What happens when you mash up punk, funk and hard rock? The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The centrepiece of the band has always been Flea (aka Michael Balzary), whose early bass parts were high-powered slap explosions, influenced by the groove of Larry Graham and all-out aggression of the Ramones.

“My position in the Chili Peppers goes beyond that of just a bass player,” said Flea in the February ’92 issue of Bass Player. “I also consider myself an entertainer. As a bassist, my job is to kick ass!”

By the time the Chilis hit big with 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, funk had become the main ingredient in their genre-spanning mix. Of course, Flea's simple, song-serving basslines were pretty mind-blowing as well.

“I used to play too many damn notes, but I think we're releasing tension on Blood Sugar. The songs are all simple, but it's the intangibles that make them happen: like paying attention and getting inside the groove.

“Don't get me wrong – I love bass players such as Jaco, but the simple stuff is what I was listening to when we did this record.”

For the first time, Flea was able to demonstrate his taste and restraint on ballads such as Under The Bridge, and his deep groove on Give It Away.

“For Give It Away, I had written something and told the guys, ‘Aah, it's just another bassline – I don't really like it. But they said, ‘No, no, it's really good – we gotta do it.’ It ended up being the album's first single.

“I wrote a lot on my 4-track at home. I came up with the core riffs on If You Have to Ask, Suck My Kiss, Naked in the Rain, and Apache Rose Peacock.

“I wrote the Mellowship Slinky groove one night while I was sitting around feeling pretty good; I wanted to write something light and airy and spacious, with that jumpy, swinging James Brown feel.

“Another time, I was watching the movie Taxi Driver; a 5-string was sitting on my lap, and I was just hitting the strings – not even listening to what I was doing.

“A commercial came on, and I realized I had written an entire song – all the parts for The Righteous & the Wicked – without even thinking about it. It was nutty – that song came from Jodie Foster!”

Dedicated to boundary-pushing US jazz-punk bassist Mike Watt (of The Minutemen, fIREHOSE and Porno for Pyros amongst others), Blood Sugar Sex Magic mined a rich seam of bass guitar chaos.

The team assembled to produce the album was also unmatchable. Producer Rick Rubin, engineer Brendan O'Brien and the band's lineup at its peak.

“Our producer, Rick Rubin, encouraged me to play simply, and the more I did it, the more I liked it. Part of it was the sound I got this time; on previous albums, I didn't have a nice, big tone that sounded good with simple parts.

“Another big factor was that we toured so hard after Mother’s Milk, and every night I was up there jumping around, sweating my ass off, playing as hard as I could, beating the shit out of my bass. When I got home, I wanted to relax.

“I didn't play one note on Blood Sugar to prove I was ‘Mr. Bitchin’ Bass Player’. I'm sure there will be a time when I'll want to be a big bassopotomous again, but right now, I just want to be part of the band and make it happen correctly.

“It's important to remember that anyone who has good technique can, with just one note, imply a billion more. Louis Armstrong never needed to play fast.”

Modern punks The Bobby Lees had just completed a sold-out European tour when they realized something was wrong. Crowds flocked, merchandise shifted – but when the band got home to the States and tallied the numbers, the reality was stark. “Everyone made almost no money,” says guitarist and vocalist Sam Quartin.

The Woodstock-founded foursome had self-funded their last three album releases after struggling to secure major-label support. But even for a band accustomed to doing it themselves, the situation no longer worked.

The perpetrator was clear – in an Instagram post later that year, Quartin and bandmates Kendall Wind (bass) and Macky Bowman (drums) announced an indefinite hiatus, citing streaming services' payouts as one of the biggest reasons mid-sized bands can’t sustain themselves.

“People don't want to say something because they're scared they won't get put on the playlist,” reasons Quartin. “We were like, 'Fuck it. Someone's gotta be honest!’" After the announcement she took a moment to disconnect, heading for a swim at her local river – oblivious to what was playing out online.

“I don’t have a personal Instagram account,” she says. “But my friend does. She said, ‘You should check the post, there’s a really positive response!’”

Expecting a message from a label or manager, Quartin instead found something far stranger. “There was a message from Jason Momoa, a video of him in his car saying, ‘Hey, you gotta call me. I want to help. I’m hosting SNL next week – I’ll be in New York. Maybe we can find a solution.’”

Quartin called him immediately. “He said, ‘We’ll get the record funded. How does that sound?’ He didn’t ask for anything in return. If only everyone who has the same position could just do one act of kindness for one of their favorite artists.”

The experience was surreal – while Momoa was busy promoting Aquaman, he was equally happy talking gear. “Kendall ended up giving him Zoom bass lessons when he was on set!” Quartin recounts.

If Momoa’s involvement felt like the beginning of a Hollywood ending, reality quickly intervened. The Bobby Lees found themselves confronting the same barriers they'd been railing against in the first place. Only this time, the challenges were being chronicled on Momoa’s HBO docuseries, On The Roam.

“Jason took us to Atlantic, Turnstile’s label, and they passed,” Quartin says with a droll laugh. “I wish that hadn't been filmed!”

The rejection was especially stark given the flawed discovery model of one the industry’s biggest streaming platforms and the ramifications for its algorithm towards new artists. As Momoa joked to the band, “‘If a new Nirvana or Bob Dylan emerged today, would the industry even recognize it?’” For a moment, it seemed the answer might be no.

Enter Epitaph – founded by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, the legendary punk imprint connected with The Bobby Lees’ first new music in years in a way others hadn’t. For Quartin, the relief was overwhelming.

“They filmed us going into Epitaph on the show, but they weren't with me after,” she recalls. When I got in the car to go back to the hotel,I just started crying.”

After years of self-funding records, scraping together tour budgets and publicly questioning whether they could continue, The Bobby Lees had finally found a home.

Momoa wasn’t the only famous supporter to emerge from the hiatus. “When we were in San Diego, Keanu Reeves came to a show,” says Quartin. “He said, ‘I'm a fan.’ I said, ‘Me too!’ It's cool when people whose work you admire appreciate what you do.”

Another unexpected ally was Flea, who Bowman knew thanks to his mom’s stint as a backing vocalist for Red Hot Chilli Peppers. “When we posted about the hiatus, Flea helped save money for our West Coast tour by putting the band up at his house – but I still haven’t met him!”

The emotional rollercoaster has inevitably bled into their latest record, New Self, specifically in the rap-rock leanings and snare snaps of the title track. Quartin admits to seeking something heavier while songwriting. “I was listening to the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine. The goal was an empowering ‘don't fuck with me’ undeniable head nod.”

While longstanding guitarist Nick Casa has since amicably parted ways (“Every reason he had for leaving, I agree”), the pair’s dual-Telecaster command was still at play for the album. But Quartin was ready to push past some long-held studio habits.

“Dave Sardy [producer] brought over a few guitars. I used to be so superstitious about using mine. I bought it at the Chelsea Hotel, in Dan's Guitar Shop.” It’s a landmark of Manhattan that was once home to Patti Smith and Jimi Hendrix. “I was like, ‘Maybe it has some of their juice!’”

Wind and Bowman also picked up some fresh tricks in the interim, playing as part of Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion. “Kendall and Macky are telepathic now,” she boasts. “A conjoined force!”

Ahead of hitting the road again this autumn, Quartin can see that while the economics that pushed The Bobby Lees to the brink haven’t changed, her perspective has. For the first time, they’re are no longer starting from underwater.

“This whole process turned the volume down on all the crap. I used to be like, ‘Why is that happening?’ But now, it's like, ‘Okay, we've said something. We've done our part. Let's use this opportunity to make the best work we can.’ We’re no longer paying attention to the bullshit.”

• New Self is out now via Epitaph Records.

In 2023, Hollywood superstar and everyone’s favorite nice guy Keanu Reeves made a musical comeback with his band Dogstar’s reunion album, Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees – plus a tour that spanned nearly 100 dates.

Fast forward three years, and Dogstar is back with their second-phase sophomore album, All In Now. The record continues to position Reeves as a bona fide bass player rather than a Hollywood A-lister turned musician – thanks to its melodic basslines and low-end-driven songs that earned him the nickname “Chordal Reeves.”

“[It’s] because he plays so many chords on the bass,” singer-guitarist Brett Domrose tells the Los Angeles Times.

“That’s actually how we started when I met Keanu,” drummer Ribert Mailhouse adds. “At first there was no guitar player – it was just him on bass and me on drums.”

And while Reeves’ acting and music worlds rarely collide, he did have the privilege of a one-to-one lesson with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea while filming Gus Van Sant’s 1991 adventure drama My Own Private Idaho.

“He’s such an amazing artist and person, and he didn’t give me a technical lesson; he gave me a philosophical lesson,” Reeves told Bass Player in a 2024 interview, “which reminds me of surfing. It’s like you’ve just got to go do it and you’ve got to feel it.

“You know, I could give you technique – ‘Here’s your balance, here’s a way to duck, here’s a way to get on the board, here’s how to pop up.’ But eventually, you’ve got to be in the water, and you have to learn about the water and learn about a wave, and you learn by doing it.

“He wasn’t giving me, like, ‘OK, when you’re slapping, try not to use too much of your arm and just stay with your hand,’ you know? It was just like, ‘Play it, feel it.’ I thought that was profound.”

As for what he took from that impromptu lesson, Reeves replied, “I’m still trying to learn how to ‘play it, feel it’. That’s a never-ending journey, isn’t it?”

Elsewhere in the 2024 interview, Reeves admits that he doesn’t see himself as worthy of a signature bass – and reveals which basses his most popular on-screen characters would play.

No bassist in the past 30 years has prompted more bare-chested youngsters to pick up the bass guitar than Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His aggressive, slap-heavy style lit up the mid-’80s L.A. scene, exemplified by their cover of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground.

On the group’s first four albums – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Freaky Styley, Uplift Mofo Party Plan and Mother’s Milk, Flea mixed the thumping innovations of Larry Graham and Louis Johnson with his own style, built on punk rock abandon.

“Understand that my roots are in punk, which was all about playing hard, fast, and loud,” said Flea in a Bass Player interview from January 1992.

It all started in high school, when guitarist Hillel Slovak asked Flea to play in his band. He bought a Fender Mustang and played his first gig two weeks later.

“Hillel and Anthony and I were living together at that time, and a friend of ours needed an opening act, so we put a band together without rehearsing. We were billed as Tony Flow & the Miraculously Majestic Masters Of Mayhem.

“When we got onstage, I started some funk-bass thing, Anthony read a poem, and we just played. At the next show, we were the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

At the time, no-one could have imagined the extraordinary success that awaited. Yet things could have turned out very differently.

Just as this early incarnation of the Chili Peppers was beginning to gain momentum, Flea auditioned for the notorious L.A. punk outfit Fear.

“By 1982, I had shaved my head and got into taking acid and acting crazy, and the next thing you know I had quit Hillel’s band and joined Fear. It was a complete turn – all of a sudden I was playing bare-bones, raw-energy punk rock.”

Flea’s involvement in Fear came at a pivotal moment in the development of the Southern California punk scene, exposing one of the bass world’s future stars to a band whose abrasive sound, controversial reputation, and fierce live performances helped define a turbulent chapter in underground music history.

“The musicians in Fear were great. The drummer, Spit Stix, was a big influence on my musicianship. I had never warmed up before I played; he taught me how to get my blood going before a show, how to be physical, and how to push the music. I really enjoyed being in Fear.”

Drawn to funkier feels, however, it wasn’t long before Flea was looking to leave the group.

“I discovered that what I was listening to was different from what they were into; they wanted the band to go in a metal direction, and I liked the funky feel. It became more obvious I wasn't going to have the freedom to be creative.”

The Chili Peppers themselves were also gaining fans with a signature brand of punk-funk and over-the-top antics. By this point, the lineup had shifted to include Flea, Anthony Kiedis, guitarist Jack Sherman, and drummer Cliff Martinez.

“As a band, the Chilli Peppers was really starting to happen. I wanted to leave Fear, but I didn't have the guts to quit. I was sitting there trying to get up the nerve to call, and just as I reached for the phone, it rang. ‘Hi, Flea, you're fired.’ It was great! From then on, it was just the Chili Peppers for me.”

Though his tenure with Fear was relatively short, it sharpened Flea's skills as a performer and exposed him to the raw energy that would later become a defining characteristic of his slap bass technique.

“When I got into punk, the way I slapped wasn't really funky; I was just hitting it as hard as I could, just abusing the bass. I was really into the punk ethic: play every note like it's your last! You could be dead tomorrow! Play for today! And when you perform, give every ounce of energy you have, but it’s not because you're better than anyone else – it's just what you have to do.

“You do it because you mean it: you're pissed, because things are twisted. And that's beautiful – the punk thing is so honest and sincere. Even though the genre was finished a long time ago, the intensity is still important to me.”

Flea has recalled the time he jammed with Parliament-Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel at one of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s earliest European shows.

In the Summer of 1985, the Chili Peppers, fresh from the release of Freaky Styley, hopped across the pond as a band for the first time and played their first European gig at Germany’s Rockpalast Loreley Open Air Festival.

It was a slot that found them opening for George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic. An apt scheduling, considering it was Clinton who had produced Freaky Styley.

Naturally, P-Funk were a huge inspiration to the band, and Flea in particular. Now, in a new interview with Trackstar, the RHCP bass hero discussed the moment he had an impromptu jam with Hazel.

After being played the iconic Maggot Brain, Flea paid tribute to Hazel’s guitar style, saying, “I remember George [Clinton], when I first started hanging out with him, was like, ‘Man, you just can’t play like that until your heart has been shattered to smithereens and you have lost all hope.’

“[It has] such a beautiful sense of melody. Obviously you put in the work to have the dexterity and the ability to express himself, but man, it’s so beautiful.”

Of his surprise jam with Hazel, Flea adds, “I once had the privilege of playing with Eddie Hazel – and I will never, ever forget it.

“This was like the first time Chili Peppers ever went to Europe, and we opened up for Funkadelic at this festival in Germany. There was a moment on stage where I found just me and Eddie at soundcheck in the daytime, we were both plugged in, and I had this thing I was doing on the bass back then – this real fast slapping thing.

“And he was just gassing on it, and started jamming with me, playing these fast rhythms. We just locked in for about five minutes, looking at each other, just going for it.

“I’ll never, ever forget it. He knew he was being generous with me and what it meant to me to do it. But he was having fun, too, and I was just in awe and hypnotized and transfixed.”

In related news, earlier this year Flea confirmed that Red Hot Chili Peppers are working on a new album, and they've been recording at John Frusciante's house.

In 1989, when the Red Hot Chili Peppers had their first big hit with a frenzied cover of Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground, the group's hyperkinetic bass player, Flea, could also be seen hopping around MTV in the video for Young MC's colossal hip-hop crossover, Bust a Move.

The recording experience was bittersweet, however, as Flea told Bass Player in February ’96. “The bassline I wrote ended up being a major melody of the tune, and I felt I deserved songwriting credit and money because it was a No. 1 hit. They sold millions of records, and I only got $200!

“Afterwards, my lawyer told them, ‘You should throw down Flea some cash,’ but the record company said, ‘We told him exactly what to play.’

“The truth is no-one was even in the room at the time but me and the engineer! It was ridiculous, but I learned from it.”

Check out the recording for Flea's funky beat-four variations. In each bar, his staccato notes on beats one and three lock in a groove, while the ghost-note shuffle feel on the ‘and’ of three anticipates the snare on beat four.

When asked on X what happened to the gloriously bizarre trousers that he wore in the music video, Flea responded, “They were stolen from the trunk of my car along with my badass leather jacket. I had just moved into a nice house for the first time in my life and I got robbed on the first night.”

Needless to say, Flea ended up on firm financial footing despite the alleged snub from Young MC. With new members John Frusciante and Chad Smith in tow, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Mother’s Milk, which was more cohesive than anything the band had previously recorded.

Higher Ground remains the album’s most celebrated track, with Flea’s slap bass replacing the clavinet of the original Stevie Wonder hit. It’s still one of his most widely recognised riffs.

Here he is rocking the same pair of stuffed animal pants on the David Letterman Show. With some help from bass legend Will Lee on backing vocals, of course.

Flea would be the first to call himself a punk rocker before he ever took on the mantle of funk legend. But his infusion of punk ethos into the playing style of Louis Johnson and Larry Graham hipped a generation of rock fans to what funk bass playing is all about.

“My playing has always been very physical. A constant whackeda-whacke-da-whack. I don't do it to impress people; I just play what's fun.

“My roots are in punk, which was all about playing hard, fast, and loud. As the Chili Peppers got more and more funky, it was a natural evolution: the energy of punk translated into the music we felt like writing.”

It's been four years since Red Hot Chili Peppers released their 12th and 13th albums, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, respectively. And with Flea set to release his solo debut, Honora, in March, questions regarding the Chili Peppers' next outing are naturally starting to arise.

“We’ve been writing music together, recording at [guitarist] John Frusciante’s house, and the music feels great,” the band's bassist reveals in a new interview with MOJO, while admitting that the two have been on a quest to unearth “magic” in the studio.

“Ultimately, once we start playing, it’s about… just catching a magic groove and doing it good.”

As for the difference between crafting a solo album and a Chili Peppers record, Flea explains, “It’s like being in a marriage with four people that’s always moving and changing, all these challenges and all the things that you have to deal with.

“Egos are inescapable and my ego is as big and as fragile as anybody’s. But it’s always, no matter what, this intrinsic part of who I am and it’s alive and it’s beautiful and you never know what shape it’s going to take next. I really feel like that right now.”

In a recent interview with Rick Beato, Flea recounted how he ended up getting his cherished – and now-iconic – 1961 Fender Jazz Bass from a seller on social media.

William “Billy Bass” Nelson Jr, who co-founded Parliament–Funkadelic alongside George Clinton, died on Saturday January 31, just days after his 75th birthday.

The news was confirmed on Clinton’s Facebook page. “Rest in eternal peace and funk,” the account commented. No cause of death has been reported.

As a teenager, Nelson worked in Clinton's barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey, and was recruited to join his vocal group the Parliaments.

When their 1967 single (I Wanna) Testify became a crossover hit, Clinton put together a touring band, with Nelson gravitating from guitar to bass guitar.

Having brought in Eddie Hazel, whose Maggot Brain guitar solo would later become one of the group’s most celebrated works, Nelson coined the name Funkadelic – a term that perfectly captured the band’s fusion of groove, and psychedelic experimentation.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2010, Nelson said: “One day, Eddie and I were tossing ideas back and forth when we came up with the name Funkadelic, which perfectly fit the psychedelic funk music.”

When the group moved to Detroit in search of a record deal at Motown, Nelson befriended James Jamerson, who taught him how to stay in the lower register.

“Music for My Mother is a good example of how Jamerson taught me to play bass. I used an Ampeg bass on that song.”

Nelson was also a trailblazer when it came to flamboyant stage personas, famously performing in a diaper and combat boots in response to being called the “baby” of the band.

In his 2014 autobiography, Clinton wrote: “Billy set a high standard for everything that followed. His Funkadelic work is still among my all-time favorite stuff. He had the Motown flavor with an aggressive rock attitude.”

As well as contributing to Funkadelic’s debut, Nelson’s basslines also anchored seminal work on Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow, and Maggot Brain; Parliament’s Osmium, and Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome.

Nelson and Clinton eventually went their separate ways in 1971 following a money dispute. Clinton replaced him with the former James Brown bassist Bootsy Collins.

Nelson found work back at Motown, collaborating with the likes of Chairmen of the Board, the Coasters, Wilson Pickett, Johnnie Taylor, the Commodores, Jermaine Jackson, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, and Lenny Williams.

He also reunited with Eddie Hazel to play on the Temptations’ Shakey Ground, before briefly rejoining P-Funk for the single Better by the Pound from 1975’s Let’s Take It to the Stage, and Blackbelt Thumpasauric Bass a year later.

Having toured with various Parliament-Funkadelic lineups in the early '90s, Nelson re-joined in 1994 and released solo work under the name O.G. Funk, before being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. He also toured with 420 Funk Mob and Sons of F.U.N.K.

In his latter years, Nelson enjoyed a surge of name-checking by Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His early Funkadelic work has been sampled by the likes of 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, D. Dre and Massive Attack.

“I have seen and listened to countless incredible bass players of every flavor in my life. I listen and watch with great intensity. Billy Bass is the funkiest bass player that ever lived,” Flea said in tribute.

“The hardest, down dirtiest, and funkiest. His bass playing is impenetrable and undeniable. Every note a mighty oak, a bull elephant, a bomb. When I watched him play live I was in awe, humbled by his greatness. Every p funk recording he made will be heard til there are no more ears. And we will dance, we will trance. There will never be another.”

Flea has built quite a bass collection over the years. The Red Hot Chili Peppers powerhouse's treasure trove includes, perhaps most notably, his cherished 1961 Shell Pink Fender Jazz Bass, which has been his primary studio instrument since 2006.

However, Flea himself admits that, for many years, he was far from a gearhead. “I always thought [with regards to] electric rock musicians' obsession with equipment, ‘Give me a break, man. It's all in the fingers in the heart. Give me any piece of shit, I don't care,’” he tells Rick Beato. “That's how I always felt. That was kind of one of my arrogant things.”

However, that all changed when Flea gave an old Fender a spin and resonated with its tone. It was an enlightening experience. From that point on, he was hooked.

In his quest for a vintage bass sometime in the 2000s, Flea took to what was then known as Twitter, then still in its earliest days.

“I remember it was in the very beginning of Twitter... and I was like, ‘I want a bass.’ And some guy wrote me, ‘I've got one for you.’ [The] guy met me in a Tower Records parking lot and gave me that bass. I traded him a Modulus for it!”

“You got the better end of that,” quips Beato, echoing what the rest of us are thinking.

“I hope that he feels good that I have gotten so much [out of it],” Flea replies. “I've recorded every record on it since I got it. I don't play it that much in big stadiums with the Chili Peppers, because [of] the old pickups and stuff. But it's a beautiful bass.”

His love affair with Fender Jazz Basses has been going strong since then, culminating in the release of his own signature bass in 2016 – a precise recreation of this rare Twitter find.

“The ’61 Fender Jazz Bass is magic. It's truly the greatest bass I’ve ever played,” Flea said upon release. “Fender embodies everything I love about music and individuality. The Flea Jazz Bass is a true resurrection and possesses that wave of energy a bass should give you when it’s in your hands.”

In more recent news, Flea has just announced his first solo record and shared the first taste of what we can expect with his debut single, A Plea – recorded in collaboration with double bassist and composer, Anna Butterss.

If there’s one thing that immediately alerts you to the fact that Flea is playing bass guitar on a record, it’s his tone: a vast, muscular and melodic sound that has the power to shift any element of the music that surrounds it.

Yet in spite of his illustrious career with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the huge respect in which he’s held within the music world (and not just by bassists) – earning him a place among the 100 best bass players of all time – Flea has never talked about a solo album. Until now.

With his first solo record expected in 2026, Flea recently shared a music video for his debut single, A Plea, directed by his daughter Clara Balzary.

Naturally, the new track features plenty of four-string exploits as Flea delivers a frantic fingerstyle groove that drives home the restlessness of the song.

And in characteristically obtuse style, at its heart is an unexpected partnership with one of today’s unsung bass heroes, double bassist and composer Anna Butterss, who thickens the groove with an improvised bassline of their own.

The Australian-born Butterss has been a name to watch for some time now, bubbling under with their work for the likes of Jason Isbell, Jeff Parker, Phoebe Bridgers and Jenny Lewis. Their presence at the heart of a niche L.A. jazz scene also culminated in a critically-acclaimed solo album, Mighty Vertebrate.

The shift from the Chili Peppers’ typical soundscape may surprise many Flea fans, but this project is more than just a chance to prove he remains one of the very finest bassists on the planet – for Flea, who also tackles trumpet on the album, it’s all about building a bridge.

In a press release he described his new single as mirroring the issues he sees in modern society.

“I’m always just trying to be myself. I don’t care about the act of politics. I think there is a much more transcendent place above it where there’s discourse to be had that can actually help humanity, and actually help us all to live harmoniously and productively in a way that’s healthy for the world. There’s a place where we meet, and it’s love.”

• A Plea is out now.

It was an early evening in June 2006, at the Hollywood studio of music photographer Neil Zlozower. Decades of rock photos covered the walls of a dark alcove that opened into a large, well-lit room, where a busy assistant on a ladder adjusted a huge backdrop.

“Is Charlie here yet?” The impending arrival of the veteran jazz bassist was clearly causing anxious excitement despite the bona-fide rock star already present. Flea responded by strapping on his '61 Fender Jazz Bass and stabbing energetically at its flatwound strings, escaping into his own musical world.

When Charlie Haden finally stepped from his hired limo, the whole place seemed to relax. The two bassists had never met before, and the reason for their meeting was an advertising photo session for Gallien Krueger, whose bass amps both players endorsed.

Flea's band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, one of the most creative and successful in rock, and Flea himself is one of the genre’s most revered bassists.

He found his playing voice melding funk techniques with the intensity of punk, but his initial musical fascination was with jazz, a passion that has stayed with him decades after commending himself to a life in rock & roll.

Haden, whose lengthy resumé includes legends like Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett, and Pat Metheny, as well his own Liberation Music Orchestra and Quartet West, began singing on his family's country radio show.

Following his older brother, he took up bass, then got hooked on jazz after hearing pioneering saxophonist Charlie Parker. Haden joined Ornette Coleman's revolutionary group when he was still a teenager.

Flea: “You were singing country music as a kid. And all of a sudden you're playing with Ornette Coleman! What happened there? You were pretty young.”

Charlie Haden: “I was 19.”

Flea: “From singing country music at 15 to inventing free jazz with Ornette at 19 – that's a big switch. Four years isn't that long!”

Charlie Haden: “Before that, in the late '40s, there was no TV and I listened to classical and jazz radio constantly.”

Flea: “Did you study jazz?”

Charlie Haden: “I’m self-taught. One of my brothers played bass on the radio show, and he had some jazz records, but you're talking about Missouri. It was hard to find records, and nobody played jazz.

“I went to a concert in Omaha, Nebraska – Jazz at the Philharmonic with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and Oscar Peterson – and when I heard Charlie Parker play, that was it. It was unbelievable. He had beautiful harmonies and beautiful melodies. You hear the gamut of beauty in his playing.”

Flea: “It's hard for me to fathom: not only that level of musical sophistication, but the depth of feeling. And to step so far beyond what had ever been done before on an instrument.

“When I was a kid, I had such an opportunity to get that education through my step-dad, who was a jazz bassist. I was 12 when my parents divorced, and all of a sudden I was living with a jazz musician who was having jam sessions at the house all the time. It changed my life.

“My goal was to become a jazz trumpet player, but then I got into my early teens and I had to rebel against my parents. All I wanted to do was be a punk rocker and play the bass guitar. I went completely in the other direction from jazz, and now I'm trying to catch up. I'm studying theory and trying to play along over bebop changes with the Jamey Aebersold books and everything.”

Charlie Haden: “On trumpet and bass?”

Flea: “Mostly on trumpet, but on bass, too. I regret not learning that stuff when I was young, but my path is my path and it's been really good for me.”

Charlie Haden: “Well, you still have that learning opportunity. I never discouraged my kids from what they were excited about, and they grew up hearing all kinds of music. They went in the direction they went in on their own; I just encouraged them.

“Josh used to say, ‘Dad, you have to listen to this.’ it would be the Meat Puppets and Black Flag and all kinds of punk rock. And I'd say, with a forced smile, ‘Oh, my goodness! That's great, Josh. It's beautiful!’

“Did you ever hear Jimmy Blanton play the bass?”

Flea: “On records, yes.”

Charlie Haden: “He was amazing. Duke Ellington's band came through St. Louis and played a dance – back then it was dances and not concerts. Afterward Duke went back to the hotel to sleep, and all the musicians went to an after-hours session.

“This young bass player was playing, and these guys flipped out. They went back and woke up Duke Ellington, and brought him to the session. Duke hired Jimmy on the spot, and the band left St. Louis with two bass players. Jimmy Blanton made all those records in 1940 and 1941, and then he got what they called ‘consumption’ back then, tuberculosis.”

“He got very sick in L.A. and they had to leave him in a sanitarium. Milt Hinton told me he went there every day to see him. Milt was playing in Cab Calloway's band at that time, and every night they'd dedicate a song to him. Milt said he was there when Jimmy took his last breath. He was 23 years old. But if you've ever heard him play ... man!”

Flea: “It's unbelievable how many guys die so young. Booker Little is a big one for me. He has one of my favorite trumpet sounds ever.”

Charlie Haden: “I played with him. He used to come into the Five Spot when I was there with Ornette and Don Cherry.”

Flea: “Did you ever play with Eric Dolphy?”

Charlie Haden: “I recorded with Dolphy on this album called Free Jazz with Ornette and Don Cherry, Freddy Hubbard, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, and my closest friend in life, Scott LaFaro, who used to share an apartment with me in L.A. before I moved to New York.”

“Scott was killed in a car accident when he was 25. He played on a very famous album by the Bill Evans Trio called A Sunday at the Village Vanguard. That was one of the last records he made.

“He was a tenor sax player with his dad's dance band when he was in high school, and one night the bass player didn't show up, so his dad made him play. He started playing the bass and he loved it, but he had the concept of the horn in his head. You can hear it when you hear him play.”

Both of you started your musical lives with something besides bass. Has that affected the way you think about or approach bass?

Flea: “Since I played trumpet first, when I picture notes in my head, I make a valve pattern with my hand and finger it on the trumpet. I never think about the bass like that, and I'm sure that has a big effect on my approach to playing bass. I never think of notes as fret patterns. I always think about it on trumpet.”

Charlie Haden: “So you think of yourself as a trumpet player first?”

Flea: “I don't know!"

Charlie Haden: “The real answer is that the instrument really doesn't matter. It's the music. I tell my students that, especially the bass players. They have to take themselves away from the concept of the bass. It's really important to discover your own music, and you're not going to discover your music if you're trying to play like some other bass player.”

Flea: “I always say the same thing. Any instrument is just a vehicle to express who you are and your relationship to the world. No matter what level you're doing it on, playing music is an opportunity to give something to the world.”

Charlie Haden: “When I was a kid and my older brother played the bass on our radio show, I noticed that when he didn't play, the fullness of the music stopped, and I was really attracted to that sound. He wouldn't allow me to touch the bass, but the minute he left the house, I'd pick it up, put on a record, and play along.”

What's important to you in terms of your sound?

Flea: “As time goes by, I realize more and more how important it is to have a good sound. Recently, I've only been playing all-wood vintage basses, whereas before I didn't really think it mattered what bass you played. I was so into being raw about it and trying to get across what was in my heart.

“I always heard guys talking about using this or that amp, this or that setting, and certain strings, and I thought it was all bullshit. I thought what mattered was how you hit them and your emotional intent, and I still think that's the bottom line. I mean, Charlie Parker could have played some old piece-of-shit sax and it would have sounded like Charlie Parker.

“But now I treasure the instruments that I play more and more. So now I play a 1961 Fender bass, and I love the old wood sound. It sounds really nice; I think it's further away from being a tree and is more used to being a bass now.”

Charlie Haden: “I always look at the sound of the bass as being like a rainforest: I try to get a deep wood sound. There are so many jazz bass players who spend thousands of dollars for these old instruments, like the classical guys do, and then they proceed to put a horrible pickup on it, plug into a horrible amplifier, turn up the treble or reverb or whatever, and it sounds like an electric bass. So they could have saved all that money and got an electric bass to begin with.

“I want to get the sound of the wood, so I use an amplifier that's made specially for the acoustic bass, and I also use gut strings on the G and D, which bring the wood sound out of the instrument. For the A and E, the lower-vibration strings, I use Thomastik SpiroCore because gut strings would be too loose.”

Flea: “The most incredible thing about the upright bass – the few times I've played one – is the way you can feel the whole thing vibrate when you have it up against your body. It's like your body is resonating with the instrument. It's a very fulfilling feeling.”

Charlie Haden: “That's why I stand so close to the bass when I play. One night in 1959 I was playing at the Five Spot with Ornette, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins, and I always play with my eyes closed – but I opened my eyes, and there was some guy onstage with his ear next to my f-hole. And I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ And Ornette was like, ‘That's Leonard Bernstein!’”

Flea: “I grew up listening to anything I could get my hands on. The Beatles were first, but jazz was the real discovery. When I was 12 and wanted to be a trumpet player, it was all Kenny Dorham, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and Miles.”

Charlie Haden: “Did you ever hear Fats Navarro?”

Flea: “Oh, yeah. And Lee Morgan is really my guy, too. The fact that those guys could play like that still boggles my mind. Outside of musicians or real jazz aficionados, people don't even understand. They think jazz is wild and crazy, but they don't realize the discipline, work ethic, and academics that are required.”

“What it really boils down to is this: To be great, you have to be able to love and care way more than your physical body is capable of.”

How do you tap into that when you’re onstage or in the studio?

Flea: “I just try to be who I am and do the best I can. I love music, and I love connecting as a human being.”

Charlie Haden: “I always tell my students, if you want to become a great jazz musician, first you have to strive to become a great human being, with qualities of humility, and appreciativeness. Do that, and you might have a shot at becoming a great jazz musician.

“There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is only right now. And in that moment, everything changes because you see a different perspective of life. You see your complete insignificance in the world. Only then are you able to see your true importance to the universe. And that's what real humility is.”

Flea: “I remember being on tour and being miserable. I had broken up with my long-time girlfriend, I was unhealthy, I was stressed out, and I couldn't sleep. I was falling apart. I didn't want to do it anymore. I know I shouldn't be whining, being a big rock star and all that, but at the time I was very unhappy.

“Then one day I woke up and thought to myself, 'So what if I'm miserable? It's not about me, it's about going out and playing for people.' So I tried to forget about all my problems and concentrate on what I could give.

“We all have our burden – you can try to fill it up with drugs or some other kind of addiction, but the bottom line is that the only thing you can do is give.”

For Vulfpeck's Joe Dart, Flea was (and still is), undisputedly, his bass hero. “When I think of bass vocabulary, for me, when I was in my teens, I was listening to a lot of Flea,” Dart divulges on Scott's Bass Lessons.

“It's him taking from Parliament-Funkadelic, so it'd be a lot of Bootsy [Collins] in there, and then a lot of horn players [like] Mayceo [Parker], Fred Wesley... My hero, Flea, was actually copying a lot of stuff from bass players that I wasn't hip to because they weren't as visible as he was. Flea was such a visible bass player, and he was the guy.”

Turns out, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bass player didn't just inspire him from afar, but rather, a keen young Dart decided to take matters into his own hands, and find a way to get in touch with Flea.

“I wrote Flea a fan mail letter when I was, like, 12 or 13 years old, and I was just like, ‘I want to do what you're doing. And do you have any advice?’” And while many fan letters go unanswered, Flea took the time to craft a reply for the young bassist, who would eventually become central to Vulfpeck’s sound.

“He wrote me back – it's unbelievable. He's the sweetest guy ever,” he continues. “He wrote me back a handwritten letter, and his advice to me was like, ‘Remember that the bass is a supportive instrument. You're there to play a supportive role. You're part of a rhythm section.’

“And he said, ‘If there's one thing I can tell you, it's listen to James Jamerson on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, and learn it. And that'll sort of set you up.’ And, because you don't listen to Flea and immediately think, like, ‘Oh, there's a James Jamerson guy.’ You don't just immediately hear that.

“He's not copying James Jamerson. But that's just essential, because it's supportive bass playing, but it's also so melodic – and then I started listening to what James was playing on some of that Stevie Wonder stuff: it's almost like a bass solo, but it's hitting all the right marks.”

Earlier this year, Dart continued to cement his own bass legacy through his ongoing collaboration with Sterling by Music Man, completing the trilogy of Joe Dart signature models priced under $500.

As any cosmology textbook will tell you, the massive stars that burn brightest self-destruct most intensely. Somehow, Eric Avery survived the rock ’n’ roll supernova of Jane's Addiction.

The band – which Avery formed in 1985 alongside singer Perry Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro, and drummer Stephen Perkins – mixed melodic bass guitar with soaring vocals and thrashy guitars and drums to concoct the sonic soup that nourished the nascent alternative rock revolution.

“The music of Jane's Addiction revolves around Eric's bass playing,” Flea told Bass Player. “He is no virtuoso at putting down fancy speed chops, but conceptually he is absolutely incredible, melodically and groove-wise. There'll never be anything like it again. It's one-of-a-kind bass playing. Eric is one of the greatest rock bass players ever. I'd put him in the top five or 10, for sure."

With Avery's earthy bass hooks driving hits like Been Caught Stealing, and stellar album tracks such as Three Days and Mountain Song, Jane's Addiction had a wildly successful run before internal tension first tore it apart in 1991 – and again, albeit more publicly, in 2024.

In between his stints with Jane's, Avery stayed busy. He formed two bands of his own, Deconstruction and Polar Bear, before touring with Alanis Morissette. Avery also appeared on Morissette's Maverick albums Under Rug Swept and So-Called Chaos.

When Metallica was searching for a bass player to replace Jason Newsted in 2003, Avery was one of the few players granted an audition. “I was basically looking for a story to tell the grandkids," he told Bass Player.

“It was Flea who first planted the idea that I might actually get the gig. I was talking to him a few days before I went to audition, and he was like, ‘Well, why wouldn't you get the gig?’ I said, ‘I'm not that guy. I'm not Metallica's new bass player.’ Flea was like, ‘Why not? They write rad music, and you're a great bassist.’

“Up to then, I hadn't really even considered it. I was just looking at it as a chance to go play Master of Puppets with Metallica for an afternoon.”

“I remember being at a small dinner party with some friends the night before the audition. They were like, ‘So, are you excited? Tomorrow you could become Metallica's bass player, you'll become a millionaire!’ My friend said she could see it all beginning to dawn on me, and I got this deer-in-the-headlights look, and I receded from the conversation in terror. It was a shocking realisation, but it turned out to be an amazing day.

“They flew me up and gave me the red-carpet treatment, which was really charming. When we started playing, I was shocked that it was just guys with amps facing each other as if we were in a garage. It was like hearing Metallica as if they were playing in their garage and we were all 20. We played through Master of Puppets, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Fuel. It was a lot of fun.”

With Metallica selecting Robert Trujillo as the band's new bassist, Avery joined the Smashing Pumpkins for a spell, before being snatched up by Garbage. “Out of the blue, I got a call to meet with them,” said Avery, who got the gig without having to play a single note.

“They got a good personal vibe from me, and when Butch Vig, Garbage's drummer/producer called me the next day, he said, ‘We're not going to make an audition day happen. Chances are pretty good that you know how to play bass!’”

For many, Flea’s wildly energetic slap bass antics and funk-sharpened attack make him one of the greatest bass players in the world. But now the Red Hot Chili Peppers maestro has named the bassist that, in turn, fascinates him the most.

The bassist, who starred in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony over the weekend, has singled out who he believes to be the “greatest rock bass player” – and he's given the honor to Paul McCartney.

“I think Paul's the greatest rock bass player. He's just great. I mean, there are so many guys that are great in different ways, but Paul's bass playing is so lyrical and melodic, and it's just so beautiful,” he tells Team Coco (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).

“One of the things I've heard is that he put the bass on after. [In] a band like mine, sometimes the song starts with bass lines. Whereas Paul and John and George, when they wrote songs, they just went and played live and would do it after.”

One example of this, Flea says, is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. What Flea finds so fascinating, is that McCartney’s playing contradicts the typical role of a rock bass player.

“The melody is already there,” he says. “So then he's doing a counter melody, so the bass is a melody as opposed to just a rhythm, and that's amazing.”

Ultimately, that against-the-grain expressiveness and focus on melody, rather than simply supplying a low-end undercurrent for other musicians to shine on top of, was a crucial ingredient in his band’s sonic stew.

Naturally, Flea's crazy licks didn't go unnoticed. Beyond the band's multiple Grammy wins and record sales figures comfortably into the millions, other bands wanted him in their ranks.

“John Lydon once made a stab at poaching Flea for Public Image,” the band's singer, Anthony Keidis revealed earlier this year. “At which point Flea keeled over and passed out.”

While the former Sex Pistols man wasn't successful in his poaching attempts, The Mars Volta were. Flea played on the band's now-classic album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, but his contributions often slip under the radar.

Reflecting on a glory-littered career earlier this year, Flea explained how he regrets destroying so many bass guitars during their '90s and '00s live shows, saying: “I feel like such an idiot.”

The Australia-born, Hollywood-raised Michael 'Flea' Balzary, so nicknamed for his diminutive stature and onstage leaps, is, many bassists feel, one of the finest funk bass players ever to stalk the earth.

Bred on a diet of cool jazz and trumpet lessons, with his most treasured childhood memory a meeting with Dizzy Gillespie, Flea took up the bass guitar after the prompting of his high-school classmate Hillel Slovak, who – along with singer Anthony Kiedis and drummer Jack Irons – formed the first line-up of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then a cheeky funk-punk act.

From these humble beginnings, Flea evolved a frighteningly fast slap-and-pop style, influenced by Larry Graham and Bootsy Collins, but spiced up with the energy of his beloved hardcore punk scene.

After applying scintillating bursts of notes to four ’80s albums, Flea had become known as ‘Joe Bass Player’ as he once put it, and decided to tone down for 1991's landmark Blood Sugar Sex Magik album.

Give It Away was a monster of a single, with a bassline that more or less made up the whole song with its liquid slide motif and some beautifully dexterous fills. As Flea told Bass Player in February 1992, the song almost ended up on the scrapheap. “I had told the guys, ‘Aah, it's just another bassline – I don't really like it.’ But they said, ‘No, no, it's really good – we gotta do it.’ Good thing!”

Producer Rick Rubin clashed with Flea during the recording of this track, attempting to persuade him to simplify his original bassline. But Give It Away became a total inspiration to bass players everywhere and went on to win Best Hard Rock Song at the 35th Grammy Awards in 1993.

At the beginning of the tune, Flea plays two neck-spanning slides. These are a little tricky to nail – the most important thing is to reach the uppermost notes right on beats three and four. It's a good idea to break out the metronome to make sure you're hitting these slides on the right part of the beat.

To dig into the verse, Flea outlines an Am7 using chord tones, and makes the most of the long glissandos down from the G. Pay special attention to beat two, which includes two different slides: first from D up to E, and then from G at the 12th fret down the neck. While there are definite starting and ending points on the first slide, the downward slide tapers off without landing on a specific note.

The second bar is similar, except that the high G at the end of beat two hangs on for just a hair longer, carrying into beat three. The key for this funky line is in the details: the deadened ghost-notes and pickup notes Flea plays in beats one, three, and four help the line lock the groove.

For the chorus, begin with an open-A downbeat. Beat four is packed with two ghost-notes, which you should play by half-fretting G and C. Slide into the second bar's downbeat from G, holding the A until beat two, when you should begin your slide down the neck.

At the guitar solo, Flea drops down a string, beginning his line on a low E. After repeating the one-bar figure seven times, he rounds out the section with a rippin' descending line played on the E string, leading back into the verse figure.

Slap bass has come a long way since Larry Graham first championed the style in the 1970s. Graham has said that he was simply trying to create a drum-like sound to flesh out the rhythm in the then drummerless Family Stone.

In the hands of the bass players you're about to read about, it has truly become a worthy addition to the electric bassist's technical arsenal. 

From Larry Graham (the godfather of ‘thumpin’ and plucking’) to Flea’s furious slaps and pops with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, of course, the phenomenal Victor Wooten, be sure to listen to all of the players mentioned in this list – there is a lot to be learned from each of them.

Oh, and don’t forget to also check out our guide to the 20 best bass solos of all time, too.

20. Throwback – Ida Nielsen (Bassist: Ida Nielsen, 2016)

As a member of Prince’s NPG and power rock trio 3RDEYEGIRL, Ida Nielsen’s old-school funk meets new-school soul style undoubtedly pays homage to the purple one. 

In the months following Prince’s passing, Nielsen returned to her native Denmark to finish recording her solo album. Throwback is a fine example of her aggressively precise slap technique.

19. Emergency on Planet Earth – Jamiroquai (Bassist: Stuart Zender, 1993)

Stuart Zender made an audacious statement with this killer bassline from Jamiroquai’s first album. Although quite simplistic in structure, there’s nothing simple about the groove and feel. 

Funkier and funkier with every turn, Zender brought his slap bass chops together with a sense of restraint that he became an expert at employing throughout his tenure with Jamiroquai.

18. If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) – Meshell N’dgeocello (Bassist: Meshell N’dgeocello, 1993)

Loaded with crisp energy, the deep-pocket slap groove holding down this uncompromising hip-hop/funk anthem just will not stop. Slides, fills and ghost notes make it impossible to pin down.

There’s little harmonic variation, but N’dgeocello's percussive bass technique creates a feel all of its own.

17. Lopsy Lu – Stanley Clarke (Bassist: Stanley Clarke, 1974)

Featuring razor-sharp pops, huge string bends and his usual disregard for convention, Stanley Clarke threw everything into the mix with Lopsy Lu and changed the face of slap bass playing in doing so.

It remains a reminder to all of us that no matter how much we think we know, there's always more to learn…

16. D-Code – Alain Caron (Bassist: Alain Caron, 1997)

D-Code sees Alain Caron taking care of business with a percolating funk groove that’s played with an immaculately even technique. 

Caron mutes the lower strings with his right palm and anchors his little finger against the body of his bass guitar in what Bruce Lee would have called economy of motion.

15. Thriller – Dirty Loops & Cory Wong (Bassist: Henrik Linder, 2021)

Henrik Linder was a student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm when Dirty Loops first broke the Internet with their fusion covers of pop hits. His virtuoso slap, pluck and chordal style is both anchor and color for the Swedish group’s unique sound.

Here, he delivers a state-of-the-art slap bassline alongside guest guitarist Cory Wong.

14. Stone Jam – Slave (Bassist: Mark Adams, 1980)

Over the course of five Slave albums released between 1977 and 1980, Mark “The Hanselor” Adams perfected a distinct approach to slap bass. But if you could get just one Slave album, make it 1980’s Stone Jam.

Adams lets loose on the title track with a monster slap groove in F# minor. Fast-forward past the epic guitar solo to hear him go for broke in the last minute.

13. Take the Power Back – Rage Against the Machine (Bassist: Tim Commerford, 1991)

Slap bass and rock music – always a touchy subject, and while Tom Morello's innovative guitar work and old-school shred combine to great effect on this landmark RATM track, it’s Tim Commerford who sets the groove from the start, slapping and popping his way through the lead riff. 

12. Love Games – Level 42 (Bassist: Mark King, 1981)

Level 42’s Mark King stands shoulder to shoulder with the all-time greats on the slap summit. Need proof? Check out his trademark ‘chugging’ slap rhythm for this classic Level 42 line.

Note the left-hand pats throughout, a key in King’s machine-gun style, especially on triplets.

11. Stomp! – The Brothers Johnson (Bassist: Louis Johnson, 1980)

Stomp! clocked in at 6:20 on the Brothers Johnson Light Up the Night LP, with over two minutes shaved off for radio. But both versions had a most pleasantly surprising centerpiece: a slap bass solo.

Louis “Thunder Thumbs” Johnson’s ability to throw all kinds of slapping, tapping slides and chording into the mix makes it a true one-off. Musically adventurous and funky to a tee.

10. Endless – Toby Petersen-Stewart (Bassists: Toby Petersen-Stewart and Jacob Umansky, 2023)

Toby Peterson-Stewart’s 2023 solo release, Endless, sees him trade licks with six-string bass mastermind Jacob Umansky.

“It started with a two-riff idea that I sent to Jacob on Instagram,” he told Bass Player. “He added another riff and before you knew it, we had a song.”

If you can play along with the blistering picking-slap-hybrid licks, you’ve arrived as a bass player.

9. Run for Cover – David Sanborn (Bassist: Marcus Miller, 1981)

Once dubbed the “thumbslinger” for his cutting edge slap-style, Marcus Miller was just 18 or 19 when he recorded Run for Cover.

The acute sense of time and feel evident in his muscular bassline, combined with the signature tone of his Jazz Bass is unmistakable.

For a slap-bass workout, you need look no further.

8. Tommy the Cat – Primus (Bassist: Les Claypool, 1991)

Tommy the Cat is probably the best way to hear Les Claypool doing his thing. He slaps, taps, and strums his Carl Thompson bass to produce a frenetic whack-fest with a strong, slightly swinging 16th-note groove. 

Break it down and you'll come up with a combination of chord strums, ghost notes, palm slaps and pops. The difficulty comes when you try to play it at the same speed as Les Claypool does.

7. Higher Ground – Red Hot Chili Peppers (Bassist: Flea, 1989)

Higher Ground, the first single from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fourth studio album Mother’s Milk, created air bassists out of all of us.

With Flea’s slap bass replacing the clavinet of the original Stevie Wonder hit, it’s a perfect entry point to playing alternating groups of slaps and pops; also note the ghosted and muted notes, which add to the part’s percussiveness.

5. Glide – Pleasure (Bassist: Nate Philips, 1979)

Glide, the Top 10 R&B single from Pleasure’s 1979 album Future Now, sports some of the finest bass work of the era. Using a double-stop slide to connect two impossibly funky licks, bassist Nate Philips drives the track with his formidable slap-and-pop technique.

“Everybody asks how I got that tone,” Philips told Bass Player. “I used my ’70 Fender Jazz, which has a maple fingerboard with block inlays. I remember putting a fresh set of Rotosound roundwounds on right before doing that take.” 

6: Slapocalypse – Charles Berthoud X Giacomo Turra (Bassist: Charles Berthoud, 2024)

Another gem from YouTube star Charles Berthoud, this bassline is one of his funkiest.

Everything on this song clicks: his slap skills are totally in the pocket and guitarist Giacomo Turra’s angular funk makes it impossible to stand still.

An object lesson for anyone interested in the inner workings of slap bass. 

4. Hair – Graham Central Station (Bassist: Larry Graham, 1974)

Having invented slap bass with Sly and the Family Stone, it’s no overstatement to say that Larry Graham impacted the bass world with as much force as Jimi Hendrix did with the electric guitar.

Hair is pretty much based around an E7 chord, with the frequent use of a b3rd, but check out Graham’s phrasing and how he plucks a high note on the onbeat instead of the offbeat. He really was a one-man rhythm section.

3. Forget Me Nots – Patrice Rushen (Bassist: Freddie Washington, 1982)

Yes, it's the Men in Black song. Forget Me Nots revolves around the eight-bar bass hook “Ready” Freddie Washington lays down at the top of the tune. His incredibly catchy popped line will not leave your brain once you've heard it.

“That bassline is the whole song,” Washington told Bass Player. “If I had switched to a different line in one of the choruses or on the ride-out, I wouldn’t have been playing Forget Me Nots anymore!” 

Washington played his ’72 Fender Precision Bass with new roundwound strings. He plugged direct into an API console and added some dbx 160 compression. 

2: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – Sly and the Family Stone (Bassist: Larry Graham, 1969)

This classic Larry Graham bassline kicks off with a simple slap and pop riff that brings his blend of funk and R&B to the table in no uncertain fashion.

After a few minutes of this, you’ll be dying to play it yourself – and it’s simple enough that you’ll probably nail it, too. But will you have as much funk in you as Larry? 

1. U Can't Hold No Groove (If You Ain't Got No Pocket) – Victor Wooten (Bassist: Victor Wooten, 1996)

A decade before YouTube made extravagant bass parts available to everyone, you had to buy a CD and figure out what was going on – and we all attempted to do just that with Victor Wooten's debut solo album, A Show Of Hands.

This opening cut set out his stall with a mixture of strummed chords, melodic runs and percussive slap techniques.

The tone, the energy and the sheer enthusiasm of a young Wooten, perhaps the greatest bassist of his generation, shine through.

Flea says he regrets destroying so many bass guitars in the ‘90s and ‘00s while playing with Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The funk rock giants have always propelled their shows with energy and intensity, and – back in the day– that often came with the odd trashed stage. It’s a habit that led to the death of many of Flea's instruments, including ones that played a fairly large part in the band’s history. 

Posting on X, Flea wrote: “[I] feel like such an idiot for smashing my bass to pieces on stage back in the day, pathetic.” Sean Lennon, son of John, appears to resonate with the sentiment, having replied with: “You’re in good company though.” 

It’s a sentiment that The Who’s Pete Townshend might not totally agree with, though – he often had to glue the guitars he smashed back together, just so he could play and smash them all over again.  

While rock ’n’ roll may forever associated with breaking musical instruments, it does come with its consequences, as shown in the clip below. 

One’s loss, however, is another’s gain. As found on Reddit, Flea’s exploits back in ‘99 meant a fan could take home a piece of rock ’n’ roll history home with them after a concert in, of all places, California.

“I have Flea’s main Modulus bass from 97-99 (smashed),” their post claims. “It was his main bass he used from 97-99. It died at the 1999 KROQ weenie roast [California festival] following a stage trashing after the encore. 

“[It was] one of two Modulus basses to die that night, the first was tossed into the crowd and later recovered. It was also used during the Californication recording sessions as well, this one is significant in the RHCP history.

“He killed probably 5-10 of these in this era,” the post continues. “Never a planned part of the show though. I HATE that he did this to these but if he didn’t this bass would be in a museum somewhere and not on my wall.”

"We work hard," wrote Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary in the liner notes of 2004's Greatest Hits album – a world away from the club-level act that his band had been two decades before. That hard work has led him to the position of Best Bassist in multiple Bass Player polls even though, as he tells us, he's nowhere near being the bassist that he really wants to be.

An Australian who moved to California as a kid and endured a tough childhood which you can read all about in his 2019 autobiography Acid For The Children, Flea – so nicknamed for his habit of leaping about on stage, like you didn't know that already – is probably his demographic's most visible bass player. He won his category in Bass Player's 100 greatest bassists poll by a significant margin, indicating that many of you reading this would agree with that assessment.

A founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea's reputation as a killer bass player had almost seen him lured away at one point. “John Lydon once made a great stab at poaching Flea for Public Image,” Anthony Kiedis reported in Bass Player. “And Malcolm McLaren tried to poach the whole band.” 

“He sat down with us, watched us rehearse, and then he said, ‘Okay, here's the plan, guys. We're going to simplify the music completely, so it's just basic, old- school, simple three-chord rock ’n’ roll, and we'll have Anthony be the focus of attention, and you guys will be the back-up band doing this surf-punk thing.’ At which point Flea keeled over and passed out. 

“It could have been what we had smoked – we were very dysfunctional at that point – but I think it was more what McLaren said.”

A jazz and punk-rock obsessive since his early days, Flea's bass parts are deft without being over-polished, fast without lacking heart, and infused with a hippie sensibility that is equal parts Larry Graham and Peter Hook. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Chili Peppers' 1991 album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

One of the high points of the album is the most obviously Chili Pepper-sounding song on it, the relentless Give It Away.

Nowadays the long-time RHCP fan will not be able to hear its opening salvo – a ringing, string-bent chord from John Frusciante plus Chad Smith's staccato snare – without punching the air. Like its big-rock-single contemporaries of the time – Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and Metallica's Enter Sandman – Give It Away has been a club staple for so long that it inevitably evokes early-'90s emotions.

But there's a reason why Give It Away has become such a benchmark: it is, without a doubt, one of the catchiest singles to be released in the last few decades. Once heard, it sticks deep in the listener's ear and will not be removed. 

The core of this catchiness is twofold. Firstly, Flea's simple, elegant bassline – a simple upper-register slide with a three-note tail – is among his most effective work to date, taking the less-is-more philosophy which he had often spoken of on the BSSM album to an elevated level. Only on two or three occasions does he drop in one of the deft fills for which he had become famous, making the whole effort a masterclass in economy.

Secondly, Kiedis' vocal – the closest to a rap, rather than singing, that he comes on this record – hangs on a repeated boast of, “Give it away, give it away, give it away now,” all of which he enunciates perfectly in couple of seconds at most. It's a fantastic piece of vocal acrobatics and is all the more remarkable since Kiedis is not known for the speed or dexterity of his vocals, before or since.

The song made a profound impact. Kiedis later explained: “I was toy shopping in New York right before Christmas, and this little girl was tugging on her mom's coat, pointing at me and going, ‘That's him, that's him.’ And her mom came over and said, ‘Oh, I've just got to thank you, you've made my life so much easier.’ 

“She said the only way she could get her little girl dressed in the morning was to play our record and sing to her. And to me, the appreciation of a child is the ultimate compliment.”

As one of the founding members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea’s outrageous showmanship and superhuman thumb have made him the throbbing heart of the band’s musical mayhem. Flea has also immersed himself in studio sessions with everyone from Johnny Cash and Alanis Morissette to Thom Yorke and “wild-ass drum music” with original Peppers drummer Jack Irons.

Not content with playing bass guitar in one of the world's biggest rock bands, there are still a handful of musicians who Flea would love to collaborate with – if he could revive the dead, that is.

“The first band that I really loved was the Beatles,” he told Bass Player. “But if I was starting my own fantasy supergroup I would have Jimi Hendrix on guitar and Billie Holliday on vocals. I’d play bass and I’d have Tony Allen on drums. I would want to play some trumpet as well, so I wouldn't pick Clifford Brown because he would hog the stage!”

At this point, Flea picked out the music that he would hope to accompany him if he was castaway on a desert island. Flea named the Beatles among his pick of desert island discs. “The White Album was the first thing that I connected with as a kid, but if I could only listen to five albums for the rest of my life? I would also take Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, (GI) by the Germs, Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and The Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet Recordings.”

With an early grounding in jazz, Flea was introduced to rock music via a chance meeting with local guitarist, Hillel Slovak. “I met Hillel when I was 17. He played me some Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin records, and I started really getting into rock music. I took up the bass guitar and joined his band.”

Flea's musical influences continued to evolve as he merged his love of jazz with his new found appreciation for classic rock. “In the beginning I got really into prog rock. I was listening to Bill Bruford's One of a Kind, Weather Report, Allan Holdsworth, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and The Tony Williams Lifetime. Coming from jazz as a kid, I could really relate to the virtuosity of that music.”

The final phase that preceded the Red Hot Chili Peppers came with the arrival of punk rock. “Punk rock was a huge awakening for me. It was almost like a spiritual awakening. It dawned on me that if you just played one chord, but with the right intent, it could be as emotionally powerful as the greatest John Coltrane solo. That’s when the concept of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was born.”

With six Grammy Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 13 studio albums, countless platinum certifications and sold-out world tours, the Red Hot Chili Peppers remain one of the most influential acts in music history. And while Flea admits that much has changed since their rise to fame in the late ‘80s, he's optimistic about the future.

“I've noticed that young people are starting to think more for themselves. It's like they're plumbing music history and finding what they really love, as opposed to getting the latest corporate release rammed down their throat by MTV. There's a bigger sense of camaraderie, which fosters a lot of creativity among kids. There's potential for great things to happen.”

Despite his renewed optimism, Flea’s fundamental approach to making music hasn't changed. “For me, music has always been about reaching for that thing that feels beautiful. It's always been about what feels good, and how my body reacts to that. I’m just devoting myself to being the best musician that I can be.”

Formed in 1965 by keyboardist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, drummer Joseph ‘Zigaboo’ Modeliste, and bassist George Porter Jr., The Meters became the measure of funk to come when they put a decidedly New Orleans spin on R&B with their laid-back, loose-but-tight feel on instrumental funk anthems like Look-Ka Py Py and Cissy Strut. As Flea noted when he invited Porter Jr. onstage at the 2016 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, “The Meters invented this shit! We are their students!” 

Asked what’s unique about New Orleans funk, Porter Jr. told BP. “I would say that bass players and drummers from New Orleans play more together than guys from anywhere else. In New Orleans they're more closely linked, playing in sync almost all the time. The bass might venture away from the kick drum to play more notes, but at some point – maybe two and four – we always meet.”

Cissy Strut, which featured in Quentin Tarantino's 1998 movie, Jackie Brown, is an ideal practice vehicle, as both main sections of the tune have set two-bar basslines that repeat four times each, allowing plenty of time to settle the parts under your fingers. Just check how cool a root/5th idea can be when played with the syncopation and sheer funk that Porter Jr. applies during the organ solo.

“Zig and I created the bottom that everything grew on, and I think what Zig did on drums is undeniably the funkiest shit on the planet. He used to throw off Art with some of those grooves. Art would say, ‘Where's one?’ Where you come in can change the whole concept of where one is. It was all intuitive – we definitely didn't write out charts or anything like that.”

As for basses, Porter Jr. has called upon an arsenal of different instruments during his career, ranging from an early Fender Telecaster Bass to a Lakland Bob Glaub 44/64 Classic Precision. “I recorded Cissy Strut with a Gibson EB-2, but when we were in the studio recording Look-Ka Py Py, I saw an old Telecaster Bass sitting in the corner. It had cobwebs all over it, but when I played it – man, it had such a ballsy tone. I used that bass to record a great deal of music.”

In keeping with his vintage leanings, Porter Jr. has stuck to a tried-and-tested approach when it comes to strings. “My strings leave the bass when they break. I would never, ever play a bass that has all brand-new strings on it; if I have to change all four of my strings, the bass is gonna sit around a while before I play on it. I like strings that are old and dull.”

Widely regarded as one of the progenitors of funk bass, his work with The Meters alone merits Porter Jr. a place in Bass Valhalla, but he's also contributed to recordings by Paul McCartney, Robert Palmer, Patti LaBelle, Dr. John, Taj Mahal, Maceo Parker, and Tori Amos.

Has the concept of funk changed over the years? “I don't know what is considered funk today – I really don't. Funk music today is hip-hop, I guess. Syncopation is out. Syncopation is history. In my dealings with people at record companies, I keep being told that my music ain't funky. They say it's too syncopated. People have to think about how to dance to music when it's syncopated, because it’s not just straight 4/4. Syncopation is like jazz – it wasn’t meant for the masses, just a hip few.”

Bass players don’t come much bigger than the late Jack Bruce. Looking back at his early days with Cream – not to mention his stints with Alex Korner, Graham Bond and the Bluesbreakers – he was one of a short list of pioneers who were challenging the traditional concept of what a bass guitarist could play. Perhaps the best way to sum up his considerable achievements is to note that, alongside his contemporaries Paul McCartney and John Entwistle, Jack Bruce is jointly responsible for the way that the bass guitar is played in modern rock music.

Looking back in 2010, Bruce told BP “I’m strange in a way as I don’t consider myself as a bass player although that’s what I do. I sing, play piano and a bit of acoustic guitar, so I don’t usually buy records because of the bass playing. I suppose The Beatles’ Rain was an influential track, but the biggest influences on me were always the jazz players. 

“There was one record called The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever, and it’s Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell and Max Roach. I'd recommend that to anybody. Also any of the Tamla Motown records, anything by James Jamerson. Another one was The Band’s first record, Music From The Big Pink. It’s hard to think who the greatest players of today are. You could say Flea, who is a great player and a friend of mine, but he doesn’t need the plug!”

Back in 2010, on the release of his authorised biography, Composing Himself, Jack Bruce revealed the five albums that shaped his sound.

1. Johann Sebastian Bach – Great Organ Works.

“There are so many of these collections, but I’d choose anything that includes Toccata And Fugue, the famous one. If you want to know anything about bass playing, it’s all there. It’s perfection. The bass parts are contrapuntal, but they’re also melodic; if you took away the bass part the whole thing would fall apart. Those parts are great if you want to learn to play melodically. You don’t need a lot of theory to understand them; the ultimate rip-off is Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale. That’s just one example, though – there are hundreds of them.”

2. Dizzy Gillespie Band – Showtime At The Spotlite: 52nd Street New York City, June 1946.

“This album has Ray Brown on bass, and the particular song I’m thinking of is called One Bass Hit. This was very influential to me, because I listened to that music and loved it very much – and the very first audition I had for a big professional band, the Murray Campbell Big Band, was that piece. It was all transcribed, but they were quite impressed because I was straight out of college and I sight-read it, and I got the job. There’s a very dense Ray Brown solo right at the beginning.” 

3. Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um.

“This is self-explanatory, really. Mingus was a really great composer and bass player, which was obviously something I wanted to emulate – I wanted to do both those things. I didn’t discover him until I was 17 or 18, and it changed my life. Also, his music was a very early fusion, if you like, of country, blues and bebop – it was very exciting. His book Beneath The Underdog is the greatest autobiography ever written. It’s full of lies and exaggerations, but why not?”

4. Various Artists – Motown 50.

“James Jamerson did everything, didn’t he? Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder…he’s on all those great tracks. They tried to muddy the waters a bit sometimes and say it was another bass player, but he played on 30 number ones, which is not a bad record. It’s said that he never changed his strings, which is one of two approaches to strings. I like to change mine a lot – if I’m on tour, it’s for every gig – because I like the sound and the feel of brand-new strings. But the other way is to leave them on forever.” 

5. Living Colour – Stain.

“This has Doug Wimbish on it. He’s just amazing. He sums up all the great things about modern bass playing. The last time I saw him was when Living Colour played the Jazz Cafe in London, and he did this solo which was just so entertaining. The things he can do with effects are astounding. He’s taken them to a new height, which is great. It’s really hard to think who the greatest players of today are, because there’s quite a few – but he’s a bit underrated. You could say Flea, who is a great player, but he doesn’t need the plug!” 

Halestorm saw their international profile receive a shot in the arm back in 2012, when they scored a Best Hard Rock/Metal Grammy for their song Love Bites (So Do I). On the strength of the group’s latest album, Back From The Dead, the Pennsylvania rock quartet were also well-positioned to score a 2023 Heavy Music Award for Best International Artist.

Their success is at least partly due to the range of influences that go into their sound. In Smith’s case, his music education included all the greats: “You’ll notice a pattern in this list, because all my favorite bass players are composers and play melodic bass parts,” he told BP. “If you ever find yourself humming along to a tasty bassline, there’s a chance that it’s by one of these guys.”

Far from being just another headbanger, Smith could never be called an ego-fuelled rock star. He’s pretty much the opposite – ever-friendly and in awe of his heroes. We asked him to reveal his bass guitar influences in a fistful of albums.

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)

“I was only eight years old when this album came out. It was three years before I even picked up a bass, and I didn’t care to explain why I loved Blood Sugar Sex Magik, I just did. Flea was clearly put on this earth to speak the language of music. His attention to groove and melody is something I fell in love with when I was a kid, and since then I have enjoyed his style and tone in every single song he has gone on to create.”

2. Tower of Power – Tower Of Power (1973)

“My dad introduced me to Tower Of Power at a young age. As I became more involved in jazz through lessons and school, my appreciation of them continued to grow. Every year they would play at a local theatre near to where I lived, and my dad would take my brothers and I. Rocco Prestia and the band never disappointed me. Listen to the opening track, What is Hip? – it’s airtight. Rocco could probably have held that 16-note pattern in his sleep.”

3. Parliament – Up For The Downstroke (1974)

“Bootsy’s attack is so punchy and aggressive. It doesn’t sound like he plucked the strings with his fingers, but more like he grabbed and pulled each note equally and deliberately. His tone has a sharp set of teeth. The entire P-Funk catalog is a music lesson, but the first song that was introduced to me, and still an all-time favourite, is Parliament’s Up For The Down Stroke.”

4. Jackson 5 – Third Album (1970)

“James Jamerson was a critical player when it came to creating the Motown sound. I don’t know if he played every song on Third Album, but he did perform on the last song, Darling Dear, and this track has always stood out for me. James lays down a constant, cascading flow of melody, and what’s more, he does it with one finger, the hook.”

5. The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)

“Just as so many people before me did, I grew up listening to, and loving, The Beatles. Paul McCartney wrote and performed some of my all time favourite songs on Abbey Road. He created beautiful melodies to accompany some of the most influential, and well-known songs of all time. Let’s not forget his voice, which is a unique and wonderful instrument in its own right.”

Back From the Dead is available to buy and stream.

You know the drill. Ask a seasoned musician if they have any regrets about their career and they’ll say they ‘wouldn't change a thing’. Not so, in the case of Flea. The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist was recently interviewed by the LA Times and revealed that he’s previously discussed re-recording the band’s first album.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ self-titled debut was released in 1984, but now – speaking to the paper’s music critic, Mikael Wood – the bass player says he wishes he could revisit the material.

“I always regret the way we made the first one,” says Flea. “I think the songs are really good. Our band was smoking at the time. But [drummer] Jack [Irons] and [guitarist] Hillel [Slovak] quit, and we hired these two other guys: Jack Sherman and Cliff Martinez.

“Both were great musicians, but the connection just wasn’t as profound as we had with the guys we started with. I’ve often wanted to go back and re-record that album, but I can never talk anyone into it.”

Flea has also previously said he wanted to “go back and fix” a track on 1995’s One Hot Minute. However, RHCP’s debut album celebrates its 40th anniversary next year, so this is probably his best window to convince his current bandmates to jump on some new sessions – particularly given the band rehearsed material from their earliest releases when John Frusciante returned to the group last year.

When it comes to Flea’s past bandmates, the aforementioned drummer, Martinez, has nonetheless enjoyed a fruitful career in music, breaking into film music in the 1990s and contributing to the scores of Drive, Traffic and The Lincoln Lawyer. Guitarist Sherman, meanwhile, later worked with Bob Dylan and George Clinton, among others, before he passed away in 2020.

Elsewhere in the interview, Flea discusses current RHCP guitarist John Frusciante’s performance on the current tour, having previously expressed concerns about how he would handle adjusting to the band’s sizeable tour schedule.

“[It’s been] really good,” says Flea. “Each gig is like a sacred thing for him. In true John fashion, he practices for like five hours before every show – Blow By Blow by Jeff Beck on, playing every single solo, warming his fingers up.”

The guitarist has never been a slouch when it comes to practicing. Indeed, if anything, he goes too far – a motivation that was evidenced when Frusciante’s guitar teacher told him he wasn’t good enough, so he started learning Steve Vai licks.

Whether One Hot Minute was a disappointment or a criminally overlooked album in the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s arsenal is up for debate. Many consider it to be one of their weaker efforts, but it certainly yielded some great songs. The addition of ex-Janes Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro brought a heavier slant to the group’s sound, with borderline metal moments on Warped and Coffee Shop.

"Actually, Aeroplane was the only song I was worried about,” said Flea in his 1996 Bass Player cover story. "I thought it sounded like another stupid white boy trying to be funky! When I played it live in the studio, the bass didn't record right, so it was one of the few things I had to overdub. I put it out anyway, but it's the one thing I'd go back and fix. The part kept feeling stiff to me, as if it wasn't my day. I wanted to redo it, but Rick Rubin said it was cool."

Don't let Flea's humbleness fool you. Aeroplane has to be one of the funkiest use of slapped octaves ever. The bassline in the verse isn’t as flashy as Flea’s earlier slap style, but his wiry tone and heavy thumb perfectly illustrates his commanding-yet-essential approach, while the fingerstyle line in the chorus, with its huge slides and groovy fills, weaves effortlessly in and out of the vocal melody. And there’s an awesome bass solo to boot. Weak effort? We think not.

The following interview is from the February 1996 issue of Bass Player. During a two-week break from the Chili Pepper's gruelling tour schedule, Flea took some time to explain why he's fallen back in love with his instrument, how not to be a player who's "all flash and no smash," and how practicing Transcendental Meditation helped him to become a better musician.

There are a bunch of different styles mixed together in the bassline of Aeroplane. How did you come up with the slap part in the verses?

"I was sitting in my garage with a bass guitar Louis Johnson gave me – a Treker Louis Johnson Signature 4-string – and I started playing that '70s funk line. The bass had light strings on it and had that whacka-whackita sound. It's kind of a ‘been done’ groove, but it's nice and Anthony liked it. The chorus part was one of those things where we were stuck; sometimes when we're looking for another part, I'll have no idea what I'm going to do, but I'll say, 'What about this?'"

Compared to the full-bore thumbwork of early Chili Peppers records, your parts on Blood Sugar Sex Magik showcased a more stripped-down approach. On One Hot Minute, did you try to combine elements of both?

"I was trying to play simply on Blood Sugar because I had been playing too much prior to that, so I thought, I've really got to chill out and play half as many notes. I think my playing on One Hot Minute is even more simple; I thrashed through the recording and didn't care about the parts being perfect. It's not that I don't love the bass passionately anymore – I just felt I'd been getting too many accolades for being Joe Bass Player."

Some might argue that this record is one of your stronger bass efforts.

"Really? Maybe not thinking about it made me play better. I definitely left lots of mistakes on there, and I can't even think of anything I played that was complex; even the slapping stuff is simple. It's original-sounding, and I'm proud of that, but what I played was more a matter of aesthetic choice. On the other hand, I guess Giant Steps was simple to John Coltrane, because it was him playing it. It's easy if you can do it!" 

Coffee Shop is chock full of bass stuff, including a solo.

"It's funny – Coffee Shop would never have been a song if it weren't for this effect called the Electro-Harmonix BassBalls. I started playing with it one morning in Hawaii, and it had the most amazing underwater, Bootsy kind of sound – and it also had this siren effect going on. But when we got to L.A. to start recording, the box never made the sound again. I got so mad, I crushed it! I almost didn't even want to record the song, because to me, it was all about that bass sound. I ended up using a Boss Dynamic Filter on the record."

In the solo, it sounds as if you're ripping the strings off the fingerboard.

"We didn't know what to do at the end, so I said, 'I'll solo.' I played the track once, and I wanted to fix it later because I thought it sucked, but I never did."

Pea, your bass-and-vocals solo piece, features an acoustic bass guitar.

"Yeah – it's a Sigma acoustic bass guitar. There's not much to say about Pea. I mean, it's just a song I wrote."

Are you catching any flack for it?

"Because I say, 'Homophobic redneck dick'? I did get some shit for it, but fuck those people! We had to put out a version of the album for Wal-Mart without that song."

Did that upset you at all?

"No. If someone says, 'I'm not going to buy your record, but I'll buy these songs,' then okay – buy those songs. I'd rather they hear it all, but to hell with my ego."

The ending of One Big Mob has a heavy feel.

"That song was actually part of a 12-minute movement. The end was the intro to another song called Stretch You Out, which is more of a funk thing, but we didn't put it on the record. It's too bad, because bass players would probably like that tune more than any other song on the album. I think we'll put it out as a B-side."

Walkabout is built around the bass, especially the verses.

"I had gone to see the Spike Lee movie Crooklyn, which has this cool '70s funk soundtrack. I came home, picked up my bass, and started playing that verse line. I wrote the intro at rehearsal – it was another of those 'What about this?' things."

Transcending centres around a twisted b7 bass riff.

"I play the root and the b7, which ring at the same time, and then I play the 4th and bend it up while I keep plucking. I wrote that part on my acoustic bass guitar while I was sitting on the beach in Hawaii."

How did you get that ultra-slimy sound on Falling Into Grace?

"It's the BassBalls, the Boss Dynamic Filter, and maybe a Boss Auto Wah, too. I had all three hooked up, but I may have used only two of them."

How do you think One Hot Minute differs from Blood Sugar Sex Magik?

"There are two big differences. First, I was in a different place emotionally for this record. I was coming out of a two-year period of misery, when I was down emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Second, Dave Navarro is intensely different from John Frusciante. Dave is really into the studio; he would spend weeks on every song, put something like 15 tracks of guitar on every tune, and weed through it in the mix. Dave's sound is more layered and 'effecty' than John's, which was like, boom – play it dry and leave it alone."

So the contrast between your styles created the album's textured sound?

"The contrast made a big difference. John was a huge fan of the band when he joined, so it wasn't a big change for us. He did come into his own aesthetic as time went on, and he had a huge amount to do with the sound of the band, but Dave's coming from his own trip – the Jane's Addiction thing in particular, which was very different from the Chili Peppers."

Did adjusting to yet another guitar player affect the feel?

"We were playing something new, and it was exciting – but on the negative side, we'd never toured together. The record is what it is, though: a document of that time. It has good energy, the grooves are good, and the music is good. I'm happy with the way I played, but I'm already onto another groove."

The band's jams seem to be stretching out into new areas.

"To me, this is the least jam-oriented record we've made. I mean, we definitely jammed on the ideas, but there's only one groove on the whole album that came from a jam, Deep Kick. The rest of it came from sitting down with a guitar or bass and saying, 'Check this out, guys.' I wrote almost all of the music on the record."

So you've expanded beyond writing only grooves?

"I've always had a major hand in writing, but on some of the One Hot Minute songs, I wrote the chords and the melody and most of the words. I wrote a lot of the lyrics on Deep Kick and Transcending, for example."

Did you put the songs together on a 4-track?

"I've got one, but mostly I'd play acoustic guitar and come up with the chords and melody, and Dave would take my simple guitar part and play it in his magical Navarro way. Or, I would have a bassline, and Dave would think of a guitar part to go with it."

When did you start learning to play guitar?

"I started a couple of months before we began making this record. Rick Rubin gave me a Martin acoustic, and I bought a Neil Young songbook to learn chords. Playing guitar has definitely helped me as a songwriter; instead of thinking in terms of basslines and grooves, which is an amazing way to think, I now think about chord progressions and melodies. It's another musical dimension for me."

One Hot Minute is available to buy or stream

The likes of James Jamerson and Donald ‘Duck' Dunn may have been among the first to relay the sound of Fender’s Precision Bass to the airwaves back in the '60s and '70s, but Green Day’s Mike Dirnt is a new breed of P-Bass champion. “Billie bought me my first P-Bass, a 1969, and I’ve been hooked on them ever since,” said Dirnt in an interview with Bass Guitar magazine. “I have other basses, but nothing works as good as a P-Bass.”

It was put to Dirnt that a lot of top bass guitar players eventually return to Fender after a few years away. “Yeah. A lot of incredible players switch back to Fenders after a while. Even Flea," says Dirnt. "He told me he wanted to go to a P-Bass and an Ampeg live. Les Claypool is another example. I'd go fishing with him sometimes, and he’s such an incredible player, but he’s struggled with his sound. He played a Jazz Bass in Sausage, didn’t he?”

Needless to say, Dirnt has acquired some veritable bass gems on his travels. “I’ve got some really great ’60s Precision basses. My wife wanted to buy me a great bass, so she found a ’58 Olympic White model – it eats my friends alive that I take it out and play it live! A few years back, Darryl Jones sold me his ’64 Jazz – it’s sick. I also have a ’62 Jazz in Olympic White.”

Several Mike Dirnt Signature models have also been produced by Fender. The current version features an ash body with a thick C-shaped maple neck in Sunburst and White Blonde finishes, as well as the Road Worn treatment to simulate years of wear and tear.

“In the beginning I asked the Custom Shop to make me a 1951 P-Bass, which is the Telecaster-looking bass, with a rosewood fretboard,” says Dirnt. “They were all freaking out, because apparently no-one had ever made one with a rosewood fretboard before. Then I added the ’55 cutaway, so you’re not rubbing your arm on that sharp ridge, and the pickups we put in are 1959 vintage-style split single-coils. I tell people that I built a Ford F-150 truck, only it looks like a Chevy!”

Last of the American Girls is probably the most overt example of Dirnt’s overdriven P-Bass tone on a Green Day recording: loaded with driving eighth notes and propelled by the super-tight rhythm section of Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool, the Green Day sound is unmistakable. 

Green Day's 2020 album, Father Of All Motherf***ers is out now.

As far as Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies go, the 2009 installment wasn’t half bad. Not only did the Hall of Fame’s Class of ‘09 feature two of the guitar world’s most prominent acts, it saw those two inductees – along with a boatload of special guests – team up for one of the Hall’s most memorable performances to date.

Indeed, 2009 saw the late Jeff Beck – one of the most influential players to ever pick up an electric guitar – and Metallica both get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and co. enlisting the Stratocaster master for a cover of Train Kept A-Rollin'.

But as if that wasn’t enough, the pair assembled a legion of rhythm heroes and lead legends to support their sonic assault, with Jimmy Page, Ronnie Wood, Joe Perry and Flea all sharing the stage for the pummeling performance.

Perhaps “pummeling” is underselling it somewhat, because – as noted by Hetfield – this lineup is “rhythm guitar player heaven,” meaning when that riff comes in following Beck’s opening bends, it completely knocks the wind out of you.

The six-strong guitar ensemble continues to smash speakers for the majority of the track, with pockets of lead exchanges given to Beck – whose raucous solo is a particular highlight – and Hammett, who lets loose on the fretboard of his white Ouija ESP model.

Perry, with his custom Gibson ES-335 in tow, also rifles through some suitably untethered pentatonic box-based bends and licks, with the Strat-toting Wood and Les Paul-wielding Page – along with the ever-energetic Flea – instead electing to remain on riff duty.

It was a familiar song to the majority of talent onstage. As Yardbirds alumni, both Beck and Page had played a pivotal role in reinventing Tiny Bradshaw’s original track. With the Yardbirds, Beck helped transform it into a psychedelic romp in 1965, with Page joining the fray for an updated version – titled Stroll On – just one year later that brought the addition of dual guitar exchanges.

Train Kept A-Rollin’ was later adopted by Page and Led Zeppelin and became a setlist stalwart for the heavy rock legends, with Perry's Aerosmith also recording it for their second album in 1974.

Although Page didn’t get the opportunity to flex his lead playing that evening, he did get the chance to wax lyrical about Beck – having been given the honor of inducting the guitar legend into the Hall of Fame that evening.

“You’d sort of listen to Jeff along the way and you’d go, ‘Well, he’s getting really, really good,’” Page said in his speech. “And you’d hear him a few years later and he’d just keep getting better and better and better.

“He still has all the way through, and he leaves us mere mortals just wondering and having so much respect for him.

“Jeff’s whole guitar style is just totally unorthodox to the way anyone was taught, and he’s developed a whole style of expanding the electric guitar and making it into something which has sounds and techniques totally unheard of before. That’s just an amazing feat.”

Page wasn’t the only one from the Train Kept A-Rollin' ensemble to give an induction speech that evening – Flea inducted Metallica, and in his speech recalled how he had been “totally floored” when he first heard the band’s music in 1984.

“I didn’t know what to make of it,” Flea said. “It had loud guitars, and it was fast as lightning, but it wasn’t punk rock. It wasn’t heavy metal. It was precise, explosive and heavy, but quick on its feet. It just totally stood by itself.

“I didn’t know what it was, but the only thing I knew for sure, was that it was a mighty thing. That song was Fight Fire with Fire and it opened up my mind to the mighty force of nature that is Metallica.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has launched a new podcast focussing on music education and the creative process. Titled This Little Light, the 15-part series explores the influences and teachers that inspired some of Flea’s own musical heroes. The first announced guests include Rick Rubin, Patti Smith, Thundercat, Stewart Copeland, Margo Price, and Cynthia Erivo.

“I wanted to do This Little Light to benefit my music school, the Silverlake Conservatory of Music,” Flea said in a statement. “The idea behind it being music education, falling in love with music and embarking on a musical journey for your life. Everybody’s path is so different, and it’s fascinating to learn how every musician came to music and developed their study of it over time.”

The series looks like it will go into some depth, with Flea quizzing his guests about the teachers who guided them, and how the lessons they learned as young musicians have shaped their careers. A portion of the proceeds from the podcast will also go towards the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a non-profit organisation that Flea founded in 2001.

“The reason I started doing this podcast was to benefit the school, but specifically it’s about music education,” says Flea. “I meet so many musicians, from someone who doesn’t even know what a scale is to someone who plays with a philharmonic orchestra. Everybody has a different educational path, and every single one of them is fascinating to me.”

There’s currently a lot to look forward to for Flea fans. In addition to the podcast, the Red Hot Chili Peppers kick off a world tour in support of their most recent albums, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen. The North American leg will run from March 29 through May 25, while a European tour will take place in June and July.

This Little Light, a production of Cadence13 and Parallel, is available for free. 

Having made a lasting impression on the world of retro-funk bass guitar with his band Vulfpeck, Joe Dart has been further channeling his bass playing prowess as a teacher, via the group’s new educational platform, Vulf Conservatory.

In an 11-minute preview of his new bass guitar course, Dart dissects his core slap technique, breaks down one of Flea’s slap-happy bass grooves, and explains why we all have Will Smith to thank for bringing the technique back in the 1990s.

“Flea would be playing very percussive, and a lot of dead notes,” says Dart. “So I really learned how to hit the strings without making any notes ring out. He was my first influence on the instrument, and his commitment to playing every note as if it were his last, and to holding it down in what is essentially a three-piece band – he inspired me as a kid and still does today.”

Accompanied by bandleader Jack Stratton, Dart goes on to showcase the main differences between Flea’s slap-style and that of slap bass specialist Victor Wooten. “This is a particular style of slap that is distinct from, say, a Victor Wooten style, where he is using his thumb more like a pick, slapping through the string and he’ll pull up and slap on the string on the way up, too. He’ll get a double slap that way, but I always did the bounce off, which is the Flea thing.”

Will Smith? "The two main slap basslines of our generation," says Stratton, "were Will Smith samples. Marcus Miller [Smith's Just The Two Of Us samples Miller's playing on the Grover Washington/Bill Withers track of the same name] and Freddie Ready on Forget Me Nots [Ready Freddie Washington's bassline from the Patrice Rushen hit is sampled on Smith's Men In Black]. 

"So we can thank Will Smith for bringing back slap bass."

Dart: "Well, just slap generally."

The online course – which features over 70 video lessons spread across 7 different lectures – takes students through a host of Dart’s bass influences, from Pino Palladino and Lee Sklar to Sting and Paul McCartney. Students are also met with topics like Grooving as a Solo, Using Scales to Compose, Improvised vs. Written Part, 3 on E and Finding Your Feel.

“To me, the one thing that you can’t skip on is developing great feel, because you’re going to play with a bunch of different drummers throughout your life," says Dart. "They’re all going to put the time somewhere else, and you should be able to always be the bridge between the drummer and the rest of the band and make it feel good. That’s a huge thing I think about when I think about what to practise. Stamina will come, and the vocabulary you can learn from listening to great bass players, but my advice is to always develop good time.“

Students who sign up will also learn how to play some of Vulpeck’s most famous songs, including Dean Town and Beastly, while also breaking down some of Dart’s own signature sounds and techniques.

The Joe Dart Bass Course is available now for $250 via the Vulf Conservatory.

If there’s one effect pedal that can give you that instant funk-bass sound, it’s unquestionably the envelope filter. The first, and still widely considered the best, is the Musitronics Mu-Tron III.

Can you imagine Flea’s Sir Psycho Sexy without the dripping funk squelch produced by the dying batteries in his Mu-Tron III? Or Parliament Funkadelic without Bootsy’s filter-laden bass guitar antics? Bootsy Collins himself is alleged to have said that "without that Mu-Tron, there ain’t no Bootsy." Come, as we delve into the cosmic spill that is the Musitronics Mu-Tron III.

A Little History

Mike Beigel and Aaron Newman formed Musitronics Corp in 1972 in Rosemont, New Jersey. After a failed synthesizer project for Guild, Mike Beigel used some of his designs to create an envelope-controlled filter for electronic instruments. 

The original prototype was called the ‘Auto-Wah’ but was renamed before initial release as the ‘Mu-Tron’, a contraction of the company name. The Roman numeral ‘III’ was apparently Beigel’s favourite number and was adopted from the start – versions ‘I’ and ‘II’ never existed. 

Musitronics continued to make the Mu-Tron III, along with other phase and octave effects, until 1979, when they sold the company to ARP. The Mu-Tron was still produced by ARP for about a year before the company went under in 1980.

In Use

The Mu-Tron III has six simple controls – three knobs and three switches – which allow you to tweak the filter in a number of different ways. The mode control selects a low pass, band pass or high pass filter sweep. Using the peak knob, you can adjust the amount of the filter that’s being added to the signal, and the gain control doubles as both a volume and sensitivity control. 

The range switch adds the filter sweep to the low or high end of your signal, and for those classic auto-wah sounds put the drive switch in the up position. Like all envelope filters, the level of ‘quack’ is controlled by how hard you hit the strings on your bass, so you’ll need to adjust the gain control accordingly.

The phenomenal sound of this pedal makes it very easy to love. Every one of its settings leads to one of those classic filter tones so very reminiscent of familiar P-Funk tracks. For a thick, dirty filter tone set the gain level quite low and the peak control on full. With the drive switch in its down position the filter closes as you strike the string, producing more of an ‘owwh’ vowel sound – a bit like listening to an underwater ray gun.

If you’re keen to experiment with some different sounds, try using the Mu-Tron III with an octaver. In fact, it works fantastically well with any other pedal.

Alternatives

This is probably one of the most copied pedals ever, though it seems few have come close to fully replicating its sound. Part of designer Mike Beigel’s technical genius was to use opto-isolators to control the filter, which is the most common reason why MuTron clones that lack these integral features never quite hit the spot. HAZ Laboratories produced a reissue named the ‘Mu-Tron III+’, yet despite looking like an exact replica of the original Musitronics pedal, it is not an authorised version and, according to Mike Beigel, the circuit is not the same.

In 1995, Electro-Harmonix commissioned Beigel to help them with their popular Q-Tron filter. This is a fine filter for those on a budget, and well worth considering if you can’t justify the hefty price of the Mu-Tron III. The Univox MU-1500 Funky-Filter and Monacor MA-10 Effectmatic are two of the very few close replicas based on the schematic released by Beigel. Nowadays, though, these seem to be even rarer than the Musitronics Mu-Tron III. 

Boutique filters like the EMMA Discumbobulator and Subdecay Prometheus are arguably the devices that have come closest to the original Mu-Tron III sound, and both offer many of the same features of the original. The Maxon AF-9 can also deliver some uncanny Mu-Tron III moments, but there really is no substitute for the real thing.

Where Can I Get One?

With the stompbox revival in the 90s, the Mu-Tron III became an instant collector’s item and remains so to this day. Originals are still available quite regularly on eBay and they do occasionally pop up on the forums as well. They are eagerly sought after and therefore usually expensive. Make sure it bears the ‘Musitronics’ logo to the right of the footswitch. A modified version was also released in 2014 by Beigel's new company Mu-FX.

As pedals go, the MuTron has to be up there as one of the all-time classics, regardless of the hype surrounding its collectable status. Envelope filters simply don’t get better than this.

Visit mu-tron.com for more info.

One of the true masters of jazz, tenor saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter passed away during the early hours of March 2. The bass playing public has since gathered to express their appreciation for Shorter’s constant creativity. “My favorite musician just left this earthly plane,” said Tal Wilkenfeld. “The lessons I learned from Wayne Shorter are immeasurable and profound.”

Throughout his career, Shorter was known to seek out some of the finest bass players in the business. His debut as bandleader in 1959 featured the great Paul Chambers. With Miles Davis he shared the stage with Ron Carter and Dave Holland. As a leader of fusion supergroup Weather Report he enlisted Miroslav Vitous, Alphonso Johnson, Jaco Pastorius and Victor Bailey. 

“Our fearless leader,” wrote Felix Pastorius, whose father Jaco starred alongside Shorter in Weather Report from 1976 to 1982 when the band was at its peak with hits like Birdland. “Thank you for your unwavering dedication to the pursuit.”

In 2000 Shorter formed his longest-running ensemble, the Wayne Shorter Quartet, featuring a handpicked group of musicians that included bassist John Patitucci. “Wayne challenged us and empowered us to go on the most incredible journey of life, spiritual unity and artistic growth," Patitucci wrote on social media. "Before we would play concerts Wayne would sometimes recount the idea he and Miles Davis would express of ‘playing like we don’t know how to play.’ He never lost that childlike wonder of discovery. My gratitude for him is boundless."

Robert Trujillo, who crossed paths with Shorter during the making of 2015’s Jaco Pastorius documentary, said, “So grateful to have worked with him on Jaco. A wise man, creative master and positive spirit. Just hands down the coolest cat!”

Beyond his work with his quartet, Shorter had also spent recent years composing an opera in collaboration with Esperanza Spalding. “If there was a language with a word 100x stronger than ‘gratitude’ to express what I feel about this friend, teacher, trickster...I reckon that language is in all his music,” wrote Spalding. “Now we keep listening deeper and more expansively than ever.”

Richard Bona added, “And the genius is gone... RIP Wayne Shorter.”

More tributes can be found below.

Flea

“One of the greatest musicians to ever walk the planet. Thank you for setting the bar so high Wayne. Your music will ring out and touch hearts forever. It will be studied and admired always. My god, you gave us so much. Some of the best concerts I was ever lucky enough to witness. My hero. I’ll spend my life working towards being a fraction as good as you. We felt all your intellect, all your spiritual depth, all your love, in every note you recorded. Fly on.”

Ben Williams

“Every piece of music I’ve written, you were the bar from which I measured my work. Every note seemed to come from somewhere divine yet always felt rooted. I can’t thank you enough for the impact you’ve had on the world. You’ve left us so much to do, to think about it, to consider and reconsider. Peaceful journey.”

Gary Willis

“We’re all better for having shared the planet with this giant, Wayne Shorter. For a short period of time I was lucky enough to have the best seat in the house. I remember sometimes after solos I’d notice his eyes roll back down as if he’d been looking up in the heavens visiting another world. I’m sure whatever world he finds now is also richer for his presence.”

Linda May Han Oh

“In the few brief conversations I had with Mr Shorter, we spoke about our favorite Neil Gaiman books and I told him that we shared the same birthdate. I never expected him to remember me, but on a few occasions when he saw me he’d motion to me like he was playing the bass and pulling the strings hard. His music has touched me to the core and I’ve always been fascinated by his playing and his incredible output as a composer, improviser and his resilience. Rest in Power Wayne Shorter. What an inspiration.”

Darryl Jones

“A giant has changed worlds. I cannot express how important Wayne Shorter is to those of us who are disciples of this music. As an instrumentalist, his creative breadth and excellence has very few peers. As a composer, his body of work stands at the vanguard of modern music. As a conceptualist, he stands shoulder to shoulder with the greatest architects of sound and rhythm the world has produced. He was/is an immensely unique individual in a field of incredibly unique individuals. Long live Wayne Shorter. A giant has changed worlds.”

Will Lee

“RIP Mr Shorter. He was a time traveler, innovator, explorer of textures and harmony. A scientist, a demonstrator of how it’s done, an observer, an icon. Thank you for all your creations you shared while you were here for this short visit to our plane. No doubt your Buddhist teachings informed of the next phase, but we’ll certainly miss you being with us. Peaceful journey.”

Derrick Hodge

“Wayne Shorter breathed life into me as a creative at 18 years old. I heard his music in a way that dared me to imagine and pursue what is possible. We recorded Fall on my Color Of Noize album in dedication to Wayne and the great Ron Carter specifically.  The entire music community owes you a great deal of gratitude.  All I can say at this moment is a heartfelt THANK YOU for being a true guiding light.”

John Clayton

“Wayne Shorter. His music was beyond powerful. It was vast in its expressiveness and he really knew no boundaries regrading style and influences. My granddaughter, barely walking at 1, would freeze in her tracks, hypnotized and swaying when she heard Wayne's Ponta de Areia. Sure, it could have been another song, another composer, but it was Wayne, and only Wayne.”

Steve Pearce

“I am privileged to have been alive for his visit to this earthly existence. I was that wide-eyed 17-year old newbie driver, parking outside the Rainbow Theatre in 1977, buying a ticket off a tout for £6.00, and then bathing in the magnificence of Wayne, Zawinul, Jaco, Acuna, and Badrena. Wayne played Thanks for the Memory as his feature. Still somewhat astonished that I actually got to record with him, enjoy lunch and sci-fi tales with him! An improvisational genius and a unique force, indeed.”

When Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and then-guitarist, Dave Navarro, found themselves working with Alanis Morissette on the lead single from her 1996 Grammy-winning album, Jagged Little Pill, it’s said that they had only the vocals to work from. According to Navarro: “We basically jammed until we found something we were both happy with.”

During an interview with Produce Like A Pro’s Warren Huart, mix engineer Chris Fogel looked back at the making of the track. In doing so, he recalled that Flea’s bassline wasn't as precise as he would've liked.

Fogel was asked whether Flea and Dave Navarro worked together on the song. “They did. They were recorded at the same time,” he says. “It was recorded by another engineer, but the tracks were brought back to me to mix and we had to really time a lot of it. Particularly Flea. Flea was way out of time on this.”

"Did you have to push him back, was he a little bit more on top?” Asks Huart at 33:30 in the video below. “He was way on top, that’s exactly what it was. At some points he was a good quarter-note on top. And if he’s watching then I apologise! But, that is not your performance, that’s your performance timed quite a bit through the genius of the ADAT and the BRC [Big Remote Control].”

In November 2021, Flea posted a tweet in which he revealed how he ended up working on the song. Journalist and sports analyst Bill Simmons had announced on Twitter that his series Music Box was returning with a documentary about Jagged Little Pill. Upon seeing the tweet, one of Simmons’ followers questioned how Flea and Dave Navarro came to feature on You Oughta Know and tagged Flea in the tweet. Flea responded: ‘Cause of Jimmy Boyle.’

Jimmy Boyle remixed the song for the single release. In an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, talent manager Guy Oseary recalled Boyle’s vision. "Jimmy just kept saying, ‘imagine what this would sound like with a stronger bass and guitar.’ So he had the immediate vision for it. He brought in Flea and Dave, they tried it and the rest is history.”

“Flea told Bass Player magazine in 1996. “When I first heard the track, it had a different bassist and guitarist on it; I listened to the bassline and thought, 'That's some weak shit!' It was no flash and no smash! But the vocal was strong, so I just tried to play something good. I showed up, rocked out, and split.”

While Fogel’s mix is the most widely known version of the song, the album also features an alternate take mixed by Boyle, who wanted a much angrier sound than Morissette had originally envisioned. "I had Dave Navarro and Flea come down and redo everything,” says Jimmy in an interview with Universal Audio. “We used the LA-2A compressor on Flea's bass. It was the thing that really made the vocals different as well. It made that really aggressive sound on her voice. That is the only product that could have given it that sound."

Jagged Little Pill is available to download from Amazon.

John Frusciante has said he views the bass as the band’s lead instrument in a new 60 Minutes interview. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers were the somewhat unlikely subjects of a recent episode of the current affairs show and took the chance to discuss their remarkable, enduring connection.

“We’re all supporting each other at the same time,” says Frusciante early in the interview. “Everybody has different ways of doing that. I see the bass as the lead instrument the whole time. Flea doesn't see it that way. I see each song as being like a bass solo where I'm there to support it.”

The guitarist’s comments in the clip reflect those he made to Total Guitar last year.

“Too often people assume that a guitar player’s worth comes from their ability to draw attention to themselves,” Frusciante told Total Guitar. “To me, what [all the great players have] in common… is that they knew how to be a member of a band and make everybody else sound better.

“To me, it really doesn’t matter how much technique you have; the real skill in being a guitar player is in making the rest of the band sound good.”

60 Minutes host Jon Wertheim also underlines Frusciante commitment when he notes that the guitarist prefers to warm-up for four hours before a show.

Elsewhere, the footage documents the founding friendship of Anthony Kiedis and Flea – indeed the latter tears up, reflecting on their bond – as well as Frusciante and Flea’s (slightly less collaborative) concept of the ‘face-off’ songwriting technique. 

“We need a section. We've got a verse say and we need a chorus and in the old days we would start it out by going like that to each other,” says Frusciante, mockingly butting heads with Flea in the process. 

“We’d give each other a dirty look and then we'd go into other rooms, then we come in and each guy plays his section for the other guys.”

“We could either go home and like think of it at home,” adds Flea. “Or we can do it right then like, ‘We're gonna do a face-off right now and the part's gonna get done!’”

It's a technique that vocalist Kiedis comments creates an “unexpected moment of humility... whatever is the best for the song.”

Check out the full 60 Minutes interview in the clip above.

In the wake of Jeff Beck’s tragic passing, countless names from the bass world have paid tribute to one of the most influential guitarists in the history of rock. Bootsy Collins, Billy Sheehan, Duff McKagan, Suzi Quatro, Stanley Clarke, Will Lee, and many more have offered heartfelt tributes. “Jeff Beck has left the building and it is a lonelier place without him,” Paul McCartney posted on social media. “God bless Jeff and his family.”

Gene Simmons called it “heartbreaking news … no one played guitar like Jeff. Please get ahold of the first two Jeff Beck Group albums and behold greatness.”

Beck, who rose to fame with the Yardbirds before fronting the Jeff Beck Group, worked with a series of phenomenal bass players during his career. One of those privileged few was Tal Wilkenfeld. “Playing in Jeff’s band was so fun,” said Tal. “It was never about playing for the sake of playing. Everyone had something to say, and something to learn from the conversation. We’ve lost our favorite guitarist, and one of the most intelligent, intuitive and hilarious people I’ve ever met.”

Doug Wimbish, who was hired to play on Beck’s 1985 album, Flash, wrote, “I will never forget Jeff and how kind he was to me. A great person, a great spirit and a total legend to the core.”

“He taught a lot while never claiming to be a teacher,” said Bootsy Collins, who recorded with Jeff for Malcolm McLaren’s House of The Blue Danube, at Pearl Sound studios in Detroit. “Thxs for the gifts u left us with.”

“Nobody had a sound or a soul to match what he had,” said Will Lee. “There’s never going to be another voice like his on any instrument. He was truly amazing.”

More tributes can be found below.

Paul Samwell-Smith      

“What a genius. We wrote Shapes of Things together and Jeff had a blank sixteen bars for a solo in the middle of the song. He not only played an extraordinary solo, but he changed the nature of guitar playing ever after. Jeff was a lot of fun, and very naughty, both in life and in music. What a great life he enjoyed."

Flea

In 2009 Flea joined Jeff Beck, Metallica and a few other very special guests for a rowdy performance of Train Kept A-Rollin at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony. “What an absolutely brilliant musician who carved out a world all his own. A huge influence on a zillion guitarists and a deep part of who I am as a bassist. We will listen to you always, Jeff. Thank you for your gifts. What a rocker. This is the end of an era.” 

Rhonda Smith

“I first met Jeff in 2009 in Montreux, Switzerland. I was there with Prince and I had just had my hair done. I was on my way back to my hotel room when I entered the elevator and there was Jeff Beck all by himself. I knew who he was, but I said nothing… I was in awe.  Who knew that we would spend the next 13 years together? Thank you Jeff for all the special moments and the invaluable things that I learned from you.”  

Will Lee

“Nobody had a sound or a soul to match what Jeff had. When I asked him to play a solo for my album cut of Driftin by Jimi Hendrix, I was blown away that he said yes. And once I heard the solo, I was literally on my knees crying. I replayed it over and over again in disbelief. His solo is the musical equivalent of the sun breaking through clouds. It only takes two notes and you’re on a magic carpet of sound, soaring across the sky on the Jeff-stream.”

Suzi Quatro

“I remember Jeff Beck was in Detroit with producer Mickie Most to record at Motown with Cozy Powell. They were all together in the audience watching me with Cradle when Mickie picked me out as ‘the one’, and the rest is history. I ended up going to the studio with them after the show and jamming on Cissy Strut. It was one of the fondest and most surreal moments in my younger life. Jeff did me the honour of playing on my version of Desperado.”

Duff McKagan

"I got to know Jeff ever since he tried to play with GNR in Paris in the early 90’s. He had to back out because his tinnitus flared up at the soundcheck. A few weeks later he came to a studio in London and played on my Believe In Me record. His guitar playing has remained some of my very favorite of all time.”

Doug Wimbish

“Jeff Beck was one of a kind. A true genius who played from the heart. In the Fall of 1984 I was working in NYC with Arthur Baker, who asked me to play bass on Jeff’s Flash album, which Arthur was producing. Arthur set up a jam session with Jeff, myself and Zack Alford over at Electric Lady Studios and Jeff and I hit it off.

"Flash was released in 1985 and was followed by a tour of Japan. Following the tour, Jeff and I started recording with Mick Jagger on his Primitive Cool album. A great person, a great spirit and a total legend to the core.”

Tal Wilkenfeld

“Jeff Beck’s light and power were so strong. I was convinced we’d be goofing around and making music until the day I leave this planet. Jeff, thank you for believing in me before anyone else did. You treated me like a daughter to the point where Wikipedia actually thought that was true!”

Stanley Clarke

"Jeff had so much fire and patience at the same time in his playing along with an unmatched uniqueness. I remember staying at his place outside of London in Tunbridge Wells along with Mike Garson. We were rehearsing for something and Jeff had his guitars laid out all over the place. We went from playing music to messing around with what I believe was Jeff’s greatest love…. his cars. He had this beautiful brown Roadster. I believe it had red fire decals on the side. I have so many great memories with him.”

Billy Sheehan

“Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds is one of the most important records in my musical life. Paul Samwell-Smith is the inspiration for the neck-position EBO pickup on my original P Bass, and then, of course, Jeff Beck. Of the ‘Big Three’ (Page, Clapton and Beck), Jeff was my guy. From jamming Rice Pudding in a High School band, as well as performing so many others of Jeff’s songs. He was a beacon of creativity and improvisational expertise. Like no other.”

Gail Ann Dorsey

“Arguably the greatest guitarist ever? If not, very close to it. I got to witness his genius here in my hometown of Kingston NY back in 2010 at UPAC. I spent a few moments after the show in his gracious company. I am forever grateful for the innovative, captivating and passionate music he has blessed us with.”

Brian Ray

“For me, Jeff Beck was the true king of the electric guitar. He was a man who spoke a language no one else could speak, but one that we can all understand. Even Jimi Hendrix called him ‘the best living guitar player.’ He was the guitarist's guitar hero.”

Bryan Beller

“You can pretty much draw a line from everyone of note I've ever worked with straight back to Jeff Beck. His boundless creativity and inventive sonic artistry made instrumental guitar-driven rock and fusion a thing in the first place.”

Darryl Jones

“We have lost one of the most singularly gifted guitar masters ever to play the instrument. Jeff Beck influenced generations of players because of his completely unique approach to guitar playing. In my opinion, there is no one that comes close to playing the way he did. The music world has lost an irreplaceable talent.”

Paul McCartney

“Jeff Beck was a lovely man who played some of the best guitar music ever to come out of Great Britain. He was a superb technician and could strip down his guitar and put it back together again in time for the show. His unique style of playing was something that no one could match, and I will always remember the great times we had together. He would come over to dinner at our place or he and his wife, Sandra, would host an evening at their house. I will cherish forever the moments we spent together.

Jeff Beck has left the building and it is a lonelier place without him. God bless Jeff and his family.”

In the history of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the terms “funky Flea bass” and “guitar pick” have rarely been used in the same sentence. In fact, put a bass in Flea’s hands, and more likely than not, he’ll whip out some trademark slapped octaves or a funky fingerstyle groove. His slap-heavy style first got him noticed when the Chili Peppers lit up the L.A. music scene in the 80s, and it’s a technique that has set him apart ever since.

“Flea was my first influence on the instrument,” says Vulfpeck’s Joe Dart. "His commitment to playing every note as if it were his last, to truly dedicating his whole body and soul to the groove, and to holding it down in what is essentially a three-piece band – he inspired me as a kid and still does today.”

Flea toned things down for 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which included the landmark bassline on Give It Away. Of all his skills, however, it’s his mastery of the pick that has escaped the most attention. "I always want to play melodically, but basslines take on a different type of melody with a pick," he says. "I'm more likely to strum chords or play with double stops when I play with a pick."

In this demo video, which showcases Flea’s own brand of bass guitar, Flea substitutes his usual Dunlop Tortex .60mm for a quarter.

Having immersed himself in a Joy Division cover band following the Chili Pepper’s 1999 album Californication, as well as studio sessions with the likes of Alanis Morissette and Tricky, Flea continued to push his bass playing boundaries. 

“Me and John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer had a Joy Division cover band for a while, so I was really trying to learn how to play with a pick," he told Joel McIver in his interview for BP.

"I love the way Peter Hook plays. It was such a melodic, hypnotic way of playing bass. Jah Wobble too - all that Public Image stuff, from the Metal Box period, really blew me away. Me and John always used to play Poptones from that record. I got really into that post-punk sound out of England. I love that music.”

Flea first sat in with Janes Addiction during a 1997 reunion tour, after original bassist Eric Avery opted out of performing. 

“I had to really get my pick chops together with Janes Addiction because those songs call for it,” he says. "Eventually I tried one with the Chili Peppers on Parallel Universe, and when John brought in By The Way it made sense to try a more melodic pick approach.” 

Red Hot Chili Peppers will continue their world tour in 2023. Visit the band’s website for a for a full list of dates. Parallel Universe appears on Californication.  

You can count on your fingers the bass players whose legacy comes close to Stanley Clarke, once of the fusion band Return To Forever and since then a constant collaborator with the great and the good of music. A jazz pioneer, Clarke has done more for the electric bass guitar than almost anybody else.

"I saw Stanley Clarke one night on The Midnight Special TV show when I was a teenager and I was floored by how he would open and close his right hand, almost strumming and plucking the bass in one smooth stroke," recalls former-Megadeth bassist David Ellefson. "He was probably the fastest ‘lead bass guitarist’ I had ever seen take a solo!"

School Days was Stanley Clarke’s third solo album and it was the one on which his compositional skills and his flamboyant bass solos really caught the bass world’s imagination. Clarke had already demonstrated his double bass chops on the first two albums with Chick Corea's Return to Forever, but with the advent of his custom-built Alembic bass guitars, he now had a distinctive tone and look – the School Days album cover is a painting of Stanley in white flares spray painting poly chords onto a New York subway wall: very hip-hop. 

Asked about his motivation for adopting the electric bass as a lead instrument, Clarke explains, “It came out of something really simple. I used to play in bands, and I’d be the only guy that could arrange the music, the only guy that could write, and the only guy that could rehearse the band properly. So I thought, ‘If I have all these abilities, why don’t I just write some shit for the bass?’ I have to admit, I had some people that used to look at me like I was crazy.”

For a lot of bass players, the desire to play power chords on the bass guitar stems from those delicious first choppy intervals on 'School Days'. The intro sees Stanley strumming chords on the bass, a technique achieved by catching the strings on the down stroke with the fingernails of the right hand. 

"When Stanley did School Days, I’d never heard playing like that," says Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler. "People used to tell me that I was a reasonable bass player and then I heard him, and I felt like just giving up. It was like, ‘Oh my God…’ He took it to a completely new level." 

Clarke’s solos may change, but his gear does not, at least at its core. He’s still sporting a variation of the Alembic instruments built for him in the early 70s. “My first bass was a horrible sounding EB-0. Then when Rick Turner built me an Alembic, it changed my life, and changed the world of the bass too, because suddenly the sound of the bass became clear.” 

Clarke's Carl Thompson piccolo also bass makes an appearance on three tracks on the album. "He had this really trebly, almost banjo-like tone that I immediately sought after," says David Ellefson. "From that time Stanley’s tone became a sound that I modelled for clarity in my thrash metal bass work."

In 2002 at the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, a stage full of bassists got together to celebrate 'School Days'. Clarke was joined by the likes of Flea, Armand Sabal-Lecco, Billy Sheehan, Alex Al, Marcus Miller, Jimmy Johnson and Stuart Hamm. Stanley takes his solo at 02:23.

“There are solos on there that are phenomenal,” the late Victor Bailey once said of School Days. “In terms of significance to the history of the bass guitar, what Stanley Clarke did was the most important."

Visit stanleyclarke.com for more info.

Red Hot Chili Peppers covered Nirvana classic Smells Like Teen Spirit during a show at Silverlake Conservatory of Music this weekend (October 29).

Fan footage shows the band launch into the track’s verse – John Frusciante’s Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble handling Kurt Cobain’s Small Clone warble – with Anthony Kiedis tackling the track’s lower-register verse (with a t-shirt over his head, obviously). But the rendition really erupts when Frusciante kicks in the Boss DS-2 Distortion and takes over lead vocals for the chorus, screaming the refrain that lit a fire under ’90s rock.

Sadly, the band only performed the track’s first verse and chorus to close out the show, which also featured Chili Peppers classics Snow ((Hey Oh)), Californication and By the Way.

The unexpected addition to the shorter, 11-track set is most likely down to the band’s venue for the evening: the Silverlake Conservatory of Music is a nonprofit organization founded by RHCP bassist Flea, and counts Kiedis among its board members. The bassist and his Chili Peppers bandmates regularly perform to raise money for the Conservatory, and audiences can usually expect a few surprises.

Nirvana toured with the Chili Peppers back in 1991 – an experience Kiedis would later describe as “life-changing” – but the cover is also timely given Cobain’s influence on the band’s pair of albums for 2022, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen.

As Frusciante told us in our marathon interview earlier this year: “I really love guitar players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen for the way that they could make the instrument explode through hand and whammy bar techniques. But I also really like the way people like Greg Ginn or Kurt Cobain play without it being so much about technique – although there are all kinds of unconventional techniques in there – but the focus is definitely a more visceral thing.

“Eventually, by the time we were recording, my concept was to find a bridge between those two conceptions of the instrument: that idea of making it explode with the electricity of the human energy that comes through the strings.”

RHCP’s world tour has been making headlines for John Frusciante’s virtuosic solos in Eddie, the band’s tribute to Eddie Van Halen, in which the guitarist channels EVH with wild leads featuring two-hand tapping and whammy dives.

Given the mercurial nature of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López’s musical predilections, nouveau prog darlings the Mars Volta have covered a lot of sonic ground since their 2001 inception – sometimes to their fans’ chagrin. But few would argue that their Rick Rubin-produced 2003 debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, is their finest work, and one of the best rock albums of the 2000s.

Rodríguez-López’s wiry guitar playing and Jon Theodore’s furious kit workouts remain touchpoints for what made the record such a masterwork, but the bass playing – and, indeed, the bass player – are often overlooked. Which is particularly surprising when you consider that bassist is Flea.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers funk devotee is one of the most distinctive players of the past half-century, and as such, his contributions tend to erupt from a mix. Yet a number of factors conspired to make his presence an altogether more under-the-radar affair.

This apparatus must be unearthed

Following the departure of original bassist Eva Gardner shortly after the release of debut EP Tremulant, the Mars Volta were in need of some low-end assistance to track their forthcoming full-length.

Producer Rick Rubin flicked through his extensive black book of all-star musicians and arrived at Flea, who agreed to join the sessions at the Los Angeles mansion where Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded their seminal 1991 record Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and where the Mars Volta would record their own opus. (Flea’s RHCP bandmate John Frusciante would eventually contribute additional guitar and synthesizer treatments to De-Loused’s Cicatriz ESP, too.)

Rodríguez-López and Gardner had written many of the basslines prior to the album’s recording, leaving Flea to embellish these parts and add additional flavor to the record’s many extended jams.

Yet the RHCP bass great didn’t anticipate the level of control the band sought over his contributions, which extended right down to his rig.

“When Flea played bass on the De-Loused record, they made him play a Fender bass,” subsequent Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete told Bass Player in 2005. “He came down with all his gear, and they just said, ‘Man, can you please play this?’”

That bass was a ’64 Fender Precision, run through an Ampeg SVT head and 8x10 cabinet. Tones were recorded using a Neumann FET 47 mic on the cabinet and a Demeter DI, before both signals were compressed by a Teletronix LA-2A.

This was a far cry from Flea’s setup at the time, which typically relied on humbucker-loaded Modulus basses and Gallien-Krueger heads – the De-Loused rig yielded a more classic tone less prone to punch a hole through a mix. (Nearly 20 years later, Flea would switch to Ampeg SVTs for his work with the Chili Peppers.)

“It was a slightly different sound for Flea, but he is such a talented musician that he fit in perfectly,” engineer Dave Schiffman told Mix Online. “The bass needed to be full and present, because, essentially, the bass was the foundation of every track.”

Flea’s bass would go on to appear on eight of the album’s 11 songs, bar Televators and Ambuletz. Session great Justin Meldal-Johnsen handled stand-up bass on the former, while Rodríguez-López tackled the latter’s electric tones himself.

Mars attacks

Upon its release in June 2003, De-Loused in the Comatorium foregrounded Bixler-Zavala’s piercing vocals and Rodríguez-López’s frenetic guitar overdubs, with the bass relatively subdued in the mix compared with other alt-rock albums of the era.

Yet while his playing lacks its trademark tonal snarl, Flea’s musical voice is in evidence if you listen for it. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) showcases those signature arpeggios and rapid-fire fingerstyle. 12-minute epic Cicatriz ESP wouldn’t be the same without the low-end odysseys underpinning the guitar wigouts. Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt features a bass solo that wouldn’t sound out of place in a live RHCP jam.

While Flea added trumpet to De-Loused’s 2005 followup, Frances the Mute, his low-end collaborations with Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala wouldn’t resume until the sole 2014 release from punk-edged supergroup Antemasque.

But despite reports of a sophomore effort, further material from the project has yet to surface. Instead, Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala collaborated on new output under their most influential monikers, first with At the Drive-In and then the Mars Volta itself.

Yet it’s hard to imagine any new material landing with quite the same impact as De-Loused, which remains a landmark release that continues to spellbind and perplex in equal measure – and its all-star call sheet is part of that eternal magnetism.

Never let it be said that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have lost the ability to surprise their audience. After making a triumphant return with Unlimited Love, their first album in six years seeing the band welcome erstwhile guitar virtuoso John Frusciante back to the fold, the band announced a second studio album of 2022, Return of the Dream Canteen. 

Recorded with long-time producer Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studio in Malibu, California, Return of the Dream Canteen is scheduled for release on October 14, through Warner, and RHCP have shared the first single and video from the record, Tippa My Tongue.

Seasoned observers could press play on the video and have a good idea of where the Chilis are taking this musically. The psychedelic visuals, the RHCP logo acid tab on the tongue of frontman Anthony Kiedis, the color-timing and extra-trippy animation that looks inspired by Monty Python and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine; it’s a not-so-subtle tell that the the band going all in on the funk.

“We have only just begun, funky monks are on the run,” sings Kiedis, referencing one of the breakthrough tracks from 1991 breakthrough album, Blood Sex Sugar Magik.

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers are in this mode, they tend to take an elementary approach to their sound, with Frusciante on the Fender Stratocaster, Flea on the Jazz Bass, frequencies all very complementary to Kiedis’s vocal, with plenty of space for drummer Chad Smith’s groove to land.

That, too, typically suggests that Frusciante will have something special when it comes time for a guitar solo – and he does – but it’s very much the less-is-more approach, hitting a note and holding it, letting it bloom, while all around him the beat goes on.

That the Red Hot Chili Peppers have returned with a follow-up so soon after the release of Unlimited Love is a testament to the creative chemistry that Frusciante says was responsible for him returning. Speaking to Total Guitar, he said there was a challenge there, to tap into that chemistry, to play an active role in band democracy, and to get one of the most bankable songwriting machines in rock history back up and running. 

“There’s an appreciation of the chemistry that I can’t say I really had towards the end of being in the band last time,” Frusciante says. “An appreciation of what we’re capable of – when you get so used to something, you sometimes tend to take things for granted. 

“I’d had lots of time making music where I do whatever I want. And that was great. And I continue to do that. But it seemed like a really good step for me as a human being to try to play in a band again. Most of all, I just have a lot of fun playing with those guys.”

If initial months of Frusciante being back found the band playing covers, that was just to get their eye in. The original ideas soon followed. That they had 45 tracks all in by the time they stopped writing for Unlimited Love, which goes some way to explaining how they could complete Return of the Dream Canteen in short order – an album that is now available to pre-order via Warner. 

In the end, it was a simple reason that led John Frusciante to return to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “I really wanted that challenge of trying to work in a democratic band with people that I respect and people that I have a chemistry with,” he says.

“I felt that to move forward as a soul and as a human being, I had to accept that challenge. I felt that it would be good for me to try to work harmoniously with them, and not have my ego be the thing that was driving me forward, but to have love and respect for them. That was the thing: to try to be a part of a whole.”

Frusciante is talking to Total Guitar from his home in Los Angeles, the city where the Red Hot Chili Peppers formed back in 1983. With his long hair unkempt under a wooly beanie, his face unshaven, wearing black-rimmed glasses and his lean frame clad in a loose-fitting yellow t-shirt and green jacket, the guitarist looks pretty much the same as he did 16 years ago, when double album Stadium Arcadium gave the band its first-ever US number one.

But it was in the wake of that album’s success that John quit the band – the second time he had done so, having previously bailed in 1992, both exits prompted by his discomfort with the pressures of fame.

Following his departure in 2009, the Chili Peppers went on to release two albums with another prodigious California guitarist, Josh Klinghoffer. Frusciante, meanwhile, pursued his love of electronic music and modular synths, in an effort to make music that stood apart from the band with which he made his name, and with entirely personal – and non-commercial – aspirations.

So it came as a surprise when the Chili Peppers issued a social media communique in late 2019 announcing Frusciante’s return, and with it, the potential for a new album – their first with John in the fold since Stadium Arcadium. 

The fruits of their labour, Unlimited Love, finds the band reunited with super-producer Rick Rubin, showcasing 17 tracks that run the gamut of their collective influences, from breezy funk to progressive rock and hardcore punk. 

In short, the chemistry between John, bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith and frontman Anthony Kiedis has resurfaced intact, a musical formulation unimpacted by the decade-plus break and even a global pandemic.

Naturally, there’s a lot to talk about, and John is certainly in the mood to talk – so much so that his conversation with TG extends beyond its allotted 60 minutes to nearly two hours.

The guitarist loves to discuss the subjects closest to his heart – the art of making music, his studio secrets, the sense of anticipation ahead of the band’s return to the live stage. He is also candid about his reasons for leaving the band over a decade ago, and what ultimately brought him back to his musical brothers.

“I’ve done a lot of reflection on the causes of my quitting the band the last time that I don’t think I had the mental space to be aware of at the time,” he says. “It was like, ‘I just really don’t want to do all this living in this world of fame and publicity; I just want to concentrate on making electronic music and making music just to make music, and not to make people happy, not to be successful.’ And that was just what I needed at the time.

“But I looked back and realised that with some of the personal stresses between me and other members of the band, I saw my own part of it more than I think I saw it back in 2009. And while I think no one person is at fault in a situation where somebody quits a band, I’d grown enough as a person to see my side in it, as opposed to just playing the victim.”

A new beginning

It’s hard to overstate the impact John Frusciante has had on generations of guitarists. With his sparse, feel-driven lines on the Chili Peppers’ 1991 breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik, he introduced ’90s players to a wiry, exhilarating blend of funk and post‑punk. 

And in his second tenure with the band, a run of three expansive, diverse, multi-million selling albums – Californication, By the Way and Stadium Arcadium – kept adventurous textures and guitar solos at the forefront of mainstream rock, at a time when pop-punk and nu-metal ruled the airwaves. 

For this third phase, the reunited band took their tentative first steps in the rehearsal room. Rather than begin writing straight off the bat, they played material from the earliest Chili Peppers albums – released when John was a fan rather than a member of the band – in a bid to reconnect with the roots of the group. 

Meanwhile, band members suggested covers of classic tracks – Some Other Guy by Richie Barrett, Trash by the New York Dolls, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s Hot Little Mama and the Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset all received a workout – which injected fresh energy into rehearsals.

“I didn’t want to feel any pressure about writing stuff, because that would have been overwhelming,” John recalls. “So for a month or two, we were just playing songs by other people, and playing really early Chili Peppers stuff. We just had a lot of fun. 

“And luckily that spirit of fun ended up staying with us throughout the whole writing process, even after those songs had been phased out and replaced by going there every day being excited about the new stuff we were bringing in, or the jams that we were turning into songs.”

And boy, did they have a lot of songs. By the time the band hit Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in 2021, they had 45 tracks ready to go, with a further three written during the sessions. All were ultimately recorded, leaving more than enough material for a follow-up record (“I definitely feel like we saved some of the best stuff for the potential next album,” John teases). But, he adds, he never had the intention to write quite so many songs.

“You know, I was ready to stop when we had, like, 20 – I felt like that was good enough,” he laughs. “But one thing led to another and somebody or other kept encouraging me to keep bringing in more songs. So, before we knew it, we had way more songs than we’d ever written for a record before.”

For his part, Frusciante had to readjust his guitar playing to write rock music again. During his electronic music wilderness, any time with a guitar in his lap was more often spent appreciating music than composing it. 

He learned every solo recorded by jazz great Charlie Christian, and took inspiration from the chord progressions in landmark ’70s albums by progressive rock legends Genesis. It helped him reconnect with his love of the instrument.

“I developed a real fan relationship with the different forms of rock music, without it having anything to do with my identity,” he explains. “So when I went back to playing in the band, I knew it would affect what I wrote.”

Accordingly, the guitarist had a vision for where he wanted to take his compositions, and it harked back to the origins of the genre he was returning to.

“I really wanted to focus on where I see the beginning of rock music in history – the rock ’n’ roll of the late-’50s, and the electric blues that took place throughout the ’40s and ’50s,” he says.

“I wanted to imagine that I was a guy coming up at the same time as The Beatles or Cream or Jimi Hendrix, to see: ‘What would I have done to embellish upon that foundation?’ I felt like as long as I’m getting back into making rock music, let’s go to the roots of it.

“I’d spent so much time on other records specifically focusing on Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix and Cream. Rather than do that again, I thought, ‘Let’s focus on Elvis and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown and Freddie King and Albert King, and Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent and Ricky Nelson – and then, okay, so how would I try to do something beyond this?’”

Those plans would change shape once John began collaborating with the band. To warm up for recording each day, he would play through Jeff Beck’s classic albums Truth, Blow By Blow and Wired. But equally, he was re-immersing himself in the textural approach of Siouxsie And The Banshees’ John McGeoch, as well as Greg Ginn’s abrasive riffs in Black Flag. His approach became an amalgamation of all those influences, with a smattering of ’80s guitar heroes for good measure.

“I really love guitar players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen for the way that they could make the instrument explode through hand and whammy bar techniques,” he says. “But I also really like the way people like Greg Ginn or Kurt Cobain play without it being so much about technique – although there are all kinds of unconventional techniques in there – but the focus is definitely a more visceral thing.

“Eventually, by the time we were recording, my concept was to find a bridge between those two conceptions of the instrument: that idea of making it explode with the electricity of the human energy that comes through the strings.

“And, also, using the full range of the instrument in terms of the types of techniques that, while Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads did a lot to develop them, I see them all as being rooted in what Jeff Beck did on Blow By Blow and Wired.”

Stretching out

Ultimately, Unlimited Love became a distillation of the guitar heroics Frusciante employed on the bombastic Stadium Arcadium, sitting alongside the ambient sonics found on By the Way’s more experimental moments, all while incorporating a more overt punk influence. 

His wide-ranging approach spans the anthemic alt-rock of Black Summer through to the sultry funk of Poster Child and the ferocious hardcore of These Are The Ways, which dishes out the album’s heaviest riffs – although the track’s inception was very different to the rock monster that ended up on the record.

“Before I wrote the music for These Are The Ways, I was playing along with Sparks’ album Propaganda,” John recalls. “I was just blown away by how seemingly simple but imaginative their chord progressions are. 

“But once I brought it to the band, we turned it into this heavy-duty thing where the drums go from being like Keith Moon to Black Sabbath to Metallica. The end seems like a speed-metal thing to me. With the power of the band, it definitely turned into something else.”

Another stylistic left turn crops up on White Braids & Pillow Chair, a mid-tempo chord workout that ends up as a full-blown rockabilly wig-out. It was one of the first songs John brought to the table, and one of his favourites in the way it “mixes up a few things that are important to me”, blending a voice-leading progression inspired by Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks with an early-’60s surf outro.

John’s more textural approach, meanwhile, crops up on slow-burn groovers Not the One and It’s Only Natural, which combine the minimal six-string ethos of ’80s goth with techniques inspired by all-time guitar greats. 

The former draws on Adrian Belew and Eddie Van Halen’s mastery of the guitar’s volume control, teamed with expansive digital delays. The latter features smatterings of backwards delay – an ’80s hallmark – on its psychedelic solo, but its deceptively simple verse atmospherics found John once again turning to Jeff Beck for inspiration.

“It sounds like there’s an echo on It’s Only Natural,” he says, “but I’m doing that with my hands. That’s not an echo. That’s me with my right hand just being loud, loud, loud, softer, softer, softer, softer, softer. 

“I had actually been doing it a lot because on Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow there’s a song called Constipated Duck, and I think he probably actually has an echo on his guitar, but to play along with it, you have to do that: play loud, softer, softer, softer, softer, to sound like you’re matching the recording. 

“Flea had come up with the idea of It’s Only Natural on piano. And then when he switched to bass, I thought that would be cool if I tried to do that kind of thing, like I’m doing on Constipated Duck, but make it a part of the song.”

Old friends

While John sought to explore new ground on Unlimited Love with his songwriting and technical philosophy, his gear ethos saw him reunite with the familiar tools he used to carve his name into the hearts of millions of young players.

“The main guitar that I played was my ’62 Strat, which is the same guitar that I got when I rejoined the band back in 1998,” he says of his go-to, which still features the original hand-wound pickups, but now comes loaded with an ILITCH hum-cancelling system. “Back in ’98 I didn’t have money for a Strat, but I told them all I had was a Fender Jaguar, and I felt that I should have a Strat for it to sound like the band. 

“Anthony and I went to Guitar Center and he lent me the money to get a Strat, and it was the one that spoke to me off the wall. And ever since then, I’ve had many other Strats – from that period of time, generally – and that one that happened to be there that day, I’ve never found one better than that.”

Other old favourites also made an appearance: his maple-necked ’55 Strat – whose Seymour Duncans were recently replaced with a louder, better-matched set of pickups courtesy of Fender Senior Master Builder Paul Waller – as well as his ’61 Fiesta Red Strat and a Jaguar or two.

Acoustics – as heard on electro-folk groover Bastards of Light and delicate album closer Tangelo – were all Martin: two 1940s 0-15 mahogany models, a D-28 Dreadnought and a 12-string.

But there were some new-to-the-Chili Peppers additions, too, via a cabal of Yamaha SGs from the late-’70s and early-’80s. These dual-humbucker heavyweights became John’s main squeeze during his time away from the band, but proved to be the perfect guitars for overdubs during the album’s heavier moments.

He explains: “When there’s a heavy section with distorted powerchords and that kind of thing, a lot of the time the Strat was what I played in the basic track, but [doubled with a] Yamaha SG straight into the Marshall with no distortion pedal or anything, just getting the distortion from the amp. Quite a bit of the time it’s the Yamaha on the left, for example, and the Fender Strat through a distortion pedal on the other speaker. And there are even some mellow, soft things where it’s the SG.”

Amp-wise, the Marshall Silver Jubilee and Major stacks that flanked the guitarist at the Chili Peppers’ biggest shows were dusted off and taken out of retirement for the bulk of the tones, while a Roland Jazz Chorus wound up on a few dubs. But John’s lockdown reading also inspired him to seek out an old classic – which, as it transpired, had an unexpected connection to the band.

“I also had an Ampeg B-15,” he reveals. “I really loved both the guitar playing and the engineering of Greg Sage from the Wipers. He’s gotten some of the best guitar tones I think anybody’s ever recorded. He mentioned that he thought [the B-15] was the best amplifier ever made. 

“So I bought one of those while we were recording the record to have a small amp to have a difference in tone for certain things. Then when I brought it in, Flea looked at it and he said, ‘That’s the same amp my stepdad used to have!’ His stepdad was a bass player and upright bass player, and that was the amp he would plug his upright bass into. That was a funny coincidence.”

But it was the Marshalls that would light the tonal fuse for some of the album’s guitar highlights, in particular the visceral, screaming feedback that tears across the solo sections of The Great Apes and The Heavy Wing.

“Feedback is one of the funnest parts of making music for me,” John enthuses. “The approach to the feedback is just volume: having all four cabinets of two stacks on at once and finding the different places to stand where the really good feedback’s gonna happen, and walking around while I’m playing the solos to get different feedback on different notes. 

“And just being extremely loud – like, so loud that if I didn’t have my headphones on, I couldn’t have stood there. The headphones were the only thing preventing my ears from getting blown out!”

The sheer volume meant that while many of the rhythm tracks were recorded live in the room, John was forced to track most of his solos as overdubs to avoid the amps bleeding too heavily into the drum mics. 

But those band recordings found the guitarist fine-tuning his core sound, too, making one major adjustment to his Strat and amps compared with previous Chili Peppers outings.

“The bass [neck] pickup is on pretty much everything,” he reveals. “For a period of time, like By the Way or Californication, I was using the bridge pickup quite a bit. So, I noticed that when we were recording this, my treble was up on three on both of the Marshalls – in the old days, my treble was always on zero.”

As a result, the guitarist is still figuring out his pedalboard for the Chili Peppers’ upcoming live dates, and contemplating an EQ pedal to even out the treble response on those neck and bridge pickups. Naturally, the studio was ripe for effects experimentation elsewhere, too: modular and rack units received regular use, alongside more conventional pedals.

“I definitely used more delays on this than I had in any time in the past,” he says. “Mainly because I was inspired by that ’50s stuff – things like Gene Vincent or Elvis, where a lot of the time, there’s a slapback delay, not just on the guitar, but on the drums and on the vocal and bass and everything. 

“So, I had a few: I had an MXR analog one, I had a [DeltaLab] Effectron II digital delay. Somebody suggested that I get one of these tape delays that they make now, the Fulltone Tube Tape Echo. That’s the last thing you hear on the album at the end of Tangelo, when all of a sudden there’s a delay that starts and then it builds into a kind of feedback for a second and then it’s noise.”

One new discovery was the Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive for a chunkier rather than more aggressive tone, as well as the MXR Super Badass Variac Fuzz for hairier solos and meatier overdubs. But at the time of writing, it remains to be seen how many of those will make it out onto the road, and whether John’s ’board will approach Slane Castle levels of enormity.

“I never used very many!” he laughs at the mention of the cornucopia of stompboxes at his feet during the landmark 2003 show. “A lot of the time, one pedal was just for one particular song, and so I had to have it there just in case we played that song.

“And it was also because sometimes after being on tour for a long time, I get bored with the same sound from night to night. I like to have pedals that are just there for me to do something weird and different if the mood strikes me.”

I Like Dirt

John presents a guided tour of the key elements on his trimmed-down rehearsal pedalboard, stacked with pedals that wound up on Unlimited Love

Ibanez WH10 and Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble

“I used a lot of the same things – the same Ibanez wah-wah pedal, the old one. And the same old Boss chorus pedal, the Chorus Ensemble.”

Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion and SD-1 Super Overdrive

“Normally, I would use the DS-2. But I also used the SD-1 – it’s less distorted. It’s not a super-extreme kind of distortion, but it can give you a powerful tone.”

MXR Super Badass Variac Fuzz and Custom Badass ’78 Distortion

“There was definitely a lot of MXR stuff on the album. They gave me a bunch of pedals early on. I used their fuzz tone quite a bit, not just for solos, but sometimes even for guitar parts for choruses or whatever. And a distortion pedal of theirs, too.”

MXR Reverbs

“That was on almost all the time [at rehearsals – the album features real room reverb]. It’s one of those things that comes from me being an engineer – I don’t think I used to be very conscious of room sounds, but now they’re very important to me to give some sort of sense of space to what you’re recording. And so it’s very subtle. It’s a very short room sound, but I just like to hear the guitar that way. The other is set for a more long kind of reverb.”

MXR Dyna Comp

“Sometimes the Dyna Comp was just exactly what I needed in terms of getting the right amount of sustain on clean things, and having a more Taffy-like kind of sound. I’ve loved the Dyna Comp ever since I was a little kid. I was a big fan of Adrian Belew when I was a youngster, and he had one of those on, like, all the time back in those days in the early ’80s.”

Around the world

Of course, there will be plenty of opportunity for Frusciante to push his tones and his playing on the Chili Peppers’ upcoming world tour. 

Unsurprisingly, the setlist is likely to be heavily populated by greatest hits from his tenures with the band, as well as plenty of new material – at the time of Total Guitar’s interview, the band have been almost exclusively rehearsing all 48 of the songs they wrote for this album and its potential follow-up. 

So, while the prospect of hearing Unlimited Love and even yet-to-be-released material is a tantalising one for fans, John emphasises how much he’s enjoying revisiting the old classics and adding some fresh, improvisatory twists.

“It really does feel good to play the old songs again,” he says. “There’s been a magic feeling for all of us going back to that material. And, you know, I like improvising on stage. So I look forward to the jamming parts of it, and making up new solos every night.

“[There’s] that reciprocal thing that happens with an audience, where their energy and the pressure of playing in front of them and not being able to rewind the tape and go backwards, it brings something out of you as a musician that there’s no way to recreate as a guitar player sitting in a studio recording your music by yourself, as I have in the past.

“I look forward to playing under that pressure, and letting go, and letting whatever spirits are with us that night come through me, and trying to match that feeling that gets generated between the band and an audience.” He pauses. “You know, I haven’t really played in front of an audience in about 12 years. So it’s as new to me as writing rock music was when I rejoined.”

Yet Frusciante has more than settled into his old role; it’s as if he never left. And while he’s brought some new tricks from an engineering perspective – citing his explorations of backwards delay and reverb and modular guitar treatments as highlights – it’s rediscovering that raw musical connection, and the simple joys of playing with like-minded musicians, that’s kept things exciting and fresh. 

All in all, it paints a rosy picture of John’s third act with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“There’s an appreciation of the chemistry that I can’t say I really had towards the end of being in the band last time,” he admits. “An appreciation of what we’re capable of – when you get so used to something, you sometimes tend to take things for granted.

“I’d had lots of time making music where I do whatever I want. And that was great. And I continue to do that. But it seemed like a really good step for me as a human being to try to play in a band again. Most of all, I just have a lot of fun playing with those guys.”

• Thanks to John’s guitar tech, Henry Trejo, for his assistance with this feature.

It’s been a busy 2022 so far for Flea, who, along with his Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmates, wrote and recorded the band’s recently released album, Unlimited Love, which will be promoted on a mega world tour later this year.

Meanwhile, the bass guitar icon has also found time to continue his acting side hustle and update his comprehensive list of pop culture cameos, with Star Wars News Net reporting – on the eve of Star Wars Day, no less – that Flea himself will be starring in Disney+’s upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series.

While he won’t have a starring role – though Obi-Wan Kenob-Flea is a Star Wars spin-off we’d definitely watch – the bassist will still reportedly make a somewhat-notable appearance. Per the original report, Flea will apparently “be wielding a cool-looking blaster”.

The report adds up, too, given Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow was behind RHCP’s Black Summer video, released back in February.

Despite the release of two trailers, footage of Flea with his “cool-looking blaster” is still yet to emerge, meaning we’ll have to wait for the show’s premiere on May 27 to catch the bassist in action.

As it turns out, Flea isn’t the first bass guitarist to pop up somewhere in the Star Wars universe. Earlier this year, fusion maestro Thundercat made his acting debut on The Book of Boba Fett – another Disney+ spin-off show.

Of course, it’s not Flea’s first rodeo in front of the camera. Over his career, the RHCP bassist has racked up a number of onscreen cameos in Back to the Future II and III, The Big Lebowski, Baby Driver and more.

While the decision to swap four-strings for fantasy firearms may only be temporary, Flea announced he’d made a more permanent – and arguably more significant – switch in both his live and studio setups earlier this year.

In an interview with Bass Player, Flea revealed he ditched his tried-and-trusted Gallien-Kreuger bass amps while recording Unlimited Love in favor of Ampeg SVTs, and announced he liked them so much he’ll be taking them on the road when RHCP tour this year.

“I’m actually switching amps on this tour for the first time in a long, long time,” Flea said. “In the studio, I started playing Ampeg SVTs, and I’m switching to them live.

“To be honest,” he continued, “I’ve always thought it doesn’t fucking matter. You’re bringing your heart and your fingers and that’s all that really matters, but I’ve been really enjoying [the SVTs] – they are the center and the character of the sound that I love.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres on May 27 on Disney+.

“We work hard,” wrote Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary in the liner notes of 2004’s Greatest Hits album, a world away from the club-level act that his band had been two decades before. That hard work has led him to the position of Best Bassist in multiple polls in this magazine – even though, as he tells us, he’s nowhere near being the bassist that he really wants to be. It’s our job to find out why.

An Australian who moved to California as a kid and endured a tough childhood which you can read all about in his 2019 autobiography Acid For The Children, Flea – so nicknamed for his habit of leaping about on stage, like you didn’t know that already – is probably his demographic’s most visible bass guitar player. He won his category in BP’s 100 Greatest Bassists Poll by a significant margin, indicating that many of you reading this would agree with that assessment. 

A jazz- and punk-rock obsessive since his early days, Flea’s bass parts are deft without being over-polished, fast without lacking heart, and infused with a hippie West Coast sensibility that is equal parts Larry Graham and Peter Hook. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Chili Peppers’ new album, Unlimited Love, whose title may sound like a rom-com, but whose contents definitely deserve your attention. 

Produced by Rick Rubin and featuring the returning John Frusciante’s first work with the band since 2009 – when he was replaced by Josh Klinghoffer, who he replaced in turn two years ago – Unlimited Love is a subtler RHCP record than many fans will expect. 

Generally quieter and less aggressive than their best-known albums Mother’s Milk (1989), Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) and Californication (1999), the album leaves plenty of space for Flea to fill with a variety of bass parts – and fill them he does. We sat down with the perennial punk of funk to see where his head is at in 2022...

Did you record Unlimited Love the old-school way – together in the studio?

“Yeah, absolutely. We don’t know any other way. We like to record live to tape, with all of us playing together in a room, looking at each other playing, feeling each other playing, like we’ve always done it. 

“We sit in a rehearsal room for months on end, writing, jamming, laughing, arguing, and at a certain point, the shit has been honed and nurtured, so we go in and put it on tape and play it for Rick. He makes his comments and then we record it.” 

I assume that when you play with John Frusciante, it’s like putting on a pair of comfortable old sneakers, or am I way off? 

“No, no, that’s it. That’s a really correct assumption. You know, John was gone for 10 years, and the first second that we started jamming together again, it was just like talking. We were both yearning for the same thing to happen, and when the thing happens, we’re both completely conscious that it’s happening. 

“It’s like that with the four of us, not just me and John. It was like that with Josh too, who is a beautiful musician, and not only a beautiful musician but a great person – someone who is kind and thoughtful and generous and supportive, musically and otherwise. 

“It’s just different sets of reference points, and different ways of looking at what the project is. It’s just a matter of the language spoken organically, you know – and we have that with John in spades. It’s there, and it’s clear, and it’s simple, and it’s easy.”

And what about working with Rick Rubin? I never know whether he kicks your asses in the studio, or if he just sits back and is a kind of impassive guru figure.

“You know, to be honest, I didn’t see a lot of him. I think he came to one rehearsal, and he listened to the shit and he loved it. He gives us arrangement advice, and he tells us how he thinks the essence of the song can be brought out better. You know, how we can serve the melody and the vocal, or whether a song needs to change key or tempo, or if he thinks one part should be longer and another part should be approached in a different way. 

“We went through that with him and then we laid it all down. He and Anthony went to Hawaii and did the vocals, and John and I stayed and did whatever overdubs were needed to my parts and John’s guitar parts. He added a whole plethora of keyboards and backing vocals, too.”

There’s tons of room for you to move around on this album – it’s a real bass playground in that sense.

“I think that’s just where we’re at, collectively, and where I’m at. I think about playing bass – particularly as it relates to the Red Hot Chili Peppers – as like a river. With the basslines and the way I want to play them, I want to live my life in a way that allows me to open myself up enough for this cosmic, spiritual river to flow through me. 

“I can unleash it however it needs to go – like when it needs to be violent rapids, or when it needs to be a calm, still pool. However I can serve the chords, the melody, the rhythm and the harmony, I’m going to be loose and free and let it flow. I feel like we have a lot of great rhythms and chords and melodies and I just want to flow through it, man. 

“It can be a supportive thing, or it can be a hypnotic, repetitive thing which creates that meditative feeling of hypnosis that we all want in music, you know what I mean? Whether I’m talking about fucking Discharge or Slayer or Erik Satie or everything in between, it’s that human feeling that we want, the connectedness of humanity, that we feel when we hear great music.” 

How do you apply this in practice?

“I get out of the way and let the thing flow. More often than not on this record, I’m all over the place. I’m just letting it flow. Every song is different than the next, every call is different than the next. I’m just feeling the music and feeling what works, and as long as I stay focused and diligent as a musician, and I play a lot, and I pay attention and I’m humble, I’m continuing to learn. 

“When the opportunity comes to play, after a lifetime of playing, I have all these reference points and all these feelings, which are part of who I am, that make me up. They’re constantly guiding me, and I trust them. I trust all the things that have come through me.”

How much of the bass is arranged and how much is improvised in the moment?

“I like to not know what I’m going to play. I know the feeling of what I’m going to play, and I know the feeling that I’m yearning for, but I’m gonna trust my fingers and my nervous system and my brain and my relationship with God to come through. I just want to rock it. I just want to let it happen.” 

Do you practice much?

“I practice, I do my scales. I do my stuff. I study. I love music. I love the bass. I get more joy picking up my bass and holding it in my hands than I ever have in my life, you know. I love to play the thing. I’ve got my ’61 Fender Jazz and I love the lightness of it, the smoothness of the neck. I hold it in my hands and all is right in the world.”

I love the unselfishness of John’s guitar parts. He obviously doesn’t feel the need to show off at this point.

“John is so fucking good, man. He is more technically capable than he’s ever been. He can play anything. His knowledge of music is encyclopaedic. His taste is beautiful. He’s always evolving, growing, changing. 

“He comes from the purest place, with the most integrity, and with all of that said, the thing that has been such a joy for me, playing with him this time around, is the humility that comes with that sparseness. 

“He has no desire, anywhere in him, to show off. He just wants to make great music. His vision of the music is so beyond ego. He’ll write a beautiful chord progression and melody, and within that, he trusts me just to do my thing.”

On the same subject, we all start our careers wanting to show off our bass chops, and then as we mature, that falls away. When did that happen for you?

“I don’t know that I ever really had that desire, consciously anyways, to be a show-off. Of course, I loved Jaco and Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller and all these great bass players, but I was more about having my own sound and my own style that sounded like me. 

“Maybe that’s where my arrogance was, especially in the early Chili Peppers stuff where I’m very busy, with fast 16th notes slapped aggressively. I’m into punk rock, and the funk that I love kind of comes through the vehicle of the punk rock aggression that I was feeling in the street as a kid, you know. I don’t know... I always loved sweet, mellow bass playing, too. It just didn’t really make sense for me to do it. 

“Even back then when I was playing all that fast stuff, we would do a song like Baby Appeal [from RHCP’s eponymous debut album, 1984], where it was just so simple. I love bands with really simple basslines, like Gang of Four or Echo & the Bunnymen. Around the time we made Blood Sugar Sex Magik, I definitely felt the value in really simple bass playing. 

“At the time I was super into Neil Young and the sound of the Crazy Horse bass player, Billy Talbot. It was so heavy. He would just hit a root and a quarter note, and it would fucking shake your insides out with the beauty and the heaviness of it. But at the same time, I could never shy away from the heaviness of Charlie Mingus’s fastest, most brutal attack. Man, I love Mingus so much. 

Has it occurred to you that in early 2022, it’s 30 years since Under the Bridge and the other Blood Sugar Sex Magik singles came out?

“I hadn’t thought about it. Once a while, I’ll look on social media and I’ll see people saying that it’s the 20-year anniversary or the 30-year anniversary of something, and I’ll think ‘That’s cool’.

“You know, I’m grateful that people care, but I’m thinking more like ‘Shit, I gotta work on my soloing, because I haven’t been practicing enough.’ The lightness and the weight of time is something that I feel every day, like every human being, you know, and especially as I get older, I’m just grateful to be a human, haha!”

Are you playing bass now the same way you were 30 years ago?

“I hope that I’m better. I mean, I feel like I’m better. I’m always discovering things, you know, and trying to develop. I like to think that the best parts of myself back then, I’ve kept, and that I’ve gotten rid of the bits that I don’t need. I’ll try to add more essential parts and I’ll get better. 

“You know, I really want to be a good jazz bass player – that’s something I really want to do, whenever I get the time. I was studying with someone for a little while, around the time I finished tracking on the last Chili Peppers album. I was studying jazz with this girl whose husband plays saxophone on our record, just working on trying to play through changes on walking bass, because upright bass is the most comforting sound to me. 

“I remember when we were tracking Californication, we were all sitting around the studio lounge, and John was asking everybody in the room, ‘What’s the real comfort music that you put on and it’s like breathing?’ I realized that for me, it’s jazz, mostly because I liked it when I was a kid. I just don’t know how to play a lot of that shit, so that’s something I’m always quietly aspiring to.”

Presumably you could do a jazz project on the side if you wanted to?

“I could, I could. I would love to, but my professional life has always been such that it’s difficult to go develop something like that.

How do you maintain your chops?

“When we’re on tour, I’m playing so much. We’re playing gigs all the time, and I play scales for an hour before every show. Something about the Chili Peppers is that never for a second have we ever taken the audience for granted, or thought, ‘We’ll just go out and play the hits.’ I take every show as a sacred moment, as part of a mission of being alive. So I keep my chops up. I’m ready!”

How are the hands and shoulders holding up after 40 years of playing bass?

“Strong as ever. I practice, but I know when it’s time to rest. I’m keen on physical fitness. I can’t speak for everyone, but for myself, my feelings get deeper and my insight gets deeper as you get older. 

“In order to be able to articulate feelings and insight, you have to take care of your body. I think that’s true at all times of life, but you become more conscious of it as you get older.

“I’m going to be 60 on my next birthday, and I have lots of friends who can’t be bothered. You know, I get it. I have a lazy streak like a motherfucker, but if you choose to do something, you want to do it as well as you can, and I care about happiness and longevity too.”

Ever tempted to bust out a Modulus bass for old times’ sake?

“I could, but then the amp settings and stuff would all have to change. I’m actually switching amps on this tour for the first time in a long, long time. In the studio, I started playing Ampeg SVTs, and I’m switching to them live. 

“To be honest, I’ve always thought it doesn’t fucking matter. You’re bringing your heart and your fingers and that’s all that really matters, but I’ve been really enjoying them – they are the center and the character of the sound that I love.”

What have you got left to achieve?

“I want to be a good musician, man.”

You don’t think you’ve reached that point yet?

“Well, I have my thing, you know, but I want to be better. The specific goals I have as a bass player are that I want to become a better soloist, and I want to expand my cerebral knowledge of chord progressions and basslines, so I can be a good jazz bass player. And I want to fucking rock harder than ever. 

“I want to stir the souls of human beings when we play. And I want to be a good bandmate – I want to connect with my bandmates, and be a great support to them and help them be the best they can be. I love my band and I’m really proud of the music we’ve recorded. It’s beautiful. I feel like it’s the best we can do. I feel like we’re firing on all cylinders and at the top of our game, and I just want to continue to do all those things.”

What makes you happy, Flea?

“Love. I try to live a life where I’m creating it, where I’m building bridges, even with people who I really disagree with. I try to build bridges with different communities where I live, with different people. 

“That’s very important to me. I just really hope that we can build bridges of love everywhere we go. I think that’s where happiness lies in the future. The possibility for it lies within all of us.”

• Unlimited Love is out now via Warner Records.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets faced off at the Crypto.com Arena in LA on Sunday (April 3), and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea was in attendance to deliver the national anthem prior to the game.

Now, it's Flea, so we expected some kind of funky, out-of-the-box treatment, but nothing could have prepared us for quite how hard he goes with it.

Armed with a purple-finished custom Fender Jazz bass guitar – appropriately adorned with a massive Los Angeles Lakers body decal – the RHCP man kicks off The Star-Spangled Banner's first few bars with a relatively untouched bass signal, before stepping on a fuzz pedal and letting loose with some show-stopping embellishments inspired, as he explained on Twitter, by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. 

His performance is injected with a smattering of crunchy double stops and chunky open low-string clangs, all while engaging in a spot of headbanging. Check it out below.

Flea's performance also offers a glimpse of his new Ampeg-powered bass rig. Previously a Gallien-Krueger loyalist, the Chili Peppers man recently revealed to Bass Player that he had made the switch prior to the recording of the band's new album, Unlimited Love.

He did, however, caveat his decision behind the switch, saying gear “doesn't fucking matter” as long as “you're bringing your heart and your fingers”.

Flea's Ampeg rig can also be spotted during the Red Hot Chili Peppers' first shows with John Frusciante since 2007, in two separate TV appearances on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a secret show at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles.

This isn't the first time Flea has performed the national anthem at a Lakers game. Back in 2016, he played another bass-only rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner before the team faced the Utah Jazz in what was basketball legend Kobe Bryant's final professional game.

His unusual performance was met with criticism from some basketball fans, though he told TMZ in response: “I know that people who like music liked it. I thought it was beautiful. I really don't have any concern for little small minds that get frustrated when they get blown. I like the big minds.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ upcoming album Unlimited Love is, for all intents and purposes, set to be something of a soft reboot for the band. The most notable change-up is, of course, John Frusciante’s return, though bassist Flea has revealed he also seized the opportunity to experiment with his setup in the studio this time round.

According to the man himself, his bass guitar sound has come from the same source for a “long, long time” – and those familiar with his setup will no doubt quickly attribute said tone to his Fender four-strings and Gallien-Krueger bass amps.

However, for Unlimited Love, Flea revealed to Bass Player that he swapped out his tried-and-trusted Gallien-Kruegers for Ampeg SVTs.

In fact, he liked these new alternatives so much, he announced he’ll be taking them on tour with him when the Chili Peppers hit the road later this year.

When asked if he’d ever don a Modulus Bass again – the brand he once endorsed – Flea responded, “I could, but then the amp settings and stuff would all have to change.

“I’m actually switching amps on this tour for the first time in a long, long time,” he continued. “In the studio, I started playing Ampeg SVTs, and I’m switching to them live.”

It’s a fairly significant gear change for Flea, who has been a Gallien-Krueger loyalist for most of his career, having used everything from the brand’s 800RB bass amp head to the trio of 2001RBs spotted in a 2012 Rig Rundown with Premier Guitar.

He’s swapped one household bass amp name for another, though, with Ampeg’s 'Super Vacuum Tube' amp considered one of the most iconic bass amps of all time. Since the first SVT iteration went into production in 1969, the amps have been a mainstay for many big names, including Stanley Clarke, Robert Trujillo and Tony Levin.

Flea did, however, caveat his defection to the ranks of Ampeg with the observation that such specifics don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, so long as "your heart and fingers" are the true driving forces behind your own individual sound.

“To be honest,” Flea continued, “I’ve always thought it doesn’t fucking matter. You’re bringing your heart and your fingers and that’s all that really matters, but I’ve been really enjoying [the SVTs] – they are the center and the character of the sound that I love.”

Flea will take his Ampeg SVTs on the road later this year for RHCP’s mammoth world tour, which will see them visit a number of European countries – including Spain, England and Germany – in June and July, before heading to North America in July, August and September.

For a list of dates, visit the Red Hot Chili Peppers website.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Bass Player, which features the full interview with Flea.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have premiered Not the One, the third single from their forthcoming album, Unlimited Love.

A dreamy ballad driven by some cinematic piano work by RHCP bass guitar hero Flea, Not the One is the most down-tempo of the three tunes (it was proceeded by the Hendrixian Black Summer and the funky Poster Child) we've heard so far from Unlimited Love, the band's first album with electric guitar player John Frusciante since 2006's Stadium Arcadium.

Frusciante, for his part, really shows his textural side on this song. With fade-ins on the volume knob of his Stratocaster, two different delays set to different times, and a chorus pedal, he adds an eerie, ethereal quality to this otherwise straightforward piano ballad.

You can hear the single below.

"Flea had put together a drum machine and bass song in his cobweb-covered garage," RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis told Zane Lowe on his Apple Music 1 show about the origins of the song. "It was not what you hear today for Not the One, because the bridge was the verse and the chorus was the bridge, and it was completely inverted. 

"Every day after band practice, I ride home and I listen to what we've done that day over and over and over and over hoping that it sparks something or that I hear the right melody or something, anything. In that case, I started hearing that entire song on the way home, but completely inverted from the way he had arranged it. 

"When you start something, you get a little bit married to it. I came in the next day and I said, 'Flea, I know this is not what you had in mind, but is it all right if I sing the verse over the chorus and the chorus over the bridge?' He's like, 'yeah, do whatever you want.' I was like, 'Really?' He's like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever,' because he wrote a beautiful thing. 

"I thought maybe he wanted to keep it as it was written. On this particular day, he was so supportive and that was super helpful. I think I was going through a very lonely and introspective month. This idea came out about I think I know who you are, but maybe I don't. 

"You think you know who I am, but maybe you don't and especially in intimate relationships, like we know we all present something and people always have an idea, but what would happen if we just showed each other our very worst from the very start?"

Unlimited Love was produced by Rick Rubin, and is set for an April 1 release via Warner Records. 

You can preorder it here, and check out its cover art and track list below.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Unlimited Love:

1. Black Summer
2. Here Ever After
3. Aquatic Mouth Dance
4. Not The One
5. Poster Child
6. The Great Apes
7. It’s Only Natural
8. She’s A Lover
9. These Are The Ways
10. Whatchu Thinkin’
11. Bastards of Light
12. White Braids & Pillow Chair
13. One Way Traffic
14. Veronica
15. Let ‘Em Cry
16. The Heavy Wing
17. Tangelo

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis invited Flea to join them onstage at their March 9 show at LA’s Shrine Auditorium for an extended rendition of their track We No Who U R.

The bassist has been busy preparing for the release of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album, Unlimited Love, but found time to jam with Cave and Ellis on a track from their Bad Seeds back catalogue. 

The song originally appeared as the opener on 2012 album Push The Sky Away and has not previously been performed on the duo’s current tour, in support of 2021 album CARNAGE. 

As you‘ll see in the fan footage, Flea is obviously prepared for his part, having donned the uniform dark suit of the band. The live performance extends the original by about three minutes and is a masterclass in ‘the respectful guest spot’, with Flea slowly ramping up to a run of melodic improvised lead lines in the closing moments before wrapping it up right on cue.

Ellis and Flea have performed together previously, and following the show, Warren Ellis posted his thanks to Flea on Instagram, calling him “beautiful brother” and stating, “So wonderful to have you on stage tonight in Los Angeles with me and Nick at The Shrine. Can feel the soul pour out of you on stage.”

Flea, meanwhile, has previously discussed his love of Cave’s music on several occasions and in a 2011 interview referred to the Australian legend as “the greatest living songwriter”.

Cave and Ellis will continue to tour the US and Canada until April 3, 2022 and are also gearing up for the release of a new film, This Much I Know To Be True, which documents their unique and long-running creative relationship.

This Much I Know To Be True is released in theaters on May 11, 2022. For more information and tour dates, head to Nick Cave’s official site.

Red Hot Chili Peppers fans have once again been whipped up into a frenzy, as the long-running LA funk-rockers have shared a fresh studio clip of newly rejoined guitarist John Frusciante jamming with bassist Flea.

The 21-second video shows Frusciante laying down some overdriven pentatonic licks with a few funky doublestops thrown in for good measure, while Flea lays down an embellished root-note groove.

This latest footage follows a brief teaser of new RHCP music, posted to the band’s social media accounts last Friday, indicating that a new single and album announcement is imminent.

When announced, it will mark John Frusciante’s first release with the band since rejoining the group in December 2019, and his first new music since 2006’s Stadium Arcadium.

Drummer Chad Smith had previously indicated the album was “almost done” back in October, with the band’s chemistry very much intact according to producer Rick Rubin, who was moved to tears during the group’s first rehearsal.

The group’s 2022 world tour begins in June, continuing through September, so surely we don’t have long to wait…

When Alain Johannes unearthed a recording of his high school band Anthym – whose lineup featured Red Hot Chili Peppers founders Flea, Jack Irons and Hillel Slovak – from the bottom of an old cassette box earlier this month, the multi-instrumentalist promised there was “a bunch more” he could share.

Well, Johannes has made good on his word, and released another Anthym demo, which once again features performances from pre-RHCP Flea, Irons and Slovak on the bass guitar, drums and electric guitar, respectively.

However, rather than being unearthed from the bottom of a dusty old cardboard box, this time round the track was instead discovered by Johannes’s “dear friend” Aaron Jacoves – owner of Blast! Music Management – and transferred by Total Annihilation Studios.

Anthym was formed initially as Chain Reaction at Fairfax High School in California with original bassist Todd Strassman. Flea, who played trumpet at the time, was later brought into the fold after Slovak offered to teach him bass, with the band later rebranding themselves as What Is This?

The group would later meet future RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis at an Anthym gig. The rest, as they say, is history.

Johannes’s newly shared cut – unlike the previously released ‘79-dated Paradox – crops up slightly later down the line in Anthym’s career, and is pinpointed by the band’s vocalist as being from a recording session that took place on March 17, 1980.

The eight-track reel-to-reel demo, titled Forever Love, was originally recorded at Music Box Studios by Edward Perry, and adopts a sonic direction that is significantly different from Anthym’s first effort.

Rather than relying on gain-heavy riffs and a Sabbath-esque mood, Forever Love features a far more open aura that leans heavily towards a Rush- and Alex Lifeson-inspired direction.

In terms of instrumentation, the four-piece conjure up some sublime soundscapes, with chime-y chord strums, an extended melodic solo section and a high-octane finale that pairs Irons’s energetic drums with some marvelous fretboard work.

As was the case with the first track, the band are remarkably tight – which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the session features a number of instrumentalists who would one day go on to become some of the most influential musicians in music history.

Something tells us that, now the floodgates are open, we should be expecting even more Anthym songs cropping up in the near future. Given the quality of the first two efforts, it’s a prospect we're certainly excited about.

Guitarist Alain Johannes has shared a recording of his high school band Anthym, which featured Red Hot Chili Peppers’ founder members Flea, Jack Irons and Hillel Slovak.

The group first formed at Fairfax High School in California under the name Chain Reaction, initially with bassist Todd Strassman, before changing their name to Anthym.

It was at an Anthym show that the band met future RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis, while Flea (then a trumpet player) joined later, when Slovak offered to teach him bass. Eventually, the group would change their name to What Is This?

It was crucial developmental period for a group of musicians who would become hugely influential, playing across bands like RHCP, Queens Of The Stone Age and Pearl Jam.

The Anthym demo captures a track named Paradox and features Johannes on guitar and vocals, Hillel Slovak on guitar, Jack Irons on drums and Flea on bass.

Johannes shared the track saying, “Found this cassette deep in a box it has a bunch more lol. Can’t believe it still kinda plays. Oh and check out my EHX Clone Theory saturated solo tone on the left. Hillel on Messenger on the right. Ah we were young and innocent.”

The demo sounds really quite good and, to our ears, something like a cross between early Rush and Black Sabbath. There’s a great prog-esque call and response guitar solo, opened by Slovak and closed by Johannes.

It’s hard to believe the tape survived 40 years in a box, given it wouldn't sound out of place among the more fashionable retro-metal bands that have cropped up in the last decade. Let’s hope that, as Johannes hints, he has more in store.

Hear ye, hear ye. As we do every Thursday, we’ve assembled some of the guitar’s greatest innovators and practitioners to display their latest creations. A weekly World’s Fair of new guitar music, if you like.

In one corner, we have a refreshing bit of fingerpickin’ pop bliss from Lindsey Buckingham, in another we have some euphoric, captivating post-rock from Deafheaven. 

Look further, and you’ll see a decidedly out-of-left-field, metal-heavy reimagining of the pop classic Right Here Waiting from Matt Heafy and Richard Marx, and a scrappy power-pop gem from The Front Bottoms.

Explore all that and more in our roundup below.

The Pretty Reckless - Only Love Can Save Me Now (Feat. Matt Cameron & Kim Thayil)

Taylor Momsen has made no secret of her love for Soundgarden, but this collaboration with two of the architects of the Seattle sound must have exceeded even her expectations.

Kim Thayil – whose beard has only grown more resplendent over lockdown – has said Only Love Can Save Me Now’s riff wouldn’t feel out of place on Louder Than Love, and he ain’t wrong: a writhing 7/4 juggernaut, it bears all the hallmarks of classic Soundgarden, but in actual fact originated from Pretty Reckless lead guitarist Ben Phillips.

Thayil makes the track his own, however, when it comes to his searing wah solo, which lasts for nigh-on a full minute – surely second only to Like Suicide as his longest lead on record. What’s more, his off-the-cuff licks take an altogether thrashier turn as the track hurtles into a breakneck double-time passage.

Throw in Taylor Momsen’s Chris Cornell-aping howls and you’ve got the closest thing to new Soundgarden music we’re likely to hear this side of the ongoing legal tussle over Cornell’s final recordings. (MAB)

Lindsey Buckingham – I Don’t Mind 

Given that he was forced to undergo life-saving open heart surgery in 2019, it’s wonderful to see Lindsey Buckingham making music again. 

If I Don’t Mind, the lead single from his upcoming self-titled solo album, is any indication of Buckingham’s form, the man hasn’t lost a single step, even as his career enters its sixth decade. 

Buckingham is one of the great chorus specialists of ours or any age, and the one he crafts for I Don’t Mind hits like a laser, buoyed by perfect hooks and some oh-so Buckingham-esque studio trickery.

All these years later, there’s still no guitarist on earth who plays quite like the Fleetwood Mac legend – that restless, circular acoustic-electric fingerpicking so rich in melody, emotional expression and rhythmic drive. It’s made his tunes stand out on the radio for almost 50 years now, and will do the same for I Don’t Mind when it inevitably begins making rounds on the airwaves. (JM)

Matthew K. Heafy – Right Here Waiting (feat. Richard Marx)

Trivium head honcho and YouTube/Twitch extraordinaire Matt Heafy is no stranger to collaboration. From guest vocals on DragonForce’s 2014 album Maximum Overload to his 5-track 2020 EP with Jared Dines, his list of musical credits beyond the realm of Trivium is far-reaching and rarely has us surprised. 

The news of his latest partnership, however, was enough to make us spit out our coffee and do a double take.

Yes, Matt Heafy – the man who sings In Waves, A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation, Shogun and a host of other metal bangers – has teamed up with pop icon Richard Marx for a reimagining of his 1989 classic, Right Here Waiting.

Trivium purists, stand at ease: Heafy’s metal influence has gotten the better of Marx on this occasion. The track’s once serene strings, synth pads and shakers have been booted in place of machine gun-esque kick drums and a cornucopia of riffs and overdriven shred. It has our stamp of approval. (SR)

Flea & John Frusciante - Not Great Men

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a lot of history with late post-punk legend Andy Gill. Not only were Gang of Four a formative influence for the LA funk outfit, but Gill also produced the band’s 1984 self-titled debut.

So you really couldn’t ask for a more perfect pair of players to lend their talents to the just-released Gill tribute album, The Problem of Leisure, than Flea – who played on the aforementioned debut – and returning Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.

Not Great Men marks the pair’s first recording together in over a decade. Listening now, Gang of Four’s 1979 original already sounds like proto-RHCP, but Flea and Frusciante nudge it over the line with the funk-punk fusion they moulded during the band’s early years.

Naturally, Flea slaps and pops his way through the original’s angular bassline, but it’s Frusciante’s staccato, lightly overdriven tone that really gets the nostalgia kicking. Whether this old-school approach is a sign of things to come from RHCP’s forthcoming album or not, it’s a fitting tribute not only to Gill but the legacy he leaves behind. (MAB)

Laura Stevenson – State

State, the opening cut and first single from Laura Stevenson’s upcoming self-titled album – her sixth solo effort to date – hits like one of the baseball bats used to great effect in the song’s music video. 

As a creeping riff sets the tone in the song’s intro, eerie strings dance in unsettling arcs around the song’s perimeter in a way that recalls John Cale’s discordant viola work with the Velvet Underground. 

That is, of course, before State explodes into a bludgeoning chorus where finding the beautifully composed, tension-building guitar leads amidst the tornado of distorted rhythm work becomes a wonderful easter egg hunt that’ll keep you coming back for further listens.

Written about a loved one who was hurt and nearly killed by someone – and Stevenson’s subsequent rage about what occurred – State seethes beautifully before pouncing when you least expect it. (JM) 

Deafheaven – Great Mass of Color

Great Mass of Color could be a fitting title for just about all of Deafheaven’s material. A band never afraid to color outside the lines – occasionally to the chagrin of genre purists – each new release paints heavy music in their own distinctive, and often unpredictable, palette.

The first single to be taken from forthcoming fifth album Infinite Granite is no exception, although its euphoric post-rock stylings are more laser-focused than previous efforts – and the appearance of uber-producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen can likely account for the band’s more direct approach.

Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra are masters of expansive guitar tones – whether lathered in delay feedback or not – and they take their craft to new heights here, with spacious phased lines and some gorgeous interweaving arpeggios, before a colossal tremolo-picked outro brings proceedings to a thunderous conclusion. (MAB)

Jared James Nichols – Skin ‘n Bone

Jared James Nichols has to be up there with the busiest blues artists of the past year. In the space of 12 months, the six-string ace has launched a brand-new Goldtop version of his Epiphone “Old Glory” signature model – cleverly dubbed “Gold Glory” – appeared on this year’s Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation’s stream-a-thon, and even set out to restore one of the first Gibson Les Pauls ever made.

And he’s not stopping just yet, as he’s just announced a brand-new EP – Shadow Dancer – and shared its gritty debut single, Skin ‘n Bone.

In typical JJN fashion, the fresh cut features a brooding array of tastefully dialed, brilliantly delivered overdriven guitar lines, with low-register riffs and upper-fretboard noodles receiving equal amounts of the blues-rocker’s attention.

Fans of the guitarist’s lead work will be pleased: there’s a superbly executed, quintessentially bluesy guitar solo to be enjoyed around the 2:07 mark, in which Nichols lets rip with a flurry of howling, bend-heavy licks. (SR)

The Front Bottoms – Voodoo Magic (Feat. Matt Skiba)

Enlisting the help of Blink-182 guitar hero Matt Skiba, The Front Bottoms’ latest punk-fueled single is everything you could ever want and more, and boasts the same effortless charm that populates the majority – if not all – of the duo’s discography.

Favoring a rollercoaster-like sense of temporal urgency distilled by way of a three-beats-and-we’re-off intro, Voodoo Magic takes you on a two-and-a-half-minute ride, layering on gain-drenched powerchords, fuzzy lead lines and supporting acoustic strums that are panned to the sweet spot so you can just about hear the pick as it races across the strings.

Skiba’s six-string influences are all over Voodoo Magic, too, in both its composition and execution. Decorating the track with tasty vocal-shadowing single-string phrases and punctuating it with precise strumming patterns, the ensemble put on a show that will have you reaching for the replay button before it's even finished.

A punk pairing made in heaven? Quite possibly. The result? A fitting pre-weekend romp that deserves to be played full-blast as the working week comes to a close. (MO)

Crypta – Dark Night of the Soul

The third single from forthcoming debut studio album Echoes of the Soul, Crypta’s Dark Night of the Soul plays host to about as much tremolo picking as anyone can withstand in one five-minute sitting.

Guitarists Sonia Anubis and Tainá Bergamaschi serve up a plentiful supply of death-style six-string lines, underpinned by the thunderous stickwork of drummer Luana Dametto and the furious vocals of Fernanda Lira.

The track follows previously released singles Starvation and From the Ashes, which both see the guitar work of Anubis and Bergamaschi placed center stage. One thing’s for sure: the album’s sure to be one of the most exciting death-metal LPs of the year. (SR)

Red Hot Chili Peppers members John Frusciante and Flea have teamed up for their first recorded material in over a decade, offering a funked-up cover of Gang of Four's Not Great Men.

The track – which appears on the newly released Andy Gill tribute album, The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four – sees Frusciante serve up an array of funky clean chords backed up by a plethora of energetic basslines from Flea. The cover also features vocals from members of the Silverlake Conservatory of Music.

The album plays host to a variety of other Gang of Four covers, including a rendition of Paralysed by Warpaint and a take on Natural's Not in It by Tom Morello and Serj Tankian.

“John Frusciante and I, along with the children's choir from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music recorded the song Not Great Men by the Gang of Four for this album,” writes Flea in an instagram post.

“It was a beautiful opportunity for me to connect with my friend, the innovative guitarist Andy Gill, before he shockingly passed away shortly after the recording was made. This was an act of love for him.

“Me, John and the kids, went and knocked it out in a couple of days raw style. John and I hadn't recorded together in about twelve years. It was fun as fuck. Long live the Gang of Four, long live Andy Gill.”

The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four was originally conceived to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Gang of Four's debut album Entertainment!, but following Gill's death in February last year, now stands as a tribute to the post-punk pioneer who influenced a generation of guitarists.

Says Andy Gill's former partner Catherine Mayer, “Andy was massively excited about the project. It wasn't, of course, conceived as a tribute album, but it's comforting to me that he lived to see artists he hugely admired enthusiastically agreeing to participate, signaling that the admiration was mutual.”

Fans are eagerly awaiting new original material from the Chili Peppers since John Frusciante announced his return to the group at the tail end of 2019. Drummer Chad Smith recently said the influential LA funk-rockers had "lots of new music" recorded and promised "we’re coming back and it’s going to be great".

• The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four is available now via Gill Music Ltd.