Super Bowl halftime show mostly pre-recorded

The chorus is growing louder from fans who are dismayed that three of the four members of Red Hot Chili Peppers pre-recorded their parts for Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show and simply mimed to the music.

In the interest of accuracy, it should be pointed out that Bruno Mars was the only one of his band members who performed live at the halftime show and that the rest of his group, like the three Peppers, pre-recorded their parts. Only Mars' singing and drumming were live.

"Yes, you are right," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said via email from New York Tuesday.

In the case of the Peppers, only lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis was live. Drummer Chad Smith, bassist Flea and guitarist Josh Klinghoffer all mimed their parts. To emphasize that they were not playing live, Flea and Klinghoffer both opted not to plug in their respective instruments, offering fans a conspicuous clue.

Flea confirmed as much in a Monday post on his Twitter page, writing: "No trickery. No choice, but no trickery."

For the record, bands miming at Super Bowl halftime shows is nothing new.

As far back as 2003, NFL officials and the producers of the halftime show told U-T San Diego in a series of interviews that live music was the exception at the Super Bowl, both for the halftime show and for the opening performances of the national anthem. Opera star Renee Flemming's anthem performance Sunday may have been the rare exception.

"A lot of the (Super Bowl) bands want to play live, but you just can't do it," veteran Super Bowl music audio supervisor Mike Stahl of Audiotek told us in 2003. Audiotek has handled the sound at every Super Bowl halftime show since the late 1990s.

"The only reason they (Super Bowl bands) won't be live," Stahl elaborated, "is we can't do a line check (of all the amplifiers and monitor speakers). If you were going to do it live, it would take an hour to go through every instrument to make sure all the lines were perfect. So you have a live vocal to a canned track, simply because we don't have enough time -- we have 3 1/2 minutes to get the sound system set up (for the halftime show)."

To further muddy the waters, even the lead vocals during the halftime show are often live-to-track , which means the singer has a pre-recorded vocal track that they can sing over as much, or as little, as they like.

There are "a lot of problems if you are singing live" at the Super Bowl," Jim Steeg, a 24-year Super Bowl production veteran, told U-T San Diego in 2003. "You also have problems with echo in a stadium... And you get a lot of talent that may have played to big crowds before, but nothing like this." (Steeg was the San Diego Chargers' Chief Operating Officer from 2004 to 2010.)

Perhaps because all the focus has been on the Peppers, Mars has yet to comment on the fact that only his halftime show-opening drum solo and subsequent singing were live, while his band energetically mimed their parts.

However Flea elaborated at length about the halftime show in a post on the Peppers' web site:

"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. 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.

"The Red Hot Chili Peppers' stance on any sort of miming has been that we will absolutely not do it. The last time we did it (or tried to) was in the late '80's; we were thrown off of 'The Top Of the Pops' television program in the U.K. during rehearsals because we refused to mime properly. I played bass with my shoe, John played guitar atop Anthony's shoulders, and we basically had a wrestling match onstage, making a mockery of the idea that it was a real live performance.

"We mimed on one or two weird MTV shows before that and it always was a drag. We take our music playing seriously, it is a sacred thing for us, and anyone who has ever seen us in concert (like the night before the Super Bowl at the Barclays Center), knows that we play from our heart, we improvise spontaneously, take musical risks, and sweat blood at every show. We have been on the road for 31 years doing it.

"So, when this Super Bowl gig concept came up, there was a lot of confusion amongst us as whether or not we should do it, but we eventually decided, it was a surreal-like, once in a life time crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it. We had given this a lot of thought before agreeing to do it, and besides many a long conversation amongst ourselves, I spoke with many musician friends for whom I have the utmost respect, and they all said they would do it if asked, that it was a wild trippy thing to do, what the hell. Plus, we the (band) all love football, too, and that played a big part in our decision. We decided that, with Anthony singing live, that we could still bring the spirit and freedom of what we do into the performance, and of course we played every note in the recording specially for the gig. I met and spoke with Bruno, who was a beautiful dude, a real talented musician, and we worked out something that seemed like it would be fun.

"We recorded a track for the day, just banged one out from our hearts that was very like in spirit to the versions we have been playing live the last few years with our beloved Josh on guitar. For the actual performance, Josh, Chad, and I were playing along with the pre-recorded track so there was no need to plug in our guitars, so we did not. 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 non-issue.

"We thought it better to not pretend. It seemed like the real-est 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.

"I am grateful to the NFL for having us. And I am grateful to Bruno, who is a super talented young man for inviting us to be a part of his gig. I would do it all the same way again.

"We, as a band, aspire to grow as musicians and songwriters, and to continue to play our guts out live onstage for anyone who wants to get their brains blown out."

Sincerely,

Flea

How much all of this matters to you depends on a number of factors, such as...

Do you prefer musical performances to be live? Do you expect them to be live at the Super Bowl? Does an entertainment spectacle trump authenticity? Can Peppers be Hot when they're not (that is, when they're only one-quarter live)?

"We were pumped to have them as part of the most-watched TV program in history," NFL spokesman MCarthy said.

And that, as they say, is the bottom line.