“George,we're the Red Hot Chili Peppers, we're from Hollywood, California,we're really hard-rocking motherfuckers, and we think youshould produce our record.”

“It started when we were little kids.Free spirits, but alreadytormented by our own handsgiven to us by our parents.We got together and wrote on desksand slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountainsand slipped through whatevercracks we could find,minds altered, we didn't falterin portraving hysterical andtragic characters in a smogfilled universe.we loved the dirty cityand the journeys away from it.We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves,chase tails round and round in downward spirals,leaving trail of irretrievable,vital life juice behind.Still, thebrothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzzwas impenetrableand we lived inside itlaughing with no clothes, andeverything experimental 'tilldeath was upon us.In our face, mortality.”

“Suddenly we could all hear, we could all listen, and instead of being caught up in our finite little balls of bullshit, we could all become players in that great universal orchestra again.”

“I remember thinking, 'Sometimes you're riding high in April and shot down in June, but at least we have each other.' We were full of enthusiasm and color, and you could sense that something was brewing that could be amazing, but we weren't quite there yet.”

“I felt I had thrown away so much inmy life, but I also felt an unspoken bond between me and my city.I'd spent so much time wandering the streets of L.A. and hikingthrough the Hollywood Hills that I sensed there was a nonhumanentity, maybe the spirit of the hills and the city, who had me in hersights and was looking after me. Even if I was a loner in my ownband, at least I still felt the presence of the city I lived in.”

“We took off our clothes, and we were basically in a sphere of love and light and warmth, and the rest of the world disappeared. It was better than I ever could have dreamed, it was that thing I had been looking for, that love mixed with the rapture of sex.”

“I had seen these transformations, people who had lost their will to live, coming back from their zombie states and radiating a new life force from their eyes.”