“I had the kid in a headlock, and Anthony physically threatened me to let go”: Flea recounts how he met fellow Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Kiedis
Who would have predicted that the kid who threatened you on your first day of school would one day become your bandmate? Certainly not Flea.
In a recent interview with MOJO, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist revisits the chaotic first encounter with frontman Anthony Kiedis and the unlikely friendship that forged despite Kiedis’s “intimidating presence”.
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Asked about Kiedis’s claim that he once “held a gun” to Flea’s head on their first day at school, the bassist chuckles: “A gun? I think he was being metaphorical, but the first time he met me he did threaten me.”
“There was this other kid who was my friend and I was kind of being an asshole. I had the kid in a headlock and doing what we call in Los Angeles a noogie, which is when you grind your knuckles into someone’s head,” Flea explains. “I was doing it playfully but I don’t think he appreciated it. And Anthony was, (shouts) ‘Lay off him!’ He physically threatened me to let go of that kid. I was like, Who is this guy?”
It wasn’t long after that tense introduction that Flea and Kiedis became fast friends. Flea describes the early connection as immediate and rare: “Very shortly after that Anthony and I had classes together and we became inseparable friends,” he says.
Interestingly enough, music wasn’t what initially brought them together.
“[Anthony] came from a completely different world. He lived with his father who was kind of like a Hollywood playboy-actor-wildman [Blackie Dammett] and Anthony knew about rock music and early punk rock and new wave and shit that was happening through his dad who was in the Hollywood scene,” Flea recalls. “But I didn’t know anything about that, I had my trumpet. So he kind of exposed me to that world, the excitement of it. My mother said I came home from school very serious and said, ‘Mom, I finally found someone I can talk to.’”
Looking back though, Flea admits that time has inevitably reshaped their bond.
“[It’s still like that] on occasion, but not like we were,” he says. “We don’t see each other as much. Time has definitely… We’ve grown in different directions in some ways.”
That said, the Red Hot Chili Peppers show no signs of easing up on the creative front. Flea recently hinted at the prospect of new music on the horizon, saying: “We’ve been writing music together, recording at [guitarist] John Frusciante’s house, and the music feels great.”
The band’s most recent album, Unlimited Love, arrived in 2022.
The post “I had the kid in a headlock, and Anthony physically threatened me to let go”: Flea recounts how he met fellow Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Kiedis appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
