Out Of The Shadows
Happiest when at home with his music, these days Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist John Frusciante prefers to lead a quiet life. But with the release of his fourth solo album and with 200,000 tickets for the band’s UK dates selling in just four hours, Jenny Knight reckons he’s in for anything but.
Settled on a bed in a darkened room at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Strip, John Frusciante – a man who is supposed to detest interviews – is in genial, if sleepy form. The bare-chested young buck who first emerged bursting with energy, fresh ideas and awesome talent when he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988 at the age of just 17 has matured into a mellow, reflective sort. And he’s managed it despite still living in the midst of the celeb-crazed LA music industry – a world that considers his one-time replacement Dave Navarro baring all on an MTV reality series about his marriage to a former Baywatch babe a perfectly normal thing to do.
As the story goes, after suffering from touring burnout and sickened by his own youthful ego-tripping, in 1992 Frusciante decided to rethink his life. He quit the band at the height of its success, even attempting to break his arm so that he couldn’t be talked out of his decision. Then, alone in his self-imposed isolation he decided to quit playing altogether.
These days it’s clear that Frusciante is living and breathing music more than ever. He has become an incredibly prolific artist, often rehearsing by day with the Chili Peppers – who gratefully welcomed him back into the fold clean and vital in 1999 – and then recording his own music by night.
‘When I practice at home, I usually just play along with other people’s records; I’ve done it since I was a little kid,’ he says. ‘The guitar players who I really get something out of are people like Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed with Velvet Underground, the guys in Fugazi, Matthew Ashman from Bow Wow Wow and Keith Levene from Public Image – people who used interesting chords and textures. It’s a constant learning experience for me. It’s not enough for me to just know how to play something – it’s extra important for me to understand why the person chose the notes they did, and to listen to it in relationship to the other instruments going on.’
On record, Frusciante’s own playing has been getting ever-sparser, more emotive and more considered. Clearly, he no longer has anything to prove.
‘When I was younger it was always about learning things with a lot of notes, for some reason,’ he remembers with a frown, ‘ but for the last five years or so it’s been the space that somebody creates with their playing or the stylistic concepts behind the playing that I’m most interested in.
‘Will Sergeant of Echo & The Bunnymen is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I was giving guitar lessons recently to this kid, and at the last lesson I gave him a copy of Heaven Up Here and Crocodiles, because to me both of them are just masterpieces of guitar playing.
‘I can teach,’ he adds with regret, ‘but it just seems like I’m too busy with doing other things… and I really feel a student should have a teacher who’s there all the time.’
Although less ‘lo-fi’ than Frusciante’s previous solo releases, Shadows Collide With People is still an insightful, intimate affair, co-performed with local musician Josh Klinghoffer, and guests Chad Smith and Flea from the Chilis and Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez. As well as a distinctly vintage vibe, many of the songs have an almost beatific, hymn-like feel, especially when intercut with choral outburst on a song like the searing Omission.
But it is Frusciante’s singing voice – a stark contrast to his soft, meandering speaking voice – that really grabs the attention. True, his resonant backing vocals could be heard all over the Chili Peppers’ last release By The Way, but here he proves himself to be a far stronger, more versatile vocalist than we could ever have imagined. The other main surprise is the electronic influence on the album, most notably on the instrumentals, which are filled with phonetically high frequencies, distortion and Mellotron feedback.
“As well as experimental music like Pita, Fennesz and Ekkehard Ehlers, I was listening to a lot of early electronic music,’ he explains. ‘In particular Fad Gadget, John Foxx’s Metamatic, Depeche Mode’s Violator, The Human League’s Reproduction…’ Frusciante grins. ‘And also The Smiths, The Beatles, The Durutti Column, Slade…’
Um, is it perhaps a good job that not all these references are audible at the same time?
‘Yeah,’ Frusciante agrees with a bit of a giggle, ‘but it all makes sense in the spirit of that period of my life. Depeche Mode’s Violator was the big thing in my head in terms of production. Even though there were many differences – I wanted lots of acoustic guitar and real drums as opposed to programmed drums – I wanted to have that same sort of richness, using string sounds in a similar way.’
Shadows Collide… is the first of Frusciante’s solo albums to be recorded in a studio as opposed to having a traumatic home birth, and he produced it himself with the experience he garnered with the Chili Peppers.
‘I’m pretty exact in the studio,’ he informs us. ‘I’m good about knowing when something’s good for the song and when it’s not – I don’t tend to mess around like that.
‘It was our idea to do a big production and have a lot of stuff going on. Usually when I write a song I record it onto a cassette recorder or a minidisc, but for this album we made eight-track demos before even getting to the studio stage. We used the eight-track to its fullest possible limits, putting so many things on one track that when it came to mixing it, both Josh and I would be sitting there pushing the faders… it would take us 15 mixes to get something right! We’re going to put them all on my website so people can download them.’
Intriguingly, we hear key threads of melody repeating themselves throughout the album. These, according to Frusciante, act as signifiers, conveying a certain meaning at a certain time. And the contemplative lyrics are equally cryptic…
‘When I’m writing my lyrics I’m constantly trying to play games with the words in terms of contradicting something I’ve said before, or keeping one concept going from the beginning to the end,’ Frusciante says, swinging abruptly into a sitting position and hugging his knees in enthusiasm. ‘I like juxtaposing aspects of reality with words that shouldn’t go together. The album’s title is the idea of a shadows bumping into a person – it’s not something that could actually happen, but with words or in your imagination you can make it happen. I’m proud of the lyrics, and it’s important for me to write them down because they’re not something I’m trying to mask.
‘At first I didn’t want to put my albums out at all,’ he reflects, ‘but once something’s buried in the past I finally do release them, which means it’s hard for me to relate to them. With the earlier records I felt at that time I was never going to make music again, so it seemed like I might as well release them because they would have been the last things I ever did.’
The strident, multi-harmony vocal tracks on Shadows Collide… are instantly recognizable as the work of the Chili Peppers’ chief songwriter, even if the subject matter – largely tales of transcendence – is several hundred shades darker than usual. Given that Frusciante usually writes both his solo material and band material at the same time, how does he decide what should go to whom?
‘I write about 60 per cent of the band stuff, but it’s as a guitar player, and that’s it,’ he clarifies. ‘Sometimes I write melodies, but I don’t ever write the words for the band. I’ve been writing words ever since I was a little kid, and I’ve got my own style with it. So if a song comes to me and it’s just an interesting guitar part, then I give it to the Chili Peppers. If it comes to me and I’m singing and pulling out my notebook, then it’s for me.’
A cheeky inquiry into how work on the new Chili Peppers’ album is coming along prompts a rather alarming response from Frusciante.
‘Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of British folk music like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention, so the next Chili Peppers record, which is almost half done, has a lot of folk influences.’
Erm, funk and folk?
‘Yeah, I guess there is some funk on it, but we didn’t really mix funk and folk.’ John Frusciante pauses for effect. ‘But we did mix heavy metal and folk…’
Tour de Force
This June will find the Chili Peppers playing some mammoth shows in the UK. Considering that one of Frusciante’s reasons for originally leaving the band was the ‘lack of connection’ he felt with the increasingly large crowds, it seems his former disgust has turned to something more amorous…
‘On the By The Way tour, the exchange of love with the audience was a wonderful experience for me, and a significant exchange for me as a person,’ he explains. ‘At the moment I’m so into being a normal guy that to be back in that place seems tiring to me right now, but by the time June comes round I’ll be ready for it again.’
Backstage at a Chili Peppers’ gig these fays you’re more likely to find rugs and throws, incense and candles and of course the obligatory purgatorial brown rice than the vices ordinarily associated with a world-renowned band. It’s all designed to make touring more bearable.
Frusciante: ‘You have to get into different patterns, whether it’s listening to Van Der Graaf Generator over and over or watching The Outer Limits every night, or reading all the time… that’s usually what I do at night after a show. And then during the day I end up getting some kind of pattern in ways of exercising. On the Californication tour it was yoga, and on the By The Way tour it was running. For me it’s important to be in good health and to be feeling relaxed and strong, otherwise it starts to get the best of you, and you start to look for artificial ways of relaxing yourself and calming down.’
