Flea


A guy who has influenced me since I started playing the bass is Flea. I don’t know his real name but he is in my opinion one of the best bass players in the world. Flea is very well known around the world and he is famous because the way he plays the bass and the way he acts are unique.
When Flea was first known, he was in a band called “Flea and Chad Smith”. Chad is an excellent drummer that together with Flea studied in the same music school. That band was only drums and bass, none of them sang but it was great because both are awesome musicians that play their instruments very well. The band made a lot of songs that people still listen and many of them are played by bands that admire them.
The bass isn’t the only instrument Flea plays; he also plays the trumpet, drums and guitar. He once played the trumpet in a concert with “Nirvana”, but I think he should only play the bass.
After some years, two guys joined Flea and Chad Smith to form “Red Hot Chilli Peppers”. The band created many songs and added lyrics to some songs from Flea and Chad Smith, such as “Naked in the rain”. Red Hot Chilli Peppers is a band that is very old and is still playing. Since the band was formed, they have made many albums, performed in different places and gained a great number of fans that follow them everywhere.
The concert that I liked most was when Red Hot Chilli Peppers played in Ireland, next to the Slane Castle. It doesn’t matter how many times I watch that concert, I never get tired of it and I always get astonished because Flea improvises a lot and makes each song unique when playing live.
Another thing that Flea does is make people laugh. In concerts, he always dresses with distinctive clothes, such as a skeleton suit and other colourful suits. On the stage, Flea seems to be crazy because of his strange but unique way of moving while playing, and that shows that he really enjoys what he does. In video clips, it is even funnier because he is always doing stupid things.
As a bass player, I admire Flea and try to use the equipment he uses. Flea used Gallien-Krueger amplifiers all his life, so I bought exactly the same one. During his years as a musician, Flea has used many different basses, from a Fender Jazz Bass to a Musicman. This last brand has launched a model called “Flea signature”, that is Flea’s recent bass with its distinctive stickers all over the body.
I hope one day I can buy that bass, not to be like Flea, but to be able to be as original as he is, and to show everybody that I am a big fan of Flea.

Dennis Skorupsky