Flea posts a cover of Clash’s Washington Bullets with John on guitar
Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers took to YouTube last night to share a cover of the Clash song Washington Bullets, which was recorded sometime in the 1990s and never saw the light of the day before.
The bass player took to the mic himself while playing his signature instrument, John is playing guitar, while Stephen Perkins plays drums. The backing vocals were provided by Cherie Westridge, presumably a friend of the trio. After the amount of the stories told about these three musicians working together over the course of the past twenty years and their work that may or may not still exist, this sure comes as a huge and welcome surprise!
You can listen to Washington Bullets on Flea’s YouTube:
Here is the note posted with the song:
This is a Clash cover I did in the nineties sometime that was never released. I think it was for a Clash tribute record and the makers of the record didn’t think it was good enough. I really like it. I learned about Victor Jara from this song and I love Victor Jara bless his soul. John Frusciante played guitar and Stephen Perkins played drums. Cherie Westridge sang background vox. I played bass and sang. peace to all.
Since this cover was not posted on Flea’s Facebook Page or the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ official website and the YouTube account associated to it has not been listed anywhere, here is Flea’s tweet about the song, just to confirm that it was a genuine upload.
https://twitter.com/flea333/status/755599666775855104
For those who are not familiar with him, Victor Jara was a Chilean singer-songwriter, theatre director and a man of many talents, who was tortured and murdered during the 1973 coup d’etat in his homeland and has remained a symbol of the struggle against Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship ever since. Jara’s murderer was finally deemed guilty this month.
* Many thanks to Federico for the heads-up.
