Red Hot Chili Peppers - John Frusciante - Red hot chili peppers in a funky sauce

It's the album Californication (1999) that catapults the Red Hot Chili Peppers into newspapers and TV screens worldwide, thanks to its 9 million copies sold. In truth, the Red Hot had already reached an even bigger peak eight years earlier, with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, but the band's origins go back even further.

Singer Anthony Kiedis (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1962) and bassist Michael Balzary (aka Flea, Melbourne, Australia, 1962) were already friends at Fairfax High School at the age of sixteen. Flea had founded Anthem together with guitarist Hillel Slovak (Haifa, Israel, 1962) and drummer Jack Irons (California, 1962). When Anthony decided to join the band, the name was changed to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Slovak and Irons, however, had been working on Anthem for a long time, and when the Red Hot signed their first contract with EMI in 1982, the two decided to leave the new group and carry on with their own project, renamed "What Is This?". Taking their place on the band's self-titled debut album were Jack Sherman on guitar and Cliff Martinez on drums.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers came out in 1984, preceded by the single "Out in L.A." (the first song the band ever recorded), and achieved decent success in the United States, mostly thanks to "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" and "Get Up And Jump". The failure of the "What Is This?" project brought the two original members back into the band, which in 1985 produced its second album, Freaky Styley; although it didn't represent the best of the Californian group's output, it earned the Peppers a certain amount of notoriety outside the States too ("Freaky Styley" and "Jungle Man" were the two singles pulled from the album). The years that followed seemed to pave the way toward the band's decline, despite their growing success: Anthony and Hillel were clearly losing control of their lives, and their drug addiction began to take its toll on the band's music. In particular, the guitarist started having serious health problems, and it wasn't rare for him to hit wrong notes or forget songs altogether during shows.

In 1987, the third album, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, proved fairly controversial: EMI demanded that the title of the song "Party On Your Pussy" be changed to "Special Secret Song Inside" and that the lyrics be left out of the booklet. "Fight Like A Brave" and "Me & My Friends" were nonetheless two big hits, alongside "Behind The Sun", whose video was all over MTV. The album also features a cover of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues". By now the Peppers were a phenomenon in the US that went well beyond music, making their name chiefly through their image as an irreverent, destructive band. But Slovak's condition kept worsening, and the band began to consider firing the guitarist. Meanwhile, at the start of 1988, the Abbey Road EP came out, a collection of four tracks plus a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire", its cover showing the band in their now-famous recreation of the Beatles' pose, wearing nothing but socks to cover their genitals.

But on June 27th, Hillel Slovak died of an overdose. The band seemed irreparably doomed: Jack Irons blamed the music world for his friend's death and refused all contact with the outside world (he would later spend time in a psychiatric facility before becoming, in 1995, the drummer for Pearl Jam); Kiedis retreated to a small village in Mexico to get clean, and it was only thanks to Flea that the group carried on: the bassist convinced Anthony to start again in their late friend's name, and eighteen-year-old John Frusciante (New York, 1970) stepped in to take his place in the band. John had been a diehard fan of the group, and Anthony and Flea had once taken him along to an audition to join Thelonious Monster: "John was a perfect clone of Hillel," Anthony recalls, "not just in the way he played, having absorbed his idol's immense technique, but also in the way he carried himself and moved on stage." It was from that audition that John Frusciante emerged as the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new guitarist. "Replacing the drummer was an extremely difficult thing," Flea admits. "On one of the many tedious audition days, in walks Chad Smith (St. Paul, Minnesota, 1962): he looked like an idiot with that bandana in his hair and his Metallica t-shirt on!" Anthony continues: "We were about to say: Next!, when he started playing. The studio was suddenly overrun by a horde of psychedelic gorillas: he looked like a madman, pounding the drums and screaming at the top of his lungs."

The quartet was finally whole again, and within just a few months the album Mother's Milk was ready (preceded by the single "Knock Me Down", dedicated to the late guitarist; the album also features a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground"). It was 1989, and success returned for the Red Hot; the album sold 500,000 copies, and the band decided to aim for the European market too, leaving their old label for Warner.

But 1991 was the Peppers' golden year: Blood Sugar Sex Magik contains 17 tracks, all recorded live, and went quadruple platinum. "Give It Away" won the Grammy for "Best Hard Rock Track", "Under The Bridge" is Anthony's recollection of his drug-ravaged life in L.A. a few years earlier, and the singles "I Could Have Lied", "Breaking The Girl" and "Suck My Kiss", together with the title track, marked the birth of a new musical genre: crossover, a blend of wildly different musical styles never before combined, which spelled the end of hardcore as the single-minded dictator of underground culture.

On Blood Sugar Sex Magik, punk and hardcore alternate with hip hop, off-beat rhythms, ska and hard rock. A massive world tour then kicked off, running through all of 1992, but on March 7th, during a stop in Japan, John Frusciante announced his departure: "I can't stay with the band any longer, I've reached a point where I can't do justice to what I've created. I can no longer give the band what I'm supposed to give it... just tell the world I've gone crazy." Flea would later say that John simply didn't get along with the label, which had unfairly left him off the album cover. Arik Marshall finished out the tour on guitar. After the release of What Hits!?, a collection of seventeen classic tracks plus "Show Me Your Soul", from the soundtrack of "Pretty Woman", in 1994 the new guitarist was Dave Navarro (Santa Monica, California, 1967), formerly of Jane's Addiction. A year later, the new record, One Hot Minute, was ready — definitely more commercial than its predecessor — featuring the hits "Aeroplane" and "My Friends" (written by Anthony in honor of his friend River Phoenix, who died in 1993), and Flea's masterpiece "Pea", which earned him the title of "Best Bass Player" in 1996. 1996 also saw the release of the single "Love Rollercoaster", featured on the soundtrack of "Beavis and Butthead Do America".

Toward the end of 1997, John Frusciante was hospitalized due to drug abuse: the Red Hot rushed to his bedside. It was a sign of the partially-clean guitarist's return, officially announced on April 22, 1998, along with news that a new album, Californication, would arrive within the year. The album proved to be a top seller, immediately landing in the top 5 albums in both the US and the UK. More than nine million copies were sold, and five hugely successful singles were pulled from it: "Scar Tissue", "Around The World", "Otherside", "Californication" and "Road Trippin'". Yet another world tour was crowned by an appearance at Woodstock and a concert in Moscow's Red Square, two of the biggest musical events of the '90s. In 2000, rounding things off, came the compilation Best of, while fans awaited a new record, due in early 2002, with the band having finally found a stable line-up again thanks to Frusciante — and seemingly in no hurry to let it go for anything in the world.

After selling more than 9 million copies worldwide with Californication, the Red Hot Chili Peppers returned with By The Way (2002), sixteen tracks that, however, suffer from the sheer blandness into which the whole band had sunk. It's safe to say this is not an innovative work from the Los Angeles outfit. After Frusciante's return and the explosive success of "Californication", the band now seems creatively spent, and it's hard to pin down just what's behind all this. But rather than dwell on the causes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' decline, we can measure its effects: "By The Way" takes to its extreme the lack of rhythmic drive that already pervaded "Californication", even though, on that earlier record, many tracks still recalled the now-forgotten funk-rock atmospheres. The overall mood of the album is uniform and unusually polished, as if engineered for supermarket-grade mellowness — one could almost call it a kind of revival, in a toned-down key, or even a degeneration, of pop art. And yet the Peppers keep sending out messages of "californication", as in "Throw Away Your Television" (one of the few tracks worth noting), paradoxically getting swallowed up themselves by the deadly spiral of commerce. Kiedis remains as devoted to sentimentality as ever, though it now lands with far less impact than the "sexual" spontaneity of earlier work. Flea seems to have been reduced to the same effects-laden style that always set him apart in the past, but this time without ever truly standing out, as he occasionally still did on the previous album. Tighter, more complex rhythms would have made much better use of Smith's technique. Frusciante, for his part, still fills the harmonic gaps with his psychedelic falsetto, yet his solos are no longer a brief journey through vivid colors, but feel like mere filler devoted to the non-creativity of the almighty dollar. Tracks worth appreciating for their "mildly spicy" aggression are the two singles "By The Way" and "Can't Stop", which taste bland to anyone used to hot red chili peppers in their ears. If this album winks at the top of the charts with one eye, it certainly closes the other to the devastating sincerity that once defined Red Hot Chili Peppers' music.

By The Way claimed many victims. It let down all the old funk-rock listeners, driving away a good chunk of the audience almost for good, while winning over a very large slice of the market instead: teenagers. They are now the Peppers' audience. A band of forty-somethings (forgive us, Frusciante), grappling with the comforts of a settled life, unable to picture themselves still playing a kind of music they no longer make (or will they ever again?).

Sealing the definitive farewell to the American "alternative" scene is the Greatest Hits (2003, Warner). One can understand, and even justify, Warner striking while the iron's hot, squeezing as many dollars as possible out of the Californian quartet.

On a musical level (which is the level that concerns us here), we're faced with yet another disappointment; not so much because of the track selection, which is inherently arbitrary (though including two songs from an album released the year before does raise an eyebrow), but because of the new tracks: "Fortune Faded" and "Save The Population". The former has a long history and a troubled gestation; it was born in 2001 as a near-perfect synthesis of funk-rock soul and melodic soul, but within three years it had turned into an overproduced pop hit. As for "Save The Population", it's probably best not to dwell on it. This collection does have one redeeming quality: it brings back into the light a little gem from the Peppers' golden era, "Soul To Squeeze", left buried for years as a b-side. Now it finally gets the spotlight, the stage, and the recognition it deserves.

As if that weren't enough, a live album came out in 2004. Live In Hyde Park (2004, Warner) is a recording of the best moments from three consecutive concerts the Red Hot Chili Peppers played in the summer of 2004 at London's largest park. Kiedis and co. were at the peak of their fame, drawing a crowd of 250,000. Between old songs ("Give It Away", "Under The Bridge"), covers (even 45 Grave's "Black Cross") and new tracks ("Rolling Sly Stone" and "Leverage Of Space"), the album at least sounds genuine, and despite featuring the usual songs, it confirms that live, at least, the Red Hot Chili Peppers can still deliver something. The new track "Rolling Sly Stone", a tribute to Mick Jagger's band and to Sly Stone, tries to strike a balance between the band's past and its new direction, while "Leverage Of Space" buries any hope for the band's compositional future.

Stadium Arcadium (2006) is the band's ninth studio album.

The single "Dani California" is a hulking, plasticky slab of hard rock, in the style of Jane's Addiction, Velvet Revolver, and surely the Guns 'n' Roses yet to come (and if that weren't enough, let's add that the lifted melody from Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is grounds for an immediate lawsuit). A hefty structure, big fat guitars, and a nicely melodic chorus: three of the most banal ingredients around.

John Frusciante's hand is evident, to the point that, not unreasonably, the album could be seen as a direct offshoot of his own Shadows Collide With People, released four years earlier by now. Not just Frusciante, though. Flea and Chad Smith had never been so prominent since the days of Californication.

On the first disc (titled "Jupiter"), alongside the drab "Snow Hey Oh" and "Charlie", "Stadium Arcadium" stands out, a big acoustic ballad in the tradition of "My Friends" and "Otherside". The same goes for "Strip My Mind", though here we're closer to the more recent "Don't Forget Me", and for "Slow Cheatin'", a little pop gem with an unforgettable melody, an easy chorus, and relaxed, happy vibes. Either we've fallen in love, or the Chili Peppers' melodies have shed their sugary, saccharine clothes and gained more bite and incisiveness. Next comes the playful funk-pop of "Hump de Rump" and "She's Only 18", which dusts off the American hard rock-blues tradition (Jimi Hendrix above all), sweetened with the usual cloying dose of pop (here really too sugary, given the context too), Anthony Kiedis's favorite move. Special mention also goes to "Warlocks", a funk opener with Kiedis torn between rap and pop, and "Wet Sand", branded with Frusciante's blood, so clearly is it his genetic offspring.

The best shots were fired right away, and there's precious little left in the Californians' magazine, and what's left are blunted bullets. The fourteen tracks of the second disc (titled "Mars") go by quickly, painless and ordinary, leaving a flat aftertaste. And to think that "Desecration Smile", placed there to open the dance, didn't bode badly at all: a country-ish march dressed up with California's flowers and colors, a driving rhythm and a simple melody. In the half hour that follows, though, very little happens: things pick up when we hear the final versions of "Ready Made" and "21st Century", which had been played live the year before. The first impressions were sadly the right ones: "Ready Made" is a bloated hard rock number, an eighties riff-fest with an FM-radio chorus (the sharpest-eared listeners won't miss a near-plagiarism of the defunct Creed). "21st Century" is a Frusciante divertissement, stuffing a pop melody with effects and chords while Anthony Kiedis coos over it. Then "Storm In A Teacup" arrives, and suddenly we're plunged back into that drugged-out, derelict world of "One Hot Minute": same sounds, same atmospheres, same situations.

Five years to recharge the batteries and gaze back at the snapshots of Stadium Arcadium's success, and the Peppers find themselves back in the studio. But Frusciante skips the appointment, and not for a doctor's visit. John leaves the group for the second time. Kiedis and company look at each other and bring in thirty-year-old Josh Klinghoffer. But the formula doesn't change, with the same strengths and weaknesses that have marked the band's last twenty years, from their definitive rise to their multi-platinum confirmations. The new album, I'm With You, produced as usual by Rick Rubin, doesn't move the needle one bit and keeps roaming the territory of an enjoyable funky pop-rock, at times sharp enough to bite. That's especially true on the opening, rather agitated "Monarchy Of Roses" and "Factory Of Faith", which seize on some good electro-disco ideas, or on "Did I Let You Know", which manages to embrace salsa dance steps complete with an unexpected trumpet solo. For the rest, routine rules, though it's not bothersome, relying on tight structures and the band's usual excellent chops.

In 2016 the Red Hot Chili Peppers are, give or take, 54 years old apiece (if we leave out the thirty-six-year-old Josh); they've rightly left the pranks of youth behind and shed their skin. With The Getaway, though, the Peppers decided to shuffle the deck and create a melting pot that absorbs the distinctive traits of everything they've made over their career. It is, in fact, a much less accessible record than the last three, one that keeps growing with repeated listens, that struggles to feel familiar on a single sitting, but that can undoubtedly boast some excellent tracks. A small revolution, on closer inspection. It's no coincidence that, after 25 years with Rick Rubin at the production helm, on "The Getaway" they chose to entrust themselves to the less pristine direction of Danger Mouse. The result is fairly varied yet cohesive: there's the sugary ballad "The Longest Wave", or the Daft Punk-flavored aftertaste of "Go Robot", and then the piano, already introduced on the previous album, which here manages to find its own space without turning saccharine. Just listen to the closing "Dreams Of A Samurai", which also recalls some of the sounds found on "OHM", whether for the unexpected pain seeping through it, or the powerful bassline running under the song, or the backing vocals, or the saturated sounds, or Josh's guitar, which is starting to carve out its own path. The lyrics, meanwhile, take shape as an intimate narrative, in which Kiedis immerses us in his own weariness, in the chase after a world he no longer feels is his. Or take "The Hunter", where it's Josh playing bass while Flea himself sits at the piano, as Kiedis lightly sketches a portrait of the life cycle and the anguish of growing old, a theme that – understandably – recurs more than once across the album. And then there's "Sick Love", with Elton John accompanying them on piano, one of the catchiest tracks, and without doubt the most classic.

Among the most positive aspects of the record is the fact that the Californians are starting to think like a band again: with the old tension between Kiedis's pop sensibility and Frusciante's experimentation left in the past, it now seems that each member is reclaiming their own space. Kiedis is by now locked into his classic monochrome vocal timbre, but at least he's trying to break out of it, and this time he can be forgiven for it, because he seems to have rediscovered his gift of the gab, and indeed it had been a long time since the band's songs featured lyrics this inspired and sincere (though he hasn't lost his taste for nonsense). An example? On "Feasting On The Flowers" he goes back to chewing over words in lyrics that sound like tongue-twisters, in a delicate tribute to a lost friend. The song seems to reference Hillel Slovak, and like every track the Peppers have dedicated to their tragically departed friend, from "Knock Me Down" to "My Lovely Man", it stands out for its beauty and intensity. Here too Josh does excellent work, crafting a catchy atmosphere despite the sadness of the words. And if it all starts to feel too soft, "Detroit" and "This Ticonderoga", the two most driving tracks on the record, step in to restore the balance.

A good album that, besides the usual instant classic the Californians deliver with every release (in this case "Dark Necessities", a new "Can't Stop"), offers plenty of substance to listen to, earning itself a more than respectable place in the band's discography.

John Frusciante's umpteenth return to the fold, in place of Josh Klinghoffer, and Rick Rubin's repositioning back in the producer's chair, bring the Chili Peppers back to the past, and not just in terms of the line-up.

Unlimited Love is the result of this historic reunion, which over the course of 2022 brings the Los Angeles band back onto the scene six years on from their previous record.

The album is decidedly long (73 minutes) and unfolds across seventeen tracks that unfortunately confirm the old adage that quantity isn't always synonymous with quality.

A few interesting moments are not lacking, to be fair. Frusciante's guitar steals the show on the opener "Black Summer" (which vaguely recalls, with all due distinctions, "Under The Bridge") and on the toe-tapping "She's A Lover" and "Whatchu Thinking".

Of course, it's not just the New York guitarist's flair on display. Flea's nimble basswork is the star of "Here Ever After", with Kiedis in fine form rattling off his classic rap-flow at speed, something he does again on the fun "One Way Traffic".

The funk vibes continue on "Aquatic Mouth Dance", where Flea and Chad Smith lock into each other, just like old times, in a thrilling rhythm section.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers confirm once again on Unlimited Love that their individual technical skills, after decades of celebrated service, are absolutely beyond question — but that alone isn't enough. In fact, it paradoxically becomes an aggravating factor, because four musicians this talented cannot and should not settle for a bare pass.

Just six months after Unlimited Love, the redhot peppers show strong creative continuity with the release of Return Of The Dream Canteen, another hefty album (seventeen tracks, just like its predecessor) that finds the Los Angeles band once again lined up in their classic formation, with John Frusciante on guitar and Rick Rubin in the producer's chair.

The peculiarity of comparing two such closely released works, essentially made at the same time, only sharpens the flaws of its predecessor, which was too sprawling and propped up solely by the band members' sheer artistic stature.

Mind you, even among these seventeen tracks there's no shortage of forgettable moments, as has often happened on Peppers records, especially the ones running well beyond the standard length (see "Stadium Arcadium"), but the positive takeaway from this "double album" overall is a sharper focus in the ideas that shaped the final project.

The record blends, with more than decent results, a return to their comfort zone, where the driving funk-rock crossover remains their signature move ("Fake As Fu@k" and "Afterlife"), alongside a few detours into other territory, even venturing into convincing blues harmonies ("Carry Me Home"), likeable forays into 80s sounds ("In The Snow"), polished pop weaves with jazz undertones thanks to the sax in the closing section ("My Cigarette"), or the shifting textures of the fun single "Tippa My Tongue", flanked by sections that recall seventies echoes.

Kiedis's lyrics, delivered in solid vocal form, show their age, perhaps more banal (fortunately for him) because they're no longer tied to the heavy personal struggles that — there's no denying it — once pushed him to voice ideas and content of undeniable interest.

As with every one of their albums though, the moments that leave a mark are the ones built on the rock-solid rhythms forged by Flea and Chad Smith's bass/drums partnership, sequences worthy of absolute masters of the craft ("The Drummer" and "Roulette"), or where a rejuvenated Frusciante can unleash his inimitable flair in full, focused freedom, as in the tribute to the great Van Halen ("Eddie"), in the explosive "Reach Out" and in the biting "Bag Of Grins".

"Return Of The Dream Canteen" puts the Red Hot Chili Peppers back on the right track. Nothing sensational or groundbreaking, as noted, but a clear improvement over the questionable works that have marked their recent artistic path.

Contributions by Davide Sechi ("I'm With You"), Giulia Quaranta ("The Getaway"), Cristiano Orlando ("Unlimited Love", "Return Of The Dream Canteen", "Maya", ".i: – :ii.")

***

John Frusciante: a solitary escape

by Pier Eugenio Torri

Alongside the Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Frusciante builds himself a new, different, deeply personal artistic life. It's 1991, during the recording sessions for Blood Sugar Sex Magik, when Frusciante starts entertaining the idea of devoting himself to something of his own, something that expresses exactly what he's feeling, something not filtered through other people's personalities, something authentic.

A guitar, an amateur recorder and little else. These are the technical tools used for his first solo album, Niandra LaDes – Usually Just A T-Shirt (1995, American). The birth was more complicated than the finished product suggests. Intrigued and stimulated by what surrounded him, by the music he was listening to and by the creeping glam vibe he felt somewhat under his skin, he plans a concept album featuring a "female/male" character who also appears on the cover: Niandra LaDes, precisely.

The influence of Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" is clear. The idea is ambitious, perhaps too much so for a twenty-year-old who had devoured punk, funk and metal throughout his adolescence.

He certainly has no shortage of "musical" and "melodic" ideas, and having abandoned the cyclical concept project at the last moment, he churns out a record that's a double album at least in terms of the number of songs on the tracklist: 25.

A more cohesive first half, with songs that seem crafted to have a beginning and an end: "As Can Be", "My Smile Is A Rifle", "Curtains", "Been Insane" are just a few of the tracks carrying that trademark Frusciante guitar touch, the one that forged such a deep bond between him and his fans. The off-key, drunken, raw voice dematerializes into a childlike falsetto, mirroring the childish themes running through some of these songs, just like the voices layered into "Untitled #8", or the child Frusciante singing on "Untitled #9", or the album's dedication to Clara, the young daughter of his friend Flea. On Niandra, Frusciante lays bare his weak, fragile, feminine, ambiguous side, putting on record all the moodiness and existential malaise typical of the addict, the reluctant homeless man. Recorded at home on an amateur tape recorder. Just him, a guitar, a few scraps of paper to sketch out some rambling lines, and a lot, a lot of drugs. "Your Pussy's Glued To A Building On Fire" is the most fully realized track of the album's first half, and perhaps one of its finest moments overall. The voice, cracked by drugs, paints a desperate melody over guitar work that shifts from simple accompanying chords to distorted solos.

The second part of the record is the "No Named" section: all the songs are, fittingly, untitled, labeled simply "Untitled". The choice not to give them titles reflects the makeshift nature of the project; these are sketches of melodies, hypotheses of songs, unfinished pieces that sometimes revolve around a well-placed riff, sometimes around a melody.

In this world steeped in "incompleteness", a couple of tracks manage to stand out as genuinely interesting: "Untitled #3" and "Untitled #11". The first is a semi-acoustic ballad of just under two minutes, with a slowed-down riff and a hoarse, drunken, distorted spoken-word coda; the second opens with an instrumental/noise intro before settling into a more melodic section with a catchy chord progression. (Having set the child aside, Frusciante stages a new character: the addict. It's not a mask or a role to play, it's simply himself. A desperate, broken man.)

John Frusciante begins his descent into hell: he shuts himself away at home for months, spending anonymous days between drugs and music. Tired of everything, of success, of friends, he even drifts away from his one true love: music. He cuts all ties with the world and starts painting, living off whatever he has left.

He becomes a near-irredeemable drug addict, surviving eight overdoses. To pay for heroin, he decides to pick up the guitar again, and with the help of the few friends he has left (including Johnny Depp) he releases what is, to all intents and purposes, his second album: Smile From The Streets You Hold (1997, Birdman).

The record is horrendous and cacophonous. You can feel the illness, the suffering, the total depersonalization of a man who not long before had seemed capable of living a normal life. Drugs have hijacked his soul; Frusciante spirals into a vortex of paranoia and hallucinations. The songs on the album are the exact musical translation of a man at the end of his rope, tired of waking up in the morning, tired of looking at the sky. It's destructive, ferocious, abrasive music, devoid of catharsis. A musician adrift, broke, but unfortunately also without even the joy of playing, and this is the album's real limitation: there are no inspired moments, only fragments of a shattered life, shards of the vase of existence broken by drug addiction. Listening to "Smile From The Streets You Hold" means listening to the delirium of a mentally ill man at the absolute peak of his psychosis.

After four years of self-imposed exile and self-destruction, John Frusciante decides to get help, to begin the long battle to get clean; he checks into a specialized facility and, with the help of some friends, manages to win the most important battle of his life. Now he can return to the Red Hot Chili Peppers while also starting to write material of his own again. In 2001, To Record Only Water For Ten Days (2001, Warner) is released. The album is still a home recording, but this time you can sense a compositional evolution and, above all, some early, tentative attempts at arrangement appear. Alongside the acoustic guitar comes the synth, the true driving force of many of the album's tracks. For the first time on a Frusciante album, the songs have a beginning, a development and an end; perhaps that's exactly why the opening tracks "Going Inside", "Someone's", "The First Season" and "Away & Anywhere" rank among the best things he had written up to that point. This is lo-fi singer-songwriter rock rooted in Syd Barrett and Nick Drake, carried forward through the work of Daniel Johnston, and ultimately echoed in the countless lo-fi indie rock projects sprouting up like mushrooms these days. Add to that a love of Depeche Mode's music, clearly audible on this synth-pop-leaning album. Melodies and guitar riffs are Frusciante's weapon of choice; he's particularly good at them, and a more settled existence strips away the depressive melancholy that had, up until now, been his trademark.

Following his rediscovered love for music and life, Frusciante decides to give his fans a gift. So, in 2001, he releases an album, commonly known as the Internet album – From The Sounds Inside – entirely downloadable for free from his official website. Still-rough songs, demos, old ideas, alternative takes, unreleased material, all packaged into an album that would mark the beginning of a strong bond between the artist and his audience, forged through the internet. Listening to it now, you can spot the embryos of some songs that would later appear complete on subsequent albums. What matters here isn't the musical value – which is roughly on par with the first album – but the idea itself.

The big opportunity comes three years later from Warner, who had already backed him on the previous album. At last he would have access to a recording studio and a more substantial budget, and, most importantly, wider distribution and media visibility. When it comes to the crunch, Frusciante doesn't miss, releasing Shadows Collide With People (2004, Warner), an album that manages to distill all the music swirling around in his head. It's a record full of ideas, perhaps too many and not fully developed, but still a rich and varied offering. It moves from melodic indie rock ("Song To Play When You're Lonely") to something more elaborate ("Carvel"), from the usual surf-pop ditties ("Omission", "Ricky") to excursions into synthetic electronics and noise ("Failure 33 Project").

The project: six albums in six months

At the end of the By The Way sessions, Frusciante found himself with a mountain of still-unreleased recordings. How to dust them off? The idea of releasing six albums in as many months arose naturally out of his eccentricity. He found a small label, tied to a major (specifically Warner), willing to handle distribution, and here we are, discussing it now that it's almost entirely come to pass. Keeping up with everything Frusciante put out in 2004 is genuinely difficult, and not just because of the sheer volume. The sheer variety of the material on offer (ranging from barely-cleaned-up home recordings to long jam sessions) is enough to catch even the snobbiest ear off guard.

The first to come out is The Will To Death (2004, Record Collection). This is perhaps the one most in line with Frusciante's musical history: not so much in terms of melody, but in the way he plays the instrument that made him famous. His touches are a dusting-off of the past, and feeling cornered from the very first seconds ("A Doubt"), with a riff that descends straight from "Sir Psycho Sexy", is genuinely thrilling, especially after having had to swallow whole the synthetic sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' latest record. Eleven more songs fill out the rest, retracing everything our man has already said. The concept is the same, but the words used are different. Not very original? Maybe. Then you come across pop melodies like "A Loop" and "The Mirror": the first, more intense, wouldn't be out of place in terms of quality on "To Record Only Water For Ten Days"; the second, however, is an embarrassing dirge, fit only to represent the rough patch the Peppers' music is going through right now. Things get back on track in the second half: "Far Away", with its Eastern-tinged/mystical intro (though more in the Aerosmith "Nine Lives" mold), is, in its own way, a decent song. The same goes for "The Days Have Turned Away" (which, strange as it may seem, has a cadence reminiscent of Tracy Chapman) and the title track "The Will To Death", a reworking of "Scar Tissue" with one extra chord. The album is ultimately a compendium of the last five years of music, a blend into which Frusciante has really thrown everything in; shame he didn't forget to toss in the rotten "bythewayane" apples too.

Under the name "Ataxia" comes Automatic Writing (2004, Record Collection). This is the result of a three-way collaboration between John Frusciante, his trusted friend and collaborator Josh Klinghoffer (frontman of L.A.'s Bycicle Thief) and Joe Lally (bassist of Fugazi). Recorded live in the studio over the course of two days, the album is a five-track EP that reflects the experimental drive of its three participants. The basic idea is simple: start from a bassline or a single guitar note and weave a melody around it, repeated for several minutes at a time: sometimes it works ("The Sides" and "Montreal", the latter featuring Joe Lally on vocals), sometimes all that comes out is smoke and a lot of tedium ("Another"). Some post-production editing doesn't erase the jam-session feel that comes through on listening, even though Joe Lally doesn't exactly push himself on bass. Frusciante's voice reclaims all the inflections he's shown off over a decade-long career, from childlike melodic pop to hysterical screaming, from falsetto to despondent murmur. With this album, John Frusciante brushes up against the shores of post-rock, a genre that had always felt foreign to his sensibility, too instinctive and raw to craft, with his guitar, a music that is, by its very nature, intellectual.

The DC EP (2004, Record Collection) consists of four tracks recorded in a single session at Fugazi's Inner Ear Studios in Washington D.C. Frusciante is offered the chance to use Fugazi's rehearsal space, their instruments, and to record everything there. He doesn't let the opportunity slip by, picks up Guy Picciotto's Les Paul Junior, and starts playing with Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat and Fugazi) producing (the first album not self-produced by Frusciante himself). What might have seemed like an interesting idea turns instead into a thoroughly polished pop album. Everything rides on simple riffs, catchy guitar lines, melancholy melodies that lodge easily in your head. By the end of the 20 minutes, though, you're left empty-handed: the four songs have come and gone, leaving behind very, very little. It's an album made of pre-Christmas songs played in front of a fireplace, songs born in a single moment, as soon as the right melody was found. If it weren't for the Frusciante name attached, this album would never have seen the light of day.

With Inside Of Emptiness (Record Collection, 2004), he returns to playing guitar and to a seventies rock sensibility. Frusciante himself reveals in an interview: "If for The Will To Death the Velvet Underground I was listening to was the one from the third album, on this one I feel closer to 'White Light/White Heat' and to Iggy Pop's 'Lust For Life'". Hard, dirty, raw rock like Iggy Pop's, and a sound full of distortion like the second VU record. Both ingredients are present, dissected and served up in Frusciante's own way. It's a grown-up vision of the debut "Niandra", but precisely for that reason it lacks the spontaneity/naivety that made that record special. We hear the same old Frusciante (albeit in fine form), wrestling with pop melody, with falsetto, with that Peppers-style guitar touch. What stands out are the ballad "A Film Kick" and the far more brazenly Iggy Pop-oriented "666", with its unusual screams.

Having abandoned hard rock, on A Sphere In The Heart of Silence (Record Collection, 2004) Frusciante calls back his trusty partner Josh Klinghoffer and dives into the world of electronics. He revives the "live" experience under the moniker "Performance", repeated about a dozen times in LA venues; he trims the excess, trying to condense into song form what had been the fruit of pure electronic improvisation, and drowns the sound in synths, drum machines and electronic trappings. The opening "Sphere" carries its own dreamlike journey for some ten minutes, occasionally skirting the territory of tedium: amid a sea of synthetic sounds, steady beats marking the rhythm and krautrock slashes, a spatial electric guitar sound emerges. Between a flat "The Afterglow" and an inconclusive "Walls", what's worth saving is the slowed-down melody of "Communique", sung by Josh Klinghoffer who also accompanies himself on piano, and the closing "My Life", whose folky-pop gait has really little to do with the album's indietronic soul. More than a Frusciante album, "A Sphere In The Heart of Silence" is the nocturnal noodling of two friends, after spending the whole afternoon listening to "Vespertine" by Bjork and "Amnesiac" by Radiohead.

Curtains (Record Collection, 2005) closes out the ambitious project of six albums in as many months with the most classic example of Frusciante-style songwriting. Having left behind his forays into musical territory ill-suited to him, John Frusciante goes back to doing what he does best. With an eight-track recorder, lying on the floor at home, he records a dozen songs halfway between the instinctiveness of "To Record Only Water For Ten Days" and the harmonic care, especially in the guitar and bass overdubs, typical of "Shadows Collide With People". Returning to the guise of indie lo-fi singer-songwriter has the merit, at the very least, of letting us hear Frusciante again in his own intimacy, grappling with the melodic interplay between voice and guitar. Unfortunately the trick wears thin over time, and sounding original is damn hard when seven albums have been released in a single year. "Curtains" is the final flourish of the whole project and is the best album of the series along with The Will To Death: these last two albums are similar to one another, in that they represent on record the acoustic, intimate and sincere side of Frusciante, who evidently brings out the best in himself precisely when he takes on this guise.

In 2007, Ataxia return with Automatic Writing II.

John Frusciante's music has become inflated; the "mystical" and all-consuming experience of the past has vanished, replaced by a musical "Fordism" that has little to do with quality. It's humanly understandable that the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist wants to put out all his music, especially during such a personally prolific period. However, that music, which for Frusciante is an anesthetizing medicine for his psychopathologies, often becomes repetitive, tedious and of little interest to most listeners. Frusciante is no Klaus Schulze, no Frank Zappa, no Captain Beefheart: his experimenting with new musical territory has no artistic value, it's pure noodling. And musical noodling can, at best, interest the die-hard fans of the LA guitarist. There's certainly been no shortage of good ideas throughout the six-album experience, but there have been far more lapses in quality, and tedium has often taken over everything else.

After the controversial drill and bass/IDM interlude of Maya (2020), and especially after contributing to the making of no fewer than two albums within six months with the Redhot (Unlimited Love and Return Of The Dream Canteen, both 2022), in the early part of 2023 Frusciante plunges back into the world of electronics, this time probing the darker side of that boundless world, heading toward territory somewhere between dark ambient, glitch and drone music.

.i: – :ii. is probably the result of the New York musician's desire to reset himself from the ever expectation-laden world of the RHCP.

Frusciante immerses us in ten endless instrumental tracks (the album runs a full 103 minutes), forged from a sequence of hypnotic sounds stretched to the point of absurdity, almost a kind of virtual lobotomy launched toward sidereal places that probably only the artist can fully glimpse.

The idea that drove Frusciante to create these tracks is to perceive his music as solitary sculptures immersed in a sonic space that imposes no boundaries, capable of conveying sensations of motion and stillness at the same time. Frusciante also imposed on himself the rule of avoiding sudden harmonic changes, especially steering clear of note sequences and rhythms.

The album's double title is simply the split between the two ways the project was released: .i:, the shortened version, distributed on vinyl not only for reasons of space, but also because some sound frequencies would have been unreproducible on that format, and :ii., the complete version, released on all digital platforms and on CD.

.i: or :II., call it whatever you like, is undoubtedly a tough listen, though it's still preferable to the techno detours Frusciante has occasionally indulged in on some of his solo LPs.

This music has the sole goal of existing, with no attempt to condition or grab the listener. It reaches its communicative peak with dedicated listening, ideally through headphones, while still retaining some function even at low volume, as background. It can compete with silence, only under the particular conditions silence itself imposes, but it can also serve as the total cancellation of any state of quiet.

In 2026 bassist Flea releases his full-length debut, titled Honora and inspired by contemporary jazz.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google