Scene Point Blank interview
March 2004, scenepointblank.com
However little you may think of the nowadays more-or-less declasse (in indie circles, anyway) punk/funk band Red Hot Chili Peppers, if you’re a pop music lover it’s still pretty hard to ignore the seemingly extraterrestrial talent of their lead guitarist/songwriter John Frusciante. John’s immense contributions to multi platinum recordings such as “By The Way,” “Californication,” & “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” have been critically hailed as beautiful and even at times staggering.
He’s written a string of incredibly catchy pop tunes that have dominated AOR radio in recent years, and as L.A. rock icons go, John surely sealed his infamy in the 1990’s during a six-year heroin habit that nearly cost him his life. In person, John has a reputation for being soft-spoken and often slightly less than coherent. This is a man who’s said he lives in the fifth dimension, and judging by my conversation with him, it’s easy to believe that’s true.
I talked with him to discuss his new solo record, his recent work with legendary producer Brian Eno, his new band with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, his upcoming performance at All Tomorrows’ Parties with Jim O’Rourke & Vincent Gallo, creativity and madness, and his newfound love of the modular synthesizer.
Congratulations on your new release, “Shadows Collide With People”---the press I’ve seen has been fantastic. 3 stars from Rolling Stone, a rave from the London Times. Are you psyched?
Those things are all well & good but for me I was psyched at the end of making the record.
It’s a thing of the past?
It’s already behind me now. It’s always nice to be appreciated, but onward & upward. I’m more concerned with going forward & doing new things.
Great, that’s what I want to talk to you about. Where you are now?
Yeah I’m proud of the record I’m glad that people like it. But I am very much in the state of mind of doing new things. But I have been avoiding talking about what I’m doing now because it’s frustrating for people to hear about things that aren’t available yet. So it’s better for me just to talk about the album that exists now, and it’s an album I’m really proud of.
As a longtime fan I’m really happy with it as well; it’s sitting well with me personally. I just wanted to share that the first time I saw you was in ’89, we were both 19. You’ve certainly come a long way since then. I was wondering if you could talk about your work with Brian Eno (legendary Talking Heads/U2 producer) at all?
He came to one of our shows in England with his kid and I was really excited to meet him because he’s been a hero of mine since I was a little kid. And he invited me over to his studio and we spent a day just listening to records and stuff and taking a walk and we ended up recording some stuff mainly because he wanted to show me a sort of a set-up he had for processing the guitar. And to demonstrate it we recorded me soloing on the guitar. So I recorded some guitar soloing and he ended up building a song around it. And it came out really good; I really liked the song he did. He’s going to release the song. I’ve been really focused on the modular synthesizer in the last couple of years & he gave me some interesting tips on that whole world. Just ways of doing things that you wouldn’t think of doing because they’re technically wrong. Basically just using it in an unorthodox way. Actually that one day that we spent together really ended up having a big influence on the direction I’ve gone in musically since then?
Yeah that’s why I asked the question. I would imagine that it really lit afire for
you. I would see kindred spirits getting together and you really taking something away from that.
Yeah I did. My music, my whole approach to the synthesizer has completely changed now. I don’t really use it anymore for the oscillator or tone generator. It means basically I’m using the synthesizer more to change the sounds of other things rather than to use it as the source of the sound. Basically I’m using it in a much more subtle way. You could listen to a recording and you could think it was a recording from the 60’s because the things with the synthesizer are so subtle they end up making things they end up making the basic timbre of the various musical elements you can tell something different is going on but you can’t tell what it is that’s making it sound strange. I’m going in that direction rather than the 80’s synth-pop direction where it’s more obvious you’re hearing a synthesizer.
