Flea thought Anthony Kiedis “an intimidating presence” in the early days of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Some musical moments seem inevitable. When you watch the funk rock outfit Red Hot Chili Pepper’s take to the stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans, you can’t help but think this was always destined to happen, but that wasn’t necessarily the case.
Serendipity is a word that you can apply to a range of different groups, as you can’t help but assume this range of talent was always going to be brought together at some point. Who knows if that’s the case, though? When Red Hot Chili Pepper’s members Flea and Anthony Kiedis first met, you would think there was an instant connection, something that said they were always going to make music, but it was quite the opposite.
The two rubbed each other the wrong way slightly, as their communication style seemed to get lost in translation. While Flea was messing around with another one of his classmates, Kiedis mistook it for bullying and so stepped in and threatened to fight the would-be bassist. Flea found himself taken aback by Kiedis, going as far as to suggest that the singer was one of the more intimidating people that he’d met.
“We had just turned 15,” recalled Flea in a recent interview with Mojo, “It was the beginning of the school year and we had just gotten to high school, so we were all new. Anthony had been in LA for a few years, just like me. He was an intimidating presence. He had his hair cut real short.”
He continued, “The first time he met me he did threaten me,” said the bassist, “There was this other kid who was my friend and I was kind of being an asshole. I had the kid in a headlock and doing what we call in Los Angeles a noogie […] I was doing it playfully but I don’t think he appreciated it.”
Their friendship grew naturally because they had a lot of classes together; however, it wasn’t music that originally bonded them, it was more just them realising that they had similar senses of humour and enjoyed each other’s company. Granted, they were from totally different worlds, but if anything, that helped them connect, as Kiedis could expose Flea to the new rock scene that was taking over Hollywood.
“He lived with his father who was kind of like a Hollywood playboy-actor-wildman [Blackie Dammett] and Anthony knew about rock music and early punk rock and new wave and shit that was happening through his Dad who in the Hollywood scene,” said Flea, “But I didn’t know anything about that, I had my trumpet. So he kind of exposed me to that world, the excitement of it.”
After talking about music and spending a lot of time together in school, it was only a matter of time before they started making some form of music together. Interestingly, the first iteration of Red Hot Chili Pepper’s saw them take on the role of parody band, as they played a one-off gig under the name of “Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem.”
That was it, floodgates open. Someone who was at first an intimidating presence was now the lead singer of a rock band Flea previously didn’t even know he wanted to be in. And the rest is a funk-rock-infused history.
