There’s a famous Nick Cave quote that gets passed around whenever anyone wants to dismiss the music of a certain long-running Los Angeles funk-metal act: “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” I can’t find the exact origin of that quote, but Cave apparently said it sometime around 2004, when he’d already achieved full elder-statesman legend status. That line is obviously fire. In all my years as a professional music critic, I don’t think I’ve ever come up with anything quite that damning and quotable. But Cave has mellowed in recent years, and now he has addressed his stance on the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the latest edition of his Red Hand Files newsletter.

In his new Red Hand Files missive, Cave describes his Chili Peppers ethering as “an offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark” with “no malice intended.” Cave expresses a great deal of admiration for Chili Peppers bassist Flea, “a human being of an entirely different calibre” who made it clear that he was still a Nick Cave fan after that quote made the rounds. In 2022, Flea joined Cave and Warren Ellis onstage in Los Angeles, and Cave writes that Flea also organized the children’s choir who once joined the Bad Seeds onstage at Coachella. Cave goes on to say that he’s just recorded vocals for a “trumpet record” that Flea is apparently making, and he recounts a story about Flea protecting a couple of Cave’s friends from a literal bear attack.

Perhaps we should note that Cave’s paean to Flea includes no kind words for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music. It also makes no attempt to reconcile with Anthony Kiedis, John Frusciante, Chad Smith, or any of the other musicians who have played in different Chili Peppers lineups over the years. This guy just loves Flea. Lots of people, it seems, love Flea. Here’s what Cave has written:

About twenty-five years ago, I made an offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There was no malice intended, it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off. I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant. Perhaps it’s an Australian trait among people of my generation, I don’t know, but that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century. But the most interesting aspect of all this is not what I said about the Chili Peppers, but rather the response from Flea, their bass player. On Facebook, Flea expressed how hurt he felt by my remark, but went on to say, in great detail, that he loved my music regardless. He wrote a profoundly generous and open-hearted love letter to Nick Cave. I remember being genuinely moved by his words and thinking what a classy guy Flea was, and feeling on some subterranean level that I was unable to fully grasp at that point in my life, that Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order.

Over the years, I would run into Flea at music festivals where both our bands were performing and see him backstage when we played in Los Angeles. Although we didn’t become close friends, my encounters with him were always pleasant – there was a presence to Flea that felt genuine and oddly affecting. On the Push The Sky Away tour, we asked Flea if he could assemble a children’s choir, from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music he founded, to accompany the Bad Seeds at the Coachella Festival. When Warren and I were on the Carnage tour, we asked Flea to join us and play the song “We No Who U R.” Watching Warren and Flea perform together with such heart and mutual regard was a glorious sight.

Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals. It was for a “trumpet record” that he is making. It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is 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. I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals. The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology.

My friend, the artist Thomas Houseago, recounted a story involving Flea. A couple of years ago, Flea, his daughter, Thomas, and a guide were hiking through the backcountry of Yosemite. They had been hiking for five days and were walking along a densely forested trail when a bear appeared on the path before them. Everybody froze. The bear was about ten feet away from them. It was a large black bear with a reddish hue. Thomas and the guide gripped their tent poles, perhaps to defend themselves in case the bear attacked. Flea, however, stepped forward, stood before the bear, and spoke to it. He acknowledged they were visitors in the bear’s territory, expressed his love for the bear, and requested permission to continue along the trail. The bear stepped off the path and allowed them to pass.

Ladies and gentlemen, Flea! What a guy!