The Red Hot Chili Pepper Goes Solo
After his return to the heart of The Red Hot Chili Peppers for their seventh album, Californication, the guitarist is working on his third solo album through which he is expressing his inner monsters and goes back to the lo-fi sound.
It is with great pleasure that we head back to Los Angeles (as we write this, it’s between 25 and 30 degrees) in the middle of December to see the little grandpas with Corvettes, and the excellent John Frusciante. We talked to the master guitarist about his third solo album that will be released in mid-February, but also about other projects with Anthony Kiedis’ band. To Record Only Water For Ten Days – this is how he’s christened the album – emphasizes the songs, without preventing him from exploring his signature less structured sounds. Obviously happy with the results, the ever-nice John is taken by confidence in a suite at the Chateau Marmont, one of the largest and most popular places in the area. It is here, where the biggest stars in music and film come; Led Zeppelin recorded here, Blues Brother John Belushi killed himself here, that John Frusciante wanted to chat about his recent recording frenzy. Perfectly heard, in all tranquility…
Guitar & Bass: What made you want to record this album at a time when everything is going really well with RHCP who have surpassed all their sales records?
John Frusciante: Simply because, as an individual I have a personal musical life, which comes before my life with the band. I don’t just make music to be part of a group. I make music because I love doing it, basically. What I do with RHCP has more to do with the chemistry that exists between the group members: my guitar style is defined specifically by Anthony’s vocal style and also by Flea’s bass playing. In this situation, I’m guided by the “social” feeling at the heart of the democratic environment that must exist when you are making music with friends, and this is something I really love. But when I am all alone at home and wake up at 4 a.m. with an urge to record my songs, things happen differently. With RHCP, Anthony writes the majority of the lyrics, but I’ve also been writing lyrics for years and years – I think I’ve been doing this since I was 14 years old, so… It’s a personal need. The majority of the songs on my album were composed in hotel rooms while I was on tour with RHCP over these past 2 years…In hotel rooms and in places where we would wait until we went on stage. When we started touring in Europe, I started getting up at 6 a.m., and while the others were going shopping or visiting museums, I had plenty of time to write a bunch of songs in my corner, and I only had to concern myself with filling up this album.
Guitar & Bass: The lyrics seem pretty mysterious, to the point where one can’t fully understand where you’re coming from. How do you come up with these lyrics?
(Long silence followed by some onomatopoeia.)
John Frusciante: ….Well, a lot of people ask about the meaning behind my lyrics. It’s true that they might come to me in a bizarre way…Some years ago, I was staring at a wall and I saw some phrases appears….Other times, I saw words on my roommates’ foreheads.
Guitar & Bass: That’s bordering on psychiatric problems! Did you at least try some kind of treatment, at that time, to calm your spirit?
John Frusciante: Yes, but that madness never scared me. I wasn’t worried. I didn’t feel any kind of mental breakdown between the things I was reading on the walls or elsewhere and what was going on in my head. Everyday, there were different words. I was reading a lot of very interesting things, and I don’t think that it was all coming from my subconscious….
Guitar & Bass: Oh yeah?
John Frusciante: I learned a lot of things from that, and the lyrics that I write for my songs come, to a large extent, from the words that I was seeing appear.
Guitar & Bass: That explains it! The drugs might also have something to do with it…were you maybe forced into this psychosis?
John Frusciante: Yeah, the feeling brought on by drugs! Drugs don’t serve their creative purpose at the moment you take them. On the other hand, the experience they bring you can serve their purpose after the hit. When you’re high, you have a good time, and that’s it. You don’t do anything else, and it’s not during that time that you’d write anything good. It can serve a purpose retrospectively, in the sense that you might remember certain impressions and use them, but your head needs to be clear and you need to be lucid in order to do this. Anyway, now, that I’m calm, I only take this plant cocktail.
Guitar & Bass: If you spoke to us about the musical aspect of this album…
John Frusciante: I produced it by myself, I played all the guitar parts and did all the singing. I did all the programming for the bass and drum sounds. Some of the drum parts were played in real time, I mean, manually on a keyboard, by putting a sound per track in order to mix it like a real drum. I don’t have a computer, but I use a sampler MPC 300 for all those types of things. It’s like a computer, but I find it easier.
Guitar & Bass: How long did you spend on this album?
John Frusciante: We had a long break after the RHCP tour, and I was able to concentrate on my own songs. It must have been 4 or 5 months,
Guitar & Bass: Is it the cold sound produced by digital equipment that turns you off?
John Frusciante: Absolutely. The equipment Jimi Boyle has at his place is analogue and the sound is excellent. A few days ago, we recorded two new songs with my other friend, Josh, on drums, and the sound we got was fabulous. We still haven’t recorded the overdubs, but just the guitar and drum tracks together sound incredibly good. I still have a lot of songs on the go, and like I often say, I write songs naturally. The songs on this album were written these last few months for the album, but I’m constantly writing.
Guitar & Bass: Are there any innovative guitar parts on this album?
John Frusciante: Not really. I’m more a simple and direct kind of guy. I get right to the point without trying to complicate things. It’s important to write good songs with as few chords as possible: I don’t use open-tunings, not anymore than bizarre guitar tunings. Everything was done with the guitars tuned in E, “regular” as we say. I used a Stratocaster from the early 60s and an old Nationnal folk from the 30s. I didn’t even use an amp, because I love the sound I get when I’m directly plugged in the
Guitar & Bass: Are you going to do a solo tour?
John Frusciante: I don’t think I’m going to do a proper tour, so to speak, but I’ll do some shows here, in the States, and it’s understood that I’ll do some small shows in Europe, most likely in England and France, since I’m going there to promote the album. We have to start working on a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album in February, and I want to take advantage of my free time to promote my new album and tour. I’ll be performing alone, with my acoustic guitar, no back-up band, because it’s much simpler from a logical point of view, but also because I think it fits really well with my songs since they were written like that…I will only be playing in France and England, because they’re the only countries on the promotional tour where I’ll have some days off.
Guitar & Bass: Is your record company going to release a single from this album?
John Frusciante: Of course, Going Inside is the track that was picked. But we intend on doing more than that, because only releasing a single doesn’t generate a lot of interest. I decided to include four bonus tracks on the maxi single. Three of those songs were recorded that same way my first album was, meaning, on a simple 4-track, about a-year-and-a-half ago. The fourth one was recorded at the same time as the rest of this album. I recorded a lot of other songs, but I picked those ones, because they wouldn’t have sounded any better if I’d recorded them any other way. For RHCP albums, we always record four extra songs to release with the singles in certain countries, and I did the same with my solo album.
Guitar & Bass: How do you judge your guitar work?
John Frusciante: I practice a lot. I’ve been working a lot with my instrument for the last year or two, because I want to become a good musician.During the years when I wasn’t playing the guitar, I worked really hard to get rid of my bad habits and become the type of person I wanted to be. I have no desire to become a star or to portray a certain image to people. There’s no place for those kinds of things in my head! I give meaning to my life by trying to be the best guitarist that I can be, even if those aren’t the technical aspects that I take to heart.
Guitar & Bass: Your project with the Chili Peppers?
John Frusciante: We’re going to start working on our next album in February, therefore it’ll be out around the end of the year. I really appreciate the work we do together because Anthony, Flea and Chad a really great guys. This group is exactly what I needed. It differs from the work I do on my own, but it’s just as important to my personal well-being.
After this interesting conversation with a very talkative John Frusciante (I heard some negative things like: “You’re going to have a hard time, he’s autistic!”), it was getting really late and we went cruising down the never-ending streets of L.A. with John’s album blasting through the stereo. In the end, I didn’t find this album as sad as I thought…
