Anthony Kiedis' Scar Tissue



I've been fascinated all week with Anthony Kiedis' book Scar Tissue, which, I gather, may be one of the most revealing Rock and Roll bio's ever, bar none, no kidding, which can be taken as neutrally or as saucily as you wish. All my life I have somewhat wondered about the skateboarder-type, you know -- the instinctive type of player in this game called life.

Rock and roll musicians exemplify that type of person, it is their ideal -- wiry, constantly moving, always "on," "attention deficient" lovers of repetitive motion, these are the drag racers, the lovers of Vin Diesel and that silly fast furious movie. I don't get them. They interest me because they all seem so alien to me, who am more of the Cutty Sark drinking diplobrat blogger type; oh yeah, and I brood . What makes them tick?

Kiedis has some amazing stories about catching Dengue Fever while on some Southeast Asian rainforest where leeches drop from trees on top of hapless tourists with his Amsterdam Tatoo artist. Also, he has tales of copping heroin and coke in LA underpasses with Latin street gangs and subsequent stays in rehab, harrowing stories of pranks, groupies, addiction, loves lost, the vagaries of being in a band and, once, actually getting kicked out despite being a founding member, and, rather disturbingly, his addiction to underage women, which, I gather, is, unfortunately, particular to the rock and roll set, like:

"I started to lose some of my interest in (model Jaime Rishar) thinking she was too young and wrapped up in the nonsense of her microcommunity. But something in me wasn't going to give up all the way, and at a certain point I could see that she needed to go home (after a Fashion Week party) and be in bed. So I put her in a cab, and she asked me to go home with her, so I went and we slept together that night but nothing happened because she was too full of booze to start our romance off. The next night we had an out-of-control, over-the-top sexual encounter. She rocked me in a way I hadn't thought was possible by a person of her age -- seventeen. There was some very adult behavior taking place, and I remember going, 'Whoa! What fucking porno has this girl been watching.'"

As I wrote earlier, Kiedis has a thing for underage girls which is not cool, but, frankly, is not uncommon to the underbelly of rock and roll, also -- I am a little puzzled the daily gossip tabloids haven't picked up on my findings.

Anyway, to leave on a lighter, less "moralistic" note, my favorite Kiedis story:

"I bonded with these giant Samoans called the Boo-Ya Tribe, who were playing on the secondary stage. I was enthralled, listening to their stories of gang warfare in East LA. They told me that their friends would get shot and not even know it because they were so big, so they's walk around for a couple of days with bullets in them. By the end of (Lallapalooza), I got one of the Boo-Yaa guys to come on stage during 'Higher Ground' and he put out his arm, picking me up, and perched me on his forearm. I rocked the whole song sitting like a puppet on his arm."

Having encountered once a Samoan who was northwards of 300 lbs-- all muscle -- I can vouch for the theoretical possibility of such a dude walking around with low caliber bullets wedged in their gut and, quite possibly, not even noticing; although, of course, that might suggest some hella ill hygiene standards by said Boo Yaa associates, to be sure.