Even if you don’t listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, you might remember Flea as the crazy shaved head bass playing hyena during Super Bowl 2014’s Bruno Mars half-time show. His memoir Acid For the Children details his stable start to life in Australia subsequently obliterated by a family move to the United States when he was 8.
His wild upbringing on the streets of Los Angeles kept me calculating his age...he was smoking marijuana as a pre-teen. Not surprisingly his drug experimentation enlarged and increased as he entered adulthood.
Flea also focuses deeply on friendships, his obvious biological connection to music starting with traditional jazz trumpet through punk rock, and his education through literature (he read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a pre teen).
Musicians will appreciate his attempts to find a band that tapped his artistic reserve and his trial by fire discovery that meditation is a far healthier and life preserving route to inner peace.
He ‘threatens’ a sequel at the end of the book to further his history with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He lived so much life before even getting to his most notable band he was able to easily fill the close to 400 pages with adventures galore.