John Frusciante, guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, only started “being himself” a year after joining the band in 1988. Before, he would have always tried to meet the expectations of others without knowing what he actually wanted to play himself. Frusciante explains how simplifying his gameplay has led him to himself.
“If I keep going like this, I’ll never be satisfied”
The musician describes trying in the early days of the band “to be what I think people want me to be, or what I think the Chilis should be like”. This way of thinking would not have made him happy, which is why one day he would have decided to change his approach. “If I carry on like this I will never be satisfied with what I’m doing, so I have to give up my ideas of what is good and I have to just try to be myself and find out what that means,” recalls Frusciante.
John Frusciante learned to hold back
His new approach increasingly dealt with the question of who he actually is, explains the guitarist. The search for himself inevitably led him to his band. “I found that in rehearsals, instead of playing, I could just give feedback or hold a note for a long time,” Frusciante told Guitar World. He would have noticed that he was making his bandmate Flea “sound fantastic”.
“I gave them the canvas to paint”
John Frusciante’s new restraint is said not only to have affected bassist Flea: the whole band would have sounded better with his new playing style. He describes the process with a metaphor: “I gave them the canvas to paint on, rather than trying to get in front of other people to do my own painting.” So he would have “let the others paint” and given his colleagues the “right atmosphere” for this. In his opinion, it would have had a “really good effect on everyone”.
Frusciante’s popularity with audiences increased
Increasingly, the musician noticed that he was better received by the audience: “People began to like my playing much more, I began to mean something to them,” says Frusciante. For him it was a strange puzzle that he could not explain. Actually, he should have stopped caring about the opinions of others.
His approach of “simply being myself, come what may” would have led him to success. “I’m going to stop trying to impress,” was his new attitude that “made people really care about what I was doing.”
Frusciante left the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the second time in 2009. He reported having mental health issues during this time and “drifting into the occult.” Three years ago he returned to the band, after which guitarist Josh Klinghoffer said goodbye to the Peppers. In between, Frusciante also worked solo and released his current album “Look Down, See Us” in 2020.
The returning musician can also be heard on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new record, “Unlimited Love”, which was released in April. It would have felt to him as if he had never been away. His bandmates are also grateful for his return. In summer the band will go on a world tour with their current album.