Scar Tissue is the autobiography of Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis. It was released in 2004 by Hyperion and authored by Kiedis with Larry Sloman, who compiled information and interviewed various parties associated with the plot line. The story follows Kiedis from his birth in 1962 to the (then) present day of early 2004. It follows Kiedis into the depth of his experiences with drug addiction. The title name was taken from the single "Scar Tissue" released five years earlier on the Red Hot Chili Peppers album Californication.
According to the book, Kiedis' first drug experience was with his father Blackie Dammett, a former drug dealer, at age twelve. By the time his band formed and became more popular in the 1980s, he and former bandmate Hillel Slovak had severe drug addictions. On Slovak's death from overdose in 1988, Kiedis writes that he was so shaken that he skipped town, missing the funeral. Kiedis had no idea what to do without his friend. His death only made matters worse, and caused him to do more and more hardcore drugs. He attempted to get clean afterwards but relapsed in 1994 after being given medications while getting a tooth pulled. Later on, he reveals that he was not actually clean, as he claimed at the time, during the late-nineties Californication era of the band's existence. He claims his new clean date is December 24, 2000. The book reports very specific dates, such as when Kiedis was conceived. The book reached a high of #1 on The New York Times Best Seller List.
Kiedis is working to develop a television series for HBO based on Scar Tissue.
On October 14, 2011 it was announced that FX has picked up the rights to produce Scar Tissue and that Entourage producers, Marc Abrams and Mike Benson will produce the series. The series is expected to follow the first half of the book during Anthony's pre teen and teenage years and his relationship with his father Blackie.
An audiobook version was released by Phoenix Audio on June 30, 2006. It was read by Rider Strong.
Famous quotes containing the words scar and/or tissue:
“Nothing is uglier than the sinner, nothing so leprous or fetid; the scar of his crimes is still raw, and he stinks like the cave of Hell.”
—Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (c. 348–405)
“Whether or not his newspaper and a set of senses reduced to five are the main sources of the so-called “real life” of the so- called average man, one thing is fortunately certain: namely, that the average man himself is but a piece of fiction, a tissue of statistics.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)