Juice magazine interview
1999, from Juice magazine (help on exact date would be appreciated)
taken from now-dead RHCP Central
“His upper teeth are nearly gone now; they have been replaced by tiny slivers of off-white that peek through rotten gums. His lower teeth, thin and brown, appear ready to fall out if he so much as coughs too hard. His lips are pale and dry, coated with spit so thick it looks like paste. His hair is shorn to the skull; his fingernails, or the spaces where they used to be, are blackened by blood. His feet and ankles and legs are pocked with burns from unfiltered Camel cigarette ashes that have fallen unnoticed. His flesh also bears briuses, scabs, and scars… Drops of dried blood dot his pants.”
This description, taken from an article in The Los Angeles New Times, in 1996 could have been from any junk clichè piece, an exposè of homelessness and drug addiction crafted to make average middle Americans feel warmer in whatever bed they made for themselves. But instead, it’s part of a grander modern parable. The junkie in qoation was one John Frusciante, ex-Chili Pepper guitarist who’d fallen on what most of us would call hard times.
How did he get to this point? This cautionary story started out a nice fairy tale, as Frusciante played a fresh -as in 17-year-old- face in a band which was already dogged by sensational fallout from its ever present sexual energy, and by rumours surrounding the death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak in June 1988. Slovak OD’d on heroin. Despite denials, singer Anthony Kiedis was using too. Seemingly diametrically opposed to all of that was a mohawked young fan, Frusciante. All-Californian, his build suited the band’s near-jock buffed look. And having chased his favourite band for years from venue to venue, copying Hillel’s guitar moves, he was never going to think twice when Los Angeles’ underground outside chance offered him the job after a string of temporary replacements.
Frusciante was known as a sensitive young man with an artist’s heart, while the realities of being in a rock band - especially one in the midst of an explosion of popularity can he tough on the naive. Ironically enongh, until joining the Peppers, Frusciante had been so busy practising guitar 15 hours a day, that using drugs while playing music had never occurred to him. Then he realised bassist Flea was often high at shows. And so, by his 20th year, Frusciante was smoking pot every day, perhaps not so smart considering what appeared to he a fragile mental state. He first tried heroin just after recording the band’s watershed Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991. The parable took a sinister turn.
The band was interested in at least appearing clean. A hit from 1989 album Mothers Milk, “Knock Me Down”, was an anti-smack tribute to Slovak. “They’re the stupidest lyrics I’ve ever heard,” said Frusciante of the chorus: “If you see me getting high / Knock me down.
Considering Frusciante’s description of drugs as “the greatest thing in the world,” from there we can only imagine the slippery slope leading to the damaged state he was in by 1996. He’d been forced out of his home in the Hollywood hills after his inability to keep up payments was exacerbated by an accidental fire. The house reflected his personal state of mind - its smell was notorious amongst visitors, and the walls were scrawled with graffiti (samples including “My eye hurts” and “Stabbing pain with discipline’s knife”).
Holed up in the Chateau Marmont, a chic hotel for the Betty Ford set (”where bigger names than he have checked in to check out,” the New Pimes afficle deadyanned, referring to John Beinshi), he was rake thin. Living on a calorie-boosting formula designed for invalids and the elderly, dressed in rags, nodding off by his own later admission he spent his time “smoking crack all day long, shooting heroin, shooting cocaine, drinking wine, taking valium.”
But as far as Frusciante was concerned, things had been worse. There was 1992, the year in which he quit his dream job in the Chili Peppers. He’d made the call himself half an hour before a show in Japan in the midst of the touring which supported Blood Sugar- a runaway hit at the time. He was so adamant he had to leave the band - which he’d joined as a near obsessed fan back in 1988 - Flea had to beg him to play that night, let alone the rest of the tour.
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