Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea recently discussed guitarist Hillel Slovak dying from a drug overdose on the Broken Records podcast. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“Hillel died from a heroin overdose, we were just kids. We were 26, but I was 26 going on 15. For a long time, I really kind of beat myself up, because I didn’t know how to be there for him then. I was angry, because I was like, ‘We’ve got this thing going man! We’ve got this band, this is cool. The funk, we’ve got to find our rhythm!’”
Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘firing’ a surprising name with John Frusciante was recently revealed. Flea added, “He had asked me to start playing bass, we had this real profound connection, and we had this music that we thought was unique, and we were propelling it forward. When he got strung out on heroin, I felt abandoned. I felt left, I left like he was leaving me. I got angry at him, and the way I expressed my concern for his drug problem was to be angry. I got mad at him, I judged, I came from a place of, ‘Get it together! We’ve got to do this.’
It causes me great difficulty to now know, from knowing how and having dealt with many people in my life with substance abuse problems, that maybe if I was able to be there, maybe I could have helped a lot. Maybe I could have saved him, maybe I could help helped him to capture the beautiful light of who he was and shed all of these deadly distractions from his life, but I didn’t know that then.
Even though I know it’s not my fault, a lot of that, I guess that part I was writing was me coming to terms with my inability to help him. Just the feelings of loss, and often for a long time I had a recurring dream where he would come in my dream, and he would just be kind of upset that I wasn’t there for him in that way. So I guess it’s just me working through that, and understanding it.” A Red Hot Chili Peppers member unloaded on booing at a performance last week.
