A conversation with John Frusciante
John Frusciante’s latest solo albums, The Will To Death and Ataxia’s Automatic Writing (with Josh Klinghoffer of The Bicycle Thief and Joe Lally of Fugazi), are deft explorations of the remote and the quietly personal. I personally don’t give two figs for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the subjects of success – excess/drugs/wacky funk slap bass (circle one or more) are now so completely boring to be inert – I might as well protest against all the sex and violence on my VCR for all the insight that would occur. With his upcoming Japanese tour, the six solo albums planned for 2004, and the situation of the interview itself, I found Frusciante to be exceptionally sincere and impassioned when it comes to the situation of creation itself. He emberges somewhat like the main character in Herzog’s film, “The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser”. This is by no means a bad thing. Of course there is the danger – like Wacky Wallwalkers and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” sequels before him – that six albums in a year may be saturation leading to a decline similar to that fuckest-uppest Olympic skier agonizing in his defeat. Yet that is the leap; that is the great gamble of the individual’s will to create that walks hand-in-claw with remoteness. These are things that ordinary trogs and clods cannot possibly understand – yet this lack of insight validates the work, stenghtening the artist in spite of it.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was four, it was put in my head – and sort of insisted upon – that I was going to be a rock star and a guitar player.
By whom?
That’s beyond the scope of this interview (laughs). I had this awareness that that was what I was supposed to be, but I didn’t really pay it much mind because it seemed kind of silly for some voice in my head to be telling me what I was going to be when I grew up. I assumed, like everyone else, that I would choose what I was going to be. I moved to California when I was seven; by this point I was starting to realize what a guitar player was. The thought of me actually being one also seemed like something pretty far-sighted. It didn’t make much sense that when I saw Joe Perry or Jimmy Page that I was going to be like that! They seemed sort of godlike – they didn’t seem like regular people.
Right – so at this point, you’re one of the lesser deities?
Well, no, but at that point, I thought I was going to be a professional skateboarder, and at a certain point I thought I could be an actor. I started actually playing guitar when I was in 6th grade, and I finally believed what I’d been told in my head since I was a little kid. I always had a voice in my head saying, “You’re going to be a guitar player.” Not only did it happen with guitar playing – it happened with all other parts of my life.
What physical aspect of the guitar do you enjoy most?
I don’t feel like the guitar is this separate thing – I feel like my spirit, my brain, my body, my guitar are all flowing together, and there’s no physical sensation like it when there’s such a good groove as that. That’s my favorite part of my relationship with the guitar, because to work toward that you have to do a lot of just sitting still – practicing. When you’re on stage and you feel like that, or when you’re in the rehearsal room – there’s that kind of energy flowing between the people playing the music. It’s just the most singular, peaceful feeling that I know of. It’s where I really feel like the world is just a perfect place, you know?
Is there a certain level of that personal peace that gets transferred ultimately through the record itself?
In the case of a Chili Peppers’ record, we might spend six months writing the songs and during those six months we may have had a hundred jams like that, with that kind of feeling. Even if none of those jams wind up on the record, the feeling of those jams are a part of the record because that was what led to us writing the songs. I believe everything anyone’s ever felt is part of any record that they’ve made – anything that’s even ever happened to somebody, even when they were a baby, is a major part of any record that record. If they’re really showing you a part of themselves, if they’re really going to make themselves vulnerable as artists, the more they’ll show you about who they really are and what they’ve lived through. All that stuff is on there in one way or another.
Do you listen to all your recordings, even the embarrassing ones?
With all these new records that I recorded, I take them with me everywhere I go; I listen to them everywhere I go (laughs). I love them – and when you love your own music that much, it just doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of it. It makes me so happy that I’m that lucky to be able to have a dream and then to realize it. It’s just a real experience for me, one that I would’ve given anything for five years ago. I made an unsuccessful attempt at recording music in 1997, and I wanted nothing more than to be able to record my songs and I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do something that was good, and the fact that now I can – that I’ve worked hard enough and built up enough momentum and I have enough good energies pushing me along – that I can actually go on and do it. It feels like there’s all this energy that pushes everything along and I’m just caught up in the middle of it.
Hence the title: Automatic Writing.
That’s what the Surrealistis would do when they did automatic writing: just write as quickly as possible without any thought to the literal meaning of whatever they were writing. Not only did I write the lyrics that way, but we wrote the music that way, too.
At the same time, it’s also missing something because when you have a band, you have this layering of year after year of really getting inside of each other – and that all comes through when the band makes a record together. Whereas something like Ataxia is more like this exciting energy that comes from when people who like playing together are playing together maybe for the first time. I really feel like the guitar playing of Ataxia is some of my better guitar playing. It’s because it all happened so quickly like that. It had an energy carrying in that none of us were familiar with, whereas (with) the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I know what that energy is – I’ve lived with it since I was a kid.
So, the thrill was in some amount of unfamiliarity.
We had no idea how our playing would react to each other. We had to very quickly find a place where the three of us could make a connection musically – we originally were just getting together to do live performances of songs I’d already recorded. We found a way of working together that was exciting to all of us and two weeks later we went to the recording studio and on stage.
Do you still get goosebumps?
Oh, yeah. I love it. That’s what keeps me going: I just feel [the music] very deeply. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be interested in doing it. I’d sit around watching movies all day.
—David Cotner
