John works on something ‘epic’, has 300-400 uned. songs, Omar says

After he spoke on John’s different philosophy, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez mentioned John in a significant number of other interviews, sometimes bringing up the subject of him first, before the interviewer would even ask about him.

Here’s what the careful readers of this website have assembled and translated so far. If you know of anything more, do drop a line.

“The preceding album is always the enemy, that’s an old saying. If I didn’t abandon what we did before, I’d be doing it yet again. That would be stagnation. That would be death. Bedlam In Goliath was tight and aggressive, so Octahedron became light and soft in comparison. With Noctourniquet I found it appealing to cut right to the chase of the matter and not to slacken the reins.”

Is this the reason why his friend, the exceptional guitarist John Frusciante, is not involved for the very first time? Omar sounds audibly contrite as he says: “It is our first album on which John does not play, yes. He is… how can I put it? He loves to play, of course, but he loathes everything that coheres with it – all responsibilities, even if there are practically none when he plays with us. However, he’s been working for the last three years on something that takes up all his time. I didn’t want to ask him to join in, because he is completely absorbed by his new music. That’s why he quit the Chili Peppers in the first place. I don’t want to give away too much, but what he’s working on will be… ‘epic’? Yeah, epic is the right word.

(bit of an interview from Musikexpress for April 2012, as per attached picture)

Q: What is working with John Frusciante like?
A: John is a great guy. More than a guitar player, he’s a very expressive guy, an artist. People don’t know about this, but he has made around 400 recordings, which would make around 30 or 40 records, but he won’t edit them because he doesn’t care, he has another philosophy right now. After playing for so long with an almost-corporation that is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with so many rules and limitations, now he goes the other way around: only playing music because he wants to play music. He doesn’t want to think about having a producer edit it or what people would say. He does it because it’s what he likes to do and what moves him. And as much as I tell him, or someone else tells him, that he should edit what he has recorded (because there’s some badass stuff, that would make people change their perspective about electronic music by mixing it with rock), he won’t do it untill he moves to a next stage. It’s very admirable of him.

(bit of an interview from El Patas, August 2011, but VERY relevant)

Q: Were you always that spiritual?
A: Yes. My mom taught me to do yoga, meditation and to study the sacred books. We weren’t a typical catholic latin familiy. We read the Cavada, the Quran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita….
Q: A “rare bird” in the music circus…
A: Well I share that with a Lot of friends, like John Frusciante.
Q: How is he? He had a lot of problems with drugs.
A: Very well since he left the Chili Peppers. Lately he has composed 300 or 400 songs. People think he disappeared, but that’s not so. He just stopped caring about editing records or playing live. We connect a lot.

(bit of the interview from the Spanish version of Rolling Stone for March 2012, as per attached picture)

Q:I wanted to ask you about John Frusciante, with whom you colaborated a lot. What is he doing? Is he going to put out a new album?

A:Well, no. John has been in his own trip this last years. He’s recording a big amount of music, electronic music, he’s already got 400 songs. He does it for the love of the process, not for putting records out or playing live. Although I guess he’ll want to share it in some point of time. It’s beautiful and very inspirational. I like that kind of mentality. I do a lot of records I don’t release, but that’s not the point or the goal, the point is the process itself.

(bit of the interview from the Spanish version of Rock Zone for March 2012, as per attached picture)

*Many thanks to Sebastián, Marta, Kadir, David, Stephan, Bahar and Shalhevet for their help compiling this, whether it was translating, scanning stuff or providing preliminary, rough translations.