The musician started dating Australian model Helena Vestergaard in 2013, and they split after being together for approximately two years.
Before that, Kiedis, now 63, had a relationship with Heather Christie, who was 22 years his junior. When the pair welcomed their son, Everly Bear, in 2007, Kiedis was 44 and his partner was 21.
In the latest episode of My Therapist Ghosted Me, Williams and her co-host Joanne McNally discussed age-gap relationships, with the former I’m a Celebrity campmate saying: “Do you know who else I find really disappointing, because I really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Anthony Kiedis.”
Seemingly referring to his romance with Vestergaard, Williams continued: “He is like 54 or something, and he is going out with a 19-year-old. And it is like, ‘Dude, what are you talking about?’”
McNally replied: “I’ve seen this. I just accept now that most men, all men, are drawn to – I’m going to be very careful how I say this – significantly younger women. That’s all I’m going to say. It is what it is and I don’t think there’s any getting away from it. We judge it but it’s not going to change.”
“I would have to say that it is not all men,” Williams continued. “Because I do think it is a very specific thing.”
Addressing why younger women might decide to date older men, McNally added: “And of course, people like him [Anthony Kiedis] and rockstars like him can get away with it because no 19-year-old girl wants to be going out with some old lad who is driving a Toyota Corolla around town.
I’ll never miss an opportunity to shit on Anthony Kiedis. But no one did it better than Mike Patton, so let’s just relive one of the most epic public fuck yous in musical history.
In the late 90s, one of Mike Pattons many acts, Mr Bungle, was on tour opening for RHCP. Patton believes it was due to them putting on such a hard to follow set that Kiedis kicked them off their tour stating that they were “Trying to rip off his style.”
What followed was, well, this. Mr. Bungle Halloween Show dressed as RHCP. Pattons way of saying “If I wanted to rip off your style I’d do it like this.” In the video their bassist, dressed as flea, can be seen miming injecting a syringe into his arm. Their guitarist, dressed as Frusciante, can be seen snorting invisible cocaine off the keyboard.
Patton decided the final piece of his revenge was to get back to the studio with Mr. Bungle. He hired out fucking John Zorn (Saxophonist for Zappa) to produce their new record. They titled it “California” and released ~5 weeks after RHCP released “Californication” as a final statement, to say something to the effect of “THIS is my style. RHCP doesn’t have style to rip off, you’re an easily replicable pop act.”
If you’ve never heard “California”, you owe it to yourself to make it your next full album listen. It is truly one of the best records of all time. Mike Pattons range is frightening.
As a huge fan of Mr Bungle, Mike Patton and Frank Zappa - I have never heard this before, but I love everything about it.
The fact about Zorn playing for Zappa is untrue, but he deserves plenty admiration on his own (Naked City is his album and then band with the same musicians). He also produced Mr. Bungle’s first album.
The real insult here is calling John Zorn ‘saxophonist for Zappa’ (edit: which isn’t even true). Zorn was a figurehead of punky jazz-fusion in the eighties’ and nineties’ NYC no-wave scene, and had/was in like fifty projects including seminal ‘Naked City’ and then jazzcore band Painkiller (with Bill Laswell and Mick Harris, the latter formerly of Napalm Death). He also has his own label Tzadik, releasing traditional Jewish music among other stuff.
Patton was on at least seventeen of Zorn’s albums and several non-album releases, and was a guest in Painkiller. Likewise, Zorn was likely on multiple albums by Patton and his projects.
P.S. Zorn has also produced Mr. Bungle’s first album.
TIL that Zorn played on Zappa’s albums. I mostly knew him from working with Buckethead and Bill Laswell
Actually, that seems to be untrue. There’s nothing about Zappa on Zorn’s Wikipedia page, and nothing about Zorn on Zappa’s and The Mothers of Inventions’ ones, except that Zorn was influenced by Zappa. On Discogs, I can’t find even one record where they worked together, only compilations of various artists.
Idk where the article’s author got that, since I’ve never heard such a claim despite listening to Zorn on and off for twenty years. I straight up read through his Wikipedia page recently-ish, before posting an album of his here on Lemmy.
And now I see the link between Patton and Serj Tankian.
Serj + Buckethead, Buckethead + Zorn, Zorn + Patton.
Serj has said a lot of glowing things about Patton in interviews. Always wondered if they had any career overlap.
Marc Streitenfeld, Serj Tankian, and Mike Patton released a single together, called ‘Bird’s Eye’. Patton and Tankian were both guests on Praxis’ ‘Profanation (Preparation For A Coming Darkness)’, but on different tracks (Praxis is a band of Laswell, Buckethead and Bryan “Brain” Mantia, with various guests including Zorn and aforementioned Mick Harris).
Oh, yeah, that’s the guy who was the Anger Sphere in Valve’s Portal.
He’s a fucking madman,
Like I said. His range… Is… Frightening
Bonus
More people should be fans of Mike Patton.
Jfc how does his vocal chords still work?!
As someone who can lay down some pretty brutal growls, it’s technique.
He is an opera trained singer. He knows how to abuse his voice, when to stop, has immaculate diaphragm/breath control, has intimate understanding of sound compression… etc
I love Goodbye Sober Day, I didn’t know about the beef with RHCP so that was a fun history lesson
i believe the problem was that in the early days Faith no more sounded similar to early RHCP, and later that Mr Bungle called their album California. As everyone knows, Kiedis is the only one who has the rights to sing about California. To be clear, RHPC are shit compared to anything Patton did.
As stated in my post, California came out after this beef. It was Patton’s final blow to RHCP to title their next album so similarly to RHCP.
But you’re right that Keidis was likely more familiar with Faith No More in his suggesting Bungle was ripping off his style
This is what makes the ‘most public musical fuck you’ so immense. Patton was showing Kiedis that Bungle wasn’t only ‘not Faith No More,’ (which to Patton, sure might have been a bit like RHCP… because it was his pop act. He was trying to make money, not be artistically inportant. And it was still more diverse than RHCP could ever dream of becoming. He was subtly saying “Faith no more was my pop act. You know me through that. Bungle is the real me, these are my friends from high school. And because you’re a twat, the next Bungle album is titled ‘California.’”
If I recall correctly kiedis used his connections to get bungle cancelled from some festivals and also got California delayed.
Such a shitty tiny little person who hates that Patton is 100 times the singer than he could ever be. Also Mike seems like he’s not a junkie and generally a decent and nice guy which can not be said about Anthony.
I love that album. Once I took a hike around Edinburgh to listen to the entire Bungle discography in order.
One of the biggest regrets I carry today was missing Bungle in their prime. I saw FNM and Fantomas but unfortunately didn’t get off my arse to see Mr Bungle and I should have.
For your post, there was stuff in there I didn’t know. I’d heard about the parody show but that was the first time I watched video of it. As for the meaning of California, yeah I hadn’t heard that. Both California and Disco Volante are masterpieces. Warner Bros thought they were getting another marketable FNM lmao
Thanks for the step back in time. They were great times that we will never see again.
Same. I got to see Bungle in the last 5 years. It was bittersweet that they played nothing off of California. I felt both appreciated and ignored. Classic. Battles opened. It was rad.
Yeah I was torn on going to that one. It’s good stuff but it’s the later stuff that’s my bag. Especially California. That’s a magnificent record that stands up anywhere