Before he was the kinetic bassist known as Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he was Mike, a kid transfixed by the jazz his stepdad played with friends at home.
"They played fast, they played furiously, they played with great tenderness, they played with great violence and physicality, and it was wild," Flea says. "When I was a kid and I heard them playing that jazz, it just blew my mind and changed my life forever."
Flea learned trumpet and started playing in bands. He says his "hippie" stepfather introduced him to records and expanded his world — but ultimately his substance addictions and violent outbursts made Flea's home unbearable.
"There are many times when it was scary to be in the house; I would sleep in the backyard," Flea says. "I remember coming home, and there'd be cops in the yard with their guns drawn. … It was a big neighborhood embarrassment."
Starting from the age of 11, Flea spent more and more time on the street with friends. He experimented with drugs and dabbled in petty crime, but throughout it all, he remained interested in music. He says founding the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Anthony Kiedis, Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons in 1982 provided a "blood bond" — and a place to channel their restless energy.
"From the first time we stepped on stage, we were intent on being the wildest band that ever existed on this planet," he says. "And we wanted to express that in the way we dressed, the way we moved, the where we spoke. We wanted to be shocking. We wanted to cut a hole in the smoggy skies of Hollywood."
The Chili Peppers have sold tens of millions of albums and taken home multiple Grammy Awards. Now in his 60s, more than four decades after that band formed, Flea is releasing his first solo album. Honora is a jazz album that connects back to his childhood.
"I grew up with jazz music and I was listening to jazz music back then," he says. "But of course I've changed — and thank God I've changed. I was a lunatic. I was a street kid ... in so many ways. You know, 19 going on 10. I continue to try to grow as a human being in all the ways — emotionally, spiritually, to be more considerate of my fellow human beings."
Interview highlights
On how his stepfather shaped him as a musician
I can't tell you how many zillions of time I get in and I'm attacking my instrument and letting the rhythm throw me around like a rag doll on the stage that I'm hoping for healing and hoping for letting go of pain and anger and fear.Flea
He played with such aggressiveness and with such intensity that I would see him get into this sort of animal state, beyond thought, ... attacking this instrument, one with it, sweating, breathing, grunting, playing this instrument like completely gone in the music. And I knew that he was using all that pain and anger and fear and anxiety that had made him act like he did, using it in a really healthy way and turning it into something beautiful, transmuting all this pain and anger into something beautiful, this, like, metamorphosis, this alchemy, which is music's greatest gift for him and for all of us who have enjoyed so much music that is made by people expressing their pain and fear and hope in sound. …
I can't tell you how many zillions of time I get in and I'm attacking my instrument and letting the rhythm throw me around like a rag doll on the stage that I'm hoping for healing and hoping for letting go of pain and anger and fear.
On growing up in an abusive home
I remember just being scared. And I remember thinking that I wanted to try to do my best. ... I remember thinking, like, I'll try to be really funny and entertaining or whatever, that I can calm everybody down and bring it to a place where everything's OK.
On who he wanted the Red Hot Chili Peppers to be onstage
I was always a very physical person. I always played sports. I loved to dance. I loved to move. I found extreme freedom in movement. And [I wanted] … that state of enlightenment, of getting beyond thought. I often had that from physical movement, and so that was just a big part of the whole operation, and for all of us. We love movement, we love dance, we invented our own funny dances, just to feel free, to feel alive, to be excited.
On the Chili Peppers' infamous socks-on-genitals performances
We would do that at home, like to be funny, [Anthony] would come … out of his room with just a sock. And we're all laughing and hanging out and we all did it. I remember the first time we did it … we played this strip club on Santa Monica Boulevard … and I remember one time we were playing and we went off stage and we're getting ready to do the encore … Anthony probably said, "Sock, man! Sock, man!" And we're like, "Oh, great! Great idea!" And so we stripped down, put on socks and came out and played — and it was met warmly. And I think on that particular show, we were opening up for another band called Roid Rogers & The Whirling Butt Cherries.
It was Hollywood early '80s. People were just doing weird stuff to be weird. Like, it was really embraced. ... We grew up in Hollywood. We ran around on the streets in Hollywood. I lived in West Hollywood. ... When I was a kid … I'd be on my way to school and I'd see gay leather guys walking out of a gay club, making out in the street dressed in nothing but leather chaps and chains. That's where I grew up. That's where I'm from — and I embraced it all.
On getting busted for indecent exposure
Once in Green Bay, Wisconsin, we played a show and … maybe a sock fell off, I don't know. But we played the show in this club, it was mid-winter in Wisconsin, so snow everywhere, freezing. And we play the show and then we walk off stage and there's the cops and they're like, "Out to the car. You guys are arrested for indecent exposure." … We walk out, they put us in single file and we're walking to the cop car. But me and Anthony look at each other and one of us is like, "Let's make a break for it." And the club is kind of removed, like on the outskirts of town, and we see these woods and we just bolt. It's mid-winter in snow and we are wearing nothing but socks. … It's like midnight, into these woods, naked, and we just run and we get away. We're running for a while, we're freezing, but we're laughing hysterically. We just played a gig, we had run away from the cops, it was like these times when you're like, "Oh my God, I'm so happy in this moment."
On what doing heroin took from him
What stopped me from being a heroin addict — and maybe it's just like my makeup, I don't know — but I always felt guided by things that were so beautiful to me. The sound of John Coltrane playing his saxophone, the way that Somerset Maugham's words flow off the page. The way that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shot a skyhook. These things are so beautiful. And when I would do heroin — and I did it a lot, and I loved it, don't get me wrong, and I could have easily been an addict — but when I wake up the day after doing hard drugs and I would feel my energy diminished, I would feel low, I would feel like I'm not as available for myself, I couldn't do the things that I loved. They would be diminished. … Since I was a little boy, I always felt that in different ways, like there's this light and it's there and it's for me and I can follow it.
Therese Madden and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Jacob Ganz adapted it for the web.
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