John Frusciante explains how David Bowie and Brian Eno influenced the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album
According to recent comments by John Frusciante, the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Return of the Dream Canteen, featured a number of innovative recording techniques as pioneered by a number of legends of the ambient and art rock scenes of yore.
Discussing the new direction of the album with Mixmag, Frusciante noted, “It’s not Red Hot Chili Peppers-go-electronic. Instead, what I’m doing has its roots in [Brian] Eno’s work in Roxy Music, where synths and other gadgets are used to alter the sound of a live group, create atmosphere and sonic movement, and generally have unexpected sounds come in every so often.”
Yet Eno wasn’t the only avant-garde icon to have influenced Return of the Dream Canteen. Frusciante also said, “Another influence is David Bowie’s use of synths on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, where it’s a raw-sounding live band, and then some really weird filthy synth sound comes in, which makes it no less raw sounding. The synths are supportive of the song and the band but at times take over with weirdness. A little bit can go a long way towards taking a live band out of the real world and into an alternate reality.”
He added, “Also, a lot of the lead vocal treatments, which I did with delays and reverbs and sometimes synths, are things I do in my electronic music to samples. I do these things to all the instruments. The electronic part of it has as much to do with using the studio in a creative way as it does with synths.”
So it appears that Frusciante’s experience in producing his own solo output put him in good stead to accompany Rick Rubin in the production studio for Return of the Dream Canteen. He concluded, “I did nothing but electronic music for about 12 years before I rejoined the band. And it’s definitely a full time job being in the Chili Peppers. Really, the Red Hot Chili Peppers is the only real ‘job’ I’ve ever had in music.”
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