Spin magazine, August 2002
Spin: So the record's really pretty.
Frusciante: Oh, thanks.
Did you have a lot to do with that?
Well, I spent a lot of time after the last tour furthering my understanding of chord theory and learning Beatles and Charles Mingus and Burt Bacharach songs. But I've got a lot more to learn.
You don't worry you'll ruin your muse with too much knowledge?
Absolutely not. It just leads to making music with a wider variety of emotion. It makes me see even more how infinite music is.
[I pull out some sunscreen.] Do you want any?
Okay. I like the [SPF] 45 for my arms. My arms are in bad shape.
He chuckles, takes off his jacket. His arms are severely scarped, as if he'd reached into a fire. They remind me of traveling in Europe, visiting old battlefields now covered in grass; you know something violent happened there. "It's actually more from coke than from heroin," he says. "Coke you're shooting every five minutes. That's what did it to me."
Did you know as a kid that you wanted to be a rock musician?
Well, it was put to me by "that guy" [the guardian spirit] when I was, like, four. So I went into my parents' record collection and found a rock 'n' roll compilation. And when my mom asked if I wanted to move to L.A., I said, "Yeah," because I knew that was where the rock stars were. I was seven. Then when I found punk and listened to the Germs, I started seeing how I was part of this. I remember being out on the baseball field when I was 11, and I felt like such an outsider. Standing there in right field, I started making up an angry punk song in my head, and I went home and wrote, like, 20 songs in a row. I realized it didn't even matter if I knew how to play guitar yet.
Didn't you ever struggle as a beginning songwriter?
Oh, yeah. But I realized that there is a way to hold onto something that doesn't exist yet. That's what takes place when a song is written: You see something that isn't there. Then you use your instrument to find it.
It's Saturday evening in east Hollywood, and the Silverlake Consevatory of Music has just completed its first spring recital. The school is a small storefront establishment located between a Mexican grocery and a gay-friendly antique shop an East Sunset. Flea founded it last year to provide people in the area with affordable music lessons.
The crowd milling about tonight is a multicultural mix typical for the neighborhood and includes several of Flea's personal employees and their families.
There are also numerous thritysomethings who've run in concentric circles with the Chili Peppers' gang since high school and now have kids of their own. Lots of survivors-of harsh 1970s childhoods, divorce, drugs.
Chatting in the hall, dean Keith Barry (a.k.a "Tree," Flea's oldest friend) agrees that his generation-that is, the Chili Peppers'-suffered quite a bit in the past. That's partly because of a lack of havens like the conservatory. "As many places like this as we can create for kids, there will always be a need as long as people keep having kids."
The school is a symbol of, and a gift to, Flea's dream city and the environment that shaped the Chili Peppers.
"The fact that people can stay sincere and have joy in their lives in the face of phoniness or economic elitism is a testament to the spirit of Los Angeles," says Flea. "Whether it be street kids from broken homes like me and Anthony, or victims of huge racism like the black community, or the Mexican community, crawling across the border just to survive. There are pockets where all these people come togeher and live in a creative and vibrant atmoshpere, and that's the Los Angeles I love."
He says he plans to hit up the "guilty rich people" he's friends with and make admission to the conservatory free. Being here, you can feel that this tiny school could become an institution, the kind of place that anchors a neighborhood and even anchors lives.
"The thing that survives has to be really beautiful," says Flea, "and have a really substantial core to it. And it has to be determined to stick to its guns and do what it's gonna do."
He's talking about L.A., but he's also talking about his band-since, in his heart, the two are inseparable. You see, even in Hollywood, people's roots eventually grow together.
