Unlimited Love

RHCP’S JOHN FRUSCIANTE ON THE WRITING & RECORDING OF FIVE STANDOUT UNLIMITED LOVE TRACKS, GEAR AND ALL

A SLEW OF TALENTED PLAYERS SELECT JOHN FRUSCIANTE’S FINEST MUSICAL MOMENTS (AND WINNINGEST QUALITIES!)

By Amit Sharma, Jim Beaugez, Damian Fanelli, Joshua Miller, Joe Bosso and Damon Orion

“John has always been an MVP in any band he performs with. He always writes the perfect part, and his passion for vintage recording gear captures his tone magnificently. Perhaps one of my favorite performances by him is an obscure one, ‘Inca Roads’ by Frank Zappa, performed solo live. Anyone who can play it is a Jedi boss! I never had to play that part when I was with Frank, thank goodness.”

— STEVE VAI

“For me it’s ‘Otherside’ off of Californication. It’s a great example of how the simplest guitar parts can be so clever and well-fitting for a band like RHCP. I can’t imagine that writing parts to complement Flea’s grooves (without getting in the way) is an easy task. Frusciante is the very definition of a guitarist who doesn’t overplay — and always lays down such appropriate ideas that include his specific voice.”

— NILI BROSH

“JF is among the very few guitar players of our generation that came up with his own very distinctive sound, and that’s not an easy thing to do on an instrument that has been around for a long, long time. Despite his being on my radar forever, it wasn’t until our 2019 album, Mettavolution, that you can hear his influence — and it’ll be very present in the new Rodrigo y Gabriela album.”

— RODRIGO SANCHEZ (RODRIGO Y GABRIELA)

“John’s songwriting and his sense for harmony and sound has always been so inspiring. Curtains [Frusciante’s 2005 solo album] is a masterpiece that showcases all of that — and ‘A Name’ or ‘Time Tonight’ are two of my favorites.”

— PHILIPP DAUSCH (MILKY CHANCE)

“What I love most about John Frusciante is the way his style has the clear roots of old-school guitar greats like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, yet still remains completely

of the times (if not a little bit futuristic). His heroes pushed the limits of the instrument and inspired generations of people to pick up the guitar… and John has done the same!”

— AYLA TESLER-MABE

“One of the first albums I bought for myself was Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

The interplay between the bass and rhythm guitar is so in the pocket and organic — lots of innovative, understated guitar moments followed by chaos and fireworks. The solo on ‘I Could Have Lied’ is so expressive and emotional; it adds this desperation to Anthony Kiedis’ delivery. I loved the guitar playing on the title track — it’s riff-driven, melodic, explosive. The whole album kills.”

— SAMANTHA FISH

“Original, raw, heartfelt and pure, Herculean and supernatural — these are some of the words I would use to describe John’s guitar playing. Whether he’s working with the cleanest of clean tones with a total absence of ambience, or the craziest of fuzzed-out, psychedelic, meltyour-face-off lead sounds, he always makes it feel natural and sound personal. John’s live performances with the Chili Peppers are exceptional examples of his organic, highly creative and high-energy approach to using a Strat.”

— JOE SATRIANI

“By the Way was one of the first albums I ever heard. I was instantly fascinated by John’s playing and I always thought he had such an interesting style; it’s so dynamic and expressive, and you can tell it’s him straight away. Not to mention his tones are absolutely stunning! His songwriting is awesome too, always playing for the song and giving it exactly what it needs.”

— SOPHIE BURRELL

“I vividly remember hearing ‘Under the Bridge’ the first time and not being able to fathom that it was just one guitar. There were bass notes, harmony and lead lines all happening at once, and for someone who had convinced himself that power chords were all that was needed, it was like he was playing a different instrument entirely. It’s an experience John himself has echoed numerous times as he described hearing ‘Little Wing’ for the first time — that melodic style of rhythm playing that Curtis Mayfield pioneered and Jimi Hendrix expanded on is an integral part of my playing

today; John was the first person I heard put it to such good use.”

— CHRIS BUCK

“One of my first-ever public performances was at summer camp playing air guitar along to ‘Under the Bridge.’ John was one of my earliest influences in that way. I was fascinated just mimicking him. I think he’s brilliant, one of my favorites. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers Live at Slane Castle is one of the all-time best live performances ever captured on footage, and it’s at least half because of John’s contribution.”

— LAURA JANE GRACE (SOLO, AGAINST ME!)

“My favorite piece from Frusciante would, hands down, be ‘Snow (Hey Oh)’ — for several reasons. Aside from the absolutely legendary complex arpeggio executed in a legato liquid manner, and the mass cultural timeless effect it has had since its recording, the homage paid to the traditions of J.S. Bach in the chordal cycle of the riff reminds us that sometimes the simple magics of this universe are just what our souls need.”

— DANIEL DONATO

“John Frusciante is responsible for some of the most catchy and recognisable riffs in music. My fave is ‘Dani California.’ Although he’s one of the most skilful guitarists out there, he’s not hugely technical — he just has enormous feel and doesn’t rely on fast, crazy runs to impress. He uses things such as dynamics and tonal range, interesting pedal effects and his other-worldly timing to compliment any song he’s playing on.”

— SOPHIE LLOYD

“‘Scar Tissue’ is one of my favorite Frusciante performances. I love the slide solos, and the main guitar parts are so economical, just like so much of his writing/playing. Obviously, you can hear his influences such as Hendrix, etc., but the parts he composes are uniquely his own. They are always deceivingly hard to pull off and most of the time you can sing his solos note for note. To me, that’s a mark of a great guitarist.”

— SADLER VADEN (SOLO, JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT)

“Every guitar part in ‘Under the Bridge’ is iconic. The beginning is very stark and nearly plain. When the hi-hats enter, you can hear the Jimi Hendrix influence; John deconstructed Hendrix’s vibe and built it back up into his own thing. Sure, you

can hear Jimi’s influence, but John’s invention is absolutely identifiable. The variety of sounds he gets from the beginning of the song through the bridge are equally iconic. From solemn-sounding chords in the beginning, to the slightly overdriven and nearly reverb-free compressed sound of the chorus, to that chorused sound in the refrain where it goes from A major to A minor… The song has everything.

— HELEN IBE

“One of the things I love most about John is his ability to fill up so much sound with so much simplicity. His parts leave room for the bass and drums to do their thing, but they outline the harmony. The hooks are always catchy, and they fill up just the right amount of space while leaving enough for the imagination to fill in some of the blanks. A lot of the riffs are just so hooky — all the parts are so cool in the way they interact. But it’s not like he’s playing huge chords to fill things out; he’s playing things that are actually a little more simple, with fewer notes than what a lot of other people would play. That plays into the technical and theoretical way he approaches things. He plays things that feel very catchy, interacting and weaving between the bass and the drums but also able to stand on their own.”

— CORY WONG

“When I started playing guitar, Californication was the biggest album in the world. I was immediately struck by John Frusciante’s slinky, funky, effortless style of riffing and soloing — often imitated, never duplicated.”

— NITA STRAUSS

“Frusciante’s playing on ‘Hey’ from Stadium Arcadium is impeccable. His clean guitar part creates this innocence that matches not only the vocal melody, but the tone of the overall piece. It creates this vibe to truly ride alongside the lyrics that Kiedis sings — all adding up to a guitar solo that can bring a man to his knees.”

— JOSH KENNEDY (THE BLACK MOODS)

“The version of ‘Don’t Forget Me’ from La Cigale feels like the entire band working at a fluidity you only find from people connecting to a moving force that’s beyond all of them. The way John is playing here feels otherworldly. I’d think that even he would say he was connected to something beyond our human comprehension, where you

“Black Summer”

“THROUGH ALL THE time that I wasn’t in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there were only a few years that I was even using guitar in my music. But I kept on practicing, because practicing is something I do to stimulate the brain in interesting ways. I still hadn’t written any songs, though. But now the possibility of me rejoining the band came into the air when Flea started talking to me about it, and so I picked up my guitar and I went, ‘Hmmm… I wonder if I can still write a rock song?’ Because my whole sense of melody had switched to a completely different vocabulary.

“My memory of it is that I picked up my guitar and ‘Black Summer’ came out. I wrote the initial idea for the verse and the chorus. I had a verse and chorus melody, too, but Anthony made up his own melody for the chorus and only used my melody that I had for the verse. And the thing he did in the chorus is way better than what I did originally.

“One thing I’m very into is chord changes, where the chords are almost like a melody, and they’re not dependent on the bass line moving with them. The changes and the little modulation things that take place in ‘Black Summer,’ the fact that there’s an A major chord in the chord progression in the verse, but then there’s an A minor chord in the next line, simple little things like that are the kind of things that I find interesting. Or having there be an E major chord in the chorus, but in the verses, the E chords are minor. These are the kind of little mental exercises that make writing chord changes fun for me. And it’s visceral. It’s not like I’m thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that be cute if I switched the major to a minor?’ It’s just that this is what moves me. And I also think it keeps a song moving in a way that makes unexpected feelings come up. Even if you’re a nonmusician, when that moment happens, a shift in your emotional reaction takes place.”

“Veronica”

“FLEA AND I, we’ve always done these things called ‘faceoffs.’ If we’ve been jamming and maybe we’ve got a good verse that we came up with, but it needs another section, in the old days we used to literally put our foreheads next to each other and give each other kind of a mean look. And then it would be, ‘Okay, I’ll go outside. You can stay here.’ We’d go in separate rooms, and I’d write a section and Flea would write a section. We’d both attempt to write a chorus or a bridge or whatever it was, and then we’d come back into the room and one guy would play everybody his part, the other guy plays everybody his part, and one of them makes it into the song. Or sometimes both of them made it into the song.

“Late in the tracking process we were doing that for a song I’d come up with that’s actually not on this record. We did a faceoff for the chorus, and the part I came in with, Rick and Anthony both immediately said, ‘That’s gotta be its own song!’ And so I went into my bedroom that night with that part and I was just like, ‘What are we missing?’ ‘What don’t we have in any of these songs?’ And what I came up with was tempo changes. I’m a big fan of tempo changes. It’s one of my favorite things about Black Sabbath — their first four records have all these tempo changes that take place within the same song. Another example would be ‘Some Velvet Morning’ by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra or ‘We Can Work It Out’ by the Beatles. I thought, ‘That’s something we don’t have on any of our songs — a chorus that’s a completely different feel and tempo than the verse. And that became the object of ‘Veronica.’ The verse is in 4/4, but the chorus has a triplet feel.

“Another thing about the song is that wawawawow kind of filter effect in the verse. Some people probably think it’s a guitar effect, but it’s actually my modular synthesizer. And we did all these backwards reverb treatments, sometimes on one instrument, but sometimes on the whole band, to make those tempo changes seem even more fluid. My ear is always looking for things like that — how can we make the recording more colorful without compromising the rawness of it?”

“The Heavy Wing”

“THERE WAS SOME song, it was either by Syd Barrett or the Move, where it was a really great song and the chords were E major, D major and A major. And I thought, ‘Those chords

can be so powerful. I should write something with those chords.’ But I also thought, ‘Let’s start with those chords and then see what other realms I can take it to.’

“I started the song with just a simple funk riff. Because of my obsession with breakbeats and electronic music, I listen to a lot of funk music from the late Sixties and early Seventies. And so I thought, ‘I’ll start out with a riff that sounds like you could be getting into a funk song, but then it’ll go into this psychedelic world.’

“The guitar in the verse is treated with the modular synth, just to give it some subtle sonic movement. And in the breakdown before the solo, you hear the same guitar playing the same part as in the intro to the song, but being sent through a more pronounced modular treatment. There’s also a modular treatment on the guitar in the last four bars of the solo on ‘Black Summer’ — very subtle, but stereo — and it made a big difference. These are just more examples of my using the synth rather than guitar pedals.

“For the guitar solo, I had my ’62 Strat, which has been my main guitar since I rejoined the band the first time, for Californication, and I was playing it really loud through all four cabinets of my Marshall. Like, so loud that I had to wear headphones or I would blow my ear off. I was in a pretty big room, so I had really good range to be able to stand at different distances and move around while I was playing to get different kinds of feedback from different places.

“There’s a point in the solo where I’m feeding back and bending a couple of notes back and forth, and then it goes to a higher octave, and then it goes to two octaves higher than that. It almost sounds like the kind of screeching feedback that people try to avoid, but you still hear that I’m bending the notes the same way I was when the feedback started. I didn’t plan that. I had no idea that those notes were going to happen. But when something like that happens, all you can do is just hold it and hope you don’t lose it. I really like that aspect of soloing — not so much planning something out and being like, ‘All right, here we go,’ but more just listening as you’re doing it, and then responding to what you’re listening to.”

“The Great Apes”

“‘THE GREAT APES’ was something Flea brought in. In the chorus, the guitar part I play is just what his bass line brought out of me. It’s definitely a Fugazi-inspired thing. The fact that I’m picking fast, but playing a melody that’s kind of a slow melody, that feeling that it expresses is something that I hear in their music a fair amount. At the same time, those slides that happen in the midst of it are very much Johnny Thunders-inspired.

“I’ll tell you a little studio trick that we did on this one, because it sounds like I’m doing something more amazing than I actually am. At the outro, Flea and I do this switch. For most of the song, during the chorus I’m playing the melody we’ve been talking about and Flea’s playing the chord changes. But when it goes to the outro, I’m playing Flea’s chord changes and he’s playing my melody. And somehow it sounds more bass-y, by the way, when I start playing the chord changes!

“Another thing about the outro: I’m playing those chord changes at the end, but then in the last few bars of the song I go back to soloing. I had two guitars — I’m pretty sure it was my Stratocaster through a distortion pedal on one side and a Yamaha SG 2000 straight into a Marshall on the other, and I would double them for that Black Sabbathtype of power. But I started soloing so fast that I couldn’t double it. I tried, but it was way too fast. And so we did an artificial double for that, with delay and some tape speed manipulation. The tape is just slightly moving, so the parts are not exactly the same. Because when you double something, that little difference in the parts is what gives it that power. So what you’re hearing gives the impression that I actually played the same thing twice, even though in this case I didn’t.”

“Tangelo”

“WE WERE TOWARD the end of the writing process, and I was thinking in terms of, ‘Okay, what styles are we missing?’ Because for a while we had a lot of funk and we had a lot of fun music, but it seemed like we were kind of light on heavy stuff. And so that’s when I was bringing in ‘The Heavy Wing’ and some other ones. But I also realized we were missing very soft, gentle things as well. And so I wrote ‘Tangelo’ just to fill up that space. I figured I’d write a fingerpicking thing for acoustic guitar. And again, it was one of those things where I had a melody, and what Anthony did with it was inspired by my melody, but it was also completely different in a lot of ways. He brought it into this almost Lou Reed-esque kind of half-talking, half-singing thing, whereas my melody was a very strict kind of melody that followed the chord changes.

“I played the acoustic part on two different guitars. They’re both Martins — I don’t remember the models, but these are guitars I’ve had for a long time. One of them is a brown Martin that’s kind of small. It’s from the Forties or Fifties. And then the other one, it’s a Martin from the Sixties that looks like the guitar John Lennon plays in the Magical Mystery Tour film. Those guitars are my babies.

“The overdubs on this one were fun. I remember it was the very last day we were in the recording phase of the album, and I was supposed to be going home that day. I felt like I didn’t have anything left inside me. I felt completely drained. And then I thought, ‘Let me just try a little thing…’ I started with one Mellotron, and then I wound up overdubbing synths and Mellotrons feverishly for, like, three hours, coming up with those parts that start in the second verse and go up until the last verse. It felt like it lifted the song to this other level. And it was really unexpected — I thought I had nothing in me and then I had all that come out of me. It was a really nice way to leave the studio.”