Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
Speaker 1: enjoyed the episode. A few bands represent the eclectic nature
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, as well as The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Speaker 1: Their blend of punk, funk and rap that they perfected
Speaker 1: on nineteen ninety one Blood Sugar, Sex Magic felt like
Speaker 1: it could have only come from southern California. That album,
Speaker 1: by the way, is produced by Broken Record host Rick Rubin,
Speaker 1: one of his first projects after moving from New York
Speaker 1: to LA. The secret to the Red Hot Chili peppers
Speaker 1: funky sound was their dexterous bass player of Flee, a
Speaker 1: prodigious bassis with massive stage presents whose charm landed him
Speaker 1: roles in movies like The Big Lebowski and Queen and Slim.
Speaker 1: His talent was incubated in Los Angeles that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: He writes about it vividly in his book, a memoir
Speaker 1: of his adolescence called Acid for the Children. Flee discussed
Speaker 1: the book recently with Malcolm Gladwell in front of an
Speaker 1: audience at the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. They also
Speaker 1: talk about Flee's upbringing and how he developed his distinctive
Speaker 1: style of bass playing. It was our very first live
Speaker 1: taping of the podcast, and we partnered with case or W,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the best music station in LA to
Speaker 1: get it done. So here's Malcolm Gladwell and Flee live
Speaker 1: in conversation. I noticed no one's chanting. Yeah, Malcolm, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty much you guys know we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about books, right. I was trying to think, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a great thrill. First of all for me
Speaker 1: to be here. I think you're the I is trying
Speaker 1: to figure this out backstage, the third most famous person
Speaker 1: I've ever met. It's pretty I mean it's really good.
Speaker 1: Number three, Wait, you're saying I'm the third most person,
Speaker 1: most famous person you've ever met. I bet Obama once.
Speaker 1: You're not. I mean you're very famous, you're not that level.
Speaker 1: And number two I met Oprah once. I think you're
Speaker 1: three behind Obama and Oprah in my in my book.
Speaker 1: So so it's very very exciting. So where I, uh,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss your book, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: is really lovely. Thank you. And I say that in
Speaker 1: all sincerity, not as a and I think that's the
Speaker 1: right word. There's there's something incredibly heartbreaking and beautiful about it,
Speaker 1: and that's where I wanted to start. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the many unexpected pleasures of this book is
Speaker 1: the picture that you paint of Hollywood in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to start there because it's a Hollywood
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean may be wrong, doesn't really exist anymore,
Speaker 1: is that right? It doesn't exist in the slightest And
Speaker 1: I actually had written extensively lamenting the loss of that
Speaker 1: time and just how the city has changed. And I
Speaker 1: took it out because I kind of got into grumpy
Speaker 1: old man territory. But I thought it was kind of
Speaker 1: some of the best writing that I did, and I
Speaker 1: sort of would like to release a special little grumpy
Speaker 1: old man book of the stuff that I took out,
Speaker 1: just because it was a love note to a Hollywood
Speaker 1: of yesteryear that now exists on the tip of a
Speaker 1: real estate agent's tongue in describing you know that this
Speaker 1: was where Charlie Chaplin kept his woman or something, you know.
Speaker 1: But Hollywood was obviously, you know, its whole heritage coming
Speaker 1: up as the beginning of the film industry. But in
Speaker 1: the seventies when I got there, it was this place
Speaker 1: that was so I mean, in one way, very dangerous
Speaker 1: and predatory and kind of revelling in the free love
Speaker 1: of the sixties, and that being exploited and turned into
Speaker 1: money and created a really seedy, mean spirited, dangerous casting
Speaker 1: couch type of vibe which was really gross and disgusting.
Speaker 1: And as a young boy in Hollywood, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I dealt with that. And also a young boy who
Speaker 1: was unwatched and a street kid and wild and out
Speaker 1: till five o'clock in the morning on the Hollywood streets
Speaker 1: when I was twelve years old, came into many a
Speaker 1: scary encounter. But also it was alive with a wildness.
Speaker 1: It was like the wild West, man, I mean it
Speaker 1: was there was so much art and so much music,
Speaker 1: and it was so untamed and ferrell and its way,
Speaker 1: and there was so much money. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just a weird, wild I mean glam You you move
Speaker 1: here from New York and you're how old at that point,
Speaker 1: I was just turned eleven years old, and your family,
Speaker 1: you and your mom and your stepfather and your sister,
Speaker 1: moved first to where to Koreatown? Is that? Am I remember?
Speaker 1: We lived in a miracle mild districal mile. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then you and then you moved from there to where
Speaker 1: exactly Hollywood, to Willoughby and Laurel in Hollywood. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's a I wanted to get into a little a
Speaker 1: little bit more. One of the things I remember you
Speaker 1: talk about when you went to high school, this sort
Speaker 1: of what is now a curious fact which would not
Speaker 1: have been curious to you at all back then, which
Speaker 1: is in that era, a public high school was still
Speaker 1: a place where everyone went, so they were You had
Speaker 1: friends whose parents were prostitutes, and friends whose parents were
Speaker 1: rich and lived in the absolutely and middle school too.
Speaker 1: And when I was in sixth grade, I mean back then,
Speaker 1: public school you just went where you lived, and it
Speaker 1: had every economic class, every racial class, every ethnicity, everybody together.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if the standard of education was
Speaker 1: higher than or not, but it was like private school
Speaker 1: was much more rare than I didn't hear about kids going,
Speaker 1: but I you know, I came across every kind of
Speaker 1: person from you know, gang members to rich kids who
Speaker 1: had lived with a wealth unlike anything I had ever
Speaker 1: encountered to, you know, kids who were like trading switchblades
Speaker 1: and bags of weed in seventh grade. You know, it's
Speaker 1: really the last moment in this city's history where you
Speaker 1: had that kind of full integration in the public school system.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really odd. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a race of nerdy sociological point to begin with. But
Speaker 1: I wonder, I think ultimately, well, I wonder whether it's
Speaker 1: connected to the kind of art that was coming out
Speaker 1: of the schools at that time. Like you you describe
Speaker 1: you had a friend Freddie Gold, yeah, who lives in
Speaker 1: the fancy house above Sunset. Yeah, and like so in
Speaker 1: the same in your same friend group you were living
Speaker 1: in under I guess your family had we're all right,
Speaker 1: I mean right, yeah, we're we're We actually had it
Speaker 1: like a pretty nice little spot. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: just getting by, but but we did find it wasn't
Speaker 1: like we were. Someone of your economic background today does
Speaker 1: not have a school friend named Freddy Gold who lives
Speaker 1: You're kind of no. Now, if you're rich, you're going
Speaker 1: to a private school, and it really speaks to where
Speaker 1: we're at now, like the devisiveness and the haves and
Speaker 1: have nots, and this gulf becoming wider, and the have
Speaker 1: nots being this entire new strata of society that is
Speaker 1: living on the street and sleeping in their own ship,
Speaker 1: you know, and being in Los Angeles. It's so prevalent
Speaker 1: and so intense. It's difficult to understand it. You know.
Speaker 1: Back then, when when I walked around the streets of
Speaker 1: Hollywood in the seventies, when you saw a homeless person
Speaker 1: was like, oh, there's a bum, there's a guy eating
Speaker 1: out of a trash can. It was a rare thing.
Speaker 1: And now it's just a huge segment of society, and it's,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the divisiveness of the country that
Speaker 1: we live in. To describe, tell us the touch points
Speaker 1: of your you know, your adolescent world in Hollywood. So
Speaker 1: you would go, where were you playing basketball? Where were
Speaker 1: you when you're you're thirteen or fourteen year old self?
Speaker 1: Tell me all your hangouts thirteen fourteen, I was hanging
Speaker 1: out at Laurel Elementary School. I was hanging out at
Speaker 1: Carthay Elementary School. I was hanging out at West Hollywood Park,
Speaker 1: shooting hoops. I was hanging out like around Hollywood Boulevard
Speaker 1: and Sunset and stuff because there were just so many
Speaker 1: little hustles that I had with my friends to get money.
Speaker 1: We used to me and my friend j D used
Speaker 1: to sit up on Hollywood Boulevard with kazoos and trash
Speaker 1: can lids and do songs, you know, play songs to
Speaker 1: get money. It was all about the hustle when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, because from a very young age. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that I was ever a homeless kid or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but I was completely unwatched and I was
Speaker 1: a street kid I got, you know, from that age.
Speaker 1: Home was just a place to crash. Sometimes I came home,
Speaker 1: sometimes I didn't, and I just got into everything that
Speaker 1: I could. But there were so many little hangouts you
Speaker 1: know that we found, like found older people that would
Speaker 1: get us high, so we'd go over to their house,
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere where. One of the things the first
Speaker 1: half of the book is about your childhood, and although
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about your stepfather, that point you
Speaker 1: just said about how you were unwatched is the striking
Speaker 1: you know, to a twenty nineteen year Yeah, the striking
Speaker 1: fact is where in God's name are his parents did?
Speaker 1: But none of you have friends seemed to have. I think, well,
Speaker 1: I think I met kids that fit into, you know,
Speaker 1: my social plan, you know, other kids that had that
Speaker 1: sort of freedom as well to varying degrees and form.
Speaker 1: My parents, you know, my stepdad, who was the main
Speaker 1: father figure around, was in and out of substance abuse
Speaker 1: and just wasn't paying attention. My mom had her own,
Speaker 1: you know, relationship problems and problems. They were just too
Speaker 1: involved in their own their own pain and their own
Speaker 1: difficulties in their own like struggle to navigate their way
Speaker 1: with your life to watch me, you know. And I
Speaker 1: know that they loved me, but they just didn't have
Speaker 1: the skills and the tools to translate that. Leven too
Speaker 1: being present and paying attention. Did your sister take care
Speaker 1: of you? Look? Well, no, she was wild. We were
Speaker 1: both wild, me and my sister. You know. Yeah, no
Speaker 1: because I no, no, uh. Because The weird the kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating paradox about the book is as you describe
Speaker 1: your childhood, you're describing chaos and mayhem one on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and you at the same time you seem
Speaker 1: to have had an extraordinar amount of joy as a child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I you know, It's funny like I've always,
Speaker 1: in general, had a thing inside of me that yearned
Speaker 1: so much to you know, to connect and to love,
Speaker 1: and to find things and to believe in, find things
Speaker 1: to believe in, like when it's a kid. I just
Speaker 1: I loved literature. When I discovered music, it changed my life.
Speaker 1: I loved the music, but the fact that I was
Speaker 1: unwatched and the fact that I was a wild street kid,
Speaker 1: even though it made growing up very difficult because I
Speaker 1: didn't have the structure and I didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents guiding me into growing up and becoming a
Speaker 1: man like that, that transition from being a kid. But
Speaker 1: by that token, I had freedom, you know, and it
Speaker 1: got me into a lot of trouble. I was a thief,
Speaker 1: I was aug user. I was out of control. I
Speaker 1: had to make huge mistakes to learn. I had to,
Speaker 1: you know, to to A lot of the book is
Speaker 1: my search for moral for my moral compass, but as
Speaker 1: well it's I looked from my family in the street.
Speaker 1: I looked from my family with my friends. And when
Speaker 1: I connected with my friends, it was it was profound
Speaker 1: and it was where I found, you know, extreme love
Speaker 1: and connection. The unhealthy part about it was I looked
Speaker 1: to my friends to fulfill roles that parents are supposed
Speaker 1: to fulfill, and you know, fourteen year old boys you're
Speaker 1: getting high with can't do that, you know. So that
Speaker 1: was difficult for me and kind of left me in
Speaker 1: an a raw and vulnerable, uncomfortable position many a time.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's you know, no accident
Speaker 1: that someone like me and the friends that I made
Speaker 1: as a kid ended up starting a band that was
Speaker 1: able to connect with people. Because any connection that any
Speaker 1: musician ever has with anyone is equal proportion to the
Speaker 1: connection that they can have with one another when they're
Speaker 1: playing together, or that if they're a solo person, the
Speaker 1: connection that they have with the divine voice of music.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's equal. And oftentimes, like people talk
Speaker 1: about talent, you know, like, well you've got talent because
Speaker 1: you can do this, it's like, I don't know, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And sometimes I think like in music,
Speaker 1: the best talent is no talent because you might not
Speaker 1: have a natural feeling for rhythm or harmonic progression or whatever.
Speaker 1: But because you don't have it, you come at it
Speaker 1: from your own complete, your own way, and you invent
Speaker 1: something you know that is really unique, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted to dwell for a moment on this paradoxical happiness.
Speaker 1: And there's a passage in your book and I'm going
Speaker 1: to make you read a little bit of it, but
Speaker 1: you're describing November twenty first, nineteen seventy eight. So how
Speaker 1: old are you in nineteen seventy eight years? Is this
Speaker 1: that the day that I'm happy? The happy day, happy day? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm fourteen. Yeah, you're like, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I had described so many sad situations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I only put things in the book that shaped me,
Speaker 1: Like I had many a wild tale that probably would
Speaker 1: have been the most exciting stories for people to read,
Speaker 1: and probably would have been the headlines and anything writing
Speaker 1: anybody about the book, in any article about the book.
Speaker 1: But it was important to me to not write things
Speaker 1: for entertainment values, but just to be honest to things
Speaker 1: that actually changed me and opened me up. So amidst
Speaker 1: all these like traumatic things and melancholy things, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I had beautiful days too, So I
Speaker 1: think that's so. This is this beautiful day you described,
Speaker 1: you walk a mile to school bouncing your basketball, and
Speaker 1: I love this little thing about the piece sign I
Speaker 1: drew in my ball popping up between potholes and sloping sidewalks.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's so much lovely language in this book.
Speaker 1: But anyway you get to I'm gonna have you to
Speaker 1: set up the little party I want you to read.
Speaker 1: So you get to class and you play. You played
Speaker 1: basketball before school. Then you sit in social studies class
Speaker 1: and you deliver an or report on the composer Hector
Speaker 1: Bosio Symphony fantastic. You get an A plus. You eat pizza,
Speaker 1: you you flirt with a girl that you have a
Speaker 1: crush on, and then just start reading by shot after
Speaker 1: after school, just read that last little bit. Shot more,
Speaker 1: Uh okay, shot more hoops? Okay away, I shot my hoops.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, shot more hoops? After school? My shot was
Speaker 1: so on. Then ran home ah the house, all to myself,
Speaker 1: practice trumpet out of my urban book, The Trumpeter's Bible,
Speaker 1: the classical melodies resonating through my cranium and echoing around
Speaker 1: my bedroom. Then cooked myself a delicious spaghetti dinner, lay
Speaker 1: on my bed, satiated and content, reading Richard Box, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Livingston Seagull watch the Laker game, happy and cozy before
Speaker 1: falling into a deep and restorative sleep. So it's like,
Speaker 1: but it's to my point, this is this description of
Speaker 1: this perfect day as a fourteen year old, and there's
Speaker 1: no mention of any adult. Yeah, well right, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. Yeah, and it's about and also it's
Speaker 1: but it's about you find It's about you seeking out
Speaker 1: and finding things that bring you pleasure. Like you the
Speaker 1: book you read, the game you watch, the present, the
Speaker 1: music presentation you give, the basketball you take with you
Speaker 1: to school, the all you had to create this environment
Speaker 1: for yourself. I thought it was sort of such a
Speaker 1: striking contrast to the life of a contemporary fourteen year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess for me as a kid and really writing
Speaker 1: about this book, like, I learned a lot about myself
Speaker 1: and I wrote a lot of things I wrote about.
Speaker 1: I was like, holy shit, why didn't anybody talk to
Speaker 1: me about this stuff? Like earlier on when my parents
Speaker 1: split up. You know, when I was a kid, my
Speaker 1: father worked for the Australian government and he wore a suit,
Speaker 1: had a briefcase, went to work every day. We had
Speaker 1: dinner at seven o'clock at night. He played golf on
Speaker 1: the week. As it was, he ran a very tight ship.
Speaker 1: It was structured. It was almost like militantly so. And
Speaker 1: we came from Australia to America because my father got
Speaker 1: an assignment to New York at the Australian Consulate. We're
Speaker 1: supposed to be in New York for four years, then
Speaker 1: go back to Australian continue on in our very normal,
Speaker 1: proper life. But my mom, my wild ass mom, and
Speaker 1: all her heart following wildness left. My dad took up
Speaker 1: with a junkie jazz musician who lived in his parents' basement.
Speaker 1: And you know, my dad went back without us and
Speaker 1: we moved in with this new man who was a
Speaker 1: drug addict who lived in his parents' basement. And that's
Speaker 1: when everything just went crazy. And when I look at
Speaker 1: that in particular, and I had never really like I
Speaker 1: knew all this stuff that happened, but I had never
Speaker 1: really like looked at it with any real degree of objectivity.
Speaker 1: And when I wrote about it, it was very emotional
Speaker 1: for me to look at it and kind of like
Speaker 1: that was one of the times I was like, jeez, Mom, dad, stepdad,
Speaker 1: Like you never ever sat down and talked to us
Speaker 1: about it. And when I first kind of realized that
Speaker 1: I had a tanty, for a minute, I was fucking angry.
Speaker 1: And then I, you know, as time went by, I realized, like,
Speaker 1: you know, they did the best they knew, they just
Speaker 1: didn't know. But but oh sorry, But just to your
Speaker 1: question and your comment, I was really lucky as a
Speaker 1: kid to fall in love with books and the time
Speaker 1: that I had with any book, and since I was
Speaker 1: a little boy, and even when I was the wildest,
Speaker 1: out of control, drug shooting, freak out, criminal ass motherfucker,
Speaker 1: I read every day unless I was too high to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, and I and even then I
Speaker 1: would probably make some you know, bumbling attempt, but I
Speaker 1: got so much joy and felt so much hope and
Speaker 1: saw that there was a life like even if it
Speaker 1: was a fantasy life, it was something that was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and the same thing with music. It opened up these
Speaker 1: doors and these feelings of this limitless possibility that was
Speaker 1: so beautiful and beyond anything that I understood in a
Speaker 1: world that often seemed you know, hypocritical, and cruel that
Speaker 1: I did have, that I created those things for myself.
Speaker 1: But you're the first person to mention and that beautiful
Speaker 1: day that there's no parents around, And I never thought
Speaker 1: of that, but I realized that outside of like with
Speaker 1: my friends and the love that I got from sports,
Speaker 1: like playing basketball in particular, and the thing that I
Speaker 1: loved about it was an unspoken connection, you know, that
Speaker 1: sort of telepath thing you have with people, and the
Speaker 1: same thing playing music, and the same thing kind of
Speaker 1: with a writer when you're reading their book. You're connecting
Speaker 1: in this way and the things the magic of my solitude,
Speaker 1: with those things that gave me hope are really that's me,
Speaker 1: Like those are the pillars of the best of me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the parental theme as well, what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: this book is full of kind of pathology and loss
Speaker 1: and dysfunction, but it's almost all adult. So you have
Speaker 1: a count, did I am I counting correctly? Three pedophiles,
Speaker 1: three adult suicides. I mean, it's like you're surrounded by
Speaker 1: all of these deeply screwed up adult figures who are
Speaker 1: making your life incredibly difficult and sad and complicated, and
Speaker 1: the simple and beautiful pleasures seems to be the are
Speaker 1: the ones that are kind of peer play measures as
Speaker 1: opposed to that's the kind of right well, I guess
Speaker 1: for me, like simple and beautiful, like it's also profound
Speaker 1: and complex and layered and and infinite. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the adults, uh, there are three pedophiles in there.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a guy you look up later he
Speaker 1: turns out to be a pedophile. Oh yeah, there's the
Speaker 1: guy who lies down next to you. You go to
Speaker 1: his house and he you met you miraculously escaped. And
Speaker 1: then there's another pedophile. I was keeping track, but after
Speaker 1: a while there's a there's like a lot of it.
Speaker 1: This is like Holly and the Seven very stuff. Man.
Speaker 1: But I you know, when writing about it, I there's
Speaker 1: different things I've had in life, Like I'm glad I
Speaker 1: never became a junkie and when I did shoot up
Speaker 1: drugs like a moron, I'm glad that I never owed
Speaker 1: eed and died or you know, got a deadly disease.
Speaker 1: And I feel like there's, man, there's some protective angel
Speaker 1: like looking out for me. Because also growing up with
Speaker 1: like I put myself in situations a million times growing
Speaker 1: up in Hollywood as a little kid, where I could
Speaker 1: have really been hurt, like this, will you tell that
Speaker 1: crazy story about the swimming pool that you guys would
Speaker 1: jump Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I would have thought it
Speaker 1: was burnt that. You're right, you were like you struggled
Speaker 1: to find out which of the swimming crazy swimming school
Speaker 1: stories I was referring to. Yeah, yeah, this is the one,
Speaker 1: because there's two swimming stories. One is like late at
Speaker 1: night we would go sneak into pools of apartment buildings
Speaker 1: to swim. I'm talking about when we jumped off the roofs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was you know, Anthony and I, as you know,
Speaker 1: when we met when we were fifteen, it was very explosive.
Speaker 1: We met, and it was antagonistic right from the first second.
Speaker 1: And also literally from the first second. I looked at
Speaker 1: him and I knew that this was a person I'd
Speaker 1: be hanging out with for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And there was no doubt I knew. And it was intense,
Speaker 1: And you know, my mom said to me, my mom's
Speaker 1: passed away, but I remember her telling me like kind
Speaker 1: of towards her later years, She's like, Michael, I remember,
Speaker 1: you know when when you came home when you were fifteen,
Speaker 1: and you walked in and you were a lit You
Speaker 1: were glowing with something, something that I hadn't seen in
Speaker 1: you before. And you said, Mom, Mom, I finally found
Speaker 1: someone I can talk to. And that was the day
Speaker 1: that I'm in Anthony, And I remember like that week
Speaker 1: it was it was raining, and so for p class,
Speaker 1: we had to sit up on a and you know,
Speaker 1: we just to sit and talk. You could go down,
Speaker 1: but you sat in the gym and we just sat
Speaker 1: and we just started talking and it was just, you know,
Speaker 1: this NonStop river of communication had you Was that the
Speaker 1: first time you ever met him? Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: just a kind of random encountering. It was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had this kid and his shirt in a headlock.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny because Tony shirw could you know,
Speaker 1: could beat the hell out of me. But but he
Speaker 1: was my best friend at the time. And uh, I
Speaker 1: had come out of hanging out with these kids that
Speaker 1: were real like kind of bad kids, I mean relatively
Speaker 1: bad in terms of like every day it was just
Speaker 1: a what crime can we do to these kids that
Speaker 1: were good kids? You know, they different homework. We played
Speaker 1: sports in the street, you know, we might have smoked
Speaker 1: a little weed here and there, but you know, but
Speaker 1: and I had this kid in a headlock and I
Speaker 1: was giving him a noogie. I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with the noggie, but it's when you get some
Speaker 1: of the headlock and you grind your knuckles in. And
Speaker 1: Anthony came up and and he's lay off, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and he was. I was scared of him. And
Speaker 1: he looked unlike I can. In nineteen seventy six, seventy seven,
Speaker 1: in my tenth grade, every kid had had long hair
Speaker 1: or a big afro and pooka shells and ope shorts
Speaker 1: and like lead zapp and he had a crew cut,
Speaker 1: and like he just looked different. You had tight pants
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and muscles buff and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's in cancers. I lay off and whoa, you know,
Speaker 1: and I just felt this, you know, this feeling of
Speaker 1: like that we both were apart from everything and that
Speaker 1: we would see things in a way that was different.
Speaker 1: And I was right. It's like that when you describe
Speaker 1: the moment you meet Anthony in this book, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you realize the book is a love story, right,
Speaker 1: it's just extraordinary romantic in the in the most beautiful
Speaker 1: sense of that word encounter and it it's and what's
Speaker 1: amazing to me is like you say, you say, you
Speaker 1: came home that night and you you realize that this
Speaker 1: is almost your this was your soulmate from the get go. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just knew that we'd be you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the right word for it is. And one
Speaker 1: of the things, and perhaps it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: have an objective view on it because our friendship is
Speaker 1: still this moving, fluctuating and sting that it's difficult for
Speaker 1: me to understand. And I tried to understand it as
Speaker 1: best I could because it was such a big part
Speaker 1: of my childhood, such a big part of my growing up,
Speaker 1: and but as I write in the book, it was
Speaker 1: it was difficult. It's difficult for me to understand because
Speaker 1: it's not like other things where people fulfill something for
Speaker 1: you in life, you know what I mean. You know,
Speaker 1: like if it's a romantic relationship, it's an intellectual relationship,
Speaker 1: it's someone you might share spiritual path with. It's all
Speaker 1: these different things. But when he with He and I,
Speaker 1: it was like from the beginning this's just this electric motivation.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, it's sort of like North
Speaker 1: and South magnets, you know, how they have to be together,
Speaker 1: they have to exist together, but they push against each
Speaker 1: other too, And I wrote about it, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I write this piece about these these uh what do
Speaker 1: you call those big horn sheep, like ramming heads together
Speaker 1: and how they fight, and it might not it's just
Speaker 1: because that's what they do. It feels good to mash
Speaker 1: their heads into each other and they're alive and they're
Speaker 1: electric and everything is flowing through through them. And even
Speaker 1: though like with Anthony and I, we butt heads all
Speaker 1: the time and we have completely different world views and
Speaker 1: you know, different ways of going about life. But you know,
Speaker 1: you know what he reminded me of. There's a very
Speaker 1: famous marriage researcher called John Gottman who does this exercise
Speaker 1: with couples, and what he does is he had asked
Speaker 1: them to describe the very first time they met. And
Speaker 1: his theory is that in the very first encounter between
Speaker 1: two people are the seeds of their unual relationship. And
Speaker 1: he gave these hilarious examples, like, you know, the couple
Speaker 1: will be in some kind of therapy because the guy
Speaker 1: is like cold and unresponsive, and he'll say, well, what
Speaker 1: happened in the first time you met? It goes, well,
Speaker 1: he was twenty five minutes late for the day, he
Speaker 1: had forgotten his wallet, he was distracted by the baseball
Speaker 1: game going. You know, it's like it's all there, So
Speaker 1: maybe think when you yeah, you're you're goofing around and
Speaker 1: then incomes this kind of like dynamic charismatic Yeah, like
Speaker 1: weird dude who's not out of step with I think
Speaker 1: it's going around and instantly there's a kind of but
Speaker 1: this conflict from the beginning, absolutely right. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting way to look at it. You know,
Speaker 1: I just got married a few weeks ago. As I
Speaker 1: was saying, and of course when you're thank you, but
Speaker 1: of course when you're saying that, I'm just thinking, like,
Speaker 1: the first time I saw this woman, it was just like,
Speaker 1: will you marry me? You know what they mean? Just
Speaker 1: like and I hadn't said a word. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: type of fascinating it. Yeah. When we come back, Malcolm
Speaker 1: and Flee continue discussing Flee's relationship with the Red Hot
Speaker 1: Chili Peppers Anthony Keatis. We're back with Malcolm and Flee
Speaker 1: Live from the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. Talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about your relationship at that moment from
Speaker 1: in that early stage with Anthony. So you have this
Speaker 1: kind of electric complex connection. What happens the next day
Speaker 1: We just started because this came. You know, the beginning
Speaker 1: of this conversation was. We used to go around in
Speaker 1: Hollywood and we'd most apartment buildings have swimming pools, so
Speaker 1: we'd go any apartment that had a building had a
Speaker 1: swimming pool. We'd try to get up on the roof
Speaker 1: to jump into the pool, and you know, we'd like
Speaker 1: getch our clothes, run in sometimes oftentimes naked, get up
Speaker 1: on top of a pool and just come flying out
Speaker 1: of the sky and you know, lad in this pool.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people would be sunning themselves by the pool
Speaker 1: and here come these crazy kids like literally flying out
Speaker 1: of the sky, screaming and yelling and landing in their
Speaker 1: pool naked. You know, people just oh and it was
Speaker 1: just like the thrill, like everything about it, the freaking
Speaker 1: out of the people, the wild flying through the sky,
Speaker 1: the running out of their being in trouble, the mixing
Speaker 1: up this like this like chaos happening for thriving on
Speaker 1: the chaos of the moment, and would you just basically
Speaker 1: like like emblematic of everything that we did, Like it
Speaker 1: was just like every day, like what can we do
Speaker 1: that will be wild? And would you have ever done
Speaker 1: those things without him? Did you need him to do that?
Speaker 1: I think I needed him to take it to that
Speaker 1: level because I found a like minded person. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because when my mom told me that I found
Speaker 1: someone I could talk to, Anthony's mom once told me, Oh,
Speaker 1: Anthony told me he found someone who will do anything.
Speaker 1: So maybe, you know, for both of us, we just
Speaker 1: kind of fed on each other. You know, I don't know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you did you? Did you keep a journal in
Speaker 1: those years? I never did know? The crazy thing I
Speaker 1: would now that I when I started writing this book,
Speaker 1: I wrote it pretty much all by hand in a journal,
Speaker 1: and you know, just kept filling up journals. And I
Speaker 1: realize that I've only ever written in journals when I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely miserable, like when I'm going through like a lot
Speaker 1: of like anxiety, panic attacks, deep sadness, deep like just
Speaker 1: being in horror of my being in my own skin.
Speaker 1: When I'll write to try to understand what I'm going
Speaker 1: through and but in writing and I just like, during
Speaker 1: the writing process of this book, I learned when you know,
Speaker 1: beyond like just like trying to understand my life and
Speaker 1: make sense of it. One of the big things I learned,
Speaker 1: I love writing. I just fucking love it. Like just
Speaker 1: the way the words sitting next to on the page,
Speaker 1: like the color of the way different words look next
Speaker 1: to each other. I learned what a literation means, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I just every time I sat down and wrote,
Speaker 1: when I lifted my head up afterwards, I felt connected
Speaker 1: and engaged to a part of myself that I had
Speaker 1: never really activated before. And it was such a beautiful thing,
Speaker 1: and I forgot what I was coming around to God,
Speaker 1: it was going to be great. Well, no, I was good.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're I thought, you must
Speaker 1: have because your memory for all this detail is astonishing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that made me end
Speaker 1: the book when the Chili Peppers started is when I
Speaker 1: started writing about my childhood. I think I don't have
Speaker 1: that grade of a memory, you know, I mean comes
Speaker 1: and goes. But once I started writing about something, I
Speaker 1: always wrote from a place of feeling like would be
Speaker 1: one little thing about an event that I remembered, but
Speaker 1: I knew it was something I've been carrying around my
Speaker 1: whole life and was one of those things that guides
Speaker 1: me without me even knowing that it guides me. It's
Speaker 1: like something like, oh, I'm scared. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I'm anxious, and because something triggers something from my childhood.
Speaker 1: But it's a murky memory. It's just like a color
Speaker 1: or shape and a distance. And so I'd start from
Speaker 1: feeling like how did I feel? And when I came
Speaker 1: from that place of like physical sensation and I started writing,
Speaker 1: it's like it would become clear. It would like the
Speaker 1: clarity and the and the thing would come into focus.
Speaker 1: And then I not only did the event itself in
Speaker 1: a narrative of the event come into focus, but then
Speaker 1: I would start digging underneath, like what was the thing underneath?
Speaker 1: It made it so? And why is it such an
Speaker 1: important thing to me? And that I loved that, I
Speaker 1: loved learning that. It's not like Keith Richards who had
Speaker 1: to hire a team of researchers to write his autobiography.
Speaker 1: What did he do? He had to heah, he literally
Speaker 1: had a team of researchers. Wow, reconstruct his own Yeah, memory,
Speaker 1: that's wild. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean that's like an
Speaker 1: extreme way to go in a way that I really
Speaker 1: did not want to go because it was important to me,
Speaker 1: and I think that I got my facts really straight
Speaker 1: in this book. I'm sure that I missed some things.
Speaker 1: I'm here and there, but I didn't care about that
Speaker 1: in the slightest. Like I thought, even if something happened
Speaker 1: and I have it completely wrong in my head, like
Speaker 1: the story, I've twisted it somehow through some neuroses or whatever,
Speaker 1: that this is the story that I'm carrying. You know,
Speaker 1: in all my life, I'm basing my actions and my
Speaker 1: thoughts and my relationship to the world based on this
Speaker 1: story that I'm holding. And if I learned that I
Speaker 1: had it wrong, that would be fascinating, you know, that'd
Speaker 1: be great, and that would be a you know, it
Speaker 1: could be a watership a watershed, not watership down, a
Speaker 1: watershed moment for me, and that you know, learning from
Speaker 1: my mistake. But but I felt like my the way
Speaker 1: that something lives in my heart is of equal validity,
Speaker 1: or even a dream is of equal validity to any
Speaker 1: like actual factual thing. That happened. Yeah, when you met Anthony,
Speaker 1: your your relationship at first was how much was it
Speaker 1: about music? Did you Was the music a part of
Speaker 1: what you were sharing in those early years or yeah,
Speaker 1: it was part of it. I mean from a young age,
Speaker 1: we started like going out and sneaking into clubs and
Speaker 1: getting into places and seeing bands played. And I was
Speaker 1: seeing rock music for the first time because as a kid,
Speaker 1: I didn't like rock music. I thought it was dumb music.
Speaker 1: I thought it was music for people who didn't care
Speaker 1: about music. Because I grew up in a jazz household
Speaker 1: and jazz being this like really sophisticated, cerebrally, emotionally, spiritually,
Speaker 1: I just saw rock music as something for kids who
Speaker 1: care about haircuts and silly magazines and stuff. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now it's taking on a different meaning
Speaker 1: because I meet Anthony and then more profoundly with Hello later.
Speaker 1: But I start we start sneaking in, I started seeing
Speaker 1: rock music, and even though I still want to be
Speaker 1: Dizzy Gillespie when I grow up, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a jazz drumpet player, I start feeling this visceral feeling
Speaker 1: about things, and I'm a kid, I'm starting to come
Speaker 1: into my sexuality. I'm starting to come in and I'm
Speaker 1: getting this. I'm out in Hollywood clubs as a little kid,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing all this crazy behavior you're and you know,
Speaker 1: nudity and people making out and doing weird things in
Speaker 1: nightclubs where little kids don't belong. I don't get the
Speaker 1: sense of reading your book. Did you and Anthony ever
Speaker 1: paid admission to any club? No? And you're no. We
Speaker 1: we we like to sneak in, challenging you to produce
Speaker 1: a single ticket. Y. Yeah, no, we used to have
Speaker 1: this thing like it probably still works. If you want
Speaker 1: to get into a movie theater, walk in backwards. We
Speaker 1: used to do this thing, just walk in backwards. It
Speaker 1: works all the time. Yeah. Deep. How would if Anthony
Speaker 1: was sitting here undecided me, how would he respond to
Speaker 1: your account of your meeting. I'm sure it was, you know,
Speaker 1: very different for him. I know that with anthy and I,
Speaker 1: if we, you know, we work together in a room
Speaker 1: and we both experience the same thing, we'll walk out
Speaker 1: and we'll both have different stories to tell. So how
Speaker 1: do how do your stories differ? We just they just do.
Speaker 1: They're just we We were both very intense about who
Speaker 1: we are, and I don't think I can really put
Speaker 1: a qualitative same in us on how they differ, because
Speaker 1: that it varies from situation a situation. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I'm talking about all these
Speaker 1: differences because you know, is someone that I love deeply,
Speaker 1: and we're brothers and we love each other. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I worry that in me trying to understand it that
Speaker 1: I wrote about in my book. And it is a
Speaker 1: love story of my book, even though there are many
Speaker 1: love stories in my book, and my book is a
Speaker 1: book of my story is a story of love, of
Speaker 1: yearning for it and being distracted and going wrong ways
Speaker 1: and and all of that. But with us, you know,
Speaker 1: no matter what, love has always been enough. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: other great love story of the book is about Helle
Speaker 1: el Slovak. Yeah, tell me, tell us about your first
Speaker 1: encounter with him. Well, I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: really noticed him because we were you know, it had
Speaker 1: been in school together since seventh grade. But I think
Speaker 1: I guess it was the last year of junior high
Speaker 1: and ninth grade eighth or ninth and for the school
Speaker 1: talent show, he and a few of his friends dressed
Speaker 1: up like kiss for the Talent Show and came out
Speaker 1: of the Talent Show and lip sync to Kiss and
Speaker 1: they had it down. It wasn't like they just put
Speaker 1: on a mask like they had spent days. They had
Speaker 1: you know, the makeup, that high boots, every outfit had
Speaker 1: been sewed and studded, and the belts and they really
Speaker 1: looked like other worldly kiss guys. And I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what Kiss was. It was, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about this stuff. But I remember seeing him mime
Speaker 1: in the talent lunch show with my with Jack and
Speaker 1: with Jack Irons, who was, you know, the other founding
Speaker 1: member of the Chili Peppers, and just being amazed. I
Speaker 1: was like at their commitment and their intensity and their
Speaker 1: belief in this thing. There was like a cartoon to me,
Speaker 1: it was just like some silly, you know thing, But
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, Wow, they really believe
Speaker 1: in this, like their commitment, their kicks and their moves,
Speaker 1: and they're back to back like rocking out, you know,
Speaker 1: wil Luila looking at tongues out like I was really
Speaker 1: like impressed in a way that I had never been
Speaker 1: impressed by, even like you know, real virtuosos and rock
Speaker 1: music and and so I noticed him then. And then
Speaker 1: there was one day and I, you know, count this
Speaker 1: story in my book where Anthony and I were out,
Speaker 1: like you know, stoned as usual, riding the bumper cars
Speaker 1: in North Hollywood, and we were always hitchhiking, always trying
Speaker 1: to get a ride and always had a hustle. And
Speaker 1: we were walking down the street and we saw him
Speaker 1: drive by. I guess we were just turned sixteen, were
Speaker 1: old enough to drive, and he had a green dots
Speaker 1: and five ten and it was blasting Lavilla strangiata by
Speaker 1: rush and rocking out and we saw him and we
Speaker 1: know that dude, that's that's he's in my social studies class.
Speaker 1: And we ran and chased him down, and you know,
Speaker 1: because you wanted to ride, and he gave us a ride.
Speaker 1: And right away, just like when Anthony and I connected,
Speaker 1: we became a threesome. Yeah, and it became every day.
Speaker 1: But to my point, you remember that it was a
Speaker 1: dots and five ten, Yeah, Well he was you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a fantastic car and a banging stereo in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like Rick Ruben. On the episode of Broken Record
Speaker 1: that just aired, he was interviewing Tanya Tucker and she's
Speaker 1: remembering these touring in the early seventies when she was,
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen years old. Yeah, and she's the same thing.
Speaker 1: She's describing everything, and she's like yeah. And then we
Speaker 1: had like, you know, two brown Fort LTDs that we
Speaker 1: were saying, who remembers that particular model of the you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one four B. When you're a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old boy in Los Angeles, car is a very significant thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have said a DUTs in five ten was
Speaker 1: very significant. Yeah, but well, no, I remember it well
Speaker 1: because I mean he had a car. We were in
Speaker 1: it constantly. Describe sixteen year old HELLEL. Slovak. I fell
Speaker 1: in love with Hellel. He was just an absolutely beautiful boy,
Speaker 1: had long, curly hair, and he was an artist. He
Speaker 1: painted these beautiful paintings, and he had an interesting like penmanship,
Speaker 1: the way he would write, and he would get into
Speaker 1: drawing things, like he'd go through a phase of just
Speaker 1: drawing cows that he and he would draw these beautiful
Speaker 1: cows with these pastoral landscapes and he would he was
Speaker 1: just an artist. I'd never met a kid like this before.
Speaker 1: He was sensitive and poetic, and artistic, and he loved
Speaker 1: rock music. And he had this red Messenger guitar that
Speaker 1: he slung over his shoulder, and he just looked so
Speaker 1: sexy and cool the way he held it. And and
Speaker 1: like I said, I had never liked rock music, but
Speaker 1: when I met Helle, I fell in love with rock
Speaker 1: music because I fell in love with him, and we'd
Speaker 1: sit in his room and you know, he just played
Speaker 1: me all this this great rock music like Hendrix, like
Speaker 1: I had missed out on Hendricks. You know, it was
Speaker 1: already nineteen seventy seven, and I didn't know about Hendricks yet.
Speaker 1: I knew he existed, I knew the songs, but all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like this sound, this virtuosity, this power,
Speaker 1: this thing is just filling me up and it's changing
Speaker 1: my life. And his belief in it and his dreams
Speaker 1: and his like yearning to connect and to this music
Speaker 1: to like breathe through him as a vehicle for his
Speaker 1: life was so intense. And we'd just sit and listen
Speaker 1: and look at art books, and it just changed everything
Speaker 1: for me. I you know, it was it was really beautiful.
Speaker 1: And and when I wrote about hellel in this book,
Speaker 1: I didn't it was important to me. I really just
Speaker 1: wanted to write about my childhood and to write about
Speaker 1: how I felt then and to be in my head
Speaker 1: is how I was when I was a kid, too,
Speaker 1: because I thought that like the value and the honesty
Speaker 1: of the story would be not like coming from an
Speaker 1: adult point of view, but how I was then, like
Speaker 1: how I was trying to make sense of things, but
Speaker 1: it was I couldn't think about it. He died in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, and his life and death are so
Speaker 1: intertwined to me at this point it was difficult for
Speaker 1: me to write about him without writing about his death.
Speaker 1: So I did write about it. And because he's become
Speaker 1: for me in a way, like I have all these
Speaker 1: beautiful stories and memories and from him, and he's really tragic.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you talk about the book being
Speaker 1: sad and beautiful at the same time, and that's how
Speaker 1: my memory sorry for him. It's like all these beautiful
Speaker 1: things and in this tremendous sense of loss and sadness
Speaker 1: of his death at such a young age. And so
Speaker 1: I wrote about that too, you know. And because he
Speaker 1: exists for me now in my dreams and in my thoughts,
Speaker 1: and every day there's a the little throughout the book,
Speaker 1: you have these little moments when you which worked really
Speaker 1: beautifully where you in italics. You kind of give us
Speaker 1: either flashbacks or you jump into the future or asides,
Speaker 1: and you have one about his funeral that is one
Speaker 1: of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. I do
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about. You know, I
Speaker 1: wrote that it's been like, you know, the book was
Speaker 1: going to come out last this year, and I decided
Speaker 1: to wait a year just because I was going through
Speaker 1: some stuff. But so I don't remember exactly what I wrote.
Speaker 1: I haven't looked at it in a while. Yeah, this guy,
Speaker 1: I know, I wrote two pieces, one like the day
Speaker 1: that he dies. Oh that no, No, Then there's another one.
Speaker 1: There's another part. Yeah, well you know, hello died from
Speaker 1: a heroin overdose. Yeah. We were just kids, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean we were twenty six, but I was twenty
Speaker 1: six going on fifteen, and for a long time I've
Speaker 1: really kind of, you know, I'm way better, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but kind of beat myself up because I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to be there for him. Then, you know, I
Speaker 1: was angry because I was like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this thing going man, we got this band. This is cool.
Speaker 1: You know, we the funk. We gotta like find our rhythm.
Speaker 1: We gotta and we he and I like he had
Speaker 1: asked me to start playing bass. We had this we
Speaker 1: all profound connection and we were had this music that
Speaker 1: we thought was unique, and we were propelling it forward.
Speaker 1: And when he got strung out on heroin, I felt abandoned.
Speaker 1: I felt left. I felt like he was leaving me,
Speaker 1: and I got angry at him. And so the way
Speaker 1: that I expressed my concern for his you know, drug
Speaker 1: problem was to be angry, and I got mad at him,
Speaker 1: and I you know, judged, and I you know, I
Speaker 1: came from a place, so come on, get it together.
Speaker 1: We got to do this. And it causes me great
Speaker 1: difficulty to now know, like from my knowing now and
Speaker 1: having obviously dealt with many a friend, with many a
Speaker 1: person in my life with substance abuse problems, like had
Speaker 1: I been able to be there, that maybe I could
Speaker 1: have helped a lot, that maybe I could have saved him,
Speaker 1: Maybe I could have helped him to you know, capture
Speaker 1: the beautiful light of who he was and to shed
Speaker 1: all these you know, deadly distractions from his life and
Speaker 1: too but I didn't know that then, and and uh,
Speaker 1: even though I know it's, you know, not my fault,
Speaker 1: I a lot of that. I guess that part that
Speaker 1: I was writing was driven by me coming to terms
Speaker 1: with that, with my inability to help him, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and I and just the feelings of of loss, and
Speaker 1: you know, I often for a long time, I had
Speaker 1: a recurring dream where he would come in my dream
Speaker 1: and there would be he would be be kind of upset,
Speaker 1: you know that I wasn't there for him in that way,
Speaker 1: and you know, so I guess it's just me working
Speaker 1: through that and understanding it. Yeah, he you talked about
Speaker 1: he was the one who introduced you to the base. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he he'd been. He'd and them that that was
Speaker 1: his band in high school. Anthem with the why why yeah?
Speaker 1: And what kind of music did they play? It was
Speaker 1: rock music yearning could be prog rock. It's the best
Speaker 1: way I can describe it. It was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was it started off like when before I joined the band.
Speaker 1: It was they were doing a lot of covers Zeppelin
Speaker 1: and Queen and stuff like that, and writing their own
Speaker 1: songs which are kind of in that like hard rock
Speaker 1: vein like mid seventies classic rock. I guess that is
Speaker 1: what you call it now. But it started to become
Speaker 1: more progressive and more already and more crazy, weird court
Speaker 1: progressions and quirky, clever kind of things. And yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like that. So did you like the music of
Speaker 1: Anthem before you? Did? You? Did? You? Did? You? Did
Speaker 1: Anthem come after you became friends with Hello? Yeah? It did?
Speaker 1: Oh it did. So I didn't really know about it before.
Speaker 1: But when I first, you know, all my judgments about
Speaker 1: rock music started going away when I went over to
Speaker 1: Jack's house in his bedroom where they would rehearse, and
Speaker 1: I'd see them playing. And I had always played music
Speaker 1: in an academic setting. I played in La Junior Philharmonic,
Speaker 1: I played in whatever. I played in the LACC jazz band.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, I played. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a trump player, but it was always a
Speaker 1: teacher and a conductor and a stand with music on it.
Speaker 1: And I'm watching them play music just by themselves, with
Speaker 1: no parents and rocking out and rock posters on the walls,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, girls who were cool at school
Speaker 1: would come and watch, and I was like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is a whole other world and
Speaker 1: I started, I started really softening to it and kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, opening my heart to the idea of it.
Speaker 1: So he comes to you and he suggests, yes, see,
Speaker 1: whether you will be the play the bass for the band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's a night that I remember so vividly. It
Speaker 1: was another night where it was raining and we're sitting
Speaker 1: in his dots and I've ten in front of his
Speaker 1: mom's house, and uh, it was raining and we were
Speaker 1: listening to this DJ we really loved named Jim Latt
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah he was you know, he was good.
Speaker 1: And it was raining and he and he was playing.
Speaker 1: He started playing Riders on the Storm by the doors
Speaker 1: and we're laying back. I'm sure we were stoned, you know,
Speaker 1: and we were sitting back and there's a plan and
Speaker 1: he's like and he's like Mike. He goes, uh, you
Speaker 1: know if he had a bass player named Todd at
Speaker 1: the time, and he says, I think, you know, Todd,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really believe in it. It's like a hobby
Speaker 1: for him. You know, he doesn't live it. He doesn't
Speaker 1: breathe it. And you know, maybe you could learn to
Speaker 1: play bass, and why don't you learn to play bass
Speaker 1: and join the band, and I just started fucking shivering
Speaker 1: all over and in that moment, you know, I felt
Speaker 1: so like I don't know if honored is even the word,
Speaker 1: like seen and loved and valued, like because I knew
Speaker 1: it meant everything to him, that the band is a
Speaker 1: fucking sacred thing, you know, and like when he when
Speaker 1: he asked me to join, I just it was the
Speaker 1: most loving thing that anyone had ever said to me
Speaker 1: in my life. It was so great. And you know, sorry,
Speaker 1: I got I got emotional, but but you know, I
Speaker 1: was just fucking stoked. And the next day I ran
Speaker 1: out and got a basse and you know, got a
Speaker 1: base and right away to started whacking away at it.
Speaker 1: And two weeks later I was on stage at Gazari's
Speaker 1: and Hollywood playing a game, and that, you know, it
Speaker 1: became what I did for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Did you want me to come back? Fully picks up
Speaker 1: his bass and walks us through the evolution of his
Speaker 1: playing style. We're back with more of Malcolm's interview with Flee.
Speaker 1: You have your bass sitting there, very tendal risingly. I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to give us a little guided tour
Speaker 1: in your in the kind of evolution of your You
Speaker 1: play the bass in a very distinctive way. I would
Speaker 1: love for you to explain to us how did that
Speaker 1: come about? To walk us through the steps? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: playing trumpet, like I said, had been a very academic
Speaker 1: like institutional way of learning. And as soon as I
Speaker 1: started playing bass, like all that one out the window.
Speaker 1: And not that I wasn't that harmonically sophisticated or anything,
Speaker 1: but like when the first day I got my bass,
Speaker 1: I had one lesson from Hollel because I started going
Speaker 1: like this, and he goes, he goes, it's good when
Speaker 1: you walk with your fingers just like you're walking. So
Speaker 1: I started going, and I remember the first thing I
Speaker 1: ever learned to play there was a song at HELLEL
Speaker 1: had written called one Way Woman, Hey the Baby, have
Speaker 1: you heard the news? He used to sing it, and
Speaker 1: we keep going. I can't remember, and like, I am
Speaker 1: a fucking awful singer, and hello was worse than mean
Speaker 1: it but it went, it went, It went like that,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember, and I'm making it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to make a mockery of it, because,
Speaker 1: believe me, when I got on stage of the Gazari's.
Speaker 1: I played that thing with every fucking atom that I
Speaker 1: had investigents in it, and you know, and so I
Speaker 1: just started playing. But then the way that I really
Speaker 1: learned to play, and then I started figuring out, like
Speaker 1: remember of the first things I learned to Kashmir by
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin. You know, I just started playing and learning things.
Speaker 1: But the way that I really learned was we would
Speaker 1: get in a room and we would just start improvising
Speaker 1: and and you know, no plan, no no song, We
Speaker 1: just we just improvised. And I just started making up rhythms,
Speaker 1: you know, and even at first that they'd be very simple.
Speaker 1: Because I came from I didn't know rock music at all,
Speaker 1: and I came from wanting to be a jazz trumpet player.
Speaker 1: I didn't approach the bass in the normal way so
Speaker 1: like most rock bass lines would, you know, And I
Speaker 1: didn't know that at all. So right away I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I just was nutty, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I just started, you know, growing as a
Speaker 1: bass player, and it wasn't really you know, and I
Speaker 1: just kept doing that and like following, as my friend
Speaker 1: Ian Mackay says, follow the thread, so say you'll you
Speaker 1: write something, you're like, you're like like just that right,
Speaker 1: and anything like okay, so that's good, you know, and
Speaker 1: just following the thread and finding the next thing. And
Speaker 1: I just kept doing it and doing it and developing
Speaker 1: my style. I didn't really have like the normal ramp
Speaker 1: up because I just right into playing gigs and jamming
Speaker 1: and stuff. There's a part, you know, I was listening
Speaker 1: to rocky music, and you know, I didn't really even
Speaker 1: learn other people's songs, which is kind of a weird
Speaker 1: way too, because most people learned songs and I still
Speaker 1: don't do that that much. But I when I was
Speaker 1: in I just started playing. And it was eleventh grade
Speaker 1: and then I saw a kid named Ray, Like there
Speaker 1: was Anthem was a band in high school, and there
Speaker 1: was another band. It was a funk band called Star
Speaker 1: and they had a bass player named Ray. And I
Speaker 1: had only seen bass play like this with the fingers,
Speaker 1: and Ray was going like this with his thumb and
Speaker 1: I was like, what the fuck? Ray? You know, and
Speaker 1: he was like bouncing is bouncing and popping and plucking
Speaker 1: and thumping. And I watched him. He was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you know, are you hitting your song? Slide it down?
Speaker 1: And that, you know, blew my mind when I saw
Speaker 1: Ray do that, and then the kind of a big
Speaker 1: so I started doing that. I started you know, playing
Speaker 1: punk and slapping. And then but then, but then what
Speaker 1: happened like a big change for me was at a
Speaker 1: certain point I discovered punk rock. And when I started
Speaker 1: liking rock music, I disliked. I liked the virtuoso players
Speaker 1: I liked, you know, I like Hendrix, and I liked
Speaker 1: prog rock like Alan Holdsworth and Bill Bruford and Yes
Speaker 1: and these guys that were very proficient, technically accomplished virtual
Speaker 1: show players. And I saw, like I'd seen punk rock
Speaker 1: shows and it was wild, and I appreciated, like the
Speaker 1: intensity of it, but I was like, they don't know
Speaker 1: how to play. I didn't like it. And then I
Speaker 1: had a one night I took acid. And by the way,
Speaker 1: my books called as of the Children, but I do
Speaker 1: not recommend children taking acid. That's not the point of it.
Speaker 1: But when we could talk about that if you want.
Speaker 1: But but I saw this band called Fear playing and
Speaker 1: they're playing this really fast, hardcore punk rock and I
Speaker 1: was just you know, granted I was on LSD, but
Speaker 1: I was entranced. You know, I was absolutely entranced, and
Speaker 1: I just the movement of it. They actually, you know,
Speaker 1: were actually really good players within the context of this
Speaker 1: really fast, relentless hardcore punk rock. And when I saw
Speaker 1: them play it, it's like opened the door. You know.
Speaker 1: It might have been on assets, so the door was
Speaker 1: there to be opened, but the thing was there for real,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, so I'm blown away by
Speaker 1: this band. Afterwards, I'm telling everyone about it. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's band Fear. There's no crazy and the singers so charismatic,
Speaker 1: and the music and the crazy time signatures. And then
Speaker 1: three days later I see an add in the paper
Speaker 1: Fear fires bass player looking for a new bass player,
Speaker 1: and I call it, and I, you know, I call up.
Speaker 1: I go down an audition and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the wildest man that ever lived, and I love
Speaker 1: this music like there's no way they're not going to
Speaker 1: hire me, and they did hire me, and so then
Speaker 1: I started playing in Fear and the music was really fast.
Speaker 1: It was punk rock, very simple but fast, and also like,
Speaker 1: here's a Fear song it's called give Me Some Action.
Speaker 1: It goes anyways. But when I coupled, when I thanks
Speaker 1: when I when I coupled that feeling of punk rock,
Speaker 1: because and I fell in love with punk rock. I
Speaker 1: had a real awakening, the real Even though I played
Speaker 1: in Fear and I loved being in Fear and it
Speaker 1: was exciting and thrilling, the thing that got me was
Speaker 1: the germs I heard. Thanks I I you know, I
Speaker 1: heard the germs. I was like, what's that? And person
Speaker 1: I was with it was like, oh, the germs. They
Speaker 1: couldn't know how to play there. You know, they're obnoxious.
Speaker 1: The singer was a creep. You know. That's what someone
Speaker 1: told me at the time. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I was getting my head. They were saying it
Speaker 1: and it was someone I admired. But in my in
Speaker 1: my head, I was like that that I got to
Speaker 1: hear that, And I remember the next day I went
Speaker 1: out and got their record GI and when I heard it,
Speaker 1: I remember it like, let's another thing. I write about
Speaker 1: it my book. It's a very vivid memory because it
Speaker 1: changed a part of me forever, which was that when
Speaker 1: I heard it, it had this magical, spiritual, intangible quality
Speaker 1: to it that just affected me, that made me tingle
Speaker 1: all over, that made me get lost in the ether.
Speaker 1: And here's this like really violent, like relentlessly intense music
Speaker 1: with no melody and the singers snarling and yelling. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's not like he's even singing, And but
Speaker 1: it just like I just like I was on. It
Speaker 1: just took me away. It took me into the ether,
Speaker 1: and I was so moved by it that it changed
Speaker 1: the way I looked at music forever. It made me
Speaker 1: feel that it didn't matter if you knew how to
Speaker 1: play fast, if you're a virtuoso. And even though I
Speaker 1: still you know, love that the discipline and all the
Speaker 1: work ethic that it takes for someone to become a virtuo.
Speaker 1: So I realized that the motivation and the integrity and
Speaker 1: the intensity of the message someone wants to to communicate
Speaker 1: their vehicle might be something really remedial. And the love
Speaker 1: of the connection of the people in the band and
Speaker 1: all these these these things that make music sacred can
Speaker 1: exist as vibrantly and the most simple thing as they can.
Speaker 1: And like the greatest John Coltrane solo, So the Germans
Speaker 1: did that for me. And that sivnity is when am
Speaker 1: I really fell in love with punk rock. Then I
Speaker 1: took the energy of you know, punk rock and funk,
Speaker 1: and I started putting them together, you know, and I
Speaker 1: started developing a style of my own, even though I
Speaker 1: already I did have my own voice as a bass player,
Speaker 1: but I kind of there started playing these these bassline,
Speaker 1: these like fast funk basslines with punk rock energy from
Speaker 1: those two different styles, and you know, created this new
Speaker 1: kind of hybrid of a sound and also you know,
Speaker 1: influenced by a lot of the great kind of post
Speaker 1: punk bands. I guess you call it, like Uh from
Speaker 1: New York. I really loved Defunct with Joe Bowie and
Speaker 1: James Chance, the contortions. There's kind of that no New
Speaker 1: York sound and stuff, as well as just the reckless
Speaker 1: freedom of the great free jazzers when they played punk,
Speaker 1: like the Uh. You know, lots of lots of people
Speaker 1: when when you say that, the moment you you said,
Speaker 1: fuse those two traditions in your own playing, When is
Speaker 1: that happening? Is that early Chili Peppers? Is that just
Speaker 1: before the Chili Peppers? You know, just before I started, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe six months before so, And at that time things
Speaker 1: are moving so quickly, you know, I guess it's like
Speaker 1: maybe that happens when you get older, time goes faster,
Speaker 1: but events, significant events. I think maybe that's like an
Speaker 1: archetypal thing or a developmental thing with people I don't know,
Speaker 1: but happen at that age, and if you're willing to
Speaker 1: have the diligence to to deal with them and integrate
Speaker 1: them into your life, they can be really profound. What
Speaker 1: were your musical peers, how are they responding to that,
Speaker 1: to that style of playing? Were you getting? I was
Speaker 1: doing it by myself at first, because I was playing
Speaker 1: you know, I left Anthem, which I had become what
Speaker 1: is this? I joined Fear, and and Fear was you know,
Speaker 1: punk rock. They didn't want to hear about me slapping
Speaker 1: and playing funk, you know. But when I got together
Speaker 1: and started playing with Hellell and Jack again and Anthony
Speaker 1: and we started with Chili Pepper, is it just all
Speaker 1: of a sad just happened. Like I had this stuff,
Speaker 1: I had this way of playing, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was like this, and you know, they just we
Speaker 1: everyone knew what to do, you know, as well as
Speaker 1: everyone else was. It wasn't just me. Everyone was finding
Speaker 1: their place and sometimes things it's just like a zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like something's in the air and you
Speaker 1: express it. I you know, I It's funny the more
Speaker 1: I learned about music, and when I went and iudied
Speaker 1: music even like you know, because I never studied music
Speaker 1: really academically, I mean like kid public school stuff. But
Speaker 1: when I was forty six, I went to college for
Speaker 1: a year to USC and studied music academically, academically, which
Speaker 1: I had never done. And it became so apparent to
Speaker 1: me that so you just start getting into saybak, which
Speaker 1: is you know, very like mathematically complex, but it's all
Speaker 1: these things are just there. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: things that resonate at various speeds and you figure them
Speaker 1: out how to put them together to make these mathematical
Speaker 1: equations that formed the sound, and it just becomes like
Speaker 1: breathing because you're so good at it. It's just all there,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it's like if our
Speaker 1: ten are anten are tuned, we pick it up. And
Speaker 1: I just think at that time it was there. Did
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about do you mentioned the beginnings
Speaker 1: of the Chili Peppers. Talk a little bit about Anthony's decision.
Speaker 1: So it goes from someone who's an avid fan of
Speaker 1: music to deciding that he wants to make y Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you asked earlier if we had if our relationship was
Speaker 1: musical from the beginning, and we appreciated music together for sure.
Speaker 1: You know, we would listen to music all the time,
Speaker 1: and he would play stuff like him and his in
Speaker 1: his house where he lived with his dad, and they
Speaker 1: would play me music that I had never heard, like
Speaker 1: Blondie's first album I remember hearing and just you know,
Speaker 1: stuff that I didn't know about because we didn't listen
Speaker 1: to rock music in my house. And but but he
Speaker 1: Anthony was an actor, you know, he was had done
Speaker 1: film parts, and he wanted to be an actor, and
Speaker 1: he was, you know, gearing himself towards a life as
Speaker 1: an actor. And you know, but we were so wild
Speaker 1: and crazy and distracted and running around on the street
Speaker 1: that neither of us like, even though we loved to
Speaker 1: do the things that we did, we were just all
Speaker 1: over the place. You know. It wasn't like we had
Speaker 1: we weren't that disciplined. But one night he went to
Speaker 1: go see Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and he
Speaker 1: came home the next day we were like all crashing
Speaker 1: in this apartment up on Wilton and Franklin, and he
Speaker 1: came in and he was just lit up. He was like, man,
Speaker 1: I saw these guys are rapping, you know. It was
Speaker 1: like we were just learning about hip hop, you know.
Speaker 1: And he saw Grandma's rest for his right. He was like,
Speaker 1: it was incredible. You know, these stories and these narratives
Speaker 1: and it's poetry but it's like it's rhythm and it's
Speaker 1: singing but it's not. It's rapping, and it's fucking amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it, you know. And he just sat
Speaker 1: right down and wrote this, started writing this rap. And
Speaker 1: at the same time a friend ours who I write
Speaker 1: about in a book, My dear friend Gary Allen, was
Speaker 1: doing a show and he said, why don't you guys
Speaker 1: get something together and do an opening act for me?
Speaker 1: And I'm Anthony wrote this rap and I had this
Speaker 1: groove the song, and we made this our first Chili
Speaker 1: Pepper song called out in La and we got together
Speaker 1: and we played and that was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you end the book on right at the moment
Speaker 1: at at the birth of the Chili Peppers? Does this
Speaker 1: mean you're running part two? At the time, I was
Speaker 1: absolutely convinced that I was going to do a part two,
Speaker 1: and now I'm kind of un offense about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I definitely want to write, and I have
Speaker 1: like a bunch of different things in my head and
Speaker 1: I'm writing stuff, and whether I want to release another
Speaker 1: memoir at least next I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted to end with and sadly, I think we do
Speaker 1: have to with one of my favorite you know, the
Speaker 1: book begins with this incredibly powerful and evocative picture of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood of your preteen years of the early seventies,
Speaker 1: and then it ends with this extraordinary, vivid depiction of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood the musical scene of your early twenties. And
Speaker 1: one there's one little chapter, and I'm going to make
Speaker 1: you read again. Where you is when you have a
Speaker 1: part time job with the veterinarian and you liberate a
Speaker 1: whole series of pills. Oh yeah, yea from you remember this?
Speaker 1: That's office. I was going to actually try to because
Speaker 1: when I did the pill installation, because I had stole
Speaker 1: pills from the Veterinarian veterinary hospital I worked at and
Speaker 1: installed them as an art piece, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I beat Damien Hurst to the punishment. Yeah, so imagine
Speaker 1: what hundreds of these pills, Uh, hundreds for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for every variety of pill, so all along the kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah, there was like a mantle that went along
Speaker 1: the house that we're renting. So you have Santa Monica
Speaker 1: and Fromosa. I want you to read these last two
Speaker 1: chapters here that page. The pills were we had a party,
Speaker 1: by the way, and if that is an obvious yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I put all these pills up. The pills were
Speaker 1: for various animal maladies like diarrhea, raw spots from excessive itching,
Speaker 1: and also included antibiotics and tranquilizers. The crowd of Hollywood
Speaker 1: high and low lives ate the pills and puped and
Speaker 1: pooped for days afterward. Emerging through the craziness of the
Speaker 1: party crowd came Snickers, a dude from a local punk
Speaker 1: band called The Stains. He commandeered the stereo, took off
Speaker 1: the artie music we're playing, and put on an ACDC record.
Speaker 1: When I tried to put on some Ornette Coleman, he
Speaker 1: jumped up in front of the record player and whipped
Speaker 1: out a bowie knife, a forty ounce of schlitz in
Speaker 1: one hand and the Knife and the other. He stood
Speaker 1: guard over his ACDC for the length of the album,
Speaker 1: stoically hanging his head, greasy hair hanging down over his
Speaker 1: wildly bloodshot eyes. I wasn't gonna fuck with him, true rocker.
Speaker 1: We later became friends. Snickers was a wild dude that
Speaker 1: I think, and The Stains were a great band. That
Speaker 1: h story I think in some ways sums up the
Speaker 1: the wild and magical and wonderful spirit of this extraordinary
Speaker 1: book that you've written. And I would I think I
Speaker 1: speak for everyone in this audience when I say that
Speaker 1: please please write Part two. I've been waited absolutely. Thank you,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, join me in thanking please. Asting was good.
Speaker 1: We could have been more thrilled. I've done our first
Speaker 1: live Broken Record with Flee. Make sure to go pick
Speaker 1: up his book Acid for the Children. You can check
Speaker 1: out a playlist we put together featuring songs from some
Speaker 1: of Flee's favorite albums. It's that Broken Record podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: newsletter while you're there. Broken Record is produced by Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: with helping Jason Gambrell and Mia Lobell. Our theme music
Speaker 1: is by the Great Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next
Speaker 1: week's episodes. You heard me right, We're dropping two. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond. Thanks again for listening.