The Red Hot Chili Peppers admitted that their Super Bowl performance was pre-recorded, after other guitarists tweeted their suspicion soon after the band took to the stage.
"That guitar is plugged into NOTHING," Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid tweeted, while Joe Bonamassa wrote, "Flea… I mean we all know, but for god's sake at least try to humor the children."
On Tuesday, Flea admitting to miming on the band's website, noted that the guitar was unplugged as he did not want to fool the audience.
"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 realest thing to do in the circumstance," Flea wrote.
Flea said that the National Football League had made it clear from the start that only the vocal would be live, whereas the bass, drums and guitar would be pre-recorded as they wanted to avoid any sort of glitch.
"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," he wrote.
Super Bowl XLVIII record 111.5 million viewers on Sunday to become the most-watched event in television history.
Sadly, this is not the first time bands and singers have pre-recorded their performances.
Last year, Beyonce Knowles was caught in a similar controversy for lip-syncing the "Star Spangled Banner" during the Inauguration Day in January, and a few months later, Mariah Carey was accused for lip-syncing at the BET Awards.
The Super Bowl, too, has had its share. Whitney Houston and Jennifer Hudson, who rendered the national anthem during the 1991 and 2009 Super Bowl respectively, were said to have lip-synced to a pre-recorded track.
