Red Hot Soloing
BETWEEN HIS SOLO efforts and his work with the Chili Peppers, you’d be forgiven for thinking that John Frusciante might be far too busy to even entertain the notion of any other projects. Not so. Last year, he contributed five tracks to the soundtrack of his actor/musician friend Vincent Gallo’s yet-to-be-released arthouse movie, The Brown Bunny (which was famously booed at the Cannes Film Festival). But there are to important things to note about the guitartist’s friendship with Gallo and his music for the film: 1) during his downtime, the actor acts as John’s unofficial “guitar pimp” (see boxout), and 2) even though it appears on the soundtrack album for The Brown Bunny (currently only availible on Japanese Import), Frusciante’s music was actually dumped from the movie. Did that piss Frusciante off?
“Well, y’know, I don’t really understand completely,” he concedes. “But I know that he loves my music and I know that he loves me as a person, so I have to accept his reason which is that the film didn’t take the music. I know that he listened to that music constantly while he was making the film and he always listened to my musi for years even before I met him. So it’s not like he doesn’t like the music. I guess I’m a little confused about it beause to me I can’t imagine two things that have more in common, that fit more perfectly together. There’s actually some really interesting guitar-playing on it – it’s very stripped down, it’s just acoustic guitar and an overdub of an electric guitar and a vocal or whatever.
“There’s a lot of really good guitar-playing in it, more so than Shadows,” he laughs.
“But he says that the film rejected the music and thats something I can relate to. I know that if Josh comes in with a certain drum beat, for instance, for one of my songs and I say, No that’s not the right drum beat, it’s not that I don’t like the drum beat, it’s just that the song is rejecting the drum beat. It comes up a lot when I’m producing music that somebody will play something, and it’s not that I don’t like what they’re playing, but it just doesn’t fit in with my image of the song. Or the song isn’t accepting it – the two things are fighting with each other. So I can relate. I definitely don’t hold it against him or anything. I know he’s on my side.”
In fact, to further underline the fact that there’s no rift between Frusciante and his friend, Klinghoffer and the guitarist plan to back Gallo when he performs at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival at Camber Sands in April (“We’re just gonna improvise”). On top of this, John has also just played on Omar Rodriguez of The Mars Volta’s solo album (“I do some interesting synthesiser and guitar on that”), as well as contributing to the new Sean Lennon record.
“I played guitar and synthesiser on that too. I guess my approach these days on the synthesiser has a lot to do with using it in a way that’s feminine – I don’t really use the oscillators much, I use it more for changing the sound of other things or to shape noise in different ways. I’m not as interested n using it as the sound source, I’m tring to use it in other ways. More oftten thatn not I use it like an effects pedal. Sean’s got this producer who’s doing a pretty slick job of it, so I guiss what I try to do is just put some weirdnes into it…”
COME LATE SUMMER, the Chili Peppers will get down to the serious business of recording the follow-up to By The Way, which – as it turns out – they’ve already managed to get something of a head-start on.
“When we were supposed to record two new songs for that Greatest Hits, we ended up recording, like, 15 musical tracks,” Frusciante explains. “Anthony did vocals for probably nine of them. We come to England to tour in June and when we get back we’re just gonna start writing, for maybe like a month, and then go in the studio and figure out which ones we like the best.”
So, of course, the big question is: any particular stylistic shift?
“Yeah, it’s much more raw and much more oriented around the sound of the band. I limit myself to never singing more than three harmony parts at once, and with this I’m trying to only sing one at a time. I’ve been really appreciating the balance of the band when we just sound like a band rather than overdoing it with a lot of overdubs and things. Also, I’ve been more likely to let Flea come up with some sort of overdub idea, like putting flute and clarinet on a song, rather than me jumping in with my synthesizers!”
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