Rock & Roll Books

Scar Tissue

Hyperion, 465 pp., $24.95

Four hundred sixty-five pages in which the words "cocaine," "heroin," and "syringe" are shot through more than most prepositions. Chapter after lurid chapter of sex with Ione Sky (a picture even), possibly Sinéad O'Connor, and prerequisite punk rock sodomy in a stairwell. Broken backs, eye sockets, and skulls. Borneo leaches. Even "rock out": militant production by Gang of Four's Andy Gill on debut Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984), George Clinton landing for LP No. 3 (Freaky Styley), and who could forget Dave Navarro, giant schlong? The Dalai Lama recruiting Kiedis' band for a benefit, Godfather styley ("If Adam Yauch ever calls you to play another festival for us, please make yourself available"). All that, and it's three words on the inside dust cover resonating the longest and loudest: "against all odds." As in, "Over 20 years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers – against all odds – have become one of the most successful bands in the world." (Emphasis mine.) No shit. Who in their whacked-out minds would've believed that three miscreants from Fairfax High in L.A., Kiedis, one Michael Balzary (Flea), and future heroin casualty Hillel Slovak, could translate their freaky funk rock into global domination. Not this Lithuanian descendant from Grand Rapids, Mich., who was a club kid seeing Neil Young and the Eagles in the first grade with his dealer dad, Blackie. Not the child actor in Sylvester Stallone's "F.I.S.T." who snorted his first line of heroin in the eighth grade. Certainly not the injured motorcyclist who winds up in emergency surgery. "I turned to the nurse and said, 'Unfortunately, over a lifetime of misbehavior, I've attained a rather enormous resistance to the opiate family of drugs. You're probably going to have to go ahead and double that dose right away. ...'" Morphine times seven doses, it ends up. As Kiedis' introduction reveals, his immediate (opiate) family also bequeathed him hep C.