Anything worth doing good takes a little chaos.
Flea
If you live a rebellious lifestyle, then you rebel against things because they go against your ideals and the integrity of who you are as a person.
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.
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.
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.
I love my life and my mistakes and my triumphs - all of it.
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 dad and being in the Red Hot Chili Peppers and all the stuff I have to do... The trumpet requires a lot of diligence, and I haven't had the time.
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.
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.
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.
Playing music is a beautiful thing. But listening to music is just as great.
Music gave me something that was not only good for me - it gave me something to work on, something to be proud of and something that I really loved and have a love for - but also music was good for other people because you put joy into the world.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.
I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.
I just lucked into this weird, little obscure cameoesque film career. I just love being a part of film history.
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.
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.
I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz musician.
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.
I wanted to play in a band, and I wanted to do music for a living, and that's what I dedicated my life to.
All my career, all that I've really done has been based on emotion and intuition and gravitating toward what sounds good.
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.
When something comes up, and it's interesting, and I have the time, I'll do it.
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.
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.
The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting.
I studied chord theory and started playing the piano.
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.
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.
After running for a while, things really start to open up in your body. I felt like I'd tapped into parts of my body that I hadn't before. I let things in the universe flow through me that opened me up in a really cool way.
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.
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.
My father was out of my life when I was pretty young - when I was 7 years old, he was gone. I didn't see him for the rest of my childhood.
For me it's the high-water mark of American culture - not so much contemporary jazz, which has become kind of academic, but the jazz from the '20s on through the '70s.
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.'
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.
I went to school and studied music for a year at USC, which unlocked a bunch of doors for me in terms of my relationship to music.
I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.
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.
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.
Ethiopia is such a great country, beautiful place.
Bands develop their own weird ways of doing things.
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.
