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Flea: Jazz saved life, but rock ’n’ roll got him laid

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Jeff Preiss film also stars Glenn Close, Elle Fanning, John Hawkes

With Glenn Close, Elle Fanning, Flea and John Hawkes on the marquee, Low Down boasts one of the biggest casts of the year. But this feature directing debut from documentary cinematographer Jeff Preiss is the definition of a small, intimate and highly personal picture.

A biopic about late, great and little-known jazz pianist Joe Albany, Low Down is a collection of scenes inspired by the recollections of Albany’s daughter, Amy-Jo Albany, who penned a book of memoirs detailing the surprisingly vibrant—if uncelebrated — Los Angeles jazz scene of the 1970s.

The book, Low Down: Junk, Jazz and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood, was published more than a decade ago. A producer came to the book signing and told her it should be a movie. He optioned her story. Then nothing happened for 10 years, until it ended up in front of Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and L.A. jazz lover Preiss.

“I grew up with jazz,” says Flea, sitting down for a post-premiere chat after the film bowed at the Sundance Film Festival.

“When I was a really little kid it was The Beatles, but when I was about seven my mother married a jazz musician in New York and all I heard was jazz music all the time: Charlie Parker, Nat Adderley, Bird, all the greats. Ever since then, it’s been the benchmark of high art. I have to say jazz was the great thing I was exposed to as a kid that changed my life—in all areas. And that truth keeps revealing itself to me as time goes by.”

He smiles with a hint of mischief. “Even now, every time I feel a need to grow, as a person, be it mentally, spiritually, even in an animal kind of way, it’s all there in the jazz. It’s unbelievable. As a kid, all I wanted to be was a jazz trumpeter when I grew up but when I was in high school, I had a great desire to have sex,” he says.

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