7 Things We Learned During Red Hot Chili Peppers' Carpool Karaoke

Red Hot Chili Peppers with James Corden off of the telly — Corden with the Chili Peppers: tops off

Every week on The Late Late Show with James Corden, the Hillingdon-born presenter drives stars around for a chat, purely as a way of showing the American public he can really sing.

Last night was the turn of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – and what followed was a surprisingly entertaining 15 minutes.

Here’s seven things we learned along the way.

Flea knows all the words to Food, Glorious Food from the musical Oliver!.

The first song Flea and Anthony Kiedis wrote together was called Heemi Lheemey. The 15-year-olds were camping in the woods – we say camping, they slept on a rock – and came up with the tongue twister after smoking lots of marijuana. Teens in Britain would just smash up a bus stop really slowly.

Kiedis is a surprisingly agile middle-aged man. Corden offers to wrestle him and is pinned down on a nearby lawn in less than a minute.

The most rock ’n’ roll thing Chad Smith has ever seen was “two guys having a fight with their prosthetic legs” at a festival in Holland. One didn’t even have a shoe on, he adds.

Guitarist Josh Klinghoffer wears three layers of clothes, even in the stifling heat.

Kiedis claims that youthful-looking megastar Cher used to babysit him on occasion when he was 12-years-old. He describes the time he once saw her getting changed through a crack in the door, like a tiny Peeping Tom.

“You’re fans of the old ‘tops off’,” says Corden mid-drive. The band – well, Kiedis and Flea – see this as a cue to whip their T-shirt and little vest off. As they do, Corden joins them in their celebration of half-nudity. So, if you want to see his chap paps flying around in a luxury car to The Zephyr Song, watch the video below…

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album The Getaway will be released on June 17 through Warners.

Why Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers threw a bottle at my head

Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Getaway album review

Born in 1976 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Simon Young has been a music journalist for over twenty-six years. His fanzine, Hit A Guy With Glasses, enjoyed a one-issue run before he secured a job at Kerrang! in 1999. His writing has also appeared in Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog, and Planet Rock. His first book, So Much For The 30 Year Plan: Therapy? — The Authorised Biography is available via Jawbone Press.