Anthony Kiedis

Anthony Kiedis

Anthony Kiedis (pronounced kee-diss) (born November 1, 1962) is the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a co-founder of the band, and is responsible for writing most of the band's lyrics.

Personal life

Anthony Kiedis was born in Lowell, Michigan, to John Kiedis (also known as Spider or Blackie Dammett) and Margaret "Peggy" Noble, and has two half-sisters, Julie and Jenny and a half-brother, James. His parents divorced in 1965 when he was three. He lived with his mother in Lowell until he was twelve, then moved to California with his father, who was an actor in Los Angeles. His great-grandfather, Anton Kiedis, was Lithuanian, and his father's mother has some Mohican blood. His godfather was Sonny Bono.

Kiedis spent much of his youth listening to Sly Stone, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder, artists who would eventually shape the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sound. Around the age of fifteen, while a student at Fairfax High School, he met Michael Balzary and Hillel Slovak, with whom he would eventually go on to form a band. He went on to study at UCLA, but dropped out after losing interest. After dropping out of UCLA, Kiedis began living with his friend Flea and eventually decided to form a band with him, Hillel Slovak, and Jack Irons. Initially, the group was named Tony Flow & The Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem. Hillel was in the band Anthym at this time.

According to his autobiography, Kiedis used to adopt the role of a "protector" in school, defending all the kids who were outcast or bullied. When future bandmate Flea was playfully putting Kiedis's friend in a headlock, he told Flea to back off. When the misunderstanding was revealed, they became friends.

According to his memoir, his father introduced him to drugs at an early age. He also lost his virginity to his father's eighteen year old girlfriend, Kimberly, at the age of twelve. Later in life, he had many struggles with drug addiction, including heroin and cocaine. He tried to get clean after the heroin overdose death of Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak on June 25,1988 saying he would never shoot up again.He entered rehab and ended up staying clean for 5 years, but relapsed in 1993. He went in and out of rehab and relapsed many times during the next few years. He has reportedly avoided another relapse since December of 2000.

In 2004 Kiedis published a memoir named Scar Tissue, which peaked at number 17 on the New York Times Bestseller List.[1]. It is a detailed insight to Kiedis's life from a rebellious child to a rockstar.

Role in the Red Hot Chili Peppers

While Kiedis was attending Fairfax High School, he was in numerous bands, but none of them were up for consideration for a real band. It was not until early 1982 when he got together with high school friends Hillel Slovak, Michael Balzary and Jack Irons to play in a club as Tony Flow & The Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, which would eventually change its name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The band's original line up consisted of the four friends, until Slovak and Irons left the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play with Anthym. Since then, the band has experienced at least twelve different line ups, releasing nine studio albums in the span of 22 years.

Having co-founded the band with Michael Balzary (Flea), he was the band frontman with his good looks and his charisma. Along with Flea, Kiedis has never left the band, although in his 2004 memoir Scar Tissue, he said he was kicked out of the band for a month due to rehabilitation problems. Kiedis is the main songwriter of the group, pounding down nearly all of the lyrics of the band's repitore. All of their songs are credited to Flea-Kiedis-.. with the other band members at the time. Kiedis has said that each band member writes his own part for each song. His songwriting style has varied over the years. From their early roots as a band, Kiedis wrote many lyrics involving sex, drugs, and life in L.A. As his musical tastes expanded and his outlook on life changed, he started to write songs about spirituality, struggles in life and loss of friends, incorporating a larger sense of social realism and thoughtfulness in his lyrics.

Kiedis' singing style has drastically changed over the years. While one cannot simply "learn" to sing, Kiedis has learned to control his vocals more and more with each album. He started being the vocalist of the band by rapping, of which he could do at extreme speeds, keeping a consistent rhythm. Starting from as early as Mother's Milk in 1989, Kiedis would write songs for the band with more melody rather than the basic rythym and beat style of funk and hip-hop, their first song doing this being "Knock Me Down". 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik still saw Kiedis rapping, but he started singing his first melodic ballads in songs like "Under the Bridge", "Breaking the Girl" and "I Could Have Lied". Over the years, Kiedis would favour singing rather than rapping. Kiedis said in his memoirs that he got many vocal coaches, but none of them would help him sing "better". In fact, it was not until 1999's Californication when he could take full control of his voice to sing. Many critics and reviewers agree that his voice has greatly improved and might have even reached its height in the Chili Peppers' most recent album Stadium Arcadium.

In 2009 the band will be eligible to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Acting roles

Using the stage name Cole Dammett, Kiedis landed a number of small roles in television and film as a teenager in the late 1970s. His early credits include F.I.S.T. and the 1978 after school special It's a Mile from Here to Glory.

Resuming his acting work, Kiedis appeared as an actor in the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze vehicle Point Break playing the surfer Tone. The Chase, a 1994 movie featuring Charlie Sheen as an estranged man trying to escape the cops with a young woman he kidnapped, had Flea and Kiedis play two metalheads in a big 4x4 who try to stop Sheen's red sportscar and end up crashing like imbeciles.

Trivia

• Kiedis is 5 ft 8.5 in.
• He has ten tattoos.
• He met the Dalai Lama during a trip in India at the end of 1996.
• While actually only part Native American, Kiedis has exhibited strong interest in that heritage, showcasing it in the tribal tattoo on his upper back, and he has used it as lyrical inspiration in songs such as "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes", "American Ghost Dance", "Apache Rose Peacock", "Fight Like a Brave" and "Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky".
• The song "Fight Like A Brave" was written on an aeroplane, with Armenian kid, Raffi Nercessian. Anthony had gone back to his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan to recover from his drug addiction after being fired from the band. He managed to kick the habit and wrote the song on the return flight. On his arrival he was asked to re-join the band and despite the fact that he started using again within weeks, the song was recorded.
• Since the death of his dog Buster, Kiedis has acquired a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks, named Katie and Sammi. Buster's name was given as a tribute to legendary silent film comedian, Buster Keaton.
• He contracted a dangerous tropical disease, Dengue Fever, whilst hiking in the Borneo rainforest at the end of 1992.
• He recently appeared in the video for Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down
• Kiedis apparenty has a bad relationship with Mike Patton as well as his now defunct band Mr. Bungle. He is responsible for kicking the band out of many summer festivals in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, as well as others in 2000.

External links

• Official Red Hot Chili Peppers page
• Anthony Kiedis at IMDb
• Notable Names Database profile
• New York Rock Interview
• Celebrity Cafe Interview
• A satirical review of his recent autobiography
• Romanian Fan Site
• Brazilian Fan Site