// Austin Chronicles |
John Frusciante is pure music. On a hazy, Southern California summer morning on the Sunset Strip, in a hotel conference room, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist vibrates at unknown frequencies, his wiry frame fidgeting to the verge of short circuit at this non-music-making meet. The first question about his universe is all it takes to flip Frusciante's switch. Dead eyes blaze, and even with a mouthful of replacement teeth, words pour out like electric current. Past drug abuse has aged the 34-year-old L.A. dweller another decade, but passion is the fountain of youth.
Actually, Frusciante is weary and admits as much. Two nights ago he played in San Francisco, and last night, he and constant collaborator Josh Klinghoffer trio-ed up with krautrock monarch Michael Rother of Neu! Two guitars, no vocal mics, and Klinghoffer's drum kit equal 70 attentive minutes of metronomic, sometimes dancey guitarchitecture in one full room of the Knitting Factory complex. When Frusciante's bandmate Flea materializes stageside, the room lurches to the left to get a better look. A single, two-minute encore, "Ghost Riders in the Sky," sends everyone home with smiles.
Following the international success of the Chili Peppers' By the Way, documented on last year's mesmerizing Live at Slane Castle DVD and on this summer's 2-CD, import-only Live in Hyde Park, Frusciante uses his downtime to execute another ambitious campaign: Six Albums in Six Months (see sidebar). Which doesn't even include March's major label solo swan song, Shadows Collide With People. It does, however, encompass a frank, often-metaphysical discussion on life and music, which to Frusciante are, of course, synonymous.
Austin Chronicle: How did you hook up with Michael Rother?
John Frusciante: I was going around doing interviews and people would ask me, "Who's your favorite guitarist?" and I'd say, "Michael Rother." This is around the time we were touring for Californication or when we were writing By the Way. I started mentioning it in the press a lot. Eventually, some German interviewer offered to put together an interview with me and Michael. And he did. ...
I'm really honored to be able to introduce Michael's music to people. I think the music he made on his solo records is really beautiful music. Michael's solo records don't have the same wildness that Neu! had, but they have such beautiful melodies, such beautiful chords, such graceful simplicity. I really appreciate that.
At the time of By the Way, I was really influenced by that. Now, I'm in a completely different place musically, so I feel I was doing it out of respect for Michael. Now I like things to be more jagged, and screwed up.
AC: You mentioned By the Way. There's Beach Boys tones on that album, Pet Sounds. Was that Rick Rubin, the band? I hear it in your solo albums, though not as pronounced.
JF: The solo record coming out in November [A Sphere in the Heart of Silence] has a lot of harmonies. More harmonies than By the Way. When we made By the Way, I'd never recorded harmonies in a studio by my own will. Rick had forced me to do backing vocals for Californication, which at the time I wasn't into. It wasn't until Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was so complimentary about my harmonies that it made me think, "Oh, wow – harmonies. Great!" [Laughs] Before that, I was like, "Harmonies suck."
When we made By the Way, Anthony [Kiedis] and I discussed me doing a ton of harmonies all over the album. We were gonna make my voice be an equal element to the music as the guitar, bass, or anything else. This is something that Anthony was and is still very in favor of. I wasn't actually listening to the Beach Boys until the last couple of songs that I did. It was toward the very end of the album that I went into an obsessive period about the Beach Boys. While I was making the record, it was more the Beatles, Erasure, Queen.
AC: How much credit does Rick Rubin deserve for the overall sound of By the Way?
JF: Rick is so incorporated into what we do in the band that it's hard to pinpoint exactly what he does, but he definitely infiltrates. I mean he's as much a part of the record as any of us. It's just in a more ethereal, kind of feminine way. You can't say, "Oh, there's Rick." Brian Eno produced records where you can tell he treated the guitar, so you know it's an Eno-produced record. There's nothing like that with Rick, but he's all over the record just in terms of his ideas. The fact that the record is as concise as it is has a lot to do with Rick.
AC: Ethereal is a good word. You don't hear many "mainstream" rock albums that have that quality.
JF: I think a big reason for that is that a lot of elements on By the Way are mixed very soft. I did all kinds of little synthesizer things that are barely audible. A lot of the time my guitar is barely audible. The mix is definitely done in a really subtle way. When you have a lot of things that are just barely at the level of audibility, you tend to feel them more than hear them, and that creates a sort of ethereal quality. When I made my first solo record after By the Way – Shadows Collide With People – that whole album had been conceptualized while making By the Way. I wrote the songs at the same time I wrote the songs on By the Way.