Wonderland
But inevitably there’s the occasional status report on “the 800lb gorilla”, Kiedis’ own term for the previously irresistible urge to destroy himself on drugs. Today he vividly recalls the time in 1984 when he ingested heroin and “some kind of ecstacy” before meeting a girl in an after-hours club called Zero. He says they had anal sex on the stairs before the intervention of a jealous bouncer. They made their ways to her apartment where they continued “all-night” on the roof.
Drugs and women are often linked in his stories. But occasionally it is drugs alone and the details are choking, sometimes surreal, such as early 80’s tale of booking himself into a Los Angeles motel room with $2000 worth of heropin and shooting speedballs in an apartment with a Mexican hitman and his sick mother.
So it’s not without reason that I raise an eyebrow at a track called ‘Charlie’. Kiedis smiles archly and launches his explanation. “The guy who types up my lyrics said, IS this about…basically he though I’d been on a binge. But I haven’t. Right now, it’s a 2 inch gorilla. There was a time in the early 9os when I would bet every cent I would die sober, that I had beaten it. That didn’t work. I’m not immune. I have a healthy fear of my obsession for heroin and cocaine. There are a few things you have to do for your mind if you’re a bit sick in the head. I do them”.
Stadium Arcadium’s sudden flourish of creativity is down harmonious intra-band politics, according to Kiedis. But also, mid-life live. Each band member is in domestic bliss. Flea has a 4-month-old baby by fiancée Frankie Rayder. Chad Smith has a 10-month-old son Cole by second wife, Nancy. John Frusciante is in love with new girlfriend Emily Kokral, a singer who has recently worked with Tricky. Even Kiedis who reportedly is dating Jessica Stam, says that three weeks ago he had a breakthrough conversation about becoming a father.
The new song Hard To Concentrate is an unequivocal proposal of marriage. Kiedis says he wrote it for Flea. But he too is beginning to understand women beyond the parameters of his bizarre upbringing. That is extraordinary progress, as anyone who has read Scar Tissue, his memoir of a 70’s Hollywood showbiz childhood and picaresque of sex, booze and drugs which followed will attest.
At the crux of Scar Tissue is his father, actor and former showbiz drug dealer John Kiedis, aka Blackie Dammett. Kiedis moved from Grand Rapids, MI, to live with him in L.A. aged 12. As well as becoming an accessory to his drug operations, Kiedis was immersed in Hollywood society. Cher was his babysitter; Sonny Bono a father figure. He sat with his dad as he sold drugs to Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin at the Rainbow Room.
But his father also presided over his sexual awakening. He showed his son how he’d grown one long fingernail as a coke spoon, and kept one short to be “pussy-friendly”. He also arranged for him to have sex with one of his own girlfriends, an 18-year old called Kimberley. Kiedis Jnr was 12 and high on a Quaalude.
“Seeing women as sex objects or imagining there is always a better one around the corner is…crippling. I don’t want to be like my dad. I’ve got as far as 2 or 3 year relationships but I want more. I’m not satisfied. Recently I’ve understood why I’m stuck in that cycle. It’s my own character defects. The though of having children made me feel less safe, less secure. But seeing Flea with his new child, I can see the opposite is true.”
What did your dad make of your book? “I haven’t had a thorough discussion with him about it,” says Kiedis. “People have given him grief. I don’t. I don’t blame him for any of my troubles. I believe he was doing 100 per cent the best he possibly could with the emotional tools he was given.” Some would say strapping cash to your 12-year old son to smuggle on to a plane on the way back from a drug run, as he did, isn’t “trying your best”. “I have no objection. At that time we were on an adventure to support the family. But yes, definitely bad parenting.”
What do you feel about your dad now? “I just feel bad that he felt so confused, that he was that confused he thought it a good idea. His childhood was an absolute disaster. His father was physically and emotionally abusive, a tyrannical bastard. In reaction my dad wanted to be an anarchist and took me along for the ride. It didn’t serve him well.”
And your mother? “Mom was not allowed to read the book. I don’t want her to know what I did.. I don’t want her to disdain my father.” Kiedis now certainly seems “centred”. Perhaps Kabbalah has played a part. “Previously I’ve always bashed institutions. It was easier to point out what was wrong with them than see I was completely out of balance with my own personal journey,” he says. There are several references to “spirits” and “higher forces”. He says he knows Kabbalah has been “flavour of the month” among celebrities and that he is in no way a fanatic. “But better a little light that no light at all,” he adds quietly. And then we sip tea and there’s the little red wristband sliding down his wrist.
