The Forgotten Sorrows of Young F.

John Frusciante in: Sound Mission Experimental Rock

“Exit John Frusciante Solo, enter John Red Hot Funky Monk”, says the website of the Californian guitarist. And sure enough: After six recently groundbreaking solo records, the 36-year-old concentrates on the Red Hot Chili Peppers again, a band that had a more than troubled career during the last 23 years. They stood in the middle of the swampland of drugs, thought about disbanding every once in a while and every time they managed to come back. Four tumblers, who reach a late creative peak with their ninth studio record “Stadium Arcadium”: two CDs, 25 songs, a bit less than 120 minutes of sound. A musical jack in the box made of Funk, Blues, Punk and Pop. With great songs and even greater guitar solos.

We talk about guitar solos for which John Frusciante is responsible for, of course. A thin, pale guy with black hair, a wild growing three-day beard and threadbare clothes. No glamorous rock star, but an old buffer. He chews on his fingernails, wears a dirty jeans and a smelly sweater. Someone, who doesn’t care about how he looks, but who just cares about music. Someone, who’s in his own studio the whole day long, working on three things at once and someone, who’s totally an artist and a brain-person. If he talks, then slowly, silently and overflowing. You ask one simple question and he’ll answer it with a many minutes lasting monologue which isn’t clearly structured, but mostly mazy and confused. But that goes well with a person who’s afraid of people, shy and introverted and whose activity nowadays is based on a traumatic drug incident: When he joined the Chili Peppers in the late 80s, when he was 18 years old, he experienced with “Mother’s Milk” and “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” the comet-like rise from a small funk band to a global blockbuster – with sold-out arenas and platinum records. A development he couldn’t handle and he escaped with alcohol and drugs until he quit the band in 1992. During the next years he lived a life as a junkie, lost his teeth and he looked like a sure candidate for death. Until he got his act together in 1998, returned to the band and developed in an unbelievable way: On the one hand as ambitious guitarist of the Chili Peppers and on the other hand as a loner and someone keen to experiment, who can’t record enough solo records and who can’t have enough side projects. And he shows more and more of his technical and creative guitar skill. You can see that on “Stadium Arcadium”: 25 songs with ambitious guitar solos and exciting sound experiments – but following a missionary approach. He’ll tell us himself what’s behind that.

John, let’s start with the hard facts: Which guitars do you use on the new Chili Peppers record?
Mostly my Sunburst Fender Stratocaster from ’62 which I used on the “By The Way” tour already. At the same time I used a white Stratocaster which I bought recently. A great guitar with a floating-vibrato, which is really cool because you can use it in both directions. I used that guitar for some solos and for the rehearsals. But before we went to the studio I held auditions between those two guitars – and the Sunburst won almost every time. Even though I thought that the white one was the better guitar, but when I tried the riffs on both guitars, the Sunburst was most of the time superior. Nevertheless the white one is great too. I limited myself to those two guitars basically. I play a Les Paul from 1969 in “Readymade”. I didn’t use the Gretsch White Falcon at all…

How come? It cost a small fortune. Almost 30.000 dollars!
(he smiles). She’s great. And I used her many times. On the “By The Way” tour I played her for two songs per concert on 150 evenings. But this time I just didn’t have the right song for her. And for the rehearsals I don’t like to change guitar that often. Mostly I come in, grab one of them and play. I don’t mess around. There’s another song where I used the Les Paul. It’s called “Whatever We Want”. Apart from that, there wasn’t a wide variety of guitars. I just used many different wah-wah pedals. That’s all.

But you never used that many effects on a Chili Peppers record, did you?
True. I’m not a big fan of effects in that case. But what I did on the record is this: I used the effects after the whole thing was recorded. I put the guitar track for instance through my Modular-Synthesizer, after it was recorded. And that was really funny. Just because you can mess around with everything and turn all the knobs. After all you can use both hands: So you can turn all the knobs to the music you created earlier on the guitar. You could never do that live unless you had two brains and four hands. In the studio this isn’t really a problem. We recorded the guitar track on tape first, dubbed it to the Modular-Synthesizer and from there back to the tape again. But it wasn’t always the Modular-Synthesizer. We also used a digital delay or the new pedal from Moogerfooger, who build this cool part called MuRF [MuRF stands for “Multiple Resonance Filter”. The input signal runs through a series of eight tuned tape-pass-filters which are triggered by a pattern-generator. Every filter has its own envelope and volume control. The pattern-generator has twelve different schedule models.

And that’s how you create all those crazy effects all over the record?
Totally crazy effects. But most of the effects probably came out of the MuRF-pedal. A good example would be the solo of “Tell Me Baby”. When you listen to the song you think that the guitar is cut into pieces…I don’t know how to explain this, but it’s a really crazy effect. I also used the MuRF on Flea’s trumpet in the second verse of “Death Of A Martian”. It’s true that I put my guitar through the Modular-Synthesizer. And most of the time the results of that are really cool. Especially because there’s no other effect doing something so substantially…

I also have a filter effect with a filter that opens and closes very fast and has an attenuator. It opens and closes in a very short time frame. I use it for the left side and the normal guitar remains on the right side. I did this all the time: I kept the normal guitar but I also manipulated it at the same time. And this manipulation sounds as if we had another guitarist. But actually it’s the same guitar. And I do that everywhere. For example on “Dani California”: There’s the normal rhythm part in the verses, which I played completely live. And in the B-parts of the verses I let the part run through the Modular. I also added a dynamic filter, which opens and closes depending on the way I strum the guitar. That’s how I created the guitar on the right channel – which sounds like a second guitar, but doesn’t actually exist. You can find that everywhere on the record. There are just a few tracks, on which the guitar doesn’t run through the synthesizer.

Sounds like a big experiment…
My goal was to create a record that is a sound experience. Both for the band and the listeners. I wanted the music to create dream-like conditions, to reach the subconscious of the people and to turn everything upside down there. “Stadium Arcadium”, the title track, is a good example. And there’s another song I wanted to be this way…oh yeah: “C’mon Girl”. What I did there is, that we let the tape run backwards and we had a really cool echo unit, the first digital-reverb-unit ever, I think from 1976. We let the guitar run through it and then through a hi-pass-filter: If you turn it on completely you can’t hear any sound. When you turn it to the left, you can hear that a little piece of the sound gets through. The more you turn it to the left, the more of the sound gets through – until you hear the entire guitar. That’s really crazy: At the beginning there’s just the thinnest and highest frequency. The more you open the filter, the more you hear the note you’re playing. I filtered the reverb-sound backwards while the tape played forwards. I used it for a lot of tracks. Afterwards I played the whole tape forwards again and looked where it sounded best. I kept the parts where the effect sounded the best. I deleted everything else afterwards and kept just the parts which sounded really good.

Pure experimentalism! Was this part of the work in the band, the jamming, or did you add it afterwards on your own?
The whole thing works like this: We write together and record the basic tracks and then I’m on my own. Anthony records the vocals with Rick Rubin and I work with my technician with the overdubs. I have all the time I need and I used it. Every day we used 12 to 14 hours to do wild experiments. I can do what I want to do – but I try to do the song something good and try to bring it ahead. After all, I love every one of them and want it to stay what it is: a well developed pop song. At the same time I wanted to experiment as much as possible. And I wanted to send listeners on a journey. They should have as much fun listening to it as we had playing the songs. And the experiences I made while I was recording my solo records gave me a better idea of how to use the studio creatively. That’s the reason why I worked with the same technician on the Chilis-record as I did on my solo records: We could use everything we learned for the solo records also on this record. We saved a lot of time with that. I guess we wasted more time for my solo records – even though it took just five days to record them. We fiddled about and experimented more than anything else and we became a lot faster in letting them off. Because I now know how to create certain sounds. I don’t have to experiment that much. When I have a bit of an idea what sound I want, then I know how to get it. And on this record there are also not as many keyboards, but many guitars. There are just two synthesizers, one keyboard-synthesizer and a mellotron, which are only used for two songs. Most of the things that sound like a mellotron or a mandolin are guitars, where the tape is played faster. I have a lot of recordings where I manipulated the sound through changing the speed of the tape. Tracks like “Dani California”, “Turn It Again”, “Wet Sand”, “Hard To Concentrate” and “Stadium Arcadium” all have guitars were the tape’s played faster. First we played the tape slower, I played slow with it, then the tape was played fast again and the guitars got a different sound.

And there are some brilliant solos too…
Oh, thank you very much. The solos are played in original time though… (he smiles).

And sometimes they sound like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Neil Young or Santana. A deliberate homage?
You know, I have the feeling that some crazy things happened during the last years in the world of guitar playing. I think that after those people you mentioned many things went out of control and simply wrong. And even though I’m a big fan of Randy Rhoads, Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen, it seems to me that they didn’t bring any progress to guitar playing. Simply because many people rebelled against their way of playing and started playing very simple things again. So what’s the result? If you ask me everything is worse now than it was when everyone played simple things. I hate it that everyone just wants to play simple nowadays. What I want to say is: Sure, those people inspired me because they came from the right direction. They wanted progress in the guitar playing and take a step forward. Nevertheless they didn’t do as much as Carlos Santana, Mick Ronson, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and those people. Because it was them who brought progress to the guitar playing. And if we want to go on where the stopped, we have to return to what those people did. I don’t mean to simply make tributes to them or something. But I think that they came from a perfect place considering it just emotionally and looking at their creative substance. What Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads did, is that they showed that it is possible to play faster and technically cleaner – that was their development of the guitar playing. But how far can you take this? Not really far. And that’s what Eddie admitted in 1979 when he said, “I can’t play any faster. That’s it!” And that’s the reason why we don’t have to go in this direction either – but rather bethink the people, who created new standards in the 60s and early 70s. Simply because their music had more emotional substance. They played mostly with their hearts.

Interesting approach. With that album you also want to make a musical statement?
Well, I’m a very serious musician. I don’t just play solos because I have nothing else to do. But I rather made the decision to play solos. For me it was a well considered decision, which was exactly timed – and with which I made a kind of statement to the world out there. Because I, for my part, think that I create something new, when I integrate this form of guitar playing into songs with sounds which they just didn’t have in the 60s. For example I learned a lot from people like Brian Eno about production techniques of George Clinton – or about Jimi Hendrix. Those people did things and handled their guitars and other things in a way which was back then stunningly revolutionary. That was the time when synthesizers just came into existence.

And you go on with this tradition?
I do this shit now with my guitar! (he laughs) Therefore my approach is something like this: “What would’ve happened if Eric Clapton had had a Modular-Synthesizer back at his time with Cream?” Something like that. I try to see things from this perspective: “Let’s do something interesting with their sound – something which they didn’t think about back in the 60s.

According to that you try to put yourself into the position of Eric Clapton from back then?
I’m inspired by those people. I don’t say that I want to copy them, but I rather admire their very emotional way of playing and I study them very closely. I wouldn’t be able to play a solo and think about another person. That would be embarrassing for me. If I told myself: “I want this solo to sound like Eric Clapton.” I wouldn’t be able to play anything. Because I have too much respect of Clapton. It’s like this: Sometimes when I play with my whole heart and I listen to it afterwards I think, “Shit, this sounds like Clapton.” Or my guitar technician tells me that. That’s what happens most of the time – other people tell me what it sounds like, before I realize it. Nevertheless I have the feeling that people shouldn’t think back anymore. They should study what Clapton & Co. did back then. Because those were the real geniuses we should be geared to. Mainly if it’s about transporting certain feelings. I don’t want to say that nobody else managed to do it after them. I, for my part, think that it’s more important to move sideward instead of forward. By changing the context, in which their sound dwells. I myself spend a lot of time with writing songs. Whereas many of them don’t have anything to do with the things those people wrote…

At the same time you prove that you’re also a shredder on tracks like “Turn It Again”. Even though you always limited that or not?
Yeah, but I oppressed myself with that. Actually I was always able to do it. But one day I decided to limit myself and play simply simple. If we talked three years ago, I would have told you something completely different. That I don’t like guitar solos and that people should please play simple. But I’ve changed and I contradict myself. Just because that’s what I am. And there was a time when I wanted to play as simply as possible when we worked on a record. But as soon as we were on tour, I did the opposite and played as complicated as possible. Just to make something simple again when we started a new record. Isn’t that crazy?

And this time?
Fortunately I was in a more complex phase this time. Although I limited myself again – you can believe that or not. There’s this song, “21st Century”, and its original solo sounded like Allan Holdsworth…but actually I could’ve gone further, I always could have done it. I always develop a kind of guideline for myself. And this time I wanted to go as far as I could – without limitations. But in the end I decided that it didn’t feel right to play like Allan Holdsworth or Eddie Van Halen. Even though I could’ve done it. But I simply feel more connected to Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. And that’s why I’m geared to their parameters. If I stay behind the things they did, then because of the song writing and the sound, but not because of the technique.

How about a new solo record? Have you planned anything yet?
How did you know that? (he smiles) Yeah, there’s a new Ataxia record that we’ll mix when the Peppers record is finished. Actually this new Ataxia stuff was the starting point of this new phase in guitar playing. This wild, uncontrolled playing, during which I didn’t hold anything back. And we created some things which are really good. And I have 17 songs which I want to use for another solo record. But I’m really busy at the moment and I can only work on it in small stages. Every time, when I got some time left. Fortunately I’ve got my own studio in my house. So I can record as long and as often as I want to. I don’t have to work 12 hours in one piece. If I want to record just the vocal parts of a song in an evening, I can do that. And Josh (Klinghoffer), my partner, is recording the drum parts for those 17 songs. Every time, when we got time, we rehearse, write something new, or record the basic tracks to a song, which we’ll finish when we’ll have enough time. But I have big plans considering this record: I want to use a lot of the production techniques, I used on the new Chili Peppers record. And this time I want to go a step further and also use classical instruments and an orchestra, but at the same time I want to keep this extremely rough sound. I think that’s an interesting conflict.

Have you ever recorded something with Michael Rother (Neu!) who seemed to be your soul mate for a while?
We’ve played some shows together, and recorded some stuff in his flat in Hamburg. But we never went to a studio together. Even though we had some really nice jams.

And how was recording “Personal Jesus” with the late Johnny Cash? Or did you just record the basic tracks for him?
Only the tracks. He learned the piece because he geared to my singing and playing. Rick showed him the Depeche-Mode-version and he couldn’t connect with the song then. But Rick had the vision to make it slower and more blues-like. So I first recorded the guitar parts and then I sang to them. It was recorded on Pro-Tools and shown to Johnny. When he heard it, he said, “Oh, now I understand how I could sing it!” He learned the piece after my vocals and then recorded his own version. I don’t think that I’ve ever met him, but the first concert I saw was a Johnny Cash concert. I was a kid back then, but my father took me with him. I really liked it and like to think about it. Insofar it was an honor to record some solos for this last box set and all that during his lifetime. But I did that more through Rick than having a personal contact.

One last question: In those seven years, when you didn’t play in the Chili Peppers, you painted a lot. Is this still up to date?
Actually not – but a few months ago I painted a few pictures because my girlfriend gave me a few utensils. I just had to try it again. But mostly I changed from putting thoughts into paintings to writing them down. Not in lyrics, but in diaries. And this became a very important and strong form of expression for me – a good way to get rid of some of the darkness inside of me. Through that I clear some space to let in the light. Something like this. That’s really healthy for me. And because I work a lot and do a lot of projects, I have to limit myself and just write about the things which are the most important to me. And to play guitar, to sing and to write down stuff are things that I can do best. Considering painting, I lack the technical knowledge. And that’s why I don’t want to waste too much time with it. Unless I’ll have a lot of fun doing it someday. But normally I just have a lot of fun when I play the guitar or sing or write. That’s why I concentrate on these things – because I’m just better at them.

— Marcel Anders

* Paired with article on the entire band.

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