Red Hot Once Again!
After so much time off from playing, was it hard for you to get your chops back?
Yeah. The whole time we were writing this record, my fingers weren’t as strong as they used to be. And now they are. They probably would’ve been, with the amount I was playing, but I wasn’t focusing on the kind of guitar players who had really strong fingers. I was focusing on new wave guitarists and punk guitarists for this style that I wanted to do on this album. People like Matthew Ashman from BowWowWow (who also was on the Adam and the Ants album Dirk Wears White Socks), Ricky Wilson from the B-52s, Bernard Sumner from New Order and Joy Division, Robert Smith from the Cure, Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto from Fugazi, Greg Ginn from Black Flag, Pat Smear from the Germs, the guys in Echo and the Bunnymen, Johnny Ramone…people who developed guitar styles not from years of playing, but from years of loving music and then all of a sudden getting freed up by realizing there was no “technique” that was necessary to express something. People who weren’t really technically great guitar players, but were great guitar players because they made up original styles that were their own. I’ve gone through so much inside the last few years that I wanted to approach the guitar- being in this band- from that standpoint. I just thought it would be interesting and fun if I made that the direction of my playing for this album, and that’s what I did.
Is there a concept or anything behind the new album’s title, Californication?
It’s just a word that Anthony came up with, and then wrote lyrics around- each line of the song being a different sort of perspective on the word. Anthony writes in a certain style. It’s about California because that’s where he lives, but it’s about other places in the world, too. We all write the music together, but only one person write the lyrics: Anthony.
What are some of the key differences between Californication and BloodSugarSexMagik- the last album you recorded with the Peppers?
Well, I told you one: My fingers were much stronger when we did BloodSugar. That’s the main difference, from my standpoint. I suppose also that with BloodSugar we went from touring for a couple of years for Mother’s Milk, to just mellowing out and making a record. This album, we came out of doing nothing. But, as far as how we get along: The interaction between us and the way we were going about writing was, in a lot of ways, even more together this time because we knew how we went about making BloodSugar. We just know how to write with each other better now.
How did some of the songs on Californication evolve?
All different ways. We’re a band that writes music together. Sometimes something starts as a jam between the guitar and the drums, and then Flea will walk in and start playing bass, and it’ll eventually turn into a song. We would also record a bunch of things, and Anthony would sort of go through the tapes all the time. He’s play us tapes like a week or a month after we did them and go, “This groove is great. We should try to make a song around it.” Because we just write tons of stuff, and if Anthony starts dancing around the room and stuff, we feel like it’s good. It was hard to make the album as short as it is. We wrote like 30 songs.
What was it like working with Rick Rubin again?
Fantastic. I love having him as our producer because he says very little to me, as far as the guitar playing goes. I just do what I do. He helps the arrangements of the songs. He comes to the rehearsals, and he’s just a great person who knows whether or not things are good. We recorded this record at a regular studio [Studio Two at Ocean Way Recording in Los Angeles], but we did it on the same kind of board that we did BloodSugar on. We were just so excited about recording music; we recorded the basics in a week and a half or so.
In the tradition of BloodSugar, it sounds like most of the tracks on Californication were cut live.
Yeah. It’s the interaction; it’s the way we write songs. We each play a part that’s separate- we don’t have one guy just come in and write the song and tell the other guys what they should play. I mean, sometimes you write a guitar part and there’s a drum beat that’s in your mind that goes with it, and there’s no separating them; you can’t help it. Sometimes, the drummer you’re playing with can sense what that beat is by hearing the guitar part; sometimes you have to tell them the drum beat. But, basically we have four separate parts in the band that all interweave together to make the song. And if one guy’s not playing, then the other guys’ groove is gonna fall into the wrong sockets. Everybody’s gotta push and lay back in the right places to fit everybody’s part smoothly. Everybody’s gotta listen to the other guy’s part. It’s not like the Beatles, where you have a guy write chord changes and the vocals, and then you can record things to follow that. There’s not one of us following the other one. Any one part in the mind of the listener can be the main part, and the other parts are always helping it. But the other parts can be just as prominent, too, if you listen to them.
Has your guitar and amp setup changed at all from when you recorded BloodSugar?
On this album, I used a real old ’65 Marshall. I also used a 200-watt bass head that I used on BloodSugar- I use a bass head and a guitar head at the same time; that’s how I play. I had a good sound for this album, but Louie [the band’s right-hand man] doesn’t want me to take the heads on tour because he thinks they’ll break. As far as guitars, I used a ’66 Jaguar on “Around the World,” one of the guitar parts on “This Velvet Glove,” and the odd guitar part here and there. I used a ’56 Stratocaster for most of the basic tracks, and a ’62 Stratocaster- the sunburst one- on some stuff. I also used this ’55 Gretsch White Falcon- it’s the kind of guitar that Matthew Ashman used in BowWowWow and Malcolm Young used to use in AC/DC- for “Californication” and “Otherside.” I have .012-gauge strings on it. I’d like to go more into that- developing a guitar style using thick strings like that. It’s fun. I also had a ’61 Gibson SG, and I used a Telecaster on some things too, like “Easily” and “Scar Tissue.” Vincent Gallo [filmmaker] helped me find a lot of those guitars that are old, collectors’ kinds of pieces. He knows more about guitars than anybody who lives in Los Angeles.
I was surprised that there’s no Frusciante trademark “backwards guitar solos” on this record.
Well, we had a song on it called “Phat Dance” that had a backwards guitar solo on it. It’s not on the record, though. That song will come out, but the vocal is gonna be changed slightly. Anthony was real bummed about that. But I do plenty of backwards guitar on Niandra La’Des, if that’s what people want to hear. I would’ve liked to have that solo that I did on “Phat Dance” be on this record, but I went into that so deeply on Niandra La’Des, I don’t really feel like it’s something I have to do.
