Throwback to this great video by Chad Smith and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This video is one of the classic funk drum and bass jam videos. It is part of a Japanese drum instructional video Chad Smith released a while ago. He is joined by his band member Flea with whom he has been playing together since 1988. Since then, they have been labeled as the tightest rhythm section in rock music. Together they have won 3 Grammys and were nominated for 12.
In this video Flea is playing a 4 string Music Man StingRay bass. He was known for playing Music Man basses in the early days of RHCP. Later he would switch to Modulus and currently, he plays his signature Fender basses.
Check out the video below
About
Flea was born on October 16, 1962, in Melbourne, Australia, but his family moved to the US soon after. Flea’s first instrument was not the bass guitar, but because of the influence of his stepfather, Flea took up the trumpet first. His stepfather was a jazz musician and because of him, he was first attracted to jazz music and became proficient at jazz trumpet even before getting into rock and punk music.
Flea was one of the founding members of Red Hot Chilli Peppers alongside his high school classmates, Anthony Kiedis and Hillel Slovak. This band was considered a side project for Hilal and Flea at that time. This was also the time that Flea took up the bass guitar and Hillel was his first teacher, teaching him about funk and punk music. Since 1983, when RHCP was founded, Flea and Anthony were the only constant band members. The band went through a lot of drummers over the years. Chad Smith, who would become the longest-serving drummer in the band joined up with Anthony and Flea in 1988.
Chad Smith and Flea have appeared on all albums since 1988 starting with “Mother’s Milk“. Their next album “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” is their most successful album to date yet. They received the Grammy Award for the “Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal” for their song “Give it Away”. The song “Under the Bridge” from the same album peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts. Since its release, this album has gone 7-Time Platinum. Chad Smith and Flea worked on 6 more RHCP albums together. These were “One Hot Minute”, “Californication”, “By the Way”, “Stadium Arcadium”, “I’m with You” and “The Getaway”.
In 2020 the classic lineup of Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, and John Frusciante rejoined again and are working on a new album that would be released hopefully soon.
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