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Flea is looking back to where it all began.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist spoke with Questlove on the April 6 episode of the Questlove Show podcast for a wide-ranging interview covering everything from his mourning routine to his first paying jobs. During their chat, he was asked to name the album that "literally changed the trajectory of [his] life," and among his love of rock and jazz, Flea landed on (GI) by the Germs.
"It's a very wild punk rock album," he said. "I grew up loving Miles Davis, loving Mahavishnu Orchestra. When I got into rock music, it was all about Jimi Hendrix. It was all about the great, great players. This is music that was everything to me. I looked at music as like your ability to play masterfully and groove too, of course, like I understood the importance of P-Funk and groove."
Listening to the Germs for the first time made it "hit home" that music can be so much more than what he thought.
"The musicianship is very few tools... it's relative. The songs are really good and I think the playing is really great. Harmonically, melodically, it's relatively remedial and simple and distorted and a mess and all this stuff. But I remember laying back, listening to headphones, just being taken away by it, like into this real beautiful, cosmic place, and I just remember thinking, like, it doesn't matter how good you play."
He continued, "Everything is motivation and intent. People come from all different cultures, they have all different abilities, but if you have the right motivation, the intent and the passion to express your story with what you've got and what you know, it is the most valuable thing in the world. And it just awakened in me a thing beyond music as a way to approach music."
Elsewhere in their conversation, the pair discussed Flea's debut solo album Honora, described by Questlove as "a journey into the world of instrumental interpretations, both the jazz/pop, rock/soul ilk, covering all spectrums of music." The project, which dropped March 27, sees Flea returning to his roots in jazz and trumpet playing, an experience that fans can experience on his upcoming Honora tour that kicks off in May.