Anthony Kiedis ( ; born November 1, 1962) is an American singer and songwriter. He is a founding member and lead vocalist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Kiedis and his fellow band members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Kiedis spent his youth in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his mother, and then moved shortly before his twelfth birthday to live with his father in Hollywood. While attending Fairfax High School, Kiedis befriended students Flea and Hillel Slovak, who were members of a band called Anthym. After high school, Kiedis began taking classes at UCLA but dropped out in his sophomore year. When Kiedis received an offer to be the opening act for a local band, he enlisted Flea, Slovak, and drummer Jack Irons. After a show under the name Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, the band progressed and the line-up eventually became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He has recorded thirteen studio albums with 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. He struggled with addiction until 2000, and maintains that he has been clean since then. Early life Kiedis was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Margaret "Peggy" Nobel and struggling actor John Michael Kiedis, known professionally as Blackie Dammett. His paternal grandfather's family emigrated from Lithuania in the early 1900s. In 2004 he wrote that his paternal grandmother, Molly Vandenveen's heritage "was a pastiche of English, Irish, French, and Dutch (and, as we've recently discovered, some Mohican blood)". In 1966, when Kiedis was three years old, his parents divorced, and he was raised by his mother in Grand Rapids. His mother later remarried and had two more children. Each summer, Kiedis would visit his father in Hollywood for two weeks, a time during which the two would bond. He idolized his father and recalled: "Those trips to California were the happiest, most carefree, the-world-is-a-beautiful-oyster times I'd ever experienced." In 1974, when Kiedis was 12, he moved to Hollywood to live with his father full-time. Kiedis's father sold drugs, which had an impact on Kiedis, as the two would often use marijuana and cocaine together. Kiedis accidentally tried heroin for the first time at age