Scar Tissue

Product Description As lead singer and songwriter for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anthony Kiedis has lived life on the razor's edge. So much has been written about him, but until now, we've only had Kiedis's songs as clues to his experience from the inside. In Scar Tissue, Kiedis proves himself to be as compelling a memoirist as he is a lyricist, giving us a searingly honest account of the life from which his music has evolved. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are that rare breed of rock band. Critically lauded and popularly embraced by millions of fans, their albums consistently sell into the stratosphere -- their CD Californication sold over 13 million copies alone. Now in Scar Tissue, Anthony Kiedis defies the rock star cliches. In his telling, we can see everything he has done has been part of a passionate journey. Kiedis is a man in love with everything -- the darkness, the death, the disease. Even his descent into drug addition was a part of that journey, another element that he has transformed into art. Review Kiedis' narrative of the funky, feckless Peppers' dues-paying years is vivid and inspiring. --NewsweekMost rocker autobiographies are ponderously lame. Anthony Kiedis's Scar Tissue . . . is not. It's thoughtful, candid, and entertaining. --GQ --Reviews"Most rocker autobiographies are ponderously lame. Anthony Kiedis's Scar Tissue. . . is not. It's thoughtful, candid, and entertaining." --Gq About the Author Larry Sloman, a.k.a. "Ratso," is a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate in sociology. He has written for "Rolling Stone" and was editor-in-chief of" High Times" and "National Lampoon," He collaborated with Howard Stern on the bestselling "Miss America" and "Private Parts" and is the author of a biography of Abbie Hoffman. He lives in New York City. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Scar TissueBy Anthony KiedisPhoenix AudioCopyright © 2006 Anthony KiedisAll right reserved.ISBN: 9781597770286Chapter One"Me, I'm from Michigan" I'd been shooting coke for three days straight with my Mexican drug dealer, Mario, when I remembered the Arizona show. By then, my band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, had one album out, and we were about to go to Michigan to record our second album, but first, Lindy, our manager, had booked us a gig in a steakhouse disco in Arizona. The promoter was a fan of ours and he was going to pay us more than we were worth and we all needed the money, so we agreed to play. Except I was a wreck. I usually was whenever I went downtown and hooked up with Mario. Mario was an amazing character. He was a slender, wiry, and wily Mexican who looked like a slightly larger, stronger version of Gandhi. He wore big glasses, so he didn't look vicious or imposing, but whenever we shot coke or heroin, he'd make his confessions: "I had to hurt somebody. I'm an enforcer for the Mexican mafia. I get these calls and don't even want to know the details, I just do my job, put the person out of commission and get paid." You never knew if anything he said was true. Mario lived in an old, eight-story brick tenement downtown, sharing his squalid apartment with his ancient mother, who would sit in the corner of this itty-bitty living room, silently watching Mexican soap operas. Every now and then, there'd be outbursts of bickering in Spanish, and I'd ask him if we should be doing drugs there-he had a giant pile of drugs and syringes and spoons and tourniquets right on the kitchen table. "Don't worry. She can't see or hear, she doesn't know what we're doing," he'd reassure me. So I'd shoot speedballs with granny in the next room. Mario wasn't actually a retail drug dealer, he was a conduit to the wholesalers, so you'd get incredible bang for your buck, but then you'd have to share your drugs with him. Which we were doing that day in his tiny kitchen. Mario's brother had just gotten out of prison and he was right there with us, sitting on the floor and screaming each time