Anthony Kiedis (/ˈkiːdɪs/ KEE-dis; born November 1, 1962) is an American musician and lead vocalist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers.

After a show under the name Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, the band progressed and the lineup eventually became the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Kiedis's lyrical style has evolved throughout his career; early recordings discussed topics such as sex and life in Los Angeles, while more recent songs focus on more reflective themes including love, addiction, and loss.

In 2004, Kiedis wrote that his paternal grandmother, Molly VanderVeen, "was a pastiche of English, Irish, French, and Dutch (and, as we've recently discovered, some Mohican blood)".

[9] Through his father, Kiedis, who worked under the stage name of Cole Dammett, landed his first acting role, appearing as Sylvester Stallone's character's son in the 1978 film, F.I.S.T.

[citation needed] Kiedis attended Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, where he struggled to find friends, but he met his future bandmate Flea.

[17] Kiedis rejected the violence and misogyny of the Los Angeles punk rock scene, and wanted to create a more peaceful environment to encourage women to come to concerts.

[21] Kiedis later described the performance: "All the anticipation of the moment hit me, and I instinctively knew that the miracle of manipulating energy and tapping into an infinite source of power and harnessing it in a small space with your friends was what I had been put on this earth to do.

[9] Irons and Slovak, however, decided to leave the Red Hot Chili Peppers in order to pursue a "more serious" future with their band Anthym, which by this time had been renamed What Is This?

Kiedis and Flea hired drummer Cliff Martinez from The Weirdos and guitarist Jack Sherman to fill Iron's and Slovak's places, respectively.

Both Kiedis and Slovak struggled with debilitating heroin addictions, which grew worse as the band was preparing to record The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

[31] After Kiedis completed his stint in rehabilitation, he felt a "whole new wave of enthusiasm" due to his sobriety and wrote the lyrics to a new song titled "Fight Like a Brave" on the flight home.

[33] Upon returning home, he began dating actress Ione Skye, whom Flea met while appearing with her in the 1987 science fiction film Stranded.

Following Slovak's death, Kiedis fled to a small fishing village in Mexico and did not attend his funeral, considering the situation to be surreal and dreamlike.

[42] Peligro, the former drummer of the punk rock band Dead Kennedys, was a friend of John Frusciante, an eighteen-year-old guitarist and avid Red Hot Chili Peppers fan.

"[47] In 1990, Kiedis was convicted for indecent exposure and sexual battery from an incident at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, in April 1989.

[54] The massive attention the Chili Peppers started receiving caused Frusciante to feel extremely uncomfortable, and he abruptly quit the band during the Japanese leg of the album's tour.

The rest of the recording was completed within the next month and their sixth album One Hot Minute was released in September 1995, featuring the band's new guitarist Dave Navarro.

[66] Kiedis recalled of the situation: "We started finding some magic and some music and some riffs and some rhythms and some jams and some grooves, and we added to it and subtracted from it and pushed it around and put melodies to it.

Following a hugely successful world tour to support Stadium Arcadium, the band decided to take an extended year long break from music in 2008.

"[76] Following his acceptance speech, Kiedis was joined on stage by his Chili Peppers bandmate Josh Klinghoffer for an acoustic performance of "Otherside", a cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay" and "By the Way".

[78] It was confirmed that Kiedis was suffering from intestinal flu and was expected to make a full recovery; however, the band was forced to postpone their iHeartRadio album preview show on May 17, 2016, which was rescheduled for May 26.

On December 20, 2021, Kiedis appeared at Dave Navarro and Billy Morrison's third annual Above Ground benefit concert in Los Angeles, where they performed a cover of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side".

Resuming his acting work in the 1990s, Kiedis played a hooligan surfer named Tone, in the 1991 Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze movie Point Break.

[93] On May 11, 2011, Anthony donated a MTV European Music Award that the band had previously won to help raise funds for ongoing relief in devastated areas of Japan, which was hit with an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

[95] In June 2015, Kiedis and his son Everly Bear, along with Cher and Willow Smith, were revealed to be the "new faces" of Marc Jacobs Fall 2015 ad campaign.

[108] The series would center on Kiedis's relationship with his father, Blackie Dammett, who sold many drugs and mingled with rock stars on the Sunset Strip, all while aspiring to get into show business.

[citation needed] Kiedis tried to get clean after Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose on June 25, 1988, saying he would never shoot up again.

[133] He entered rehab and ended up staying clean for five years, but he relapsed in 1994, causing a major delay in the release of the band's 1995 album, One Hot Minute.

However, tensions arose between the two bands in 1989 when Kiedis accused Mosley's replacement, Patton, of imitating his mannerisms and image on stage and during the music video for their biggest hit, "Epic".