"Scar tissue that I wish you saw | Sarcastic Mr Know-it-all" - Red Hot Chili Peppers, 'Scar Tissue'
I love rock biographies. I went through a period of reading nothing but, but I haven't read one for a few years now, so when by boys gave me this for a Fathers Day present I was looking forward to getting my teeth into it.
As is the way, Kiedis' autobiography is ghost written. The ghost writer is Larry Sloman, most well known for co-penning US "shock jock" Howard Stern's two autobiographies, as well as his book "On The Road With Bob Dylan", the story of the Rolling Thunder Revue. From what I can tell, although the book is written as "I did this, then I did that, then this happened to me", the book was written by Sloman from various interviews with Kiedis and the other main players in the book. Not that you should let that distract you from the book itself.
Ian Drury coined the classic phrase "Sex and Drugs and Rock & Roll" which has since become the rasion d'etre for many and most rock-stars since. Kiedis ticks these off with aplomb during the course of the book, starting from his early teen years. The tale starts in earnest when he moved to Hollywood from Michigan to love with his Dad, John "Blackie Dammett" "Spider" Kiedis, a full time drug user, pat time drug dealer, part time scenester, part time actor. Kiedis jr is thrown into his Dad's world and laps it up. He is, by his own accounts a Grade A student during the week at school, but some the weekend he goes with his Dad to the LA clubs and starts his journey. When you read the opening chapters, it's hard to like Kiedis. He revels in the drug taking, the fights, sleeping with his Dads girlfriend (under the guidance of his Dad), the law breaking and risk taking. You read it and you start to think "what a cock", here is this kid living the life that later one leads to addiction and problems, yet he seems almost boastful of it. It's not until you get near the end of the book that you realise that the writing has shifted style as the book had gone on, with the over exuberance of youth replaced with a steady thinking style; which makes you realise that the early chapters are meant to sound like he is being boastful as he is writing as his 14 year old self, after all what 14 year old would love to boast about a life like that? It's a clever way of pacing he book, but I'm left wondering how many have started to read but got put off by the opening style - maybe an opening chapter at the present day would have helped "set the scene" more, I don't know.
It's hard to review this book without basically writing a synopsis of it. Of course, there is no conventional plot or character development, so unless you know the Red Hot Chili Peppers and other associated 80s/90s American alt. rock stars you will be relying on Google a lot. But that is not to say that this is a RHCP book. Its not, its a book about Kiedis. Even at the heigh of the Peppers' fame, he writes more about his failed love life and his drugs that the experiences of writing, recording and playing. Of course, those things are covered off; from the recording sessions with George Clinton to headlining Woodstock (no, not the 60s one). His relationships within the band are talked about in detail too. You see how he met Flea and Hillel Slovak at school; how Slovaks death from drugs shock him up; his relationship with John Frusciante and the pain he felt with Frusciante fell in to the drug hell that Kiedis was battling with. Every Chili Peppers' member and album is talked about, usually in glowing terms - even Dave Navarro! The love he shows for his band mates, past and present gives one of the only insights to a nicer side of his personality, alongside his descriptions of the various girls that he has loved over his life.
One thing that does strike you through the book is the lucidity of the tales. From this teenage years, Kiedis claims he was getting higher and higher, snorting cocaine, shooting heroin, acid tripping, drinking, smoking... and yet he remembers, sometimes in graphic detail, all the important points, discussions and decisions in his life. That's amazing and to be honest, a tiny bit unbelievable. But if you take the exact-ness of the tales of the ex-drug addict rock and roll star with a pinch of salt, then it's a bit easier to swallow.
The books is let down by the ending as much as it is by the start. The last few chapters that deal with the period from the release of "Californication" onwards start to drag. Kiedis' life seemed to be a never ending cycle of 'get sober, music, love girlfriend, slip and get high, rehab in Mexico, hate girlfriend, get sober, music, love girlfriend' etc etc. It all gets a bit too much, and by the time he has either gone to rehabilitate himself back at his mothers in Michigan or at a hotel in Mexico for the 20th time you start to think that maybe, even after all his bravado about how he is now sober, that he never really will be and that one day he will binge one last time and die. He claims he is now sober entirely, regaling us with a tale of the last time he had the itch for a fix but he didn't go through with it, but based on the previous 400 pages of addiction and lying about it, it seems unlikely.
Kiedis and Sloman turn out an overall enjoyable, well paced and decently written book that does his life justice and certainly paints a picture of his journey through the afore mentioned holy rock trinity of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Does it make you like him? No. Does it make you envy him? Again, probably no. Now that could just be me and my age, but I feel its not and that is a shame - you should be able, even at 30+ years, to look at rockstars and be jealous...
