Not being a big fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers this book was not really one to read for me, in fact it should have been a massive turn off.
I’ve never really dug the way they create music or their standpoint of music.
That said I do love that time in the 70s and early 80s where an awful lot of America was in a sort of flux.
Drugs, Music, Sex on all points skewed.
Life had become one long party, bring your kids!
Then it got dark.
And that seems how Anthony Kiedis’s life ended up.
One long party that in the end got very dark indeed, but lucky for him it all ended well.
If like me you grew up around this time when music was a big bag of contradictions you’ll probably love it.
You really don’t have to be a fan of the Chilli Peppers.
Really easy to read and very interesting memoir of the hedonistic LA we all really would have loved to have seen.
‘In SCAR TISSUE Anthony Kiedis, charismatic and highly articulate frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recounts his remarkable life story, and the history of the band itself. Raised in the Midwest, he moved to LA aged eleven to live with his father Blackie, purveyor of pills, pot, and cocaine to the Hollywood elite. After a brief child-acting career, Kiedis dropped out of U.C.L.A. and plunged headfirst into the demimonde of the L.A. underground music scene. He formed the band with three schoolfriends – and found his life’s purpose. Crisscrossing the country, the Chili Peppers were musical innovators and influenced a whole generation of musicians.
But there’s a price to pay for both success and excess and in SCAR TISSUE, Kiedis writes candidly of the overdose death of his soul mate and band mate, Hillel Slovak, and his own ongoing struggle with an addiction to drugs. SCAR TISSUE far transcends the typical rock biography, because Anthony Kiedis is anything but a typical rock star. It is instead a compelling story of dedication and debauchery, of intrigue and integrity, of recklessness and redemption.’