John Frusciante: He will surpass pop
He is one of the best guitarists and songwriters in popular rock music. Yet the youngest Chili Pepper is drawn towards the avant-garde.
When John Frusciante met journalists for the first time at the Hotel Chateau Marmont in 1996 to talk about his solo album (back then is was the second one in the making, Smile From The Streets You Hold) the author of the L.A. New Times faced a wretched scene. In a suite of the mythical hideaway hotel towering like a castle over West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, a skinny, toothless junkie cowered between stacks of CD’s, cigarette ends and disinfecting alcohol-pads and pondered stammering about how the Chili Pepper’s overboarding success once drove him towards insanity and how it made him quit the band. A few days later Frusciante was kicked out of the hotel since he had given his last money to a heroin dealer instead of paying the hotel bill.
The Chateau Marmont on a Friday evening in mid-January, eight years later. With a relieved sigh John Frusciante sprawls on a large, worn out couch. “I’ve been giving interviews here for the last three days,” he excuses himself with a mild smile for his exhausted appearance. A polite but superfluous gesture: Even after such a PR-marathon Frusciante, whose black hair has grown way past his shoulders, looks astonishingly fit. Since his withdrawal and his re-union with the Peppers he pays close attention to his health and apart from his new dentures, which cause him to mumble slightly, the scars on his arms are the only visible reminder of the long period of time he was addicted. As usual, Frusciante usually keeps those scars covered under long sleeves.
“I regret my past.” The fact that Frusciante wants these lines – mantra-like repeated in “Regret” one of the outstanding songs on his new and forth solo album “Shadows Collide With People” – to be understood with irony can easily be overlooked when one regards his biography’s dark chapters. “I don’t regret the years of my addiction even though I don’t wish for anyone to go through this. I had no money, but at the same time a constant craving, I whimpered at dealers and went mad when I didn’t get anything for 24 or 48 hours. But it was something which I probably had to go through. Back then I make experiences which I now can process artistically. Back then I couldn’t.”
This was also a reason why he took “Smiles From The Streets You Hold” off the market after his 1999 “Californication” comeback as the Peppers’ guitarist. The records consists mainly of remainders he couldn’t use three years earlier for his already quite unwieldy debut “Niandra LaDes and Usually Just A T-Shirt”. But there were also tracks on it he had recorded later, undoubtedly stoned. “I wanted to avoid that anyone buying this album simply because of an interest in the Chili Peppers would get to listen something like this. The record can scare you quite a bit.”
Today, Frusciante (33) is far from stating his part in the band’s musical appearance with those self-confident 60 per cent he mentioned immediately after his quitting the Peppers in 1992. Yet it were his guitars, his keyboards, his backing-vocals which refined “By The Way” in 2002 and which made it one of the most appealing pop records that year. “I approach a new album with a concept, the others don’t. They simply play what they feel like playing,” he says, elegantly avoiding the question if he sees himself as the driving force behind the band. Modestly he adds: “The harmony vocals weren’t even my idea, but Rick Rubin’s. He led me there, at first even against my will.”
The Peppers haven been trusting Rubin’s golden touch since their ’91 masterpiece “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”, but Frusciante still produces his solo work himself. But after all: Unlike with his last album “To Record Only Water” (2001), on “Shadows Collide With People” the multi-instrumentalist Frusciante makes room for a hand full of guest musicians, amongst them his band colleagues Chad Smith and Flea as well as Mars Volta mastermind Omar Rodriguez. He even shares the credits for song writing with his close friend Josh Klinghoffer, formerly of the short-lived L.A. indie trio The Bicycle Thief. But it is still Frusciante who determines the colour of his record. His favourite songs are the ones you can distinguish immediately.
Did you have Iggy Pop’s “Passenger” in mind when you wrote “This Cold”?
Oh, are those the same chords? (He thinks about it and he’s honestly surprised.) Indeed, those are the same chords! (laughs) You know, apart from David Bowie and Lou Reed Iggy Pop has always been one of the most inspiring songwriters for me. I grew up with his music, to his music I have the best connection. And this is likely to show in anything I’ll ever do whether I want it or not. However, I always try to avoid copying something. Instead, I think a long time before the album what it should sound like.
How was “Shadows Collide With People” supposed to sound then?
For example like “Violator” by Depeche Mode. There you come across new sounds on every turn and you never know what’s waiting for you next. Also many of the synthesizers sound more like they’ve been recorded live rather than pre-programmed. These are the things that I recall when I start writing songs.
It is interesting that you should mention “Violator”, the record on which Depeche Mode began to integrate conventional instruments into their electronic music. In your case the development goes the other way round: You are guitarist in a rock band and have discovered your love for synthesizers.
This is very likely so because I occupy myself with bands like Can, NEU! and Kraftwerk. Bands which always remind me of how unlimited music can be.
Does it also remind you of the Peppers’ gig in Hamburg in March 2003 when you and Omar Rodriguez were extensively jamming with NEU!-guitarist Michael Rother?
Yes, this night was one of the happiest moments in my life.
Considering your growing interest in electronic music what do you believe will you do in ten year’s time?
That hard to tell, because I change all the time. But I can imagine that things will develop more towards avantgarde and electronica. That’s were I lean to.
Doesn’t sound as if you have long-time plans with the Peppers.
As happy and proud as I am being in this band I can’t imagine us still on stage at the age of 50 pretending to be something we won’t be anymore by then. This idea makes me sick. (laughs)
At least one more album is what the Peppers want to deliver for sure. “We’ve already finished half of it,” confirms Frusciante and warns straightaway that one should prepare for a rough record. “I like mistakes, and I like fucked-up guitar solos at the moment.” A foretaste of his band’s next album can hardly be found on “Shadows Collide With People”. “The idea behind this record was to take it to the limit, to do a great and clean production. That’s what I’ve realized. On my other solo albums were many ideas which could have been taken into other directions. On this one, however, everything is perfectly completed this tells me I’m on the right path.” In the future John Frusciante wants to use the rare gaps on the Chili Pepper’s tour schedule to write his own songs. “There was a time in my life during which I stayed far behind my potential and this is what I’m trying to catch up with now: those three or four years in which I could have been creative but I wasn’t due to my inner problems. Already I’ve got tons of music which I’ve not published anywhere.”
There’s no need to worry for this man that he won’t have enough to do. With all his solo and band work and projects, the question is rather if he’s not unsure at times for whom he’s writing a particular song. “Actually, this happened to me just recently for the first time. I decided to keep the song for the Chili Peppers and gave it to Anthony. So far he hasn’t written lyrics for it and I wonder if he ever will.” Frusciante grins. “If not I’ll take it back.”
—Dennis Plauk
