Best known as the bassist and a founding member of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea (born Michael Peter Balzary) has written an affecting, emotional and keenly self-aware memoir focusing on his first 20 years. Although Acid for the Children ends just when he and best friend Anthony Kiedis form their band (with Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons), Flea packed a lot of living into those first two decades. This 400-page memoir moves at a galloping pace.
Born in Australia and raised in Rye, N.Y., Flea and his sister were raised by their divorced mother, who was vivacious and smart but not maternal. "There is not one instance in my life where I can ever remember her holding or cuddling me," he writes. Pretty much left on his own to wander the streets, he writes, "My earliest memories are rooted in an underlying sense that something's wrong with me, that everyone else is clued into a group consciousness from which I'm excluded." At age 12, the family moves to California, where he discovers marijuana, cocaine and crystal meth. "For clarity's sake, I've never been a drug addict," he writes. "A wildly out of control and misguided experimenter, yes.... Experiments that yielded sadness, neurosis, and physical damage." He finds his calling and community in music. "Punk rock opened the door to a new way of thinking that applied to every facet of my life," he writes.
Flea's impressive memoir is filled with outrageous and rambunctious memories but told with style and introspection. Happily, it ends with the promise of a second volume. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant