Acid For The Children

★★★ Flea HEADLINE. £20

Memoir covering the early years of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist.

Bold of Michael Balzary AKA Flea to imagine that his life story is sufficiently engaging that it requires 373 pages of picaresque autobiography before he details the debut Red Hot Chili Peppers gig, as Tony Flow And The Miraculously Majestic Masters Of Mayhem, in 1983. To his credit, his fast-paced, openhearted prose, laden with wide-eyed wonder, makes his journey from Australia to Los Angeles via New York engaging, his lust for life undiminished by regular incidents of domestic violence, encounters with paedophile teachers and a boundless appetite for drugs. Flea’s love for bandmate Anthony Kiedis shines throughout, as does his allconsuming passion for music, so you can almost forgive him for comparing the Chili Peppers’ wild energy to “that monk in the photograph setting himself on fire”. Almost.