When Hillel died, it was during one of the happiest times of my life. I was married and completely in love and had a baby on the way.
— Flea
I'm always put in the unfortunate position of asking people to donate money and people I know in bands to play benefit concerts and all this stuff.
I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.
Playing music is a beautiful thing. But listening to music is just as great.
I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.
When I got with Nina Greenberg, I had been running for a few months already without a trainer. But then she gave me a program and guided me through my runs, showing me how to take care of myself and letting me know I should ice my legs and stretch - stuff I hadn't been doing.
I love entertaining people, I love playing music, and I love rocking like an animal. But at a certain point, you're playing gig after gig after gig, in town after town after town, and you're lying down, staring at another hotel-room ceiling, and it's like, 'I want to be home. I'm a dad. I've got kids.'
Just so people know, the Silverlake Conservatory of Music is not at all about celebrity or fame or being a star. It's an academic music school.
Anything worth doing good takes a little chaos.
I did record a bunch of stuff, but the thing that usually stops me from doing that is that I'm a terrible singer. I made a bunch of instrumental music, and it feels really good, but just as a singer, I'm not good.
When I'm at home, I just run all the time, you know; I get up, and I go pretty much four days a week outdoors. I go in the canyons around L.A., Malibu - just around L.A. there's a lot of different spots.
Music is made up out of these building blocks. Studying how these blocks go together and what they consist of and the math of how it works - it's all the same stuff; it's just different aesthetics that we're talking about.
I've always kind of been an in-the-moment kind of person. I don't think that far in advance or have any idea what's around the next corner.
I feel creatively vibrant. I have some great friends; I feel like I'm capable of giving a lot to the world. And ultimately, that's what I really care about, is just giving.
A big part of my life is music education because it changed my life - but arts, academics and athletics should all be equally treated in the school.
I exercise; I have a big career. I'm a parent, and I run a music school.
I love my life and my mistakes and my triumphs - all of it.
I grew up being terrified of my parents, particularly my father figures.
When I first heard about Twittering, I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever heard of in my life. It's like the devil: the idea that your personal life is there for everybody.
I'm a performer and have managed to get my performing into the mainstream consciousness of the world, I guess.
When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.
Outside of a couple of times I ran without eating right or being too tired, I always feel great after I run.
I have a trainer, a really nice woman named Nina Greenberg, and she got me a training plan, and we go running in the canyons in Malibu. It's just beautiful up there, absolutely gorgeous. You see bobcats up there sometimes.
Being a rock star isn't all it's cracked up to be, let me tell you.
About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!
Lucky enough, through the public school system, I had been able to have some music education, and that gave me something to focus on, and discipline - like a family to feel part of. There was a healthy family.
I worked full time jobs, basically doing manual labor until I could make enough money supporting myself as a musician.
It's so easy to fall into a comfortable groove in life where you do the things that you like, and because of that, often times, we don't grow or change because we're not pushing ourselves.
All my career, all that I've really done has been based on emotion and intuition and gravitating toward what sounds good.
Turning 50 is a little bit of a 'taking stock' moment. I feel probably a little dumber. I don't think I'm as sharp as I was when I was younger, but I'm definitely wiser and less likely to make gigantic blunders of an intellectual, spiritual, emotional or physical type.
The most important thing to me with any politician is that they don't start wars, but education is a big part of that, too, because educated people are less likely to do stupid, violent things.
I just lucked into this weird, little obscure cameoesque film career. I just love being a part of film history.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
I love literature deeply. I view books as sacred things, and in writing my story, I'm going to do my best to honor the form that has played such a huge part in shaping who I am.
Steven Adler and I played football in the street when we were 12. I remember rehearsing in my bedroom with my first band, and some kid climbed over the fence of my backyard and peeked his head in the window to see who was rocking. It was Slash.
I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.
Music is like the genius of humankind, universal... People who have never really taken the time to get into music, their lives are a lot smaller. Kids deserve the richness and dimension of it in their lives.
My whole musical life has been an educational process, and I'm just furthering my education and filling in the blanks. There's stuff that I want to know that I don't know.
It's fun to just get out there and have a nice conversation when I'm running. To be honest, when I do longer runs, the trail that I like to run up in Malibu has mountain lions, so I always feel I want to run with someone else.
Kids deserve arts, and it's just as important as science, math, history, English or athletics.
When I was a kid, and it was time to go to college, I thought, 'College is for people who don't have the street smarts to make it on their own - get in a band, get in a van, and get rockin'.
When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they'd teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician.
Bands develop their own weird ways of doing things.
Water is my main state. If I time before I run - like, to digest, like, a good hour and a half or so to digest, I'll eat oatmeal. but I'm a vegetarian for the most part, so in general, I just eat grains and vegetables and fruit.
I feel like if we're not running, we're basically disrespecting our bodies. When you're running, you're really using your body for what it's meant to do.
I studied music at the most remedial level when I was a kid, through the Los Angeles public schools, with a little private instruction.
The Silverlake Conservatory is a nonprofit music school in Los Angeles where we teach music, mostly to kids, but to people of all ages - people who are old, people with beards, all kinds of people.
The last thing that should happen is funding cut for education; it should be increased. We need to put more money towards education, and anything else is abusive.
I always thought I was a pretty terrible actor.
I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.
