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Red Hot Chili Peppers · S1 E2
The Australian
Michael Balzary, born in Melbourne, arrives in LA with a trumpet and no plan
Melbourne, 1966. Four-year-old Michael Balzary boards a plane to America with his family, leaving Australia behind for good. He doesn't know it yet, but in fifteen years he'll be the most recognizable bass player on the planet.
"Around the World" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1999). That bass intro is Flea in four notes: aggressive, funky, impossible to ignore. Before he became the guy who plays bass shirtless in front of 80,000 people, he was a kid from Melbourne who picked up a trumpet.
From Melbourne to the Valley
Michael Peter Balzary was born on October 16, 1962 in Burwood, a suburb of Melbourne. His family moved to New York when he was four, then settled in Los Angeles. His parents divorced, and his mother married Walter Urban Jr., a jazz bassist. That stepfather brought jazz into the house: Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie. Flea didn't choose music. Music moved in with him.
Sources
Flea. "Acid for the Children." Grand Central Publishing, 2019.
Apter, Jeff. "Fornication: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story." Omnibus Press, 2004.
“Walter was a brilliant jazz musician. He'd sit there playing upright bass and I'd just watch his hands. I didn't understand it, but I could feel it. That feeling is the whole reason I play music.”
— Flea, "Acid for the Children" (Grand Central Publishing, 2019)
TAP TO REVEAL: What was Flea's first instrument?
Around the World, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999)
"Around the World" opens with the most Flea intro in the entire RHCP catalog: a slapped bass riff that hits like a fist on a table. The production on Californication is famously compressed, but this track still breathes because Flea's bass is so dynamic it punches through the mix by sheer force. Listen for how the bass line shifts between the verse (melodic, almost singing) and the chorus (pure percussive slap). That range, from melody to muscle, is what makes Flea different from every other rock bassist alive.
Sources
Kiedis, Anthony. "Scar Tissue." Hyperion Books, 2004.
Fairfax District, Los Angeles
The neighborhood where Flea grew up after moving to LA. The Fairfax District in the late '70s was a melting pot of Jewish, African American, and Latino communities, and its mix of cultures would directly shape the sound of the band that was about to form.
Flea by the Numbers
Soul to Squeeze, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1993)
"Soul to Squeeze" was recorded during the Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions but left off the album. It ended up on the Coneheads movie soundtrack instead, which is one of the great injustices in '90s rock. Flea's bass line here is melodic, restrained, almost gentle, the opposite of his slap-funk reputation. This track proves he's not just a technician. He's a musician who listens to the song and plays exactly what it needs.
Soul to Squeeze, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1993)
"Where I go, I just don't know, I got to, got to, gotta take it slow." The lyric sounds loose and improvised, but it captures something real about the Chili Peppers' creative process: they follow the feeling, not the plan. Kiedis wrote it during a period of personal turmoil, and the vocal has a vulnerability that the band's harder tracks rarely allow. The bass and the voice move together like two people walking in the same direction without talking.
Which prestigious youth orchestra did Flea play trumpet in as a teenager?
Two future legends are now living in the same city. But they haven't met yet. That happens inside a building on Melrose Avenue, in a classroom full of misfits and musicians who have no idea what's coming. Next: Fairfax High School.
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