‘Stone Cold Bush’ is from Mother’s Milk, the fourth album from Red Hot Chili Peppers. Released in 1989, the album gave the band three hit singles: ‘Higher Ground’, ‘Knock Me Down’ and ‘Taste the Pain’. It was this track however that had the bass players hooked: Flea is on top form throughout, combining tight fingerstyle grooves with aggressive slap lines, and of course turning in a jaw-dropping bass solo. In this video course I’ll be showing you how to play this song, section by section.
Be sure to hit the Download Resources button above to download the PDF transcription for this piece (available to subscribers only). Please note that a backing track is NOT included with this course.
This course contains the following videos, each of which can be selected from the video player above:
In this video I’ll be playing through the song using my Mayones Viking 4-string bass, strung with Rotosound strings.
In this video I’ll giving an overview of song and the techniques required to perform it. I’ll also be giving some advice on how to find the right tone for this track.
This lesson covers the song’s intro section which consists of two syncopated lines that are reused later in the piece.
In this lesson I’ll be teaching you the bassline from the verse sections. The bassline here is heavy on the sixteenth notes and can be quite difficult to play at this tempo.
This video covers the chorus sections for the song. Flea switches to the slap technique here. The line itself is quite simple, although a lot of aggression is needed!
This lesson covers the bass solo, which is heard after the second chorus. The solo is only four bars long, but Flea packs a lot of notes into those bars!
In this lesson I’ll be showing you the slap bass groove that Flea settles into after the bass solo. This line is also used for the guitar solo that follows.
This video covers the song’s outro. This four-bar section is almost the same as the bass solo, but with a couple of small variations.