Tuesday, February 11, 2014
A Message From Flea
RHCP News: When we were asked by the NFL and Bruno to play our song Give It Away at the Super Bowl, it was made clear to us that the vocals would be live, but the bass, drums, and guitar would be pre-recorded. I understand the NFL's stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the t.v. viewers. There was not any room for argument on this, the NFL does not want to risk their show being botched by bad sound, period.
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5 comments:
As a music fan, I'm mad that the Superbowl forced the Red Hot Chili Peppers to record previously and not play live. As a theater technician though, it makes perfect sense. In my opinion, their show was fine. I appreciate them actually playing, even if they weren't plugged in. It's not perfect, but at least they were trying. One thing that gets me though is that the Superbowl doesn't pay their performers (their reasoning is that it's enough exposure). Even if it's the gosh darn Superbowl, respect your musicians and their professions and pay them. You've got the money.
I have so much respect for what Flea has to say, he could have blamed all this on the NFL and called it a day but instead defended the bands decision and the NFL. It is sad that viewers did not get to see a true live performance but the reality for one song it would have been incredibly illogical to set up all their instruments. The band did the right thing and should not be looked down upon for what they did, they were doing what they had to do for the opportunity. Playing at the Superbowl halftime show is a big deal and at the end of the day they got a lot of exposure and with the incident handled it very well and may have gained more of following because of it.
It was really cool of Flea to post that, and to explain to his fans why they didn't actually play live. His reasoning is totally understandable, and in that sort of setting playing live would make the event even more complicated. It was great that Flea, in addition to defending the band and its decision to fake it, defended the Super Bowl's decision to not have the show be live. He could of just blamed them for not allowing the band to perform live, but he chose to tell people why that decision made sense. Also ,I think it's really cool that the band performed with their instruments unplugged. They weren't trying to hide what they were doing, and that shows a great amount of respect for their fans.
As I understand it, musical artists often prerecord tracks for events like this. Even if they decide not to use it, the track is there as a contingency plan. There are so many variables to take into account and so many things that could go wrong that sometimes it just makes sense to go with the prerecorded track, especially when the set up time is so short and they aren't the featured artist. Hell, even Beyonce lip-synced the Inauguration. What is nice to see is Flea defending the band's decision. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, why pass it up. They clearly had a good time performing and why plug instruments in and pretend. They owned it and either way it was a great show.
This isn't the first time I'm reading this article or the first time I'm hearing about the subject of the article. I noticed that the guitars weren't plugged in during the show and immediately after watching the superbowl I posted a photo of Mr. Flea without his bass plugged in and was a tad disappointed. But that was just in the moment I was quite angry, immediately after I looked around the internet and found out that RHCP played a gig the night before and started to better understand why they might do this. Not to long after this someone posted this article to my timeline and I regained all possible lost respect for Flea and the band.
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