~flupps

I’ve been reading this book now for a while during travels. I picked it up sometime in June in London and have been just paging through is slowly.

It’s a biography co-written with Larry Sloman and covers the time from before Anthony was born and up until the fall 2004.

It’s basically a story about sex, drugs and rock n’ roll (with the major focus on drugs, drugs and a also quite a bit of sex - although not explained very graphically on the sex parts).

I did like the book a lot, but I’m not sure if someone that hasn’t grown up with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, etc can relate to it.

One of the main things I love was to find out how certain songs became written and what the lyrics actually refer to. Take “First time I saw you, you were sitting backstage in a dress - a perfect mess” from Tearjerker, for example. This describes the first time he ran into Kurt Cobain.

The book is far from happy, though, it’s a long drawn out description of a life of relapsing into drug use, womanizing and somehow being able to focus for the crucial weeks of finishing up albums.

One of the strongest stories is how he trades an electric guitar signed by all the Rolling Stones members for a tiny piece of heroin that will just keep him high until the banks open so he can go and withdraw cash.

His womanizing tendencies throughout the book describes meetings with a smaller army of women and how he seduces them. One of the examples that shows his thoughts on the subject is this girl he’s been with for quite a few years in the start of his career. While he’s been on tour he’s been cheating on her with basically one female every gig (it’s the impression that he gives - even if it’s not spelled out fully). He later finds out that she cheated on him once and leaves her in a big fight about it.

There are a lot of celebrities mentioned through this book, everything from meetings with Nirvana, Pearl Jam (who gives an extremely sympathetic impression), Neil Young, Gwen Stephani (who was listening to them practive in Flea’s garage when John just re-joined the band and hadn’t played guitar for a long time), Smashing Pumpkins, Cher, Sinead O’Connor, and the list goes on almost endlessly.

It’s not a very flattering book, since most of it covers how he got hooked on drugs and all the stupid shit he pulled off while under the influence - but he doesn’t write about it in the style “Hey, look what I did“, he just calmly seems to explain what happened.

The book pulled me in and I got quite emotionally involved in the story, if you like the sex, drugs and rock’n'roll style - especially if you’re a RHCP fan, I’d recommend this book - If nothing else just for the pictures of the young peppers with Hillel and the awesome look of Anthony’s dad (Some of Anthony’s girlfriends are also gorgeous of course…)