As the band gear up to release their new studio album I’m With You, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ inimitable bassist Flea has revealed in a radio interview how the band actually wrote 70 songs for the new album before whittling them down to the final cut. Rather than simply choosing the ‘best ones’, he says that they actually chose the ones that he felt best ‘filled their own space’.

Never one to keep it simple, the frequently shirtless bass slapper told BBC Radio “What was important to us when we put the record together was to make sure that each song filled its own space and was not like another song on the record. We wrote 70 songs, so it’s not even necessarily all the best ones that we put on, but just the ones that occupy their own space.”

While initial reactions to the band’s new single ‘The Adventures of Raindance Maggie’ have generally been quite positive, he’s also warned fans not to take that track as being indicative of the whole album. He says  “‘The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie’ – I like the song. It’s a cool, simple, funky, little jam but it’s completely different, there’s nothing else on the record that sounds anything like it. It’s a tricky one because all of the songs on the record are so different.”

I’m With You is out on August 30th. Have a listen to the single ‘The Adventures of Raindance Maggie’.

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