Flea’s Autobiography Now Available

Flea’s long-awaited autobiography, Acid for the Children, is now available. The memoir has been several years in the making.

“Today, the thing that I spent hundreds of hours quietly writing at home, in hotels, on buses, and wherever I could get some minutes of solitude, will no longer exist only as a process of my thoughts, but will take on a new life as a tangible thing to hold. Thank you trees and ink,” he wrote on the RHCP website.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers co-founder and bass icon focuses on his formative (and wild) years growing up between Australia, New York City, and Los Angeles. His mother’s boyfriend Walter was a jazz musician, which opened up his eyes to music. A basement bebop jam session was one of his first musical experiences.

“I remember they were playing fast and Walter played the upright bass,” he said in an interview with Forbes. “He’s hunched over the bass attacking it like a f**king animal. All these guys — saxophones, trumpet, drummer, vamping piano, deep groove. It was like the music took me. I started screaming and yelling and laughing and staring at them. A door opened up to something I didn’t know existed and it was the most magical thing I ever could have imagined.”

Flea’s writing style reflects jazz culture with dreamy prose to describe his childhood. The book takes us all the way up to the creation of Red Hot Chili Peppers but stops there in 1983. He originally wrote up through the year 2000 but decided to break it down into a more focused era. Asked if there will be another volume he said, “I just don’t know. I need to process it, get through it and then decide what I’m going to do. Cause I was certain I was going to do it and right now to be completely honest I’m on the fence.”

Acid For The Children is available now in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio book.