“I told the guys, ‘Aah, it’s just another bassline – I don’t really like it.’ But they said, ‘No, no, it’s really good – we gotta do it!’” Flea wanted to ditch Give It Away before his Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmates stepped in

The Australia-born, Hollywood-raised Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary, so nicknamed for his diminutive stature and onstage leaps, is, many bassists feel, one of the finest funk bass players ever to stalk the earth. 

Bred on a diet of cool jazz and trumpet lessons, with his most treasured childhood memory a meeting with Dizzy Gillespie, Flea took up the bass guitar after the prompting of his high-school classmate Hillel Slovak, who – along with singer Anthony Kiedis and drummer Jack Irons – formed the first line-up of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then a cheeky funk-punk act. 

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