Flea Reflects on Wild LA Youth and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Gritty Origins

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea recalled his "feral" teenage years with Anthony Kiedis in 1970s Hollywood during a recent interview with musician and YouTuber Rick Beato. The bassist discussed a childhood marked by poverty, crime, and chaos before the band formed in 1982.

Flea described himself as a "shy, weird" kid who became "just wild" after his family moved from New York to Los Angeles. "I was in the street, unwatched, getting into trouble, running around doing dumb, stupid f***ing crimes," he said.

The two met at Fairfax High School in 1976. They became inseparable. Flea came home that day and told his mother, "For the first time in my life, I've found someone I can talk to."

"Anthony and I, when we were kids, we were up to so much wild stuff," Flea said to Beato. "We were just loose and gone...in Hollywood in the 70s. It was crazy."

Both came from low-income families. Money didn't exist. "It was like, 'How are we going to get lunch today? What are we going to do?'" Flea said. That struggle birthed something valuable when they started making music.

"Because we were always so used to just trying to survive on the street, when it came time to have a band, we had...this grit," the bassist recalled.

The original lineup came together in 1982 with Flea and Kiedis joined by high school friends Hillel Slovak on guitar and Jack Irons on drums. Their influences stretched far past the funk-rock sound they became known for.

"We didn't just listen to funk," Flea said. "We listened to Ornette Coleman, we listened to the No New York scene in New York in the 80s, the Lounge Lizards and James Chance and all of that. And we loved Led Zeppelin and the mighty rock bands."

The bassist also wrote about meeting Kiedis in his 2019 memoir, Acid for the Children. "I'd found the perfect partner in crime, a guy like me, who just didn't give a f*** about any kind of convention," he wrote.