You wouldn’t think that Flea – the charismatic, all-action bassist of Red Hot Chili Peppers – would be scared of anything. This, after all, is a musician who’d regularly appear on stage with only a tube sock to preserve his modesty. But as he tells Sylvie Simmons in this month’s MOJO Interview, assembling the stellar players for his first ever solo album pushed him way outside his comfort zone. “I was scared,” he tells Simmons. “I was scared the other musicians might not think I was good enough, that I might just be some rock guy on some vain pursuit.”
Flea returns to his first instrument, the trumpet, and first love, jazz, for the album Honora, released on March 27. In this month’s MOJO, on sale now, he recounts his musical journey, inspired but also intimidated by his “violent” jazz bassist stepfather, haunted by the death of the Chili Peppers’ founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, but somehow pushing through to help establish his group as multi-platinum hitmakers.
However, as he explains, rock fame took him away from the trumpet and it’s taken him a while to restore his skills.
“About two years before I made the jazz record I got a teacher, a guy named Rickey Washington who’s the father of Kamasi Washington who’s a great tenor player,” Flea explains. “Rickey started teaching me stuff, like how to look at chords. He gave me things to practice.”
For a band, Flea looked hard at a record he loved – Meshell Ndegeocello’s 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book. From its credits he plucked Tortoise-affiliated guitarist Jeff Parker and saxophonist/producer Josh Johnson. From there he made connections with bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Deantoni Parks, among others. Parker, for one, was flattered to be asked.
“It was a real honour,” the guitarist tells MOJO. “He’s such a musical icon and hero, to myself and many other people. I mean, I had kind of been introduced to the idea because we did this joint interview for GQ magazine where he mentioned that he was going to make a jazz album and he asked me if I would play on it.”
Parker recognised another music obsessive with broad tastes (“I think we’re kindred spirits in that way”) and notes they had almost crossed paths in 2005 when both appeared on Joshua Redman’s Momentum album. “But I met him because our kids went to the same school for a while,” Parker chuckles, “and I would see him at, like, school events.”
Honora explores atmospheres that will resonate with those familiar with jazz records on Chicago’s International Anthem label, a home to Parker, Johnson, Butterss and others.
“It was very nice to have the familiarity of those colleagues,” says Parker, “and that Flea was finding some inspiration in the music that we’d been making for International Anthem. He wanted some of that vibe in his music, the sense of space.”
One of the key tunes on Honora is Morning Cry. In the notes provided to journalists, Flea mentions its debt to free jazz pathfinder Ornette Coleman, but there’s also an echo of ’40s bebop – something of Dizzy Gillespie’s Salt Peanuts in its DNA.
“Yeah, I’d agree,” says Parker. “Flea is really sympathetic to a lot of classic jazz sounds. He came up idolising Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. And, you know, Chet Baker and Lee Morgan.”
And what of Flea’s self-confessed nervousness around this top tier of American jazz cats – did Parker see any of that?
“Oh, he didn’t come across like that at all,” says the guitarist. “He’s more assertive, I think, in his bass playing, but he’s got such a beautiful sound on trumpet. He’s just a very, very musical person. And you know he actually played with Ornette – three or four concerts!”
Parker pauses. There’s something MOJO needs to know.
“He’s a humble guy, but he’s got chops.”
Honora is released on March 27. Flea & The Honora Band – including Jeff Parker – tour the US and Europe from May 7, visiting Koko, London on May 26.
“I was reaching for something beautiful, always...”
Jazz, punk, the Chilis and beyond - get the latest issue of MOJO to read the interview with Flea in full, more info and to order a copy HERE!
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