MusicRadar interview 2008/2009
Joe Bosso: Now, I’m fascinated. Is it possible for a player as yourself to turn that off though?
John Frusciante: No reason to, like, I think there’s a period of time when a person first learns those things it produces a kind of mental strain where the instinctual part of the brain isn’t escapable anymore of dominating the brain and the technical part ends up being overemphasized and taking up all the brain space you have room for. You use up all the brain power you have available to compensate all these technical relationships and things like that but once it becomes the same thing as talking or something, you know, once it becomes the same thing as you know what the word “man†means and it’s not a strain to think of a man and have the word “man†in your head, you know, there’s just…eventually they just become one thing, the symbol of the thing and the thing itself just become one thing. The word majors heard and the sound of it and the look of it on the guitar it just all becomes one thing in your brain, you know…
Joe Bosso: You might be using a bunch of different guitars on the album but if I had to pick a predominant sound it does sound like a Strat most of the time…
John Frusciante: Yeah, that’s all I’m using. I don’t think I played any other guitars. It’s hard to remember. I might have used an SG on the solo of “Central†but I think I might have just made the Strat sound like an SG with and English Muffin Electro Harmonix Effect. I basically used all the same gear I use in the Chili Peppers, you know, just Marshall Major and Jubilee and my 62 Strat and my 67 Strat…
Joe Bosso: Right. There’s so many cool sounds on this record but if I had pick one it’s the solo in the song “Enough Of Meâ€. What…?
John Frusciante: I think that’s my favorite one too.
Joe Bosso: There you go. What kind of overdrive are you using on that?
John Frusciante: I think it’s an English Muffin and I didn’t play that through the Marshalls I played it through a Fender Bassman.
Joe Bosso: Okay.
John Frusciante: ‘Cause I wanted to get real low frequency…
Joe Bosso: Yeah.
John Frusciante: …and I wanted to be standing next to the amp and not be too far away from the control room, so…when I was on tour I was just messing around in my hotel room I started to think of that style of playing of…I was just messing around a lot with…instead of thinking of one note as one note that leads to the next note that leads to the next note to sort of divide the guitar into pieces. So you’re playing low notes alternately with high notes that have, you know, a stretch of, you know, a couple of octaves at least and it forces you brain to have to, sort of, thinking two directions at once even though the notes aren’t happening at the same time which…I remember on my first solo album I did a lot of that work. I was playing acoustic guitar parts where they kind of had a bass note and a high note that were at least, like, an octave and a third away from each other or whatever but in this case it’s a single note guitar line but your brain is, sort of, thinking in…up the whole neck…you start to, once you do it for a while, you start to just think of the whole neck as one thing and you don’t stay in those boxy patterns the guitar players can think…
Joe Bosso: Right.
John Frusciante: …staying, you know. It was just a fun, like, at first it was just like a fun mental challenge to think that way and then by the time I played it on the album I had been doing a lot in my room. I did a little on stage but it’s so different from the way I normally play…
Joe Bosso: Oh.
John Frusciante: …it was…I wasn’t really enjoying doing it in the band.
Joe Bosso: Well, it’s an amazing solo. Just totally mind-blowing.
John Frusciante: Thanks, man.
