Jeff Apter - Fornication: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story

Opening
The Mild Ones, West Palm Beach, Florida, June 2003

Chapter One
We would be friends forever, for better, for worse, for everything in the universe.

Chapter Two
No pubes! I told you guys no pubes!

Chapter Three
Thats homo.

Chapter Four
The next day my shit turned snow white. I thought that was Gods way of telling me, You cant do a lot of this.

Chapter Five
Our music is like a bowel movement.

Chapter Six
Dude, your brothers dead.

Chapter Seven
You cant go around taking your dick out. Some people dont like it.

Chapter Eight
I see that erection as being my enemy.

Chapter Nine
Were just like Spinal Tap, although it isnt our drummers who keep exploding.

Chapter Ten
Its still about pelvis thrust.

Chapter Eleven
I dont care whether I live or die.

Chapter Twelve
The results are considerably better than they were during my junkie time.

Ending
Hopefully we can look back and have a laugh at what knuckleheads we were.

To Diana,
for everything, once again

T HIS surely cant be right. This is supposed to be the backstage area at a crazy, wild, sexy rocknroll show. A Red Hot Chili Peppers show, no less, a celebration of the music of a band that revelled in playing nude with only a single tube sock dangling between them and a charge of indecent exposure. This is also the same group now minus one deceased member that thumbed their noses at one of rocks most iconic bands and images by posing with the very same socks on cocks for the cover of their 1988 Abbey Road EP.

Its a band whose lead singer, Anthony Kiedis, not only penned a song by the name Sir Psycho Sexy, but spent many years living up to the tag. Kiedis has also gone by the name Antwan the Swan, because of what he once referred to as his magic wand. Kiedis name has been linked with actresses Jennifer Aniston and Ione Skye and supermodel Heidi Klum, plus pop stars Madonna and Sporty Spice, amongst many others. Hes lived so large that even eternal teenager, Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, would have had trouble keeping up with him. And this is a band whose drummer, Chad Smith one Chili Pepper who isnt an addict-on-the-mend has no problem spawning children (hes the father of three), but for the life of him cant maintain a relationship with any of their three mothers. Its a band whose exuberant, gap-toothed, sweet-natured bassist, the now 40-year-old Michael Balzary (aka Flea), still cant keep his trousers on once he hits the stage and plugs in. He usually prefers to pound his bass while dressed in Y-fronts, often less. Its also a band that in its turbulent 20-year life has lost a founding member, Hillel Slovak, to heroin, and miraculously saved a second, John Frusciante, from the same pointless demise. A band that has nearly enough former members to make up a football team. A band that has had not just one major commercial and critical rebirth, but two, a near impossibility in an increasingly fickle musical world.

And here they are backstage, pre show, in the midst of another hugely successful tour and album stretch, with incense burning and tofu on the menu. By The Way, their eighth long-player, has already shifted eight million copies and rising worldwide, with reviews praising its rich musical tapestry, comparing it to everyone from The Beatles to Beach Boy mastermind Brian Wilson. Rolling Stone magazine declared it a near perfect balance of gutter-grime and high art aspiration. Its a supremely strong follow-up to 1999s 12-million-plus-selling Californication, an album that rescued the band from a seemingly unstoppable slide into rocknroll insignificance. Theres a lot to celebrate so where are the frantic, horny, anything-goes groupies with heliumated breasts? Where are the drugs? Where is the booze? Where are the dwarves? What the hells going on?

Picture this: Flea is seated with tour manager Louis Mathieu and his assistant Gage Freeman. Theyre playing Boggle, the chosen sport of indolent middle America, while being serenaded by soothing classical music. Flea looks up, his luminous blue eyes not quite hiding a steely intent. This is a very serious Boggle tournament, he insists. I am the current Boggle champion. Hes hoping that maybe his 14-year-old daughter Clara whose name is tattooed on his left arm, right next to Jimi Hendrix will join him soon. If she can take the time out from her all-girl band, that is.

The best word to describe Flea in 2003 is beatific. The words God and gratitude dot his sentences; he says a silent prayer before every meal. Although not tied to one formal religion, Flea now believes that, God, of course, is the most important part in everybody.

Kiedis is nearby, in an amiable bear hug with his father, John, whos better known to all as Blackie Dammett, B-grade actor, former Hollywood scenester and the self-proclaimed Editor and Chief Potentate of the bands fan club organisation, Rockinfreakapotamus Peoplehood, Inc, a tag swiped from Kiedis nickname for the bands breakthrough 1989 album, Mothers Milk.

The Kiedis relationship is soap-opera worthy. There have been long periods of separation, reconciliations, recriminations, hero worship even a stretch when the teenage Kiedis shared a Hollywood home with his father, where they lived and partied like two bachelors on the prowl. Kiedis senior introduced his son to dope, Hollywood wannabes, party girls and the rock stars who hung out with him at Rodney Bingenheimers notorious English Disco, LAs coolest dive at the time. The Kiedis home was an open house where the sight of a naked woman sometimes several was absolutely nothing to be alarmed about. Kiedis father even helped his son lose his virginity, when he was aged 12. Son repaid father many years later by buying him a sprawling six-and-a-half-acre lakeside property in Michigan. So exactly how does Kiedis remember his Hollywood youth? Fights, drugs and lots of guys and girls getting crazy.