The one musician who touched Flea the most: “You feel it all”
Being a musician meant much more to Flea than playing every single note perfectly whenever he played.
A lot of the best tunes of all time may not have had the greatest performances on record, but if you listen to the way that an artist is expressing themselves, that usually matters more than anything else on the record. Anyone would want to relate to the person behind the song half the time, but Flea knew when some artists had more passion than just about anyone else he had ever heard.
But the idea of ‘feel’ isn’t something that can really be taught. The artist is only responsible for their own hands whenever they pick up their instrument, and whether it’s listening to Flea pump out some of the best basslines on Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, or watching Neil Young absolutely annihilate the fretboard whenever he loses control of his guitar, you’re hearing someone who’s in a ferocious battle with every single emotion in their body.
No one can really plan for those moments to happen, but Flea was always on the lookout for people who embodied every piece of their music when they played. Sometimes it could be found in some of the greatest jazz players that he heard as a kid, or it could be listening to Cliff Burton parse through one of Metallica’s greatest songs, but the primary thing that mattered was that each song had to have that certain X-factor no one could put their finger on.
And when the fusion genre took off, Jaco Pastorius had that same magic in every note he played. Not everything that he did needed to be all that technical from time to time, but when you look at the way that he brought the bass out front and turned it into a lead instrument must have been like watching Jimi Hendrix for the first time or when people heard Led Zeppelin’s debut album.
There was no reference point for someone who could play like this, but that’s what made it so interesting. Pastorius was staking his claim as one of the best bass players in the world, and while Flea has overshadowed many great artists in his wake, he felt that there isn’t a single soul on this earth who meant each note that they played more than he did when working on tunes like ‘Teen Town’.
He didn’t have to write everything he played, but seeing a master at work like that made Flea’s imagination run wild from the minute that he heard him, saying, “He just took this energy and turned it into what he turned it into. You can feel it in every note. You feel his nervous system, his joy, his suffering, you feel it all. And to really go to that deep of a place with music, and all the work that it takes, is a difficult thing.”
But even if Pastorius came to a tragic end when he passed away, all of those recordings make it seem like he is still here in a way. No one could possibly challenge what he was doing on the bass, and when you look at how he played off of everyone he worked with, no one could get harmonics out of a bass like he did or go for that massive 16th-note run that he does in a song like ‘Come on Come Over’.
That’s the kind of music that will never be recaptured again, and even if Flea could try his best to pay his own tribute to what Pastorius did, most of us are stuck looking in awe at every note. Musicians simply can’t aspire to be something like this because even if they fill out all of the necessary requirements and put their hands in the same places on the fretboard that Pastorius did, getting that spirit down on the tape was something totally different.
