Music

A big mouth in many ways, Anthony Kiedis was born in 1962 in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA)

Kiedis shared his childhood and adolescence between the harsh winters of Michigan with his mother and crazy summers with his actor father in Hollywood. It was the latter who introduced him to drugs at the age of twelve. Marijuana and cocaine, in fact almost all the products in vogue at the time, were tried with the family. To the point of getting out of hand when Anthony had just turned 14 and, believe it or not, heroin was mistaken for coke. Quite a childhood!

 In "Scar Tissue", his autobiography written in 2004 with journalist Larry Sloman and which also gives its title to a superb, very personal song, the singer remembers this time with an incredible candor tinged with carefreeness: "These trips to California embody the happiest moments of my life," he recalls. The result is that Kiedis has struggled for years against the demons of various addictions. Without ever being sure of getting out of it definitively, until recently.

Continuing to follow in his father's footsteps, he first considered a career as an actor, landed supporting roles in children's TV shows and even played Sylvester Stallone's son in "F.I.S.T.", a film of little scope released in 1978. Anthony was 16 years old at the time. Thereafter, he regularly answered the call of the big screen, sometimes to play his own character (as in an Ice Cube video) and most often in B movies, or even complete duds. We will therefore only remember "Point Break" in 1991 for its now cult character.

Failing to make his mark on the seventh art, Kiedis met Michael "Flea" Balzary, who would become the bassist of the Red Hots in 1982 and above all an inseparable partner of the singer. In their young adult escapades and then during epic tours that had nothing to envy to those of the Who or the Rolling Stones. They were two decades earlier, but the Red Hot matched them for excess.

Born under the California sun, the American quartet is celebrating this year the 40th anniversary of their first eponymous album. It already gave pride of place to this rock fusion tinged with funk as well as rap, which was to become their trademark. There were also some hallucinatory tracks on this record such as "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" which tends to prove that they didn't only drink water in the rehearsal room!

Over a four-decade career and thirteen studio albums, the Red Hot have not only inspired the name of the TV series "Californication" (2007 to 2013) with the title of their 1999 album (probably their best) but can also boast a string of hits, including fifteen number 1s in the United States such as the turbulent "Get Up And Jump" (1984).  "Higher Ground" (1989), "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away" (1991), "Aeroplane" (1996), "Otherside", "Scar Tissue" and of course "Californication" (1999), "The Zephyr Song" and "By the Way" (2002) or "Snow (Hey Oh)" (2006). Over time, it’ s odd to realize that it is the quieter melodies that we remember the most..

(AK/ML - Photo: Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: Anthony Kiedis with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the stage of the Pinkpop festival in the Netherlands on June 4, 1990 (© Etienne Tordoir)