MusicRadar interview 2008/2009
Joe Bosso: Now, I’m a big fan of Johnny Marr but I must say I could not tell at all which track he is playing on, so…can you tell me which track he’s on?
John Frusciante: He’s on two tracks.
Joe Bosso: Okay.
John Frusciante: He’s on “Heaven†and he’s on “Centralâ€.
Joe Bosso: Okay, okay.
John Frusciante: Ya, I guess in “Heaven†none of the guitars are me until the second verse, like; he’s basically doing the first verse and the first chorus…
Joe Bosso: Alrighty.
John Frusciante: …the first chorus is like a breakdown kinda chorus, if I’m remembering correctly. He basically does the first verse and the first chorus and I do the second verse and the second chorus and the rest of it’s all me. So he’s playing multiple guitars there, you know, he messed around a lot, he basically, you know, we just had one night so…while he was here, touring with Modest Mouse, so we just like, he just heard the songs once and distilled around for a few hours and when we mixed we figured out how to make it, like, working in the structure of the song. That was our approach for all the songs: To kinda record a lot of tracks and figure out in the mix how we were gonna, I mean, I say we, but it was me. But figuring out in the mix like which instruments are gonna be used in which section and doing a lot of tape edit and stuff like that and then…and in the other one, “Centralâ€, he did an acoustic guitar, like, strumming…oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait: Did I say “Heavenâ€? I meant “Enough Of Meâ€.
Joe Bosso: Okay…
John Frusciante: Yeah, yeah. “Enough Of Me†is the one where he plays on the first verse and the first chorus. He played on “Heaven†but we didn’t use it in the end…just like that.
Joe Bosso: Okay.
John Frusciante: But “Enough Of Meâ€, he’s on the first verse and on the first chorus and on “Central†he plays acoustic, rhythm guitar and he played…
Joe Bosso: Ya.
John Frusciante: He did this really neat harmonic thing, a really interesting hand technique, and he had some echo on it and stuff. There might be one other part on “Central†that he plays but I can’t remember…haven’t heard it in a while.
Joe Bosso: Now, did you give him any kind of direction or did you just…?
John Frusciante: No, I…that’s the thing…I’ve kinda learned from making records for a long time that if you really wanna capture a good energy on a record it’s best to just…first of all to add only people playing with you who already would have a sense of what you’re doing and are already… sort of, have a soul connection to what you’re doing, you know…
Joe Bosso: Right.
John Frusciante: You don’t wanna have somebody just ‘cause they can technically play but, you know, you wanna have somebody who understands your point of view that you write music from, you know, and if you have that, like, the best thing to do is to just let them do whatever they do, you know, like, you know, there’s a little, like, when Josh and I are doing stuff we have a little verbal communication about it but basically, like, he understands my music and knows where it’s coming from so…I like to just let him do whatever he does and then I just figure out during the mix. It’s so easy in the mix. Sometimes when people are too quick to sort of judge something like, “Oh, that doesn’t work right for this section.†or “That’s more…taking over too much.†They’re not using their heads and thinking ahead with how much you can do when you’re mixing, you know, like, with EQ and effects and treatments and stuff you just wrangle it in there, you know…
Joe Bosso: Yeah.
John Frusciante: You just, sort of, form it, like, I think, when I was first making records I was too quick to judge things just based on the first listen and I’ve learned over the years that if you got a good energy in the room the spirits of music or, you know, the gods of music do their thing with it, you know, like there’s a plan that’s much more belabored and much more complex and wonderful than anything that you could plan out in your head, you know. If you just let the energies flow, you know…
Joe Bosso: Now…
John Frusciante: I don’t change anything with Johnny. I was just watching him come up with stuff, was really educationally, you know, ‘cause I’ve learnt so much from his playing to see that he wasn’t…’cause I come with playing from a…, you know, the theoretical symbols for things are real prominent in my mind and all the time when I make music, even if I’m totally breaking all the rules in playing, atonal notes and all that, I know what intervals they are, you know, when I’m building chord upon chord I know what the intervallic relationship is, you know, and with him…he doesn’t have that…I think he just learnt to play music from doing it and from playing along with old records and stuff…so to see the way that…in his own mind he’s created his own mental symbols for the same things that I use the theoretical symbols for, but, you know, in so many ways I learn how to use things like thirteenths and elevenths and ninths in a musical context from starting from plain to this real complex chord progressions in, like, Smiths songs and stuff like that to find out that he’s always been going by his instinct and going by his own mental pitchers and stuff…it was really neat to watch it just fall into place, you know.
