Total Guitar, July 2006 interview
July 2006, Total Guitar (UK)
thanks to Kane Taylor, for typing it out
click the thumbnail to see scans
In the first of a special two-part interview, John Frusciante discusses Hendrix, drugs, Ricky Gervais, meditation and why he's fallen in love with guitar solos again. Words: Phil Ascott. Portraits: Ross Halfin
“Congestion ahead. Delays are expected.” It’s 3.18pm on Good Friday and, from the passenger seat of our car TG is surveying the endless stream of stationary vehicles snaking their way into the distance. We’re braving the M6 motorway, heading north for Easter sojourn with the in laws. It’s a laborious process at the best of times (we’re referring of course to driving up the M6, not visiting the in laws), but this time the holiday traffic combined with a full premiership football schedule, has turned one of Britain’s longest car parks.
The sound of our mobile phone ringing briefly distracts us from the tedium of tarmac. Scrabbling around, TG locates our vibrating friend and notes a mystery London number is on the line:
“Hello?”
“Hi it’s John Frusciante here.”
“Oh, er, Hi John….”
Rewind 24 hours , and we are waiting in room 105 of the world famous Claridge’s Hotel, a luxury five- star establishment right in the heart of London’s West End. The hotel room is the epitome of glamour: spacious, decked out with antique Art Deco furniture with copious bowl of fresh exotic fruits dotted around and a bathroom so long you could hold a bowls tournament in it.
John Frusciante is fashionably late. Our allotted hour’s interview was due to start at 1pm but John is still upstairs wharfing down his breakfast, so we recline on an opulent chaise longe, grab a grape and wait. 10 minutes later Frusciante appears shuffles slightly awkwardly across the room and greets us warmly. His long unkempt hair, unshaven, rugged features and simple jeans, t-shirt and lumber shirt attire seems out of place in these sumptuous surroundings. With his tattoos and heavily scarred arms hidden from view, he looks unremarkable – seemingly more likely to produce a Big Issue from up his sleeve than the kind of diamond encrusted watch he could so easily afford – yet perversely, Frusciante is perhaps the most remarkable guitarist Total Guitar has ever met.
His incredible life story to date has been told often, but bears repeating. A prodigious young musician, he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers aged just 18 years old and his impact on the band was immediate. As the creative force behind 1991’s brilliant Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, Frusciante transformed the band from slightly embarrassing sex obsessed funk- metallers to global rock giants in three short years. Then at the height of their popularity he quit the band in a haze of heroin. Drugs were to rule his life for the next five years, first heroin, then crack cocaine. As Frusciante battled with the “beings of higher intelligence” or “spirits” he’d had in his head since childhood, he lost his teeth, his skin (the burns on his arms a consequence of setting fire to himself while freebasing) his house (burnt down) and by overdosing regularly almost his life.
With the Chilis floundering after and unsuccessful phase with Dave Navarro on guitar, it was bassist Flea who was instrumental in bringing Frusciante out of his addiction and back into the band. His reinstatement once again bore immediate fruits. The banks next studio album Californication, sold 15 million copies, while an astonishing one in 35 UK households own a copy of 2002’s By The Way.
But its not just Frusciante’s musical Midas touch that’s remarkable. He’s a fascinating man to spend time with. Despite the scheduled one-hour slot, the enigmatic guitarist eventually spends nearly three hours in our company and rarely have we encountered a guitarist so deeply studied, progressive and passionate about his art. Every facet of his existence is channelled towards his music: whether its an in-depth study of every form of composition from classical to the electronic avant-garde, dissecting pioneering, foreign cinema and British comedy, or practising Buddhist meditation, a technique that has replaced drug intake as the guiding force in Frusciante’s life.
Often his conversation has convoluted as he grapples for the ideal words to explain his complex creations and persona, yet it is clear Frusciante is deeply intelligent; a pioneering perfectionist who functions on a level most musicians aspire to yet few achieve. A perfectionism that leads him to interrupt TG’S journey to clarify some of the finer points of our previous day’s conversation, and what led him to the sonic heights that dominate the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s monster, new double album, Stadium Arcadium.
