“Whenever I am close to a stereo that plays garbage music, I discover that they are the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” The phrase is attributed to Nick Cave, who would have dictated him about twenty and passed by. Today it would not repeat it. Responding to the question of a reader of his Red Hand Files, he explained the context of that naive judgment and revealed that he collaborated with the bassist (and trumpeter) Flea by affecting “the song with the best text of all time”.
“About 25 years ago, an out of place and naive phrase on the Red Hot Chili Peppers said,” Cave writes. “It was not said with malice, it was the type of hateful thing that I said at the time to paste people. I was a plane, a rippallele, one who felt good when it irritated people. Perhaps it is a character spread widespread among the Australians of my generation, I don't know, but for a quarter of a century that phrase tormented me ».
The most interesting aspect of the matter, Cave writes, is not the phrase he said, but Flea's answer on Facebook. «He explained how badly my judgment hurt him, yet he went on explaining in detail how much my music loved. It was an incredibly generous and sincere love letter. His words moved me and made me understand that Flea was a classy man and, for what I could understand in that moment of my life, a human being of a higher level ».
Over the years the two have met several times and have also collaborated. “Last week,” writes Cave «Flea sent me a song asking me if I was going to add the vocal parts. It was for a disc on the trumpet that is preparing. It is not to me what song it is, I just say that it is a piece that I particularly care about and that it probably has the greatest text ever written, a song that I have such an esteem that I would never have dared to sing it if Flea had not asked me. On Wednesday I entered the studio and recorded my vocal part. The result was a beautiful conversation between the trumpet of Flea and my voice, full of desire and love, the song transcends the parts from which it is composed to become a cosmic dance in slow evolution, taking the form of a reconciliation and a request for excuses “.
Finally, Cave tells an anecdote that the sculptor Thomas Houseago reported to him about the bass player. “A couple of years ago, Flea, his daughter, Thomas and a guide were making an excursion to Yosemite. After walking for five days they were traveling on a wooded path when a bear appeared on the path. They were chicked, a large black bear with reddish shades was about three meters from them. Thomas and the guide took the poles of the curtain in hand if they had to defend themselves from an attack. Flea, however, placed himself in front of the bear and spoke to him: he admitted that they were visitors who entered his territory, expressed his love for the bear and asked for permission to continue along the path. The bear has moved and allowed them to pass ».
