Anthony Kiedis

Anthony Kiedis has sung for the Red Hot Chili Peppers since 1983, when he started the band in Los Angeles with three Fairfax High School friends: the bassist Flea, the guitarist Hillel Slovak and the drummer Jack Irons. Scar Tissue, written with Larry Sloman and published in 2004, is his account of that life. It opens in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was born in 1962, moves to Hollywood when he was twelve to live with his father John Kiedis, who acted under the name Blackie Dammett, and gives most of its length to addiction, his own and Slovak's, which killed the guitarist in 1988 at twenty six. The book went to number one on the American bestseller list. Kiedis later said he regretted it for a time because of the hurt it caused people close to him, and changed his mind only when readers in hospitals, prisons and schools began writing back.