‘Scar Tissue- Anthony Kiedis’ quick review!
Anthony Kiedis was the lead singer of the influential American rock band, the Red-Hot Chilli Peppers, which was formed in 1983. He was the front man for one of the world’s most successful and popular rock bands of all time, but his life was riddled and marred by toxic relationships and probably the most intense drug abuse that the world has ever seen.
Anthony’s father was a hippy, drug dealer who ran night clubs around Hollywood. As a result, from a young age, Anthony was exposed with an alluring and crazy lifestyle early on, filled with girls and drugs. Constantly in his house, there were groups of his dad’s girlfriends partying in the house and doing drugs, so it was no surprise that he got involved in various vices early on.
At only age 4, Kiedis’s father blew smoke from a joint into his face, while they were walking down the street. That was his first experience with drugs. At age 12, Anthony asked his dad if he could have sex with one of his dad’s girlfriends, and his dad complied. That was his first sexual experience. At age 14, Anthony snorted a line of white powder on a table in his living room, which he presumed was cocaine. It turned out to be heroin and he nearly died as a result of overdose. That was his first experience with hard drugs.
From these 3 above experiences, these set off a hedonistic life; a life geared towards pursuing pleasure, fun and crazed experiences. During the teenage years in high school he would get up to as much mischief as possible, playing pranks, going on drug and alcohol fuelled adventures and pursuing sex with girls.
During the latter years of his high school, he started to get into hard drugs seriously- cocaine and heroin. He had no qualms about shooting them up, as he had seen so many people in his house do it before. The rush, excitement and adventures that cocaine brought him, led to a life of dependency on the drug and pursuing it no matter the obstacle. Once when he was gearing to shooting up, he realised he had no water, so he used to water out of a gutter to fill up his syringe. Heroin, on the other hand, he used for the horrific comedowns that accompanied the shooting up of coke. Heroin for him was pure bliss, euphoria and comfort, but again, it led to another dependency and doing whatever he could to get another fix.
Amongst all this drug usage and thrill seeking, Kiedis actually did well in high school. He was a smart kid with strong writing capabilities but what ultimately set him back was his trouble making. He had a poetic mind early on that was good at rhyming and forming sentences. He enrolled at the University of California for a couple of years, but he never really fit and dropped out.
During his uni days was the time when he started to really develop his musical talent and he joined a band. Music was a release and a spiritual experience for him, but with all his music playing, a constant stream of toxic relationships and drug binges accompanied them. The Red-Hot Chilli Peppers started as an underground and fairly edgy rock group, with most of the members number one priority focused on getting ‘loaded’, but really that made them who they were. They slowly built up into becoming a widely known international rock group; but throughout their careers, all of their old habits persisted.
This book is extraordinarily interesting with all its stories of the crazy stuff Kiedis and his band members did and the absolutely ridiculous drug benders he went on. Kiedis’s life story is basically one huge drug bender, with periods of sobriety, with some music playing and relationships playing a minor role.
Towards the backend of his career, he made many attempts at getting sober. These attempts constantly were futile. He got sober and then relapsed over 20 times, with the urges and drive to experience the ultimate pleasure constantly being too strong.
Reading some other review’s of this book on good reads, I encountered many extremely negative reviews, on account of his bad behaviour during his life and all the pain he caused himself and others through his selfishness, addictions and recklessness. What this book really offers is perspective through the telling of one of the craziest, amazing, scary and adventurous life’s. This book will help you understand about the idea of addiction and what some people go through- certainly helping you empathise in the process. The book also provides a perspective of life in Hollywood, with all its ego, pop culture, drug taking and fame that is involved. While Hollywood is obviously the centre of a lot of the world’s most amazing cultural works, it can also be an absolutely toxic environment for some, due to its superficiality and bad values- themes which Kiedis explores in a lot of his songs, such as Californication. And obviously, this book also presents the background into the Chilli Peppers music making, something I found very interesting given a lifelong love of their music. You really get an understanding of the lyrics of their great songs and pain that was involved in writing them. This was music had had an extreme cultural influence over the world.
Kiedis has now been sober since 2000 and is constantly trying to help others become sober, while still fighting his own demons and temptations of drugs. He still tours with the Red-Hot Chilli Peppers to this date.
I give this book 5 stars. Kiedis writes fantastically and his story is absolutely amazing. He has certainly lived one of the craziest lives of anyone to live- full of the highs and immense lows. Fan of the Chilli Peppers or not, give this book a read.
