,
John Frusciante
From: On the Record
Date: 02.11.2004
written by Guy Oseary
(Transcription by Gyan)
Interviewer:
Did you have a mentor or someone who inspired you? If so, what have you learned from that person?
Frusciante:
My stepfather, Larry, was a really good guy to have around when I was growing up. At school, every day was a new argument - with kids, with teachers. With kids, it would be because they made fun of things I liked that they'd never heard of, like King Crimson. With teachers, it was like when they wouldn't let me do a book report on The Anti-Christ by Nietzsche. Larry and I would always discuss these things when I came home, and he always made me feel like I was right. I in him that I had somebody who believed in me. It means a lot to you when you're a kid to have an adult who really does believe in you and sees something in you.
I remember a teacher amed Mr. Hughes at my junior high school. It was his responsiblity to hold the detention class, and kids either loved him or hated him. He was very funny but also very strict. Once you knew him, you also came to realize how funny even his strictness was. When I was in eighth grade he asked the prettiest girl in class to come get me out of another class to come to him - usually when he did that, you knew you were in trouble. When I got to his office, he said, “John, I want you to sit down and write a letter explaining what you think about me as a teacher, and to sign it, so when you’re famous I can show it to my students.” It made me feel good. I always knew that I was going to be a musician for a living, but nobody else believed me. Maybe other kids did, once they started to hear me play, but not at that point for sure. Mr. Hughes was saying it based on nothing but my attitude toward music and what he saw in my eyes. I really appreciated that.
When I was a teenager, I devoted myself to learning Frank Zappa’s music. I thought of him as the perfect human being who could do and say no wrong. I knew I wanted to be the best guitarist I could be. And I would learn very difficult music that he had written. I would imagine him standing in front of me wiht his baron, and I would play at the technical level I imagined he demanded from his musicians. He calmed something in me when I was fifteen or sixteen, which was when I practiced more than at any other time. If you’re in a certain amount of pain or confusion when you’re growing up, it’s nice to have someone who always makes you laugh or smile. When you don’t have somebody like that, you’re left with your own sadness or pain. I’ve always had people like that. A few years ago it was Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. Right now, it’s Peter Hammill from Van Der Graaff Generator. When I thinkk about him, it gills me with good feelings. I often think about what the world would be like if we didn’t have these images that correspond to our own subconscious pain and cancel it out. These images have kept me happy in times that otherwise would have been very bleak.
Interviewer:
What was your very first job in the music industry, and how did you get it?
Frusciante:
I was eighteen years old when I joined the band. I had been living on my own for about a year, and my dad was paing something like four hunderd dollars a month for me to go to some ind of music classes. I did that for a while, then I pretended to do that, and he cut me off. And then I joined the Chili Peppers.
Interviewer:
What was your first big break? The first great thing that happend to you...
Frusciante:
Joing what was, at that time, my favorite band. I feel very fortunate to have gotten into the business the way I did, which was just by making a friend who played bass in a band that was already moderately successful. I didn’t expect that I could ever be more popular than what the Chili Peppers were at the time, selling seventy thousand records or so. Playing at the Palace or the Roxy seemed like the height of fame.
When we first became highly successful, it was actually more of a letdown to me. The last time that I saw the Chili Peppers before joining the band (at Hillel’s last show at the Palace), my girlfriend at the time, Sarah asked me whether I would still like the Chili Peppers if they played the Forum. I didn’t think that could ever happen. To me, if they did, they wouldn’t be thee same band. They wouldn’t have any of the things I liked about them. At that time, the thought of the Chili Peppers sounding anything like we sound now would have seemed far-fetched. It would have seemed very unlikely for the band to have the kind of sound that really does translate well in an arena.
I had an image of what the band meant to me, and at the time of Blood Sugar, I felt like we were overstepping that image by becoming as popular as we started to become. I was mad about making the transition from playing clubs to theaters’it wasn’t even arenas yet, just four- or five-thousand-seat venues. In retrospect, I hadn’t yet realized that I am what people think of me. I still wanted people to think I was what I thought I was. Letting go of that was very important. You and your music can be so many different things to so many different people, and in some way, each one of them is right. Their perception of you is the real thing for them, so why should you be the one to control it? I realized that at various times in my life, my images of people were all that made me happy. Those images were more important than who they actually were. When you meet a person, it can kind of blow it. Your image of them is much more elastic and much more magical. I’m very proud to be able to mean a lot of things to different people.
Interviewer:
What elements of your job make you want ot go to work every day?
Frusciante:
I feel that ther is still more territory to cover musically. I feel like we’re getting better. I see Flea growing as a musician; I see Anthony growing as a singer and songwriter. I feel like there’s a lot more to do within the context of this group that is of interest to me. If that wasn’t there, if I felt like we were past our prime, I wouldn’t want to do this anymore. I’d rather continue in a direction that interested me, whether or not it was commercially viable. Luckiliy right now, the thing that interests me is also the thing that makes me a good living.
Interviewer:
What qualtities most helped you get to where you are today?
Frusciante:
The fact that I am doing this out of a total love for music. Music has saved my life so many times. Since I was a little kid, it’s been a best friend. It’s been the one thing I can depend on an d what makes life seem infinite. Since I was seven years old, music has made me see clearly that everything is infinite: that space is everything while at the same time, it is nothing. This was clear to me just by listening to KISS.
When I was twelve, we moved to the Valley. When you’re a kid, the Valley seems like this boring place with a bunch of geeks, where everybody’s kind of square and nobody knows what’s going on. I had developed this total devotion to music, and I wanted to make it my life. I needed to make sure I was good at it, so I became very disciplined. At that point, all I could play was punk rock. But I knew it was going to be at least five years until I got out of the Valley, so I figured I might as well practice as much as I could so that by the time I got out of there I would be a good guitarist. I gradually went from practicing a couple hours a day to practicing as much as fifteen hours a day. That’s why at seventeen I was confident I was going to be able to make living making music.
There’s a certain feeling that runs through my brain, through the music I listen to and through my life. I knew that feeling was going to be the essence of my music, and that ceraint people were going to gravitate toward it. I can’t take credit for the feeling - it’s something that’s been there since I was a little kid. I never had any doubt that I was going to succeed. Most importantly, I knew that I was making music for the right reasons.
Interviewer:
If you knew everything at the beginning of your carreer that you know now, what would you have done differently?
Frusciante:
I’m very happy and proud to be who I am, and whatever mistakes I’ve made only helped me become this person.
Interviewer:
What is your greatest lesson learned?
Frusciante:
Music is not something that you are in control of. It comes from somewhere else. If you’re that middleman between the cosmos and the real world on earth that hte music comes through, you are very lucky. When you record music, it’s not your job to try to control anything. It’s more about being in the right place and flowing with the energies that are in the air around you and with the people that you are making the music with. The second that someone thinks music comes from themselves, and that they are the ones responsible for it, is when they go off track. The most important thing you could ralize is that you are the least important part of the whole process. Music is going to be made whether any one artist is here or not. If John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix had disappeared, music still would have gone on, changed, grown, and been the beautiful thing that it is. You take away the music, all you have are the individuals, and they don’t mean anything. The individual is nothing - it’s the music that’s in the air all the time that’s important, and you have to be humble in the face of that.
Interviewer:
What are some of your favorite albums?
Frusciante:
I’m naming ones I love, but I can name five hundred others that I love equally. Especially with bands like the Velvet Underground or the Mothers, I love a lot of their albums equally. I’m just trying to pick one per band.
(GI), the Germs
Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
Low, David Bowie
The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other, Van Der Graaf Generator
The Velvet Underground, the Velvet Underground
Not Available, the Residents
Cut, the Slits
The Ekkehard Ehlers Plays series, Ekkehard Ehlers
Raw Power, the Stooges
Hark! The Village Wait, Steeleye Span
Closer, Joy Division
The Idiot, Iggy Pop
Adolescents, the Adolescents
What Makes a Man Start Fires, Minutemen
I Say, I Say, I Say, Erasure
Penthouse and Pavement, Heaven 17
Fireside Favorites, Fat Gadget
Burning from the Inside, Bauhaus
Over the Edge, the Wipers
The Slide, T.Rex
Remain in Light, Talking Heads
Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
Travelogue, the Human League
Desert Shore, Nico
Slayed?, Slade
Funkadelic, Funkadelic
Red Medicine, Fugazi
Barrett, Syd Barrett
Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno
Black Celebration, Depeche Mode
Red, King Crimson
Trilogy, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Close to the Edge, Yes
’75, Neu!
Flammende Herzen, Micheal Rother
Get Out, Pita
Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56’ 37” Minus Sixteen Degrees 51’ 08”, Fennesz
Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention
Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin
The New Yor Dolls, the New York Dolls
The Ramones, the Ramones
Interviewer:
Did you have any posters on your bedroom walls as a kid? Of whom?
Frusciante:
Depends on what age...
When I was seven, it was Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, and KISS. When I was ten, I had a garage where I had ads for punk-rock shows, like X, the Germs, and Black Flag. When I was thirteen, I had a nice Ziggy Stardust poster, but it was mostly pictures cut out of magazines. I separated them into sections - Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the various people section.
When I was seventeen and moved to Hollywood to live on my own, I started buying eight-by-ten photographs from the memorabilia stores on Hollywood Boulevard. My room was covered in eight-by-tens of Divine (I was deep into John Waters), Nina Hagen, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, the New York Dolls, and David Bowie.
Interviewer:
What are some great shows you’ve seen?
Frusciante:
The Butthole Surfers at UCLA in 1989 was an amazing show. I also saw them in New York, which was equally amazing.
Jane’s Addiction, in 1989-91. I saw them a lot, an they were incredible. It was hard for me to imagina a band being more powerful. Eric Avery was such a great prescence, and Perry gave it everything he had. It was beyong inspiring.
In the last five years, I’ve had the good fortune of seeing Fugazi a lot of times I’d seen them as early as 1990, but in the last few years I’ve probably seen them twenty times. Every one of those shows was equally wonderful and exciting and fresh. Every performance they give is completely different from the next. They don’t use a set list. They know every one of their songs, and just go from song to song, barely pausing in between. To me, they are exactly what a band should be - the perfect show for my taste.
Interviewer:
What are some of your favorite songs?
John:
“Lady Grinning Soul,” David Bowie
“The Musical Box,” Genesis
“Forensic Scene,” Fugazi
“The Trees They Do Grow High,” Joan Baez
“Holiday,” the Bee Gees
“Ride into the Sun,” Lou Reed
“Drugs,” Talking Heads
“Black Angel’s Death Song,” the Velvet Underground
“Wonderful Woman,” the Smiths
“White Queen,” Queen
“Epitaph,” King Crimson
“Frankenstein,” the New York Dolls
“Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” the Ramones
“Free Money,” Patti Smith
“Girl,” T.Rex
“Remember (Walking in the Sand),” the Shangri-Las
“Duke of Earl,” Gene Chandler
“Snowblind,” Black Sabbath
“Police Story,” Black Flag
“Presence of a Brain,” Parliament
“Maybe,” the Chantels
“Be My Baby,” the Ronettes
“I Feel Love,” Donna Summer
“You’re So Fine,” the Falcons
Interviewer:
List up to ten things that could be helpful to someone breaking into the business.
Frusciante:
Give it everything you have in your performances.
Practice as much as you can. A band like the Mars Volta practices, like, ten hours a day, and that just seems right on to me. They’re people really trying as hard as they can to be the best they can be. To me, these are the things that guarantee a person a place in the music industry.
I feel like people who are in it for the wrong reasons might get lucky and be succesful; people who are doing it for the right reasons might not reacht that millionaire level of success, but they will always achieve a kind of success in their own hearts which will fulfill them for their whole lives. If they make music that’s good, they should be able to at least make enough money to live by playing. If the type of music they play is so abstract that they can’t make enough money to live, I believe they can still feel a kind of success that’s as deep as any. Music is that fulfilling.
A lot of the music that I am excited by now is made by people who have jobs. It’s made by people whose direction isn’t determined by trying to satisfy a public, or trying to be successful in the music business. Too much music these days is contaminated by the desire to be successful.What was great about punk rock to me as a kid in 1979 was that they were making music because they had to; it was a pure form of expression. They weren’t making music because they were trying to get anywhere with it, or be on the radio. There was no chance of punk being on the radio. To me you make music bacause you’re interested in music. You follow the direction that your interest dictate, not what is dictated by the public or the record business. I love listening to music by people like Fugazi, the Black Eyes, the Mars Volta, electronic people like Pita, Fennesz, Ekkehard Ehlers. These people are making the music that interests them whith no expectation of it being successful in the music business. This music is relaxing to me because there’s purity to it that a lot of people in the music business, or people who are constantly chasing success, don’t have
Since i dont have a computer and whenever i have alittle bit too much fun the night before and take the day off work i go on the computer and re-read all of the john frusciante interviews, every single one. which i've read all of them hundreds of times.but everytime i do this i feel empty because i dont have these interviews with me at all times so i was wondering if anyone would be interested in printing all of these interviews up for me. i'm willing to pay 30 bucks to whoever will do this for me{megan you need money!!!}. i hope that one of you will help me out
peace
From: On the Record
Date: 02.11.2004
written by Guy Oseary
(Transcription by Gyan)
Interviewer:
Did you have a mentor or someone who inspired you? If so, what have you learned from that person?
Frusciante:
My stepfather, Larry, was a really good guy to have around when I was growing up. At school, every day was a new argument - with kids, with teachers. With kids, it would be because they made fun of things I liked that they'd never heard of, like King Crimson. With teachers, it was like when they wouldn't let me do a book report on The Anti-Christ by Nietzsche. Larry and I would always discuss these things when I came home, and he always made me feel like I was right. I in him that I had somebody who believed in me. It means a lot to you when you're a kid to have an adult who really does believe in you and sees something in you.
I remember a teacher amed Mr. Hughes at my junior high school. It was his responsiblity to hold the detention class, and kids either loved him or hated him. He was very funny but also very strict. Once you knew him, you also came to realize how funny even his strictness was. When I was in eighth grade he asked the prettiest girl in class to come get me out of another class to come to him - usually when he did that, you knew you were in trouble. When I got to his office, he said, “John, I want you to sit down and write a letter explaining what you think about me as a teacher, and to sign it, so when you’re famous I can show it to my students.” It made me feel good. I always knew that I was going to be a musician for a living, but nobody else believed me. Maybe other kids did, once they started to hear me play, but not at that point for sure. Mr. Hughes was saying it based on nothing but my attitude toward music and what he saw in my eyes. I really appreciated that.
When I was a teenager, I devoted myself to learning Frank Zappa’s music. I thought of him as the perfect human being who could do and say no wrong. I knew I wanted to be the best guitarist I could be. And I would learn very difficult music that he had written. I would imagine him standing in front of me wiht his baron, and I would play at the technical level I imagined he demanded from his musicians. He calmed something in me when I was fifteen or sixteen, which was when I practiced more than at any other time. If you’re in a certain amount of pain or confusion when you’re growing up, it’s nice to have someone who always makes you laugh or smile. When you don’t have somebody like that, you’re left with your own sadness or pain. I’ve always had people like that. A few years ago it was Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. Right now, it’s Peter Hammill from Van Der Graaff Generator. When I thinkk about him, it gills me with good feelings. I often think about what the world would be like if we didn’t have these images that correspond to our own subconscious pain and cancel it out. These images have kept me happy in times that otherwise would have been very bleak.
Interviewer:
What was your very first job in the music industry, and how did you get it?
Frusciante:
I was eighteen years old when I joined the band. I had been living on my own for about a year, and my dad was paing something like four hunderd dollars a month for me to go to some ind of music classes. I did that for a while, then I pretended to do that, and he cut me off. And then I joined the Chili Peppers.
Interviewer:
What was your first big break? The first great thing that happend to you...
Frusciante:
Joing what was, at that time, my favorite band. I feel very fortunate to have gotten into the business the way I did, which was just by making a friend who played bass in a band that was already moderately successful. I didn’t expect that I could ever be more popular than what the Chili Peppers were at the time, selling seventy thousand records or so. Playing at the Palace or the Roxy seemed like the height of fame.
When we first became highly successful, it was actually more of a letdown to me. The last time that I saw the Chili Peppers before joining the band (at Hillel’s last show at the Palace), my girlfriend at the time, Sarah asked me whether I would still like the Chili Peppers if they played the Forum. I didn’t think that could ever happen. To me, if they did, they wouldn’t be thee same band. They wouldn’t have any of the things I liked about them. At that time, the thought of the Chili Peppers sounding anything like we sound now would have seemed far-fetched. It would have seemed very unlikely for the band to have the kind of sound that really does translate well in an arena.
I had an image of what the band meant to me, and at the time of Blood Sugar, I felt like we were overstepping that image by becoming as popular as we started to become. I was mad about making the transition from playing clubs to theaters’it wasn’t even arenas yet, just four- or five-thousand-seat venues. In retrospect, I hadn’t yet realized that I am what people think of me. I still wanted people to think I was what I thought I was. Letting go of that was very important. You and your music can be so many different things to so many different people, and in some way, each one of them is right. Their perception of you is the real thing for them, so why should you be the one to control it? I realized that at various times in my life, my images of people were all that made me happy. Those images were more important than who they actually were. When you meet a person, it can kind of blow it. Your image of them is much more elastic and much more magical. I’m very proud to be able to mean a lot of things to different people.
Interviewer:
What elements of your job make you want ot go to work every day?
Frusciante:
I feel that ther is still more territory to cover musically. I feel like we’re getting better. I see Flea growing as a musician; I see Anthony growing as a singer and songwriter. I feel like there’s a lot more to do within the context of this group that is of interest to me. If that wasn’t there, if I felt like we were past our prime, I wouldn’t want to do this anymore. I’d rather continue in a direction that interested me, whether or not it was commercially viable. Luckiliy right now, the thing that interests me is also the thing that makes me a good living.
Interviewer:
What qualtities most helped you get to where you are today?
Frusciante:
The fact that I am doing this out of a total love for music. Music has saved my life so many times. Since I was a little kid, it’s been a best friend. It’s been the one thing I can depend on an d what makes life seem infinite. Since I was seven years old, music has made me see clearly that everything is infinite: that space is everything while at the same time, it is nothing. This was clear to me just by listening to KISS.
When I was twelve, we moved to the Valley. When you’re a kid, the Valley seems like this boring place with a bunch of geeks, where everybody’s kind of square and nobody knows what’s going on. I had developed this total devotion to music, and I wanted to make it my life. I needed to make sure I was good at it, so I became very disciplined. At that point, all I could play was punk rock. But I knew it was going to be at least five years until I got out of the Valley, so I figured I might as well practice as much as I could so that by the time I got out of there I would be a good guitarist. I gradually went from practicing a couple hours a day to practicing as much as fifteen hours a day. That’s why at seventeen I was confident I was going to be able to make living making music.
There’s a certain feeling that runs through my brain, through the music I listen to and through my life. I knew that feeling was going to be the essence of my music, and that ceraint people were going to gravitate toward it. I can’t take credit for the feeling - it’s something that’s been there since I was a little kid. I never had any doubt that I was going to succeed. Most importantly, I knew that I was making music for the right reasons.
Interviewer:
If you knew everything at the beginning of your carreer that you know now, what would you have done differently?
Frusciante:
I’m very happy and proud to be who I am, and whatever mistakes I’ve made only helped me become this person.
Interviewer:
What is your greatest lesson learned?
Frusciante:
Music is not something that you are in control of. It comes from somewhere else. If you’re that middleman between the cosmos and the real world on earth that hte music comes through, you are very lucky. When you record music, it’s not your job to try to control anything. It’s more about being in the right place and flowing with the energies that are in the air around you and with the people that you are making the music with. The second that someone thinks music comes from themselves, and that they are the ones responsible for it, is when they go off track. The most important thing you could ralize is that you are the least important part of the whole process. Music is going to be made whether any one artist is here or not. If John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix had disappeared, music still would have gone on, changed, grown, and been the beautiful thing that it is. You take away the music, all you have are the individuals, and they don’t mean anything. The individual is nothing - it’s the music that’s in the air all the time that’s important, and you have to be humble in the face of that.
Interviewer:
What are some of your favorite albums?
Frusciante:
I’m naming ones I love, but I can name five hundred others that I love equally. Especially with bands like the Velvet Underground or the Mothers, I love a lot of their albums equally. I’m just trying to pick one per band.
(GI), the Germs
Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
Low, David Bowie
The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other, Van Der Graaf Generator
The Velvet Underground, the Velvet Underground
Not Available, the Residents
Cut, the Slits
The Ekkehard Ehlers Plays series, Ekkehard Ehlers
Raw Power, the Stooges
Hark! The Village Wait, Steeleye Span
Closer, Joy Division
The Idiot, Iggy Pop
Adolescents, the Adolescents
What Makes a Man Start Fires, Minutemen
I Say, I Say, I Say, Erasure
Penthouse and Pavement, Heaven 17
Fireside Favorites, Fat Gadget
Burning from the Inside, Bauhaus
Over the Edge, the Wipers
The Slide, T.Rex
Remain in Light, Talking Heads
Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
Travelogue, the Human League
Desert Shore, Nico
Slayed?, Slade
Funkadelic, Funkadelic
Red Medicine, Fugazi
Barrett, Syd Barrett
Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno
Black Celebration, Depeche Mode
Red, King Crimson
Trilogy, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Close to the Edge, Yes
’75, Neu!
Flammende Herzen, Micheal Rother
Get Out, Pita
Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56’ 37” Minus Sixteen Degrees 51’ 08”, Fennesz
Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention
Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin
The New Yor Dolls, the New York Dolls
The Ramones, the Ramones
Interviewer:
Did you have any posters on your bedroom walls as a kid? Of whom?
Frusciante:
Depends on what age...
When I was seven, it was Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, and KISS. When I was ten, I had a garage where I had ads for punk-rock shows, like X, the Germs, and Black Flag. When I was thirteen, I had a nice Ziggy Stardust poster, but it was mostly pictures cut out of magazines. I separated them into sections - Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the various people section.
When I was seventeen and moved to Hollywood to live on my own, I started buying eight-by-ten photographs from the memorabilia stores on Hollywood Boulevard. My room was covered in eight-by-tens of Divine (I was deep into John Waters), Nina Hagen, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, the New York Dolls, and David Bowie.
Interviewer:
What are some great shows you’ve seen?
Frusciante:
The Butthole Surfers at UCLA in 1989 was an amazing show. I also saw them in New York, which was equally amazing.
Jane’s Addiction, in 1989-91. I saw them a lot, an they were incredible. It was hard for me to imagina a band being more powerful. Eric Avery was such a great prescence, and Perry gave it everything he had. It was beyong inspiring.
In the last five years, I’ve had the good fortune of seeing Fugazi a lot of times I’d seen them as early as 1990, but in the last few years I’ve probably seen them twenty times. Every one of those shows was equally wonderful and exciting and fresh. Every performance they give is completely different from the next. They don’t use a set list. They know every one of their songs, and just go from song to song, barely pausing in between. To me, they are exactly what a band should be - the perfect show for my taste.
Interviewer:
What are some of your favorite songs?
John:
“Lady Grinning Soul,” David Bowie
“The Musical Box,” Genesis
“Forensic Scene,” Fugazi
“The Trees They Do Grow High,” Joan Baez
“Holiday,” the Bee Gees
“Ride into the Sun,” Lou Reed
“Drugs,” Talking Heads
“Black Angel’s Death Song,” the Velvet Underground
“Wonderful Woman,” the Smiths
“White Queen,” Queen
“Epitaph,” King Crimson
“Frankenstein,” the New York Dolls
“Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” the Ramones
“Free Money,” Patti Smith
“Girl,” T.Rex
“Remember (Walking in the Sand),” the Shangri-Las
“Duke of Earl,” Gene Chandler
“Snowblind,” Black Sabbath
“Police Story,” Black Flag
“Presence of a Brain,” Parliament
“Maybe,” the Chantels
“Be My Baby,” the Ronettes
“I Feel Love,” Donna Summer
“You’re So Fine,” the Falcons
Interviewer:
List up to ten things that could be helpful to someone breaking into the business.
Frusciante:
Give it everything you have in your performances.
Practice as much as you can. A band like the Mars Volta practices, like, ten hours a day, and that just seems right on to me. They’re people really trying as hard as they can to be the best they can be. To me, these are the things that guarantee a person a place in the music industry.
I feel like people who are in it for the wrong reasons might get lucky and be succesful; people who are doing it for the right reasons might not reacht that millionaire level of success, but they will always achieve a kind of success in their own hearts which will fulfill them for their whole lives. If they make music that’s good, they should be able to at least make enough money to live by playing. If the type of music they play is so abstract that they can’t make enough money to live, I believe they can still feel a kind of success that’s as deep as any. Music is that fulfilling.
A lot of the music that I am excited by now is made by people who have jobs. It’s made by people whose direction isn’t determined by trying to satisfy a public, or trying to be successful in the music business. Too much music these days is contaminated by the desire to be successful.What was great about punk rock to me as a kid in 1979 was that they were making music because they had to; it was a pure form of expression. They weren’t making music because they were trying to get anywhere with it, or be on the radio. There was no chance of punk being on the radio. To me you make music bacause you’re interested in music. You follow the direction that your interest dictate, not what is dictated by the public or the record business. I love listening to music by people like Fugazi, the Black Eyes, the Mars Volta, electronic people like Pita, Fennesz, Ekkehard Ehlers. These people are making the music that interests them whith no expectation of it being successful in the music business. This music is relaxing to me because there’s purity to it that a lot of people in the music business, or people who are constantly chasing success, don’t have
Since i dont have a computer and whenever i have alittle bit too much fun the night before and take the day off work i go on the computer and re-read all of the john frusciante interviews, every single one. which i've read all of them hundreds of times.but everytime i do this i feel empty because i dont have these interviews with me at all times so i was wondering if anyone would be interested in printing all of these interviews up for me. i'm willing to pay 30 bucks to whoever will do this for me{megan you need money!!!}. i hope that one of you will help me out
peace