The (Re)Birth of Tragedy
There seems to be an evolution through all the records, from your first solo album to To Record Only Water for Ten Days [Warner Bros., 2001] and onward, there seemed to be an escalation of production values. But then, with the newer releases, you were almost stepping back from that.
Yeah, it'll be interesting now if I do something more produced. I mean, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence is somewhat more produced... it has a lot more electronics, but it's recorded in a much more raw way. It's much more alive and more live performance than it is really produced. When things are really produced it's looked at from all angles: How are people going to hear this? How am I going to go about getting this sound? Et cetera. If I do a real produced record now with a certain amount of layering, it will still have the raw production. If I go in that direction again, it won't be at the expense of flaws.
That's one of the most interesting things bout you recordings - being able to hear those little glitches. Even on a Chili Peppers albums, it seems like you bring a sense of spontaneity to the music. There are often these little beautiful accidents that give the songs much more character.
Yeah, I agree. I think I lost sight of that for a while around the time I did Shadows. It's always a bummer when musicians get more and more perfect and they lose all their soul and shit [laughs]... I realized that I started to go in that direction and now I've taken a completely backward approach to avoid it.
There's a solo on the Ataxia record that just glitches up a little bit at the end and it really makes it all sound so perfect. It must be relieving to do whatever kind of guitar part you want, because I'm sure you have to deal with more rigid techniques for the Chili Peppers stuff.
Not really in terms of the music, it's more like a lot of care goes into perfecting the drums beforehand, and perfecting the vocals because a lot of times Anthony [Kiedis] is still writing lyrics while we're recording. The difference is that [producer] Rick [Rubin] is really putting the drums under the microscope to get the perfect groove, and we have to do four or five takes, or sometimes we just have to move on and do something else. For Josh and I, that would never happen. I've got it clear in that, like, the Stones in the sixties didn't have anyone like Rick putting them under the microscope, The Velvet Underground didn't have anyone putting the beats under a microscope, and consequently the drums are speeding up and slowing down all the time. But to my ear, that's beautiful. My songs can stand up to that kind of thing. They're songs first and foremost, they're not grooves, you know? If a song is a good song, it can withstand the tempo speeding up in a part, or whatever. It's more about getting the spirit of people in a room who love playing together. As long as that's there, I'm always going to be happy listening to the playback. With the Chili Peppers there's always this consideration, like, 'Is this the groove what 10 million people are going to rock out to in their car.' [laughs] You know? It's a totally different criteria. I'm happy to be involved in both those things. It's not a bummer for me, I enjoy working under those conditions too.
Your lyrics are really confessional. They tend to be focused on elements of your personal life. And, I think that it fits well to the type of music recording that you do. It's very intimate.
That's sort of the function that music plays in my life. I might go for a long period of my life without being around a girl, but if I can be listening to Roberta Flack or Sandy Denny or all the wonderful women singers that there are who soothe me, I feel like I'm with a woman, you know? If I'm listening to a songwriter who really touches me like Peter Hammil [of Van Der Graaf Generator] or Lou Reed or Cat Stevens or whoever, even if I haven't seen my best friend in two months, I feel like I have a best friend in my life. Music has always carried me through times of loneliness. So, when I make music, I like it to make people who listen to it to feel like they have a friend who reveals something personal to them, rather than trying to be like a god up on a pedestal. It pulls me in when someone shows you the most fragile part of their character.
Well, it seems like if one were trying to read into your lyrics, there's this sense of remorse and loss... I think people look for clues in you lyrics, because obviously, you've been through quite a lot in your life. Joining a really popular band at such a young age, and your drug experiences...
Yeah, it definitely changed me immensely. It was a real trip to join my favorite band when I was 18, you know? But, there's so much... like, what can I say about 15 years of my life? The foundation of who I am and why I do what I do lies in a belief that there's more to what's going on than we're seeing around us. There's more than what meets the eye. If I didn't have that philosophy, I would have never switched my lifestyle from being extremely self-destructive to now being very healthy and constructive. I'm extremely grateful for the help that I have from other worlds and things like that. I try to pay that back and I try to open up people's minds who weren't able to go as far off the deep end as I was to learn the valuable lessons I've had.
