Chicago Tribune interview
Anthony Kiedis, singer for the multiplatinum funk-rock Red Hot Chili Peppers, released his epic autobiography, “Scar Tissue,” this month. It’s full of the type of wild stories — watching his father deal coke to football players as a kid, trading in a guitar signed by all of the Rolling Stones for a tiny bit of heroin during a bender — that one would expect from a member of one of the world’s biggest and baddest bands.
It’s also the bold move you would expect from the charismatic frontman of a band. But while this book reinforces Kiedis’ status as the alpha member of group, another Chili Pepper, the shy, introspective guitarist John Frusciante, is quietly realizing an ambitious solo project. Frusciante is releasing a series of six albums in six months that showcases his incredible fluency with the guitar.
“I feel strongly about this music, and I think there will always be people who discover it and get something out of it,” Frusciante said. “I care about leaving a legacy of work. I am definitely not doing it the smart way if my goal was to sell records.”
Frusciante has always written and recorded his own music, but it wasn’t until last December, when the Chili Peppers were taking a break, that he felt he had the vision and understanding necessary to make his own album. Embarking on a flurry of recording sessions that ended in May, the guitarist and a rotating cast of collaborators created an eclectic body of work to be released on the Record Collection label.
“People will be amazed that this much stuff is coming out from somebody who’s playing with a major band,” said Joe Lally, a bassist with Fugazi who contributed to the project.
Mellow rock collection
The first album, “Will to Death,” a soulful collection of spacious, mellow rock songs recorded with drummer Josh Klinghoffer, was released in June. Next came “Automatic Writing,” a swirling mix of feedback and mechanical, Joy Division-like bass lines credited to the group Ataxia.
Fugazi member Ian MacKaye produced the next release, the “DC” EP. Frusciante, a huge devotee of Fugazi, lived out the ultimate fan fantasy during recording sessions and used the amp featured on the cover of the band’s “Red Medicine” album. The latest, “Inside of Emptiness” came out Oct. 26 and again features Klinghoffer.
“It’s music that’s coming from a very small place inside me,” said Frusciante. “And my heart goes into everything that I do.”
Darrin Fox, associate editor of Guitar Player magazine, says although the breadth of this project might suggest otherwise, Frusciante isn’t just dabbling in different genres.
“He’s really an accomplished musician, so I don’t think it sounds like a clash of completely different styles,” he said.
The series will conclude later this year with “Sphere in the Heart of Silence,” a mostly electronic album that features collaborations with Klinghoffer and a few solo piano pieces that came out last week, and “Curtains,” an album of acoustic music partially inspired by Cat Stevens that’s scheduled for a Jan. 25 release.
“`Sphere’ will be shocking to someone listening to the course of these albums,” Frusciante said. “I’ve been doing a lot of electronic stuff and was recording a lot of music in the style of early Human League or Depeche Mode just a few years ago. And then `Curtains’ goes in the complete opposite direction, just me sitting in my living room playing guitar.”
What immediately grabs listeners about this series is the raw feeling of the recordings, capturing the intricate twists of Frusciante’s guitar and the fragility of his voice. It was all a deliberate attempt, he says, to let the songs have a life of their own and capture the vibe of good friends at a jam session. Many of the songs were single takes and the albums were recorded in just days, as opposed to the weeks of recording and editing used on many albums today.
“I thought about old records by bands like Velvet Underground and the Talking Heads and realized there was a correlation between the amount of time it took to record and how good it was,” said Frusciante. “Today, those records would have been cleaned up and edited in production to the point of being perfect. Imperfections can be some of the most beautiful things.”
Music in his blood
Frusciante’s musical education started early on, because his father was a concert pianist who studied at Julliard and toured around the world. After moving around a bit when Frusciante was a child, his family settled in L.A. when he was 11 and he took to the guitar, inspired by punk rock bands such as the Germs. By the time he was 17, he dropped out of school to pursue music in Hollywood.
While in L.A., he met D.H. Peligro, the drummer of the legendary political punk group Dead Kennedys, who introduced him to a hyperactive bass player named Flea. Soon Frusciante was jamming with Flea, who was impressed with the guitarist’s ability to play difficult Frank Zappa guitar parts. It was a dream come true for the teenager, a fan of the Chili Peppers.
When the Chili Peppers’ original guitarist, Hillel Slovak, died of a heroin overdose in June 1988, the band began searching for a replacement and eventually settled on the then 17-year-old Frusciante. Soon, the band scored major hits with 1989’s “Mother’s Milk” and 1991’s Warner Bros. debut “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” which sold 7 million copies. It was a high point for the band that marked Frusciante’s coming of age as a guitarist, Fox says.
“On his first record with the band, `Mother’s Milk,’ he was still a teenager and was doing more of the rock/metal hybrid,” says Fox. “But on `Blood Sugar Sex Magic’ he really develops a more stripped-down, angular style, bringing in Captain Beefheart influences and the softer side of Led Zeppelin. I think that was his best record.”
But while Frusciante was developing artistically, he was feeling pressured by the band’s increasingly larger profile and began to take more and more hard drugs. Eventually, during the band’s 1992 tour of Japan, he abruptly quit the group. Until Frusciante reunited with the group to record 1999’s “Californication,” he went through a period of isolation and heroin addiction in his Hollywood Hills home, barely surfacing long enough to release two obscure solo records (1995’s “Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt” and 1997’s “Smile From the Streets You Hold”).
But Frusciante, who had kept in touch with Flea, eventually entered rehab, overcame his addiction and rejoined the band…
“Five years ago I had nobody,” he said. “And now, just to have, like, five people in my life who I feel close to musically — I couldn’t be luckier.”
