The 1966 album that inspired Flea’s jazz renaissance: “Deeply spiritual”
For a long time, Red Hot Chili Peppers were one of the very best bands to see live.
The furious energy of punk rock met the charming swagger of soul and funk, channelled through a band who had all the unpredictability and skill of legends from both sonic worlds. The minute Blood Sugar Sex Magik hit the shelves and the public could listen to ‘Give It Away’ in full, they knew that the subsequent live show would be a chaotic marriage of sounds that simply had to be seen.
In the late 1980s and ‘90s, the band honoured that promise. Everything was full-blooded, from the performances, attitude and musicality which the band’s enigmatic bassist Flea led from the front. Not only was he performing a large percentage of the gigs in full nudity, hiding the most private parts with the outline of his guitar, but he was delivering truly mindbending performances that extended the bass parts beyond simple rhythmic timing.
There was a virtuosity to his playing that clearly brought his jazz influences into the mix. The essence of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ genre-fused sound was really down to Flea, who sprinkled jazz funk and soul into his bass parts, meaning there was plenty of substance as well as style. So it’s no surprise that as his career has moved on, he’s leaned further into his jazz influences to a point where he is now releasing solo albums entirely in honour of his beloved genre.
While there has been something of a jazz renaissance in recent years, led by the likes of Kamasi Washington and Ezra Collective, seeing a truly immersive jazz gig is still difficult in the modern day, and Flea has dedicated his own Honora tour to achieving that. But he still believes he’s working in the shadows of the greats. Miles Davis is often on the tip of his tongue when it comes to naming his influences, but there is one musician who was still actively playing up until his death in 2023.
Flea held Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil album up as a gateway record to the world of jazz brilliance and urged fans to see him whenever they could. He explained, “I saw some jazz records that had actually had a lot more profound meaning in my life, but I got this particular one because of all the ones that I saw that I just loved. This is a guy that you can still go and see play today.”
Shorter’s last ever gig was in 2018, when he was 84 years old and was still putting on shows that rivalled some of the best in the modern day. It was in that recent line-up that included other jazz legends where Flea had a transcendental music experience, and one that he urged future jazz lovers to see for themselves.
He said, “It is the most insanely good band. Brian Blade and Wayne Shorter, the way they play together, is so otherworldly. They communicate on such a high level, but it’s for everybody. It’s not like an academic. It’s a deeply spiritual, moving thing.”
Flea honoured that spirit in his own music, blending pure musical virtuosity with accessibility, to help push the most important forms of music into a cultural future.
