Flea responds to the Super Bowl whiners
Music News | Feb 4th, 2014
I usually scoff at the performances at The Super Bowl halftime show, but I actually liked Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Honestly, I didn’t even notice that Flea and the other guys’ instruments weren’t even plugged in. I knew some of the music was probably played over a back track and that was the case. This time The singing was still live, except I think the last song Bruno Mars sang probably wasn’t. But for some reason, everyone was pissed about RHCP not having their instruments plugged in. Well Flea responds to the haters…
Flea commented about the Superbowl “performance” at their site but here’s an excerpt:
A MESSAGE FROM FLEA
Dear everybody,
When we were asked by the NFL and Bruno to play our song Give It Away at the Super Bowl, it was made clear to us that the vocals would be live, but the bass, drums, and guitar would be pre-recorded. I understand the NFL’s stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the t.v. viewers. There was not any room for argument on this, the NFL does not want to risk their show being botched by bad sound, period.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers stance on any sort of miming has been that we will absolutely not do it. The last time we did it (or tried to) was in the late 80’s, we were thrown off of ‘The Top Of the Pops’ television program in the U.K. during rehearsals because we refused to mime properly, I played bass with my shoe, John played guitar atop Anthony’s shoulders, and we basically had a wrestling match onstage, making a mockery of the idea that it was a real live performance.
We mimed on one or two weird MTV shows before that and it always was a drag. We take our music playing seriously, it is a sacred thing for us, and anyone who has ever seen us in concert (like the night before the Super Bowl at the Barclays Center), knows that we play from our heart, we improvise spontaneously, take musical risks, and sweat blood at every show. We have been on the road for 31 years doing it.
[Red Hot Chili Peppers]
