Anthony Kiedis
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| Anthony Kiedis | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Anthony Kiedis | |
| Also known as | Cole Dammett, AK, Antoine (Antwan) the Swan, Tony Flow | |
| Born | November 1, 1962 (age 44) Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA |
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| Origin | Los Angeles, California, USA | |
| Genre(s) | Alternative rock Funk rock Funkcore |
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| Occupation(s) | Singer/songwriter | |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals | |
| Years active | 1983 - Present | |
| Label(s) | EMI, Warner Bros. | |
| Associated acts |
Red Hot Chili Peppers | |
| Website | http://www.redhotchilipeppers.com | |
Anthony Kiedis (born November 1, 1962) is the lead singer and a co-founder of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He is also responsible for writing most of the band's vocal melodies and lyrics. He is well known for his onstage athleticism and muscular upper body.
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[edit] Personal life
Anthony Kiedis was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to John Kiedis and Margaret "Peggy" Idema (née Noble). His parents divorced in 1965, when he was three. He has two half-sisters, Julie and Jenny, and a half-brother, James. Kiedis lived with his mother in Grand Rapids until he was eleven, then moved to Los Angeles, California, with his father, a soon-to-be actor and drug dealer. Anthony's father was the person who introduced him to drugs for the first time. Anthony would later go on to use and abuse many drugs in his lifetime. His great-grandfather, Anton Kiedis, is Lithuanian and his paternal grandmother has some Mohican blood. His godfather was Sonny Bono. Kiedis spent much of his youth listening to Sly & the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder - artists who would influence the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sound. Around the age of fifteen, while a student at Fairfax High School, he met Michael Balzary (Flea) 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, due to his abusive relationship with drugs. This cycle of addiction and recovery in the mid to late 80's would become a basis for a lot of Anthony's early lyrics. After dropping out of UCLA, Kiedis was offered to open for a friend's band, so he got together with friends Flea, Slovak, and Jack Irons. Initially, the group was named Tony Flow and the Miraculousy Majestic Masters of Mayhem. Slovak and Irons were in the band Anthym at this time. According to his autobiography, Kiedis used to take up 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. Also in Scar Tissue, Kiedis talks about how he slept over Flea's house in his child years, and repeatedly engaged in sexual activity with Flea's sister, Karen. He lost his virginity when he was around twelve years old to his father's girlfriend at the time, a redhead named Kimberly.
Later in life, Kiedis often struggled 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. He relapsed in 1993 because of a strong painkiller used while having his wisdom teeth removed. He went in and out of rehab over the next few years, but has reportedly avoided another relapse since December 24, 2000. "It’s easy to be a junkie," Kiedis said in the March, 2007, issue of Blender. "It’s not easy to be one of the greatest guitar players of all time, or one of the greatest writers."[1]
In 2004, Kiedis published a memoir titled Scar Tissue, which peaked at number 17 on the New York Times Bestseller List.[2] It is a detailed insight to Kiedis's life from a rebellious child to a rockstar.
[edit] Role in the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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In early 1982 Kiedis, high school friends with Hillel Slovak, witnessed young Hillel bullied by a young Michael Balzary and stood up for Slovak. Kiedis, a kind of friend to the nerds and geeks as he says in his book Scar Tissue, stood up to bullies. When Kiedis went to confront the bully Michael Balzary (Flea),he realized they were alike in more ways than one. Both quickly became good friends. Jack Irons (drummer) began to socialize with the two and eventually Slovak was friends with all four of them. The group were invited to play in a club as Tony Flow and 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, leading up to their first studio album, at which time Jack and Hillel reunited with their original project. After The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hillel Slovak was reunited with Anthony and Flea. Another album later, Jack Irons rejoined the band until leaving due to Hillel's drug overdose. Since then, the band has experienced at least twelve different line ups, releasing nine studio albums in the span of 24 years.
Kiedis has always been the band's frontman with his good looks and charisma. Along with fellow band co-founder 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 one of the main musical songwriters of the group and writes most of the lyrics, although all of their songs are credited to Flea-Kiedis-.. with the other band members at the time. From 1989's "Mother's Milk" to 1991's "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" album and since 1999's "Californication" album, John Frusciante and Flea have written all of the music for RHCP with Kiedis supplying lyrics and melodies. His lyrical 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.
He started being the vocalist of the band by rapping, 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 rhythm and beat style of funk and hip-hop, their first song doing this was "Knock Me Down". The melody was actually shaped and reformed by the guitarist - John Frusciante. Upon joining the band, he sang lead vocals on the song along with Kiedis. 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 favor 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.
[edit] 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 in the 1990s, Kiedis appeared in the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze vehicle Point Break playing Tone, a surfer. The Chase, a 1994 movie starring Charlie Sheen as an estranged man trying to escape the cops with a young woman he kidnapped, had Flea and Kiedis have a small part playing metalheads who chase Sheen's character in a 4x4 truck and end up crashing.
[edit] References
- ^ Norris, Chris. ""Anthony Kiedis: The Pursuit of Happiness"", Blender Magazine, March 2007. Retrieved on February 13, 2007. (in English)
- ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1325709,00.html Observer.guardian.co.uk
[edit] External links
- Official Red Hot Chili Peppers website
- Anthony Kiedis at the Internet Movie Database
- Notable Names Database profile
- Blender Interview
- New York Rock Interview
- Celebrity Cafe Interview
- A review of his recent autobiography
- Romanian Fan Site
- Brazilian Fan Site
Categories: Articles which may contain original research | Articles lacking sources from January 2007 | All articles lacking sources | Red Hot Chili Peppers members | American rock singers | American singer-songwriters | American male singers | Michigan musicians | People from Grand Rapids, Michigan | Lithuanian-Americans | Native American musicians | American vegetarians | Former drug addicts | 1962 births | Living people
