Anthony Kiedis wearing a “Makeup Face” pleated skirt by Moschino designer, Jeremy Scott during RHCP’s concert at the PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina on April 15th 2017.

“I don’t take drugs nor drink since 2000 and I must say that I don’t think about it anymore, although like every person that was addicted and has money – I know that this can lead to temptation.” – Anthony Kiedis 2012

John Frusciante Interview with Libération French Newspaper

John Frusciante: "Sound is the truth of music"

Published November 8th 2020 Libération French Newspaper Interview by Guillaume Gendron | Photo Kathryn Vetter Miller

The guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who is continuing his solo career before his next return with the group, releases "Maya", the twelfth album with assumed electronic change.

Liberation speaks with the 50-year-old Californian artist on his career, his vision of music and his tendency to isolate himself which succeeds him. “You don't waste your life / By going inside.” The profession of faith is already twenty years old, nugget of the flayed To Record Only Water for Ten Days, bedside record of a generation of indie bards who don't want to cut between nylon string and synth. It was also the moment when John Frusciante - who by day, with Christ like hair, worked as the official guitarist and regular melodist of one of the most popular rock bands in the world, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. - discovered a nocturnal fibre of cerebral chirp. The electronic moult will have taken its time, under various vaguely obscene aliases (Trickfinger, Speed Dealer Moms), until this twelfth album in its own name, where we hear neither his voice nor his six-string. Howard Hughes tragicomic of funk rock, the Californian recluse dedicates this condensed breakbeats to the only witness of his transformation, that is to say Maya, his deceased cat, "only traveling companion of these solitary sessions".

Nine titles, so many feline lives.

At 50 years old, Frusciante is a phoenix many times burnt. Child prodigy of the Sunset Strip, he is barely of age when he goes from the status of a simple fan to guitarist of the muscular Red Hot Chli Peppers. In four years, he revolutionized their sound, from post-Hendrixian ballads (Under the Bridge) to elastic riffs (Give It Away), opening the charts wide to the quartet. Grunge of heart, he is disgusted with playing in stadiums, sabotages their TV appearances and plunges into the heroine. For the next five years, he conscientiously poisoned himself to burst his veins and drop all the snags. To finance his fixes, he released Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt in 1994, sounding like a UFO with dissonant and sublime melodies, as recorded from beyond the grave on sizzling four-tracks.

In 1997, he was resurrected post-detox, ready to put the Red Hot Chili Peppers back into orbit, then stuck in a languid metal groove. Follow Californication and planetary jingles and pop rehashes of more forgettable (By the Way, Stadium Arcadium). In parallel, the guitar hero in spite of himself whispers and roars solo, oscillating between spleenetic and stripped folk freak (The Will to Death) and overproduced prog cathedrals (The Empyrean). Frusciante once again abandons his comrades at the end of the 2000s, before slowly but surely plunging his toes into the electronic bath.

Invisible on stage for more than a decade, we could not imagine him reuniting with the band of Anthony Kiedis. And yet, a year ago, the Red Hot Chili Peppers announced with great fanfare his return. Grief minds will note that it follows a costly divorce. Since then, Covid has put the lid on this comeback, leaving Frusciante to return to his cavernous experiments. From his angeleno lair, the musician agreed to discuss by mail, machines and “antihero guitarists”, the punkitude of English jungle music and the virtues of solitude. Despite the promised, "non disclosure agreement" obliges, not to approach the Red Hot Chili Peppers too head-on ...shhh...

Maya has a very nostalgic side, snapshot of an era (the mid-90s) and a place (England), a priori very far from your life as a reclusive Californian rockstar at that time...

JF: In the early 2000s, I started going out to a few clubs that played drum'n'bass. But if there has always been an underground scene in Los Angeles, I had no idea until 2008 when I really started going to illegal raves. At the same time, Aaron Funk spun me a ton of digitized UK jungle and early '90s hardcore records. One eye-opener: I had no idea how much great stuff there was in this genre. Fast, brutal, raw. Unique sounds because the producers then had no preconceived idea of what it was supposed to sound like. Subsequently, the better they became in the studio and the less interested in me. The 91-96 parentheses is the perfect balance: this combination of rough-hewn productions and pure aggression brought me back to punk that I loved as a kid.

By recreating this very situated sound, did you have the impression of doing a style exercise, the electronic equivalent of a rocker's blues cover album?

JF: There are guys who are really good at recreating the sound of hardcore and vintage jungle to perfection, and I'm not one of them. Jungle is my favorite genre today, but I try to recontextualize it in a creative way. My beats go deeper into abstraction, the things I do with keyboards are also outside those nails. Some see Maya closer to IDM (intelligent dance music), and although the intention was not to “modernize” the jungle, I don't disagree with that. When I create, the only thing I try to think about is leaving a few tracks in my tracks for DJs to mix in their sets. For the rest, whether we are talking about electro, acid, jungle, etc., I do not see rigid forms. Just a starting point.

But electronic music can be as much a backward-looking as an experimental practice… Where are you located?

JF: All ambitious music seeks to push the boundaries of sound. Sound is the reality of music, its truth - the notes, the rhythms, they are symbols. If you want to say something new musically, you have to go through the sound. That's what I love about electronic music: artistic expression is what comes out of the speakers, without any intermediary, except the ghosts behind the machines. As for so-called new or old ideas, it is purely subjective. It all depends on how the music makes us feel. If this feeling is strong, we are in the present, and this present never disappears. The Human League always sounds futuristic because their music carries that feeling with it.

JF: As a guitarist, you are associated with stage music. But your personal projects, folks or electronic, refer to solitary manufacturing and listening experiences, a "bedroom music" side. Besides, you do not turn ... It is clear that the direct person-to-person connection that the Internet offers suits me perfectly [very prolific, Frusciante has left dozens of unreleased material freely available on his site and then his YouTube channel over the years]. But my wife organizes raves, she has brought a lot of great artists back to town in recent years. So I learned a lot from his friends who are DJs, listening to sets with them, talking about gear, and it changed my way of approaching my art. Some DJs even played Maya while I was still working on it. So it's still social music, which works in every context - at home or in rave. Even though, it's true, I tend to isolate myself.

Was the album composed during a period of confinement, in a California between pandemic, fires and political tensions?

JF: No. The only thing I released at that time was a contribution to the Music in Support of Black Mental Health compilation [the proceeds of which were donated to anti-racist support associations].

Covid has not affected my work - whatever happens most of my time locked at home composing or performing. As far as I can remember, music has been my escape from reality. My ignorance, or my disconnection from the so-called "real world" is the foundation of my artistic perspective...

What binds your heterogeneous solo work together is undoubtedly this unfiltered intimacy. On Maya , we hear the same musician as on Niandra LaDes ?

JF: When I was 18-19 (age at which he joined RHCP), I hoped to become an entertainer. But I was very bad at it! So I had to learn to present myself without any sort of filter or character. My means of expression have changed constantly, but the person I am - the one who lives through music - has remained constant.

By turning to the machines, do you think you have destroyed for good the image of the “guitar hero” that weighed on you for a long time?

JF: I guess too many people took pictures of me on stage! Guitar is what I have always used to understand music, to come to a form of truth that I cannot touch otherwise. For the rest, all the attempts that I could have had to cultivate a posture, including that of the "guitar hero", failed miserably. Coming back to the guitar, there are mental traps that conventional instruments can lead you into, which I became aware of as a teenager: imagining that a riff is good because it is difficult to play, which 'a vibrato necessarily brings feeling… So I have always tried to learn melodies generated by machines on my guitar, relying on the style of “anti-heroes” guitarists. That said, the guitar has its limits. And when it comes to creating sounds, [two synthesizers].

Is your current connection to the machines related to a disenchantment with group composition?

Being alone with the machines allows a form of sonic creation “live”, we are in the immediacy. In a group, there are loads of variables to consider before you get to what you want. But if you have chemistry with a small group of people, and are supportive of each other, that can make up for the fact that the process is less straightforward.

Most of my life composing meant writing songs with lyrics. In the last ten years, machines had replaced that. But I never stopped playing guitar, even when I didn't use it in my songs anymore. Since I joined the band [in December 2019], I got back to songwriting, the same way we always have, while continuing my electronic research. I'm very lucky to have been able to make music in so many different ways, with so many different people. Over time, I realized that letting go of your ego helps the creative process immensely. If you only care about recognition or what others may think, you become your own worst enemy. As long as all those involved do the same and surrender to the music, the two configurations, solo or in a group, are equal.

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Translation isn’t perfect, but will be updated when possible.

Flea: Drug Temptation is a Bitch

FLEA on the dangers of addiction to prescription painkillers... Time Magazine Interview regarding the drug addiction crisis Published February 22nd 2018

"What if your dealer was someone you’d trusted to keep you healthy since you were a kid?”

Many who are suffering today were introduced to drugs through their healthcare providers. When I was a kid, my doctor would give me a butterscotch candy after a checkup. Now, they’re handing out scripts. It’s hard to beat temptation when the person supplying you has a fancy job and credentials and it’s usually bad advice not to trust them.

A few years ago I broke my arm snowboarding and had to have major surgery. My doctor put me back together perfectly, and thanks to him I can still play bass with all my heart. But he also gave me two-month supply of Oxycontin. The bottle said to take four each day. I was high as hell when I took those things. It not only quelled my physical pain, but all my emotions as well. I only took one a day, but I was not present for my kids, my creative spirit went into decline and I became depressed. I stopped taking them after a month, but I could have easily gotten another refill.

Perfectly sane people become addicted to these medications and end up dead. Lawyers, plumbers, philosophers, celebrities — addiction doesn’t care who you are.

There is obviously a time when painkillers should be prescribed, but medical professions should be more discerning. It’s also equally obvious that part of any opioid prescription should include follow-up, monitoring and a clear solution and path to rehabilitation if anyone becomes addicted. Big pharma could pay for this with a percentage of their huge profits.

Addiction is a cruel disease, and the medical community, together with the government, should offer help to all of those who need it.

Life hurts. The world is scary and it’s easier to take drugs than work through pain, anxiety, injustice and disappointment. But by starting with gratitude for the rough times, and valuing the lessons of our difficulties, we’ve got the opportunity to rise above them and be healthier and happier individuals who live above the strong temptation of addiction. - Flea 2018

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

New photo of John Frusciante in California on November 1st 2020

By photographer Kathryn Vetter Miller katie-miller.net

Anthony Kiedis Hollywood Hills 2017

RHCPEPR

Alderaan's not far away, it's Californication MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU

The Red Hot Chili Peppers perform at the Parker Institute For Cancer Immunotherapy Gala on the 13th of April 2016. The Parker Institute For Cancer Immunotherapy is a collaboration on Cancer Immunotherapy Research between the country's leading immunologists & cancer centers. Read more at ParkerICI.org

“The essence of the funk is being loyal to the funk. Living by it, feeling it 24 hours a day. It’s the true universal language.” - Flea

“From an early age, I was a street kid. Me and Anthony on the street, robbing, stealing and doing drugs. Looking like we're going nowhere fast... Thankfully there was music.” - Flea, July 2016

“The only thing I've ever wanted to do is really make people happy, offer some sort of positivity with music that I've written.”  Josh Klinghoffer

You mentioned gravity, what's that again? Flea - Defying gravity since 1962 F = G*((m sub 1*m sub 2)/r^2)

Ultra-fine and altruistic  Can I spy into the MYSTIC   System's down for infiltration    Open mind free of frustration

Josh photographs Chad's Drum Kit when the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed at their Live At The Pyramids show at the Giza Pyramids in Egypt in March 2019

What's your favourite album from the Josh Klinghoffer era so far?   I’m With You?   ...or...   The Getaway? VOTE on Twitter

All this time, I was searchin’ for a dream...