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"The first couple of years I was in the Chili Peppers, I don't consider myself a very good guitarist by my own standards," he says now. "I don't feel like I was 100 percent taking the feelings and colors in my head and adequately transferring them to the guitar and into the world where they became something concrete instead of just a feeling that floats through outer space. But then I became as good at that as a person could be, and every night when I would play, I would play different solos and different guitar parts. I just had a good relationship with the spirits and with the ghosts and with the colors in outer space. "A song is something spirits can get feelings from, but its nothing a human being can be aware of except I am. So they give it to me as just a color and as a vibe and as a feeling and as an aesthetic echo in my head, and then I'm able to take it and turn it into music." When he returned to LA, he sat on his couch for nearly a year, depressed and alone and unable to function. He wondered whether he had made the right decision in quitting the band, or in joining in the first place; he was convinced he was pissing away his talent. He had only experimented with drugs, smoked pot "every day when I was 20," and says he first shot heroin right after the recording of 1991's breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik and then dallied with the drug on and off again. But he finally became a junkie as a final salvation, and in time he again started writing in his journals, painting, and recording. Now he can't be without his needles or his guitars; three guitars are scattered on the floor of his Chateau suite, and he often fondles the neck of one as he talks.

"I used to record every day" he explains. "it's good that I do at all now. When I quit the band, I couldn't look at art, I couldn't paint, I couldn't read books, I couldn't play guitar, I couldn't listen to music, I couldn't do anything but lay on the couch depressed, and then I became a junkie and came to life again and became happy and started playing music again. But I couldn't exist at first. I was so depressed. I couldn't talk to people. I was just the most hopeless, miserable person you have ever seen. I thought I was through with music and that I was gonna die within a couple of weeks from depression. I thought, Where I'm at in my head is the head of a person about to die. I thought my body was literally gonna give up. And then I just decided, 'I'm gonna become a junkie now' and the next day I was just happy and better.. I just decided without [heroin], I have no control over what thoughts take over my brain. See, with this, I have control over what I want to think about, and when something comes into my head that is useless to think about, it won't take over, I can get rid of it. I would sit there and think about the way things could have been if I would have done it this way, the way I didn't do it But those are pointless things to think about, but that's all I could think about, and I had to just forget it I always had a really good discipline as far as my head goes, but that stuff was just too heavy. With heroin, I was able to all of a sudden have the power to get rid of those things that would pop up into my head and think about something else. like, all of a sudden I wasn't the boss of my head any more."

In the fall of 1994, he released his first solo album on American Recordings, the label owned by Rick Rubin, who had produced Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Warner Bros. Records, the Peppers' label, had rights to the album because of a leaving-artist clause in Frusciante's chili Peppers contract, but because he was living as a recluse who refused to do many interviews, the label happily handed it over to Rubin, who finally released the album at the insistence of River Phoenix, Butthole Surfer Gibby Hayes and Johnny Depp. In the end, Frusciante's solo albums Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-shirt , sold about 15000 copies--a tiny number compared to the six million the Peppers moved of Blood Sugar. Niandra Lade is a bizarre and complicated album, two dozen tracks that grow increasingly fragmented and frightening as the album wears on; any Chili peppers fans who listened to the record expecting more punk-funk likely thought their stereos were broken. "Heroin emphasizes whatever you are," Frusciante explains. "Like, if you want to record music, it'll help you concentrate on that more, but if you want to lie in bed and not do anything, it'll help you do that better. It helps you do anything better you want to do. At least for me, not for other people. My head works differently than most people, so consequently drugs affect me differently."

Frusciante insists he wants to get on a stage again--the last time he performed was at the Viper Room the night his closest friend and champion and protector, River Phoenix, died outside its doors--and that he wants to assemble a real band to perform his pop songs, the ones that go verse-chorus-verse instead of just verse.

In the end, Frusciante has become just another gifted musician who plunges a needle into his arm every few hours between playing and painting, between reading and writing, between preparing a new record and finding a new home, between living and dying; these days, record label rosters are once again stockpiled with men and women just like Frusciante, though they have publicists to hide their artists' habits. Since Phoenix's death, most of Frusciante's other close friends have abandoned him, sometimes after trying to intervene and save his life; they're too fired of watching him decay in front of them, too sick of watching him unapologetically kill himself. He knows they don't like being around him, but he doesn't give a fuck. "They're afraid of death, but I'm not," he says. "I don't care whether I live or die."

"It’s hard to watch," says Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers ex-band-mate) "He doesn't care about money or personal hygiene or anything else. And he never has. He once gave $10,000 to the pizza delivery guy. He doesn’t care." Flea, a former drug user himself, tells Frusciante what he thinks about his habits. "John once told me, 'I don't have a problem with drugs, you have a problem with me doing drugs.' In retrospect, I realize, yeah, I do have a problem with drugs. I do have a problem with friends dying. It makes me really fucking sad. I don't want him to do any drugs at all, and I tell him that. That's all I can do as someone who loves and respects him."

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