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? 2002 Los Angeles Weekly,
information on the exact date would be appreciated
taken from now-dead RHCP Central

John Frusciante is sitting, half-submerged, in the swimming pool of his Hollywood Hills home, the lilting psychedelia of Tyrannosaurus Rex traveling out from a stereo. If you've seen pictures of Frusciante from 10 years ago, his appearance is noticeably different. In youth, he was almost male-model pretty, posing for photographs with a confident smile bordering on a sneer. Nowadays, he appears somewhat fragile-looking, more disheveled artist than Southern California skate punk. He is surprisingly talkative, blending a sure intellect with slightly New Age spirituality, not particularly warm, but engaging. Frusciante was a teenage fan of the band when he was tapped as their fourth guitarist. "Everybody I ever met," he says, "I would tell them, 'The Chili Peppers are my favorite band, I love them.'"

He had migrated from the doldrums of the San Fernando Valley to study guitar at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, when drummer D.H. Peligro of the Dead Kennedys introduced him to Flea, and he was asked to join the band. Chili Pepper drummer Chad Smith shakes his head. "He was 18 when he joined the band. Eighteen! The first band he was ever in was his favorite band. It would be like me having joined fucking Led Zeppelin!"

Frusciante recorded two records with the Chili Peppers during his initial go-round, the second of those, BloodSugarSexMagik, being the album that launched them into mainstream stardom. This sudden ascent to mass popularity left the acutely sensitive Frusciante increasingly unhappy and disillusioned. "By the time we were recording on BloodSugar," he recalls, "it was very clear to me that I could make the world beautiful if I controlled my environment. But that if you rushed me into the middle of a traffic jam or put some ugly billboard in front of me, anything that wasn't pleasant to me, I had no idea how to protect myself against it." This discomfort also translated to fellow band members, whom he believed were too eager to sell themselves out for fame and fortune. "I felt like they thought to be successful they had to pretend to be something, to make funny faces and jump around and be silly and make weird jokes, because that's what was going to make them successful."

At the time, Frusciante felt the band should model themselves after underground heroes like Black Flag, the Velvet Underground and the Butthole Surfers, and not concern themselves with selling vast amounts of records. Accordingly, he began trying to subvert the process, refusing to do interviews and changing the way he played during their live shows. "He was almost like the fan in some ways," Smith says. "Like, 'I used to like them, but now everybody likes them, so I don't like them anymore.' But we didn't really change. It's just a mentality, that rebelling-against-being-popular thing. As soon as the record started to take off, he would just do the opposite of whatever he thought he was supposed to do. If it was time for a lead, he'd unplug his guitar. If it was time for a rhythm break, he'd just go completely off." On tour in Japan, Frusciante abruptly quit the band and flew home to Hollywood.

After leaving the Chili Peppers, Frusciante dedicated himself full time to a bout of heroin addiction that left even the most jaded in Hollywood aghast. With infection spreading throughout his arms and teeth rotting out of his head, many assumed the end was looming. Yet somehow he managed to linger in this isolated and somnambulistic state for six bleak years before finally being hospitalized. Drug free and on the mend, Frusciante was eventually asked to rejoin the band. "He comes over to Flea's garage, and I didn't know what to think," Smith recalls. "But once we started playing, it was just kind of like putting on an old shoe. It just felt good."

His arms scarred from skin grafts and his grill replaced, Frusciante now seems finally at peace with the uncertainties that fueled his initial departure. Sitting on a couch surrounded by an enormous and eclectic record collection, Frusciante explains how he has finally come to accept life as a famous rock star. He tells of how, when all alone in the depths of his addiction, images he had of artists like Jean-Michael Basquiat, David Bowie and Leonardo da Vinci kept him alive. "And it matters very little whether these people were in tune with me on some subconscious level or were pure fantasy," he says. "The fact is, they kept me alive and they made my life feel like it was worth living. They made me feel like I had a friend. And this time when I joined the band, I was so thankful for being kept alive all those years by my images of people, that I was just like, oh great, let's send out images to some other people. To me what's important is the image that some kid in Montana has of me. If I make that person feel good, if I mean something to that person, it's just as real or more real than what I actually am."

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