School Of Hard Rocks
And what of the main man, singer, überphilanderer and self-confessed drug monster Anthony Kiedis ? Well, he's five years sober, miraculously cured of the needle-born hepatitis C he was diagnosed with in the Nineties, and looking more taut and toned than he has any right to, given the years of rigorous abuse he's put his body through. Fory-three-year-old Kiedis lives in an elegant Thirties gated villa in Benedict Canyon, set in a eucalyptus grove. Since his last girlfriend moved out his only companions here are a couple of Rhodesian ridgeback dogs, a lot of music and books - including a whole self containing the copmkete OED - and some large pictures and framed movie posters. Of the four, he seems the least settled: he rattles around in his sparsely furnished des res and talks of needind to move, "to wipe the slate clean".
Of the old brotherly connection - and the competitive dare-devilry that went with it - between him and Flea, the best buddy from high school he's played with for more than 20 years and known for more than 30, the only hint sits parkled in the garage. Both men drive Porsche Carreras; he is grey, Flea's is black. Otherwise there's little domestic evidence to link them with each other, or with the band whose hedonistic antics, back in the day, made them pretty much the only gang in town. For years, one half of young Los Angeles wanted to be in Red Hot Chili peppers while the other half, it seemed, wanted (and often got) Red Hot Chili Peppers in them. Now they've become the elder statesmen of the punk-funk movement; and having lived the life to the limit and beyond, all but one of them - founder member and guitarist Hillel Slovak - has lived to tell it.
Socks and drugs...
From the early exposure of 1988's Abbey Road EP to 1999's Californication comeback, via line-up changes and the death of guitarist Hillel Slovak; Anthony Kiedis and Flea have been at the core of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' explosive funk rock output.
BLOOD
Aged 12, Anthony Kiedis left his mother's home in Michigan for LA to live with his estranged father, "Spider" Kiedis - a bit-part actor, drug dealer to the stars and an avid womaniser.
Anthony Kiedis "As soon as I moved in with him he became mu role model and hero. He would take me on his pot-smuggling trips, take me to meet his friends and clients in clubs, get me to photograph his girlfriends topless. He even got me cast in a Coca-Cola commercial, which generated friction because then I was making more money than he was.
"What was kind of annoying was the late-night traffic. I was like, 'Wow, this guy really wants that damn coke.' One day when I was 15, our solid oak front door was kicked in and a phalanx of guys with shotguns and bulletproof vests and pistols poured in. They were screaming, 'Freeze! Freeze! Get on the f:loor!' One of the knuckleheads burrowed a hole into the ceiling of the black closet and found everything - the big rocks of coke, the bags of weed and the huge quaalude jar. They took Dad away but I conviced them that I needed to be at schoool in the morning.
"It turned out that my dad had a prostitute over a few nights earlier, but she wasn't his cup of tea. So she stormed out and told the cops that he might be the Hillside Strangler who was terrorising LA at that time."
Hollywood, a school whose gymnasium featured in the Nirvana video for "Smell Like teen Spirits". It was here he met the three boys who formed Red Hot Chili Peppers mark one: Hillel Slovak (who died in 1988), Jack Irons and Michael "Flea" Balzary.
AK "About a month into the school year, a tiny, crazy-looking, gap-toothed, big-haired kid came waltzing up. I felt an instant connection to the little weirdo, who said his name was Flea. I usually felt like the leader in most relationships with kids my age because of all the crazy experiences I'd had, Mike [Flea] was painfully shy and insecure and much more sheltered than I had been so I assumed the alpha role. He was into pot when I first met him, so I began to dip into my dad's stash to satisfy our needs."
Flea "My mother said that when I came home from school the day I met Anthony, I said, 'Mom, I've finally found someone I can talk to !" We both come from dysfunctoinal families, we both came to LA in the early Seventies.
"When Anthony and I were kids, we had this special thing where every day we would do crazy stuff, like going hiking in the mountains and eating dirt. Dumb stuff like breaking into peoplme's houses.We'd flash old ladies. We'd heard that Beverly and Wildwhire was the biggest intersection in the world so we took quaaludes, took off all our clothes and climbed to the top of a billboard on a Saturday night. Silly things like juming off buildings into pools, until Anthony broke his back, which put a downer on that."
AK "His situation at home seemed as chaotic as mine. He would regale me with stories about his stepfather, Walter, who had dealt with an alcohol problem and was now a hermit. Mike would never go anywhere without his trumpet. He was first trumpet in the school playing opened me up to a whole other world."
Flea "I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz misician. I was raised to think that rock was music for ignorant people who didn't think for themselves. People later took us as this frat-boy party band, but taht could not have been further from the truth in the early days. Those were exactly the type of kids that used to make fun of me ! We were these arty punks from Hollywood. I considered myself an intellectual."
AK "Unlike Flea, who had a real scrapping-brother type relationship with me, Hillel wasn't competitive. I immediately knew Hillel was at least my equal. He understood a lot about music, he was a great visual artist and he had a sense of self and calm that were just riveting. Plus he was Israeli-Jewish, which seemed very cool to me."
John Frusciante "When I joined, after hillel died, I was 18. They were 25 and they'd all grown up together and lived through a lot. I felt I wasn't standing up to what Hillel had done. They saw me as someone who was just out of high school and they called me 'greenie'. I was the butt of all the jokes. I wanted to make it so nobody would laugh at me any more, so I forced myself to grow up probably quicker than I should have. I repressed myself. On this new album I've tried to do what I wish I would have done when I was 18."
