"We work hard," wrote Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary in the liner notes of 2004's Greatest Hits album – a world away from the club-level act that his band had been two decades before. That hard work has led him to the position of Best Bassist in multiple Bass Player polls even though, as he tells us, he's nowhere near being the bassist that he really wants to be.
An Australian who moved to California as a kid and endured a tough childhood which you can read all about in his 2019 autobiography Acid For The Children, Flea – so nicknamed for his habit of leaping about on stage, like you didn't know that already – is probably his demographic's most visible bass player. He won his category in Bass Player's 100 greatest bassists poll by a significant margin, indicating that many of you reading this would agree with that assessment.
