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Aloha (The Netherlands), 26th April 2004
thanks to Ilse van t'Hoff for translation
click the thumbnail to see the scans

Like every genius John Frusciante (33) is a bit strange. But who cares: at least he's still alive. For years the Peppers-guitarist was in a willful heroine hell, from which he was able to get out of at just the right time. Since that he enjoys life, in his own multi-dimensional way. A captivating look into a profound mind.

You once said that you knew in advance that you were going to leave the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1992. How does that work?
In the time that we were finishing Blood Sugar Sex Magik ('91), I heard voices in my head. They said I was not able to do the tour and that I had to stop now. That I was tempting fate by putting my life in a totally different direction. And that I, because of that, had no reason to do the tour. Those are often the strongest moves that a person can make:doing something without a clear reason but more from a sort of premonition. That takes courage, because it goes against everything that you've done in your life so far.

I ignored those voices in the beginning and for a long time I saw that as the worst mistake in my life. I did go on tour, while I had no idea as to how I should function as a traveling rock artist. At home I had made a creative fantasy universe for myself, there everything was about Captain Beefheart, paint, brushes, pencils, smoking pot and drinking wine. On tour I was faced with the tough real world. There you can be creative, but not 24 hours a day, like at home. I wrote a lot of songs, but it only took me a couple of hours a week. The rest of the time you were almost forced to do nothing. And I couldn't handle that.

Because of the circumstances I was in when I left the band, I think it was a good choice to become a drug addict. That was just something I needed to do at that moment. I had strayed from the right path in those days and I needed to take some distance from the big bad world.

What was it about the big bad world that made you reach for drugs?
There were things that I just didn't understand. What it comes down to is that there was this wave that was going through my head, it told me what to play on my guitar. It told me how to write songs. Eventually I found out that the wave was my subconscious. It took a while for me to figure that out.

Was it your subconscious, or do you believe that there could be other creatures that can influence you by talking to you?
I think it's both. But in the end it's all the same thing. That's why I'm a bit afraid to talk about 'other beings'. What has become very clear to me is that everyone is a collection of memories and experiences but also a collection of personalities in one. And those personalities exist as individuals in another dimension. But those are dimensions in which there is a nonlinear time, so they can't do anything with their own personalities there. They can only express themselves by way of people that live in a linear time. Once they are in us we can make eternal things, like a record, a painting, a article, a book, or something else. I very much think that they are more important. At the same time I do not underestimate the importance of myself, because I know that they are also apart of that. Like I said: we are all one thing.

Recently I read an interview in which you were talking about the amount of calories in crackers. Isn't it bizarre that someone who is talking about other dimensions is also talking about fat content?
No, because it's all the same. Everything that's happening here is just a reflection of what is happening in the Fourth Dimension. I used to think that I was the only one that was absorbed in music, but that's not true: businessmen, assholes, yuppies, everything is a reflection of the other dimension. So it isn't all full of color and beauty. Some parts are disgusting and repulsive.

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