The (Re)Birth of Tragedy
John Frusciante may be best known as the guitarist for frat-boy jock-funksters The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the musical prodigy and the charismatic performer has also slowly – almost secretly – proven to be a venerable, if mercurial, solo artist over the past decade. His first few solo albums, including Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt, which were packaged as a double album and released by Warner Bros. in 1994 (and reissued in 1999 and again in 2003), were frantic, garbled and obtuse testaments to his candle-burning-at-both-ends, bare artistic genius. At the time of those recordings, he had just quit the band,, determined to focus on his own music (and perhaps, more accurately, on feeding his massive heroin addiction).
Frusciante’s delicate, expressive and downright somber guitar playing and his increasingly prominent and emotive vocal harmonies, are beyond a doubt the core of the Chili Peppers surprisingly revived vitality upon his 1998 return to the group, after drugs nearly wiped him from the planet. Pitted against the Chili Peppers’ socks’n’sausage party aesthetic, Frusciante imbues the band with a sullen, soaring soul – an accomplishment that would seem nearly impossible when taking the rest of the band at face value.
It’s not simply that Frusciante is a great guitar player – because, really, who cares? The world is filled with skilled technicians in all forms of commerce and art – but it’s that the guy actually plays with such verve and heart-wrenching desperation that makes him worthy of respect. While many of his solo songs seem cloying and formulaic, they’re never without the charm of his musical and vocal Spence of urgency..
It might be that very sense of urgency in his music that inspired the unprecedented rash of releases throughout the summer and fall of 2004 – a new album every month for six months via the fledgling Warner Bros. offshoot Record Collection. It’s truly a perfect example of addict behavior, but in this case, a creatively directed one.. Likewise, throughout these six releases – The will to Death, DC EP, Inside of Emptiness, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, Curtains, and Automatic Writing, the last being a collaboration with Josh Klinghoffer and Fugazi’s Joe Lally and released under the moniker Ataxia – you can hear the powerful force of a soul that has long ago resigned itself from this life. To me, every song Frusciante writes sounds like another phrase culled from a drawn-out suicide note. He achingly strums his guitar as if yearning for it to choke out his own breath. Some day, Frusciante will achieve his wish to exit our world. Until then, his albums serve as a chilling repast from the other side.
Let it be noted that this interview began on a sour note, as Frusciante is clearly not at ease with the process of talking about his music. From the outset, he misunderstood the opening question and took a defensive tack for much of the discussion. And throughout, his disdain for explaining himself beyond the means that he has already in liner notes to his solo albums is readily apparent. Perhaps most interesting, on another level, is his need to correlate himself with “underground” artists. The loud thud of each name drop throughout is indeed a telling testament to Frusciante’s difficult perch as an artist who has also (twice!) sold his soul to rock’n’roll but still wants to remain true to his own sense of artistic credibility.
It seems apparent in the bios for your new albums that you’ve got your own ideas about what exactly makes this music work and what it’s about. Would you care to elaborate on those ideas a bit?
Well, you know, it’s music. It doesn’t really matter what’s said about it. It’s music that I did, that I really love. When you’ve done something that you really love it doesn’t matter what anybody says, or what I say about it… I don’t think it adds anything to it. [Frusciante grows increasingly more hostile.] I’ll answer your questions, but do I think the music has to have something said about it? No, the most I can think to say about it I wrote in the bio.
That’s what I meant, it seems like it’s something that speaks for itself in your mind.
The stuff I wrote in the bio is about the production aspect of it, which is different from what I’m used to in my life. At the same time, there’s lots of groups who grew up having to – for instance, my friends in The Mrs Volta, they used to be in At the Drive-In, where they used to have to make a record in five days, you know? Whereas, I grew up making records with Michael Beinhorn, then with Rick Rubin, where a lot of time and money was spent. So, I had to learn how to make records quickly. Now that I do things that way, it’s opened up a whole world to me in terms of being at one with my dreams and to decide to do a project and just do it. At precious points in my life, I’d talk about doing a project and then nothing would ever happen about it. It was just talk. Now, I say I’m going to make a record, and I make a record. Then a month later, II say I’m going to make another record and I make another record… I feel like I’m at one with what I want to do. I’m glad I took this philosophy that the economics are an important part of playing music, and that’s what’s opened this up to do as much music as I have. The acceleration of how much better each record gets, from my respective, is something that could only be gotten from doing a bunch of recordings right next to each other. It’s a time I’ll always be proud of.
Was it your goal to have a high level of productivity, or was it just by chance doing one thing after another that it all fell in line?
I had a six-month break drom the Chili Peppers and I had about 70 songs that I wanted to record, So I said, ‘I’m going to record as many of these songs as I can in this time.’ I don’t know how many I recorded, but I did a decent portion of them. I don’t get a six-month break very often. Once the Chili Peppers start working together again, I won’t get much time to spend. Now that I can make a record that quickly, I can take a weekend and record a few songs here and there.
The thing that strikes me about your playing and singing is that you seem so adaptable and a quick learner. From one record to the next, there’s this very apparent growth in various areas that you seem to focus upon. For instance, I’ve noticed how much your singing has progressed since your first solo record up to now, the great control that you have of harmony and lead vocals, not to mention the development of your guitar style. Is there something that with each record you look back and try to do better?
It’s not so much that I try to get better. If I’ve already done something, it’s not that exciting to continue with the same concept…For me, it’s important to go somewhere that I haven’t gone before. If I play a certain style on one album, I want to do something completely different on the next one. It’s the most important thing an artist can do – to turn the corner abruptly nd do something that’s not linear, like any normal person would do.
Was your goal to play with a mixed batch of musicians on these recordings?
Uh… no, not really. It’s mostly me and my friend Josh [Klinghoffer] on the records. Joe Lally [Fugazi bassist] played on one record and my friend Omar Rodriguez from The Mars Volta plays some guitar solos on a couple of the records.
Are you trying to get away from overdubs and adding in layers?
No, no, no… that was just on The Will to Death. And, still on that, there was a lot of overdubs to the basic tracks. On the Ataxia record, the music and vocals were done live, but I did a lot of overdubs treating the tracks – like running the drums through my synthesizer, doing little synthesizer overdubs, things like that. But, with The Will to Death, I wanted this space to be there. On Shadows Collide with People [Warner Bros., 2004], there wasn’t a lot of space, it was really produced and had things going on all the time. For The Will to Death, I was listening to the third Velvet Underground album a lot, as well as listening to BBC sessions and demos that other bands would do that had a really stripped-down sound. I was really attracted to that kind of sound. I did so many harmonies on [Shadows that I didn’t want to have as many of them as that. But, the record I have coming out in December [Curtains] has more harmonies on it than anything I’ve ever done.
There seems to be an evolution through all the records, from your first solo album to To Record Only Water for Ten Days [Warner Bros., 2001] and onward, there seemed to be an escalation of production values. But then, with the newer releases, you were almost stepping back from that.
Yeah, it’ll be interesting now if I do something more produced. I mean, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence is somewhat more produced… it has a lot more electronics, but it’s recorded in a much more raw way. It’s much more alive and more live performance than it is really produced. When things are really produced it’s looked at from all angles: How are people going to hear this? How am I going to go about getting this sound? Et cetera. If I do a real produced record now with a certain amount of layering, it will still have the raw production. If I go in that direction again, it won’t be at the expense of flaws.
That’s one of the most interesting things bout you recordings – being able to hear those little glitches. Even on a Chili Peppers albums, it seems like you bring a sense of spontaneity to the music. There are often these little beautiful accidents that give the songs much more character.
Yeah, I agree. I think I lost sight of that for a while around the time I did Shadows. It’s always a bummer when musicians get more and more perfect and they lose all their soul and shit [laughs]… I realized that I started to go in that direction and now I’ve taken a completely backward approach to avoid it.
There’s a solo on the Ataxia record that just glitches up a little bit at the end and it really makes it all sound so perfect. It must be relieving to do whatever kind of guitar part you want, because I’m sure you have to deal with more rigid techniques for the Chili Peppers stuff.
Not really in terms of the music, it’s more like a lot of care goes into perfecting the drums beforehand, and perfecting the vocals because a lot of times Anthony [Kiedis] is still writing lyrics while we’re recording. The difference is that [producer] Rick [Rubin] is really putting the drums under the microscope to get the perfect groove, and we have to do four or five takes, or sometimes we just have to move on and do something else. For Josh and I, that would never happen. I’ve got it clear in that, like, the Stones in the sixties didn’t have anyone like Rick putting them under the microscope, The Velvet Underground didn’t have anyone putting the beats under a microscope, and consequently the drums are speeding up and slowing down all the time. But to my ear, that’s beautiful. My songs can stand up to that kind of thing. They’re songs first and foremost, they’re not grooves, you know? If a song is a good song, it can withstand the tempo speeding up in a part, or whatever. It’s more about getting the spirit of people in a room who love playing together. As long as that’s there, I’m always going to be happy listening to the playback. With the Chili Peppers there’s always this consideration, like, ‘Is this the groove what 10 million people are going to rock out to in their car.’ [laughs] You know? It’s a totally different criteria. I’m happy to be involved in both those things. It’s not a bummer for me, I enjoy working under those conditions too.
Your lyrics are really confessional. They tend to be focused on elements of your personal life. And, I think that it fits well to the type of music recording that you do. It’s very intimate.
That’s sort of the function that music plays in my life. I might go for a long period of my life without being around a girl, but if I can be listening to Roberta Flack or Sandy Denny or all the wonderful women singers that there are who soothe me, I feel like I’m with a woman, you know? If I’m listening to a songwriter who really touches me like Peter Hamill [of Van Der Graaf Generator] or Lou Reed or Cat Stevens or whoever, even if I haven’t seen my best friend in two months, I feel like I have a best friend in my life. Music has always carried me through times of loneliness. So, when I make music, I like it to make people who listen to it to feel like they have a friend who reveals something personal to them, rather than trying to be like a god up on a pedestal. It pulls me in when someone shows you the most fragile part of their character.
Well, it seems like if one were trying to read into your lyrics, there’s this sense of remorse and loss… I think people look for clues in you lyrics, because obviously, you’ve been through quite a lot in your life. Joining a really popular band at such a young age, and your drug experiences…
Yeah, it definitely changed me immensely. It was a real trip to join my favorite band when I was 18, you know? But, there’s so much… like, what can I say about 15 years of my life? The foundation of who I am and why I do what I do lies in a belief that there’s more to what’s going on than we’re seeing around us. There’s more than what meets the eye. If I didn’t have that philosophy, I would have never switched my lifestyle from being extremely self-destructive to now being very healthy and constructive. I’m extremely grateful for the help that I have from other worlds and things like that. I try to pay that back and I try to open up people’s minds who weren’t able to go as far off the deep end as I was to learn the valuable lessons I’ve had.
