Anthony Kiedis on Under the Bridge, Rick Rubin, and Addiction

The Joe Rogan Experience the hardest of the hard, the gangsters of La I'll go down Sunset Boulevard and here under the

bridge

getting out of a Low Rider and it's the hardest, the scariest, most of you know looked at the guys just melting. under the

bridge

, I'm like, okay, that was a day well spent writing that song, do you always close with that song? What do they mix?, uh, we mix it and, yes, it's a meaningful melody, you have the proof. of time when you guys closed with that the other night, I thought, yeah, you gotta uh, I owe a lot of that to Rick Rubin that song, it's amazing, right, okay, what a trip, okay, it's so cool.

Unusual for a beginner, he's pretty good, so we were writing Sex Magic about blood sugar, you know, and I at the time were just spending our days together, I was a lot less busy, he wasn't a dad and we were just spending the day together. time all day. what you're working on, show me the songs you're writing 'cause he's producing a record and I showed him everything you know, sexy songs, heavy funky songs, okay, that's good, we can work on it, he's like anything else in the book. a poem that's not really a song, I mean, it has a melody, but I don't think it's for us, well, let me listen to it.

I thought, oh, it's a little embarrassing, it's a little sentimental love to hear, it's Rick because Rick knows. Like there are no rules, you want what you don't expect, so I sang it under the bridge and he said that's your best song. I was like, oh, it's just a poem, bring it to the vocals, show them the song, so with Rick's push, you know. For Sensitive Guy's counterintuitive song, we might never have had the chance to write that there are some people in the world who are magical, yeah I love Rick and he's magical, he's a magical person, yeah, there's something about him when speak.

For him he has the feeling of ignoring and just tuning into the magic, it's very and it shows when you talk to him, it's not nonsense, it's like a science, it's almost like an understanding of what it is and he just follows that frequency, he's just chasing her, yeah, he's tuned into that, yeah, he's very good at it, he's a different person, if you look at his origins, it's no coincidence that he ended up being the person he's a single kid in the suburbs of New York City with. York, I think Long Beach Long Island and he had a very cerebral aunt, a kid who was already a very smart kid but who lived a boring, culture-free life on the island and he had an aunt who lived in Manhattan who loved her nephew and every weekend. or every other weekend, whatever he spent with her and she was cultured, she was like: let's go to the opera, let's go to the symphony, let's go to the museum, let's go see all these different things and Rick was amazed. for the music, art and culture that she shared with him that he wasn't getting in his home life and he just started taking advantage of the magic and dedicating himself in a way that led him to start his record company. when he was in the dorms at NY NYU, but it wasn't an accident because he was fed the raw materials as a child and that opened his dream and I think probably also, being a single child, you are not influenced by your brothers either, so you get a chance to be who you really are less influence he would get on a bus and go 200 miles to see James Brown when James Brown was still on tour alone and he would show up five hours early, they said you have to wait in the parking lot because the doors don't open for five hours when I was a kid just to go see James Brown.

I was like, yeah, you're qualified just out of gratitude, without even thinking there was a race involved in it, that's what's so crazy. about his story, yeah, there was no career to be that guy, no, no, he invented a career, yeah, there isn't, there's no light, there was no future in hip-hop, no one looked down on him, they thought he wasn't even music, yes, it calls. When you had some music, they said it's not that funny. Yeah, he was telling me the whole story of the connection between Aerosmith and Run DMC about people like what are you doing?

You're like ruining Aerosmith and then the hip- People like it, what are you doing? You're putting hip-hop and rock together, that's all and in the meantime it's like, oh my God, you just brought two worlds together, yeah, you brought two worlds together and opened up a new realm of possibilities for music. and he just did it by following the magic, yeah, yeah, so I met him maybe in 1985 and we were hectic. He was lost in a sea of ​​drug

addiction

, too thin to win that start, huh, how did it start? but first I had to show the little detail, so basically I was a junkie, but I still showed up at work from time to time, which was the basement of Emi uh studios on Sunset Boulevard, they gave us a little basement to rehearse it, they had signed . us, but we weren't going anywhere, very slowly, we couldn't get out of our own way and even though we were still making noise, there was still something exciting about us that caught people's attention and caught Rick Rubin's attention and he was with the Beastie Boys and they were exploding with success and greatness writing incredible music, so Rick brought the Beastie Boys to our dirty little rehearsal/recording space and sat there and we rehearsed while they watched, they were on these dirty little couches watching us and we went through our songs and Rick Steuben said let's go now I was like okay, shall we do it?

We talk again. What's going on? We will contact you. I didn't see him for years and years and years passed. He came back and said, let's make a record, but I told him what happened that day. You came, we played, you disappeared and I never spoke to you again. He said: I thought someone was going to be killed in that rehearsal place. I thought someone was going. to die I had to leave that's how dark we had become that's how dark I had gotten he was afraid that someone was going to die and it was time to leave murdered that's what he said it's like you guys were scary you were scary it felt like someone was going to die we had to leave when you remember those times do you understand how he thought not exactly but everyone has their own perception and there was darkness in the room when you follow that lifestyle there is definitely a place of a magical energy there a very discernible dark energy, yes, but I didn't realize it was so dangerous, I was afraid, how did you get to the road?, the drug.

Good path, I think the path was already in me since I was born. uh, combination of predisposition to

addiction

. Physically and then emotionally I developed the tendencies I needed to squash some of the noise, spiritually a little exhausted so I started smoking weed and loved it, it was really fun and at the time subversive to be a part of what is pretty fucked up today. common, but then I was very Outlaw when I was a young teenager and years went by and there was no problem and then I started introducing narcotics at a fairly young age and I didn't really have anything to say anymore.

It was like the caboose of a train. just going wherever the hell that train said to go was interesting and exciting but it was also very painful it was like in the end this is a life of suffering um fortunately you know my destiny was to survive that and Well, you know, they're not really events or advice or anything that gives you the window to get out of that, but it is a small gift from the cosmos that simply makes you look at yourself and say: I will give you a chance. I will give you the opportunity to work on improving if you choose, if not, you continue what the narcotic of choice was, I would have to say, uh, the combination of heroin and cocaine was at that time at that At that time, do you remember what you started with with those two?

Yes, I probably did cocaine shortly before I did heroin, but around the same time, at a very young age, you have to do it because it was what people around you did. exciting it was rebellious like what it was it was part of rock and roll it had nothing to do with rock and roll or trying to impress or pretend it was happening around me in my world it was exciting and dangerous like everyone was afraid You know, I think I will do that just the word scares people, but it was also a way to check it, in the same way that you know that a person sits in a bar and has a few beers and just doesn't. for, yes, that allergic reaction to the feeling of finding your medication right.

I had that reaction like I felt complete wearing these things until I had to pay the toll. You know, it's like you stole from Peter. You have to pay Paul the next day. and it's a terrible paycheck to write a terrible paycheck to write I could only imagine, yeah, yeah, it was finding what I thought was going to cure me, but it was actually killing me and how long were we on that path? Well, I think I was 27 the first time I was able to push myself and get sober and then I hit 30 and I forgot where I came from and I forgot the maintenance process, it's like you get physical. fitting in is not going to be for life you have to show up yes or anything else you know you suck your job if you leave it it fades so I left the job of sobriety and an opportunity opened up and I ended up going back there for a lot of years, like five years, which was even worse because now I knew there was a solution and I was just ignoring it, so there was nothing fun about it and then the window came back and I had another chance. commit to sobriety and I did and that was 21 years ago, how did you get sober the first time?

So in a way, my best friend died, which didn't instigate sobriety, he died from drugs, he did, but it definitely destroyed me. emotionally but I continued using after his death and then got to the point where I couldn't turn off the noise with drugs and alcohol, literally flooding my body with the substance and still wide awake so I wasn't getting the desired effect . This is terrible, like I was putting all this poison into myself and I'm still here and I called a friend and rehab didn't exist at the time. I called a sober friend and asked him: what is this rehab stuff?

I have to find one, he's the only one I know he's very expensive, 10 grand, which in the '80s for a struggling musician was like he had 10 grand, that's exactly how much money I have and I spent it. I gave my last 10 grand. my only 10 thousand dollars to rehab and I went and checked in and there were 30 drug addicts in the room from all walks of life, but all with the common illness and the counselor said, I'm looking at 30 of you and statistics. Wisely one of you is going to get out of here sober wow and I was like, get out of the way because I'm going to take that spot.

It was a little competitive. Yes, it is an eagle. Maniac. You're right. I'm taking that well. Please know that the rest of you can go back to where you came from, only one in 30. That's what he told us and there was a SWAT team guy who was a professional athlete representing all types of people there. I thought I would accept it, but then I realized that there is a process and there is an aspect of service and there is an aspect of humility to everything and that was the beginning of taking many years to go from being a complete idiot to only partially idiotic.