“He came into the room, which was a squalid mess, and he looked at me. “Anthony, get up.” I sat up. “I can’t do this with you anymore. You’re too fucked up. I gotta quit the band.” I woke up, because that wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. I thought he’d say, “Dude, you’re a mess, we gotta talk about you not getting quite so high anymore,” but when he said he had to quit the band, all of my cells reverberated and I bolted up. That was the first taste of the fact that I could be destroying the dream we had created of this amazing funk band that was all about dancing and energy and sex. I wanted to be in that band with Flea more than anything. “Flea, you can’t quit,” I pleaded. “I’m going to be the James Brown of the eighties.”
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
