Flea: Acid For The Children

By the time The Red Hot Chili Peppers hit the stage, we were whooped. We’d already moshed to Ministry, hollered back at Ice Cube, tuned into some hip Brits, head-banged our appreciation to the ascendant Seattle sound, and volunteered our buddy Jere as a live prop for Jim Rose’s Circus Side Show. (No, he didn’t have to lift anything with his nuts.)*

“Under the Bridge” was everywhere that summer. It was the second year of Lollapalooza, Perry Farrel’s fever dream to load all the freaks into a mighty caravan, to take the scene to kids, and sell out the big sheds across the land. Soon multi-act package tours would become the norm, with H.O.R.D.E., Lilith Fair, et al. on rotation. Good times all around, but nothing matched the spirit of those first few Lollapaloozas. “Alternative” skull-cracked the mainstream, and for a minute it felt like we’d won.

One of the most vandalous gigs in Ohio Rock ‘n Roll History, that show will never be forgotten by a certain generation of music fans. An afternoon thunderstorm broke out over the classy Blossom Music Center, “The Summer Home Of the Cleveland Orchestra,” and the deluge loosed the animal spirits. Our 40,000 stomping boots quickly laid waste to the idyllic fields, churning the manicured earth into weapons of mud-slinging mayhem. It was the sodden vs. the sod, and we were happy to do our part.

But we drifted off mid-set after the Chilis did their fire-helmet stunt, taking leave from another party that had peaked. Slogging back through the ruined turf, we passed plenty of kids stuck axel-deep in the muck, their revolution having run its course. “Hey, man, can you give us a push…?”

Though the Peppers showed everyone a good time, we never took their tunes to heart. A little too cute and cut for our inflated sense of dispossession, we dismissed them as the frat-boys of the alt-rock scene, all shirtless testosterone and good-time noise. Jocks who rock.

So it came as a surprise when I caught Flea in an interview with Malcolm Gladwell. Flea’d just put out his autobiography, Acid For The Children. I’d always considered Flea to be hella talented and was sure he had a serious side — no one gets that good without it — but in all honesty…maybe mostly a sock-cocked doofus? Gladwell, of course, is a man of big-brain, and they had a thoughtful and kind conversation. I was intrigued.

Flea can write. Though he admits he’s uneducated in such things (“an eleven-fingered oaf slobbering over a typewriter…,”) he’s always been a big reader, digging everything from the Brontës to Bukowski. In Acid For The Children, he writes from the heart, dropping honest, self-deprecating tales of love and dissipation, of chasing highs and mourning lows. Flea rides the rhythm of the prose, ever-attuned to an inner word-groove, composing copy with a musician’s instinctive ear.

Did you know Flea was Australian? He was born to an Aussie naval officer, who was assigned to a desk job in New York City when Flea was a tyke. His mum fell in love with the big-town 1960s scene, packed up the kids and ran off with her guitar teacher, eventually landing in LA in a last-ditch attempt to launch her new fella’s faltering jazz career.

His home life was horrific, one that he fled most nights, running feral through the low-rent side of Hollywood. Flea’s in-born smarts and wicked luck kept him one step ahead, one needle away from the edge. Stability was not part of the plan, but then again, you don’t get a Flea out of normalcy.

Had they family stayed together, his military dad would have treated him like “the beloved bonsai he’s trimmed and groomed over a lifetime in order to control (its) growth, so he would have tried to do with me.”

In other words, he’s happy with how it all turned out. But it’s easy to be cool with misadventure when you end up a rock star.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have amped it up a little more back then, in the late 90s and the early aughts, during that brief window when my decisions were mine and mine alone, without rippling repercussions crashing down on wives and children, back when my body still knew how to heal, when I had the energy for endless rebounds, and the naive verve to fix stupid with shear willpower.

But I’d been pruned too thoroughly by then. Perhaps my course was set, my parameters locked into place, my wilding less like a jungle beast, more like the staid ivy curling up my dormroom windows — a genteel gardener’s nod to nature’s chaos.

As another Gen-Xer on the downslope, living vicariously through Flea will have to be good enough for me. I’m glad I gave him a second chance. Flea wraps up Acid For the Children just as the RHCP locked in and played their first gigs. He teases that he’s got a few more stories yet to tell, and I’ll be tuning in when they drop.

Maybe that mud-bathed concert on the outskirts of Cleveland will get a nod, and I can tell the kids that we were there, lost in transcendent mayhem, wrestling in the muck of life, together.

*Main-stage lineup at Lollapalooza 1992:

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Ministry
Ice Cube
Soundgarden
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Pearl Jam
Lush