Flea just might be the best-known rock bassist of the past 30 years — but long before he was known for his funky slapping with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he was all about jazz.
"I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old," he told Yahoo! in 2014. "All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up. That was my goal in life." His stepfather, Walter, was a jazz bassist who frequently hosted jam sessions at their home, and Flea fell in love with jazz long before developing a taste for rock.
Director Damien Chazelle's Babylon (out December 23 through Paramount Pictures), which features Flea in a small but significant role, returns the bassist to his Jazz Age origins. He doesn't actually play a musician — he plays Bob Levine, a studio executive who displays a fiery temper and carries strong influence in Hollywood. But even without an instrument in his hands, Flea's role strongly connects to the early jazz of the Roaring '20s: the first time he appears is in a wild party scene, in which a raucous brass band sets a wild atmosphere for a night of hedonism. It reflects the role jazz occupied in America at the time; while today it's generally considered polite and sophisticated, it used to be cutting-edge music associated with drugs, rebellion and counterculture.
Although Flea has historically downplayed jazz throughout his long career with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it has remained an undercurrent of his work. Best known for funk-influenced slapping and punk rock aggression, as well as tasteful melodic work on RHCP's radio ballads, he's been subtly including moments of jazz trumpet throughout the band's oeuvre. He can be heard playing the mournful, sustained horn notes in the background of 1989's delicate instrumental "Pretty Little Ditty" — and consequently his trumpet appears prominently in Crazy Town's horny rap hit "Butterfly," which samples that RHCP song. He played the staccato horn blasts on Jane's Addiction's "Idiots Rule," joined Nirvana on stage to add trumpet to a very strange live version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and can be heard playing trumpet on numerous RHCP songs over the years ("Tear," "Hump de Bump" and "Let 'Em Cry" to name just a few). A solo titled "Flea's Trumpet Treated by John" appeared on 2004's Live in Hyde Park.
Flea's jazz mastery reached its full expression on his 2012 EP Helen Burns — his only official solo release, outside of a couple of singles. Named after a character from the gothic novel Jayne Eyre, its six tracks are almost entirely instrumental, featuring avant-jazz soundscapes dominated by sweetly meandering trumpet, whooshing electronics and occasional explosions of rhythm. It's a wild, futuristic vision of jazz: distorted trumpets that resemble guitars are found on eight-minute opener "333" and Patti Smith sings on the piano ballad "Helen Burns," while the slinky electric piano grooves and Mellotron flutes of "Pedestal of Infamy" find the common ground between jazz, hip-hop and electronica.
With that in mind, it's only right that Flea's latest acting role brings him right into the heart of the jazz era. Babylon is a sprawling epic that covers several years from the late '20s into the '30s, tracing Hollywood's transition from the silent era into the talkies. This includes the landmark 1927 film The Jazz Singer, Jovan Adepo playing a jazz bandleader named Sidney Palmer, and an early version of the classic musical number "Singin' in the Rain." And, of course, squalling jazz vamps soundtrack all the wildest party scenes — particularly in the silent era, a time that is ironically depicted as being chaotic and noisy, before actors needed to memorize lines and when "quiet on set" was an unfamiliar concept.
Babylon arrives in cinemas December 23, marking the latest of Chazelle's jazz-themed blockbusters (including 2016's La La Land, a musical comedy about a struggling jazz pianist, and 2014's Whiplash, about a jazz drummer and his abusive music teacher). For music fans, the inclusion of Flea is the cherry on top for a film that captures a thrilling moment in American entertainment history.
"I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old," he told Yahoo! in 2014. "All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up. That was my goal in life." His stepfather, Walter, was a jazz bassist who frequently hosted jam sessions at their home, and Flea fell in love with jazz long before developing a taste for rock.
Director Damien Chazelle's Babylon (out December 23 through Paramount Pictures), which features Flea in a small but significant role, returns the bassist to his Jazz Age origins. He doesn't actually play a musician — he plays Bob Levine, a studio executive who displays a fiery temper and carries strong influence in Hollywood. But even without an instrument in his hands, Flea's role strongly connects to the early jazz of the Roaring '20s: the first time he appears is in a wild party scene, in which a raucous brass band sets a wild atmosphere for a night of hedonism. It reflects the role jazz occupied in America at the time; while today it's generally considered polite and sophisticated, it used to be cutting-edge music associated with drugs, rebellion and counterculture.
Although Flea has historically downplayed jazz throughout his long career with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it has remained an undercurrent of his work. Best known for funk-influenced slapping and punk rock aggression, as well as tasteful melodic work on RHCP's radio ballads, he's been subtly including moments of jazz trumpet throughout the band's oeuvre. He can be heard playing the mournful, sustained horn notes in the background of 1989's delicate instrumental "Pretty Little Ditty" — and consequently his trumpet appears prominently in Crazy Town's horny rap hit "Butterfly," which samples that RHCP song. He played the staccato horn blasts on Jane's Addiction's "Idiots Rule," joined Nirvana on stage to add trumpet to a very strange live version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and can be heard playing trumpet on numerous RHCP songs over the years ("Tear," "Hump de Bump" and "Let 'Em Cry" to name just a few). A solo titled "Flea's Trumpet Treated by John" appeared on 2004's Live in Hyde Park.
Flea's jazz mastery reached its full expression on his 2012 EP Helen Burns — his only official solo release, outside of a couple of singles. Named after a character from the gothic novel Jayne Eyre, its six tracks are almost entirely instrumental, featuring avant-jazz soundscapes dominated by sweetly meandering trumpet, whooshing electronics and occasional explosions of rhythm. It's a wild, futuristic vision of jazz: distorted trumpets that resemble guitars are found on eight-minute opener "333" and Patti Smith sings on the piano ballad "Helen Burns," while the slinky electric piano grooves and Mellotron flutes of "Pedestal of Infamy" find the common ground between jazz, hip-hop and electronica.
With that in mind, it's only right that Flea's latest acting role brings him right into the heart of the jazz era. Babylon is a sprawling epic that covers several years from the late '20s into the '30s, tracing Hollywood's transition from the silent era into the talkies. This includes the landmark 1927 film The Jazz Singer, Jovan Adepo playing a jazz bandleader named Sidney Palmer, and an early version of the classic musical number "Singin' in the Rain." And, of course, squalling jazz vamps soundtrack all the wildest party scenes — particularly in the silent era, a time that is ironically depicted as being chaotic and noisy, before actors needed to memorize lines and when "quiet on set" was an unfamiliar concept.
Babylon arrives in cinemas December 23, marking the latest of Chazelle's jazz-themed blockbusters (including 2016's La La Land, a musical comedy about a struggling jazz pianist, and 2014's Whiplash, about a jazz drummer and his abusive music teacher). For music fans, the inclusion of Flea is the cherry on top for a film that captures a thrilling moment in American entertainment history.
