Flea: “Anthony Kiedis and I knew how to infiltrate everywhere”

In an interview granted to Rick Beato the bassist of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fleatold some anecdotes about his beginnings and his friendship with his bandmate Anthony Kiedis.

Flea he explained that, having both grown up in fairly modest-income families in 1970s Hollywood, he and Kiedis had to be quite resourceful to survive. “Anthony and I, as kids, did a lot of crazy things. We were just wild and wild… in Hollywood in the ’70s, it was crazy. We had no money. We both came from low-income families, so we were like, how are we going to eat today? What are we going to do?… Because we’d always been so used to trying to survive on the streets, when it came time to start a band, we had… this drive.”

Flea He also highlighted the diverse musical influences that have shaped the band’s diverse sound Red Hot Chili Peppers. “We didn’t just listen to funk. We listened to Ornette Coleman, we listened to the No New York scene in New York in the ’80s, the Lounge Lizards and James Chance and all that. We loved Led Zeppelin and the big rock bands. We went to see the Who, and at the same time we went to see Jaco Pastorius, we saw Weather Report and Miles Davis.”

The 63-year-old Australian-born musician explained how he and Kiedis managed to get into concerts without paying. “We knew how to infiltrate everywhere. I’m telling you, guys, if you want to infiltrate somewhere, go in backwards, they’ll never notice you. Just go in backwards. I’m telling you, it works.”