The story of how John Frusciante joined Red Hot Chili Peppers
For over three decades, John Frusciante has been regarded as one of the finest contemporary music guitarists. Making his name in funk-rock masters Red Hot Chili Peppers, the six string wizard has covered many bases in his time, with a host of notable moments to his name from ‘Snow’ to ‘Dani California’.
Like most musicians at the top of their game, Frusciante took to the guitar quickly. His rise was so rapid that he became the guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers when he was just 18 years old, following the death of founding member Hillel Slovak from a heroin overdose at age 26 in 1988. According to Frusciante, in the years that followed, the wheels were already set in motion for him to eventually join the group before Slovak’s passing.
When speaking to super producer Rick Rubin on the Broken Record Podcast in 2022, Frusciante explained how he ended up playing guitar for Red Hot Chili Peppers. It all materialised through his friendship with former Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro, whom he got to know in early 1988. One day, Peligro set up a jam session with Chili Peppers bassist Flea, acquainting the two and laying the foundations for what was to come.
Frusciante recalled: “And one day, D.H. just called me up, and Flea had just gotten back from their last European tour. And he said, ‘Flea’s here,’ he knew I loved Flea, you know? And so he said, ‘Flea’s here, you want to come over and jam with us’. And so I went over there and played with him, and we played the Funkadelic song ‘Alice in My Fantasies’. And I think we even tried to do a cover version of ‘Higher Ground’, which was what we wound up doing on Mother’s Milk, but Flea had that idea already at that time. What if, you know, a heavy metal version of ‘Higher Ground’, and jammed and stuff, and I guess Flea enjoyed jamming with me.”
It was a few weeks later that Slovak died. Frusciante continued: “He gave me his phone number and told me, you know, like, ‘I’d love to play more’, and a few weeks later, I called him up to see if he wanted to jam again. I got my nerve up to call him up, and he was crying, and he just said, like, ‘I can’t talk right now. My guitar player just died.’ And we got off the phone real quick.”
Things weren’t so simple, and it took an extended period before the teenage Frusciante was asked to join the band. They hired another guitarist before him, another well-respected player in former Parliament-Funkadelic axeman DeWayne ‘Blackbyrd’ McKnight.
Frusciante explained: “Then, I think he might have gotten in touch with me after that at some point, and just was saying, he was trying to get back into the headspace of making music again, not sure if the band’s going to continue or anything like that, but, did I want to come jam with him in his friend Dick’s garage. And so we just played the two of us without a drummer or anything, and he told me, you know, ‘I’m not sure if the band’s just gonna stop at this point, but if we are, you’ll definitely get an audition.'”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist concluded: “And then, at one point, he called me up and told me, ‘Hey, there’s this guy Blackbyrd. He’d been in the band for like a week at one point when Hillel had quit, and then we’d fired him when Hillel decided he wanted to rejoin, and we feel kinda guilty about it, so we will feel like we gotta give him this chance, we kinda owe it to him.’ So, Blackbyrd was in the band for several months, but I had a feeling that I would wind up being in the band, and that was what eventually what happened.”
Listen to the discussion below.
