Oor, 24th February 2001

John Frusciante

Among other things, thanks to his guitar playing on Californication, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are back on the world map since 1999. But also solo, John Frusciante (30) seems to make a stir every now and then. He made two chaotic albums already in the nineties, heavily under the influence of heroin. This month To Record Only Water For Ten Days came along. Yet again, this is not an album that is ‘easy to digest’, but, at least, it is made on firm ground.

It’s probably about 6 years ago we published it: OOR’s Crazy Geniuses Hall Of Fame. Guitarist John Frusciante, at the time ex-RHCP’er and heavily addicted to drugs, was one of them. In his company: Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, Captain Beefheart, Lee Perry, Phil Spector, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, GG Allin, that kind of people. Was John Frusciante a genius? If you would have judged him based on his inspired playing on the great success that was Blood Sugar Sex Magix: yes. Not so if you listened to his somewhat epileptic solo debut album Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt. Was John Frusciante crazy? No. He was, however, extremely addicted. Because of his addiction he was dazzled, damaged, paranoid, introvert. For the time being.

When he wasn’t addicted anymore, and came back to the Chili Peppers in ’98-‘99, it became clear again that there was more genius that craziness in this man. These were the years of the realization of Californication, the record on which Frusciante was excellent again. He embodied one of the most remarkable rebirths in pop-history.

WHY DO WE TALK NOW, HERE, ABOUT JOHN FRUSCIANTE? Because John Frusciante now, here, asks for everyone’s attention, just for now. Or rather: asked for our attention. In the beginning of this month, this tragic guitar god was the single most important news. On just one day he did a solo concert in the upstairs room of Paradiso and his third album, To Record Only Water For Ten Days, was out. Strange record, but not nearly as strange as its predecessors (in 1997 Frusciante made another record, Smile From The Streets You Hold). Also, it was much more incomprehensible and inaccessible. To Record contains fifteen songs with openers, closers, rhythms and melodies. Sung painfully out of tune, but honest and disarming in tone, and pungently introspective in content. ‘A testament to his survival’, that was how Rolling Stone describe it. But of course, this was a record that, just like Radiohead’s Kid A, was born to split opinions in a very extreme way. ‘Nieuwe Revu’ for example, did what they were expected to do (they put their hands on their ears, as if they were in great pain, and gave it just one star), radio station Kink FM gave Going Inside the title ‘Brilliant Single’, and put it on the number one spot on their ‘Outlaw 41′. And the concert? Memorable, at least. And of course, it should have taken place in the large room (but that was regretfully reserved for Ani DiFranco). For one and a half hour, Frusciante glued everything together that was most important to him. His means: singing (more in tune than on the CD!) and acoustic guitar. It became a celebration of recognition. And admiration, emotion, sympathy. Old songs, new songs, covers. With emphasis on that last one. Syd Barrett, Joy Division, R.E.M., Lou Reed, Radiohead, Del Shannon and of course his hero, David Bowie, he played them all. Mostly, they were small parts or initiatives, but they were all stripped to the core. Frusciante looked restless but clear. And as if time after time, a well thought out cocktail of uppers and downers had to be fabricated, between the songs he grabbed the bottles of alcohol next to him (many different types and colors) and took a few hasty swigs. Very touching. He ended with Bowie’s Rock & Roll Suicide. Couldn’t be more significant.

THE MAN THAT REPORTED HIMSELF THAT MORNING FOR HIS FIRST INTERVIEW OF THE DAY, CURSES hilariously, with the sterile, ‘tres chique’ hotel room surrounding him. Model John is wearing a smudgy little hat, a five-day-old stubble and – on top of it all – an dilapidated greenish waistcoat with big holes at the level of his shoulders and elbows. His look is hazy. The average homeless person from a capital city looks more tasteful. Believe it or not, but a few moments later on, John, who thanks to the Peppers-success should be a millionaire at least, told that he was indeed homeless. Sort of. He’s staying permanently in the Chateaux Marmont-hotel in Hollywood. ‘I just don’t have a house. I can’t make myself go and look for a place. I’ll just wait until it comes to me.’ He laughs. Fake teeth. He lost his real teeth during his heroin-adventure. His life, he explains, is very basic anyway. He still does what he’s been doing half his life: play guitar the whole day. ‘I still want to get better. A better songwriter too. Playing guitar and watch videos, that’s it. And stay healthy. Lots of yoga.’

He’s speaking more clearly and coherent than in April 1999, before the release of Californication, the last time I talked with him. What’s more, he always turned analyzing inimitably, especially when his addiction was brought up. I remember vague and long explanations about the battle in his head that took place during his heroin-era, and about the balance between giving and taking. In that department, for years there was no balance between him and the outside world, he thought. He called his drug years “the years of imbalance”. But here and there a balance disappears. Especially his sense of time seems affected. This became clear during his Paradiso-concert, when he, again, announced that the next song was written ‘a few days, no, a few weeks ago’. Even during the interview he juggles with indications of time. But when we talk on the concert, and he arrives at the subject ‘R.E.M.’ (he covered their Country Feedback), he knows he used to listen regularly to their music in ‘September 1997′. In his girlfriend’s car. ‘She wouldn’t let me smoke in the house, so I sat in the car. I listened to R.E.M. and Bob Marley. Country Feedback… That song talked to me. Something in the lyrics gave me the feeling that there were other dimensions. That there was more in this world than I would experience in my life. It means a lot to me singing that song now. It helped me in multiple epochs of my life.’

WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT THE CHILI PEPPERS. I ask John how it feels to be in the same circus again, that made him decide the quit the band. His reaction is fierce. ‘The fact that we tried to become popular and famous, was not the reason. The things we did, the things that everyone does if you’re young and successful, dislocated me from the inside, that is correct. But our success didn’t hurt me. On the contrary. The problem was… I wasn’t able to see the beautiful side of what I had to offer to the people. I know now that, when writing, you put yourself in a four-dimensional surrounding. You recreate that through your music, and pass it on to the three-dimensional world: the audience. That music creates a new space in the heads of the listeners and gets in a chemical reaction with their feelings. Those feelings, on their part, originated as a reaction to your music. That’s a beautiful symbiotic process, but you have to recognize it. You first have to realize what levels that process creates in all kinds of new dimensions. That’s what I am now. That is the reason I can appreciate what we’re doing now, and I couldn’t back then.’ He twiddles a bit with his hat. On, off, on, off. ‘If someone would have explained me this back then, nothing would have gone wrong. But I… I wanted to now desperately why I felt the urge to make music. I simply wanted to see that explained. I knew that it had to do with me, the inner me, with spirituality. But I didn’t understand how that worked. At a certain moment, I only felt things that were aimed at the outside: making crazy faces during photo shoots, jumping around on stage, doing interviews, receiving awards, talking about stuff I cared about for so long, that they became things I didn’t care about anymore. Everything diminished in meaning . My creativity disappeared. At the end of the Blood Sugar Sex Magic-sessions, I had reached another creative peak, and I knew that. But all of a sudden, the album was finished and all of that fell in decline. We had to go on tour, while my role in the group had nothing to offer to me anymore at that moment. Very painful. I desperately tried to turn the tide: go for a walk every morning. Sitting on a bench and draw. Persistently trying to hold on to that creativity. But it didn’t work. At one point, I didn’t even enjoy playing the guitar anymore.’ So John dropped out of the Peppers decisively. ‘I had to find out what happened inside of me. I had to create order in all these thoughts, all those voices that talked to me. And what also played a role: the other band members didn’t get on with each other. There was friction and tension between the band members. And it’s no fun to play in a band with people that are not your friends.’ But, John laughs, that was then. And this is now. ‘And now we know what it’s like without each other. Because of that we appreciate and respect each other a lot more than we did back then. We’re all on our own busy making ourselves better people. We’re nicer to each other. We’re a ‘gang’ again, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.’

AND NOW THERE’S TO RECORD ONLY WATER FOR TEN DAYS. The first Frusciante record that’s concrete and approachable. ‘That’s because of the music I’ve been listening to the last few years. Very different to the stuff that I was listening to some time ago. Now I think it’s much more important that there’s precision in my songs. Mainly from a technical point of view: the feelings that are in there, are still the same, but the form is different. I don’t have to experiment anymore. I know what I want. I used to write half a song and record it. Where there were no lyrics, I improvised. Or I read something from a book aloud. Backwards [laughs]. Now I make sure everything is well sorted out in my head. First practice for hours, then record. Discipline, that’s what it is all about.’

He has worked on the weakest point of the album, the singing. John smiles. ‘I’m a much better singer now than I was when I recorded the album. I practice a lot on harmonies, with my good friend Josh. We do songs from The Beatles, The Velvets, Depeche Mode… Also, I’ve learned to warm up my voice before I sing. It makes a huge difference. I used to laugh when Anthony did voice training before the shows. That went really wild, like: [stretches vocal cords] wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhh!!! It was crazy. Now I know how important that is. On my next record, the singing will be better.’

John says we can’t view his new album as a diary of what happened to him the last few years. At least not of what was visible to the outside world. ‘This album is about everything that happened deep inside of me.’ Record opener Going Inside is a good example, John thinks. ‘That song is about the value of doing nothing. Because the older you get, the greater the pressure to make something out of your life. You have to study, to be creative, to work, to be social, to make money, to be successful… For society, you have to improve constantly, especially in America. I don’t care about that. I’m at a point where I discovered the value and advantage of complete emptiness. I’ve found satisfaction in things as elementary as sitting down. Letting the world pass me by. Going Inside, to see what’s down there. Drugs helped me with that, yes.’

In the meantime, John might be clean, but he doesn’t rule out that he will use some again in the future. ‘But in a different manner. I look forward to doing nothing for a year and not to worry about money. Or about what others think about me. You see, to enter yourself is not visible to others; that’s what makes it hard. Others think you are doing nothing. But I see it as a way to meditate. Devoting my life to tripping my head out. Without sometimes having those periods of emptiness, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now. What I did on Californication, I wouldn’t have been able to do without the years that came before it.’

THAT THOSE PERIODS OF EMPTINESS CAN GO COMPLETELY WRONG, is something John has experienced too. During the Paradiso-concert, during one of his talks between songs, he pointed out ‘he once was dead for some time’. So to say. And after that he just had his rebirth. ‘How can I explain… The elements that make me who I am, the spirits that sum up to the vitality that’s usually within me, weren’t there for some time. Nine months, to be precise. That number makes the illusion of rebirth even prettier [laughs]. It was 1997. Worst time of my life. I just wasn’t there. I was nothing. If someone addressed me as John Frusciante, I felt like a con. If someone reminded me of something I made in the past, my first solo-record for example, it was like I was talking about the work of a stranger. I didn’t exist. I had become an empty place of my own.’

How it went down exactly, John doesn’t remember, but eventually he came back to life. ‘That was a process of about three months. I slowly started to feel regular feelings and sensations again. I remember I used to write an awful lot in that period. Notebooks and notebooks. And I used to dance a lot. But from the inside, maybe. I probably did nothing that was of any value to an outsider, maybe not even something visible, but slowly I could become John Frusciante again. Shortly after that I ended up in a rehabilitation clinic, and I got better physically too. The stars finally aligned.’

The time for the interview is over. One final question: Whether drugs, in whatever way, still played a role in John’s life. ‘No. I still look for the kick, but now through other means. Innocent, natural things. For example, I take valerian. Most people fall asleep when they take that, I get fucked up. But there’s one big difference with the past, when I got in that state with heroine: I feel good when I get up the next morning. And you can talk to me all day.’
 
REMARKABLE
The message that John Frusciante explicitly allows recordings of his shows, clearly had reached the Paradiso-audience, as became clear seeing many spectators with cameras and audio-equipment. Their recordings may not bring in much because of that, but the people will be careful with them, because this was a special show. Frusciante might come across way more shy than his charismatic bandmembers of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but when he’s alone on stage with his acoustic guitar, he turns out to be a captivating and liberating personality that loves to make contact with his audience. He chatters between all songs, and answers the questions he can hear. After about six songs, he encourages his audience to make requests, which he will keep playing for the rest of the show. When he doesn’t know how the rest of the song exactly went, he just tries it again. The request to play Under The Bridge, he doesn’t find appropriate for the moment, after which he spontaneously explained it’s a rip off of David Bowie’s Andy Warhol, which he plays ad hoc in his totality. The transition to the refrain turns out to be copied form T-Rex, which he makes clear moments later. A lot of covers pass in review, but of course he also plays a lot of his own songs. Frusciante has huge technical capabilities, but he doesn’t always seem to care about them. What he sings and plays is not at all times right, but it is extraordinarily intense. His songs are melancholic and even sad, and not accessible to everyone. When he sings and talks about something, he is open and honest, and together with his eager speeches, it makes for a very personal show during which everybody is hanging upon his lips. He does encores until he’s not allowed anymore, and after that, he goes and talks with the people in the audience. He uncovers himself from all mysteries, until you clearly see who he is: a very wayward artist, upright and admirable.

‘verhandelingen’ literally means ‘lectures’, but is used figuratively here
‘mallemolen’ is a very special Dutch word, that literally translates to ‘merry-go-round’
‘Afkalven’ literally means ‘sloughing’

By: Eric van den Berg / Photography: Oski Collado

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