Zitat des Tages von Flea:
The last thing that should happen is funding cut for education; it should be increased. We need to put more money towards education, and anything else is abusive.
I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.
When Hillel died, it was during one of the happiest times of my life. I was married and completely in love and had a baby on the way.
I have a trainer, a really nice woman named Nina Greenberg, and she got me a training plan, and we go running in the canyons in Malibu. It's just beautiful up there, absolutely gorgeous. You see bobcats up there sometimes.
I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.
The most important thing to me with any politician is that they don't start wars, but education is a big part of that, too, because educated people are less likely to do stupid, violent things.
If you live a rebellious lifestyle, then you rebel against things because they go against your ideals and the integrity of who you are as a person.
I feel creatively vibrant. I have some great friends; I feel like I'm capable of giving a lot to the world. And ultimately, that's what I really care about, is just giving.
My whole musical life has been an educational process, and I'm just furthering my education and filling in the blanks. There's stuff that I want to know that I don't know.
Anything worth doing good takes a little chaos.
About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!
When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.
I've always kind of been an in-the-moment kind of person. I don't think that far in advance or have any idea what's around the next corner.
I love entertaining people, I love playing music, and I love rocking like an animal. But at a certain point, you're playing gig after gig after gig, in town after town after town, and you're lying down, staring at another hotel-room ceiling, and it's like, 'I want to be home. I'm a dad. I've got kids.'
Water is my main state. If I time before I run - like, to digest, like, a good hour and a half or so to digest, I'll eat oatmeal. but I'm a vegetarian for the most part, so in general, I just eat grains and vegetables and fruit.
All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.
When I'm at home, I just run all the time, you know; I get up, and I go pretty much four days a week outdoors. I go in the canyons around L.A., Malibu - just around L.A. there's a lot of different spots.
I like the idea of acting. Of all these things I've done, sometimes I think I've done well, and sometimes I think I didn't do well, but they are more cameos, and I come in and be crazy.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
It's fun to just get out there and have a nice conversation when I'm running. To be honest, when I do longer runs, the trail that I like to run up in Malibu has mountain lions, so I always feel I want to run with someone else.
We always write way more than we put on a record. We always write a lot-lot.
I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.
I'm always put in the unfortunate position of asking people to donate money and people I know in bands to play benefit concerts and all this stuff.
When something comes up, and it's interesting, and I have the time, I'll do it.
I just lucked into this weird, little obscure cameoesque film career. I just love being a part of film history.
I went to school and studied music for a year at USC, which unlocked a bunch of doors for me in terms of my relationship to music.
Ethiopia is such a great country, beautiful place.
For me, music was the only reason I went to school. I was kind of a street kid, in a lot of trouble committing crimes and stuff. Music gave me something to focus on.
I wanted to play in a band, and I wanted to do music for a living, and that's what I dedicated my life to.
When I got with Nina Greenberg, I had been running for a few months already without a trainer. But then she gave me a program and guided me through my runs, showing me how to take care of myself and letting me know I should ice my legs and stretch - stuff I hadn't been doing.
Being a dad and being in the Red Hot Chili Peppers and all the stuff I have to do... The trumpet requires a lot of diligence, and I haven't had the time.
When you make music, you're forming these invisible vibrations in the air into different shapes and consistencies and speeds in order to create music, and understanding how the math of that works just gives you more colors to paint with, and allows you to get to what you want quicker.
I was raised to think that rock was music for ignorant people who didn't think for themselves.
I worked full time jobs, basically doing manual labor until I could make enough money supporting myself as a musician.
I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.
