Me and My Friends #31 - Lonesome Flea
Here’s yet another entry written by Leni, who aside from picking up the slack for me in these newsletters, also runs the RHCP Live Archive. They recently celebrated their 5th anniversary. If you’re reading this, you’ve obviously been to the wonderful site before, but in the off chance you haven’t – I can’t recommend it enough. The best RHCP resource, hands down.
I believe Flea started flirting with the idea of having a solo career around the time the band was writing “One Hot Minute”. For the first time on any of the previous albums, besides contributing music as usual, he took over and wrote both music and lyrics. This is probably the catalyst that planted the idea in his mind that a solo album could be a possibility.
The first public talk about it comes from a February 1995 issue of Bikini Magazine when he was asked if he could see him doing one:
Totally can. I don’t think I’d do one in a normal context. I’ve been fucking around a lot on my four track. And I’ve decided I’m going to keep doing that and come up with enough stuff and out it out. Or maybe get more sophisticated recording equipment and do that, do all kinds of stuff…like pretty songs, funk songs and punk rock stuff. I think that I can do something that’s dynamic and I feel like I, you know, have something to say. My biggest thing lately is that I’ve learned how to play guitar a little bit. I’ve never played guitar and on the new album there’s a few things I wrote on guitar so it’s a totally different thing instead of me writing them on bass. I just kind of strum along and hum and come up with some songs.
Sometime in the early 00’s a 4-song demo leaked to the internet. There was absolutely no info about it – no date, no song titles (these are fan-titles listed below), nothing at all:
- Time for Me to Leave
- Ouch
- You Got Stuck with Me (later re-recorded and released as “Tantric Sex”)
- Fiberoptics
The songs are just Flea singing and playing guitar, with no other instruments, and no overdubs. I believe these are part of those 4-track recordings he mentioned earlier.
Then, sometime in early 1995, Flea entered Ocean Way Studios to track down “I’ve Been Down” with Dave Navarro and Stephen Perkins for “The Basketball Diaries” movie soundtrack. It’s Flea’s first release under his own name.
He kept his solo career quiet until later that year, when it seemed to become a serious endeavor in his life. He played 3 acoustic shows in Los Angeles:
November 26 – Moguls – Benefit show for Darcy West – John Frusciante also played a solo set that evening. December 18 – The Palace (Ringling Sisters’ annual fundraiser) – On some songs, Mike Watt joined on bass and Pete Weiss on drums December 30 – Moguls – Benefit show for D.H. Peligro
Judging by the tracks he performed at the shows, at this point he has at least 9 original songs written.
Sometime in 1996 Flea made a deal with Warner Bros and his solo album plans finally take shape. Sessions began at Sound City Studios in mid-to-late 1996, recorded and engineered by Sylvia Massy (producer of “Love Rollercoaster” and a protégé of Rick Rubin). Guests included Dave Navarro, Stephen Perkins, Dix Denny and Jewel.
This was first mentioned on the January 1997 issue of Billboard Magazine:
And soon after on the Rockinfreakapotamus, issue #9 (the official fan club magazine):
Around this time he also approached Lindy Goetz, RHCP’s manager at the time, and asked for help to manage his solo career and promote the album.
Recently, Sylvia put up a DAT master tape from these sessions for sale in her shop for a whopping $1000, featuring various mixes for two songs: “No Words” and “Congo Song”.
“No Words” was featured two years later on the end credits of the independent movie “Liar’s Poker”, in which Flea had a starring role. However, “Congo Song” remains unreleased. We believe this song to be the fan-titled “Love Is Good” as he mentions writing the song in Congo, Australia just before playing it on the Later with Greg Kinnear show on September 10, 1996.
Flea’s replied to our tweet about it that he was “saddened that Sylvia would do this” and shortly after deleted it. The item was immediately marked as “out of stock” and we believe Flea himself either a) bought it to avoid it from leaking or b) asked her to take it down. Who knows, maybe somebody else managed to buy it in time.
There’s another song from these sessions that found its way out, “Tantric Sex”, which appeared on the 1997 compilation Schooloaf (Everything But The Crust). This was completely different to the version on his 1995 acoustic demo, with full band arrangement and a new bridge and third verse. What else what recorded during these sessions and why they were eventually abandoned is unknown.
During this timeframe, Flea played two more solo shows: November 24 – Skylight Books – weekend festival to celebrate the bookstore’s opening. December 1 – Viper Room – Benefit show for Leonard Peltier. (It’s rumored the Chili Peppers and Porno for Pyros also performed this evening)
Unfortunately, no recordings or setlist info is available. It would be interesting to hear how his solo performance act evolved since his previous solo shows, exactly a year before. It then seems his solo career was put on hold during 1997. It was certainly a difficult year for the Chili Peppers; you can go into detail about it on a previous newsletter entry. He also spent most of the second half of the year rehearsing and touring with Jane’s Addiction.
Flea was interviewed in November that year for the March 1998 issue of Bass Frontiers, and when asked about the album he replied:
Well I keep starting it and something else comes along, I know I have to keep working on it, because I have songs recorded. Not much bass though – mostly guitar and singing. I’m definitely going to make one unless things keep coming up like this.
During this interview from March 5, 1998, Conan mentions his solo album coming soon – but Flea quickly corrects him:
I’m on the eve of recording my solo record, it’s actually not coming out soon. It’s something I’m really excited about. It’s a record of melancholy, kind of sad songs. If this is any hint, I played some of them for my friends the other day and, they’re these real sensitive songs, sad, sensitive with a lot of feelings […] and they started laughing at me. So I don’t know what that means, but I’m really proud of these songs.
It certainly sounds like he planned to start the process all over again, and scrap the 1996 sessions with Sylvia Massy.
Finally, the last update about the album comes from a March 28 posting on the official RHCP website:
Flea wants to finish his solo album before the band does their new one - so probably be a couple of months before we get back into high gear.
At this point, John’s return into the band wasn’t announced and the official word at the time was that the guys were recording (or at least, trying to) their second album with Dave. With John coming back and the band going full steam into writing a new record, I can see why Flea decided to shelve once and for all his solo project. Even so, on the band’s first performance (sans Chad) after John’s return, on June 5, 1998, he performed 3 previously-unheard solo songs.
Apparently, as per this Bassist magazine issue, “Gong Li” was originally a Flea solo song readapted during the “Californication” sessions as a Chili Peppers song and released as a b-side to “Scar Tissue”.
Here’s a video compiling all the known songs (demo, studio and live takes) from his solo career that might have made the album:
Now, we have to go almost a decade forward to late 2007. The band start a well-deserved hiatus after the “Stadium Arcadium” tour, and Flea decided to record some music in his home studio without any intentions of releasing it, with the help of Chris Warren, as he was interested in learning how to be a sound engineer.
In 2012, he released the “Helen Burns” EP, his first official solo release, exclusively available in vinyl through his own store to raise money for The Silverlake Conservatory of Music, his community based nonprofit music school. In 2013, the EP was reissued by ORG Music (Dot Hacker and Pluralone’s label) worldwide in both vinyl and CD.
