Stone Free
“When I was making this music, I had no idea that it would ever become a record. I was so located in the spiritual dimension where the music comes from that I literally wasn’t aware of the fact that people were going to buy it and play it in their houses.”
John Frusciante is talking about his new solo album, Niandra La Des And Usually Just a T-Shirt (American), his first release since his truamatic 1992 departure from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Niandra La Des is a bizarre and challenging recording. Deeply introspective, hallucinogenically meandering, by turns delicate and fitful, it is reminiscent of the late sixties solo albums by Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s disturbed founder.
Frusciante recorded most of the album at his home, using a four-track recorder to capture his rambling guitar work and haunted vocals. He started working on Niandra while working on the Chili Peppers’ BloodSugarSexMagik and finished about six months after he left the group. “No song took more than three hours,” says Frusciante. “Everything was done in one take. This was a chance to trip my head out and be as free as I wanted. What I expressed in the Chili Peppers was just a small part of what I’m all about.”
The word that best describes these intensely private recordings is, perhaps, the word “chilling”. Adding to the eerie vibe is the presence of late actor River Phoenix, who contributes a backwards monologue to one track, and sings and plays acoustic guitar on another. It was Frusciante’s Hollywood cronies who persuaded him to release his home recordings: “All my friends – Perry Farrell, Johnny Depp, Flea, Gibby Haynes, and River – begged me to put it out. They told me that, what with all the shitty music that’s out there nowadays, this record needs to be out. I eventually gave in.”
—Alan Di Perna
