John Frusciante unofficial website - Invisible-Movement.net

June 2006, Guitar Part (France)
Many thanks to Clémence, for translation
Click the thumbnail for scans

Which guitars did you use on this album? (Stadium Arcadium)
I especially used the Fender Stratocaster sunburst from '62. I also used a white Stratocaster that I bought recently. It's really a superb guitar, with a floating tremolo, what is cool, because you can take it off, but I use it on a certain number of solos and on some songs. Apart from these two principal guitars, I also play on a Les Paul from 1969 on the song Readymade. As for the White Falcon, I didn't use it this time...

Yet you paid out more than 30 000 dollars for this guitar!
Yeah, and it's a great guitar! I played it every evening on the last tour. It's not really the price that counts; my guitars, I wear out them until the marrow. I played with this guitar on two songs by concert at the rate of 150 concerts at least, just on the By The Way tour.

Apart from that, you aren't a big supporter of effects...
I'm not a big fan of effects. Sometimes, I rather use the Murf pedal of Moogerfooger (a brand who fabricates cool pedals, the Merv pedals), but what I've done on this album, it's above all to add effects after recording. And above all, to pass the guitar through a modular synthesizer. It's rather a funny method, because you really can play on everything, you can fiddle, turn buttons with your free hands. No other effect is so subtle and nobody has effects which use the treated signal and the no-treated signal at the same time. It gives the impression that another guy is playing. I've proceeded like this in many songs, whose Dani California, where on the verses, you've got the guitar part at a normal rhythm, which corresponds to what I made in direct catch, then for the second part of the verse, it's the same but past in my modular synthesizer, in which I added a dynamic filter. The filter opens and closes according to the way that I hit my guitar. The more I hit strong, the more it opens widely. The less I hit strong, the less the filter opens, so the guitar comes from the right and it gives the impression that it's another guitar. There are not many songs which aren't past through the synthesizer, at least one time. We also experimented a lot, we indulged ourselves and I'm quite proud of it...

Experimentation came to you from jam sessions, or from your side?
We operate composing songs all together, we record basic demos, and only after, I work alone. I make the overdubs from my side. I have all the time that I want to experiment. I work on it during twelve or fourteen hours, I experiment, always for the good of the song. From the sonorous point of view, I wanted the album to be nice to listen, but during the recording, what I've learnt in the field of the studio working on my solo albums has been quickly put in practice on this one in a creative way. For this album, there are not many keyboards, almost everything is made at the guitar. There are just two synthesizer and only two songs which benefit from it, and two others with a mellotron. When on some songs you believe to hear a mandolin, it's just a guitar that we accelerated.

So there are good solos, which sound a bit like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, or even Santana. It's a sort of tribute, isn't it?
In a way, yes. I have the impression that even if I'm a big fan of Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen or Steve Vai and others, their playing didn't influence me. But in a more general way, I really feel people repulsive to their playing, they try to play in a much simpler way and it became worse than when everybody tried to play fast. That would make me sick to have to play in a simplistic way all the time. So I'm inspired by people who tried to make progress music at their level and who brought it further. I feel closer to people like Carlos Santana, Mick Ronson, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, these people... I really think that they were emotionally in the right. With guys like Van Halen or Randy Rhoads, we are able to play fast, to play neatly and at the same time to explore. But how far can it go? In 1979, Eddie Van Halen said: “I can't play faster now.” So it's not the good way to take, and I prefer to be interessed in these guitarists from the sixties and the seventies, because I think that, emotionally, they put their heart in their music and that's the very substance.

So this album is a big declaration of musical intention?
I'm a very serious musician, you know, I don't play solos just because it's needed. If I play solos, it's a carefully thought out decision, it's because some songs take part in it, and not because it's fashionable or not. My state of mind is: “And if Clapton had used a modular synthesizer when he was in Cream?” or: “Let us try a sonorous experience which hasn't been tried in the sixties.”

You mean that you've been in Clapton's shoes for one day?
I'm inspired by these people. I study the way that they play, but if I said: “I want that this solo sounds like Eric Clapton.” I would be incapable of doing anything because I respect Eric Clapton too much. But sometimes I play with my guts and when I listen to it again, I tell myself, or a technician comes to tell me that it sounds like Clapton.

You do some shred like never before on Turn It Again...
I always refrained myself from it, but I've always been capable of it. Maybe that, later, we will make another album where I will use a simple playing again, but this time, we began the album at a period where I started again to play fully and in a dense way. On this album, you will believe me or not, but I restricted myself by myself. The original solo that I made on 21st Century sounded like Allan Holdsworth or something like that...

What about your solo albums? Are you working on a new one?
Well, there's another Ataxia album. As soon as the Chili Peppers album is finished to mix, we tackle the second half of the one of Ataxia. And it's really now that I start this new phase in my guitar playing: to play without control, savagely, without holding back anything. I have much hope for this album, I want to look seriously into production, on the techniques that I learnt by working on the Red Hot albums. But I will do more, with the integration of classic instruments to the detriment of the harder sound that I usually had.

Do you still paint for the pleasure?
No, I made some paintings some months ago because I had recovered some gear at my girlfriend's home, but no, now I prefer by far writing, writing for myself, not necessarily only lyrics. For me, it's a powerful way of expression, and an effective way to eliminate many parts of shadow that cluttered up my life. It became almost vital. It's the best way I found to make the most of the little time which lets me my work, because I have so many projects that it's hard to find the time to realize everything I want, I have to limit myself on what I have the most aptitudes for. Indeed, to play guitar, to sing, to write, these are the things for which I manage best. I don't really have technical predispositions for the painting, so it's not something to which I would devote much time, except if it entertains me. But you know, I have much more fun playing guitar or singing, so it's rather toward it than I turn first and foremost, because they are the only things I know how to do.