Punk Funk Mofos from Hell
The Meters must have been an important influence, too.
Flea: We recorded the Meters’ “Africa,” but we changed the name to “Hollywood” [on Freaky Styley] because that’s where we were from. The Meters had a song called “Jungle Man,” but I swear I’d never heard their song when we recorded our song “Jungle Man” [also on Freaky Styley]. We just met George Porter of The Meters the other day when we were doing a gig in New Orleans. He is such a sweet man, and an amazing bass player. My favorite bass players are probably him, Bootsy Collins, and Larry Graham.
John: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with borrowing from other musicians. This band rips off other bands as much as anybody. A lot of times, some of the most creative things come out of slight alterations of things that have happened in the past. A song might start out as a rip-off of something else, but it’s through our own twisted misrepresentation, and through our personality, so it becomes something completely different.
The Feel
John: Sometimes when I hear players nowadays, it sounds like all their inward pain comes out through their music, like they have a strong desire to prove they’re better than everybody else. It’s as if their insecurity about inadequate penis size comes through their guitar playing. But to me, that’s not what makes a musician “better.” For example, I think that “Three Hours Past Midnight,” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson, from the ‘50s, is the greatest guitar solo of all time. It’s just mean-as-shit-sounding, like he’s just playing with his middle finger, and it makes me want to get violent. To me, that’s what a great musician is. That’s what was so beautiful about the punk rock movement. It had nothing to do with how “good” you were, or how much time you had to practice. It was just an expression of their lives.
But you’re a fairly accomplished technician.
John: Yeah, but you try to have that implied in simplicity. My goal is that any bit of technique that I have is implied, rather than shoved right in your face. With certain musicians, you can tell, even when they play one note, that they could have played a million notes, but they played that one because it was the right one.
Flea: Like Louis Armstrong.
John: Sometimes when I perform, I try to play solos like I have no idea how to play guitar, and that’s helped me a lot. I read that Miles Davis once told that to John McLaughlin: “Play like you have no idea what a guitar is.”
The band seems to have a submerged jazz streak. You mention jazz musicians a lot, and you’ve been known to perform Miles Davis’ “Jeanne Pierre” in concert.
Flea: But we wrote new words for it: [sings] “We’ve got the biggest cocks, we’ve got the biggest cocks.” Yeah, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were influenced by many, many musicians, from simple, aggressive, punk rock to people like Miles and McLaughlin. But it’s never a matter of trying to emulate anybody, but of creating an emotion. For instance, I might really like the way this one Miles Davis song makes me feel, but if I wanted to create that same feeling in a song, I wouldn’t go about it by copying Miles. I’d just remember the way it made me feel, and try to duplicate that feel.
John: A lot of the musicians don’t pick up on the cosmic energy that’s flowing around their bodies at any time. People don’t pick up on those types of energy, they don’t open themselves up to them. We pick up on the spiritual aspects of music just like we pick up on the spiritual aspects of just being alive, everything from having sex to taking a shit.
Flea: Yes.
The Radio
Do you still think of yourselves as an “Organic Anti-Beat Box Band,” as you proclaimed on your last album?
Flea: In the past, I was very anti-drum machines because I thought they were making music get farther away from what it’s all about: emotion. But more recently, I’ve gotten into a lot of music that uses drum machines, like N.W.A, Public Enemy, and George Clinton. It’s just a matter of using them creatively.
John: Like any genre of music, there are good ones and bad ones. I can’t listen to rap stations for long, but I can listen to particular records, like Public Enemy’s. The sound of the drum machine really gets on my nerves.
Flea: Yeah, but you can’t listen to a white station that’s playing Bon Jovi, either. It’s not because it’s black or white; it’s just because the majority of stuff that gets played on the radio is spinless, wimpy bullshit, with an occasional good song.
John: And it’s no coincidence that the white stations always play Whitesnake, Great White and White Lion.
The Past
Flea: I’m 27. I’m originally from Melbourne, Australia, but I came to the U.S. in 1967, moving to L.A. in 1972. I started playing bass in 1980. I took trumpet lessons as a kid, but I only had one bass lesson. The teacher gave me an Eagles song—“Well, ah’m runnin’ down the road, tryin’ to loosen my load”—but I just wasn’t into it, so I decided to figure things out on my own. I played with Fear [an L.A. punk band notorious for its confrontational performances] in 1982, just after their first record came out. I played with them for a little over a year, and it was the first band I was in that made any money and that people came to see. The band demanded that I use a pick and play all downstrokes, but I haven’t used a pick since then. I also played in a band called What This Is, with Hillal Slovak and Jack Sherman, our first two guitar players. Actually, it was Hillel who taught me how to play bass.
When did you start slapping and popping?
Flea: I don’t recall, but I remember seeing other bass players doing it when I was in high school.
Why don’t more rock players slap?
Flea: I don’t know. Maybe it’s because most rock bands today are busy copying other rock bands. But a lot more bands are starting to do it.
John: I’m 19. I was born in New York, but raised in Los Angeles. When I was growing up, I used to just masturbate a lot and practice. It wasn’t until I moved out of my parents’ house, when I was 16, that I realized that playing with other people was an aspect of my music that I needed to develop. I had a big identity problem when I was younger. There was a time when I wanted to shave off my eyebrows so I could look like Adrian Belew.
Flea: But then you found out that Steve Vai had bushy eyebrows, and you were happy.
John: I’m peeing in a bottle right now, Joe.
We could take a break.
John: No, I’m just telling you.
Thanks for sharing.
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