Flea Music Quotations

A big part of my life is music education because it changed my life - but arts, academics and athletics should all be equally treated in the school.

I went to school and studied music for a year at USC, which unlocked a bunch of doors for me in terms of my relationship to music.

I was raised to think that rock was music for ignorant people who didn't think for themselves.

Music gave me something that was not only good for me - it gave me something to work on, something to be proud of and something that I really loved and have a love for - but also music was good for other people because you put joy into the world.

For me, music was the only reason I went to school. I was kind of a street kid, in a lot of trouble committing crimes and stuff. Music gave me something to focus on.

The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting.

Music is like the genius of humankind, universal... People who have never really taken the time to get into music, their lives are a lot smaller. Kids deserve the richness and dimension of it in their lives.

When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they'd teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician.

The Silverlake Conservatory is a nonprofit music school in Los Angeles where we teach music, mostly to kids, but to people of all ages - people who are old, people with beards, all kinds of people.

My whole musical life has been an educational process, and I'm just furthering my education and filling in the blanks. There's stuff that I want to know that I don't know.

Music is made up out of these building blocks. Studying how these blocks go together and what they consist of and the math of how it works - it's all the same stuff; it's just different aesthetics that we're talking about.

Lucky enough, through the public school system, I had been able to have some music education, and that gave me something to focus on, and discipline - like a family to feel part of. There was a healthy family.

I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.

I love entertaining people, I love playing music, and I love rocking like an animal. But at a certain point, you're playing gig after gig after gig, in town after town after town, and you're lying down, staring at another hotel-room ceiling, and it's like, 'I want to be home. I'm a dad. I've got kids.'

When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.

Playing music is a beautiful thing. But listening to music is just as great.

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

As a musician I'm about expressing what's inside, and I think everyone has a song in them that they need to get out, whatever their gig is.

When you make music, you're forming these invisible vibrations in the air into different shapes and consistencies and speeds in order to create music, and understanding how the math of that works just gives you more colors to paint with, and allows you to get to what you want quicker.

I did record a bunch of stuff, but the thing that usually stops me from doing that is that I'm a terrible singer. I made a bunch of instrumental music, and it feels really good, but just as a singer, I'm not good.

About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!

Just so people know, the Silverlake Conservatory of Music is not at all about celebrity or fame or being a star. It's an academic music school.

I wanted to play in a band, and I wanted to do music for a living, and that's what I dedicated my life to.

I studied music at the most remedial level when I was a kid, through the Los Angeles public schools, with a little private instruction.

I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.

I exercise; I have a big career. I'm a parent, and I run a music school.