Red Hot Chili Peppers Tour 2014: Bassist Flea Reacts To ‘Unplugged’ Super Bowl Performance With Bruno Mars; Peppers Ready To Hit Festivals Around The World

Red Hot Chili Peppers Tour 2014: The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been in a bit of controversy after the Super Bowl half time performance with Bruno Mars last Sunday.

Both artists made the half time performance memorable after Bruno Mars sang a few of his hits "Treasure" and "Locked Out Of Heaven" then into the Peppers song "Give It Away", where Mars sang with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Peppers didn't escape from a little bit of controversy, however, when the band was seen playing the song 'unplugged', miming the pre-recorded song and just singing the song with live vocals. It didn't bother the band including bassist Flea about the miming of the song since it would waste a lot of time during the half time show if they would be plugged in and perform the song live. They believe in themselves that they have the ability to play the song anytime live perfectly but they just had to give it to the Super Bowl for time constraints and playing the song 'pre-recorded'.

"When we were asked by the NFL and Bruno to play our song 'Give It Away' at the Super Bowl, it was made clear to us that the vocals would be live, but the bass, drums and guitar would be pre-recorded," Flea said in an interview. "I understand the NFL's stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the T.V. viewers. There was not any room for argument on this, the NFL does not want to risk their show being botched by bad sound, period."

"For the actual performance, Josh [Klinghoffer, guitar], Chad [Smith, drums], and I were playing along with the prerecorded track so there was no need to plug in our guitars, so we did not," the bassist said. "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 nonissue. We thought it better to not pretend. It seemed like the realest thing to do in the circumstance. It was like making a music video in front of a gazillion people, except with live vocals, and only one chance to rock it. Our only thought was to bring the spirit of who we are to the people."

The Peppers are set for a festival world tour where they are scheduled to play different festivals all around the world.

Feb. 22-23 - 7107 International Music Festival in Clark, Pampanga, Philippines

Mar. 29 - Lollapalooza in Santiago, Chile

April 1-2 - Lollapalooza in Buenos Aires, Argentina

April 3-5 - Festival Estereo Picnic in Bogota,  Colombia

April 6 - Colliseo de Puerto Rico Jose Miguel Agrelot in San Juan, Puerto Rico

June 14 - Isle Of Wight Festival in Isle Of Wight, England