Last night a record changed my life
Aged nine, Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist john Frusciante picked up a seminal LA ounk infection. He still hasn’t shaken off The Germs.
I was nine when I girst heard the Germs’ (GI) on Rodney Bingenheimer’s radi show on KRQQ in Los Angeles. My memories of it are mostly of listening to it really quietly – just the feeling running through my body was one of gentleness. It wasn’t like I put it on and it made me want to want my head against the wall or something. It relaxed something in me. Before I heard that album, I felt such a weird kind of confusion and rage that I didn’t know what to do with, and that record made me a see a way that I could sort of connect with a gentle part of myself and in the process relax both parts and make both parts comfortable with themselves.
I made my friends listen to it, but nobody liked it. It really freaked people out. It made people not wqant to be friends with me. The day I brought it over to a friend’s house, that was the last time I ever saw him. I had just bought (GI) at a record store near his house and went over there so I could hear it. I had purple hair and he wouldn’t let me in. He came to the door and I held up the record, and he wouldn’t let me in. He said something about his mom wanted him to do some work. but I knew what wasn’t it. Any time I would invite people over and I played it, there was always a tense moment. I could never understand it because to me it was really gentle, there’s a real femininity inside the music of that record – especially in the lyrics, which read like poetry.
Darby Crash has certainly influenced me as a singer. The way he sang, the way he pronounced his words, is so creative and so original. There’s a couple of singers who I think of having really a flawless pronunciation and he’s one of them. I sometimes try to play guitar in the liquid style that he sang. On the Californication tour I warmed up to it probably every third show.
I think the most important thing about this record was, up until I bought that album, Kiss had been my heroes. When I heard (GI), the whole concept of sincerity on the part of the artist hit me. I realised that day that Kiss didn’t feel the way about their music that I felt about it, but I knew I was feeling the same thing that The Germs were feeling because what you were hearing was really exactly what they were feeling. It had never occurred to me that something like sincerity could take music to another level and it altered my understanding of what could be done with music. At that moment, Kiss became meaningless to me. I took all my Kiss records out, broke them, peed on them, and threw them out the window. I felt almost taken advantage of by them. But I’ve since made peace with their music.
When the Chili Peppers were going to sign to Warner Bros, I remember we went to label boss Mo Ostin’s house, and at that point (GI) was out of print, so I said to him, “We’ll sign with you if you put out (GI) by The Germs.” He picked up the phone, and called someone and said, “Do we own (GI) by The Germs?” He talked to the person on the other end for a while and then he got off the phone and he said, “It’s done.”
— As told to Jaan Uhelszki
