TORONTO — A member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers admitted Tuesday the band wasn’t playing “Give It Away” live during Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show.
“Josh, Chad, and I were playing along with the pre recorded track so there was no need to plug in our guitars,” explained bassist Flea in a message posted online. “So we did not.”
The musician said the NFL insisted the music be on tape so there was no risk of poor sound quality. He said lead singer Anthony Kiedis was singing live.
“The Red Hot Chili Peppers stance on any sort of miming has been that we will absolutely not do it,” Flea wrote. “We take our music playing seriously, it is a sacred thing for us, and anyone who has ever seen us in concert knows that we play from our heart, we improvise spontaneously, take musical risks, and sweat blood at every show. We have been on the road for 31 years doing it.”
Flea said the opportunity to perform in front of a global audience of more than 115 million people was enough for the band to make an exception.
“We had given this a lot of thought before agreeing to do it, and besides many a long conversation amongst ourselves, I spoke with many musician friends for whom I have the utmost respect, and they all said they would do it if asked,” he recalled.
“We decided that, with Anthony singing live, that we could still bring the spirit and freedom of what we do into the performance, and of course we played every note in the recording specially for the gig.”
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