Flea Is Making a “Trumpet Record” with Help from Nick Cave

Nick Cave has revealed that he has contributed to a “trumpet record” being made by Flea, an act serving as a “reconciliation and an apology” for his past comments about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals,” Cave wrote in the latest Q&A on his Red Hands Files website. “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.”

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He added, “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.”

As a refresher, a quote attributed to Cave has been passed around for the past few decades, in which he purportedly said, “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always ‘The Red Hot Chili Peppers.'”

In the newsletter, Cave copped to making an “offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark” about the band “about twenty-five years ago,” though “there was no malice intended.” Cave then recalled Flea posting a “profoundly generous and open-hearted love letter” making it clear he was still a fan. This prompted Cave to realize the bassist was a “human being of an entirely different calibre.”

Eventually, Cave tested the waters by asking Flea to put together a children’s choir from his Silverlake Conservatory of Music to accompany the Bad Seeds at Coachella 2013. Roughly one decade later, Flea joined Cave and Warren Ellis onstage in Los Angeles to play “We No Who U R.”

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will head out on a North American tour beginning in April, which will once again see Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood filling in for bassist Martyn Casey. Get your tickets here.