Voodoo Chili
Last modified: 23:46:45 CET on 22 Feb, 2009 |
March 2009, Guitarist magazine (UK)
Thanks to Eleni for helping me type half of this.
Click the thumbnail for scans.
The future of the Red Hot Chili Peppers may be in question, but that doesn't mean guitarist John Frusciante is going to sit around and mope - as heard throughout his most focused solo release yet, The Empyrean
Since the late 1980s, few guitarists have introduced more rockers to the wonders of funk music than the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante. But there is much more to the guitarist than just this slinky style - as evidenced by his unpredictable and varied solo releases over the past few years. For the first time in a long time, Frusciante is focusing solely on non-Chili Peppers activities, and his first solo release post-Stadium Arcadium sees contributions from Flea, multi-instrumentalist Josh Klinghoffer, the New Dimension Singers and Sonus Quarter, in addition to one of John's guitar heroes, Johnny Marr.
How does The Empyrean differ from your previous solo releases?
If you put all the dates together that we worked on it, it was probably a month-and-a-half or two months accumulated, but it was done over a period of over a year. In terms of mixing, I learned how to engineer completely during this record. It's the first time I've gotten that under my belt to the point where I really felt like I was putting the same expression into the recording and the mixing that I do into the songwriting, the guitar playing, or the singing.
Who plays on the album, and how was it playing with the other musicians?
I'm really accustomed now, when I record music, to the fact I'm doing everything myself - I don't have anybody around me, except my friend who gets gear fixed.
I was appreciating the gift of being able to work with people for what it was. With Josh's keyboard playing, I kind of based the sound of the album around his organ and electric piano playing, that and Flea's bass playing. I guide people and form things a little bit - ask people to put this note there in the bass or put a kick drum here - but mostly, anybody I work with understands where my music is coming from well enough, so I don't have to tell them what to do.
So, with the string quartet it was the same - these people that Josh was on tour with, with Gnarls Barkley, we were into a lot of the same classsical music. So with no instruction at all, I just had them write these string parts. In one case, we did two versions of one song - one that was only strings and a couple of elements, because we had already mixed the song when they did their string parts. So, I made it a reprise of an earlier songs - the songs Enough Of Me and One More Of Me. It's neat to see the energy just take form - even when it's in other people's hands. Like with the choir, I told them what to sing and how to sing it. They just blew me away - just the sound of their voices and the pleasure of being able to EQ such rich voices like that. it was a really great experience for me mixing that.
The Empyrean is a concept album, so would you care to discuss its storyline?
I've never written lyrics that were so specific to me. But it's personal to the degree that I'm not interested in talking about it in the press, because it would go against the principles that the album is based on. And I have too much respect for those principles to just use them as 'selling material'. But basically, there are things in the album that have to do with the kind of reaching that it's in our nature to do. You strive for things that are beyond your reach. And in getting there, you grow, change, and open up - as a person. But it's necessary in that growth process to give up sometimes, or even to experience a kind of 'death' - whether it's an actual physical death, or a kind of a death that comes along with giving up, which you're reborn from.
So, the album, lyrically, goes back and forth between a mixed up insanity to thoughts gradually coming into clarity, and then going back into a kind of insanity, and then gradually going into a clarity. It's the same thing musically, where the album starts in these murky depths, and then it starts ascending and getting higher and higher. Then when it reaches a peak, it drops down again, then it continues to reach up, and then it reaches another peak, and then it drops down again. The end of the album is higher in pitch and in vibrancy than at any other point of the album. I tried to make the album continually feel like it's moving upwards. That's why the last song doesn't even have any bass drum or bass guitar, so it contributes to the feeling of it floating, in relationship to the rest of the record.
But I can only really speak about the concept in the abstract. There's stuff in the lyrics for somebody who's at a particular point in their path, and I'm sure that person will be able to get something out of that, or somebody with a certain type of experience that might be parallel with mine in some way. But I don't feel things of this nature - when it comes to things or somebody's personal inner journey - I don't feel like that's the kind of stuff that anybodz can tell another person, with anz kind of clarity about their own experience. I think I've done it on the lyrics about as clearly as I would be capable of doing it. Everything gets twisted around in interviews, so what I've said is all I can say.
What guitars and amps did you use on the album?
Pretty much the same ones I use with the Chili Peppers - a Marshall Major, a Marshall Jubilee, a '62 Strat, '57 Strat. It's the first time I've ever used the same stuff I use in the band on one of my solo records. But really, that equipment is more me than any other equipment I've ever used, so I figured I'd stop playing a game and do what I do. I also used a Fender Bassman amp for the guitar.
What effects did you use?
That BOSS Turbo Distortion, Electro-Harmonix English Muffin, BOSS CHorus Ensemble, Ibanez Wah Wah pedal - again it's the same stuff I use in the band. I think a Maestro Fuzz-Rite, but I used a lot of modular synth stuff. I would put things on tape, and then run them through a modular synthesier, basically using it as an effects unit. So most of the effects aren't guitar effects - the initial guitar tones were usually made using the things I mentioned, but I did pretty extensive treatments with the modular synthesiser. I also used some really cool outboard gear for treatments as well: the EMT 250 Reverb, Plate Reverb, Eventide Primetime - old digital reverbs - the EMT 250 was one of the first digital reverbs ever made, and it figures prominently on the record.
What about strings?
D'Addario 0.010s.
