Mans has lived a wild life

I've read several rock memoirs, but this is far and away my favorite. Kiedis doesn't just tell us what happened, but he speaks from the heart and relives it. There is a humility in his story, from someone who has been at the top of the world but knows it could come crashing down at any minute, and often did.

Kiedis does not tell us his story so that we'll feel sorry for him. It isn't out of arrogance or egotism that he shares his experiences with the Hollywood scene, the music business, and drug addiction. No, this is a way that he can pay it forward, embracing all of his experiences (good and bad) and live as an example. He's not preachy in his dislike of addiction. He's not judgmental of those that haven't beaten it. Rather, he lives by example, embracing life and everything it has to offer. What better inspiration could someone have to get clean and make the most of what they have in life?

I was personally touched by this book. Not due to drug addiction - I've never had to experience that. I was a smoker, so I do understand some of the ways that an addiction can mind-fuck a person, but that's not even close to the levels of Hell that Kiedis and others have had to go through. No, I felt connected because of the way Kiedis is always looking forward. He learned (and learns) from experiences, and doesn't spend a lot of time beating himself up about it. Learn and build on the experiences, sharing what you can with those around you. That's the outlook he takes on life and the issues it presents.

Are you kidding me?? I would re-title this book PHONEY BALONEY TONY. Anthony is full of sh*t from beginning to end. Do I believe he lost his virginity at age TWELVE? Nope. We would have been spared reading all those depressing bull-crap chapters if he simple said "I relapsed back into heroin 100 times all the while treating my friends, family and women like dirt". I laughed out loud when I read the part about Tony going to meet the Dali Lama, he was told that the Dali was booked for 3 years so it would not be possible! Well... low and behold Tony finds himself in a place where off in the distance the Dali is walking with his body guards, the Dali see's Tony and make a beeline over to him, cups his hands and lavishes him with blessed gifts. The Dali insists that a picture be taken with them both on Tony's camera. Tony is then invited to a prayer meeting which is ONLY for those who have studied for 50 years, but of coarse Tony is invited and is seated in the front row, then leaves after the first lesson, WTF. What a big fat LIAR, gee, maybe if you posted that picture I would have bought this load of horse crap. I also got a kick out the time he was in his car infront of a seedy Motel trying to score heroin when he sees a family "down on their luck" pull into the Motel, they had a Red hot chili pepper bumper sticker and the young kids were all wearing RHCP t-shirts (this made Tony Baloney feel sad) WHATEVER, liar, liar pants on fire.
I was never a RHCP fan to begin with, I guess I am not into verbal diarrhea, I did find it interesting that Tony was constantly praised by his English teacher for being such a creative writer and was told he had very special talents, I guess his lyric's "hey-o, listen what I say-o" or rhyming Mississippi with Hippie is proof of his genius! LOL. I believe this is the first bio that I had could not bring myself to reading the last chapter (btw, I really wanted to like him) what an arrogant, bullshitting asshole this jerk is. I will be drop-kicking this pile of poo into the blue box!

Memoir = No rating.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Memoir. Keidis has lived an incredibly bizarre life. I'm a huge RHCP fan, but there was SO much that I didn't know about him and the band. I expected sex, drugs, and Rock&Roll, but I got so much more than I expected.

Here are just a few fun facts that I was shocked to learn:
- He lost his virginity at 12, to his dad's girlfriend, with his dad's permission. WTF?
- He broke his back as a teenager by jumping off a building and missing the swimming pool
- His dad’s ex-girlfriend dated Sonny Bono, so he knew and hung out with both Sonny & Cher
- He went to college; UCLA
- He wasn't involved with music until his early 20s!!
- The original guitarist, Hillal Slovak, died of a heroin overdose
- He had a drug relapse after 5 years of sobriety by simply accepting medication during a wisdom tooth extraction
- Dave Navarro was a member of the band for 5 years! How did I not know this?
- I loved that he explained his lyrics to songs throughout the book.

I listened to this one on audiobook and it is narrated by Ryder Strong (Shawn from Boy Meets World). It made it a little weird because all I could picture was Shawn doing the things that Anthony did, and it made for a weird mental picture for me. I recommend reading this one instead of audiobooking for that reason.

A very self indulgent book that tells stories with little to no explanation. It's like reading a long string of facebook statuses where the only context is the fact that it's Anthony Kiedis. If it were written by anyone else it wouldn't have ever been noticed. The only reason I gave this book two stars instead of one is because of its broad vocabulary. It's a shame so many statements were made with no explanation or it could have been good.

If you want an easy read that requires absolutely no thought, and you are entertained by basic explanations of sex and drugs... Then this might work for you.

Between 4-5 ⭐️ even though it took me a while to finish this. There were parts that felt repetitive and timelines that felt confusing, but overall I loved it. I couldn’t believe half of what I was reading was true and not fiction. An incredible story of addiction, redemption, music, love and life. Happy you’re alive today, Anthony!

This book made me dislike Anthony Kiedis immensely. I found him more and more annoying as the book went on. This guy has a charmed life in so many respects and he totally just pisses it away. He doesn't learn anything during the whole book - he just keeps falling in love with the "love of his life" every few pages. If you want to read a great autobiography, check out the Motley Crue one "The Dirt"

_Scar Tissue_ amazed me on every level. It is difficult to know even where to begin.
I found it completely engaging on a historical/cultural level. His book expresses the zeitgeist of 80's Hollywood. He moves there at age 10 or 11 and thanks to his drug-dealer gadfly dad is fully engaged in the scene. He's meeting the Who, Zeppelin, hanging out at the Whisky, going to Hollywood parties, sharing a bed with Cher all before high school. Reading it, I got a visceral first-hand account of the emergence of punk, explosion of drugs, skating, the whole 80's thing. The first half reads like a who's who of people making the scene in LA at that time. LA people will get a kick out of recognizing all of his haunts, (Canter's Musso and Franks, etc.)
The book also gives an engaging history of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anthony, Flea, and Hillel (Slim) all were chums at Fairfax High School. The formation of the band, its iterations, the origins of their sound and their songs are all explained well in Kiedis' inimitable voice.
Another way this book fascinated me was the facility with which he made it plain what it was like to be a rock star while at the same time really still feeling like an ordinary person. Here are guys with a lot of talent, but even more problems and foibles than the average person suddenly catapulted to stardom and the insanity that brings. (What is it like to invite a girl to a party and then have to deal with Jack Nicholson AND Joaquin Phoenix hitting on her?)
On its most visceral level, Scar Tissue is, as its title implies, the story of lifelong addiction. The book includes a photo of him getting high for the first time at age eleven, (the photo and the drugs supplied by dad.) What follows is over two decades of drug-mania and sexual debauchery. Seriously, Caligula would blush. It is painful to read of the levels he would sink to, the efforts made to get clean, rehab facilities he would escape from, and his inevitable descent into addiction again. The book concludes on a hopeful note with four years of sobriety under his belt and his commitment to continue to work the 12 steps.
The spiritual vividness with which his life story was told struck me deeply. Passages where he writes of his healing only coming as he has prayed, served, and shown love to others would be at home in the Christian bookstore. He writes of his interactions with the spiritual world with chilling familiarity. At the moment of his friend Hillel's death, he writes of experience a spiritual attack by the same "dark spirits" that drove his friend to the grave.

It is difficult for me to imagine anyone not being captivated by the book, although there is admittedly much to appall.

One of my favorite Autobiographies by one of my favorite lead singers

A pretty fascinating, no-holds-barred look into the life of the vocalist of one of my favourite bands. This is possibly the first ever memoir.autobiography I've come across where the author not only admits how awful he may have been at points, but also makes no excuses for it. This actually ended up with me feeling much more sympathetic towards him than if he'd just been saying how awful he'd been with no attempt at apology, OR constant explanations along the lines of "yes I was awful but only because i=of the drugs" etc. Anthony seems to have become totally at peace, self aware and completely grown up while retaining a wonderful child-like innocence which is pretty amazing considering how wild his life has been.

There were a few negatives for me. I do think that parts of the near endless sex could have been removed - not in the interests of toning it down, at all, but merely because they served no purpose to telling his story. After a while it became repetitive and boring. I think I've mentioned this before but writing about sex should never come across as dull unless that is completely 100% the intended effect, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of what's being described here. Also, though interesting to know about his "relationship" with Flea's sister, I think a little more tact around his oldest friend could have been exercised. Sounds like Flea was pretty pissed off about that ending up in the book. Memoirs and autobiographies do to automatically have to include those kinds of details about other people's families!

Still, fascinating read. I can see why the book is so popular.

basically, anthony kiedis has been one of my celeb crushes through the years. this book pretty much ended that. i felt a little dirty after some of the sections. THAT kind of dirty... like i needed to go scrub the images from my mind each time i put the book down!

the stories were intriguing, i had no idea of some of the horrible things this guy has done. (or if i did have an idea, i was always able to brush it off!) i'm really surprised at how far he's been able to go in life with all the craziness that is described in the book.

go figure.

anyhow, i still love the chili peppers. ;-)

Ascolto i Red Hot sin dall'età di nove anni, il periodo in cui "By the Way" imperversava su Mtv e per le radio, anche se ricordo di averli conosciuti già prima, ammaliato dal video di "Californication" (il quale pensavo fosse davvero un videogioco). Crescendo ho potuto approfondire di più la loro discografia (finendo sempre più per apprezzare la scalmanata cinquina iniziale in stile funk rock) e le loro tormentate quanto strambe storie personali, promettendomi di leggere prima o poi "Scar Tissue", titolo di un loro omonimo successo e uno dei pezzi più riusciti, traducibile come "cicatrice", a testimonianza di una vita al limite lasciata alle spalle. In generale, le aspettative sono state rette, sia nella completezza dei fatti che nella scorrevolezza del tutto, nonostante qualche errore nelle traduzioni e situazioni interessanti che si risolvono troppo presto.