The title name was taken from the single "Scar Tissue" released five years earlier on the Red Hot Chili Peppers album Californication.

He acknowledges, for example, that he was briefly sexually involved with a 14-year-old, before and after learning of her age in the 1980s, which inspired him to write the song "Catholic School Girls Rule".

I realized that the whole point of writing that book wasn't for me, but to show that somebody can go all the way down and come all the way back and have a productive, successful happy interesting life.

"[4] John Harris of The Guardian believed that the autobiography showed Kiedis to have "hubris, selfishness, the large-scale absence of any sense of humour" as well as "irreparable damage" from his childhood of drug use and sexual experiences.

[6] In 2008, it was reported that Kiedis was developing a television series for HBO titled Spider and Son which would be loosely based on Scar Tissue.

The series was expected to follow the first half of Kiedis's book during his pre teen and teenage years and his relationship with his father Blackie Dammett.

[8] Dammett confirmed in 2013 that the production of the series had been "mothballed", however he hoped they could re-visit the project in once the Chili Peppers finished their I'm with You World Tour that same year.