Written by Anthony Kiedis has spoken about the time he was kicked out of Red Hot Chili Peppers when his addiction to heroin was “starting to hurt the collective.”
The vocalist shares his memories of the period in the new Netflix documentary, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers” Our Brother Hillel, which focuses on the life and legacy of late Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak, who passed away in 1988, aged 26.
Kiedis, Flea and Slovak became inseparable best friends in their mid-teens, while pupils at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, bonding over music, comedy, girls, and drugs. However, by the time the trio – and fellow Fairfax High alumni Jack Irons – began demoing the third Red Hot Chili Peppers album, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, it was obvious to all that that Kiedis and Slovak’s drug use was becoming problematic.
When producer Michel Beinhorn flew into Los Angeles In the spring of 1987 to work on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ third album, the band’s rhythm section collected him at LAX airport. On the drive into the city, Jack Irons casually mentioned to Beinhorn that two members of the collective were dealing with heroin addiction problems.
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“I was a mess, and spiralling downward,” Anthony Kiedis admits in the film. “Staying up all night and showing up wasted at rehearsals. And that wasn’t entirely new, but I was kind of coming apart at the seams.”
“I was like, Dude stop this shit, it’s pathetic,” Flea says, recalling his anger and frustration. “You’re fucking up. What are you doing? Like, Why?”
Things came to a head in the studio when Beinhorn and the band started work on the song Fight Like A Brave, with Keidis regularly a no-show.
“Somehow we got him to a rehearsal, and I was like, Cool, where are the lyrics?” the producer recalls. “Anthony came in with nothing written. And that was it. I was like, Motherfucker, how dare you walk into this fucking studio and disrespect me and these guys in your band? How dare you? Get the fuck out of this studio right now. You’re fucking fired. And his jaw hit the ground.”
Initially, Kiedis was unrepentant, admitting in the documentary that his first thoughts were, “Okay, this gives me more time to destroy myself.” But his friend Hillel Slovak was hit hard by his absence, writing in his journal, “My heart feels like an anvil soaked in lead… I pray that Anthony returns to cosmic soulness.”
Kiedis ended up going to a Salvation Army detox in Michigan, where he spent “30 days without using,” he recalls, and then came back to Los Angeles asking for forgiveness for letting down his friends. He was accepted back into the band. Vowing to remain clean for the making of the record, the singer returned to the studio “in fighting form” according to Beinhorn, “almost as if he’d been reborn.”
Released on September 29,, 1987, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan would go to to become the first Chili Peppers record to penetrate the Billboard 200, with Fight Like A Brave – Kiedis’ motivational pep talk to anyone struggling with addiction issues and/or low self esteem –becoming a college radio hit.
Unfortunately, as the film documents, Hillel Slovak’s intensifying drug use began to create a new set of problems.
Watch the trailer for the documentary below.
