Opening a New Door

Rock star or headmaster? Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ impish bass player, will be both once his Silverlake Conservatory of Music opens its doors this month. “See that kid?” he asks, pointing to a child running past the back door. “Future tuba player.”

Sandwiched between a carniceria and a storage area on Sunset Boulevard, the school is another addition to the ever-gentrifying hipster neighborhood of Silver Lake. The former thrift shop is well on its way to a full transformation. A storefront once crammed with unwanted clothes and dusty knickknacks is now a beautifully rendered practice studio with eight rooms, each named after a tone in the diatonic scale--do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti and do.

“I’ve been teaching all these years ... in boarded-up old bathrooms and closets,” says Keith Barry, a high school friend of Flea’s who will be the conservatory’s dean of education, as well as a music instructor. “That’s your typical private lesson space, and I’m happy to be there, but this facility is going to be gorgeous.”

Inside, the school has the feel of an Art Deco train station, with retro ceiling lamps and two-tone green walls.

Eventually those walls will be decorated with portraits of iconoclastic musicians: John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Igor Stravinsky and Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye.

That gallery is symbolic not only of Flea’s musical taste and influences, but also of the school’s overall take on music instruction.

“I would want to teach a kid Germs songs as much as I would want to teach them Bartok or Haydn,” says Flea, whose real name is Michael Balzary. “When I was a kid I played in symphony orchestras and I played punk rock, and it’s just as valid to me.”

The conservatory will reflect “a diversity of individuals, curriculums, approaches and personalities,” he says. More than 20 teachers will rent space from the school, offering classes on instruments that range from clarinet and lap-steel guitar to electric bass and vocals. Music supplies will be sold in the school’s store.

Specific classes and times have not yet been set, but the conservatory plans to offer 30-minute and hourlong private lessons, costing $20 and $40, respectively. “Master classes,” lasting six to eight weeks, will also be available in Afro-Cuban percussion, string quartets and other disciplines.

Flea, who is financially backing the school, plans to teach a few lessons a week in trumpet and bass.

He’s “not real picky” about who his students are, he says, though he’d prefer beginners. He’ll probably limit his commitment to two-month blocks of lessons because of the Chili Peppers’ tour and recording schedule--the group will soon be in the studio making the follow-up to its 1999 hit “Californication,” which has sold more than 8 million copies.

Other members of the Chili Peppers may also teach some clinics, says Flea, who will certainly rank as the biggest rock star ever to engage in such a face-to-face relationship with the public. Is there any concern that some will sign up for lessons only to bask in the glow of celebrity presence?

“If that’s the initial thing that brings them in, then that’s fine. Whatever it takes to get a kid interested in music,” says Pete Weiss, 42, the school’s chief of operations. “Maybe at that point they won’t need to look to celebrities, they’ll be able to look at themselves and feel good.”

The transformative power of music and the importance of music education are the underlying principles of the Silverlake Conservatory, which aims not only to pick up the slack from public schools that have dropped the ball on arts instruction, but also to expose kids to something other than MTV.

“As our culture becomes more and more fast-food ... and more and more media becomes big brother, [they’re] less likely to seek out their own individual way of being, artistically,” says Flea, 39. “I’m hoping to have this place expose kids to music and hopefully inspire them to do cool stuff.”

When Flea speaks about the conservatory, he is dead serious--a bit of a disconnect from his goofball image. Is this the same guy who once sported a sock on his privates for an album cover? The guy who tattooed his own name on his scalp?

Flea’s earnestness about the school stems from his own upbringing. The stepson of jazz bassist Walter Urban Jr., he grew up in a house teeming with musicians but strapped for cash. A gifted trumpet player, he was able to take private lessons only because he won a scholarship.

“I was lucky, and I got it and I loved it. For me, it was the greatest thing in the world,” says Flea, who today sports a mustache and wears his hair red.

Eventually, he hopes to turn the conservatory into a nonprofit and subsidize half of its students with free lessons and instruments.

But until then, there are other decisions to be made: Where should the bookshelves go? What day will the school open?

“Oct. 1,” Flea insisted.

“Do you see a toilet in that bathroom?” countered Weiss.

Eventually, the two decide it will be Oct. 20. They shake hands, then break into a spontaneous jig.

Flea says he started seriously considering opening up the school a year ago after discussing it with Barry. He wasn’t inspired to action, however, until he gave an informal performance at his L.A. alma mater, Fairfax High.

“They had nothing. All they had was a vocal group. They didn’t have any instruments,” says Flea, who graduated in 1980, two years after Proposition 13 was passed and school arts programs began getting the ax.

At Fairfax, Flea was a member of the jazz band, orchestra, marching band and choir. If those programs hadn’t been there, “for me it would have been completely devastating because that was the only reason I went to school.”

Performing at Fairfax 20 years later, he says he felt “shaken up about it. There was just no music for kids in public schools.” Flea was also inspired by the late L.A. jazz musician Horace Tapscott, who set up a neighborhood musicians’ union that taught residents of the Crenshaw District to play instruments and performed free concerts in Leimert Park.

Sitting in a corner where a small stage will be built, he says he envisions the school as a creative community center of sorts. The stage will be used primarily for recitals--”kids blowing clarinets and teary-eyed parents and stuff,” he says--but also for orchestra, jazz and vocal performances, and poetry readings.

Though the name Silverlake Conservatory of Music may seem a little square for a guy whose band likes to play in the buff, Flea says, “I wanted to have a name that was serious because this is going to be a serious academic school. It’s not a place to fool around.”

The kids are not, he says with a smile, “gonna be coming in cursing and acting like me.”