ARCADIUM GAMESstory by Marcel AndersCrazy may have once been a word used to describe JOHN FRUSCIANTE's state of mind. Now it's more likely to describe style and trailblazing studio imagination, as heard on the two-disc sonic volcano that is Stadium ArcadiumAn undeniable six-string eccentric, John Frusciante has struggled for many years with personal demons, substance abuse, boats of mental illness and the perfectionist agonies interwined with his stringent creative philosophy. The Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and prolific songwriter (10 solo albums and counting) sees music as a deep, powerful and mystical force, one which he often describes with abstract, synaesthetic imagery.
Approaching music with a mixture of spiritually and dedication, Frusciante is not content to merely be a good guitarist. He looks up to figures like Hendrix and Clapton, as do many of us, but whilst the majority indulge in such worship as fans and aspirant lead demons, Frusciante hopes to one day create something as important to the evolution of guitar as his heroes did. Some might argue that he already has.
From the funkiest staccato licks to the most monstrous solos, fiery funk-punk frenzies and psychedelic ambiance, Frusciantes journey is based on playing material thats significant to the advancement of guitar, a path which first bore fruit during the 1980's. By the time the decade ended, the teenaged Frusciante had made the final 5 auditioning as Frank Zappa's new guitarist before simply giving up, and was soon hired by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, when their Australian born bassist Flea discovered him jamming one day at DH Peligro's [ex-RHCP/Dead Kennedys drummer] house.
The prodigious new addition to the line-up went on to record the albums Mothers Milk and the breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik , but the global success of the latter and associated touring commitment left Frusciante mentally unraveled and at odds with his sense of integrity, so he quit the band in 1992, just days before the Australian tour was to begin. The ensuing years saw him descend into a personal, isolated hell of drugs and depression, until music came back to cure it all with an invitation to rejoin his estranged collaborators on 1999's Californication.
Now as this magazine goes to press, the Red Hot Chili Peppers unveil their latest, Stadium Arcadium , a double album of 28 tracks recorded with longtime producer Rick Rubin, which bring together the fearsome, sexy funk of the band's early work and the mature soul-heavy master-crafter pop of recent years in a perfect balance of supreme musicianship, energy and production. It's little wonder Frusciante is proud of it, as it showcases some of his most vibrant, envelope - pushing guitar business to date, not to mentionthose uniqueproduction techniques, including a current obsession with running his guitar through a modular synth.
John, what guitars were you using on the album?Mostly the sunburst Fender Stratocaster from '62, my main guitar when we were touring for By The Way. I guess it's the guitar I used for a lot of By The Way, but I also used a white Stratocaster that I bought recently. That's a really great guitar,[and] it's got a floating tremolo, which is cool. I used it on a certain amount of solo's and played it on some songs. At rehearsals I was playing the white one all the time, but then when we got in the studio, [for] every song I'd AB the two guitars and the sunburst ended up winning almost all the time. I thought the white one was a better guitar, but the sunburst was winning. I play a Les Paul on "Readymade", a Les Paul from 1969, and I dont play the White Falcon at all.
Why? You paid over US$30,000 for it!It's great. I played it every night on the last tour. It's not really about what it cost, but I've gotten a lot of use out of the guitar. I played it on 2 songs a night for probably 150 shows on the By The Way tour alone, but I just didnt have a song for it. At rehearsal I dont like to switch around guitars a lot. There really wasn't a lot of variety of wah-wah pedal stuff in ém.
But apart from that you hardly use any affects.Yeah. I'm not really a big effects guy, but what I did do on this record is use effects on the guitar after it's recorded, [like] run the guitar through my modular synthesiser. Thats a fun way to do it, because you can really play with everything. You have both your hands free, so the knobs can be in movement with the music your playing on your guitar, whereas live, you wont be capable of doing it unless you had four hands and two brains. In the studio, the way we do it is we record the guitar, it's on tape, then we take it off the tape, into the modular synthesiser, out of the modular synthesiser, back onto tape, or sometimes its not the modular synthesiser. Sometimes it's a digital delay or sometimes it's the new MuRF pedal from moogerfooger.
And that's got some weird effects?Really weird effects! The solo on "Tell Me Baby", if you hear that song you'll notice the way the guitar kind of has these stripes shooting through it or something. I dont know how to describe it. Its a really strange effect. I also used the MuRF on Fleas trumpet on the top of the second verse on "Death Of A Martian". But almost every song I've run my guitar through my modular synthesiser. a lot of the time, what its doing is really subtle and cool, people don't [tend to have] the dry signal and the affected signal going on at once. For instance, I might have a filter effect where the filter is opening and closing very quickly and it's got an attenuator on it, so it's opening and closing within a real tight framework really quickly, so I'll have that on the left side [of the mix] and the normal guitar on the right side. We did a lot of stuff like that where I keep the normal guitar, but also do a treatment and the treatment comes in and sounds like another guy coming in, but it's really the same guitar. Like on "Dani California", in the verses you have your normal rhythm guitar part, which is what I did live, then for the 'B sections 'of the verse I ran it through my modular synthesiser. I added on a dynamic filter, which means the filter is opening and closing according to how I'm hitting the guitar - the harder you hit, the wider the filter opens and the softer you hit, the less the filter opens. That guitar comes in on the right and it sounds like another guitar came in, but again it's just the same guitar going through the modular synthesiser. We also do trippy things. One of the things I'm most proud of is on "Stadium Arcadium"and...
So it's all about sonic texture?Yeah, I wnted the music to create dream-like states and to go to people's subconscious and mix everything up in there and really move it around. "C'mon Girl" and "Stadium Arcadium", what I did on those is we flipped the tape over. We had this really cool reverb unit called the EMT 250 and it was like the first digital reverb, made in like 1976, and then we put the guitar through a high pass filter. A high pass filter, if you turn it up all the way, there is no sound, and as you turn it to the left you hear the tiniest little slithers of sound, and the more you turn it to the left, the wider the sound gets, until it sounds like the whole guitar. So I filtered the reverb, only backwards, with the tape flipped over. I did that on a few tracks and then flipped the tape over, figured out where it sounded good, and then erased everythingexcept for what was good.
Did that experimentation happen while you were jamming with the band?The way it works is that we write songs together, we record basic tracks together, and then I'm on my own. Anthony goes and records his vocals with Rick [Rubin, producer] over the basic tracks, and I do the overdubs with my engineer and a second engineer who helps. I basically have all the time I want to experiment as much as I want. I'd be in there 12 to 14 hours a day just doing all the experimentation I want to do. I love every one of these songs and I wanted each one to remain a finely crafted pop song. At the same time I wanted to do a lot of experimentation and I wanted to do things that I'd never heard before. I wanted the listener to be taken somewhere. Sonically, I wanted the record to be fun to listen to, not only as a band playing, but as a recording, and the experience of making my solo records really gave me a much better idea of how to use the studio in a creative way, especially because I used the same engineer on the Chili Peppers record as I did on my solo records and he's mixing the Chili Peppers record as well. A lot of things that sound like a Mellontron or something [on Stadium Arcadium] are actually guitars sped up. I did a lot of things with tape speed manipulation and things like that. Songs like "Dani California"and "Turn It Again"and "Wet Sand" "Hard To Concentrate" "Stadium Arcadium", these songs all have something in them that's a guitar or groups of guitars that are sped up. I played along with the songs slow, and then we played the tape fast and the guitars have a completely different sound to them.
Plus there's some really good solos on thereThanks, yeah, thte guitar solos are all normal speed.
There's some Jimi Hendrix, some Led Zeppelin, some Neil Young, and some Santana. Are you paying tribute to them?Well, I feel like in a way some weird things happened with guitar playing over the years, and I feel like things got off track after those people. Even though I am a huge fan of Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai and things like that, I dont feel their playing ended up helping guitar playing progress. People actually revolted against their playing and started playing simply, and now that's gotten way worse that when everybody was playing fast. Like, I am really sick of everybody playing simple all the time. So what I'm saying is, you know, I'm inspired by those people [Hendrix et all], because they were coming from the right place; they were trying to make music progress and go forward. Time might not have co-operated with them, but I feel their intentions were good. I feel like people like Carlos Santana and Mick Ronson, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, if we're going to get back to the right track and start trying to take guitar playing forward again, I think we have to go back to what these people were doing. It's not like I'm trying to just do a tribute. I really feel like they were coming from the perfect place emotionally nd substance-wise. I guess the point is, with people like Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, the idea was "We can play faster than most people, we can play cleaner than most people, therefore we're moving forward." But how far can that go? Even Eddie Van Halen in 1979 was saying, "Well, I can't play any faster. Thats it. " These people were playing in the early '70s and '60s, as far as the emotional substance of the music, they had the most heart in their playing.
So this album is like a big musical statement?Well, I'm a very serious musician. I don't just play solos because I happen to play solos. It was a clearly thought out decision that I felt was timed a certain way in the context of the world we live in. The way I feel like im doing something new is by putting that kind of guitar playing in the context of songs that those people didn't have. For instance Cream's guitar playing was in the context of basically blues-based songs. They had some songs that were acoustic guitar, quartal bass, but those songs didnt really have the solos that we all love. My idea is like, still keep basically that same type of guitar soloing, but put it in the context of songs and guitar parts that are coming from a new place, coming from a place that's a conglomeration of all the influences that I have. I've learned a lot from people like Brian Eno and George Clinton's production techniques and things like that, and Jimi Hendrix's production technique. These people were doing things - especially Eno throughout the '70s and the beginning of the '80s - with treating guitars and treating other instruments, which people in the '60s werent doing yet, because synthesisers had just been invented. I guess my state of mind was like "What if Eric Clapton had a modular synthesiser when he was in Cream? " I'm not saying I was ever out to copy anybody. People should go back and go into studying what these people did, because they were the real geniuses when it comes to conveying deep emotions and really digging deep into music for everything that you can get out of it. For me, I really put a lot of time into writing songs, like I write songs that don't resemble anything that any of these people wrote - songs like "Snow", these are things I created, they're not influenced by any of those people, but at the same time my guitar playing on them, I'll take that influence. It's just like being a good writer. If you want to be a good writer, you've got to read Shakespeare and you've got to understand that in many ways, that's the best writing that's ever been done.
But you've never shredded like on "Turn It Again", have you?I've just been repressing myself- I've always been able to do it. I made a conscious effort to restrict myself and to play simply. If you'd have talked to me 3 years ago, I would have said that I dont like guitar solos and that people should play simply. I change, I contradict myself. Thats the kind of person I am, and it seemed like the cycle I was going on for a while was when we'd make an album, I was playing simply, and then we would go out on tour and I was into playing busy and then by the time we would make another album, I'd be into playing simply again. This time, luckily, I was in a phase where I was liking playing busy again. On this album, believe it or not, I actually restricted myself. The original solo I did on "21st Century" sounded like Allan Holdsworth or something. I can go further that I go and I've always been able to go further than I go. I create sort of guidelines for myself. In the end I made the decision that it's not my place to play as fast as people like Allan Holdsworth and Eddie Van Halen. Even though I can do it, Its like I feel more kinship with people like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, so I'd rather sort of stay within the guidelines they played within. If I'm going to try going beyond what they did, it's going to be in terms of the sound or the songwriting, not the actual techique.
What about solo albums? Anything in the making?Well, there is another Ataxia album. [With the Chili Peppers album finished] we're going to go in the studio and mix the other half of the Ataxia stuff. That was where this new phase of guitar playing started - just playing out f control and playing wild and not holding anything back. I have 17 songs that we're planning on making another solo record out of, but at the moment I'm very busy and I just have to do it in little bits whenever I can. Luckily, I have a studio at my house, so I pretty much have the option of recording in little bits. Josh [ Klinghoffer from Ataxia ], he's making up drum parts to these 17 songs right now, and whenever we get the chance we'll rehearse, come up with stuff. I have a big plan for that album because I want to employ a lot of the production techniques that I've used on this new Chili Peppers album, but I also want to go even further and use classical instruments, orchestral instruments, really retain the raw sound, but at the same time do a lot of production.
What was it like working with Johnny Cash on "Personal Jesus", or did you just record the basic track for him?Not just the track. He actually learned the song from me singing it, because Rick [Rubin] had played him the Depeche Mode version, and he didnt feel connected to the song, but Rick had this vision of it being a slower, bluesier thing, so i played the guitar part and sang the vocal, it was recorded on Pro Tools, then he played that for Johnny, and he was like "Oh yeah, I see how I could sing this." I dont think I ever met him, but I think it was the first concert I ever saw, a Johnny Cash concert, when I ws a kid with my dad. And I also played a couple of solos on something on that box set of Johnny Cash, and all this while he ws still alive, but I was doing it more through Rick. I didn't meet Johnny. Anthony knew Johnny.
