"Red Hot Chili Peppers" - Give it Away: The Stories Behind Every Song Paperback – 1 May 2004

A fair few of the photos were not 'chronologically' correct (i.e. showed old photos aginst new albums and vice versa) and often the note saying who was in the pic was totally wrong (i.e. current line-up described as Slovak, Irons, Flea, Kiedis).I also expected a better insight into what the songs are about & the inspiration that brought them into existence, but you just get the author's (sometimes incorrect) synopsis (i.e. 'Cabron' is actually about befriending LA gang members, not a boy meets girl love story).If these inaccuracies are sorted out for a future revised edition, it'll be a good fans/collectors piece.

First, I feel I should give you a comprehensive insight into the author of the book:Rob Fitzpatrick is a writer for NME magazine; a magazine that rarely covers the chili peppers other than reviews of their albums, which is surprising considering how popular the band are.A recent review he wrote of the band playing live at murrayfield describes the peppers as "four attractive, tanned millionaires up there who patently feel there's somewhere else they'd rather be." I could go on (read the review here - [...] but the evidence provided shows that Rob Fitzpatrick is NOT a chili peppers fan; his reasons for writing this book is more for love of money than love of music.The book itself is very well presented and designed, plenty of bold pictures that represent the chili peppers well (albeit the captions are completely false!)This book is split into biography sections and sections that go through every song. The biography sections are comprehensive and cover the band well, but fans will already be familiar with re-treads of the sock antics of the chili peppers. The individual sections for each song vary in quality. Some are quite interesting reads, describing how the songs came about. Others only seem to offer a bored Fitzpatrick enterpretation of the song.It should be noted for fans that none of the quotes in the book are new - they are all taken from older interviews, so for fans such as myself there is little new information on the band.Overall the book is a well-presented comprehensive chili peppers read, but the false information and lack of enthusiasm for the subject really brings this title down. You can work through the book in a couple of hours, but if your a chili peppers fan don't expect any new information.

i give it 2 stars... just cus of the cool pics.im a huge chili peppers fan - this book gets facts wrong and most of the pics are given the wrong tags etc. i find it offensive somebody can be so passive over it in getting it published...DO YOU NOT PROOF READ!!! IDIOTS!