Back From The Dead
Red Hot Chili Pepper John Fruciante’s comeback from the abyss of heroin addiction is one of the most remarkable in recent rock history. In 1996, the guitarist was living in the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood. The pin-up looks he had when he joined the group were gone, his teeth had fallen out, the places where his fingernails used to be were blackened with blood, and his flesh was covered in scabs, scars, burns and wounds.
But somehow he made his way back, not just to health, but to a new peak of creativity. It was Frusciante’s songwriting that helped make his Chili Pepper comeback albums – the 20 million selling Californication and By The Way – the most successful of the bands’ career.
“Why did I get into heroin?”, he smiles while lounging in a London hotel suite named after acting legen John Gielgud. “Because it was fun, i guess. It wasn’t actually my favorite drug. I preferred cocaine to begin with. But you know what? No matter how bad it got during that period – and it certainly did get tough – I never thought I wasn’t going to make it back. The way I look at it now, it’s an experience I had to go through to get where i am today.”
“I’ve never really been worried that it was all going to end horribly. Right from when I was very young I have had a series of premonitions that everything would turn out alright.”
This summer, Frusciante, who is 34 today, and the rest of the Chili Peppers will play a series of massive gigs around the UK where they will assert their turbocharged funk rock mastery. But the guitarist is currently in town without his Pepper pals – Anthony Kiedis, Flea and Chad Smith – to promote an impressive new solo album, Shadows Collide With People. Since he rediscovered his creative strength, it seems there’s no end to Frusciante’s output. Unlike earlier solo outings, two of which he admits were made to get money to feed his heroin habit, the new record is a finished work presenting familiar Chili Pepper elements and an added adventurous edge.
But the drug free Frusciante is still an eccentric figure. With his thick-rimmed glasses, a woolen hat and a shirt collar poking out of his V-neck jumper, he looks more like a studious maths buff that one of the coolest rock musicians on the planet.
“I am studying mathematics,” he admits, but it’s not so he can calculate his substantial royalties. “I got really interested in how my synthesiser works and that led me to a maths course so that I can understand the way the technology has been put together.”
The son of a classical concert pianist, Frusciante said he realised that he was going to be a musician, specifically a guitarist, from a very early age.
“I knew how my life was going to go,” he insists. “I knew I would play guitar, join a successful band and then make solo albums.”
Doesn’t the band ever worry that the lure of solo fame will mean they’ll lose you?
“You’d have to ask them about that,” John replies. “But I see no problem in combining my stuff with working with the band. I love the process of making music with other people and I see no end to the Chili Peppers.”
Frusciante kicked his drug habit not just to save his health but also because of the damage that it was doing to his music.
“When you are in a state of normality most of the time and you take drugs occasionally, there’s no doubt that can be interesting and make a positive difference to your music,” he says. “But when a drugged-out state becomes normal it has no positive effect on the music.”
His withdrawal from heroin was done without signing up to LA’s rehab industry.
“I don’t consider myself in recovery,” John says. “I’m not a member of NA or any group like that. That’s fine for other people.”
He’ll never regain his youthful glow but he looks remarkably well considering his past, partly thanks to a new set of implanted teeth.
“It was a painful thing to have done,” John admits, “but it was worth it. I had to have it done because of the looks I was getting. It was very upsetting to see peoples’ faces so i had to do something about it. The great thing is, I don’t have any worries about visiting the dentist.”
—Gavin Martin
