Dallas Music Guide interview
2004, dallasmusicguide.com (USA)
Information on the exact date would be appreciated
John Frusciante is undeniably a man with a tremendous amount of passion. Be it with the Red Hot Chili Peppers or in his solo career, his appetite for music and the things he derives from it seems to transcend notes and songs, stretching to an almost obsessive degree of fascination with music and sound. In fact, this interview began late, which John explained by saying, “I need people to call me, I never remember to call anyone – otherwise I’ll just sit in my house and listen to music all day.” His continuing state of wonderment regarding music is so pure and almost childlike that it’s wonderfully refreshing.
Although best known for his work with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Frusciante has managed to create a name for himself as a respected solo artist, creating music that is miles away from anything on a Chili Peppers record. His first two solo records, “Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt” and “Smile From the Streets You Hold” have become cult favorites due to the raw nature of the recordings, during which Frusciante was in the midst of his strangely fascinating drug addiction. The bare, pained sounds of the records appealed to many who relished in the ‘falling apart’ aspect of the material, which came across to many as the sounds of a man dying.
If those two records were the sound of a man dying, everything he has released since he has cleaned up sounds like a man living – with a stronger voice and an emphasis on more cohesive songs, Frusciante returned with the excellent “To Record Only Water for Ten Days,” followed by “Shadows Collide With People.”
Now, it seems that Frusciante can’t record fast enough. He announced after “Shadows…” that he would be releasing six more records by the end of 2004 (through the Record Collection label), quite a feat by any standards. The first record in the series, “The Will to Death,” (recorded in five days) showcases Frusciante’s ability to slow things down and create a sort of mellow, brooding atmosphere without making it overly depressing, even when a good amount of the songs are about death.
In part one of the interview, Frusciante discusses why he chose to release such a volume of material, his interest in death, and how he was inspired to use a synthesizer by the Velvet Underground, who never used one.
This project you’re undertaking is a pretty ambitious one – what was the motivation to put out so much music in such a short time?
Well, I don’t see it as a project. It started out when I went to test out a studio to test out the room, and I had just finished a record – “Shadows Collide With People” – which I think took a total of a couple of months to record and mix, which I consider to be a really endlessly long time. I was just testing out the studio, and I went in there with my friend Carla, and I taught her these songs and recorded them and did all my overdubs and all my singing and everything in one day. The idea when I went into the studio that day was to leave mistakes, don’t worry if it speeds up a little or slows down a little or things like that, but once I’d actually listened to the final thing at the end of the day, it sounded incredible. It sounded perfect, and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
That was when I realized that I could record really fast. I had gotten into this habit of doing things the way people do them nowadays, because when you work with engineers and producers of today, they are used to doing things a certain way and they waste a lot of time. When I actually took the attitude of not giving a fuck, I ended up making really good music in the course of a day, so I went to my friend Josh [Klinghoffer] and said that I think we could record a lot quicker than we thought we could, because we didn’t want to go through that whole stressful thing of making a two month record. It sucks making a record like that, it’s a struggle. We went into the studio one day – we recorded three songs in two days - and that was how “The Will to Death” album started. Josh didn’t believe that we would be able to do it, but we were. He did his drums all in one take, the vocals were done in one take, and the things we spent the most time with were experimenting with the synthesizer or treating the instruments. We probably spent more time doing that than anything else, just because with that there’s always a lot of rewinding the tape and getting things just right, so it just rolled from there.
