunity to give something to the world.”
Despite appearing near-masterful on stage, Flea regards some of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ deep cuts as being a struggle to play. Reflecting in an interview with Rick Beato, Flea considers which songs, across the spectrum of their discography, stick out as ones that remain difficult to this day.
“The early ones are kind of the hardest,” the bassist admits. “‘Like ‘Get Up and Jump’, I really need to warm up to fucking play it.” While Flea then proceeds to casually play a bass lick for a few seconds, you can instantly hear where the song’s intricacies would pose difficulty.
Appearing on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eponymous 1984 debut album, ‘Get Up and Jump’ amplifies their customary funk leanings with Flea’s chaotic bass scrambling in between each line. While the band was overall disappointed with the direction that the album had taken, citing that their raw sound was the missing link, Flea’s bass captures its remnants.
Flea names another early song as an equal struggle to play: ‘Blackeyed Blonde’. Playing the song for a moment, a determined, furrowed look on his face, Flea shows that the speed and precision with which he plays is a constant evolution. ‘Blackeyed Blonde’ features on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ second album, 1985’s Freaky Styley, and the influence of funk musician George Clinton’s production is heard on Flea’s best basslines. Though still facing a long way to go (both sonically and in their personal lives), the album was a step up from their debut in terms of clarifying their sound.
“That early shit where it’s mixing the punk rock feeling with these funk rhythms,” Flea describes, of the songs he views as a continuing struggle. “Those are physically taxing and, also, it’s a groove. You really have to get in there.”
