John "Red Hot Chili Peppers" Frusciante interview regarding Frank Zappa's influence
Hoodoo
L.A. Weekly Delivers the Arts
Thursday July 29, 8:35 pm ET
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040729/lath137_1.html
Plus
Love and Loathing in Boston
LOS ANGELES, July 29 /PRNewswire/
[snip]
John Payne interviews Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante
about Frank Zappa's influence, the need for spontaneity and his
ambitious solo project -- recording and releasing an album a month for
up to a year.
[snip]
Charles Ulrich
Hoodoo <hoo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> Press Release Source: L.A. Weekly
>
> L.A. Weekly Delivers the Arts
>
> Thursday July 29, 8:35 pm ET
> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040729/lath137_1.html
And the actual article is here:
<http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/36/triple-payne.php>
--Charles
Stu Mark
Changing Channels
John Fruscianteąs brave new frequencies
by John Payne
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time talking to guitarist-composer John
Frusciante, best known as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but also
recognized by those close to him as a bit of a seeker ‹ of new ways of
making music, and new ways of unlocking the doors of perception. Frusciante
is in the final stages of a very ambitious dream project, which is to record
and release an album a month for up to a year. So far, one has been
released, The Will to Death. The second, Automatic Writing, due August 10,
is the first half of a collection thatąll come out under the band name
Ataxia, recorded with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally and Bicycle Thief drummer
Josh Klinghoffer, the latter of whom also collaborates with Frusciante on
The Will to Death and the forthcoming albums in the series.
These wide-ranging (acoustic/electric, vocal/instrumental,
short-form/long-sprawl) recordings reject modernityąs emphasis on
painstakingly slow and scientific methods for constructing pop product with
digital perfection. Fruscianteąs new music is all recorded and mixed on
magnetic tape as quickly and spontaneously as humanly possible, with 16
tracks at most. He is, he says, fed up with the way late-vintage studio
technology has stultified the creative process. In order to be immersed in
the moment, with the possibility of glimpsing the future, he feels, itąs
important to look to the past. Musicąs łspirits,˛ he says, would tell you
the same.
L.A. WEEKLY: These records are different from the way most pop music is
conceived and created.
JOHN FRUSCIANTE: I wanted to make records inexpensively, and I wanted to
make them quickly. I would listen to something like Frank Zappaąs Hot Rats
album, where if he played a guitar solo, there was one take, maybe two, and
any musician who was playing with him had to be good enough to be able to do
shit in a couple of takes. All the great recorded music from the ą50s was
played live [in the studio], to the ą60s, where a record was often made in a
few hours.
And I was inspired by the great performances people do when they go live on
a radio show and perform, when the pressureąs on, and they respond to that.
We did a little test where we had two days in the studio and we mainly
recorded three songs in those two days, and once we saw that we could go
that quickly, we just started going off ‹ we did basically six records in
six months.
With the same kind of technical setup?
I have a certain amount of equipment that I bring to studios myself, but we
go to studios that have tape machines, and we put 16 tracks on 24-track
machines. Once we started doing The Will to Death, we started doing other
things to be contrary to the way people do it nowadays; we really tried to
pay attention to the way the people did it in the old days. In the old days,
you didnąt wait till the mix to make decisions, you had to make decisions
while you were recording.
That steamy, exotic quality that dub producer Lee Perry got had a lot to do
with the fact that he used four-tracks and crammed so much into the
recordings, so the tracks bled and smeared all over each other.
On my machine, when you take three tracks and mix them onto one track, they
sound better after the bounce than they did before. Thereąs something about
squeezing in that space thatąs really a wonderful thing.
Analog sounds the best to me, and I feel thatąs how my music should be
recorded. Iąm not gonna go on a big tirade against computers, because a lot
of music I really love is done on them. I would point out, though, that
somehow, as convenient as computers make things, albums take longer to
record now than they did in the ą50s or the ą70s. So I donąt know if the
convenience is actually convenient; I think itąs just the illusion of
convenience, and in actuality it makes things more complicated.
Might be that the computer confronts the musician with an infinity of
choices; that can be paralyzing. You, however, talk about working with
restrictions. When you know you only have 8 tracks or 16 tracks . . .
. . . You have to work with it, and it brings the best out of you. Magnetic
tape is the way I like doing it; itąs really fun for me. I like doing first
takes, I donąt like doing multiple takes, I donąt like comping, I donąt like
doing all that bullshit. For me, the first take has a special excitement to
it.
How are the Ataxia albums different conceptually from the others in the
series?
The pieces start out as jams by Joe Lally and Josh and myself; then I put
vocals over them, then those vocals turn the jams into songs, although the
bass lines are very repetitive ‹ itąs very Public Imageinspired, real
repetitive bass lines, or a big dub sound on the bass, and lots of fucked-up
guitar playing, lots of dynamics and so on.
When musicians have focused on capturing spontaneity and giving it a shape ‹
rather than using music to express their egos ‹ it has resulted in a lot of
timeless music.
That was a big part of making these records. As human beings, we have these
factors of randomness that come into anything we do. Weąre not in control of
how itąs gonna come out; if I plan on singing a note, my voice might crack
on that note, or be a bit wobbly ‹ the idea is to be ready for things like
that to happen, and welcome them.
I like seeing the music change over the course of time. Iąm in a phase where
I like playing guitar thatąs out of my control, either that thereąs so much
energy coming through me that Iąm matching it that way, or just playing in a
way that leaves a lot open to noise and feedback. You hear a lot of that on
the Ataxia and Inside of Emptiness records [the latter will be the fourth in
the set].
It stands to reason that when you keep the ego out of it, you have a better
chance of making music that stands the test of time, because itąs both part
of you and beyond you.
Thereąs energy around us all the time thatąs as responsible for the music
that people make as the people who make it are, and the more egotistical
control a person puts toward what they do, the less these spirits have of
working through the people. When those spirits work, itąs within those
elements that are uncontrollable.
You can see spirits on walls that are cracking: You see icons and events
going on, and people doing things. This is the unseen world, and this is
where it shows through in our world. Because we live in a linear time
continuum, if we look at a wall thatąs been falling apart for 10 years, and
we see faces in it, to our eyes it looks like theyąre still. But in a place
where they donąt have a relationship with time, thatąs the reality. Thatąs
the spiritsą way of connecting with us. If I play guitar in such a way that
Iąm totally in control, those spirits donąt have a chance to come through;
they might have come through in the original thought or conception, but they
have no place in the performance of it. If I just grab my guitar and I start
jamming the pick into the pickups with a really loud sound, and just putting
all the energy I can into it but not actually playing any notes, Iąm not
responsible for the sound that comes out; the energy that came through me is
responsible for the sound that comes out.
By the way, Iąm not saying my music comes from the spirits and yours
doesnąt; all the crap music everywhere in the world, it all comes from
spirits. Crappy music comes from crappy spirits.
It must be satisfying to have nearly completed this major project.
All I know is that the six months when I recorded this music was the most
productive time of my life, and Iąll always remember it as the first time in
my life that I ever felt like I was one with my dreams.
Roint
glad that John's doing something to temper the rather... "bad" songwriting
on By The Way :-).
Did anyone know that a song on the pepper's first album was written by
Frank Zappa? It was called "Mommy Where's Daddy?" I never bought their
first album, because even the band members themselves didn't like it, but
I'd be interested in finding out how they got Zappy to write a song for
them....
El Rointo
Charles Ulrich
Roint <ro...@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> Did anyone know that a song on the pepper's first album was written by
> Frank Zappa?
No.
> It was called "Mommy Where's Daddy?" I never bought their
> first album, because even the band members themselves didn't like it, but
> I'd be interested in finding out how they got Zappy to write a song for
> them....
According to the AMG, the song was written by the band members.
--Charles
Roint
being written by zappa:
Bill
We've discussed this inconclusively before ....
Oddly, I do not have their first album on cd (I have the rest).
Listening to a short snippet at cduniverse makes me doubt FZ
had anything to do with the song, unless at some point later
on they sample or quote one of his songs.