Anthony Kiedis was born on November 1, 1962, in Grand Rapids. Passionate about music since he was a child, during high school, attended Fairfax High School, he is called as a roadie of the school group, Anthem, in which he plays his friend Hillel Slovak, and who performs songs by Led Zeppelin and Queen. Progressively, Anthony refines his poetic vein, inventing new presentations. At the age of eighteen, together with Hillel and Flea, bass player of the band, he finds himself playing under the name “Tony Flow and the miraculously majestic masters of Mayhem” several funk pieces; later, the boys will take the name of Red Hot Chili Peppers, inspired by a billboard of an old concert featuring the British Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers by Nick Lowe, Brinsley Schwarz, and Snakefinger.
Unlike Anthony, however, Irons and Slovak consider the Red Hot Chili Peppers project secondary, since they give priority to another band, What is this?: that’s why they leave the band. Shortly afterward, the record company EMI proposes to Red Hot to record their first album, and so the band sees the inputs of Jack Sherman and Cliff Martinez. With the newcomers, however, neither Anthony nor Flea can find the same feeling they had with their previous partners: this doesn’t prevent them from releasing their first album, called “The Red Hot Chili Peppers” and characterized by the (not very successful) single “True men don’t kill coyotes”.Iron and Slovak returned to the band after the second album, but Jack left the band again after Hillel’s death by overdose in 1988. The drug problem, however, also involves Kiedis, who has been smoking marijuana since he was twelve years old: it was his father, used to consume drugs on a regular basis, who initiated him to this practice, also introducing him to cocaine. Over the years Anthony often falls into the tunnel, as confirmed by the song “Under the bridge”, although the death of Hillel, his guitarist above all his friend, due to the abuse of speedball, leads Kiedis to try to detoxify himself from heroin and cocaine. He entered rehab in the same 1988, and he resisted until 1994 when he started using drugs again. In the meantime, the album “Mother’s milk” is released, which sees the arrival of drummer Chad Smith and guitarist John Frusciante in the band: one of the tracks on the album is called “Knock me down”, and is dedicated to his missing friend. The popularity de Red Hot, and as a result of Kiedis, increases considerably. The most famous work remains, without doubt, “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”, which makes the group known worldwide. Shortly after, Frusciante leaves the Red Hot Chili Peppers, publishing alone “One hot minute”, and is replaced by Dave Navarro, former guitarist of Jane’s Addiction. In 1999, Kiedis stopped using drugs for good: that was the year of the album “Californication”, perhaps the biggest success of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Engaged to Beth Jeans Houghton, an English singer-songwriter, Kiedis does not eat meat, and in 2008 he was elected by Peta the most sensual vegetarian of the year. The father of Everly Bear, a son he had together with model Heather Christie and born in 2007, chose the name of the child because of his admiration for the Everly Brothers. Anthony met Kurt Cobain (to whom he was very close friends, and to whom he dedicated, in “One hot minute”, “Tearjerker”), Eddie Vedder and Billy Morgan: bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Guns’n’Roses and Smashing Pumpkins, in fact, often opened Red Hot concerts. In 2012, writer Mark Haskell Smith identified MacArthur Park, located in Los Angeles, as the place where Kiedis used to consume drugs: twenty years earlier, the musician spoke generically to “Rolling Stone” magazine about a bridge on the outskirts of the city, avoiding to specify which one it was to prevent people from looking for it.
Discography
1984 – The Red Hot Chili Peppers
1985 – Freaky Styley
1987 – The Uplift Mofo Party Plan
1989 – Mother’s Milk
1991 – Blood Sugar Sex Magik
1995 – One Hot Minute
1999 – Californication
2002 – By the Way
2006 – Stadium Arcadium
2011 – I’m with You
2016 – The Getaway
