Total Guitar Beginners’ Special 5
There have been breathtaking highs and shattering lows. Platinium-selling success and smack-addled failure. Now John Frusciante is back – and better than ever. Here’s how he got Red Hot…
So there was this guitar prodigy, right? He joined his favorite band as a teenager an set about conquering the world. And for a while, it all went pretty well. Over the next four years, the guitar prodigy – let’s call him John – turned his favourite band – let’s call them the Red Hot Chili Peppers – from L.A cult act to funk superstars, via a pair of stunning albums (1989’s Mother’s Milk and 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik). Then came the drugs. Then came the breakdowns. By 1992, the guitar prodigy was out of his favourite band; his playing on the slide and his life in the balance.
So goes the story of John Frusciante. What we didn’t expect was a second chapter. Having been written off as a cautionary tale; a trackmarked testament to the depths plumbed by rock’s rollercoaster, 1998 saw Frusciante cleaned up and back in the sock for the best Chilis album yet, Californication and By the Way. He’s now a pacific solo artist in his own right, while holding down God’s own day job with the Chilis, and one of the few players that TG’s entire payroll agrees on. A living legend then – but only just.
What first got you into the guitar?
“I was 11 years old when I first picked up the guitar. It was hearing the Germs. I mean, I always knew I wanted to play guitar – voices in my head were telling me ‘you’re gonna be a guitarist’. But I didn’t really believe it. When you’re a kid and you look at Led Zeppelin, Kiss or whatever, it all seems so, like another world. When you imagine yourself being in the place of one of those people it’s crazy, but when I discovered punk rock and new wave, I realised I could do it.”
Do you remember the first thing you learn to play?
“I learnt the whole of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks album, just to convince my dad I was dedicated to the guitar. And I loved Black Flag… the song Revenge (from the Decline Of Western Civilisation soundtrack) – the live version – that was the first time I ever tried to learn a solo. It wasn’t a very successful attempt ‘cos I was very haphazard – and there’s lots of noisy feedback so you can’t just learn the solo by playing all the notes.”
What kind of player were you when recording Blood Sugar Sex Magik?
“That time was a sort of balancing act of the show-off style I had when I was a teenager – between 15 and 18, when it was my sole purpose to show everybody how good I was. I was real flashy. But then I realised that kind of guitar playing was lame and full of shit, and what mattered were the colours and the shapes and sounds that you created as a musician, and not what you were physically doing. This kind of balancing act worked really well for a couple of years, but then I just felt like I was left with nothing.”
How do you play these days?
“I use my technique in a completely different way to when I was a youngster. I learn synthesiser parts usually. Depeche Mode songs; I learn all the synth parts. I’ll sit at the back of the tourbus, listening to Music For The Masses or something and play every part that I’m hearing. It takes a lot of technical precision; it’s often really fast. I also like other guitarists who play very texturally – Keith Levin from PIL, Johnny Marr from The Smiths. During Californication, I tried to learn stuff like that, but I couldn’t hear the chords or the notes at the time. But my ear”s gotten better again, and now I can hear those sorts of things.”
