By Lawrence Grobel

In Anthony Kiedis's just-published memoir Scar Tissue he describes a scene from 1997 in which he and a drug dealer pull into the parking lot of a "cheap hooker motel on Sunset" Boulevard. The dealer went to score some dope. "I was waiting in the truck, when this family got out of their car and headed for their room.... I looked over at their car and saw a Chili Peppers bumper sticker on it. Then I looked at the kids, and they both had on Chili Peppers T-shirts. I felt horribly ashamed and embarrassed. I slouched in my seat and pulled the visor down. Here was a family of fans proud to fly their Red Hot colors, and I was at the same motel but trying to score drugs from some insidious dope dealer."

It got worse. There came a time when he had no money in his pocket and an overwhelming need for some heroin. "What I did have was a beautiful white Stratocaster guitar signed by all of the Rolling Stones.... I was so desperate that I bartered the signed guitar for some drugs that would get me high for about ten minutes."

If it's sex, drugs and rock and roll you want to read about, Kiedis has written the book, one that can share space on the shelf with William Burroughs's Junky and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight as a detailed blow-by-blow revelation of what it's like to sink into the sordid world of self-destruction and despair. This is a brave, no-holds-barred, 465-page confession. It's not glamorous (though he does describe a hell of a lot of blow jobs by beautiful women), and it's not uplifting (Kiedis never really knew what bandmate Flea thought of his drug use, even though they had been friends since high school).

Scar Tissue is a glimpse into a world most of us don't know. We see the Chili Peppers rocking out on stage, we listen to their records and we think these guys have to be the coolest mofos on the planet. Then you read Kiedis's book and you wonder how he managed to live through all the relapses and screwups to write it. ("My closet was filled with the accoutrements of serious damage-doing. I had jackets that had drugs, jackets that had pipes, jackets that had syringes, jackets that had money, jackets that had Polaroid sex photos, the whole gamut.")

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been around for more than two decades. They've changed drummers and guitarists, but the core of Kiedis and Flea has remained throughout. They lost their friend and guitarist Hillel Slovak to drugs, and then lost guitarist John Frusciante for the period between Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Californication (when they put out One Hot Minute with guitarist Dave Navarro). But the miracle of the band is that they have improved with each new album. Californication was a huge hit, and they followed that with their most soulful record to date, By the Way. But it hasn't been easy. Kiedis has loved and lost more times than even a guy with his looks and talent deserves. He has been in and out of rehab, he has been sober for five years and then relapsed for months, then sobered up, then relapsed. Currently he is going on four years of sobriety and counting. But, as he says at the end of his book, "a week doesn't go by when I'm not visited by the idea of getting loaded."

In a 2002 article in the LA Weekly, John Albert wrote: "More than any current artist, Kiedis appears to have lived the quintessential L.A. experience, having been a child actor, a drug addict, a rock star, a hedonist and a spiritualist."

I went to see the single, clean and sober Kiedis at his new house in one of the canyons of Beverly Hills, which he currently shares with his dog Buster.