Although bassist, singer, and keyboardist Geddy Lee is a huge fan of Progressive Rock music and Rush is known as a Progressive Hard Rock band, he has always been interested in many other types of music. Whenever there is an interesting bass guitarist, he listens to their bands' music. Over the decades, he has talked about many bands with remarkable bass players, sharing his opinions about them. One of those bands was the American group Red Hot Chili Peppers, which features Flea as their bassist. What is Geddy Lee's opinion on the Red Hot Chili Peppers Geddy Lee is a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, especially because of the band’s acclaimed bassist, Flea. The Rush frontman has always admired his bass playing and even tried to incorporate some of his style into his own."Flea blows my mind. I mean, when you talk about a generation of bass players that started slapping. There’s so many. I guess it grew a little bit out of jazz, a little bit out of R&B. I remember for a time, that’s all you heard." "Every bass player was slapping and popping, slapping and popping. And then there was Flea, who could slap, pop, and play everything in between, to such incredible, dextrous degree, that I just felt he used that in such a brilliant way. He brought that sensibility of … I guess, what you would call in that period, sort of a contemporary R&B style of play into a rock genre. (He) always kept it rock. Always does rock." "And I love the fact that he has all those tools in his toolbox. More tools than most other bass players have, in my view. And he always experimented with different instruments, and got a bit of a different tone. And again, here’s a guy that did a lot of pop music, and yet that pop music had very aggressive, very creative, very melodic bass lines. So I just love that about his playing, and I’ve come to appreciate it over the years, more and more. He’s very identifiable, and he has a singular style of playing," Geddy Lee told Rolling Stone in 2020 listing Flea as one of his favorite bass players. Geddy Lee compared the bass in "Give It Away" with the one from The Beatles' "Come Together" In Rock and Roll music, the guitar has most often been the instrument that captures the listeners’ attention. However, there are a few tracks, like The Beatles’ “Come Together,” where the bass takes the spotlight and becomes the driving force of the song. For Geddy Lee, the Red Hot Chili Peppers classic “Give It Away,” from their 1991 album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", relates to that, as the bass is also the central element of the track. “(Flea) He is a monster player. Flea is one of the great, you know, contemporary bass players. His influences are so Funk driven, yet, he can do anything. On ‘Give It Away’ he is just like the bass in ‘Come Together’. Like the bass in so many great pop songs. He is providing an alternate rhythm for the drums and an alternate melody and he is working at the bottom of the neck and the top of the neck. He is going back and forth between. Which I always love as a bass player, that’s a perfect example of that,” Geddy Lee told Amazon Music in 2019 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). "Give It Away" was one of the songs he told the streaming service that inspired his playing the most. He tried to learn how to play a bit like Flea Although the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rush did a very different kind of music, Geddy was inspired by Flea. He even tried to incorporate some of that inspiration in the 1990s. However, that didn't work so well because he really couldn't play like the musician as he recalled in his book "My Effin' Life" (2023). "At the time, incidentally, I wanted to bring a more percussive, rhythmic approach to the way I hit the strings, and developed a kind of flamenco approach to playing. It was partly inspired by watching Les Claypool of Primus on stage and listening to players like Flea, who switched seamlessly from a slap style to traditional yet still adventuresome Rock." "What accidentally made my style unique was that I was pretty much a failed slap player. When I attempted my strings sounded too clicky and lost 'oomph'. So I developed my own finger technique to produce an aggressive rhythmic approach that retained my signature twang. What at first sounded weak and weird in the context of Rush provided a different but still powerful backbone," Geddy Lee said. Geddy Lee is a fan of the RHCP drummer Chad Smith https://youtu.be/Y7PtYnltIKA?si=i3f5F5lEDtj9MTiI&t=274 Besides Flea, Geddy Lee already praised Chad Smith, RHCP's drummer, who is also a fan of Rush and the late drummer Neil Peart. Curiously, when mentioning Smith as a drummer he liked, in an interview with The Guardian in 2023 answering questions from fans. Geddy also mentioned Anika Nilles, who was announced in 2025 as the touring drummer for Rush's return to the road. Smith performed "Working Man" with Alex Lifeson and Geddy in 2022 at the Taylor Hawkins tribute show in Los Angeles. "There are so many. We’re living in a time rich with great drummers. I love (Tool’s drummer) Danny Carey’s playing. I love (Red Hot Chili Peppers’) Chad Smith. Very different to Neil, but the man has so much power. I heard this drummer the other day, I think her name is Anika (Nilles). She played on the last Jeff Beck tour and I thought she was terrific," he said. After Smith played with them in 2022, he talked about the band in an interview with Power Hour. "For me to be able to play with them... I mean, when I was 15, the record for me, was "2112". I would put the f*cking 8-track in, smoke some weed in the parking lot before going to school like every day and I was like in! (Then) I changed my f*cking drum set, set up the cowbells, the whole thing. I have my Neil phase, which I think any drummer had," he said. When Red Hot Chili Peppers was formed in 1982, Rush already was a known band for almost a decade. But the band would really become commercially successful in the 1990s. Especially because of albums like "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" (1991) and "Californication" (1999). The post Geddy Lee’s opinion on the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.