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 Ń 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 thatÕll 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 modernityÕs
emphasis on painstakingly slow and scientific methods for constructing pop
product with digital perfection. FruscianteÕs 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, itÕs important to look to the past. MusicÕs Ņspirits,Ó he says,
would tell you the same.
JOHN PAYNE: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 ZappaÕs
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 Õ50s was played live [in the studio], to the Õ60s,
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 pressureÕs 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 Ń 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 didnÕt 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. ThereÕs something about squeezing in that space thatÕs really a
wonderful thing.
Analog sounds the best to me, and I feel thatÕs how
my music should be recorded. IÕm 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 Õ50s or the Õ70s. So
I donÕt know if the convenience is actually convenient; I think itÕs 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 . . .ÉYou have to work with it, and it brings the
best out of you. Magnetic tape is the way I like doing it; itÕs really fun
for me. I like doing first takes, I donÕt like doing multiple takes, I
donÕt like comping, I donÕt 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 Ń itÕs very
Public
ImageŠinspired, 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 Ń rather than using music to express
their egos Ń 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.
WeÕre not in control of how itÕs gonna come out; if I plan on singing a
note, my voice might crack on that note, or be a bit wobbly Ń 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. IÕm in a phase where I like playing guitar thatÕs out of my control, either
that thereÕs so much energy coming through me that IÕm 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 itÕs both part of you and beyond you.
ThereÕs energy around us all the time thatÕs 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, itÕs 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 thatÕs been falling apart for
10 years, and we see faces in it, to our eyes it looks like theyÕre still.
But in a place where they donÕt have a relationship with time, thatÕs the
reality. ThatÕs the spiritsÕ way of connecting with us. If I play guitar in
such a way that IÕm totally in control, those spirits donÕt 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, IÕm 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, IÕm not saying my music comes from the
spirits and yours doesnÕt; 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 IÕll always
remember it as the first time in my life that I ever felt like I was one
with my dreams.
