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March 2001, Guitar (UK)
thanks to Katie, for typing it out
click the thumbnail for scans

Descending from packed arenas to a lonely home studio, Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante capitalised on a rare tour break and a burst of creative energy to capture sounds both eclectic and ethereal on solo album number three. Verdict: stunning...

We've all seen it before: guitarist in a big-selling band gets annoyed about everyone banging on about the lead singer, when any fool can see who is the real star talent in the band. This particular attack on the ego has led to that phenomenon known as 'solus projecticus', where said guitarist, Mike Yarwood-style (ask your parents), declares that 'this is the real me', leaving us to deal with the turgid fret-flying showcases devoid of charisma or melody.

But, as ever, John Frusciante is the exception to the rule. That shouldn't be too surprising, though, considering he's been writing his own, very idiosyncratic, script since the age of 18 when he stopped moshing to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and joined the band. At a time when band members and fans alike thought that the tragic death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak might will scupper the Peppers, Frusciante's arrival inspired the funksters to new creative heights and -- with the success of 1989's Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik in '91 -- worldwide commercial success.

Ultimately, this success came to be Frusicante's nemesis, as he grew disillusioned with the whole arena-touring machine the band had become. After leaving the Chilis in '92, he made two solo albums, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt ('94) and Smile From the Streets You Hold ('97). The off-kilter, often incoherent tangents that Frusciante indulged in on these recordings, coupled with his chemical dalliances, were used as justification by those who were of the opinion that the former Chili Pepper was living out an all-too stereotypical rock star decline.

But when his replacement, Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, left the Chili Peppers after only one album -- the indifferent One Hot Minute -- Frusciante was ready again to join the fray. The return sparked a new period of productivity in his life, with the guitarist not only making a sparkling contribution to the band's latest album, Californication, but knocking out songs on the side at a furious rate.

"The last few years have been real productive for me. If it hadn't been for Anthony, Flea and Chad's love for me and their confidence I wouldn't have been able to get to the point that I am at now," says a grateful Frusciante. "They were loving the stuff I was doing from day one, even though it was just a fraction of what I was capable of. When you have friends who are on your side there is no limit to what you can do."

The product of this love and affection is his third solo album, To Record Only Water For Ten Days. Written for the most part while touring with the Chili Peppers, Frusciante has harnessed his ability to get 'out there' with lashings of cockle-warming melodies that really do feel like Novocaine for the soul. Many songs, like the bashing folk blues of _Fallout_, are sprinkled with elegiac acoustic picking and falsetto vocals, whilst elsewhere a laidback old-school hip hop vibe forms the backdrop for some jaunty acoustic strumming and phased space-age vocals.

According to Frusciante, this kind of musical invention and cross-stitching has been made possible due to the wonders of technology, allowing him to make the whole album by himself.

"I'm not really good at other instruments, but I realised that I could learn about electronics and orchestrate my music that way. So I learned how to program drums and when I'm doing that I feel as if I'm expressing myself the same was as on the guitar. The good thing about the age we're living in is that you don't have to be a good musician to be able to make good music."

Any suggestion, though, that he could have got in any of the numerous top-notch musician friends in his Filofax to contribute is given the short shrift. "I've tried to play my songs with other people before and it doesn't sound right," Frusciante explains. "The Chili Peppers is a real band where the songs belong to all of us, so all of us need to put our own thing in there. But when they are just my songs I know how and where the rhythms and the melodies should go, but other musicians hear things in their own way and you get their interpretation of what should happen.

"With my songs," he concludes defiantly, "I feel like it's my responsibility to take them to their final destination in this dimension."

For those not of a spiritual or mystical nature, hearing Frusciante describe his philosophies on guitar playing, and music in general, can be a confusing experience. Talk of scales, chords, technique and the other "mundanities" of the craft is dismissed in favor of discussing the colours and shapes that make up his songs.

"I heard music in a technical way for so long when I was a teenager that when I turned 20 or 21, all of a sudden, I started hearing music completely as colour. I didn't see the fretboard as having any value whatsoever, in terms of the actual physics of playing the guitar. I remember the exact day that it happened and I've never looked at the guitar the same way again."

He goes on to reveal that he does still continue his musical education, learning about chords and chord structures by analysing such greats as Charles Mingus and The Beatles. But Frusciante sees no contradictions with this and his standpoint on technique, claiming: "I just want to be able to take my songs new places. Even though the fundamentals of a song might be different, the emotions might be staying in a similar place, and I feel like I might be able to have some new colours and shapes in my songs if I were able to understand chord theory a little better."

He goes on to expound on the John Lennon theory that songs aren't necessarily written but "picked up", often fully formed, by an erstwhile composer's antennae. "Songs come to me as a feeling. A lot of these songs came when I was just playing guitar on the tour bus during the day, but when I had them in my head I pretty much knew how they were going sound straightaway. Any technical stuff you know should just be there to make sure you get the sound and melodies out of your head in the right way."

You might think such would inherently undermine the talent and hard work of a songwriter, essentially negating the need to give him or her any credit other than for their "listening" abilities and the effort put in to make sure others can hear this divine music that supposedly exists in the ether. It's a line of thinking that doesn't seem to bother Frusciante, who relishes -- alchemist-like -- converting the ethereal to the concrete.

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