Tattooed Love Boys
Last modified: 2:14:47 CET on 16 Jan, 2010 |
Frusciante is adamant about his sabbatical: ''I was not in the depths of darkness.'' He talks about being holed up at home, painting and writing with the same isolated concentration with which he'd learned how to play guitar. He is also frank about his addiction: ''I was 'no shame.' There was a dealer with the best Persian heroin and the best cocaine. He had thirty customers when I met him. He dumped them all so he could deal with me.
''The whole experience of being a drug addict and getting out of it -- I don't see it the way other people do,'' he says. ''Any rejoicing you do in life has to do with something you've overcome. I had my reasons for doing it.'' And they were, Frusciante insists, ''as good as my reasons for not doing it. Success, in a way, is this monster that says, 'Now you're gonna do this, and now you're gonna do that.' And everybody does what the fuck that monster tells them. I'm somebody who didn't do that. I'm proud of myself for quitting the band when I did.''
Ironically, Frusciante's return to health (he has been drug-free since 1998) and the band (initiated by Flea) helped Kiedis come out of the black himself. ''I was struggling when he came back,'' the singer confesses. ''I had one last relapse. It was his chance to reach out to me and say, 'Don't do that. We have too much cool shit going on here.' He was so nonjudgmental, as only another person with that kind of experience could be.''
But in his consuming love of music and desire to excel in it, Frusciante is still basically the same kid who jumped right from his bedroom to the ultimate rock & roll fantasy camp. ''I don't feel like a man,'' he admits. Stadium Arcadium ''reminds me of the way I felt when I was sixteen. The playing is exactly what I would have loved to do then -- except I didn't have the life experience to do it.''
''I had a little revelation a couple of weeks ago,'' Kiedis says at one point that day in his living room. ''My mom retired after forty years of faithful service to the same organization.'' He repeats the number in a low voice. ''Forty years.'' And again. ''Forty years.''
Kiedis' mother, Peggy, worked at the Michigan law firm of Miller, Johnson, Snell and Cummiskey. ''And she loved it,'' he says. ''Those were her friends. She was of service. And it wasn't about money. That was her purpose.
''Then I was thinking: 'We've been a band for twenty-three years. In my circle of friends, I don't know anybody who's done anything for twenty-three years. I was like, 'How the hell have I had the same job for twenty-three years?' Oh, right. You pattern yourself after your parents, whether you like it or not.''
Asked about the qualities he inherited from his mother, Kiedis replies without hesitation: ''Survival. Strength. She's a Leo. She's quiet. But she is the stability in me. That is a huge factor. It's not as flashy and colorful as the things I got from my dad -- nor as destructive or newsworthy.
''But that's what I took from her, this ability to stick with something long-term no matter what -- the highs, the lows, the disasters, the triumphs,'' he says fondly. ''And the way things are going, if I had to draw an arc of how this band is going, I feel like the best is yet to come.''
When it is pointed out that he has another seventeen years to go with the Chili Peppers before he equals his mom's record, Kiedis laughs. ''I don't mind having seventeen years left in this band.''
