John Frusciante goes over the bridge
When John Frusciante quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the middle of their world tour for Blood Sugar Sex Magik, their biggest album to date, most people thought he was crazy. They may have been right, but then again it is the mind of lunatics that some of the world’s greatest art is born.
After walking out on the band in Japan, Frusciante returned to his home in Los Angeles and locked himself away from the world, doing absolutely nothing for the period of one month. Then he picked up his guitar again and began recording on a four track, working on songs he’d started years before. He also became obsessed with painting during this period, and would literally spend weeks at it, falling asleep every few days in front of the canvas.
The completed recordings of this period have been recently released on American Recordings as Niandra LaDes and Usually Just A T-Shirt. The 24 home-recorded songs offer a personal glimpse into the mind of a disturbed genius.
I don’t know much about your past. Were you in any bands before the Chili Peppers?
No, I was only eighteen when I joined.
Why did you end up leaving the Chili Peppers?
Well, it was just impossible for me to stay in the band any longer. It had come to the point where even though they wanted me in the band, it felt like I was forced out of the band. Not by any members in particular or management in particular, but just the direction it was going.
You probably wouldn’t have been too comfortable doing something like Woodstock then.
Exactly, or the Stones tour.
Do you still get along with them then?
With Flea. My album is dedicated to his daughter Clara. She’s six years old and she’s the smartest person I ever met. Me and her have done a lot of collaborations in painting. We have a love for doing that together.
What can you tell me about the recording of the new album?
I did it at home on a four track, which has been one of my favorite pastitmes since I was 14 when I got my first four track. Before that I used to put two tape recorders next to each other and record back and forth between them.
When you were recording it, were you thinking about releasing it eventually?
Not at all. That would’ve been totally against all the reasons for recording it. It was recorded to be an un-commercial thing, something that was separate from the whole songwriting tactics of the band. Because with that, even though the origin of every song was a place of love between me and Flea, and from the air, from a really un-thought kind of place, it would always end up in the same arrangement of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-verse-chorus or whatever. And that’s not the way the air speaks to me, so that’s not the way music speaks to me either. With this music, none of it took more than a couple hours to record but it was recorded over a period of like three years.
Does it make you nervous to have it out for public consumption then?
No. I don’t get freaked out about things like that anymore. I used to. To me, any good music being released to kids nowadays is a good thing because there isn’t much of it around. And there’s a specific vibe that I replaced with the word “good”. But there’s a specific vibe that this music has in common with lots of other things, not just music but all forms of art, that the people who are playing music now just don’t have. And this album has that vibe and I think it’s something that can really make a difference in somebody’s life in this world. It can make them feel like they have a place in the world or not have a place.
Is it because it was recorded at home, is it more pure than recording in a studio that way?
Well, I have no problems with studios, whether I record at home or in a studio, I do everything in one take. I don’t go back and over dub or fix things so it’s not that much different.
There are some really wigged out effects on your album, especially on the song “Running Away Into You”. How did you do that on a four track?
The only tracks on that are one track of a guitar and one track of vocal. The sounds are just an echo on the vocals where I play with the knobs while I’m singing. So I just did it while I sang in one take.
Why did you decide to cover the Bad Brains’ song, “Big Takeover”?
It was just something I had been walking around thinking of in my head. Sometimes I’ll walk around singing punk rock songs to myself, but as if they were regular songs instead of punk rock songs, you know, slow it down and make a melody instead of just yelling them out. And then the idea occured me to record it like a Led Zeppelin ballad with mandolins and stuff.
I heard a rumour that River Phoenix was somewhere on this record. Is that true?
He was on the advance cassette and he may be on a future pressing, but he’s not on the copy that’s out now.
So, there are more songs where these came from?
Yeah. There are a lot more.
Will you be releasing them soon?
Well, that depends on the record company. But first we have to find out who will release the Three Amoebas’ record. The Three Amoebas are me and Flea and Stephen Perkins and we recorded a bunch of songs. Now I have to get the word from a record company person that I can go and master it. And then it’s just a matter of picking out the best songs and releasing it.
But there are no definite plans yet.
Well, it’s definitely coming out. I just don’t know if it will be with Rick Rubin or Warner Bros.
Oh, I see. Can you tell me a little about the film you made for the new album with Johnny Depp and Gibby Haynes?
Well, Gibby’s been my friend for a while and he brought Johnny Depp over here one night when I was still in a period of intense concentration on painting and he made the mistake of sitting down next to me and he told me that this jar of paint I had was dead because the upper layer of it had hardened. So when he said, “This paint is dead,” I took a big gob of paint in my hand and threw it at him. But even though I was bothered by him like that, the whole thing was taken in good humour. And even though I knew he was in my house, he actually sat beside me for a half hour without me realizing it. And no one can sit next to me when I paint, but his vibe wasn’t getting in my way, so I realized he was a very cool person. And the three of us stayed up all night listening to my music and they really liked it. They sort of forced me to put the music out.
But they were really tripped out by the way my house looked, because it had paint everywhere. So they wanted to film it. And unlike most people who have ideas in the middle of an all night session, they actually came back three days later with a camera crew and they filmed it and edited it. And it turned out to be a cool little film. But me and my girlfriend are going to make films of our own to go with the music, something for MTV and for release on videotape.
Have you been working a lot with visual arts lately?
Just drawing lately. I’ve been writing up some ideas for movies.
So what is your biggest project right now?
Getting something together with another musician and doing some shows.
Are you thinking of doing a national tour?
No, just playing in places I like playing.
And would you be doing stuff from the new album?
Most likely I’ll be doing the Frusciante method which is that you don’t play anything live once it’s recorded. I have so much music that I haven’t ever recorded yet that I’d love to play.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
Uh, I didn’t even know there was a New Year…so I guess not.
—Brian Bruxvoort
