“I just loved feeling the metal strings under my fingers, the deep thunk as I struck them and invented my finger dances. That wood, the long piece of it, smooth and rounded on the backside so my left palm could slide up and down it like when sliding down the banister and whooping it up in an old house with a big staircase. Those left-hand fingers gripping around the other hard, flat side of the wood, strips of metal crisscrossing it one way, and the long metal strings floating magically above it on the other. Each of my fingertips with its own little brain excitingly plotting their moves atop the strings, all of my heart and body vibrating with the VOOM POP BOOM RAOOM BOP.” To hear Flea interpret his earliest experiences of playing bass is a thing of beauty. To learn the most intimate details of his turbulent upbringing, and the wild journey of morphing from Michael Peter Balzary into the rock icon he is today, through his own words, makes for one hell of a book. His new memoir, Acid for the Children, is Flea’s first foray into writing, and much like his unbridled approach to playing bass, he takes it on with both a master’s touch and the reckless abandon of a wide-eyed child on a sugar rush. The candid tell-all testimonial gives us insight into his childhood, which found him constantly trying to discover himself while navigating the vastly different environments of Australia, New York, and Los Angeles. Naturally, music is a central theme of his book, but the stories and random memories that he pieces together in short-burst chapters meld together like a pulp-movie coming-of-age tale depicting scenes of innocence, drug use, reflection, and ultimately, self discovery. Beyond Flea merely waxing poetic about his youthful experiences and the family and friends who shaped him, we get to take a wild ride inside his head on his path to discovering music and connecting with it down to his core. We marvel in the moments when the bass first comes onto his radar, thanks to his mother’s loveable but problematic boyfriend, Walter Urban. The bebop jazz bassist’s frantic and emotive playing would cause a young Flea to roll around on the basement floor uncontrollably in fits of laughter and tears. We geek out when reading about the moment when founding Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak first convinces Flea to pick up a bass to join his band. And we revel in reading about his transformation as a bass player, his introduction to slap bass from a classmate named Ray, his first real band experience in Fear, and of course, when he met his musical soulmate, Anthony Keidis, at Fairfax High School. As expected, Flea’s voice as a writer mirrors that of his persona as a musician — raw, from the soul, unfiltered, and truly one of a kind. But Flea’s new role as an author isn’t the only thing that’s been occupying him lately. The 57-year-old rocker recently married his longtime girlfriend, fashion designer Melody Ehsani, in a ceremony con