On Scar Tissue however, the proposal is that Kiedis’ life is far from the worry-free, uber-attractive rockorama we all think it is.

Technically it’s a semi-autobiography since Anthony Kiedis got loads of advice from collaborator Larry Sloman. Sloman also helped out Howard Stern and Bob Dylan on their tell-all books. I’ve heard Kiedis on interviews and the prose, though probably cleaned up and profusely edited by Sloman, stays true to his straightforward, no-bullshit conversational attitude peppered with hippie parlance and greeting card "love is all around" sentiment.

The book tracks Kiedis as he grows up on the mean streets of Los Angeles, hooks up with his future bandmates Michael Balzary (Flea) and the late lamented Hillel Slovak in high school, takes us through each of the RHCP albums, his bouts with drugs and attempts at rehabilitation, his spontaneous journeys to exotic locales, his women and more drugs galore. The book ends with a catch me upper. Kiedis in the present day.

NME called it "the book of the year." Here’s why.

First off, the bad points. There’s no stopping the occasional, overblown, "Yeah, I’m a rockstar!" passages but Kiedis never harps on these for long except to make a clarifying comment or two. While I am curious about his love and sex life (among them director Sofia Copolla, model Claire Essex and drop dead sexy Carmen Hawk – whose bare-breasted pic in the book is drool worthy), a lot of the parts about this revolving door of girlfriends and women come off unsurprisingly like celebrity gossip meets macho posturing.

On more than one occasion though, it’s refreshing for a rock star to own up to his failures in conquest. Like how Sinead O’ Connor led him on then dropped him like hot potatoes for no apparent reason. Apparently, it also happens to alpha males like Kiedis. I also highly suspect that the volume of drugs Kiedis took has been exaggerated. I mean, we are reading about it, hey? How he sometimes slips into post-therapy language often grates.

The failure of the book to scratch beyond the surface of this faster-than-a-roadrunner life is an inevitable offshoot of the pace and writing. Besides, it would be dangerously out of character for Kiedis to reflect on so and so topic for three chapters (the death of Slovak, Kiedis’s supposed "best friend," only merited a page).

The good thing about Scar Tissue is that it chugs right along its momentum. It spreads out when the topic needs more detail, sparse where it needs to be – thus avoiding the usual overblown, pompous and suffocatingly boring stuff that other books of its ilk are full of.

The insight and trivia behind the songs is a RHCP fan’s wet dream (Did you know that "Breaking the Girl" was about Sinead O Connor?). The creative process of the Peppers is revealing and bands can pick up a few tips on how to keep their camaraderie alive.

By the time we’re through, his strength to own up to a mea culpa stance about his addiction and recovery lends the book a "story in progress" air. After all, Kiedis unlike Cobain, is still alive. While Scar Tissue isn’t as confessional or page bleeding as Journals, it is an admirable book by other rock autobiog standards.

A lot of the illuminating passages seem to me as if the author himself was caught unawares. My favorite is the time when Kiedis wrote his dad a note asking if he could get his cherry popped by his dad’s 18-year old girlfriend. After reading the note, dad gave his tacit approval and even provided the bed.

Throughout the various tangents and vignettes weaving in and out of the book, the main thread is Kiedis’s account of his war with addiction and eventual recovery. This is paralleled by his growth from a fame-seeking, priapic, juvenile punk to a mature and dedicated funkster.

Over all, it’s a fun read. By the end of the book, sincerity and candor, as in many punk records, carries the day.

Here’s a few of the memorable excerpts from Scar Tissue:

[My father] was sitting at the table with a pretty 18 year old girl he’d been hanging out with that week. "Do you want to smoke a joint?’ he asked me.

-- On smoking ganja for the first time at age 12

You’re young and you’re not jaded yet so the idea of being naked and playing this beautiful music with your best friends and generating so much color and energy and love in a moment of being nude is great.

I always found Billy [Corgan] very supportive and never competitive or weirdly jealous. . .their drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was a monster.

[John Frusciante] wanted to be in a world that was a beautiful manifestation of his own creation. You‘re not going to find that on a promo tour.

The news sucked the air out of the entire house. . .For all his screaming and all his darkness, he was just lovable.