Rock star offers support to Scots brothers rowing across Pacific
Michael Balzary - better known by his stage name, Flea - is the bassist for Red Hot Chili Peppers, and is the latest celebrity to back Scottish brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean.
On Sunday, the brothers marked 100 days of their non-stop, unsupported row from Peru to Australia in a bid to raise money for clean water projects in Madagascar.
The entire trip will be around 9,000 miles, and the Macleans are expected to complete their challenge within the next 20 to 30 days.
Celebrities including actor Mark Wahlberg, rugby star Blair Kinghorn, TV presenter Lorraine Kelly and actor and comedian Greg Hemphill have also backed the brothers.
Ahead of the 100-day mark, Flea spoke with the brothers via a podcast, where they bonded over the challenge and revealed how living with your brothers or bandmates can lead to difficulties.
Flea, who was born in Melbourne, Australia, said: "For us … (the Chili Peppers) we were together and touring for 10 years before we started becoming a really popular band and really making money.
"Without those 10 years, if that would have happened in the beginning, we would have fallen apart right away.
"I think it's really rare … Like, if you hear about a young artist that puts out their first record and they're a big success - very, very rarely do they continue on having a career that works. Something about just paying your dues.
"Like you already rode across the Atlantic (the brothers completed this voyage in 2019). But I'm sure before you did that, you did a million little trips where you learned how to do it. Learned what it is to be stuck on a boat with each other for months.
"There's days when we f***ing hate each other. And that's when it's really hard. When you can live together and everyone's getting along, it's this magical thing - you're this travelling entity and it's all love."
The brothers' 28ft (8.5m) carbon fibre boat, Rose Emily, is named in memory of their late sister.
It has no engine and no sail and the brothers are powering their way across the ocean in two-hour shifts.
They left Peru in March on a mission to reach Australia and raise £1 million for clean water projects.
While speaking with Flea, Lachlan spoke of how he was washed overboard during a violent storm. Lachlan, who turned 27 while rowing the Pacific, said he was "lucky" to be attached to his boat by a safety line during 40mph (64kmh) winds and 6m (20ft) waves last week.
He was dragged along behind the craft before his brother Ewan, 33, was able to help him to scramble back on board.
Flea also spoke about what drives him to keep performing after more than four decades with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
He said: "There's definitely times when I'm running on fumes and I've got nothing. We've been doing this for 43 years or something. And you know, our performance is really physical. I try to stay in the best shape I can. But for me, emotionally, the whole thing is, I'm doing this to be of service.
"I like money as much as the next person, but like a long time ago, I could have retired. I could be eating papayas, taking bong hits on the beach somewhere, you know?
"It's a job to bring joy to people through music. And when I stay in that mindset … because there are so many nights where I'm sitting in a hotel room and it's like, 'I don't wanna get up'.
"I don't wanna go face 50,000 people in the stadium and play a concert. But it's time to go. And it's like, OK, it's not about me. I feel like s***, I'm tired, I got the flu, whatever's going on with me - I'm heartbroken, my wife left me, whatever's going on - but it's like, I have to let go of my life completely and do it.
"Be there for the people. Be there for my bandmates. And be there to honour the tradition of music."
Jamie commented: "We've got a beautiful sunrise, we're sipping coffees out of baby beakers, and we're chatting to Flea. Doesn't get much better."
They also swapped food stories, as the Macleans shared tales of freeze-dried meals prepped in Jamie's old school kitchen, while Flea reflected on years of bad roadside burgers.
"For years and years, we toured in a van, sitting up all through the night, driving through the night for like six months on end," he said.
"You kind of start feeling like a caged animal, just eating shitty food … roadside truck stop food, whatever you can get.
"You always pull into town after a show, you're starving and there's just nothing to eat … but now we have it good. We eat like kings."
The podcast, Dinner with the Macleans, is available on Spotify, and YouTube.
The brothers have raised around £218,000 so far.
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The historic connection to Scotland, along with the origins of Glasgow Celtic, goes a long way to explain the deep roots that soccer has in the county. When it came to Gaelic Games, the seeds fell on fallow ground for decades. That's not to say that sport had no presence in the county. The Protestant influence in east Donegal brought activity in hockey, cricket and rugby. Regattas would be contested by teams of fishermen on the Foyle and Lough Swilly. After the Irish Republican Brotherhood seized control of the GAA at a convention in Thurles Courthouse in 1887, the clergy in Derry began encouraging the working classes to play association football instead. The locals obeyed. The early hankering for hurling helped Donegal who, it might surprise to hear, have three Ulster senior hurling championship titles from 1906, 1923 and 1932. They reached the second final in 1904 to be beaten by Antrim. The same outcome occurred in 1905 though it is left unclear if that game was actually played, the title nonetheless going to Antrim. The 1906 championship reached its finale on 14 July, 1907, when Donegal beat Antrim on a recorded scoreline of 5-21 to 0-1 in Burt, a place that has deep hurling roots. Essentially though, Donegal took their own sweet time. The Prairie Fire that torched across the country in the spread of Gaelic Games was snuffed out on the bogs of Donegal. There were many factors. The lack of rail transport. The lack of anything approaching modern roads. The distances involved in organising GAA activities at board level, when the majority of meetings were held in Limerick Junction in Tipperary. It wasn't a particularly nationalist county, either. The level of Donegal involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising was minimal, if any. The Irish Republican Brotherhood tried to organise in the county and Ernest Blythe spent some time trying to rise numbers for the Irish Volunteers, but could only recruit 20 men. When the GAA's Central Council called for mass participation in Gaelic Games on 4 August 1918 in what would become known as 'Gaelic Sunday', almost 100,000 taking part in an act of civil disobedience with the RIC seeking permits for games, there was no record of activity in Donegal. Almost a year later, Ulster GAA held its convention in Derry on 16 March. Secretary Eoin O'Duffy was a huge figure in the War of Independence who led several lives. He would later become the first Garda Commissioner before raising an army to go and fight in the Spanish Civil War on the fascist side of General Franco. But Donegal have him to thank for their GAA culture as he personally formed a new county board, their first meeting being held in Strabane, Co Tyrone on 3 April 1919. This time, it stuck. The board would meet regularly. Six different regions were set up in a smart move to keep travel to a minimum. Clubs sprung up everywhere. In 1921, both Ardara and Glenties were formed in a spirit of nationalist fervour. That decade was one of consumerist growth. It all helped. In 1923 there were 9,246 motorcars registered in the county. By 1930, that figure had grown to 32,632. The county footballers first made an appearance in the Ulster championship of 1905/06 where they were beaten 0-20 to 0-1 by Derry. A year later and the score was 0-18 to 0-2. They checked out then until 1919 and became a fixture from then on. The country changed. Donegal may have been lagging behind but they were still moving forward. A dance in Donegal town in September 1921 was reported on as, 'Irish dances were in the ascendant. No jazzing or one stepping. Any attempt to introduce these ugly, disgusting things would have been immediately frustrated and criticised'. A year later, the people of Gaoth Dobhair went for it with full jazzing and one-stepping to beat the band and were rounded on by the local press. The establishment of the Department of the Gaeltacht went about revitalising those communities on the western seaboard, just as tourism was taking off and Bundoran was becoming an Irish Blackpool. Donegal was arriving. ***** Almost everything they achieved in Gaelic football had the imprint of two men: Brian McEniff and Jim McGuinness. For their first Ulster title in 1972, McEniff was a player who won an All-Star. He was also the team manager, at the age of 30. Two year later he repeated the trick and while the reigning Ulster winning manager, was ousted by a county board that were familiar with the whetstone. In all, he managed Donegal five times. He won five Ulster titles and an All-Ireland in 1992, when he carried a teenage McGuinness on the panel, nicknamed 'Cher' by the squad on account of his long curly black hair. Brian McEniff with the Sam Maguire, 1992. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO McEniff's final stint as manager brought them to an All-Ireland semi-final loss to Armagh. But it was also achieved while he was the serving county board chairman. McGuinness has now also accumulated five Ulster titles: 2011, 2012, 2014, 2024 and this year to go along with the All-Ireland in 2012, while Declan Bonner managed Donegal to Ulster success in 2018 and 2019. Throughout the decades in the method of playing football, Donegal had a certain way of doing things. They were early adopters of the fist-pass and carried the ball tight to their chests. Even today, that's the Donegal house style. Work the ball through the hands. Your feet are for shooting. They don't apologise for that. In the past, McGuinness has linked the 2012 All-Ireland with the 1992 All-Ireland in terms of style. 'That identity, what goes on in club football with the wind coming in off the Atlantic, it happens every day of the week,' he said in an interview over the past year. 'That style got us over the line in '92 and it happened in '12 again.' The Donegal bench, with a teenage Jim McGuinness standing, await the final whistle of the 1992 All-Ireland final. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO Now, you can point out that it all sounds a little fanciful given that other western seaboard counties such as Galway and Kerry have known a gust of wind in their time and haven't been afraid to give the ball an odd kick. But that was bred into him. Even when McGuinness was a teenage sub on the first Donegal team to win the All-Ireland in 1992, their full-back Matt Gallagher went the entire game in the final against Dublin without kicking the football once, instead laying it off with a handpass every time. Doing it their own way is the county character. Take the music for example. The Donegal style of Irish traditional music is very connected to the Scottish Highlands. Almost exclusively played by fiddle. The cradle of this music originates from the areas around Gaoth Dobhair, while Johnny Doherty of Ardara was the most famous and renowned exponent of popularising it. It is played with single bowing, making it choppy, staccato and raw. Not to say that it is unsophisticated, but there are those that can look down their noses at it. Put it this way: Donegal traditional music is the most distinct from the others. For reasons, primarily geographic and cultural isolation, it has absorbed precious few other influences. It won't surprise you to learn that their Sean-nós singing is fairly unique also. Again, they do things their own way. And there's a particular strength that comes with that. When Jim McGuinness made his complaints around having to play Mayo in Dr Hyde Park this year, he'd have known this was no huge injustice. Especially with Kerry having to play Meath in Tullamore the day before. Instead, he was channelling his former manager, Brian McEniff. During the 2003 championship, McEniff made an enormous noise about having to play an All-Ireland quarter-final replay against Galway, in Castlebar. 'A pilgrimage to Castlebar,' he called it when the venue was announced. Given that the opposition was Galway, some of the Donegal players sniggered at their quirky manager. But McGuinness – who appeared as an injury-time sub for Christy Toye that day – would have noted the support that Donegal garnered through McEniff's proclamation. 'It would only happen because it's us,' said McGuinness of having to go to Roscommon. If 2012 owed something to 1992, then the lessons taught by McEniff go deep. ***** In a way, it's absolutely amazing. At The Famine Village in Doagh, the proprietor Patrick Doherty talked of living in his family home with the thatched roof and the low entry. Related Reads 'One of my early years, I had the match played in my head a thousand times beforehand' David Clifford 'could be the best player that has ever played the game' - McGuinness 'It's challenging but it's adding to the entertainment' - Goalkeeper view on new rules There were a few 'back in the day' yarns, one which centred around how mothers treated teething weans to the long stems of seaweed, coiled up. The child would bite on the tough stem and the taste of sea salt would please them enough to stop the crying. Doagh Famine Village. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo What changed everything, he said, was the entry into the European Economic Community in 1973, and the acceleration of events in 1984. The Man From The Council would then come round to your thatched house and order it to be tumbled and replaced with a fresh house. The clothing company, Fruit of the Loom, came to Buncrana in 1987 and employed thousands. Ireland was modernising. Donegal's modernisation was gaining pace, building on the existing and improving tourism industry. Think about it. For a couple hundred years, they were few areas in Europe quite as remote as Donegal. People ate the seaweed and cockles off the beaches and what they could catch on a rod. Now, the world comes to them. To taste their now legally-distilled Poitín. To chew on the local seaweed and marvel at the few thatch cottages left. They sit in recreations of Irish wakes and lap up the folklore before grabbing coffee and traybakes, making plans to hear a little of that old time music later on in the evening. Americans, English, Europeans, Irish, they all come in their droves to rent out houses and take trips on the coach tours, marvelling at some of the most unspoiled views of western Europe; or at least those that have not entirely succumbed to Bungalow Blight. They have it made. In other ways, they don't. There are fishing vessels moored in the deepwater port of Killybegs that are valued around €25 million. In the past, they would have fished the waters nine months of the year with people employed the length of Bundoran to Falcarragh within the industry. Now, the boats can leave the harbour in late October but they have to be finished by the start of March. Other crews from Spain, The Netherlands and Portugal can dock in Killybegs and travel 15 miles outside the bay to fish their bigger quotas. That's got to rub a few noses in it. Even something as emphatically Donegal as a day on the bog is gone. People still 'win' the turf, but it's a clandestine affair and selling turf for burning has been banned since 2022. Given the misery of the mid-1800s outlined earlier, you'd be forgiven for believing that Donegal had never achieved prominence. Within the Donegal GAA crest is a right hand gripping a red cross, the coat of arms of the O'Donnell Clan. They ruled Tír Chonaill for centuries as old royalty of the Gaelic nobility system. Frequently warring with other clans, most notably the O'Neill's, their most famous member was Red Hugh O'Donnell who was instrumental in many battles during the Nine Years War. Eventually though, after red Hugh's death in 1602, Rory O'Donnell engineered the Flight of the Earls on 14 September 1607, taking the prominent members and supporters of the families in a ship holding a reported number of 99. An art installation commemorates the Flight of the Earls, Ramelton. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Leaving for Spain in a French boat hired in Nantes six months previously, determined to seek Catholic support, particularly from Spain to challenge English rule in Ireland. It never happened for them. As they left Ireland behind them, nervously looking at the shores of Lough Swilly, paranoid that the English were aware of their plan, they left behind a leadership void. One that was filled by the Plantation of Ulster by English and Scottish settlers. The descendants of the O'Donnells and O'Neills would go on to die young on foreign battlefields or rise to nobility and loyalty in Europe. Prior to their departure, they had elevated Donegal to international renown. The contrast in centuries was hammered home in one letter to The Irish Times some years ago, when a daughter recalled telling her father that his native parish in Donegal was hanging on a wall in the Doges Palace, Venice, in the 17th Century. He replied: 'Imagine, the Venetians knew about us in the 1700s and Dublin only discovered us in the 1960s!' They know all about them now. ***** Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
