Pages: 1 2

Issue 5 (2006), HoBo magazine (USA)
thanks to Caroline for typing it out
click the thumbnail to see scans

John Frusciante is explaining to me the appeal of the musical notes that he decided 'not' to play. It is a notion made even more compelling when considering that Frusciante is describing the music that he is the most proud of creating.

"People have thought of a million ways of filing up space with guitars," he says, "but not that many people have had interesting ideas as far as ways of using space. So I felt like I had something to say in terms of silence."

After joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers sixteen years ago at the fledgling age of eighteen, it is ideas like this - speaking with silence - that have established Frusciante's reputation for an ever-outside-the-box approach to music. In a field that often teeters more towards celebrity than art, he has remained firmly entrenched on the creative end of his craft. Still, I didn't expect to be discussing the topic of silence with him. It is not just because Frusciante's eccentric eloquence as a guitar player has provided much of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sound over the years. And neither is it because... like you... I can still hear his Hendrix-esque reverse guitar solo from 'Give It Away' readily everberating in the further corners of my mind. No, the topic of silence is particularly surprising when considering John's current string of projects: six albums in six months. In this sense, it would seem that he has quite a lot to say.

Frusciante's current set of releases - a series of solo efforts, collaborations, and side projects - comes on the heels of a highly peroductive run with the Chili peppers, including their latest CD - By the Way, a huge world tour, a greatest hits collection, and a double live album. Whereas such effort would warrant a much-needed vacation for most, he seems thrilled to now have the time to manifest other ideas. In turn, John is beginning to prove himself prolific - in the Frank Zappa sense of the word.

"I had a stock built up of about seventy songs from the last three years," he says by telephone from his home in Los Angeles, "not to mention lots of songs from before then."

While John acknowledges Zappa as an appropriate model for such a high degree of productivity, he does so without considering the output level to be particularly unusual. "It doesn't seem especially fast," Frusciante says, "It's not like if you saw me in the studio I'd be going like you were pressing the fast forward button on the video recorder." In fact, when assessing the ambition of his album-a-month project, John also cites Black Sabbath's work ethic in the seventies as a fair comparison. "Their first album was done in a day, and there was a time when that was normal. I guess if there is anything to be learned from what I'm doing it is to remind people that it can be done." Yet more so than just the quantity, the quality of these new releases may even take Frusciante's most commited fans by surprise. Created with major contributions from the highly versatile Josh Klinghoffer (The Bicycle Thief, PJ Harvey), the collection is as multi-faceted as it is dense. Amongst the standouts is The Will to Death, a serene and poignant effort that John describes as a "small, very personal sounding album". In addition to the brilliand Leonard Cohen-style title track, Frusciante produces a fair amount of engaging and entirely soulful moments. In between the screetch and shimmer of his guitar on the song 'An Exercise', he sings, 'Anyhow mistakes are what lead you through life/down and out is only if you think up and in is right."

Equally compelling is the album Automatic Writing, which has Frusciante, Klinghoffer, and Fugazi's Joe Lally constructing long and momentous soundscapes beneath John's introspective vocals. The album's final track, 'Montreal', is a hypnotic thirteenminute venture into Mazzy Star moodiness that is likely to slip by as an unnoticed masterpiece in John's already accomplished career. Frusciante doesn't seem too concerned with the listener's reaction however, characterizing his detachment as the only way to really create the work that he envisions. "Sometimes when all you want is to make something perfect," he explains, "it is almost like you are taking the listener too much into consideration. I love The Will to Death, so much that if everybody in the world hated it... I'd still feel great about it."

Pages: 1 2