Red Hot Chilli Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis has been rather reclusive for the last year or so. A TV series is being made of his biography to air on HBO, but his musical activities have been few and far between. The New York Daily News suggests this is likely due to kidney failure.

According to several sources, the former cocaine and heroin addict was a frequent patient at L.A.’s Cedars-Sinai hospital last summer as he battled kidney disease.

“Anthony’s health was pretty bleak,” a close friend tells us of the rocker, whose partying ways of the past contributed to his condition.

“Organ failure was a possibility. There was talk of how to get him on a transplant list, to cover all the bases, but that opened up a whole new can of worms because people with histories of drug and alcohol abuse are less likely to receive the organs they need.”

Kiedis’ Cedars visits were confirmed by another insider who says the musician is now on the mend: “The general consensus is that the treatments helped, and he’s getting better.”

Two different reps for Kiedis laughed off the reports when contacted, but denied only that he was being treated for a kidney problem.

They refused to confirm — or deny — that he had made multiple hospital visits.

New York Daily News

Anthony was a long term user of both heroin and cocaine. According to Wikipedia, heroin has been linked to kidney failure, but it is uncertain whether this is due to the drugs, or additives in them. Cocaine is also linked to kidney disease in long term users.

Kiedis detailed his drug use in his memoir, Scar Tissue. He began using drugs with his father (who was a dealer to artists in the 1970s) at age 12 and continued until fellow band member Hillel Slovac died in 1988. Use of a narcotic for pain relief during dental surgery in 1994 caused him to relapse, before he stopped using again on Christmas Eve 2000. The story is being developed into a series with HBO, Anthony and his father are working together on the project.

We wish Anthony well, and hope he’s recovered enough to make music and TV again soon.

Anthony Kiedis is shown at the Fallout 3 launch party on 10/16/08. Credit: PRPhotos

Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis’ childhood sounds like a rock ‘n roll cliché. Anthony’s dad was a Sunset Strip drug dealer that moved his goods in 1970′s Los Angeles, taking his son with him to work. Spider, as Kiedis’ dad was called, encouraged sex, drug and rock-n-roll for his son, getting him high to lose his virginity at 13 and hang out with rock stars of the time.

Anthony Kiedis wrote about his troubled childhood in his memoir Scar Tissue, and HBO is now turning his story into a series.

Variety reported today that Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis’ colorful rock-and-roll upbringing will be the basis of an HBO series tentatively titled “Scar Tissue.”

The show will center on Kiedis’ relationship with his dad and their hopped-up adventures on L.A.’s Sunset Strip. “He introduced me to the arts, to a more culturally magnificent life,” Kiedis told Daily Variety. “But some of it was this heavy, adult matter that I wasn’t quite capable of digesting. … It was a very rich but kind of challenging period of my life. I was thrust into this adult mentality by age 11.” The show is not strictly based on Kiedis’ memoir of the same name — which focused more on the singer’s life as a rock star — but will also look at the Hollywood rock scene of the ’70s, with Kiedis planning to be heavily involved in the project, including possibly narrating the hour-long drama and making occasional cameos.

[From MTV Newsroom]

It’s good that Anthony can see the positives in the exposure he was given, but it’s even better that he sees the negatives in it. Kiedis has had years of drug issues, but says he’s been sober since 2000. The life he led gave him the lyrics to some excellent music.

Kiedis is a dad now, to one cute little Everly Bear, and he always looks like a caring, doting father. If nothing else I think he learned how not to father from the parenting he received.