If you’re not a big music fan but happened to be on a Utah mountain years ago, you might remember Michael Balzary, the guy who was skiing naked with Woody Harrelson. (Or you might remember him from a separate skiing incident also involving Harrelson, in which he, clothed this time, nearly got into a brawl after some reckless shredding.) If you’re most people, though, he’s better known as Flea, bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the group he co-founded in the early 1980s.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of those bands where everybody is so great and distinct at what they do that many know all the members’ names (assuming they can keep track of whether John Frusciante is in the group at any given moment). Flea’s bass, though, has been particularly defining for the Chili Peppers, from classics like 1991’s “Give It Away” to more recent cuts like 2016’s “Dark Necessities.” He’s incredibly skilled at his instrument, but he doesn’t let his virtuosity take a song over unless the moment calls for it. Over the years, the result of this balance has been regular acclaim; In 2009, for example, Flea was named the second-best bassist ever, second only to The Who’s John Entwistle, in a Rolling Stone Reader’s Poll.
Flea’s phenomenal greatness at one particular skill has put him in a position similar to other GOATs. Michael Jordan was an unbelievable scorer, which can overshadow the fact that he was also one of the NBA’s best defenders, winning the Defensive Player Of The Year trophy in 1988. Steve Jobs helped Apple become one of the most successful and influential technology companies ever, but he was also a leader at Pixar during its formative years. Albert Einstein is the crazy-haired guy from the photo where he stuck his tongue out, but less known is that he also developed the theory of relativity.
As for Flea, he’s one of the most elite bassists to ever slap the strings and one of skiing’s all-time best troublemakers, but he’s also great at… well, a lot of other things, and he doesn’t get enough credit for it. Flea has two big endeavors going on right now that represent his diversity: Arco, the French animated film in which he has a voice role, was recently nominated for an Oscar, and he just released Honora, his debut solo album.
Let’s start with the former arena. Flea doesn’t just dabble in acting; he’s been doing it for essentially as long as he’s been in Red Hot Chili Peppers. His earliest credits came in 1983, with appearances in the movies Nightmares, Suburbia, and The Outsiders. In film and TV, he’s been involved in not just a lot of productions, but some of the most beloved ones ever: Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, The Big Lebowski, and Back To The Future Part II and III, to name a few.
His resumé as a voice actor might be even more impressive. His biggest role there is one that most people born in the ’90s remember, even if they didn’t know Flea was responsible for it: In one of the smartest casting decisions in the history of animation, he was the voice of the feral jungle boy Donnie in the Nickelodeon series The Wild Thornberrys. More recently, he secured some of that Pixar money (thanks, Steve Jobs!) with roles in Inside Out, Inside Out 2, and Toy Story 4. For the past 40 years, Flea has quietly left his fingerprint on multiple significant parts of pop culture. And his acting even extends to some music videos for iconic songs, including James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!),” and Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff.”
That’s as good a transition as any into talking about Flea’s vast musical universe. Before Flea started playing bass as a kid, he was more interested in the trumpet. That’s where last month’s Honora lives; Nick Cave was the first to break the news of the project, when he said in early 2025 that Flea asked him to contribute vocals to his “trumpet record.” While being coy about what song he sang, he described it as “a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to.”
The song ended up being the 1968 Glen Campbell classic “Wichita Lineman,” which was one of a few different covers on Honora. Another is the iconic Funkadelic track “Maggot Brain” from around the same era. Instead of a drawn-out psychedelic guitar jam, Flea condenses the 10-minute track down to a tighter sub-five and lets his warm trumpet-playing set the tone. Flea’s covers span nearly a century of source material: Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep For Me” from 1932 through Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” from 2012. These are all very different songs, but Flea has done a great job of giving them aesthetic unity, even if he doesn’t take identical approaches to all the recordings.
Six of the ten tracks are originals. “Frailed” is probably the most “out there,” a meditative 11 minutes carried by a simple bass line, basic electronic percussion, ambient atmospherics, soothing trumpet, and other accoutrements that make it an easy one to get lost in. Meanwhile, along with Cave, the only other feature on the album comes from Radiohead leader Thom Yorke, who sings on the rhythmic and relatively barebones “Traffic Lights.”
Fans of both artists know well that this isn’t their first time working together. Honora is Flea’s first solo album, but it’s far from his only music outside of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Over a decade ago, Flea and Yorke were in a supergroup, Atoms For Peace, alongside Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and veteran instrumentalists Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco. The group’s debut (and so far only) album, Amok, featured a combination of electronic music and live instrumentation that was well-received and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart.
The album’s US chart rank was actually a bit of a sore spot for the group, or at least for Yorke. It was outranked by Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox, and, in an interview, Yorke and Godrich attributed that to Amazon selling Bruno’s album at the promotional price of $1.99. “Amazon fucks with us every time,” Yorke said. “They undercut us.” Godrich also chimed in, “They’re just trying to get people to their site. It’s modern marketing in the dotcom era.” Shortly before Amok, Flea was in Rocket Juice & The Moon, another high-profile supergroup, alongside Blur and Gorillaz leader Damon Albarn and iconic drummer Tony Allen. They had a self-titled album that came out in 2012.
Like Flea’s surprisingly deep history in film, he’s played with so many music icons. There’s a famous video of him on stage with Nirvana in 1993, playing a trumpet solo on “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” He and former bandmate Dave Navarro also perform on the studio version of Alanis Morissette’s signature hit “You Oughta Know.” He’s recorded dozens of other tracks with the likes of Janet Jackson, Jane’s Addiction, Johnny Cash, Jewel, and Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine (and that’s just listing the artists with “J” names).
There are other Flea endeavors worth mentioning, but the last one for today is the Silverlake Conservatory Of Music. He launched the non-profit in 2001 (alongside Chili Peppers collaborator Keith “Tree” Barry) and it has a stated mission of facilitating “a dynamic music education and to teach beginning and accomplished musicians of all skill levels,” also granting “scholarships to children who qualify, providing free lessons and instruments.” In 2025, a group of students dubbed the Silverlake Conservatory Of Music All-Stars released a series of EPs in tribute to the Pretenders, Neil Young, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Flea’s nickname was earned as a kid, because he was frequently excited and rarely sat still. As his resumé shows, that has remained true well into adulthood. He’s always doing something, and it’s often extraordinary, whether it’s in the realm of music, movies, or getting into mischief with Woody Harrelson.
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