“I grew up hating that stuff”: The bands Flea detested as a kid
The origins and influences of Red Hot Chili Peppers are often debated, but there’s no denying that whatever inspired them in their earliest years became the catalyst for their rise as one of rock’s most dominant forces for multiple decades. Their long-lasting legacy isn’t down to pure luck—it’s the result of years spent honing their craft, blending a variety of styles in a way that felt both unique and exciting at the time.
Formed in 1982, the band began life as a funk rock group, and on their first few albums throughout the decade, they zoomed in on this fusion of genres, creating a heavy sound that was driven by prominent rhythms and heavier guitars. One might look at groups such as Parliament-Funkadelic as having been a huge point of reference for the group during this period, but once they got bigger, things began to change for the Los Angeles group.
When they began to achieve mainstream success in the late 1980s and ‘90s, their sound started to become a little more homogenised, and rather than strictly focusing on the funk rock sound that they had established for themselves, they were instead writing stadium-ready rock music that catered to mass appeal. You can hardly blame them for chasing where the money was at the time, and all bands are destined to evolve and move on from their origins at some point, but this led them to lose a little part of their identity as a group.
It’s often a shame when bands lose sight of their origins due to their rise in stature, and considering how Red Hot Chili Peppers offered a completely different prospect to many of their peers in their early years, it’s especially disappointing that they caved to the pressure of becoming global superstars. Some aspects of the band’s sound didn’t change, especially with core members Anthony Kiedis and Flea still involved, but they did show signs of adapting beyond the sound that they established for themselves at the start.
However, in an interview with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast in 2022, bassist Flea spoke about their early years, and when questioned on the sort of thing that the band were collectively inspired by for the creation of their third album, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, it was revealed that they had quite differing opinions on the direction they should take as a group around the time.
Flea began by stating that “we had tapped into a thing that we loved just from our reference points growing up, and it was from music that was exciting us at the time,” citing the rise of hip-hop, English post-punk and New York no wave acts such as Contortions and The Lounge Lizards as being things that they were all into. However, the slap bass legend would go on to reveal that guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons grew up on something far removed from what he was personally raised on.
“Hillel and Jack grew up loving Kiss and Aerosmith and classic rock,” he explained. “I grew up hating that stuff. I grew up loving Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. My stepdad was a jazz musician and that was what I was around from when I was a little kid.”
Speaking further on his early adoration of jazz music, he said that an early memory of his was seeing his stepdad and all of his “jazz buddies” playing in their living room, where a seven-year-old Flea was “just rolling on the floor in hysterics, in a state of ecstasy at what was happening.”
While this demonstrates a clear disparity between what the members of the band were into, all of the respective influences can be heard throughout the album and much of the rest of their early work, and this fusion of sounds is what made their early releases some of the most exciting music they’d make together as a group.
