Personality Clash - The Hours Vs Flea

Clash brought the two friends together across time zones and oceans with the help of only a telephone…

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Ant Genn is one half of The Hours, the band he formed with Martin Slattery after they both left Joe Strummer’s Mescaleros. The Sheffield-born singer has survived working with Robbie Williams and a heroin habit, and is about to release The Hours’ second album, ‘See The Light’.

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Flea is the one-man bass tempest from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He has experienced the highs and lows of a twenty-five year career, and, while the band are on hiatus, is currently enrolled at the University of Southern California, studying music theory, music composition and jazz trumpet.

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Ant: Is that the Fleashkinov?
Flea: It is me, Sir Vladimir Fleashkinov, speaking to you from the majestic snowy mountains, staring down on the bluebirds.
Ant: Which mountains are you in?
Flea: I’m in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Central California. It’s fucking beautiful, man.
Ant: I’m fucking jealous - I’m in fucking Camden! (Laughs)
Flea: (Laughs) Well, they have better Indian food there.
Ant:: That is true, although I had a curry last night - I’m never eating one again, man. My guts - I’ve been on the fucking shitter all day.
Flea: You’re from Sheffield - you can’t eat curry!
Ant: We’re not made for that shit!

Clash: The Hours’ second album is about to come out. In these times, bands don’t often get the chance to be nurtured - yet, for Flea, their second album was about six years before they really made it big internationally. Is there more pressure now for a band to reach success quickly?
Flea: Well, you know, the record business that I started in, it’s finished - it’s over, doesn’t exist anymore. Record companies don’t have the money or the patience or the soul - at least the big ones - to sit with a band and nurture them because they love them. They want a hit or you’re done.
Ant: We’re in a privileged position because we were signed to one of those major labels and that exact thing happened to us. For a moment, we were incredibly hot with our first single, ‘Ali In The Jungle’, then, for one reason or another, it didn’t catch fire like they thought it would. Then, particularly in this country, if you don’t get played all over the radio, and that success doesn’t come quickly, often it’s hard to sustain it - especially under the major label system, because, as you say, if you don’t make a hit record, you’re gone. But for us, I think that we could have carried on with A&M, but we wanted to try and do something different, and that’s why we’re doing this thing with Damien Hirst, who is an old friend of mine. The best thing about it is that he is a creative person and he comes from the position of being an artist, so we are being allowed to nurture and develop as creative people and as artists, which is an incredible privilege.
Flea: I do feel like The Hours are in a great position, and they created that position by being who they are, but in general, for musicians and bands... Like, throughout growing up with friends in punk rock bands and that whole do-it-yourself aesthetic, it’s like it’s always been a feat. I feel like a feat can live outside of the mainstream and create your own means for distributing your music, getting your music heard, communicating your music with people - a feat in one sense because you’re not reliant on this corporate hand-out, but also because it feeds into your creativity, because you’re not making something to be approved by some guy in a suit, you’re making something that you think is beautiful, that you wanna try and make the world a better place with. I just feel like all these bands that have done that from the get-go - you look at all these indie type of bands who make their own labels, put out their own records, do their own thing - they’re not affected by the changing record companies or by whatever the economic climate may be, because they’ve always just done what they wanted to do. That’s the kind of spirit that will always win through. I just think if you rely on separation to validate them as an artist, then, y’know, they have to live by the sword and die by the sword.

Clash: Flea, you’re on a major label. The Chili Peppers are at a stature now where if you wanted to do something different, you probably could. But is there freedom with a major label? Is it more or less restrictive?
Flea: Well, I’m not talking about myself because I’ve always been a corporate kiss-ass.
Ant: You ass-kissing fuck!
Flea: I’m a brown nosed, hand-shaking kiss-ass. But, you know, the Chili Peppers have always been really fortunate to just make our music and be done with it and not have anyone interfering in it - outside of a couple of minute seconds early in our career when we didn’t know any better - but we’ve always just done our thing, handed it in and said, ‘Here it is’. We’re also really, really lucky - we’re signed to a major label, which is Warner Bros., and we had a real gentleman like Mo Ostin, who really believed that what the artist says goes and nurtured artists. That’s why he signed a lot of the greatest acts of all time and will always be an icon in that world, because art came first and music came first. We were very lucky.
Ant: As you said, that kind of age is dead, but like with anything, it’s like, ‘The King is dead. Long live the King’. I mean, really and truly, I didn’t choose to be in the music business - music chose me. It sounds like a hippy kind of thing to say, but it’s just a fact. Music is what gets me hard, so the fact that I’m doing The Hours with Martin [Slattery] and with the band is good, because if I wasn’t making music I’d probably fucking die! The music business and the economic situation is not gonna stop me making music - no fucking chance. And there’s loads of other different kinds of music that I wanna do and that I do do; be it involved in music for films or just working with other people. It’s not just about being in a band and making a record and putting it out there into the world in that tried and tested kind of way. If music is in you, that’s what you do, and you don’t have a choice, I don’t think. I know that’s true of Flea for sure, because you play with any fucker! (Laughs) You’d play with the kids at the end of your street!
Flea: I do play with them! It’s hard to be a hippie and hate hippies at the same time, you know? I really find myself in this quandary. The hippie aesthetic and the way of life has always made me want to puke, but at the same time I’m a complete hippie; I’m just a vegetarian, peace and love, love vibe, hippie meditator - and I hate hippies! I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I may as well just shoot myself in the head!
Ant: (Laughs) You’re a punk rock hippie who doesn’t give a fuck though.
Flea: Yeah. I was arguing with a friend of mine who’s a hippie a little while ago, and I was telling him how much I hate hippies. He goes, “What’s the difference? We’re both anti-authority.” And I said, “Yeah, but the difference is the hippies always sell out to The Man.”
Ant: Even punks are selling out to The Man now. In England, Johnny Rotten advertises butter, and Iggy Pop sells car insurance! And the car insurance that he sells, you can’t even get insured if you’re a fucking musician!
Flea: Is that true, Iggy Pop selling car insurance? He had ‘Search And Destroy’ on a Nike commercial like ten years ago.
Ant: Yeah, he’s fucking mad for it, that one. He’s obviously thinking about what kind of coffin he wants. He’s thinking he wants a really big gravestone, so he’s trying to get as much cash as he can.
Flea: As long as his buttocks are still firm, it’s alright with me. He’s still rocking.

Clash: How do you guys know each other? When did you first meet?
Flea: I don’t remember. At dinner? At dinner in Ireland?
Ant: No, no, we met in Australia, remember? I was with [Joe] Strummer. I jumped on your back, didn’t I?
Flea: Yeah! I remember that because I was really unhappy at that time and I remember walking down this field feeling really miserable, and you came up behind me, grabbed me and hugged me, jumped on my back and slobbered on me - but not in an obnoxious way. Normally if someone did that to me I’d be like, ‘Get the fuck off me!’ But it was really nice. I was like, ‘This guy is a really nice man’.
Ant: Even though I was out of my mind on hard drugs! (Laughs)
Flea: Yeah, you’re great on drugs! You should go back to being a junkie!
Ant: (Laughs) Actually, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m drinking a can of Red Bull as we speak - that’s about as hard as it gets for me these days. I know you’re fully against that shit [drugs]. But that’s how we met, yeah, and then I didn’t see Flea for a few years. Then we were at some friends of ours in Ireland - we were at a dinner and I was there with Damien [Hirst] and some other people - and Flea was there. We just hung out, then I came to see you a few days later - you were playing Hyde Park. Then we realised that we were both supreme humans that had to hang out together a lot more.
Flea: Well, I realised that he was a supreme human, and I realised that I was trying to aspire to his greatness.
Ant: I realised that I had dietary problems that you could help me with, and you could introduce me to papaya.
Flea: And you needed to lay off the frozen mashed potatoes diet. The Sheffield diet. So Ant, when’s your record coming out?
Ant: It’s coming out on April 20th.
Flea: When’s the single coming out that’s the greatest song I’ve ever heard?
Ant: That already came out; that was a limited edition.
Flea: ‘See The Light’ was a limited edition? It’s an unbelievable amazing single. Why is it limited edition?
Ant: Because it’s seven minutes fourteen seconds, and I’m too old to be played on British radio anyway.
Flea: Yeah, but you’re very handsome.
Ant: (Laughs) And playing a song that’s seven minutes fourteen is not gonna give me any bigger chance. But we’ve been playing it live. You’ll be pleased to know that we’ve ditched all the electronic equipment of trying to recreate the sound of the record. I’ve made all that choir sound - I’ve got a loop machine like you have with your bass, and I just track up my voices. It sounds like ‘Music For Airports’.
Flea: You’re putting your voices in a Boomerang [guitar pedal]?
Ant: Yeah, well, like a Boomerang, yeah. I’d track up like, (sings a note), and then like, (sings higher note), and then just make this choir like the sound on the record - which is exactly what I did on the record but in the studio - and then we just loop it up and it just goes round and round and round, and then everyone comes in; it’s a fucking beauty. We’re trying to get rid of all that electronic equipment and just be human beings playing music.
Flea: I’ve been in the music industry as a musician making records for a pretty long time, and the radio stations not playing your song? That doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s a great, great song! I mean, if anything could be a single on the radio, it’s that. Can’t you do an edit or something?
Ant: Yeah, we tried. We got it down to about five minutes fourteen. (Laughs) It seems to work as a whole thing, you know what I mean? And it’s only two chords as well.

Clash: I suppose that’s the benefit of today’s download culture - people are more willing to dig around and seek out new music or something different, whether that’s on blog sites or just on YouTube.
Flea: Yeah. I think YouTube is the greatest thing on the whole Internet. All morning this morning I was looking at the LA Philharmonic - there’s this amazing new conductor in it. This guy Dudamel from Venezuela; Gustavo Dudamel. YouTube him. He is twenty-seven-years-old and he is so good; I mean, the guy is incredible - you’ve got to check him out. I’ve never seen a conductor as absorbed in the music as him - I mean, I never saw Bernstein conduct or anything - but the guy is unbelievable. I’m so excited to see him.
Ant: How did they get him?
Flea: I don’t know, but he looks like he’s in The Mars Volta. You’ve got to see him.
Ant: (Laughs) He sounds rock and roll!
Flea: I was watching one video. He’s conducting this orchestra piece and it has this long, mellow introduction - just lots of low notes, beautiful and slow - and he’s head-banging like a maniac up on the podium, with the baton held in the tip of his fingertips. You just think, what’s gonna happen when it gets to the climax? Is he gonna take off his clothes? The guy is unbelievable.
Ant: He sounds like a punk rock conductor. Music needs some people like that.
Flea: Yeah, they do. Plus, he’s really big on the programme with getting kids from the ghettos good music educations too. The guy rocks.
Ant: That Venezuelan thing is amazing.
Flea: Yeah, he heads up that whole thing, I think; the Venezuelan Music Project.
Ant: That’s where I’ve heard about him.
Flea: Have you ever been to Venezuela?
Ant: It’s crazy there, man. The Chili Peppers played a show there one time, and you’re like driving into the show on the highway and people are walking out into the middle of the highway - it’s insane. They go, ‘Oh, the murder rate on the weekend is really high. People get their pay checks and they go off shooting people.’ We were getting ready to go on stage and they were like, ‘Your show has been pushed back a half hour - they’re shooting at people as they’re coming into the gates.’
Ant: Fuck!
Flea: It was unbelievable. That place was crazy. When we got there, they said, ‘Don’t go out of your hotel room because it’s dangerous.’ Our hotel was in a pretty well-to-do part of town, and our roadie Dave - our biggest, baldest, strongest roadie - walked outside and was mugged by a bunch of little kids within about thirty seconds. Unbelievable.
Ant: I’ve crossed that off my list of places to go.
Flea: But it was a great crowd at the show.
Ant: I bet it was! I bet they were fucking mad for it. You were lucky not to be shot! So, what have you been doing anyway? What happened with that stuff you were doing when you were in London?
Flea: That’s happening - I haven’t talked to those guys in a little while, but it’s happening. I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff, just playing on different people’s records, going to school, studying music, trying to write music all the time - you know, I’m just like music, music, music. Except right now I’m away doing three days’ snowboarding.
Ant: Who are you snowboarding with?
Flea: Remember those girls that you met who are in a band when you came and stayed at my house? Those girls and just some people, you know? It’s so fun sliding down that snowy mountain. I love it so much.
Ant: I’ve never been snowboarding - I’ve got to go. I think it’s a bit late for me to start though.
Flea: No - I started in my thirties.
Ant: Well, I’m definitely in my thirties still...just! (Laughs)
Flea: I just want you to do it because since you’ve beat me so badly it’d give me a chance to be better. You beat me at golf, you beat me at chess...
Ant: You’d kick my ass at snowboarding! So, when are you coming over?
Flea: I don’t know. I know I’m coming sometime soon, but I don’t know when. Within the next couple of months, for sure.

Clash: What’s your favourite thing about London, Flea?
Flea: Well, I used to hate it, but now I love it. I mostly just hated it because I would go there and be on tour, didn’t know anyone and always kinda felt out of sorts. But now I have some really good friends there, so I always have a great time when I’m there.
Ant: Hey, we’re playing the Royal Albert Hall on the 27th (March).
Flea: Really? That’s incredible.
Ant: We’re supporting my friend Serge’s band, Kasabian. They’re playing this thing called the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity thing which they do every year and loads of people play it. They [Kasabian] asked us to play with them, so I’m gonna play the Royal Albert Hall, which is gonna be unbelievable.
Flea: That’s so cool. Are Kasabian named after Linda Kasabian from the Manson Family?
Ant: Yeah. You should check them out - you’d like them.
Flea: Yeah, I’ve heard that before. One time I was at a festival and they were playing but I didn’t get to see them, but I heard that they were really good.
Ant: Serge is very into Ennio Morricone. If you stripped all the drums out and looked at what he’s doing harmonically and melodically, he’s got loads of ‘The Good, The Band And The Ugly’ in there.
Flea: That’s cool. I keep thinking about that Talk Talk record that you played me.
Ant: Yeah, ‘Spirit Of Eden’.
Flea: That thing was amazing, man. I’ve got to get that. That was so beautiful, that record.
Ant: That record is the record that I’ve played most in my life. Going back to that thing we started this conversation with, they are the classic example of major record companies. Talk Talk made a record that was completely inspirational, pure, emotional, visceral, vital - and the record company sued them for it! They took them to court! It was a total pure expression of who they were, and the record company sued them for not making pop hits!
Flea: I read a good quote last night. We were looking at quotes on the Internet of great philosophers, and I can’t remember who said this one, but the guy said: “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.” I think it was Emerson, but I can’t remember. [It was Winston Churchill.]
Ant: Talk Talk got dropped when they made that record. They took a year to make it, they spent a million pounds, but it just sounds unbelievable. It takes me to another universe when I listen to that record. All the sounds on it are so pure, it sounds like you’re sat right next to them. I suppose it would be a bit like the Chili Peppers making a completely fucking ambient record, and the record company going, ‘What the fuck are you guys doing? I thought you guys were the ass-kissers!’ (Laughs)
Flea: Yeah. ‘Would you like a three-and-a-half-minute perfect rock song with a hummable chorus?’
Ant: ‘Where’s the hummable chorus?’ (Laughs)
Flea: Hey, I’ve got to get going.
Ant: Yeah man, get on that slope.
Flea: No, I’m driving for six hours and I’ve gotta get going. Ant, I love you, man. I’ll talk to you soon.
Ant: Okay, speak soon, bye.