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August 2006, Total Guitar, UK
thanks to funkedup for typing it out
click the thumbnail for scans

John Frusciante describes the writing process, studio techniques and gear used to make Stadium Arcadium. Plus, learn his practise routines and techniques.

It’s been out for over a month now, but chances are you’re still getting to grips with the Goliath that is Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium. Not only is it Frusciante’s most ambitious record yet, but thanks to his newfound studio knowledge, it’s also his most complex and kaleidoscopic.

What were the concepts behind your guitar work on Stadium Arcadium?
“Like I mentioned previously, I started getting particularly about anyone who was doing any kind of off-time stuff and I would try and get everybody else into the same kind of movement. We [RHCP] would have arguments about it. If it was up to me, Dani California would have been slowed down about three clicks a minute more than it was. When we’re in the studio we get really precise about the tempo of things. With Chad [Smith, drums], we can argue about one beat per minute. Our arguments were always that I wanted to drop so heavy it would slow down. For example on She’s only 18 chorus the whole feeling of the chorus is much slower than you would imagine from the verse. With the Dani California chorus, you will notice the last chorus slows down even more than the first two. I was just interested in playing with rhythm.”

What was the writing process?
“When we were rehearsing for this album, I was probably listening and practising with my guitar for about five, six, seven hours a day. A lot of music for this album came from me just playing and playing. A lot of what I was listening to was hip-hop, so I was playing bass along with it and then I would pick up my guitar and play for an hour and see what came out. I have the patience to play the same thing over and over on my guitar until something new comes into it from meditating.”
“A lot of my time was also spent memorising long Jimi Hendrix Solos. With the first 11 minutes of the Isle Of Weight performance of Machine gun, for example, I’d try to memorize how I hard the sound coming out. If I haven’t played Voodoo Child (Slight Return) for a couple of months, I can re-learn it in a few minutes thanks to meditation. Before it would have taken around 45 minutes.”

Did you use any new equipment for this particular album?
“I bought a bunch of different wah pedals because there were so many moments on the album that were going to have wah-wah that we didn’t want them all to be the same. My favourite one is still the Ibanez (WH-10) one, which they don’t make anymore, the bastards! Omar [Rodriguez-Lopez, of Mars Volta] is now addicted to them and he’s buying them up all over the place. The Dimebag model [Jim Dunlop Dimebag Crybaby from Hell DB01] was another one I used on certain spots on the album. I don’t like it as much as the Ibanez, but it’s the best that I’ve found.”

Do you know how you’re going to alter sounds before you’ve played them or is it an organic process?“
Sometimes I’m experimenting with the modular synthesizer, and sometimes I hear the sound clear in my head so I know exactly what I’m setting out to do. Some effects are impossible to control, like the new MuRF pedal by Mooger Fooger. It’s basically a series of 10 filters that go in a rhythm and you can turn up each frequency at any moment. I used that on the solo at the top of the verse on Dani California, and I also used it on Flea’s [Bass, RHCP] trumpet on Death of a Martian.

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