I didn't have a healthy, interactive relationship with death at that time, so I was being taken advantage of and freaked out a lot. A lot of voices in my head that I was very confused by – a lot of confusion. ... After a while, in general – except for an exceptional few people – you end up running out of steam. You need to take the initiative. You can't just let your subconscious be your ruler. You have to take the bulls by the horns with your conscious mind. You have to make decisions. You have to take control. You have to leave yourself open to what the subconscious has to offer, because that's where a lot of the great ideas are, but if you don't know how to take charge, the subconscious isn't enough. It's just going to get more and more disparate. That's what happened to me at that time.
When I ran out of steam, I made the decision that I was just going to paint, and I was going to stop doing music for a while. I actually made the decision that I was going to stop playing music forever. That's when I released my first solo album. It had been recorded mostly when I was in the Chili Peppers and just after I quit the Chili Peppers. At the time that I recorded it, I didn't think I was going to release it, and then I decided to release it. Then the second album came out; it was just leftover stuff from that period, with maybe five exceptions.
Then I had a whole five-year period where I was focusing on painting, and drawing, and reading about artists – giving myself a kind of art history education.

AC: You didn't play during those five years?
JF: No, I didn't play. The couple attempts I did make at live performances and making recordings failed, because it's not enough to just be John Frusciante, or to be anybody – to be Jimi Hendrix. You have to work hard. You can't just expect that because of who you are that's enough to make music.
I had no spirits on my side when I tried making music in '96. I had none of the energy that's inside of me that pushes me to do what I do. I had none of the technique, I had none of the discipline, I had none of the focus. There's no reason why me, who not having played music because I was smoking crack and stuff, there's no reason I should be able to record music. Once I actually stopped taking the drugs I was taking and started living a very simple sort of life ... I had this tiny little guest house I lived in. I had just enough room for my records and very little else. I just sat there practicing all the time.
After six months I felt like I was good enough to be making little demo recordings and stuff. I had joined the Chili Peppers. If it wasn't for joining the Chili Peppers I would have never put that amount of time into practicing. The only reason that I make music now is because Flea and Anthony had the belief in me that they had when I rejoined the band. Because I'd play with other people around that time, like Perry Farrell, but he couldn't see it as the future. He had no belief in me. He just knew what I was at one time, and what I was now, which was significantly less than what I had been. Whereas Flea and Anthony saw what I could be. They had a vision. I don't even know that they knew what I could be. To them, they just thought I was great right then. They just thought the sound of us playing together is the greatest thing in the world. It's just a chemistry that's there. I don't think they were thinking, "Oh, in five months he'll be good." They were thinking, "This is the greatest thing in the world right now."
The feeling that that gave me, to actually have these people believe in me ... because nobody believed in me. I could see it in the way people would look at me. I was a loser. Flea and Anthony, to them, I was a winner. Playing with them every day inspired me. I was just playing along with records every day. I started as if I hadn't played guitar before. It was like I had lived another life, and I was starting life again, only I had the ability to learn everything about how to do and how not to do things from this past life. I really was starting from a fresh point. From point A again.
When I was 18, there was a point A. When I joined the Chili Peppers I had the ability to do anything. I had total freedom to do anything. I misused that freedom. I didn't do things right. For the first couple of years, I really fucked off and wasn't disciplined at all. Didn't focus on music at all. So by the time I was 20 and I wasn't actually focusing on music, I was totally off balance.
This time, I was starting from a fresh place. Whether I was a failure, or whether I was a loser, I believed in myself and I knew the right way to do things. I'd thought about things enough. I'd spent enough time regretting things enough to know the right way to do shit. Whether it was practicing guitar, or whether it was how to treat your friends or whether it was how to settle an argument between you and a friend or how to love somebody. I finally had the stuff under my belt, so this time I was going to start again. Because forever it just felt like I was trying to crawl out of a dirt hole. It felt like all my drug addiction and all the bad behavior of my youth had just put me down in a hole, and I could not get out.
I just wanted to get out and get into life. ...
It's been a good path since then, because I've grown and changed and gotten better at a pretty even level. I've stayed disciplined the whole time, and I don't ever lose sight of the fact that in the equation of what makes the music that I make, I'm a very small part of it.
It's the music that I listen to. It's pain. It's the friends that I have, whether they're human beings or spirits. That's where the music comes from. I'm just going on from that line. I was really blessed to be able to start from that fresh point and to have friends who believed in me. It would have been impossible without them.