Yesterday, some images of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Super Bowl halftime performance made the rounds online that showed the band’s guitars weren’t even plugged in. Now bassist Flea has offered an explanation as to why viewers were essentially subjected to one massive air guitar session. In a statement posted on the band’s website, he wrote,
The Red Hot Chili Peppers stance on any sort of miming has been that we will absolutely not do it …So, when this Super Bowl gig concept came up, there was a lot of confusion amongst us as whether or not we should do it, but we eventually decided, it was a surreal-like, once in a life time crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it … For the actual performance, Josh, Chad, and I were playing along with the pre recorded track so there was no need to plug in our guitars, so we did not. Could we have plugged them in and avoided bumming people out who have expressed disappointment that the instrumental track was pre recorded? Of course easily we could have and this would be a non-issue. We thought it better to not pretend.
But, of course, they were pretending. Otherwise, what was the point of having guitars in the first place? He explained that though vocalist Anthony Kiedis was actually singing, the band recorded a live version of “Give It Away” days before which they used to “mime” during half time. What do we think about “miming”? That would be a waste of time …
