Biography
NOTE: I wrote this text myself. If you want to use it, you have to ask me and I have to approve it. You also need to credit me for it.
NOTE 2: This text does not contain any information on 2006, 2007 and 2008 and it is currently being updated.
DISCLAIMER: Since I do not know John or anyone who’s close to him, I cannot guarantee that everything said here is 100% true. The only thing I can guarantee is that this is the most literate bio you can find, with proper capitalisation and mostly proper grammar. OK, that was a bit evil. If you happen to have anything that could be interesting or any correction that you can prove to be correct, contact me. Also, if I have said anything offensive, too private to be put here or untrue, please feel free to correct me and I will apologise and take if off.
John Anthony Frusciante was born in Queens, New York, USA on Thursday, 5th March 1970; as the first and only child of his father John and his mother Gail, who later went separate ways and had more children in their second marriages; so, on his mother’s side, John has a brother Eric (?) and on his father’s side a brother Michael (1981) and two sisters, Anna (?) and Lilly (1989). He’s coming from a family where everyone was involved with music in some way. His Italian great-grandfather and grandfather, the second one also called John (!) were playing violin and mandolin in restaurants in the city; his father was playing piano until he changed his mind to become a successful lawyer and his mother is a very talented singer, who sings harmony vocals on RHCP’s hit "Under The Bridge" accompanied by two friends. Therefore, John’s early interest in music was somewhat natural. He started playing guitar at the age of 6, but, as he said in one interview, he was was taught the beginnig of Stairway To Heaven and stopped learning because his teacher could not show him the solo. The same year, his family moved to Arizona for a year and during that time, his mother and father divorced and John goes with his mom to Santa Monica, California. When he heard where they were going to move, he was very happy, because he knew that all the good music is there.
As a kid of that age, John was interested in sports (he even played baseball for a short time, as said in one interview, but the coach was making him feel bad all the time), skateboarding and rock and punk bands, such as Germs, Black Flag, Fear, Sex Pistols. He started playing the guitar again aprox. the age of 10, 4 years after having moved to Mar Vista with his mom and new step-dad (also a musician), having discovered punk music. In 5th grade, he had some kind of a band with his school friend and they were playing for friends and eating sandwiches with them, as said by the friend himself early in 2004. At the age of 14, John recorded some of his first songs. He recalls that the name of one of those songs was "Water Music". At the age of 15, he saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers play for the first time and they immediatelly became his favourite band, he was spending all of his money on concert tickets for him and his pals, so he could introduce more people to his favourites. But his music taste was wide even back then, so, as said in RHCP’s Greatest Hits booklet, he was taping music from the radio and listening to it on his cassette recorder during the night, when he was supposed to be sleeping. He recalls having listened to Elton John’s songs in his mom’s car and having taped Donna Summer’s "I Feel Love", so there’s no wonder that he is often choosing to cover these artists’ songs dring his solo acts at RHCP concerts.
At the age of 16, John left the alternative type of highschool where he was relocated to, and he found a job and went on to live alone in LA with his friend Bill, having attended Musicians Institute Of Technology at the same time. In one interview, he said that he was practicing for 15 hours a day, then sleeping on the morning classes, so it is not clear what became of his studies there. Sometime in 1987/8, John went on an audition for a guitarist in Frank Zappa’s band. He never actually made it to play there, he gave up and went away. He sincerelly says that he wanted to become a rockstar, do drugs and get the girls, which he wouldn’t have been able to do in Zappa’s band. In the 2004 Mojo interview, he also revelaed, though apologising for having said that, that Zappa wasn’t acting nice and respectful to the people, so that might have discouraged him as well. He also knew Zappa’s opinion on drugs and John and his friend were, well, snorting cocaine back then. Sometime in this period, John recorded the song "A Fall Thru The Ground" which was featured on his well-known dark and mystical album "Smile From The Streets You Hold", ten years later.
In the middle of 1988, short before Red Hot Chili Peppers’ original guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose, John jammed with D.H. Pelligro, former Dead Kennedys’ drummer who was also jamming with RHCP. Somehow, John got to jam with Flea at D.H’s garage soon after. Flea even recorded bits of it on his 4-track-recorder and then invited Anthony Kiedis who was with his family in Michigan to come back and hear "the kid" play. Flea claimed that he never met somebody as excited to play ALL the time as John. Later, they’ve phoned him up and told him that he was in, shortly after Anthony saw him jam with Bob Forrest’s band Thelonious Monster. John often recalls that moment and once he said that he was so happy when he was accepted that there were footprints on the walls of his room, about 1.5 m high. And he brought the band much energy and a new style of playing, having been slowly abandoning Hillel Slovak’s style (he was often being called a Hillel clone back then!) and developing his own. The famous RHCP’s instrumental "Pretty Little Ditty" was born during one of John and Flea’s first jam sessions. The new RHCP had a short "Turd Town Tour" with John and D.H, but later on D.H. was replaced with Chad Smith. The band then recorded their 4th album, "Mother’s Milk". There’s the story about John having said that the lyrics for "Knock Me Down" was one of the stupidest things he’d ever heard. Eventually, the album went gold, it even got onto the lower half of Billboard’s list. After that, the guys have toured the world and the tour was called "Positive Mental Octopus". Bits of it are shown on a couple of videos/DVDs and the chemistry was undeniable. Even then, as someone who barely got out of the teenage years, John was playing perfectly and he always had his own little moments to sing some of his favourite songs, such as Elton John’s "Tiny Dancer". But on the other side, despite amazing playing which made him a virtuoso already at that age and pretty wise statements, he was chasing girls (and they were chasing him), smoking marijuana and joining the band in various photo sessions and concert encores with well…strategically placed socks.
In May and June 1991, RHCP were living in the old villa in Laurel Canyon, where they were recording their album "BloodSugarSexMagik" and this process was documented in the b&w video called "Funky Monks". In that video, at one point 21-year-old John is sitting at the roof talking about the importance of the 4th dimension and, at the other point, he’s talking about various sex-related things and posing for photographs. He seemed just like a regular guy of his age, having fun, but the collapse was yet to come. During the recording of BSSM, he wrote about 60% of the music and came up with many great ideas and improvements. The album proved to be a hit and, according to many people, RHCP’s best album to date. Now-famous French photographer and director Stephane Sendaoui directed the video for the first single, "Give It Away" followed by "Suck My Kiss" and the band started touring again. On this tour and on the concerts, John was acting much differently than before. He wasn’t into goofing around and dressing down anymore, he was sometimes having panic moments before the shows. One of the most memorable and reliable sources to show how John was feeling was definitely the 1992’s RHCP performance on popular US TV show, "Saturday Night Live" where John was screaming instead of singing harmony vocals on "Under The Bridge" and during "Stone Cold Bush" Anthony Kiedis kicked him with the microphone. As Chad Smith later explained, there were many moments he wanted to kick John’s "little ass". In the interviews, John was saying that he can’t wait for the tour to be over so he could go back home, be with his girlfriend and play clarinet (!). The bomb was undoubtedly about to explode. The last video John appeared in was "Under The Bridge". On 7th May 1992, prior to one of the concerts on the Japanese tour, John said that he was quitting the band and he refused to play. After a short talk with the tour manager and the band, he agreed to play one more show and the next day he went back to Los Angeles. He asked the manager to issue a statement saying that he’d gone insane.
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