Guided By Voices
July 2006, Guitar World (USA)
thanks to Becky Jeskey for typing it out
WARNING: OFENSIVE CONTENTS! click the thumbnail to see the scans
This interview comes with a video
Once in league with the devil, John Frusciante has found inner peace by tapping into a higher power. Through all of it, the voices in his head have never been silent. The Red Hot Chil Peppers, guitarist tells how Hendrix, meditation and a few friendly spirits shaped the group's new double-length album Stadium Arcadium.
It was John Frusciante's idea to be photographed as Satan and Jesus for this interview. Rock and Rollers from Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard onward have toyed and struggled with the dichotomy between bestial behavior and beautitude that seems to be an inherent part of the music itself.
Few however, have had as dramatic a journey from darkness to light as the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist. Over the past decade, he has risen from the depths of hopeless drug addiction to become something of a visionary, both musically and spiritually. At the very least, he certainly gets messianic gleam in his eye when he starts talking about his aspirations for the new Chili Peppers album, Stadium Arcadium (Warner Bros.)
"It's my dream to make music that can make people feel like they're flying," says Frusciante. "I want the music to produce certain brain waves in the listener. I want it to recreate certain psychedelic feelings that come about in life, whether it's just looking at the ocean or watching a bird flying in the sky." Over the years, he's made concerted efforts to achieve his goal. "I did some sonic experiments; I went pretty far with that. But in a lot of ways in which I think I could go further."
Frusciante's sojourn into the metaphysics of sound has certainly paid off. Stadium Arcadium is epic in scope. The album rocks harder than its predecessor, 2002's By the Way, but without sacrificing the high level of harmonic sophistication that the Chili Peppers achieved on that disc. On Stadium Arcadium, Frusciante's musical approach is expansively celestial, but when he cuts loose on guitar, he sounds like a man with a hellhound on his trail. The album contains some of the most furious, fierce and fiery fretwork he has ever committed to disc.
"John often puts limits on himself as a guitarist," says Chili Peppers' bass icon Flea. "He wants to make a stylistic statement, so he doesn't just let go and play. But on this album, he did both of those things. But there are also times when he just let fly with a Hendrixian, Pagian flurry of loudness."
Flea's Hendrix comparison hits home. At times on Stadium Arcadium it seems like Frusciante's directly channeling Hendrix - echoing the guitar legend's distinctive sense of phrasing and tone with supernatural verismilitude, but still managing to transmute his Hendrix worship into pure Frusciante deviancy. Beyond this, Frusciante has come closer than perhaps any other modern guitarist in realizing Hendrix's vision of the recording studio as one enormous guitar effect. Stadium Arcadium is awash in the sound of Frusciante's guitar mutated by modular analog synth gear, the latest stomp boxes and tape manipulation sorcery. At various points on the disc, his ax sounds like an organ, like a Sputnik satellite, like water sprites at play, like time turning in on itself, like the sun exploding.
