John Frusciante Puts His Stamp on Stadium Arcadium
November 2006, Guitar Player (USA)
thanks to Caroline for typing it out
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Those given to cosmic speculation might easily conclude that John Frusciante was born to play guitar in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Having followed the band from its inception, and having mastered all the songs in the Peppers' repertoire, Frusciante was a de facto understudy for guitarist Hillel Slovak, and the natural choice for Slovak's successor when he succumbed to heroin addiction in 1988. Following the runaway success of 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Frusciante became disillusioned with the rock star life, leading to a six-year hiatus from the band - but he returned just prior to the new millennium, and his guitar playing and songwriting are currently more inpired and compelling than ever.
Frusciante has a voracious musical appetite. One moment he's spinning vintage vinyl by John Lee Hooker and Cecil Taylor, the next he's extolling the virtues of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, and the next he's name checking artists as diverse as Funkadelic, Black Sabbath, Brian Eno, John McLaughlin, and Squarepusher - not to mention perennial favorites such as Hendrix, Clapton, and Beck. His living room walls and much of its floor are home to thousands of CDs and LPs.
Complementing Frusciante's passion for music are his love of recordings and his fascination with pure sound. "As a person whose job it is to make sounds, it's important for me not to overlook any of the various properties that sound possesses," he explains. "Studying modular synthesis has taught me how to approach music in a completely different way, and now I think in terms of giving sound width and dimension, rather than just in terms of what my fingers are doing. You don't have a chance to think that way when you're caught up in the actual playing. It's only in the studio that you can really explore that."
Although showcasing the vocal was producer Rick Rubin and the band's prime directive when recording and mixing the Chili Peppers' new double-disc, Stadium Arcadium [Warner Bros.], Frusciante's sonic watermark is evident throughout. "A big part of my concept for the record was to have the music be constantly revealing itself from the beginning to the end of the song," he explains. "Some songs build more than others, but they all have various elements that get added as the track goes on." Here, Frusciante reveals those elements in exhaustive detail.
