Socks Away!
Flea (“because I was little and jumped around a lot”) is the Chili Pepper who most personifies the band’s contradictions. He’s the one with the dyed hair and the daft voices (which he’s employed in The Big Lebowski and cartoon The Wild Thornberrys) and the fondness for disrobing on stage. But he’s also the meditator who prays before every meal and who likes Kurosawa films and avant-garde jazz. In the rockstar DNA blender, he’s equal parts Thom Yorke, Sting and Blink-182’s Tome Delonge; a strange brew.
Sat at a table in the hotel suite some hours later and having eschewed all animal products for the last few months, Flea is tearing into a heap of chops with the gusto of a recently released hostage. Until Rick Rubin introduced him to transcendental meditation in the mid-90’s, Flea’s tendency to ricochet between extremes was even more dizzying. “When I first met Flea, it was difficult for him to communicate,” says Rubin. “He’s be racing off in a lot of different directions and not making much sense.”
Until 1992, Flea alternated between voracious drug consumption and short-lived puritanical spells. These days, like Kiedis and Frusciante, he doesn’t even drink or smoke, but knows the ‘oafish troll’ image lingers.
“Anyone’s feelings would be hurt when people say you’re an asshole,” he reasons. “Y’know, sexist frat-rock, jock, shallow-minded party music. But does it impress people that I read Celine and listen to Thelonious Monk and watch Cassavetes films? I don’t know. Stuff in the centre of pop culture has never really interested me that much.”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ status as the Lollapalooza generation’s class clowns, multi-platinum sellers and reluctant godfathers of rap-metal has obscured their left-field origins. In their early years, when other LA metal bands wore spandex, they worked with George Clinton, Gang of Four’s Andy Gill and Captain Beefheart’s drummer, Cliff Martinez. But then, if the Art Ensemble of Chicago had appeared on album sleeves with socks over their penises – as the Chili Peppers did on ‘88’s Abbey Road EP – they’d probably have had credibility problems, too. But, as Smith explains, “We may jump around with socks on our dicks, but when it comes to making records, we don’t take things lightly.”
Still, despite the Chili Peppers’ somewhat boisterous sexuality, and a run-in with the Florida police after spanking a female stage invader in 1990, Flea bristles at charges of sexism.
“Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I didn’t feel we were ever sexist. I always felt very much in the feminine. So I don’t feel that different, I just feel a desire now, if I can, to contribute to the feminist cause.” Only a Californian could say such a sentence with a straight face. Does he, then, regret the wrong impression given by his previous exploits? “I don’t really mind, I embrace the cock-waving lunatic. I think it had its place.” Is he gone for good? “No, the cock waving lunatic likes to have a laugh. Perhaps the cock-waving lunatic is more conscious of how he affects other people.”
When you survey the current US rock scene, most of the bands who aren’t brandishing their childhood tragedies like medals are in some way indebted to the Chili Peppers’ socks-on-cocks hi-jinks. Soberingly, Sum 41 are just about young enough to be Flea’s children. He pleads ignorance of most rap-metal (his 13 year-old daughter Clara is more of a Stokes fan) but acknowledges that if there’s an influence, then “They take the most male part of it. It’s like hair bands in the ‘80’s. Led Zeppelin had so many different sides to them, but everyone wanted to steal this macho suck-my-cock heavy metal.”
Flea’s only regret about the old days is his promiscuity. Currently, he’s at the other end of the extreme. “I’m a bachelor, man. [Mock-bawling] A lonely man nearing 40 and I don’t have a girlfriend.”
And then he has to head home to Malibu, an hour out of town, before Clara goes to bed. “Last week, right after I died my hair blue, her friends came round and she wouldn’t let me go outside and say hello to their parents,” he reports. She was like, [mortified voice] Oh please don’t. It happens all the time.” Every day that the ‘cock-waving lunatic’ remains on sabbatical, one 13-year-old girl must be very relieved.
