The Will To Live. John Frusciante: singer, guitarist, soloist & Red Hot Chili Pepper

He’s one of the most important but at the same time least acknowledged guitarists of our time: John Frusciante. His time as songwriter for the Red Hot Chili Peppers brought the young musician from New York the stardom which almost cost him his life in the middle of the 90s. After several years in the swampland of drug addiction he accomplished his return to release the very successful records “Californication”, “By The Way” and “Stadium Arcadium”. On January 27th, John Frusciante celebrated furthermore his 11th solo release since 1994 with “The Empyrean”. Another reason to introduce the life and work of this exceptional musician.

Knock Me Down
It’s June 30th, 1988, 1pm. A haunting silence dominates this hot afternoon at the Forest Lawn Cemetery [translator’s note: Hillel was buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park, or am I mistaken?] in Los Angeles, California. The warm summer breeze blows through the treetops of the palm trees [I don’t want to criticize the author of the article again but there are no palm trees there] and you can hear the ever pulsating life of the heart of Hollywood only from afar. At the Jewish cemetery on the contrary you can’t feel any turbulences of the metropolis: Too deep goes the pain of the many attendant mourners when at this time the body of a young man with the name of Hillel Slovak is entombed. He was 26 years old when his demons defeated him.

At this time Anthony Kiedis is on his way to Mexico. In a small beach hut he wants to gain back his consciousness. He wants to become clean. Arrange his ideas. Digest the shock. When the message reached him a few days ago that his friend and fellow musician Slovak died due to an overdose of heroin and that he was found dead by an acquaintance in his flat the shock paralyzed every single one of his muscles. How come that his brother by soul [I can’t think of a better translation] lets him down like that? Just now, when the two of them seemed to start a musical crusade from California over the rest of the world with their band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and their third album, “The Uplift Mofo Party Plan”. Several days Kiedis partitions himself and tries to find explanations for the death of his guitarist, being aware that it could’ve been him just as well.

But the early death of the guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers did by no means come suddenly. After releasing “The Uplift Mofo Party Plan” in 1987 directed by producer Michael Beinhorn, following “The Red Hot Chili Peppers” and “Freaky Styley”, the band gains more and more popularity even outside of their hometown Los Angeles, but looses their guitarist Slovak more and more to the heroin, which possessed the majority of the band at that time. In a band meeting only a few days after Slovak’s funeral the future of the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be decided.

While drummer Jack Irons – close to experiencing a nervous breakdown – quits the band, singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Michael “Flea” Balzary decide to keep the Chili Peppers alive in memory of Slovak and to look for a worthy replacement. Also a quite economic decision, considering that the record label EMI at this point already scented the superregional interest in the funk sensation from Hollywood. And because good advice can also come cheap, they knock at grandmaster George Clinton’s door, who recommends Darren Peligro and guitarist De Wayne “Blackbird” McKnight to the remaining Peppers. Only a few sessions are enough before they realize: The magic that always kept the Red Hot Chili Peppers together will never work in this formation.

I’m Around

John Anthony Frusciante is 15 years old, when he sees the Red Hot Chili Peppers play at the sold-out Variety Arts Center in Los Angeles for the first time. Before he moves to Santa Monica (near Los Angeles) with his divorced mother Gail and immerses in the scene at Sunset Strip there, the – until then – combined family lives some time in New York, Arizona and Florida.

Frusciante is an uprooted loner and hasn’t many friends at that time. As an outlet he uses a cheap classical concert guitar with a sunburst finishing, which had been given to him by his music loving parents when he was six. The guitar becomes his best friend together with some scratched vinyl records and a radio with integrated cassette recorder. He spends his days and nights – only interrupted by occasional skateboarding – mainly in his room, improvising to songs by Zappa, Hendrix, Captain Beefheart and The Germs – sometimes up to 15 hours a day. After his graduation from high school, he turns away from his home and moves into his first own flat. Even though he spends more and more nights out in L.A., he still devotes his life to the music and busies himself, besides with rock and punk idols of his time, also with solemn progressive rock bands like King Crimson and Yes. The young John Frusciante hasn’t played in a fixed formation yet and slowly starts to look out for jam partners. He buys an Ibanez RG 250 DX as equipment – a powerstrat with two single coils and a humbucker.

His juvenile dreams of a wild rock star life full of drugs start to shape when he’s just 18. He cancels an audition for Frank Zappa because he’s afraid that that could be the end of his regular drug consumption. He decides to continue improvising with his newest acquaintance from the Sunset Strip, Darren Peligro, instead– after all the new drummer of his favorite band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Every now and then he also has instrumental jams with Peppers bassist Flea, in which amongst others “Pretty Little Ditty” is created, which will later appear on “Mother’s Milk”.

All along starts an increasingly deep friendship between the 18-year-old freak and his musical hero. At that time it doesn’t even enter the equation to give the job of Slovak’s successor to Frusciante instead of McKnight: The manic New Yorker friend with the Mohawk haircut and the many stickers on his guitar is misjudged for being too young and inexperienced.

Mother’s Milk
When Anthony accompanies John to audition for Thelonious Monster, a punk band the Chilis are friends with, he’s fascinated by the dynamic, with which John treats the strings of his guitar. Years later Kiedis writes in his autobiography that he realized in that moment that “John wasn’t destined to be a Monster but a Pepper”. After talking to Flea about it shortly he offers his protégé the job as guitarist, which means at the same time that Blackbird has to go. Frusciante’s dream comes true: He’s now an official member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Full of verve they begin to rehearse and they’re overwhelmed by the musical and personal congruency John Frusciante shows compared to his deceased predecessor. Friends of the band describe the new member as a clone-like appearance, which concerns both his guitar skills and his looks. No wonder, if you know that Slovak was one of Frusciante’s ideal together with Hendrix long before he had any personal connection to the Red Hots.

After some rehearsals they decide to play some gigs in the sparsely populated hinterland for the adaption phase. After Peligro turns out to be unreliable due to excessive drug consumption during those concerts, he has to go too and they audition several drummers during the following months. With Chad Smith, a sturdy biker from the Midwest, who marches up to audition due to the recommendation of a close friend, they finally find a drummer who can keep up with Flea’s impulsive bass playing. In the liner notes for “Mother’s Milk” Flea describes him as “a guy who’s eating drums for breakfast”. With Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante and Chad Smith the most productive line-up of the Chili Peppers is up for it.

Full of anticipation the newly formatted band starts their creative work on the album, with the working title “Mother’s Milk”, which has been delayed due to Slovak’s death – again with Michael Beinhorn behind the controllers. Only after some days in the studio Beinhorn and new member Frusciante have a discussion considering sound matters: Unlike Frusciante, Beinhorn wants a heavy Metal sound and he gives him the choice between Fender and Gibson – in any case the riffs shouldn’t be from an Ibanez-RG-guitar. Since then Fender Strats – mainly from the 60s – belong to the main instruments of the self-confessed Hendrix fan. Frusciante writes 11 songs together with the other band members and arranges cover versions of the Stevie Wonder classic “Higher Ground” and the Hendrix hymn “Fire” according to Beinhorn’s visions. Even though his full potential can’t surface at this time due to the strict limitations of the producer, the song “Knock Me Down” displays a turning point considering the songwriting of the Chili Peppers: The Peppers worked groove-orientated on their earlier records, whereas on this album Frusciante’s influence appears in the form of melodic chord combinations.

When “Mother’s Milk” is released on August 18th, 1989, the critics are surprised by the musical maturity of the – at this time – almost declared dead Red Hot Chili Peppers. Shortly after the release it enters the Billboard charts and the music videos of “Higher Ground” and “Knock Me Down” get heavy rotation on music television channels. The song “Show Me Your Soul” even manages to be part of the soundtrack to the movie “Pretty Woman” with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. On the upcoming promotion tour Frusciante takes ambivalent roles: He presents himself on the outside with a huge ego and devours groupies in a row, whereas inside the band he has to put up with being teased by the older band members: Over and over again Flea and Kiedis call the young guitarist “Greenhorn”, what really gets to him under the fresh rock star surface. He already is constantly in contact with drugs.

BloodSugarSexMagik
Because they had to agree to some unpleasant compromises in the past with the record label EMI, they buy their way out off their contractual commitments shortly after the release of “Mother’s Milk” and they put out feelers towards a different company for their upcoming record. After receiving tempting offers from Sony and Warner, they finally settle with the latter. Producer and record company owner Rick Rubin also showed interest in signing the Chili Peppers with his label but he wasn’t able to hold the candle to the major companies. Since the band still has interest in working with Rubin, he becomes the producer for their next album.

Rubin’s convinced that an unconventional place would be the best for the recording sessions for “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”. After considering a studio on Hawaii first, he then decides to turn an old villa in the Hollywood Hills into a studio. In the documentary “Funky Monks” Kiedis talks about the special magic surrounding the villa, “Jimi Hendrix lived here and the Beatles took LSD in these rooms.” They’re sure that they’ve found an inspiring environment.

Several 60s Strats, a Martin D 12-28 (“Breaking The Girl”) and a Fender Jaguar (“Under The Bridge”) were used in the session, amplified with dozens of Marshall-Heads, mostly JCM800 and 200W Major, in combination with Marshall 1960-4×12-cabinets. The outcome: A distinctive mix between Fender and Marshall. Frusciante gets his distortion power from a Boss DS-2, the certain sound depth from a Boss CH-1 chorus ensemble and his funky wah-parts from an Ibanez WH-10. More and more Frusciante stops following the footsteps of his predecessor Hillel Slovak and starts developing his own songwriting talent: There are not only the at that time perfected and independent funk riffs but also Hendrix-like chord combinations, which create a melodic synthesis between rhythm and lead parts (“Under The Bridge”, “Sir Psycho Sexy”). Flea starts creating more pop-orientated bass lines, which also give the guitarist more freedom.

The days have turned
While Kiedis is still clean during those sessions, Flea and Frusciante work stoned in most rehearsals. Slowly the drugs start to take their toll again. Already during the recording process in the Hollywood Hills, Frusciante starts to retreat more and more and dedicates himself to painting for long periods. “Sometimes he stewed in his own strange juice for days”, Kiedis describes the situation in retrospective. Nevertheless they manage to release a mind-blowing record with “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” on September 23rd, 1991, which is clearly more intensive and independent than its predecessors. “Under The Bridge” is played over and over again on the radio, the record becomes number one in the charts and soon gains platinum status. Four guys from Hollywood become famous all over the world overnight.

Following the huge success with “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”, they go on tour with Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana as opening bands. While the band constantly climbs the ladder of success, Frusciante takes refuge in a vicious circle of drugs and alcohol. “At that time the only thing that made me stay were the improvisation together with Flea”, he tells the Dutch TV channel VPRO in 1994. The Chili Peppers became stars overnight, suddenly filled huge arenas and their fans made icons out of them – that was clearly too much for the young Frusciante. Music wasn’t a form of energy created by him and his friends anymore, but most of all something to entertain people and earn money.

The tour should take them to Japan and then to Australia in 1992, but the by now unreliable, strung out and total burnt out Frusciante revolts: He wants to quit the band. Immediately.

Some plans considering a substitute guitarist, who’d take Frusciante’s place on stage for the rest of the tour, were rejected after the first rehearsals. While Frusciante’s on his way back to Los Angeles, the rest of the band decides to cancel the tour.

The world’s edge
During an emergency meeting they try to come up with ideas for replacing Frusciante and they decide to knock on Dave Navarro’s door, who had been guitarist for Jane’s Addiction. Navarro declines the offer of being guitarist for the Peppers together with an offer from Guns N’ Roses. In short they hire Arik Marshall, an eminently respectable guitarist of the L.A. funk scene. Shortly afterwards they realize that the chemistry between the band and the new member doesn’t feel right, mostly considering songwriting. With the help of a job advertisement in the L.A. Weekly they try to find another guitarist in July 1993. Even though many guitarists show up for the auditions, they can’t find the right one. After some back and forth they lure Jesse Tobias from the band Mother Tongue away, who’ll also stay only shortly with the Chili Peppers. After a month he’s out again – because Navarro decided to take the offer of the Peppers.

While they try to get some consistency back into the workflow, Frusciante gets more and more lost in the marshes of drug addiction after coming back to the Hollywood Hills. Sparsely equipped – only some guitars decorate the desolate flat – he spends most of his time with drugs, music and art. The up-and-coming actor and friend of Frusciante, Johnny Depp, creates a short film on the introverted life of the former Chili Pepper. The film was called “Stuff” and can still be found on platforms like YouTube.

Shortly after the shooting of the movie, Frusciante’s house burns down and he moves to the L.A. luxury hotel Chateau Marmont. Following the advice of friends from Jane’s Addiction and the Butthole Surfers, Frusciante releases his first solo record, which had been recorded on a four-track tape recorder, “Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt”, on March 8th, 1994. The enormously disturbing tracks – mostly recorded during the “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”- tour already – show the rapid decline of the guitarist and his tightrope walk between genius and insanity.

The Chili Peppers meanwhile release the outcome of their work with Navarro: “One Hot Minute”. For the funk-punks from Hollywood the record’s gloomy and grave and compared to his predecessor it only sells slowly. Navarro starts to dissociate himself from the band in public, while Kiedis starts getting in touch with drugs again. A year of standstill follows, before Navarro leaves the band in April 1998 to take part in the Jane’s Addiction reunion tour. Once again the Chilis teeter on the brink of collapse.

Frusciante releases his second solo record “Smile From The Streets You Hold” in 1997 only for one purpose: to earn money for drugs. Musical quality gives way to a gruesome intensity: Dissonant guitar riffs paired with the crushed vocals of a junkie, predict the near death of a young man. After his teeth start to rot, friends and doctors try to convince him to wear braces to stop infections. Besides that Frusciante’s at risk of falling ill with gangrene. His friend Bob Forrest finally manages to convince him to do a withdrawal at the clinic Los Encinos.

Look on: reunion
When the Red Hot Chili Peppers decide not to give up yet again, Flea suggests contacting Frusciante to ask if there’s a chance of him joining the band again. Flea’s very optimistic at that time because he sometimes talks to Frusciante, who’s on his way to get better. Frusciante agrees to come over for a jam session at Flea’s garage. Kiedis seems to be thrilled by the freshness of this session in retrospect in comparisons to jams with Navarro, “Right then I knew that this was the only way to go. The magic was in the air again.” Frusciante’s excited too about the possibilities this band constellation offers him to act out his creativity. The only problem is that Frusciante doesn’t own a single guitar anymore: Without a second thought the other band members buy him a 1962 Fender Stratocaster Sunburst – until today his main guitar. The rest’s history: “Californication” (1999), “By The Way” (2002) and “Stadium Arcadium” (2006) definitively pave the way for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to enter the history books of modern rock music.

If You Have To Ask: effects, guitars, amps
While Frusciante starts going a different way – away from Hillel Slovak – on “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”, he fully finds his own style on “Californication”. At some times the guitar riffs are reduced – sometimes just single notes (“Around The World”, “Otherside”, “Purple Stain”) – but at other times Frusciante sets raw energy free using high gain distortion (“Emit Remmus”). Like on his first solo record “Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt” he uses tenths during the verse of “Scar Tissue” – a stylistic device heavily used in jams during live performances of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Also on “Californication” there’s the typical mixture of Fender and Marshall for a lot of “British US-sound”: A Fender-Silver Jubilee 22/55 for a slightly distorted sound and a Major 200W for clean sound, both times full stack (Marshall 1960 A/B) for a lot of power. In the clean area you can hear the sound of a Fender Blackface Showman sometimes. Considering effects, he mostly sticks to his old combination of Boss CH-1 Chorus, Boss DS-2 Distortion, and Ibanez WH-10, but he also adds a MXR Phase 90 and a Boss FZ-3 Fuzz.
During the recording process of “By The Way” – the most pop-orientated record of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – Frusciante experiments with sound modulation even more (“Don’t Forget Me”, “Throw Away Your Television”), which leaves traces on his pedal board. The most important changes are a phaser from Moog, as well as a DL-4 Delay Modeler and a FM4 Filter Modeler from Line6. During the “Californication”-tour in 1999 and 2000 he experiments with an EHX Big Muff Pi besides his Boss FZ-3 Fuzz already. He decides to keep it on the pedal board as an alternative to the Boss Fuzz.

While “Californication” stood out due to precise and unpolished playing techniques, Frusciante works more with chord-saturated sound layers on “By The Way”. In interviews from that time he often states that he used chords that aren’t as easy to see through as those on “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” and “Californication” – the outcome is a wide variety of hippie-like sound meshwork, which strongly shows on tracks such as “Dosed”. The usage of multiple guitar layers is already a often used trademark – on stage an EHX Holy Grail Reverb and multiple delays (besides Boss and Line6, he also uses a Digitech Digital-Delay for a short time) to gain this sound intensity.

The liability to effects already shows a bit on “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” where the solo of “Give It Away” is composed of backwards played notes. He uses this method on his solo records as well as on the newest Chili Peppers album “Stadium Arcadium” on the track “Slow Cheetah”. While the songs on the previous records had been easy to play live, the tracks of “Stadium Arcadium” were a lot harder to play live with just one guitar and that’s the reason why Frusciante’s musical companion Josh Klinghoffer joined the tour as second guitarist during the second half.

Also the number of effects on the pedal board starts to become gigantic: He adds six different modulators from Moog – mostly to create out-of-space-like [I couldn’t think of a better translation] variations of the guitar sound during outro-jams at concerts – to his voluminous arsenal. Every now and then he also diversifies the use of his fuzz pedals until he replaces his EHX Big Muff Pi in 2007 with an EHX English Muffin. During the tour to Japan the same year a Digitech Whammy Pedal – Tom Morello’s weapon of choice – gets lost on Frusciante’s pedal board and is removed shortly afterwards after talking to his guitar tech Dave Lee.

After Frusciante traded his Ibanez Powerstrat, when he started playing with the Chili Peppers, for a more traditional Fender Stratocaster, he quickly developed an affinity for them. Besides multiple strats (Sunburst, Black, Fiesta Red, Olympic White) from the 50s and 60s, he owns a Fender Jaguar and two Telecaster from 1963 and 1965, which are numbered among the virtuoso’s main instruments during the “By The Way”-era. To call him a narrow-minded Fender user would be wrong, because he started using a Gibson SG Custom from 1962 during the recording for the “By The Way” B-side “Fortune Faded. On the “Stadium Arcadium” tour Frusciante used a Gibson Les Paul Custom for the riff orientated “Readymade”. A Gretsch White Falcon (1955) is part of his touring equipment until 2003 and was used mainly for the tracks “Californication” and “Otherside”, before he stopped using it due to the on-tour-exertion.

In the acoustic area he uses the brands Taylor and Martin since he started playing for the Chili Peppers (“Venice Queen”, “Desecration Smile”).

Going Inside: solo
When “Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt” is released in 1994 via American Records, friends and critics are bewildered by the newest musical output of the ex-Chili Pepper. Simply recorded on a four-track tape recorder the drug saturated tracks – comparable to those of Pink Floyd veteran Syd Barrett – need nothing else than an acoustic guitar and Frusciante’s – at this time indigestive – vocals. But despite the confusing atmosphere there are some great rudiments in those 23 tracks, which remain mostly untitled. On “Your Pussy’s Glued To A Building On Fire”, for instance, Frusciante’s fetish for Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” becomes visible, whereas “As Can Be” and “Curtains” show the intensity of the work he’ll release later.

Two years after the release of the debut the at that time heavy drug addict puts out his second record. Where there had been artistically potential before, the artist on “Smile From The Streets You Hold” just exists in a cloud of crack and heroin. Besides 16 foggy original compositions, he uses “Come As You Are” by Nirvana for “I Can’t See Until I See Your Eyes”. After Frusciante’s return to the Chili Peppers he takes the record, which had been released at Birdman Records, off the market.

When he came back to his old band, his solo work gained more and more structure – most of all the production quality of “To Record Only Water For Ten Days” (2001) surprises considering the Lo-Fi quality of his predecessors. Like on the later released “Shadows Collide With People” (2004), “To Record Only Water For Ten Days” is strongly influenced by elements of Krautrock bands like Kraftwerk and Neu! – Frusciante did concerts in 2004 with Kraftwerk founder Michael Rother in Los Angeles. In the second half of “Fallout” Frusciante already uses the riff that he’ll later interpret new in the Peppers song “Dani California”. As a present to his fans he releases a free online album shortly after “To Record Only Water For Ten Days” with the name “From The Sounds Inside”.

“Shadows Collide With People”, released in 2004, shows the clear maturity of his songwriting qualities and the enormously broad spectrum of his work: “Omission”, “Song To Sing When I’m Lonely” and “Water” are highly perfected pop songs while “-00Ghost27” and “23 Go In To End” contribute the typical avant-garde elements. Dynamic assistance is carried out by Chad Smith on the drums, Frusciante’s musical soul mate Josh Klinghoffer (Ataxia) and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta) on guitar and bass.

2004 develops into Frusciante’s most creative year thitherto – for the pleasure of his fans: In the months after “Shadows Collide With People” follow the unbelievable intensive records “The Will To Death” and “Inside Of Emptiness”, which are rather in the Lo-Fi area considering production quality. Tracks like “A Firm Kick”, “Scratches” and “The Days Have Turned” are evidence of Frusciante’s vocal improvement. Qualitatively higher are the following records “DC EP” and “Curtains”. Mostly the latter is one of the most mainstream compatible records of Frusciante because there are parallels to Cat Stevens’ songwriting and that of the early Neil Young on the 11 mainly acoustic tracks.

A bit weaker is the Frusciante/Klinghoffer collaboration “A Sphere In The Heart Of Silence”, which is also released during the release series in 2004. The return to electronic elements like in 2001 takes the center stage of the seven half-baked tracks.

On January 27th, 2009, the long awaited and latest sign of life of Frusciante, whose main band’s currently on a hiatus of indefinite length, was released: “The Empyrean” is the title of the ten tracks long and nearly an hour long concept album, which contains the musical version of inner realities. “The Empyrean” is probably the least accessible record of his later creative period due to the epic atmosphere and the melodious complexity. Frusciante experiments with backwards recorded gospel choirs, Fender-Rhodes pianos and the continuously interpretive seizure of musical motives. The tracks “One More Of Me” and “Enough Of Me” are almost identical considering chord structure and melodic themes, while “Heaven” uses a theme from “Unreachable” – repetitive use of a theme in the context of a new song.

It’s the same with “The Empyrean” like with any other record John Frusciante has released separated from the Red Hot Chili Peppers: It’s hard to get access, but those who got it finally will find almost an endless world of sound with a breathtaking variety of atmospheres. It may require more than one try and the polarization of attention to be carried away by “The Empyrean” & Co. You’ll quickly realize: John Frusciante’s solo tracks are no background music. It’s advisable to follow the listening instructions of the master considering his latest solo record: “It should be played as loud as possible and it is suited to dark living rooms late at night.”