In the past, once those wheels were set in motion, forget about it—floods, earthquakes, famines, locusts, nothing would have stopped me from my abhorrent rounds. But now I’d proved to myself that I could live with my obsession until it went away. I was willing to accept the fact that I thought about getting high on a regular basis, that I could watch a beer commercial and see that sweaty bottle with the cap popping off and actually want a beer (and still not drink one).
The good news is that by the second year, those cravings were about half as frequent, and by the third year, half as much again. I’m still a little bent, a little crooked, but all things considered, I can’t complain. After all those years of all kinds of abuse and crashing into trees at eighty miles an hour and jumping off buildings and living through overdoses and liver disease, I feel better now than I did ten years ago. I might have some scar tissue, but that’s all right, I’m still making progress. And when I do think, “Man, a fucking motel room with a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of narcotics would do me right,” I just look over at my dog and remember that Buster’s never seen me high.
Acknowledgments
AK would like to thank:
Larry Ratso Sloman for his constant and heartfelt thoughtfulness toward those he engaged to compile this story. Ratso’s wily investigative knack was invaluable for the construction of this project, but his consideration for the well-being of others was paramount to the bigger picture. God bless this talented man and his badass style.
Thanks also to bandmates, family members, friends, enemies, lovers, detractors, teachers, troublemakers, and God for making this story come true. I love all of you.
LS would like to thank:
Anthony for his incredible candor, sincerity, memory, and open-heartedness.
Michelle Dupont for the tea, sympathy, and everything else.
David Vigliano, Superagent.
Bob Miller, Leslie Wells, Muriel Tebid, and Elisa Lee at Hyperion.
Antonia Hodgson and Maddie Mogford in England.
Bo Gardner and Vanessa Hadibrata for all their help above and beyond the call.
Blackie Dammett and Peggy Idema for their gracious Midwestern hospitality.
Harry and Sandy Zimmerman and Hope Howard for the L.A. hospitality.
Michael Simmons for the EMS call.
All of AK’s friends and colleagues who gave so much of their time to reminisce, especially Flea, John Frusciante, Rick Rubin, Guy O, Louie Mathieu, Sherry Rogers, Pete Weiss, Bob Forrest, Kim Jones, Ione Skye, Carmen Hawk, Jaime Rishar, Claire Essex, Heidi Klum, Lindy Goetz, Eric Greenspan, Jack Sherman, Jack Irons, Cliff Martinez, D.H. Peligro, Mark Johnson, Dick Rude, Gage, Brendan Mullen, John Pochna, Keith Barry, Keith Morris, Alan Bashara, Gary Allen, Dave Jerden, Dave Rat, Trip Brown, Tequila Mockingbird, Grandpa Ted, Julie Simmons, Jennifer Korman, Nate Oliver, Donde Bastone, Chris Hoy, Pleasant Gehman, Iris Berry, Sat Hari, and Ava Stander.
Cliff Bernstein, Peter Mensch and Gail Fine at Q-Prime.
Jill Matheson, Akasha Jelani, and Bernadette Fiorella for their amazing transcribing skills.
Langer’s for the best pastrami west of Second Ave.
Mitch Blank and Jeff Friedman for the emergency tape repair.
Lucy and Buster for the canine companionship.
And, most of all, my wonderful wife Christy, who kept the home fires burning.
Photographic Insert
Wearing a shirt that I wish I still had. It probably came from my faraway dad. I seem to be honing and sharpening my strategic powers over a game of Don’t Break the Ice. 2247 Paris Street S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan. Approximately 1971.
Mom used to sit me down for the occasional correspondence with my renegade pops. Little did I know I was encouraging the sale of weed by the kilo. Either way, I was California dreaming at the tender age of six.
At the age of twenty-one, I was already an angel away from killing myself behind the wheel of my mother’s Subaru. Nobody told me that dope-sick junkies shouldn’t drink three buckets of beer and try to drive home. I played a show with the Red Hots in New York City less than a week later. 1984.
Like father, like son. I’ve got to tell you, little boys love their dads. It’s a fact. Doesn’t matter what the scenario is, we love our dads. And need ’em. This is one of the rare but sacred visits my father made to my house on Paris Street. Early 1970s.
I’ve never met a girl that had more style or spunk than Jennifer Bruce. I don’t think anyone has. We used to drag ourselves out of bed and grab a simple breakfast at Joseph’s Café in the heart of Hollywood. I wasn’t doing too well and she was right behind me. Bless her heart, we loved and needed each other in the worst way. 1985.
This is Christmas. Right out of a fairy tale! It would have been the second or third Christmas that Jennifer had come back to Michigan with me. We were still in love and still perpetrating classic ’80s California fashion. 1986.
This is from the “I love my mama” series of photos. There were dozens, but I could use only a couple. There is no stronger or more reliable creature on Earth than the Mother. This is mine at her backyard wedding to Steve Idema. Lowell, Michigan. Summer of 1973.
To this day, Mom’s house in Michigan is still my greatest sanctuary for peace and relaxation. Here we are in the yard sometime in the mid ’90s. As you can see from her shirt, she is forever my number one fan, and like my dad, she has been from day one.
When I was fourteen, I moved back to Michigan to be with the family for the birth of my youngest sister, Jenny (the baby in the picture). I stayed for the first semester of ninth grade and attended Lowell High. By this time, I was a pretty regular pot smoker, and I’m probably stoned in this photo.
This must be our first U.S. tour when we played Top of the Rock in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The next day the paper wrote, “If I had a son like that, I’d shoot him.” My mom wrote a letter to the editor putting them all in their places. Flea and I were having fun. 1985.
Hard to say where the hell I got my sense of style from. This was taken a mere few months after the Red Hot conception, and I had no real performance role models. I think I wore whatever I could find nearby. Back then we would often end up wearing each other’s clothes. 1984.
My book publishers tried to kick this photo out of the lot, but I thought it was way too picturesque. Notice the flowers, my favorite hat, and the buttons on my jacket. 1972.
Childhood portrait of my mom. She reminds me of my amazing nephew Jackson in this picture. Funny how a family thread keeps on weaving its way through the generations. What a cutie. 1940-something.
In 1974, the single most important possession in my life was my fiberglass Bane skateboard with Cadillac trucks and fan urethane wheels. The second most important was my li’l sis, Julie. This is us sharing a bit of love for the camera on summer vacation.
My mom took pictures of me after I had been crying over a tricycle wipeout. I think it shows her skill as a photographer. It was just the two of us living together at the time in West Los Angeles, and we made the most of our togetherness.
Hillel and I, sitting at the edge of some motel bed during an American tour for our record Freaky Styley. Both of us look a wee bit worse from wear. And both of us seem to be attempting to unsuccessfully produce looks of well-being for the camera. Oh well, we were livin’ fast and hard! 1986.
Los Faces of Fairfax at age sixteen. Left to right—me, Hillel, and Flea on a cross-country tear through Michigan in the summer of ’79. We liked to eat, drink, be merry, and play lots of tricks on each other. The cabin on Little Manistee River.
My father and I used to run into each other out on the town long after I had evacuated the nest. Here he is, upholding the spirit of Bela Lugosi with a scowl and a classic Kiedis chin tilt. The T-shirt I’m wearing was a gift from Flea. He bought it in Amsterdam. And it later became the lyrical inspiration for our song “Buckle Down”. . . Red star, black fist. 1984.
Note the ridiculous haircut. The preposterous facial expres
sion. The ludicrous tilt of the chin. Why am I trying to seduce the lens? I think I stole these hilarious mannerisms from my dad. Did I mention my outfit? The visible knee posture would later become my trademark for meeting girls.
Backstage immediately before our first-ever headlining show at an arena. It was the Long Beach Arena where I had seen Deep Purple and Rod Stewart when I was seven years old. I am not sure who this girl is or why my hand was mysteriously finding its way down the back of her skirt, but I do know that I was a free man. And why do I look like I’m consoling her?
I know it’s blurry, but to me this is a meaningful shot. It’s of Flea and me listening to some music that George Clinton wanted very much to play for us. That’s Jennifer Bruce sitting on the bed with her back to us. I think we were all high on the first batch of Ecstasy to ever come through L.A. Some hotel, 1985 or ’86.
Two minutes after our fourth-ever show at the Cathay de Grand on Gower and Selma, Gary Leonard took our picture in the backstage hallway. I think our collective enthusiasm shows up strong in this moment. We weren’t jaded or tired of anything. 1983. (Photo credit: Gary Leonard)
Here we are in the midst of an official photo session. That’s D.H., our drummer at the time, rocking the mike. We pulled a switcheroo of instruments for the hell of it and I was the only one who couldn’t actually play the instrument I had switched to for the picture. 1988-ish.
Only God knows what club we are playing in here. I do guesstimate that it is somewhere in America on tour for the Uplift record. Hillel is wearing spats on his shoes. Flea is working the thumb. And I am flanked by two of the greatest of all time.
Something wonderful happening in a church on our first-ever U.S. tour. It was somewhere in Oklahoma, and we were feeling the magic of being a band in front of about twenty people. 1985.
Maybe you can see from these pictures why I fell like a ton of bricks for Carmen Jeanette Hawk. This was somewhere between 1989 and 1990, and we would run like rabbits in love until around ’91. God bless this incredible pixie.
I’m a lucky guy. Jaime Rishar loved me with all her heart, and I loved her right back. Here we are reflecting some sunlight in Papa’s backyard garden. What a blessed feeling to be held by such an angel. Damn. Somewhere in the mid ’90s.
Back in the early years we would come up with absurd and unthinkable concepts for our live performances. On this day for a show at the Whiskey, we dressed and went in character as rabbis. Cliff, our drummer, who is not pictured here, thought that was cool, but chose instead to dress as a top-hatted piece of poop. What a genius. Oh yeah, the guy on the left is legendary musician and producer Al Kooper. Freaky Styley era.
Beneath our kayaks here are the brackish waters of an Alaskan fjord called Endicott Arm. Historically my friends and I would drop whatever nonsense we had going on in the city and head for the great outdoors. This particular trip to Alaska was called the “Kevin Seven.” Three of the fabled seven are pictured here, left to right—Marty Goldberg aka Hal Negro, Michael Peter Balzary aka Mike B. aka Flea, and me.
Two club-kid lovebirds in profile. I imagine this was at a club called Power Tools in downtown L.A. Jennifer Bruce was the hottest go-go dancer this side of the East River. She out–Gwen Stefanied Gwen Stefani before there even was a Gwen Stefani. That’s a compliment to both girls. Circa 1985.
My first roommate, Donde Bastone, had a pretty cool little Hollywood bungalow backhouse. I moved in when I was sixteen and made good use of his record collection, his weed supply, his refrigerator, but maybe not his full-length mirror. Can somebody please undo the top button? Wilcox Avenue. 1979.
This is the rare Siamese ostrich plant that can be found posing amongst the shrubs of the Hollywood Hills. Jennifer was really on a no-holds-barred roll when she dressed me up on this night. Not exactly the Ramones uniform. 1987. (Photo credit: Gary Leonard)
I met Ione on her sixteenth birthday. We fell in love and stayed together for about three years. This was taken about a year and a half into it, and I often think I would have died without her care. We did have lots of fun playing house together.
The Dalai Lama was unbelievably sweet and down to earth when I met him in Dharamsala, India. Notice how he’s holding my hand, which he did for the entire length of our chat (about ten minutes). The guy’s not a bad dresser either.
Here’s the old man on a dope-dealing weekend in San Francisco. Could be the height of his outlaw lifestyle, as I was about to move in with him a year later and put just a hint of a crimp into his gangster way of livin’. Notice his perfectly adjusted nutsack trouser package. Very ’70s.
Not sure who the little three-year-old monkey is on the left, but that’s my mom at age twenty-three looking like she’s thirteen. We lived in California then and apparently I rather enjoyed her company.
For me, this group of four black-and-white snapshots is nothing short of monumental in my tiny life. It’s me smoking pot for the first time. My dad was taking the picture and I was handing the joint to a pretty girl who was about to take her top off. I had only been in L.A. for a day or two and was on my way to doing almost everything imaginable in that kitchen. Palm Avenue, West Hollywood. 1973.
Flea and I have always had a bizarre and sometimes dangerous bond. Like Cain and Abel without the bloodshed. Here we seem to be scowling at each other’s very souls. We’ve probably played music together 10,000 times and I can’t wait for the next. Circa 1990 or ’91.
After we recorded Freaky Styley with George Clinton, he would periodically pop up at our club shows and make himself at home onstage. What a sensational stroke of good luck for us from my accidental mentor. If memory serves, this is us at Jack Spats in the Southbay, deep behind the orange curtain and on our way to a very long night.
I think I got these shorts from Bob Forrest’s girlfriend Sabrina Judge. The knee pads? Well, I was still getting high during the tour for Uplift Mofo and I would get some wacky ideas. That’s our old manager Mark Johnson in the background. Circa 1987.
Here we have the ultra New York East Village vixen, Claire Essex, punching the clock at Balthazar’s about one month before I met her. I actually met her at her workplace in 1999. We toughed it out for almost four years after that, with a few breaks along the way. Her spell on me was beyond powerful and our time together was invaluable. Kiss.
After our first gold record with Mother’s Milk, we got pretty cocky without even realizing it. This is us backstage at the Greek Theater with the actor Michael McKean in full character as David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap. He did a five-minute introduction for us that we all watched from the wings. Needless to say, we were in stitches. Literally. 1989.
This is Claire and me messing around in a drugstore photo booth. The picture always made me think of some new-wave German techno duo called Wish You Were Here. We shared a lot of love, she and I.
Don’t ask me where. It’s backstage somewhere on tour for Freaky Styley. Flea, me, Slim, and Cliff. Come to think of it, it might be Dingwalls in London, England, because that’s where Hillel wore the black leather Swedish military overalls. Skinny little tore-back road dogs. Gotta love it.
Professional photographers get some pretty bad ideas about what backdrops will look good for your band. This one is actually kind of attractive with its wannabe pink, alleyway chic. Back then Flea would let me draw all over him for photo shoots. It was a tradition. I think it was 1987. Left to right: Flea, me, Jackie I., and the golden ring–fingered Slim Bob Billy.
There were times when all Hillel and I had was each other. We were fucked up and understood what it was to be living in an out-of-control fog. We still had style and we still had funk. Looks like we’re in the back of a car, but I have no clue when or where. Circa Freaky Styley.
Don’t know what song we’re playing, but it must have been mere months after John first joined the band. I remember that is how J.F. was wearing his hair when I met him, and that was the guitar he was playing at that time. Safe to say, he and I bonded right off the bat. Notice the heavy-du
ty gloves I found it necessary to be wearing. 1988 or ’89.
Flea and I had been up for a couple of days when we wandered into this San Francisco photo booth. As can be seen by the unison of our expressions, we had charted out a bit of a plan. Somehow we made it back to L.A. in two pieces and started a band a few months later.
Ione’s rare and soulful beauty really shows itself without any inhibitions as she holds her loving man against her naked body. I had come back from our first European tour with a rather large back piece at a time when they weren’t a dime a dozen, and Ione was in shock. She got over it in time to make herself available for this photo. Oddly enough, the photographer, Patricia Steur, was the wife of the Dutch tattoo artist who had rendered the piece, Hank Schiffmacher. 1987 or ’88. (Photo credit: Patricia Steur)
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