Niandra LaDes Press Kit
Beginning nowhere, a place that had been pulling me yelling for me, chasing me as well as us nothings playing John Frusciante could gather ever since we were untangled at some hotels in Europe where I was very very close to punching out some of the interviewers there as they were insisting that I was a rock star and not a nothing. Had fun with nothingness for the next year playing on stage and looking at my bass player’s eyes, and in a moment of clarity (clarity which had been developing ever since I was mistaking myself for a grain of sand) finally jumped in a pool (mid-tour) swam in circles, then thru pipes, which led to the ocean, and swam all the way back to Los Angeles.
I spent the next month laying on my couch, the room totally silent, doing nothing which was grateful to be wrapping itself around me again.
Following that month I recorded much music including the album ‘Niandra Lades’ which was completed 6 months later and had begun two years earlier.
Also recorded with “The Three Amoebas†more music for our album, which we started recording two or three years before as well. The Three Amoebas are John Frusciante, Stephen Perkins and Flea.
In December, while staying in NY I decided to consider me a painter, not a musician. (Insert description of this from first essay.)
This rather insane period went on for about a year. Spent another year doing secret research and travel slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry, and did a lot of writing. This led to the period that will pass over the present where I go through a notebook every two weeks. Have done a lot of recording and writing of music in the recent months. My life is now running off this page.
John Frusciante quit the Red Hots in Japan, a place he dislikes, and has gone completely insane as happened on their trip 2 years before. This time feeling no more insane than he had been for the last year on the road, he left the band with no real reason, but they and he live in some very un-real places. As far as he was concerned he was just doing what he had decided to do a year earlier at which time there really wouldn’t have been any clear verbal reason for which reason he felt that even if he quit, the band would not grant him this. His lack of any reason other than a bad feeling about how the road would affect would have been shown to be compared to how well the band communication and magic was going and they simply would not have let him quit, he feared. By the time he quit the solidarity of the band had been long ago fucked up. When he returned from they he spent one month laying on a couch unable to listen to music, read books, paint, draw, or even look at –burnt spot- of pictures. Activities which were all he ever did normally, for a reason unknown to anyone around him, he said were too painful. He also said he quit playing guitar. Once he finally became –burnt spot- waiting for someone –burnt spot- he began listening to any his favorite music (Bowie, Captain Beefheart, a few others). He became so serious about painting and drawing that he was now –burnt spot- emerged in that and spent about one year doing that, literally 2+ hrs a day, falling asleep every 3 days or so with his face on freshly painted canvas and waking up a few hrs later went right back to it.
He spent some of his time the recent couple of years in NY with the love of his life, Toni, and in various hotels in LA, plus his house. At the end of that one month period I mentioned he recorded the rest of the music which would eventually be the record Niandra LaDes & Usually Just a T-shirt, which he had begun recording at the same time that the
