Acid for the Children: A Memoir

If you bought or are buying this book with the idea of getting to the extraordinary bass playing abilities of Flea...this is just a heads up.....its based around his early childhood, very misspent youth and tales of druggery and a little petty crime.From a musical point of view.....his first real exposure to music was through Jazz and his double bass playing and very unstable step dad. So I get perhaps that he was never going to approach ..lets call it "Rock Music" from the usual angle. He also blew trumpet...and again that is a different place to approach the bass from...(although I did dabble with the same instrument before I got to the bass. I was too lazy and unengaged with this to do much)So most of the rest of the book revolves around his dabbling with narcotics, with some teenage angst and girl crushes. He clearly had a "Non standard" ..Experimental Jazz upbringing, and of course this has a big effect on him, and in a way that is quite sad and very harrowing.Despite several statements that he wasn't addicted and wasn't an addict.....in my eyes...it seems that he was..ok maybe not to one particular narcotic, and he was quite damning of heroin about heroin, but clearly he couldn't stop taking drugs of some sort.By the end of the book is the realisation that drugs are very bad and have a long lasting effect on mind and body. I would question the several pages written about how precisely and step by step, (24 steps) you should "Geez" (inject cocaine) if drug taking is bad.On a musical point...I know there was always a fair old gap between what UK Punk (Rock) was about and US Punk was about. But Flea seemed to have been taken by the Circle Jerks...and that this band was his "Punk Rock Template"..I find this extraordinary ....shoot me down all you US Hardcore fans.....but this was very different from the Punk Rock world I grew up with here in the UK (Circa 1976/77)Ok so a lot of our musical geniuses were pretty messed up with Narcotics of one sort or another, but forgive me for saying that they probably are not a requirement for developing your talent. I think Flea is an outstanding player, and I will never forget him being hung upside down on the Jonathan Ross TV Chat show and performing Foxy Lady with the RHCP's ..perhaps he was just imagining he was back in the country of his birth!!!I'm assuming I'm going to get more from Volume II of his story ..as by the end of this....the band had yet to form..Knock Me Down......

Flea, ace bassist in one of my favourite bands tells the start of his life story. Lots of awful teenage behaviour and tons of drugs but strangely he comes across as an endearing and innocent soul. Very well written.

Absolutely brilliant book, didn't expect it was this good, bright and honest! It's really easy to read and you go through it fast but the details in it just stick around.

Well written and very entertaining read.

Loved this book. Fantastically written. Such an interesting bloke/life.