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? 1994, Bikini Magazine (USA)
many thanks to Lauren Tobia, for typing it out
click the thumbnail for scans

I’m sitting on this old, two-piece shocking velvet couch in John Frusciante’s living room waiting for Frusciante to come down stairs. I got this cat looking at me strange like I’ve come to steal something. (Ed. Note: Artie’s paranoid) I’m doing everything I can to appear comfortable. Actually, maybe I am comfortable. I’ve got a view of the city from where I’m sitting and from the looks of things, I should be in for a free Evian, possibly even one of those expensive fruit smoothie drinks. I turn my head and catch a skinny guy coming down the stairs. Bleached hair pulled back and some pale skin. A good shirt, blue I think. With a collar and a filterless Camel burning. John Frusciante, last of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: now, setting out on a solo career. He sits down and we jump right into the lowdown on the new album.

I ask about the drums, or rather, the lack thereof.
To me, it [his solo album, Niandra LaDes and Usually Just A T-Shirt, American Recordings] has the vibe of when I was recording. It has the same kind of vibe as Jane’s Addiction or Da Vinci or whatever, without drums. But it seemed just as heavy…

Yeah, I like some of that backwards guitar I heard in it, I say, not feeling a need to question John’s Da Vinci reference.
Thanks…Some people require like a macho thugs presence [with the drums] but as long as the feeling of macho stud is there…

When I listened to Niandra I realize just how much impact you had on the Chili Peppers with BloodSugar.
Yeah…I wrote like 60 percent of the music and Flea wrote 40…

You gave them a really nice added dimension…helped them transcend the strictly party, funk thing and broaden the sound.
Yeah…well I had a good time ‘cause I was always looking at Flea and my amp…

Now the Evian comes out, and John lights another Camel. There’s a landscaper somewhere in the neighborhood cursing at a weedwacker. Have you jammed with other people since then?
Me and Flea and Steven Perkins [of Porno For Pyros] have a band…we’re called the Three Ameobas…We have like 10 or 15 hours of stuff on tape…and it’s great. They’re never any dull moments at all…fuckin’ flows perfectly and we’re never jacking off…It doesn’t have any of the things that makes instrumental rock laughable a few years down the line. They’re the main people I’m interested in jamming with, you know…me and Flea jam now and then, Steven’s really busy with Porno right now…I don’t really know any other musicians…Me and River Phoenix used to have a good…we played together…a sort of communication that was intense…on just two guitars…but…can’t do that anymore…

The album’s got a heavy Syd Barret (Early Pink Floyd) vibe.
…Yeah, the main stuff that like she [girlfriend, Toni] is pretty insightful into what I’m doing ‘cause I always avoid realizing that I’m even in this dimension, you know, she said to me that she thought that the three main influences on the album are Syd Barret and Robert Johnson…And what was the other one. Toni…[Yells upstairs]…Oh yeah, Captain Beefheart…

You cut the whole album in this house?
…Right there.

He points to a pile of instruments. Guitars, a bass, a clarinet-looking thing, a Moog-type apparatus, a four track. I figure it’s as good a time as any to stick my toe into the ‘why did you leave the Peppers’ water. He says, ‘No Problem’…so I ask.
You left the Chili Peppers when you were touring in Japan?
Is there an ashtray?

John leaves the room and comes back with tray in hand, takes a drag, looks past me and begins.
…While I was still living in the house…and I would like say to myself, ‘Ok. I know you don’t have any reason to but you’ve gotta quit the band’, you know…and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it…because I knew that they wouldn’t let me. I had a feeling that the road was really gonna fuck with me. But I mean…Flea…the road had been fucking with him for so many years. It’d be spoiled of me to have quit then, but I was definitely sure I should do it and was uncomfortable but with what? I didn’t know…It just had to do with my sub-conscious and my development as a person, and a spirit, you know…and I just felt like a guy with like 400 ghosts telling him what to do all the time. I just wanted to lay back on the couch and think about nothing and that’s what I did up until the time we went on tour. I [had] told Flea a year before I quit the band that the unity hadn’t been so good…Anthony and I hadn’t really talked for a couple of tours…and we didn’t really look at each other much on stage. And so Flea took me to the park and said, ‘Is there anything you like about being in the band?’ And I said, ‘No…I’m just in the band ‘cause I love you…I love playing with you, and I don’t want to just leave you but there’s nothing I like about being in the band…’ and he was just like, ‘Well I guess you shouldn’t do it just for me.’ And he understood and everything but never the less like…he didn’t think about it for the next year so like when I quit the band, it was still a shock…because I, you know, it all had to do with things that were taking place inside me, you know…to them it just seemed like it was getting better at the time. I just didn’t wanna do it anymore…I was really happy…I mean like my own version of happy, like in outer space every time I would look at Flea’s eyes, or my amp, or Chad’s foot [on the drums] but you know other than that, the popularity thing really bummed me out…When I quit the band I didn’t even want to play guitar anymore…I just wanted to quit…

So now you’ve got your own album? It’s time to forget about the past and get into the future of Frusciante.
Yeah, but I didn’t do it as an album…because a lot of it was recorded at the same time as were writing and recording Blood Sugar…so it was more a way to balance out what, what I wasn’t doing in the band…you know…’cause that was just a small part of me…And so with this I just…even though there was nothing preconceived about what we did that was because we all knew what the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s is…where as with this [Niandra LaDes]…there was no limitations at all…and since I’m not like a egomaniac show off…it was all right to just do whatever I wanted and do as much as I wanted to do…

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