The moment John Frusciante saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the first time
We all had our favourite bands when we were kids, yet none of us could ever imagine joining them and becoming one of their vital members. But that is exactly what happened to John Frusciante when he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988.
Frusciante had been a fan of the funk-rock legends since 1984 when his guitar teacher had auditioned to be their guitarist. He first went to see them play live a couple of years later and quickly became one of their biggest fans, idolising Hillel Slovak and learning all his parts. In a conversation with Rick Rubin, Frusciante relayed the time he first saw the Chili Peppers play.
“Basically, I had a friend in high school who was really into the Chili Peppers, and he’d gone to see them at least a couple of times,” Frusciante said. “I remember he went and saw them at Fender’s ballroom. That was before I was going to see them with Fishbone and Faith No More on the Best of the West tour. He got me excited about music that was outside of the spectrum of what I’d been listening to lately. Music that was about fun, you know, because I’d gotten into such a technical frame of mind.”
He added, “So he and I went to see the Chili Peppers at the Variety Arts Centre downtown. I’d been very happy at previous shows like Adrian Belew and Stanley Clark. I’d felt the feeling of joy at concerts before, but there was nothing in comparison to seeing that band when the original lineup was back together, but they hadn’t come out with their third record yet.”
Chili Peppers had been formed in 1983 by Anthony Keidis, Flea, Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons. However, Irons and Slovak were in another group called What Is This?. So Flea and Kiedis later recruited Cliff Martinez and Jack Sherman. Sherman would be sacked in 1984, which saw Slovak rejoin, and Martinez was fired in 1986. So when Irons rejoined the group, it was the first time the original four members had played together since they first formed.
“Everything I’d heard of them, everything I’d seen on videotape did not prepare me for the intensity of the show,” Frusciante continued. “It was so psychedelic; they all had fluorescent paint everywhere on their bodies. You couldn’t see then. And the black lights, it felt so otherworldly, it felt like me, and the other thousand people who were there just all went into a dream together or something. It did not feel like reality.”
He added, “I saw two shows where they did that, where they wore the paint and never had experiences anything where the audience and the performers felt like we were all one thing. We were all in the same place together. The rest of the world didn’t exist. Everybody’s completely happy. Everybody’s completely out of their minds. Everybody’s jumping around. At their show, it was like I was feeling that same energy that I remembered imagining about [1970s] punk shows.”
Listen to the full episode below as John Frusciante explores his musical life with Rick Rubin.
