Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Jesse Thorne. This week on Bullseye, Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson. Ask him whatever you want. Just don't ask him to hang out late at the after party. They're just like, oh, don't you want to like come to this next kind of thing? And then, oh, that's right. You got, yeah, you can. All right. Well, we'll see you later, man. We'll get Kenan and you home in time for bed.
That's on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Flea. He co-founded the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1982.
From the first time we stepped on stage, we were intent on being the wildest band that ever existed on this planet.
We'll talk about how Flea's music and life have changed.
Of course I've changed, and thank God I've changed. I was a lunatic. I was, you know, 19 going on 10.
Also, we hear from Nick Offerman. He stars in the new series Margo's Got Money Troubles. It's about a bright college freshman who gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Offerman plays her estranged father, a former pro wrestler, who comes back into her life to help. Offerman is best known for playing Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation.
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Chapter 2: What changes has Flea experienced in his music and life?
And Zach Galifianakis has a new gardening show, and David Bianculli has a review. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Flea co-founded the multiple Grammy-winning band the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1982. He's a songwriter and the band's bass player, known for his fast, percussive grooves. They started as an LA punk rock band when LA and New York were the punk capitals.
Their lead singer initially rapped more than he sang. Flea has just released his first solo album called Honora, and it's a big departure. Various styles of jazz figure into it. Flea's stepfather was a jazz musician, and listening to his music, starting when Flea was seven, changed Flea's life in ways he's still grateful for.
But Flea's stepfather was also addicted to heroin and alcohol, and that made home life unpredictable and sometimes dangerous, leaving Flea afraid to go home. He spent as much time as he could on the streets and with friends, often doing things that could have had serious consequences. On the new album, in addition to bass... Flea plays trumpet, the first instrument he learned to play.
The album also reflects how Flea started studying music theory about 10 years ago. Onora includes original compositions by Flea, as well as covers of songs by George Clinton and Frank Ocean. Tom Yorick of Radiohead sings on one track. Nick Cave sings Wichita Linemen. The arrangements feature strings, brass, and woodwinds.
When I recorded this interview with Flea last week, we talked about his childhood, his relationship with his stepfather, the Chili Peppers, being wild, and how Flea and his music have changed. He wrote a memoir in 2019 titled Acid for the Children. Flea, welcome to Fresh Air. Congratulations on the new album. So let's get to your music.
I want to compare where you started from in terms of your recordings and where you are now. So let's start by listening to a brief part of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' first demo record.
Well, cool.
And this is Nevermind. You're, of course, featured on bass.
Nevermind the Pac-Town
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Chapter 3: What role does Nick Offerman play in 'Margo's Got Money Troubles'?
Okay, well, let's compare that to Frailed from your new album, Honora, with you featured on trumpet and bass.
¦
Yeah. So what do you think the 20-year-old you would have thought of the music from your new album?
I would have been really happy with myself making music that I cared about, being a student of music, continuing to just love music.
And when I listened back to the song Nevermind that you played for my first demo tape, and the feeling that I had making it, and the feeling that I had when we went around with that tape, playing it for people with our cassette tape, trying to get booked into clubs to get gigs, It's a similar feeling that I have now with the record that I just made, Honora.
It's a feeling that I haven't really had since back then. And it's a feeling of, I've made this music that is really, you know, obviously it's a collective, you know, the Chili Peppers made the music, but we made music. And I had a feeling that we are filling this place, an empty place in the world that
that is hasn't been filled before we've created this thing that is ourselves purely so it can't be anybody else and we've we're filling this new place and it's a really a beautiful feeling and and that's how i feel about um the music that i've made with honor it's the same thing like i feel like uh i'm making music that occupies its own place in the world and that feels good to me
Does the change in music represent a change in you? You're older. You're not in your 20s. You're in your 60s.
Yep. Constantly, yeah. I mean, of course, even though back then, you know, when I made that music when I was 20, I think. I was 20 years old when we recorded that, 19 or 20. Um, I was listening to, you know, ethereal jazz music all the time. I grew up with jazz music and I was listening to jazz music back then. Um, but of course I've changed and thank God I've changed. I was a lunatic.
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Chapter 4: What themes are explored in Flea's new album 'Honora'?
And my stepfather came into my life when I was about seven. seven years old, six or seven. And the first time that I ever saw him play with his friends in New York, his buddies came over to the house, set up in the living room and they started throwing down. They played fast. They played furiously. They played with great tenderness. They played with great violence and physicality.
And it was wild.
Chapter 5: How did Flea's childhood influence his music career?
You describe it like it was punk rock.
Well, for me, all music is music. So if I think of punk rock, you take a song like Nervous Breakdown by Black Flag and it goes, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.
My head really hurts.
And it's a beautiful song. I love it. And then you take a song like Cherokee, best played by Clifford Brown and Max Roach, and the bass is going... The drums are going... And they're both very fast, very aggressive. They both have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And they are both played by people yearning with every fiber of their being to make sense of the world that they live in.
But, you know, I love both and I'm studying. But anyway, so yes, when I was a kid and I heard them playing that jazz, it just blew my mind and changed my life forever.
So you were born in Australia and lived there for the first four or five years of your life. When you were around four, your family moved to New York where your father got a job. And he sounds like he was a very briefcase, follow the rules, working man, dinner at the same time every night kind of guy, except for when he drank.
And he loved you, but he also gave you the belt when you stepped out of line. They divorced when you were seven, and your mother wanted to live a more bohemian life. So she married your stepfather, the jazz bass player, Walter Urban Jr. Yep. What was he like as a man? You describe him as sad. And he was also addicted to heroin. And he was very moody.
Can you describe what it was like for you as a child to grow up with somebody whose music you loved, who introduced you to great people and great sounds, but who also could be like a scary person? He could be an irresponsible person and an inattentive parent.
It was difficult. Um, I, you know, when my mother and Walter, his name, you know, Walter, when they got together, um, it was really exciting at first because, you know, my dad was, was very much by the rules and every day was kind of the same. And there were these strict, you know, codes of conduct that you did not break or you got the belt. You know what I mean? You didn't mess up.
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Chapter 6: How does Offerman prepare for his challenging new role?
Did you love being in that kind of setting?
Yeah, that was the thing. I loved it. I loved playing in an orchestra. I loved playing. I played in the L.A. Junior Philharmonic for a little while until one day I got real stoned and went there and made a mistake. And the guy put me out of the first chair into the junior chair and I was embarrassed and never went back.
In marching band, did you wear a uniform? No.
No, our school didn't have it. Like all the other schools had the big epaulets and the big fur hats and all that stuff. And we didn't. We just had t-shirts that said Fairfax Band on them. Yeah, and we were terrible marchers. We just kind of walked out into a clump in the middle of the field. But we were good, though. We were good. We used to play Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder.
Which was Stevie Wonder's tribute to Duke Ellington. And yeah, we were pretty funky. I remember feeling excited about the music.
Describe what you were like on stage in those early years of the Chili Peppers. and how your background in gymnastics, surfing, and other sports may have figured into what you were able to do on stage.
Well, I think, you know, from the jump, all of us... Literally jump. Yeah, we wanted to be, from that point, from the first time we stepped on stage, we were intent on being the wildest band that ever existed on this planet. And we wanted to express that in the way we dressed, the way we moved, the way we spoke. We wanted to be shocking. We wanted to cut a hole in the smoggy skies of Hollywood.
We wanted to be a beam of cosmic light that came out of Ornette Coleman's saxophone. We wanted to, you know, we just wanted to be wild. And so... I was always a very physical person.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Offerman share about his character's struggles?
I always played sports. I loved to dance. I loved to move. I found extreme freedom in movement. And like that thing I talked about earlier about that state of enlightenment of getting beyond thought, I often had that from physical movement. And so that was just a big part of the whole operation, you know. And for all of us, you know, for all of us. And we love movement. We love dance.
We invented our own funny dances just to feel free, to feel alive, to be excited and to, you know, we're entertainers. We wanted to do the thing.
So one of the things you did, and this is kind of famous, the band was dressed, I think it was all the band, that what you were dressed in was just a sock over genitals.
Yeah. Socks on **** is what we called it. That was something like, you know, Halal and Anthony and I, we would do that at home, like to be funny. You know, someone would come. I think it may have been Anthony that came like walking out of his room with, you know, with just a sock. And, you know, we're all laughing and hanging out and we all did it.
And yeah, and I can't I think I remember the first time we did it, we used to play the strip club.
Perfect place.
Yeah, yeah.
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Chapter 8: How does Offerman feel about his iconic role as Ron Swanson?
We played this strip club on Santa Monica Boulevard called – damn it. I wish I could remember the name of it. But anyways, we played there and I remember one time we were playing and we went off stage and we were getting ready to do the encore. Everyone was screaming and yelling. And Anthony, I probably said, sock man, sock man. And we're like, oh, great, great idea. And so we –
You know, put on socks, stripped down, put on socks and came out and played. And it was met warmly. And I think on that particular show, we were opening up for another band called Roy Rogers and the Whirling Butt Cherries. It was just it was Hollywood early 80s. Let me tell you. stuff, people were just doing weird stuff to be weird. Like it was really embraced.
There was this underground scene and I'm, you know, I'm saying these things that some people might find repugnant and that's cool. You know, I get it. But, um, we grew up in Hollywood. We ran around on the streets in Hollywood. We're so used to, like, I lived in West Hollywood where it was nothing.
Like I would, when I was a kid, I would go walk down the street and I would see, you know, guys come, I'd be on my way to school and I'd see guys, gay leather guys walking out of a of a gay club, you know, making out in the street dressed in nothing but leather chaps and chains. Like, that's where I grew up. That's where I'm from. And I embraced it all, you know what I mean?
I never, you know, I've always embraced it all.
Did you do the socks thing at punk clubs too?
Yeah, yeah. Then it became like a thing. Like, it was so fun and then we did it all the time.
Did you ever get busted for it?
Like indecency? Yeah, once in Green Bay, Wisconsin, we played a show. And I can't remember if we did socks or we went completely naked. But I'm pretty sure it was socks. Maybe a sock fell off. I don't know. But we played a show in this club. It was midwinter in Wisconsin. So snow everywhere, freezing everywhere.
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