The Maturity Of Four Illuminati
The story of this Californian band is marked by the goes and returns of John Frusciante, the genius of the band, a priveleged guitarist marked by his heroine addiction. At his 36 he has false teeth and his arms badly scarred. Obsessive man, excesively talented, changed his drug addiction by compulsive creation, and in 2004 before getting in the studio with the peppers he released 6 albums by himself. Yes. 6.
“Doing heroine just gives you some sort of mental peace when you’re high, but when you wake up the next morning you just feel like shit all day”, he says staring at the ceiling, lying in his hotel bed, in a great mood. The interview is just at his nap time.
His mind flies and it doesn’t take long until he starts a monologue about the heroin years: “ It happens the same in a long term: if you do heroin every day for three years, to be healthy again, you have to work for it three more years. I had three years of fun and misery... and after that I was so happy of not being attached to anything, of being able of eating fruit, salads, play music with people.... I went from having money, to not having any, from being what people call rich, to not having where to go; the experience is tough, I didn’t have money for food many of those days... In 1996, I was home expecting someone would come to visit me so they would give me 10 bucks for a burguer. I had to get 50 bucks for not being sick, there were lots of dealers offering me drugs all the time.... I got money every six months [copyrights], but in between, I would starve to death, the dealers gave me the drugs and I would pay them once I got the check... Those were incredibly tough days... I had a girlfriend who used to beg people for money, or she used to go out to the street and do anything needed to get me the drugs...”
The Frusciante runaway is one of the main points in the bands story. He left the band in 1993, in the high spot, he was unable to deal with the succes of the band. 9 years younger than their colleagues, he just found himself surrounded by a huge succes and awful amounts of money. He, the one who always said that good bands never sell too much. “ The interviews, the fans, and the tours damaged my creativity, and the only way to get it back was being home and drugged all the time”, he remembers.
While touring, in Japan, middle 92, he just walked away.
The end of the inspiration and the sales arrived with the Frusciante runaway. A dull era started with an irrelevant album (One Hot Minute). And his way back in 1999, it’s the other huge episode in the Chili Peppers: it meant the creative resurrection and millionaire sales, the biggest of their career: Californication sold 15 millions albums.
In the short distance, you can tell Frusciante is a weirdo. When he was five years old, he started to hear voices in his head; voices that told him he was going to be a musician, he explains. In his infant brain were projected images of an armonic future. It’s not that he wanted to be a musician, he didn’t even know what that meant, but he knew (being five! He assures) that he would end up being one.
“I had a lot of experiences like this when I was a kid”. That old rock and roll compilation his dad had in the living room, allowed him to give shape to those images. He listened Louie Louie and he knew he would be a guitarist. He moved to Santa Mónica; he got into the skate world; he adored Kiss, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin... And the land of punk allowed him to say to himself: I can do that.
