Flea ‘Didn’t See a Lot’ of Rick Rubin During RHCP Sessions
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea said he’d barely had any direct contact with producer Rick Rubin while they worked on the band's latest album, Unlimited Love.
The bassist’s comments were published soon after Geezer Butler expressed dissatisfaction with Rubin’s famously eccentric approach to producing Black Sabbath’s final album, 13, calling it “ridiculous” and “mad.”
“You know, to be honest, I didn’t see a lot of him,” Flea said to Bass Player of Rubin. “I think he came to one rehearsal, and he listened to the shit and he loved it. He gives us arrangement advice, and he tells us how he thinks the essence of the song can be brought out better.”
Unlimited Love marked the first RHCP release with guitarist John Frusciante back in the band, who left the group in 2009 for a second time. He returned a decade later in 2019.
"John was gone for 10 years, and the first second that we started jamming together again, it was just like talking," Flea said. "We were both yearning for the same thing to happen, and when the thing happens, we’re both completely conscious that it’s happening."
"I feel like we [the band] have a lot of great rhythms and chords and melodies and I just want to flow through it, man," he continued. "It can be a supportive thing, or it can be a hypnotic, repetitive thing which creates that meditative feeling of hypnosis that we all want in music... it’s that human feeling that we want, the connectedness of humanity, that we feel when we hear great music.”