John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers Returns, Part 3 | Broken Record (Hosted by Rick Rubin)

foreign [Music] we're back with a third episode in our John fuschante Returns series over the last couple of months Rick Rubin and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers have come together to tape an ongoing series of conversations that dives deep into John's philosophical and practical approach to writing music and playing guitar if you haven't heard the previous episodes I highly recommend going to check them out today we'll hear John talk about his love of electronic music and how he struggled to fall back in love with guitar-based rock before recording the Pepper's latest set of albums he also talks about the process of making Californication and near the end of the interview picks up a guitar to play through some of his most well-known guitar parts from that album this is broken record liner notes for the digital age I'm Justin mitchman here's Rick Rubin and John fuschante from Shangri-La have you ever taken a principle that you've learned in painting or from another art form and brought it into music I think so but but you know it's it's not it's not specific not conscious not that I can think of anyways but those years that I was just painting and drawing and writing in notebooks that's what made me see how I could make music again because I thought I was done making music but it was through doing that and realizing that I I was realizing what I was incapable of in that that I was capable of in music like what I wanted to do with that I couldn't do I didn't have enough Tech like I didn't used to appreciate the technical theoretical and all that but once I realized what I wanted to do as a visual artist that I couldn't do it in visual art it was real clear that I could do it exactly that in music and do you think it's because you've spent so much time practicing music before is that why that was that's why like like had you started as a painter oh yeah then I would have had that technique yeah so it's really just the time in yeah the commitment previous commitment it was strange because I just I did so much in terms of the thinking in terms of theory and technique that by the time I found myself as a guitar player that what I thought I was doing was forgetting about all that stuff yeah and when I painted I continued to just be free and then when I realized the things I saw in my head I wanted to be able to do and I knew who what aspects of whose Styles I wanted to combine and I didn't have the technical ability to do it and I thought God with music I can do that if I want to make something that has like the melodic sense of this person and the rhythmic sense of this person and the you know sound if this person I know how to do it is is that all art I feel like maybe it is like all art is all of the different things that we've taken in and seeing oh this aspect of what this person does is really interesting and this aspect of what they do is interesting yeah and this aspect of what someone else is interesting and no one has put those together before and that's a new that's a new form and it's probably the lineage of of art has always been built on things of the past shown in a new way that we've never experienced them before yeah in playing along with other people's music I constantly noticed that somebody's taken one part of one thing and another part of another thing in there together and I don't know if the things were conscious but you see it all the time yeah I figure there's just so many combinations and so we're just spitting them out and we get them from different places sometimes I imagine happens by mistake where you'll you know be playing in one style yeah and then a mistake will lead you into a different style but it works and then it's like oh these two Styles go together and I wouldn't have consciously thought that yeah do you remember when you heard that Joe Jackson song like did you hear it within a year I was just listening that record a lot I mean I knew I was really into his music when I was growing up yeah like and I was into him since I was a little kid like since I was like nine or something but what's interesting is that for whatever reason at that moment in time you were going through a Joe Jackson phase the world was not going through a Joe Jackson phase in that moment no yeah you were yeah and that was the information that allowed you into a new thing and I feel like that's where the the magical part of it isn't that it comes from the Joe Jackson songs that why were you listening to Joe Jackson then and the theory would be because it had the information you needed even though that's that's not why you were looking for do you know what I'm saying you weren't listening to it as a reference material you were listening to it because you liked it now I particularly like that record at that time beat crazy that it's on I was listening to it a lot there were certain records I I was really into the new George Michael record as well that listen without prejudice volume one I when we were writing blood sugar I was listening that all the time like they were just examples of pop music where somebody was going in a direction that was different from what they were known for like Joe Jackson did that even more on his following album but on that album there's certain things on it he has this song called one on one to one that's like a ballot a really strong kind of ballad song it was just different than the kind of power pop you could tell he was he was trying to go in a in a different direction so I don't know if it was conscious but it was definitely worked out to be related to what we were doing as far as you know with blood sugar I'm sure it wasn't conscious and that's what's interesting it's like that that the way we live in the world impacts the things that we make yeah you know the way we're paying attention what we're paying attention to yeah Works its way in yeah it's like and it often seems like it's the other people we think of caus causality that the one causes the other in actuality that yeah you often get the sense that it's the other way around that you were listening to that thing because you had to write that song you know like just to point out for people as far as the space like the difference is it it what would be the regular it would have been like this [Music] that's the normal way yeah that that would have been the verse ends and you go into the chorus and everybody plays on the one but but because of that song it wasn't just that I wanted the guitar part to go I wanted Chad to do it with me I wanted plea to do it with me you know what I mean like like Anthony's the only one who sang something on the one which is different from the Joe Jackson where the vocal and the music all are on the two yeah of the bar so I had that realization that it's just space basically that I was it's fascinating and interesting where where these things come from and it could have also happened in an unconscious way like in this case it's conscious because you know that it happened yeah but it also can happen on an unconscious level where just depending on what you're listening to there's something that your mind's like oh that's interesting and then later you're writing some things like oh that's interesting do you know what I'm saying without it being conscious it can still happen and it's not trying to rip anything off it's like we are made of the things we listen to yeah that's how it works yeah no that's all we're made of yeah it's not like there's other stuff we're adding on top of what we hear do you know what I'm saying it's like our bank our our reference Bank our files are whatever we've heard that somehow got stored whether we knew it was getting stored or not yeah Joe Jackson's an interesting artist also to talk about just because even in Punk times I felt like he was an outlier like he wasn't like anyone else yeah no his story is really interesting he wrote a really interesting book it basically just goes up to where he started having a career and he's got a real Strange Life up till then like he went to a music school like he was reading Beethoven's scores when he was a little kid like playing in cover groups to make money in pubs for years like and had an opportunity to get a record contract and had a clear concept of how the band would look what the style of music would be what the songs would be he had a very calculated approach to to being a part of what wound up being like the new wave you know post-punk world but I think wrote some of the best pop songs of the time and and really like but he his book only goes up to that point but it's real you can't imagine that person winding up doing that but he had a really good idea about how to fit in with what was going on at the time you know interesting I think the police were kind of similar I I think they were such good musicians that what they were playing was a calculated thing based on what was currently going on in England at the time what was cool at the time and it could either be calculated or when you're a kid and there's a new music movement and you're into it It's Not Unusual to morph into it I know that in my case I was really into punk rock and then hip hop came along and I didn't like punk rock any less but there was this momentum around hip hop and it was fun to be part of this other new music scene that seemed related because they were both about not being able to play really you know they were both like uh more about the content than the virtuosity yeah in both cases yeah but there were you know some people were calculated at the time because the punk thing was this new thing and it's real crappy music and in the case of the police and Joe Jackson their music has tons of heart it's really good music you know like but I think I've heard from quotes of Sting and from Joe Jackson's book that it really was like I could do anything that I want to do yeah but I'm going to do this specific thing mix the reggae rhythms with the faster Punk rhythms like you know but make pop songs out of that like you know and in Joe Jackson's case he wrote all the parts for everybody in his band there was no he approached it like a composer where everything was written like like Frank Zappa or something where like he tells each person exactly what to play I didn't mean to speak disparagingly about it being calculated because something like the monkeys was a group that was put together yeah and I love the monkeys and I love those songs yeah yeah and uh there's not a right way to do it it's it's whatever yields something that you like to listen to is fine yeah it's funny how some people you know like I think Lou Reed's songwriting style that he did in the Velvet Underground a lot of it came from that he was working for that Pickwick record company where he's just writing songs on a similar to like a Tin Pan Alley type situation where they've just got a lot of writers is they say write a surf song Write a motorcycle song you're just sitting there all day cranking out imitations of these trendy things from that time and I think when he wrote songs like heroin or waiting for the man he's he's taking an idea for a song and approaching the writing of the song in the same sort of calculated way like that this song's about motorcycles this song is going to be about heroin being a junkie you know what I mean like I don't think without that experience of writing songs on an assembly line that he would have ended up writing those types of songs that he did and probably the same for the way Andy Warhol eventually made art where it was more of a he had the idea for the piece and then it would be crafted essentially by other people because it would be silk screened or some maybe in some cases he would do the silk screen himself but it didn't really matter yeah because it was more the idea of the silk screen piece and the composition yeah so he composed it but he didn't have to physically manufacture yeah now that idea of Music being manufactured this is inherent in the whole our whole what pop music is to us that and and how it was created it happened hand in hand with the manufacturing of records and hand in hand with the selling of sheet music as a product like like pop music it changes Styles but it doesn't change its basic form it comes from these things what existed before that I don't think has any real direct relationship to pop music the folk music and stuff like that even folk music that we think of as like folk music from the 60s on pop folk yeah is really all derivative of old folk music and sort of like appropriated from the past yeah but presented new to us now we look back at 60s as like that was the folk Revolution yeah but it really was the folk Revival yeah into the recorded medium which was a completely different thing yeah but yeah I've I've always been real conscious every time we've made a record I've always been as we're moving towards making the record my mind is thinking what what am I going to play along with which means what am I going to listen to because I sit around playing along with CDs the way a lot of people might sit around reading the newspaper or something it's just it's how I relax and I'm just well aware that the final thing is going to carry aspects of those things in it but the fun thing is not knowing what but seeing how where am I where my imagination is leading me is what things am I excited about what things are giving me intense feelings and also making sure that there's some kind of variety where the things have a contrast with each other it's like well how am I going to put those things together but it's got to be things that I pick that I'm excited about it I wouldn't be able to do it with somebody else's idea on assignment you couldn't do it no it's just more just like it's what you happen to be into and I know for anything if you're gonna do a deep dive into anything I don't know how it's possible to do unless you're really into it it's not possible yeah could you imagine listening all day to music that you didn't choose to listen to be terrible imagine yeah it'd be crazy making yeah yeah actually when we started making the new stuff I sent everybody a ton of music and Dropbox you know and like I I don't think anybody listened to anything I said like everybody's got their own ideas about about what they need to hear to get them through a creative uh and that's great too because in a way what makes a band great is not everyone being on the same page it's being able to come together on a page yeah but with everyone bringing different you know aspects of themselves and what's exciting to them yield something more interesting than what a solo project would be yeah just those combined energies you know amplifying to something bigger yeah no that's the thing is like it's like I know that no matter what that combination of things that I'm listening to is I can't predict what aspects of it are going to be apparent by the time everybody else has done their contributed their part to it do you ever play along to non-guitar based music yeah and what does that look like how does it work give me an example and what would you play lots of things I've had periods where I'm like figuring out the harmonies to Beethoven and Wagner and things like that like where if I'm listening to it and I have a and and I can see in my head how I would how I could approach some of the harmonies in it and get some kind of conception of it I'd do that but more often I guess since I was a kid I I used to figure out like the heads of jazz tunes and stuff like that but in my adult life like in the Chili Peppers I think the thing I've probably done the most is play along with synthesizers whether it's like I know how to play all the synth Parts on all the Depeche Mode records from like from their first album up through like 94 like I know every little Melody that comes in I know how to play it so I can just play along with the same song like four or five times and every time play it differently because I'm playing with different group of parts and so yeah like there's lots of synth pop that I play along with the synth Parts too there's lots of electronic music and rave music that I play along with the samples or I play along with the synth part or the bass line so I've done a lot of that I've also done a lot of uh playing along with hip-hop when we were making Stadium Arcadium because it was so simple I would I would play it on bass because there was a lot of bass like the bass was there and the stuff I was listening to more than other more than Melodies were and when I play bass along with it I just play with my pinky because I was trying to strengthen up my pinky so I'd do the whole thing with just the one finger with the weakest finger and then there's certain things that I just make a conscious effort okay I'm not gonna play along with that I can usually see in my head how I how you would play along with it but it's nice to have a couple of things you just never play along with yeah like I used to really like REM at the time that we did Californication but I had a rule for myself I just never played along with them and at the time by the way I really liked uh the band Henry rocks a lot I was listening to them a lot and but I never played along with them like I just didn't want to do it I know rocks was an interesting Out of Time band yeah yeah because they're just they're more like a post Glam thing they're they're not really like too late to be Glam yeah and too early to be uh hair metal yeah yeah yeah now I always thought I I liked them since I was a teenager they was just like there's something really fun about their music to me I like the bands that don't fit anywhere there oh there's always something interesting when either a band is part of a scene that they don't really belong in like Joe Jackson would be an example it's not obvious that he belonged in that scene even though he was popular in that scene yeah or where there is no scene associated with just sort of a fringy thing like I think of the um or albums that don't sound like other albums the the uh love forever changes album it's one of my favorite albums and I don't know any other albums particularly like that nothing and it's so good and it's so one of a kind like how come there's not 50 more like that in the wake of that yeah it's just a singular thing yeah no there's a lot jungle is probably my favorite kind of music and and I collect it and the stuff from like 92 to 96 and every so often there's a song this musical style of it it's there's not one other song that's like that one song and you find these weird a lot of it's similar to each other in certain ways and then you've there's certain songs that somebody could have nabbed that and it could have become a trend but it just never did and so it just it just winds up being this one obscure song that doesn't sound like anything else that's also when you're into something you notice those differences more you know to somebody else that forever changes might just sound same as like a folk rock any other folk rock album you know like it's when you really like something I feel like you wind up zoning into the details of it that make one thing dissimilar do you decide on a new for you old genre music to dive into deeply at times does that come up where like I'm gonna really research particular style of music only if I'm excited about it yeah yeah do you remember the last one the last one and the only thing that's popping into my head is ghetto house from Chicago like it developed into a style called Juke and then a style called footwork and I was really into footwork when I first heard that but I wasn't aware of the ghetto house that it had come from that the people who made footwork had been listening to when they were growing up you know but I mean I got into it like 10 I don't know seven years ago or something like that is it a blend of rap and house not rap because it's it's repetitive and the lyrics are generally kind of funny dirty sex lyrics but one sample of something repeated so it's spoken it's not really rapping but it's it's because there's no flow really it's just a a sentence or a phrase that keeps getting repeated over and over and over it comes from Chicago house music so you have like Chicago acid and then you have this label dance Mania that that was a Chicago label that kept developing as the music was developing at the time and ghetto house was one of the things it developed into and there's nothing fancy about it it's it's like a real simple version of funk it's like a electron it's a real it's a really strange kind of electronic funk that's very minimal it'll usually be like you know a baseline a simple drum part maybe one simple synth Melody one sample they get a lot of mileage out of very little and I'm so in with my electronic music I'm so into being fancy that I really enjoy listening to people who can who can say so much so simply and with so little effects so little uh programming to have a loop that feels good that's just one bar going over and over but it but it's really funky and you want to hear it over and over or a sample that you want to hear the same sample over and over really hard yeah and for them it came naturally so it's fascinating music for me to listen to so you know I feel like joining the joining the band again this time it was really sort of about going back to I was trying to figure out what out of rock music would I be interested in now because I just listened to this you know to I'd be on a drive home from the dentist and I'd listen to The Rolling Stones and I'd think I'd I was really cool I used to make meaningful kind of music like this with the band you know like as much as I love electronic music there would be certain things whether it was like Peter Hamill and Van der Graaff generator or I'd listen to a record now and then and it just had a certain sort of meaningfulness like sometimes like makes you cry or gives you chills in this way that's a different feeling from what I get from electronic music and that feeling of vulnerability and and the of the human being that's doing it because you don't have the machine in between but I didn't specifically I wasn't obsessed with any rock music in particular I would just listen to this now and then you know or that so when I rejoined I had to start it start to figure out okay what out of rock music would I actually be like want to hear over and over and be excited about you know what was it what was the thing not too many things like if I know 50s music really yeah 50s was the thing but that was the thing that in general was the most exciting to me when I rejoined this time was just like because it because of the purity of it and because of because of the the feeling that was new in the state of mind I was in all other rock music after say like 1959 sounded to me like a fake version of the real thing it was only the things from like 56 through 59 that sounded authentic to me I think AC DC felt that way the whole entirety of their career right like music ended sort of with Chuck Berry like everything post Chuck Berry doesn't matter yeah I'd never seen it exactly from that perspective until whatever that was 2020 that that started playing together and I started and I started writing music with them I was like wow the only rock music that really that does the same thing for me that electronic music does emotionally is the 50s stuff because because it's the same with electronic music I like my favorite things or when a style has just blossomed when it's when when they've just come across a certain way of doing things and a certain kind of spirit and emotion and style I like it for that first two or three years that they're doing it and then I don't like it I I then I like whatever the thing was that came a few years after that where somebody was influenced by it but was doing something completely different generally I'm not saying that's 100 true but that's generally how I my taste is with electronic music I like a particular style for like three I would say inch that's true for all music not even just just electronic music because like I'll get interested in something and then once it becomes regular to me yeah it's less interesting right yeah when you when you can expect what people are going to do but there's a certain freshness that comes from Wow nobody's ever sounded like this you know because there was great r b in the early 50s but like but that thing that Elvis was doing there's not somebody else that sounds like that before him yeah he's influenced by things but what that sound what he was doing with his voice the way those musicians were playing together those precise kind of rhythms there just wasn't something that sounded like that so it if you're studying what came before and you're and you're familiar with it and then you hear that you can see wow you can put yourself in the time and place of what that would have felt like at the time and Buddy Holly songwriting and stuff like that it was just in the way Johnny Guitar Watson played guitar like where it's distorted and mean and [ __ ] up sounding like like nasty before him I don't know if I I know a lot of like Electric Blues players who like who were playing before him nobody was that nasty as that like it it's really there's there's a there's a few people Clarence gay mouth Brown and and who I who was going for a while before joining guitar watched him and I guess he got to a point where he was having a similar kind of nastiness but but yeah there's these certain certain things when they first come up so I was so into those kind of players that stuff like cream and The Yardbirds what wasn't seeming as exciting to me as or Jimi Hendrix even like wasn't sounding as exciting as the people that they were listening to because it that's where that's where I heard that freshness so so I was definitely into 50s music the whole time but also Susie and the Banshees sounded good to me right away right when I rejoined and that was something I was enjoying playing along with a lot and gradually as we as the band played together more and as I started to see the direction that we were going because I having no idea what that was going to be at first it was hard but as as time went by I started getting into more like psychedelic things and stuff it's interesting how regardless of the influences going back to what you're listening to let's say on Californication up through now the influences could be could change wildly over the years and you and the band sound like you and the band yeah which is great do you know what it's like it's it's beautiful that the new Inspirations can open new channels but they don't change who you are you know like they don't they don't make it a different band yeah nothing can change your spirit I always say I I've never I've never heard a musician sound like another musician for all the talk that people do about uh this person stole from that person I've never heard one other musician sound like another musician I I just I've seen people try to and they don't like like and that even goes for electronic music even when it's drum machines and synthesizers I've heard plenty of people try to imitate say Aphex Twin and I've never heard that somebody actually sound like him like the human spirit it's it's Unique to each person and a person's soul is unique to them and I think you're stuck with that you're stuck with whoever you are as a soul you can use influences to give you ideas or to guide your ideas in different directions that you might not have gone otherwise but the one thing that you can't avoid is sounding like yourself and and I would say the opposite side of being stuck with it is it's the reason for you to make art because if you don't do it no one else can play your part right you know what I'm saying it's like you only you can play what you play whatever that is and what you bring to it that's your sound yeah and maybe in the beginning it might be based on other people's sounds to until you find really what your direction is because most most people making music might start by copying someone else yeah but very quickly that falls away into being who you are yeah yeah like author being a teenager I was definitely obsessed with trying to be just like certain musicians but I always looking back I sounded like me I was it was me playing a different style yeah I hadn't found the style of my own but the spirit of it still sounded like me I didn't sound like those other people I can't it's not that we have to find our own sound because our own sound is there it's when the influences start falling away what's left is your sound do you know what I mean right it's less of a discovery and more of a coming into who we are yeah but yeah Sid Barrett like Bad Brains Nirvana I gradually started like seeing a connection between what I wanted to do you know on what became our new records and and that stuff and was just and just moved by it like it but I've never had I've never been into so little mute rock music as I was when we when we made these records it really I had to really strive to like find like okay what can get me excited about it just because like I said I would get excited about it in burst I've never loved it any less but I would I just wasn't as obsessed with it I get more obsessed with with electronic music how has playing live changed from the earliest days in the band to now for you well as we discussed like the first six months I was I I didn't know what to do with myself up there I was really nervous and just and just confused maybe in relation to the music more than how to be do you know what I mean I guess if I'm thinking like from Californication on like like it really hasn't changed that much you know playing live is just a more intense version of what we do in the studio and yeah and and I don't I don't feel like my basic approach to it has changed because it it has so much room to be in the moment and to do things that are unique at that point I was really I was excited about playing live and I was experimenting like on blood sugar tour I wasn't super excited to be playing live but I was doing real neat sort of experimenting on stage and stuff but from Californication on it's like I'm I'm exploring things and I'm excited to be there so it's got that same indifference that I had on the blood sugar tour where where I'm not worried if I [ __ ] up or if or if I or if some or if the energy falls apart for a second I'm not worried about it but it's backed by like enthusiasm about playing with the guys and about you know so how different would you say it is from night to night for you I didn't mean enthusiasm wise I mean like musically how would you say well flea and Chad and I are improvising like all the time it's amazing yeah like I feel like no bands do that right I don't know of any other bands I do I mean jazz bands do that but I don't know of big rock bands playing for a lot of people who do that yeah and certain songs allow for it more than others for me yeah flee I think is improvising from the beginning of the show till the end of the show yeah like like there's enough the bass parts are all kind almost all kind of built for that yes and Chad I noticed especially right now he's doing it more he's he's more sensitive to us than he ever was in the past like he's interacting with us in ways that I don't remember him doing on the in any of the previous times I was in the band he's he used to sort of he he held things together and he pushed us and all that but he wasn't listening to us in the way that he listens now yeah like he's really sensitive as a person too he has a sensitivity that I I did not associate him with having anything like that when I rejoined you know because he's an incredible musician yeah he's an incredible musician we're always really listening to each other and for me on guitar there's certain songs where like the chords of the chords and I have to play the chords but even with those maybe nobody notices but I'm gonna I'm putting notes in the chords that weren't in the in the chord on the record there's sometimes what I'm the difference is subtle and sometimes the difference is Extreme and this is just in the guitar part like flea and I are always throwing in little extra riffs like Anthony says a line and Fleet does a little riff and then it says another line and I do a little riff sort of imitation of what flee did or something you know where and then or I'll do something some certain weird kind of fast rhythm in a Solo and then Chad responds by doing that same Rhythm as a as a drum fill like it's not just during the instrumental sections that we're improvising we're doing it all the time and can you hear each other well enough to be able to play off each other in that way yeah we can hear each other really well that's amazing yeah yeah I'm always surprised Chad Chad really hears every little thing I do like there's tons of moments during the show where I do something that I think is subtle that he's not going to notice and and he either shows me that he notices by playing a certain thing in response or he's or by looking at me a certain way or something and then depending on how flea does something new might that impact what you do new in relation to it yeah exactly like like the like just bouncing off each other's ideas all the time that's what we're always doing yeah so let's keep it so fresh it does like we the the set list always changes but I feel like even if it didn't I would be creatively satisfied up there because it that type of interaction it means so much to me especially because the weird part of it is that nothing ever falls apart like we're doing all these things that that are only done that one time and doing all this kind of interaction and you you can you can never quite predict what the other guys are gonna do and yet we play like a like we're one entity yeah you know like especially playing in these big stadiums you're aware like the details of what you're doing aren't even that important the important thing is that you make one sound together and so if I'm hitting the guitar and Chad's hitting the snare and please hitting the base all at the same time that's one big sound that goes out there to to the back to the people in the back it's like how the pieces fit together yeah yeah so that so to be able to to have that and to be able to make it spontaneous at the same time is just a unique thing that that we've developed over the years and to do it in the context of familiar songs that the audience can sing along with the whole time yeah so it doesn't stray so far I mean the song is still the song but it's more like the song is the scaffolding to allow all of the interesting playing to happen yeah and we're always listening to Anthony like the important thing it's part of the challenge of it if Anthony wasn't singing the vocals and and depending on us to to give him a proper Groove yeah we would go further out but like but got to keep it because he's there we like I make sure if I'm gonna do some unexpected thing and he's going to come in singing right after I do it I better be right on time you know like I better nail this new Rhythm that I'm trying to do because he's got to come in in the right Groove and he's got to be feeling the right thing before he comes in so you're always making sure to support everybody else and to not go off on such a tangent that you're throwing anybody else off sounds super fun it really is it sounds it it just sounds like the most fun playing music yeah I never I never knew growing up that it could be like that I don't think there were any bands that that I was into that had that exact thing where everybody's really listening and changing in subtle ways all the time it's in a different way but the T-shirt I'm wearing can Crimson that that lineup of them was really good in that way like they were like that when I think of who did I like when I was a teenager that showed me that that was possible that's probably the closest thing yeah yeah most most groups when I was growing up you just assumed that the song is the song and the band plays the song it might sound different for one reason or another but and for most bands that's what it was yeah for most expensive what it was that's why I feel like uh the Chili Peppers is such an unusual thing live there's so much more life in it than the live version of the record right it's so much more musical even when you can't hear what's different I subconsciously feel there's more going on right and it's and it doesn't feel like more is going on and it's screwing it up which can also happen yeah it doesn't feel like that it feels like a mind expanded version of it yeah in learning other people's music I always notice that there's sometimes the hardest things to memorize are apparently very simple things like it's much easier to learn what sounds like an impressive kind of busy guitar solo than it is to learn a rhythm guitar part that doesn't repeat itself too much that keeps changing in subtle little ways for five minutes straight yeah that's actually a lot harder for the brain to memorize what sounds like it's the easiest thing in the world would actually be a real pain in the ass to sit there and memorize in comparison to what sounds like a hard to play solo yeah and something we've noticed so possible that the guitarist who's playing it doesn't even know it yeah exactly that's what I mean is is to memorize something because those are that's not really a part so much as somebody playing along yeah to something like like say Funkadelic like has a lot of stuff like this where they're clearly they're guys in a room jamming with each other and it became a song but there wasn't a flat like this is the guitar part you repeat this every four bars like that's the verse the other there's there's a lot of sort of rhythm guitar parts that just they flow from the beginning of the song to the end they're not a repetitive pattern but feels like a Groove from beginning to end you know what I mean like those things there's something in the brain that just doesn't want to memorize something when it's that simple yet it keeps changing but it's beautiful to listen to it like it feels more like you're looking at the ocean or watching the clouds move in the sky or something to listen it's got a much more natural random quality that's more real than the same perfect Cloud every time you know to say yeah what would it be like if every wave was the same wave it's not so interesting yeah so it's the kind of things like chat Chad notices when I'm say I'm playing a funk Rhythm and the funk rhythm of on the record is one thing and I'm playing a different Rhythm he hears that I'm doing a unique thing that's only happening in the on that one night it could be nobody in the audience even notices that I'm doing anything different because it still sounds like the song you know yeah I thought it would be fun I just wrote before I came here I wrote down a bunch of songs to talk about the guitar parts just to see what comes up okay but you know hopefully I remember them because yeah and if not we can even listen a little reference yeah if I heard um I started with Californication because I think that's where we left off our conversation I think did we talk everything about Californication last time or just I feel like we touched on it but it wouldn't hurt if we're gonna if we're gonna go through the other through Californication by the way and Stadium it might be good to talk a bit about more about Californication yeah so going into that project you're back in the band I remember we talked about you being out of the band I think we talked about you coming back to the band yeah right I think I think where we left off when we talked about it was I was kind of talking about how my technique wasn't where it had been so I had to come up with a different style of playing and be inspired by more like New Wave guitar players as opposed to Guitar Hero kind of guitar players and found a style from that when they asked me to be in the group again like especially at that time I had for years at that point thought I would never make music again and even when I did start to want to make music didn't feel that I could ever make music that would uh touch people again didn't feel I could make a good sound with my voice anymore I'd had extensive Dental stuff and singing was much more difficult than it had ever been and didn't feel that I could ever again make a beautiful sound with my voice and felt like I was missing whatever that thing was that had once been able to touch people with music and yet the to those guys I Was the Same as I'd ever been like and I don't think I had any other friends who saw me that way you know like Anthony and plea specifically like their belief in me made me able to be reborn at that time like I had tried to start bands with other people and stuff like that there was there was no magic in it no magic coming from me and from playing with them that started I started to feel like there was I was generating magic you know like it was a really neat time in that way and especially because we really believed in our in ourselves and what we were doing even if like the record company didn't seem particularly interested you know like like we were just very excited about about what we were doing and and ended up carrying us through you know yeah and the real exciting thing for me about that time was just sort of starting from a place where where we were able to take those melodic sort of ideas that we'd done on the on the slower softer songs on blood sugar and combine that with the energy of the other types of funk things that we did and for me to be able to play guitar in a way that has some blues aspects in some parts but but had more of a more of an influence coming from the late 70s and early 80s New Wave what's now called Post Punk that I was Finding ways to incorporate those influences more than I had previously and I was depending on hallel's style less than I ever had like I was able to really like find a like there was a place for for that Halal influence stuff it's certainly there on Californication but all those things like Californication and other side and uh easily and you know all these all these songs they were just I felt like it was a style that I was creating specifically for the band and it I hadn't heard those things go together before you know I think I had before I had a fixed idea of what flee's role is supposed to be or what my role is supposed to be and I just started to be able to find that I could put those things aside you know Scar Tissue just play things that really sounded like nobody but me and it worked really perfectly in the context of the band and everybody just made it and it did seemed like some of the influence writing wise were more from synth-based bands you're playing guitars in a band but the songwriting didn't necessarily sound like guitar based music yeah because my favorite music at that time was like Massive Attack and tricky and Depeche Mode and the Human League and I was listening to all this electronic music it was actually really hard at first because similar to what I was saying about the the current time uh in a different way when I first joined I found rehearsal seemed really boring if I listened to the kind of music I like to listen to before I went to rehearsal it's like if I started my day listening to like Depeche Mode and Massive Attack if I went to rehearsal I would just be sitting there thinking God we sound really boring and you know like this sounds like it didn't have anything textually interesting about it it seemed like a bland kind of color so I had to force myself to listen to guitar based music and I found that there were a small amount of certain guitar based things that seemed to my ear seemed as colorful as Depeche Mode and those things I mentioned but it wasn't a whole lot of rock things again you know it was when I would get home from rehearsal the first thing I do would be put on Depeche Mode you know like like that was really what I wanted to hear and would have loved to go to rehearsal and have a drum machine guy sitting there you know like Edward's really wanting to hear drum machines but that pattern worked out really well because those things because I could warm up to the Ramones I was really in to warm up to the Ramones and fugazi and The Yardbirds and stuff and then and then go to rehearsal and something about that combination of that on one hand I'm inspired by these other people who've done things with guitar and on the other hand the melodic things that are exciting to me are coming from this other style of music that's done with other types of here did you ever hear the um the acoustic Depeche Mode demos yeah I'm familiar with some of their demos bootlegs of them and stuff their acoustic ones where it's either on the piano or guitar and it's interesting because I think most of the songs were written with traditional instruments and then turn into Depeche Mode songs yeah but yeah in the early days he used Martin Gore used to make like synth demos that were pretty developed like he must have done them on like a four track or an eight-track or something and a lot of those they're kind of just like a shittier sounding version of what wound up on the record but I think as time went by he started bringing the songs in more just on guitar so the producer and Alan Wilder and stuff could come up more with more of an electronic vision of it they got really good results from doing it that way both ways though but but anyways yeah so so uh the sense of Melody there on on Californication had definitely more of a even though the sound of the band is more like 60s 70s music the melodic aspect had a lot more to do with things that were more modern at the time can you grab a guitar because there's we could talk about like a song like let's talk about other side that'd be a good one too that see that that guitar part you you can't play it without the bass part because because because it's uh it wouldn't sound yeah it doesn't sound like the song it just sounds like a part of it because we're foreign yeah he's playing notes that are basically in between but there are other they're different they're different notes but they're basically the same Rhythm but together it forms together they form a chord yeah how'd that get written how did it how did it come to be like that I came in with [Music] yeah I [Music] something like that it was those chords and then I think I started by playing them but my I had a plan before I had even gone in I was like I'm gonna start with those chords but I'm gonna wait for him to start to [ __ ] around with it and then I'm gonna start I think I already had that melody in my head I I knew that that would that that Melody would sound good with those chords yeah so I started playing them figuring he would pick up on the chords or all of the songs that work where it's the guitar and the bass making chords do they always start as on the writing side do they start as traditional chords that then turn into I don't know about always because because we we did that with something like other side and we gradually realized that that was a thing we could do so you could start writing in that style without ever starting with the original chords I think so that's interesting I think so because I'm I'm pretty sure when we're doing it later on the song by the way yeah I don't think we'd figured out the chords I think maybe the chords still that was still sort of our version of the chords from the chorus I know that they're not exactly the chords from the chorus and and the intro to by the way there's definitely like we were it was looser a looser interpretation of it than uh but I know it is a way that we can play now like we do our Californication intro where we're just like playing you know fast notes all at the same time and playing different things and still we like lock up again there is a chord change that's implied in it yeah it does help to have to be able to do that on a guitar and a bass it's good to have an invisible chord that you both know what it is you know yeah because then you know you know the framework of where you can go yeah and it makes you be able to sound connected yeah even though there's no apparent reason to The Listener why you should be connected because you seem to both be doing different things but you're both thinking a minor F whatever it is and Matt what's interesting about that is that's like Depeche Mode writing a song on guitar or piano right and turning it into a Depeche Mode song where the chords are implied even though there might not be an instrument playing the chords exactly the the composition of the different sounds give you the feeling that there's a chord happening but it's an invisible chord right exactly yeah so I think that Californication time I was so excited about what happened when we just walked into a room together and started playing as opposed to sitting there with with the whole thing of like well here's my song I wrote it home I'm going to show it to you like I wanted to try to avoid that I felt like that that whole setup and that whole like because I used to play games with it at blood sugar time I had this act I would put on where I would act like what I was about to play was shitty I thought it was good but I found that I was getting the best reaction from them if if I acted like it was some no big deal you know they would they were more affordable or something so there would always be the setup to it so by Cal flea did the same thing I mean I don't know how much of an act necessarily but but yeah like it it really used to feel like if you acted like you were not confident with what you were doing or if you weren't confident in what you were doing the other guys would be supportive of you and stuff and and whereas if you walked in and said like I got this riff it's the best [ __ ] riff you ever heard in your life you just weren't going to get a good reaction from them you know so so yeah so so by Californication I'm starting to realize like like uh I don't have to say anything I can come in with those because I I don't know how I knew those would go but maybe I'd recorded them on a cassette recorder and I was just I was playing these chords and I was playing guitar to the cassette recorder and I was probably going [Music] so I knew the two things went together good but I was like I'm not going to go in and show flee so hey man play a f see you know what I mean I'm just gonna go in and play the chords and see what happens and you know like and he plays with you ten minutes later like we had this beautiful you know thing where we're weaving in and out of each other and he's going up when I'm going down and all you know it's just like when I hear it it definitely makes me wonder how it happens yeah you know like it's not that it I mean it works together so magically that without me knowing that there is an invisible chord at play behind the scenes it's impossible to even know how anything like that ever gets written right yeah it's cool when you take away the source of where something came from you know like so it's a good device and and in that song is it just those chords over and over again because the chorus is the same yeah yeah exactly it is so it changes from the verse to the chorus well not not there's the bridge is different but the chorus and the verse are basically the same chord progression the sparse version and the chord version yeah I don't even know if I actually fully play the chords I think flee just plays differently uh let's see oh oh no no the verse is different sorry yeah the verse has a different guitar parts [Music] yeah that's that's the verse guitar part so that other part is the chorus and rather than play the chords hopefully and I had that thing worked out that we did and then that verse also feels like that would also make the guitar part in the chorus seem less like it's related to chords because what you just played for the verse doesn't seem related to chords it is it's a to e okay you know just it feels more like a riff because of the way you're playing it yeah because that that yeah I like that idea I I was I like of putting big intervals between uh the notes in a guitar using using the guitar itself to create a sense of space so with that guitar those two notes are so far apart from each other and there's so much space between them it seemed like it gives space to the rest of the band to fill it to fill it in as opposed to if I was playing the full chord it would be like [Music] you know it to me that's less meaning there's more going on and it's less meaningful so yeah so I was just I really like that guitarist Ricky Wilson from The B-52s he had this way of playing where he just had he only had four strings he had the the low two strings and the high two strings were tuned to the same note and he had no g string and no D string and he would essentially be playing two different guitar parts at the same time because it sounds like two different guitar parts because he's sort of playing a bar chord on the low strings and then the high strings he's playing a kind of a melody and it gave him a real unique right hand style to to be able to do that because sometimes they alternate the right hand alternates from the high string to low string to the high string sometimes they play at the same time so they they have two separate motions to them so that that was somebody who I know I I was inspired by in that way but it it's something I'd just been messing around with even at blood sugar time just and it was when I remember when I first did it it was inspired by listening to him but that whole sort of style of playing where you're going like foreign yeah it creates all this space and it makes it fun to just play guitar by yourself because you're kind of doing a bass part and you're doing a Melody part but it's and really different than finger picking yeah yeah exactly because it's simpler and and but I used to just find it was fun to just [Music] it's more like piano in a way just yeah just improvise it's like playing piano with one finger on each hand basically super simple piano yeah so uh so yeah so that other side verse part definitely comes from thinking that way and Scar Tissue it's the same kind of thing [Music] same same kind of thing just wanting to put big intervals between things because I'd always you know play along with music all the time there's certain things like that that I'd Wonder like I'd notice like not that many people have done this for some reason it's a stupid thing you know it's like it's nothing complicated or anything but I just hadn't heard a lot of people doing it so I'm always on the lookout for things like that like what if what somebody maybe hinted at yeah but hasn't really done that much I think some of my references for playing like that Eric Avery and Jane's Addiction had a couple of bass lines that were like that uh [Music] yeah is that thing and uh I think Summertime Summertime rolls has a baseline kind of like oh I would for you has a baseline that I think has has those kind of distances in it he would kind of play these he had a few songs where he he'd have these like big intervals like that on his base and uh I thought that would be cool to do on guitar yeah you know so cool yeah um parallel universe uh yeah so again that that one is flea and I sort of playing in harmony with one another and that's actually I can't think I don't think there was a court I think I don't even remember which of us was playing first but one of us was playing and the other played to that if I remember correctly yeah and and definitely forgot his discussion about it being rhythmically Unison for the whole song or did that just sort of happen it started and never stopped yeah there definitely wasn't discussion that it would be cool you know it's hard to remember exactly how that came about I remember writing the chorus at home I think that was probably like pretty like Nirvana inspired you know like uh you know they have these songs like all right [Music] it's called even in his youth that's a song so same key like like [Music] they have another song that goes I just like I really like those songs that had that sort of minor kind of uh dark feeling they don't sound at all the same to me but it's interesting that they do that yeah I think in my mind I was gonna I was like I'm gonna write something like even in his Youth and that was just [Music] that seems more like Ramon's the anthemic to me yeah I mean I'm also listening to The Ramones a lot at that time also you know for me to say I think I used to kind of try to hide the Nirvana influence because I felt like they were our contemporaries and I didn't want people to know how much I loved them but like but like I I mentioned you before like when when I was down and out and there was like all those those years where there was no future their music their music along with a few other people like David Bowie and Black Sabbath it just meant the world to me it just meant everything to me and partially in their case because I felt like it was something I felt inside me since I was a kid because I because I I loved punk punk was the music that got me into playing guitar but also loved all different kinds of pop music and stuff so for somebody to combine Punk with pop as well as they did just and they somebody to be that good of a screamer because Darby Crash was my favorite singer when I was a kid and then said have somebody who's screaming like as good as Darby Crash yet he's singing like melodically in this way that Darby didn't really sing yeah their music just meant a lot to me so I remember them opening for you is that on the blood sugar tour that they were opening for you only for three shows oh I must have been on all three shows then because for me it felt like all that they're on the tour yeah I was in California only but and I wasn't into them then I resented the whole idea of a pop punk thing at the time it's so funny yeah I didn't like them until after he he'd he'd already died like wow yeah he just died I think when I started to Tony Oswald started playing playing I first showed him when I was in the I was in a rehab and I mean when I first heard them and liked them I was in rehab and that in neutral album had come out and she played me the song raped me over the telephone and I was stuck in a rehab for 30 days and I I kept calling her up going play me that song again this play like however it sounded on the phone I just had to hear it again I loved it so much that was it was really that in neutral it might have been before he died and I think it was still after he died but I just hadn't heard that album in utero and that was the and I still think that's their best album and that that was what got me uh real excited about them yeah maybe the things about never mind that Kurt himself didn't like were the things that didn't appeal to me about it when it came out or something because once I heard them sound actually like raw and sound like just like guys playing in a room that's when I realized and I didn't even watch them when they opened for us I was just in my own head and so anyways so so I saw that quartz it's like a Nirvana thing but like I said a lot of times things like I like a lot of times the things we love we don't hit us right at first yeah that's not unusual at all yeah I know it was that way for you with the Ramones yeah yeah it just made me laugh yeah but yeah but anyways being into Punk since I was a kid it was like once I got into them I was surprised that I hadn't landed on these ideas like when I first joined the band you know this way of sort of uh combining punk and pop because like I just thought the band didn't want to be I didn't think that I didn't even think the Red Hot Chili Peppers would want to do something like that anyways you know like I wouldn't and they might not have wanted to right when you joined I'm actually if you think about it because it it wasn't until it took time for it to for the mold to open of what the Chili Peppers Could Be yeah it wouldn't have suited really the way Anthony was singing then yeah you know like it took time for it to turn into yeah anything we like yeah you know that took time yeah but anyways it came real naturally that tongue is definitely a combination of fugazi and Nirvana In My Mind like probably quite a bit of our songs I could sum up in ways like that I could say It's a combination of this artist and that artist or whatever but really yeah it sounds like us yeah I was gonna say it doesn't sound like either of them yeah what is the verse guitar part in parallel universe it's like hard to play on this but yes it doesn't sound like anything it doesn't sound like yes it doesn't sound like music without the bass it's so interesting though but when they're together it's so unique and so cool yeah yeah that that one it might have come up in a similar way to to other side with me coming in with chords but somehow I don't think so I think flee I think flea was probably playing that on the bass and the the do you know what his part is you know [Music] so that does sound more root yeah that you can hear the music more my part doesn't even sound like the song like unless you hear it with that part with that the harmony makes it makes the whole thing feel like thick yeah yeah exactly like his part you hear the song in it yeah because he's playing the root notes and I'm playing the different intervals but yeah I guess come to think of it that it must have been that that like that I like those cup those three notes of even in his youth go the so I wanted to do something with those that started with that basic tonality I see but like but the way I'm strumming it is like the Ramones like that's it's all down Strokes foreign along with the Ramones every day it was good for my rhythm hand it got me stronger and stronger as as we rehearsed I kept being able to do downstrokes faster and faster and became friends with Johnny Ramon at that time which also like yeah had an influence on on me in in a lot of ways he's the person who got me into 50s music so I started like like I learned all the guitar solos on all the Ricky Nelsons already into old movies before Johnny Ramon or was Johnny really no I was into yeah I was into yeah old movies but he was able to show me a lot more about them and stuff that I that I didn't know like he used to give me Humphrey Bogart movies that he would record off TV when they would show a rare one and stuff and yeah got me into collecting such an interesting person I really miss him yeah me too he's one of the more interesting people I've ever met yeah no truly true very um like knew what he liked very you know what I mean like very saw the world his way clearly yeah he was very sure of it and he didn't mind if you disagreed with him not at all at all not at all and at the same time it just didn't it didn't but it didn't but it didn't make sense yeah you just thought I'd see how anyone could see it differently yeah he would just say okay yeah yeah like he's like I I think I know more about more about this than you I saw that you did one of one of the Ramone songs that um at flee's thing last week and it was I saw a little clip right Linda sent me it was so beautiful thanks yeah yeah I've done it a few times now I did it once for the day that he that he died once for his birthday which came not long after that and then the other day because DH died so and because Linda was there so yeah I didn't know that the itch died you didn't know dh9 oh yeah he fully called me up the night before that show I was like you've heard so yeah I can't remember did you play together with him in the band yeah for six six months when you joined yeah me and him were playing with another friend of mine who's who who died just a few years later a really great bass player and me and him and DH were trying to get a band going and then DH joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers remember and then I joined and I think it was actually probably just a total of about four or five months that I was in the band and did you do gigs I can't remember yeah we did we we did a tour for like three weeks in the midwest we played San Francisco we played la I think twice we played in Arizona we played scattered played a few scattered gigs in other places but yeah I mean he's the person who introduced me to flea you know and yeah and like his feel as a drummer is just like it was really fun playing Punk with him I remember the very last time I was pretty sure we were gonna fire him or I knew we were gonna fire him at this point but we were we had a last rehearsal and I remember it being just meaningfully in DH there and we played foreign policy by fear yeah because you you could pretty much just go into whatever Punk song and DH knew how to play it really well and I really loved that song foreign policy it's a really beautiful it's just a beautiful emotive song and and it was a real emotional moment it was one of those moments I was like I'm never going to forget this like the feel you know the feeling of this like because him and me and flea had such a good connection but he just he just uh he wasn't willing to give up the things that were separating him from the rest of us and and it had to go that way but yeah we used to have a good time playing together so when he died I like listened to those first couple of dead Kennedy's records that he's on and just listening to his Groove and stuff it just felt really good to to remember him but I hadn't talked to him in like 20 years we were at the same rehab like 20 years ago right before Californication and he left after a few days but that was that was the last time I'd seen him but the other guys had been in touch and I'd been recently like sending Anthony pictures of us with him that came my way to like show him and he was like wanting to see the pictures and stuff like he was going in a good direction I thought we have to pause the conversation right here but we'll be dropping the next episode in our for Shantae series next week in that episode John continues to play through Red Hot Chili Pepper songs and he plays a snippet of his solo track dying song and tells us why that didn't end up on by the way so be sure to keep an eye out on our feet you can hear all of our favorite Chili Pepper songs on our playlist at brokenruckerpodcast.com be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com broken record podcast where you can find all of our new episodes you can follow us on Twitter at broken record broken record is produced with help from Leah Rose Jason Gambrell bent holiday Eric Sandler Jennifer Sanchez our editor Sophie crane our executive producer is Mia LaBelle broken record is a production of Pushkin Industries if you like our show please remember to share rate and review us on your podcast app our theme music by Kenny beats I'm Justin Richmond [Music]

Channel: Broken Record Podcast

Views: 116,119

Keywords: Broken Record, Podcast, Interview, Music, Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, How to Play RHCP Under the Bridge, John Frusciante, Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Frusciante Rick Rubin, RHCP, Red Hot Chili Peppers Unlimited Love, Red Hot Chili Peppers Rick Rubin, John Frusciante Interview, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Rick Rubin Interview, Rick Rubin RHCP, Anthony Kiedis, Music Podcast, Rock Music, new music, red hot chili peppers new album, rhcp new album, RHCP Californication

Id: Q4tPxc_ED5c

Length: 73min 27sec (4407 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022