Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're sharing one of Rick Rubin's most intimate conversations ever Unbroken record with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frushante. Rick last spoke to John back in April when the Peppers were getting ready to release Unlimited Love, their first record with Rushante in sixteen years. If you haven't heard Rick series of individual interviews with the band, I highly recommend you go back and listen. Those conversations are a testament to the band's deep, soulful connection and their unique creative partnership that has proven time and again to soar as a result of Frushonte's songwriting and gorgeous guitar work, and Frushante rejoining the band again has reinvigorated the group. On April, first Unlimited Love debut at number one in the US and fifteen other countries. In July, the band anounced the release of a second Rick Rubin produced album that's out today, Return of the Dream Canteen. On today's episode, we'll here John Frushonte talk about the making of Blood Sugar, Sex Magic and how has contributions on slower, more melodic songs like Under the Bridge and Breaking the Girl helped expand the Chili peppers funk punk sound. John also talks candidly about the dark, drug addicted years that followed the intense success of Blood Sugar, and he explains how he was able to finally get sober and rejoin the Chili Peppers to record their classic commercial comeback album Californication. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin and John Frushonte And just a heads up, this is part one of a two part conversation, so keep your eye on our feed for part two soon. What's happened to man? Hey? Rag? How are you feeling good? How are you good? What's life on the road like these days? It's been really good. Yeah, we're in a great like playing has been really fun and you know, it's it's a different kind of lifestyle, just like everything is aimed towards being able to get up on stage and do that. And it took me like about a month and a half pretty much the whole European tour. Every time I walked out into one of those stadiums to play, I was shocked about the amount of people, you know, like, like I thought we had played stadiums before in Europe, and now I realized we hadn't. Maybe we'd played some festival, we hadn't played anything that looked like that. Wow, every night, that amount of energy coming from the people and putting out what you feel like you have to put out. It's just every day when I wake up, I can't imagine going up on stage and in front of that many people and doing that. But you just gradually build yourself towards it throughout the day, and I don't know, it's just a real different state of mind. But I enjoy. I enjoy practicing all the time. That's the main thing I do, is just practice and the energy of the audience. Like, can you use the energy coming from the audience to channel that into what you're doing. Yeah, it seems like that happens. That's what I'm preparing myself to take place, because what I play when I'm practicing, it's not nearly as intense. Ever, no matter what I warm up with, it's not nearly as intense as what I do once I'm up there. It's just like, I feel like it's something about the people and the general feeling of happiness that brings that out of me. And you can practice all you want, but there's really no practice for doing that other than doing it, you know, because there's no way to simulate it. So yeah, I feel like I'm just warming up. I'm looking forward to next year and stuff. Yeah, you know, so, I think the last time we talked, we were starting to talk about playing on albums and we got through Mother's Milk and then we got distracted. It never kept going exactly. So Mother's Milk. It was not a great experience for you. And was that I can't remember now. Was that your first time in a proper recording studio recording or no, Well, the first time was when we did the song Taste the Pain and that went really well, Like did it in one take and everything, you know, went really smoothly. Yeah. Michael Binhorn was just hyped when we were making the record, and he was taking on a lot of pressure. I think he had put a lot of pressure on himself that it's got to be the greatest album ever and all this stuff, and he definitely imposed that on me and me especially because I think he felt like I was young and you know, he could really guide me and stuff like this, and you know, so the album felt forced. I've, you know, since doing interviews recently, I've kind of reflected on that period, especially once we got on tour, because once we started touring with Chad after the record had come out and stuff, it really we really had a thing. Like I think even a couple of years later, I didn't appreciate what that was. I was such a fan of the band before I was in the band that I thought of the magic of that band really highly with Helleo and Jack. But I recently heard, just heard. I listened to one song of us around that time of the Mother's Milk tour, doing what was usually our first song back then, the first song they ever performed on stage out in LA and Man, I was like, wow, we were really good. I was like I was because I always think I was bad at that time, and I listened back to it and I was like, Wow, we really had something that that that that other band didn't have, Like we had this very intense energy, like there was something kind of mellow in comparison about about the previous band, Like we really did play every note like it was going to be our last, Like there was this passion and intensity, and I don't know, considering that it was basically funk music and that we were playing it that hard, I just don't feel like there's ever only been anything like it. And I even though I had an ego about it at the time, I don't think I really appreciated like how special it was. And I think when I really felt like I found myself, I kind of mellowed out a bit, you know, and stopped pushing myself on the music so much. And but there really was something we had then in eighty eight eighty nine that was I guess, in particular eighty nine that was really like powerful. I saw you guys at the Greek Theater at that time and it was mind blowing. Right Yeah. That was the very last show of that tour, So yeah, yeah. And I think part of it also has to do with Chad, because if you think of what drummers and funk bands sound like, like, you think about James Brown's drummers, they're super groovy, but they played almost like jazz, like, like very subdued groovy but not loud. Yeah, And Chad's rocking like crazy, which is not your typical funk drum right, But he's got a he's got a good funk feel, you know, it's incredible. It's a great combination. Yeah, it's just like there's this heaviness to it, but it's still got this funk thing, but it's also got this extra speed to it. And it was just there's all four of us. It was just like it was a real explosion when we came out on stage and there was like, I don't know, somehow it took me like thirty three years to realize to realize what that thing was we had. Because there's other things about that period of time, like I can be critical about myself in the sense that I wasn't improvising as much as I did after that, Like my solos weren't as like ever since then. You know, when I play a solo, it's usually pretty unique to that night. It's rare that I do the same thing in the same place twice, you know, And at that time, I feel like I wasn't ready to take that risk. But that was part of the intensity. It was so important to me that it was maximum intensity all the time. When I did start improvising, there was this feeling of like indifference to the outcome. Yeah, it feels much it feels much riskier to do. Yeah, it is, And like in nineteen eighty nine, I energetically like the energy was the main thing to me, and like I couldn't afford to let that energy slip at all the way I felt, you know. So I'm I'm glad I went. I'm glad I moved past that to being able to relax and allow mistakes to happen and allow allow myself to do a solo that's not great in knowing that like taking the same risk the next time a great one might come. You know. Yeah, it also makes sense that because you were such a big fan of the original lineup of the band and knowing you're just a different person. It's, you know, it's you always feel like how do I fit in? You know, how do I step up to this thing that I love so much? It didn't it doesn't even really have to do with how good of a guitar player you are, do you know what I mean? It's like, those guys do this thing that I love, and now I get to do it. But it's weird, you know, it's just weird. It's it's a weird thing. No, it's really strange and Anthony and Fleet. All my memories of seeing them prior to my being in the band, including had videotapes. I managed to get a hold of of early live shows of Theirs and stuff that I used to watch when I was, you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and they and they still have it to this day. They have this thing that happens on stage and in a way, they're kind of like that in life too. They somehow simultaneously appear to be trying very hard and at the same time they seem like they're kicking back and they really don't care about the impression they make on anybody, and they're there to be themselves. Like there's this balance in the persona of who they are on stage that somehow has this combination of a careless, kind of relaxed, I don't give a shit thing, and I'm trying really hard at the same time to be the best entertainer I can be up here. It's a it's something. It's yeah, it seems contradictory, and so coming into it, I think my first thought was that I was going to be as crazy as them on stage, you know, like, and I think possibly the reason I didn't have that same balance is because I think I cared a lot for the reason that you're saying. You know, I couldn't have that relaxed indifference. That's this very cool sense that I used to get from them on stage. For me, if I was going to go up there and go crazy, that's all it was was a guy going crazy. There was no cool kickback aspect to it. You know. It just wasn't me being trying to be wild and crazy like my it's not my personality and it wasn't the best way for me to serve the overall chemistry of the group, you know. So having a relaxed mental attitude to the performance part, to the playing part, to everything was what turned out to be best for everybody, I think. But like I say, there was something about the fact that I was just so all, you know, all out in that first couple of years that you know, never got that back again again, you know what I mean, Like, no, but that it's cool and it's cool that that's a period of time, and that's like you wouldn't change your diary entries either, you know. It's like that's a moment in time and that was then and now you get to do this and it's great, and it's you know, it's different versions of good. It's not like they're in competition with each other. Yeah. I remember I went to see Radiohead two nights in a row at Radio City Musical, and the first night it looked like Tom York didn't want to be there and he was just standing at the mic and playing and singing and stone faced, not moving perfectly still, and it just felt like he was just waiting for the show to end. And then the next night, which was the last show of the tour, he was the most animated I've ever seen him, Like it was the opposite person. Two nights in a row, Yeah, and he was running all over and happy. It. It was fascinating to see. I've had that same thing a few times on this tour, Like I'm specifically DC to Boston was the same thing as what you just described, Like there's certain nights where for some reason, I can't put any physical energy into the show, including just the normal sort of crouched down, kind of leaning back kind of stance that's pretty normal for Flee and I to play in. And Anthony stands the same way too. It's just like I can't even do that. I can just stand there perfectly straight up and with my legs straight and stand by Chad and just walk up to the mic when it's time to sing or press an effect and walk back to Chad after that, and just like I can't look at the audience, I can't feel anything. Probably the best that ever comes out of my playing on a night like that is a kind of intensity that comes out of anger that I just focus into the playing, and I can't really enjoy it. But that's probably if I listened back, I would imagine that would be the redeeming part of the show. Is just some sort of focus that can come from being in a bad mood like that that I can put into my lead playing in a certain way. But if that happens, do you always know it's like, oh, I had this argument earlier with someone and that's it. Or is it just like a feeling you wake up that way and it's not related to anything specific that you could point finger at. Yeah, if I analyze it, I could have a theory, but there's really like no way to know. There's really no way to know. I sense it when I'm walking towards the stage and when I'm on stage. I realize it in that moment that I'm first on stage and I realize, Okay, I'm in one of those moods and I'm not going to be able to get out of it, you know. And the same thing happens to flee or you know, but he has a different way of handling it, like he might go extra physically crazy to work his way through it. For me, I don't. I don't try to do that. I just uh yeah, just stand there and get through it. And I'm sure musically the show's great, Like it's it's great either way. Maybe I've got definitely when I've had nights like that, Anthony'll give me back some report like so and so said that somebody who's seen us a lot of times. So and so said it was the best show he's ever seen of us. So you know, it's so I'm I'm learning to just let it be that way when it's a nice night like that, and don't beat myself up about it while I'm on stage or anything. And in my radio hit example, I can't say one show was better than Together. It was right. I was going to be interesting to see how different it could be. Yeah, yeah that so, yeah, the night following the night that I'm thinking of in Boston, like like it was the freest, most loosest I could imagine feeling on stage, like it was particularly like one of the best shows of the tours. So sometimes those maybe those nights are just to remind myself to really be able to feel it completely, because if you know, if you felt good every night, you might never feel particular high because there isn't a load of balance it for granted. Also, yeah, so there's something about that. And it's like with meditation. You know, when you sit to meditate. At the end of the meditation, there is in a sense of sometimes we'll say to ourselves or that was a good one, or that wasn't a good one, and neither those are true. It's like, yeah, it's if you sat down to do it, you did it, and that's all that matters. And then sometimes the experience of it is euphoric, and other times it feels like you don't go anywhere and that's what it's supposed to be that day to get to the next one. It's just the path on the road, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's a really hard concept for people to understand and for you to try to make yourself always remember, is that like that there's not a good and bad meditation, you know, It's it's a hard thing to understand because when your head is full of thoughts and you just feel like this is not going well. But yeah, you really never know. And I know it from history of other bands too. I know, like certain nights when somebody was you know, supposedly like not in a good mood that night, and they played really good. It was just different than how they normally played, you know. So I don't know, I'm trying not to be too judgmental about it, but it's not as fun, that's for sure. Yeah. So the band was really rocking after Mother's Milk Live and now it's time to make the next album, and that's when we started working together. And tell me from your perspective, what was the experience like of making Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Well, pretty much right around that time that we played at the Greek, I guess we had. We took a couple of months off, and during that couple of months I really was And around that time, I remember I ran into you at Canters when we weren't we didn't know who was going to produce the record, and a lot of things were lining up for me as a musician and as a person right around that time, and I just had I had some epiphanies in terms of taking the direction of my playing and my songwriting in a different in a different direction. We were so close by that point as a as a band and as friends. I didn't feel anymore like I had to prove myself or to be to be what my idea of a Chili Pepper was or anything. I was confident that in my place in the band, and I felt like I I wanted to try just being myself, even though I've been gradually being more and more myself as a person and as a musician as that tour went on. But around that time, I was having all these realizations just listening to music that was that was my favorite music at the time, and that was different from what the band was always listening to together, because we were always we were always listening to like Curtis Mayfield, the Meters Signed The Family, Stone zz Top, the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack, like different, different little things that we would listen to together. That and even at home, that was a lot of what I'd been listening to that Fishbone, you know, like, and so I just started now the tour was over and everything, and I was living in this house, living in the in the Hollywood Hills for the first time, and and just having really strong feelings listening to things like The Velvet Underground and television and Peter Gabriel era Genesis, and I was realizing that, like that, a lot of power can come from from not hitting the strings super hard all the time, you know, from from not filling up all thiss with notes, from leaving big spaces listening to that guitarist from Bow Wow Wow, and listening to how how spacious is playing was and how well it supported the bass. I've been a fan of them forever, but just hadn't specifically wanted to play like that. And so I was really starting to realize, like how much music was starting to really produce these intense feelings inside me. That that period only really lasted for a few years where I really I had a kind of a synesthesia where I could oftentimes it was seeing, but it was something in between seeing and hearing in my brain that if I put on a record, the feeling was produced. If I put the needle back, the same exact feeling was produced again, and it was like watching a movie or something. So certain records were bringing up those feelings really intensely, or that bringing up that phenomena, and so those were the things I focused on. Captain Beefheart was a real big one for me at the time that was producing I think more of those types of sensations than anything else was. So started writing things because I knew it Flee and Anthony's taste so well, and I knew the breadth of it, and I knew their open mindedness. Like I was still trying to make stuff that I thought they would like, as I still do today, but I was coming from an angle that they weren't going to expect, you know, And so like that, Breaking the Girl's Song was one of the first things that I wrote before we ever started rehearsing, and Funky Monk's song was one that I sort of collaborated with Anthony. He was playing the guitar part, but it was it wasn't really the guitar part. It was just one finger and he was hitting all the strings and he was going bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. And so I took that basic rhythm and made a thing out of it. And power of Equality I think was the basic riff for that was something I came up with early. And it was just like I was really starting to understand how to get power out of simplicity and wasn't trying to compete with Flea as far as being busy and stuff like that. It was one of those things where I finally had it through my head like Flea's allowed to be busy somehow, Like he can be busy and not sound like he's showing off. If I do it, it sounds like I'm eating into everybody else's space. You know. Was appreciating stuff like led Zeppelin, where you noticed Jimmy Page is playing, He's he gives so much space to the drums. He's often not playing. He'll often hold a note and leave it to allow the snare drum to be the maximum size that it can be. And so, yeah, it was putting all those things together in my head and that having that synesthesia thing, and so when we started rehearsing, just everything was falling into place like magic and yeah, I had that talk with you. It canters and I became really psyched about the I of you producing us, and we all talked about it, and that's what everybody wanted to do. And the real exciting thing that we all noticed right off the bat was that you were the opposite of what Michael Beinhorn had been. You. You you weren't putting any pressure on us. You your skill of listening was apparent immediately you were. You were there to listen, and you had no thought to impose yourself on the music or the direction at all. Like you spoke when there was something you had to say, and you were silent the rest of the time. And it was really inspiring to us because that in a way, that not pushing yourself on things. That's exactly what I had come to right around that time when I ran into Incannters, was like, Wow, like I don't need to force myself on the music. I can. I can let music happen without proposing to attack it, you know. And me me playing that way made Flee sound better and that inspired him and he backing off and not playing quite as busy himself, and we all just got really into listening to each other and supporting each other, and so it was neat. It was like that time, I guess in nineteen ninety we really started to realize what we had as a band and what the chemistry was that was completely separate, you know, like where in nineteen eighty nine maybe it was just a more energetic, you know, more powerful version of the same thing. Like this felt like something that was unique to us. And not to say that Jack and Hollel didn't have a huge influence still on the basic parameters of what we were doing, but we had fallen into a thing where we were realizing who we were as a as a group, and you being there just helped to solidify it and support it. And every time you had an idea, it felt like something that had to be said. And that's what I was trying to do with my play, was like, if you don't have anything to say, just play one note, and if you hear that a second note needs to be added, then play a second note, you know. And seemed to me that that's that's how your contributions when everything you did made a huge difference to the overall thing, and a lot of it was about creating space. You know, a lot of a lot of your ideas had to do with with like we were all being more conscious of the space that we were creating between each other's instruments and each other's notes, and you emphasized that that same thing, like telling me not to play for a whole verse, or telling you know, Chad to lay out for this part, or Flee to lay out for this part, or everybody to do a complete silent pause right here. You know, Like all those kind of ideas were mind blowing for us at the time. There were things we never would have thought of, you know. And and your whole drum machine what I perceived at the time, your experience with drum machines, because I don't know how had you worked with a lot of drummers at that point. You had, well, mostly drum machines, right, yeah, so it mostly programmed everything. Yeah, So it was really neat, like you were when you were helping Chad with a kick drum pattern or whatever, and like it really seemed like it was this drum machine mentality going into a real drummer, and it was. It was really inspiring, and it felt really fresh and new, you know, and all that stuff was really inspiring in that period of time of writing that record, I think of as being like the happiest time of being in the band, you know, in that first period. That's great. I can remember being at the alley one time exactly this story told I can't remember what song it was, but I remember saying, and I can't remember who I suggested it to, is like, Okay, not everybody has to play from the beginning of the song. What's it like if he lays out until the chorus or John lays out till the course, Let's try. What was it like if we lay out to the second verse? What does it do? Let's hear it? Yeah, And just like thinking about it, and I didn't have a idea of what would work or not. It was just a way of thinking of how can we create more space and how can we do things that allow the material to develop without having to keep adding more things later, you know, like like if you take something away in the beginning, then when the normal third instrument comes in, it feels like an event and we haven't had to add anything. We did it by taking something away. And I remember I remember having that conversation. It felt like it was a big deal at the time because it whatever thing we were trying it on it worked. It was like, oh, this is a new tool in the bag of tricks of things that can work. You know. Really, and again, I think I'm assuming that your experience producing hip hop was an influence on it because of the constant muting and un muting that takes place when you're making that kind of music. It was absolutely It was basically like you were muting the guitar for the first verse and saving it for the second verse. You know. Yeah, Like we were all conscious that that was where you were coming from, and it was so neat to hear those ideas being applied to a rock band, you know, like and yeah, it just made us think in a way, it just wouldn't never have occurred to us. We write the verse, that's what we play in the verse, you know. We think of ourselves as a unit. We don't think of ourselves as like separate. So it was it was really neat to hear how how space could move things along. And I and I wound up needing to do less overdubs on that album as a result of exactly what you're saying, Like, I've often looked back and go like, how did I get away with doing so few overdubs, and still the songs feel like they developed from beginning to end. And yeah, I think it's the arrangements absolutely. Yeah, we have to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more of Rick Rubin's conversation with John Frushante. We're back with Rick Rubin and John Frushante. I remember we were again. I don't remember which songs were when, but we had gotten to the point where it seemed like we were ready to make an album, and then there was some record label stuff going on where we weren't allowed to go into the studio and ended up writing for probably close to another year, So there was already an album's worth of material that had things been normal, we probably would have recorded, and then instead we used that time to just write a bunch of more songs than Again. I don't remember which ones came earlier, which ones came late, but I know a bunch of good ones came late too, you know, I think there were good ones on both sides. Yeah, we decided that there was no way we were going to be on EMI anymore because they were taking too much control away from the band, like editing the record without consulting us. The mix was done without consulting us. We didn't We never approved any mixes, putting things out without asking us. Whatever it is, twelve inches or whatever, just like I guess we hadn't noticed because the label just hadn't cared about the band in the first few albums, so nobody had noticed that we didn't have artistic finals say. And so we really wanted to be with a label that trusted us and was going to allow us to be ourselves and allow us to have artistic finals say. And it turned out there were several who were willing to give us that, and so it was hard for somebody to talk m I out of letting into letting us go. But Mo Austen made a deal with them and made a deal with us, and that was the label that we felt comfortable with. And we really liked him, you know himself. Even when we had decided at one point not to go with Warner Brothers. He made a point of calling each person in the band and saying some really nice things, and that was what did it. We were just like, Okay, this is a really warm, sweet guy here. Yeah, you know, and he always was the whole my entire you know, I got to work with him for I don't know, twenty something years and never a bad moment, never a bad moment. Yeah, yeah, you know, he was great and so so yeah, so we we took a couple of months off. At one point, I remember from from the rehearsing writing process, fleet did my own private Idaho. Yeah. But I think even during that time, maybe like Anthony might have and I might have written, I could have lied at that time, which came from a very real experience a girl he really liked didn't want to be with him. And we drove around all day talking about it. Drove to the bank and it was a rainy day and we were just having a conversation about it. And I'd been recording stuff on my four track and with a sort of fingerpicking style on the acoustic guitar, but oftentimes putting wild, crazy guitar solos on top of them. So we'd been having this conversation all day. I guess I thought it would be cool to do something like this four track stuff I'm doing, which is the stuff that later came out on your label. That's the music, the four track music I'm talking about. And I was like, we should write a song about this thing that Anthony's going through, but in the style of this stuff I've been recording on my four track, and we did it that night. We recorded, or I think we came up with a basic idea for the for the music, and then and Anthony wrote some stuff, and then I seem to remember him going to his house and writing some lyrics and then driving back and recorded the vocal and we weren't even the demo was so good we were considering even if the if the recording of the band didn't come out good, we would use that demo on the record. So yeah, pretty yeah, So I'm pretty sure that was around that was in that break. And then yeah, when when when everything cleared and we were we were allowed to go in the studio, I guess we probably rehearsed for another month or two or something, and then and then moved into the mansion, which was another thing, Like to live in this house that was like again or just a warm, cozy feeling as opposed to a sterile, you know, professional feeling. We wouldn't have ever known that that was a possibility, you know, to us, you had to go in a studio to record a song, and you were just like, no, we could make one. And I don't know why I thought that either because I'd never done it before. I don't really know why it was a strange. I think the thought was they had made these this group of albums that I didn't get the feeling that there was ever a great recording experience for the Chili Peppers. And they were all similar in that they all went into a corporate studio and recorded what can we do to make this one? The first one? That's not like that? And I would drive over Laurel Canyon all the time, and I loved that house. And then I just tracked down the owner and asked if there was any way that we could rent it and it worked out. We looked at other houses before that, and it wouldn't it wouldn't have been as good. That was a really special place. Yeah, it really was. Yeah, And we were so excited by stuff, just like hearing all that natural room sound on the snare and stuff. It's like it's it's when I hear it today, it sounds really overblown, But it was exciting, you know, like it was yeah, like and it felt it was perfect for that record, and how we had arranged the tunes because it's smart. They were, Yeah, exactly. It filled up the space whenever the guitar wasn't playing or the bass wasn't playing. The drums it almost sounded like you didn't need anything but drums to fill up the space. Everything else sounded like extra. So yeah, it was. It was really magic. And I remember when we did the overdubs where everybody played percussion instruments. I remember when we recorded up at midnight behind the house outside. Remember how in the Red Hot you did good stuff. It was fun. And I remember Anthony was singing upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Yeah. Yeah, Flei was saying that that moment of recording the Robert Johnson song in the behind the house and the outside was it's like his favorite recording experience ever. Yeah. It was some card drove on down Laurel Canyon. You could hear it was filled with girls and they screamed like right before we started recording it. It was like so cool. It just felt like that was right as we had breast record and were it was just like, oh, yeah, that's the magic sound that's supposed to go right there. You know, when you brought in the songs that didn't sound like previous Chili Pepper songs. What was the reaction from the band at first when you came to rehearsal with let's say, breaky in the Girl music, Total openness, total excitement, Like wow, that to me, it felt so easy to write something like that. It felt like I could have been doing that all along. I didn't know that it was going and be okay, you know, yeah, because up until that point, what the Chili Peppers were was a very specific thing. It was hard funk with rap vocals always yeah, and on this album that that mold got broken to just be good music. Whatever the good music was. Yeah, And I hadn't realized how much those limitations that we were working in as far as the musical style. I think I thought of that as just as intentional. I didn't think of it as that they just weren't able to write something like breaking the Girl or something. I thought specifically they didn't want to do that. And the more I got to know them, like on the Mother's Milk tour, Anthony and I we had a really nice drive in Germany at one time, just like we'd never listened to David Bowie together, and we listened to Hunky Dory. We had a cassette of it that a nice woman from e M I gave to us, And yeah, just seeing him feel that music so intensely and so along the way throughout the Mother's Milk tour, I'm starting to put it together in my head that like, they would really like it if I wrote stuff like this, And in a lot of ways, it was the most natural thing that I could do, and I just but it was also that not just not just that there might have been an inability to write stuff like that before, but like, like I really loved the band within those limitations, Like I really like I that that funk punk sometimes heavy metal, but really good version of heavy metal thing that they had. Like as a fan, I thought it was such a brilliant combination of things that I didn't want to mess with it myself for purely artistic reasons, you know, I didn't. And also you never know something till you've tried it, And I didn't know how good we would sound playing something like under the Bridge, or I could have lied like like we were saying, like even what I could have liked, we had doubt as to whether it would even sound good with chat and fully playing on it. You know. I can remember when we were putting songs on the album decide that what's the song that ended up on the cone Head soundtrack sold to squeeze Y. It's like, well, that couldn't be on the album because it was like too mellow and we already had a mellow So like, do you remember that? Yeah, and you really did your best to convince us to put it on there. You were like, I think it's one of the best songs, you know. And when we were writing this last batch of material that we wrote for these couple albums, I listened to the whole album. I listened to each of the whole albums at some point during the making of it, just to see where we were at and what we might be missing. And and when I listened to Blood Sugar, particularly, I, you know, as great as it is and everything, I was just like we were insane for not putting Sould to Squeeze on that record, Like I remember clearly fleasing my thinking and stuff. Of course, I remember us both particularly being like yeah, yeah, too much as it is. We've got three songs like this and that's that's already way more than Enough or something like that. It's just such a good song. It's such a good song, but you never know, like you really never know. And it's like if the Ramones would have made an album like Hunky Dorry, I don't know if we would have liked it, do you know what I'm saying. It's like sometimes when the formula is good or a CDC, you know, we there are bands that you want to sound like the way they sound, So in some ways it was it was risky. Now in retrospect it worked out, but it was risky. The other thing that it did was they were already a handful of those albums, so it wasn't like this was the band's second album of their career. Yeah, they had already mind those fields for some time. Yeah, and it seemed like good timing to expand, and we didn't expand like crazy. It's still if you liked the old band, I don't think you would have not liked the new bad. It wasn't It wasn't like one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. It just was widening the scope. Yeah, there definitely were people who didn't like us, like who turned on us at that point for sure when when Blood Sugar came out, Like for sure, yeah, there was definitely people that like the fast punk punk thing and and felt that we were selling out or whatever. You know. I remember when interviewer came to the Blood Sugar house and he said, so, when you guys playing Vegas? And I said, and I said, I said, oh, we're playing in Vegas in August or whatever, Like I thought, he actually meant, yeah, when you're playing in Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah, And and then and then I, oh, okay, I see what you meant. Yeah, like like and I'm sure I said something really rude to him, but but yeah, like we got a little of that. I even remember like some punk kids like protesting at one of our shows and flee walking out and talk talking to them and stuff like. But uh, in the long run, it definitely worked out, you know, like something similar happening by the way time as well, Like like we went so far in this other direction that wasn't what people expected. And in the big picture, I think we gained more fans than we lost. But but there were people who felt like like the thing that they liked about the band, we weren't doing that anymore. You know. But I think, you know, I think artistically it's good to take those you know, to take those risks, and absolutely, and I think for us it worked out career wise in the long run, because I think people definitely think of us more as this band that makes these melodic, you know, pop tunes than they think of us as a funk punk band anymore, you know. Yeah, And we're still able to compete with bands who do go for a complete heavy onslaught type. We still have a very intense power, like we never lost that, you know, which is I think why maybe even though sometimes we might have thrown some people off and initially they might not have liked the new direction or whatever, like I think a lot of the time those people it grew on them. You know. I've never talked to you about this. Obviously, I talked to Anthony about it because I was with him at the beginning when it happened. But for Under the Bridge, I remember finding the lyrics in his book. I've told the story before, but I remember finding the lyrics and I remember him saying, that's not chili pepper song, because it was still in those days that couldn't be a chili Pepper song, and I said, well, try sing it to the band, see what happens. And he was very resistant, very resistant, and then he ended up playing it for you or singing it to you, and then you came up with the music, and I remember he was still terrified for you and him to present it to the rest of the band because it seemed so far outside of anything that had come before it. But I want to ask you about it. What was your experience when he first because I wasn't there when he when he sang it to you, what was that Like My memory of it's a little different. I remember you and Anthony coming to rehearsal and you really urging him to do it, and him making a bunch of disclaimers, and you just really encouraging him to sing it to us, and he sang it to us and Flee and I flee drove me home off and in those days and Flee and I driving home, and it made us really sad under the bridge. Hearing it just made us feel like, boy, Anthony's really bummed out, like like heavy yeah, like heavy words. Yeah. We just felt really like bad form And it was just this like sad kind of experience. And and going back to my house and just singing, Boy, that song is a real bummer, you know, like not meaning that it's bad, meaning like emotionally, yeah, Like I thought of it as a song about that he doesn't have any friends. That's that was how I described it in my head. But with your encouragement and with feeling having a feeling that there was something there, Anthony and I made a plan for me to go to his house. And I wasn't super looking forward to the thing, Like I thought of it as a depressing and as a friend, not really knowing how to like how to be there for that part of him, you know, like like I guess I felt maybe in some ways like he didn't feel like I was there for him as a friend or something. But we got together to do it, and I had I had some vague ideas in my head. I thought, there's these Jimi Hendrix songs. There's a couple of them on Access Boldest Love. The song Boldest Love and it's it's got this kind of chord progression that's very similar chord progression to the chord progression of Under the Bridge, where it starts on a major chord, but it goes to a minor chord in the course of the chord progression, so it's basically happy, but it's also got this slight sadness that it moves right through. And I think, I so even though I didn't know exactly what we were going to come up with, like driving there, I remember I specifically thought, do something like Bold's Love like because we'd also been we've been performing a cover of Castles Made of Sand, which is off that same Jimmie Hendricks album, and it worked live like. Our audience liked it. You know, that's my favorite Jimmie Hendricks song, right, and so so yeah, so we've been doing that all through the Mother's Milk tour and everybody loved it. So so I knew we could sound good playing something like that, and so I thought, just write something like that, and we figured out how to have the chords and the lyric and the melody and all work together with that. And there was a Joe Jackson song that I was particularly fond of called in Every Dream, Home and Nightmare, where when it gets to the chorus, there's nothing on the one, there's the verse happens, and then there's a little drum break and so the verse ends and then the drums go to good bomb bomb bomb bomb, So it's this interesting kind of groove just where it where it where there's nothing on the one, and there's a little drum break right before the chorus. So when Anthony I came up with it that that was I what I envisioned my head was we could do a chorus like that Joe Jackson song. So what I came up with that have a similar kind of drum break after the verse is over, this little breath and then and then in our case, it went one to the bomb, bomb bomb, So like the chord was arting at a different time. It's sooner in the bar line, but it was the same basic idea I played. I played Ryan, our engineer, that song, saying this is where I got the idea for under the Bridge chorus in the song. The chorus went by him and he was like, I don't hear it, of course, yeah, but but conceptually it was that it was that idea of start later than the one rather than on the one for the chorus. That's a really interesting point in general, how we can be inspired by a piece of music or a technique and a piece of music and then make something inspired by it and it's nothing like it. Yeah, it's nothing like it. It's just some underlying rhythm or organization or principle that gets you to the next place. But it's not the song at all. It's just the technique. Yeah, yeah, we did. We did a lot of that back then. Flee and I were really on a roll with that. What we perceived is ripping. We called it ripping something off. But there is one example of that that I would just think that I would say comes anywhere near plagiarism, you know, it was. It's really inspiration and it's like, oh, we could do something like that, and that the context is so different that it has nothing to do with the original. Yeah, And a lot of the time it might be in the guitar part or the bass part, but then that gets covered up and interacted with by the drums and the guitar or whatever, and you wind up with a completely different texture and a completely different sound and a completely different musical statement. Where a lot of musicians I've known have been paranoid about stealing from anybody else, and then for some reason, those same musicians actually have bass lines or guitar parts that are exactly something director rip offs and they didn't and they didn't know they were doing it, you know. So somehow I feel like by being conscious of it, we were controlling it, you know. And it would be a theoretical idea that we were taking, or or an idea that has something to do with the relationship of the instruments, or and it's it's not actually taking music from somebody else. Yeah, it's like architecture. Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Rick Rubin and John Fuschante. We're back with Rick Rubin and John Fuschante, who are talking about the making of the Chili Peppers nineteen ninety one album Blood Sugar Sex Magic. So then we finished that album. I remember we had a really good party at that house. It was really fun. It felt like a thousand people were there. Do you remember that. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. That was really good. Yeah, playing music everywhere in the house and stuff and people playing ping pong and yeah, and then you went on the road and then how long was it before it stopped being fun? Well, we had a pretty big break between especially because we weren't really involved in the mixing, so as I remember it from the time I left the recording studio. I think of it as being like a six month period or something that we weren't doing anything. Was probably shorter than that, but I seem to remember having a nice long break, you know, And during that time there's a couple of things that happened to me that I think like switched my mental gears around. Like one was a bad acid trip, like taking acid in the wrong environment and feeling at the time like I was never going to be the same, and being stuck in that mindset, and then waking up and feeling like, Okay, I'm I'm normal now, I'm not stuck like that. But as the weeks went on, starting to realize that I don't think I am the same anymore, and also started I won't get into too much into the drug thing, but they did seem like pivotal things that took place that that started occasionally using heroin around the same time and gradually and you know, as I had already been smoking pot all day long, but it was having a very positive effect, you know, up till then, but especially when that happened with the acid trip, it was just like I think my brain definitely needed like a clearing, and I didn't allow myself for that. I was so attached to the relationship between pot and my creativity that I couldn't stop doing that. And gradually we went we went on tour, and gradually that synesthesia that I was talking about, it was gradually getting weaker and weaker, like there was a distinct feeling of it drifting away and it was fading. I would guess it would be a good way to describe it. And with the limited experience I'd had in my life up till then, it seemed like if I didn't have that, I wasn't going to have creativity. Like I thought that they were the same thing, and I thought, if I didn't have that, I'm going to go back to being how I was at mother's milk time or something or And the one time, the one activity that I could do that still was producing that phenomenon was drawing and painting. And I guess that had a lot to do with the fact that there was no purpose to it. I wasn't doing it for an audience. I wasn't doing it to be good. I wasn't doing it to impress anybody. I wasn't doing it to make money. So somehow that part of my creativity gradually was the thing that I was clutching to more and more, and music itself was starting to seem more and more meaningless, and I was having a lot of strange experiences. Were like I couldn't find any CDs or records on the shelves that I wanted to hear. Everyone had some sort of bad connotation to me, and those experiences were really scary. And so where music had felt like it like it was my best friend, it was starting to feel like music itself was turning on me or something. It felt like the voices in my head that had been guiding me towards what had been by far the most creative period of my life, we're starting to seem like angry at me or opposed to me in some way. We weren't we weren't. We weren't working as a team anymore. And I felt like as the tour went on, I couldn't explain any of this stuff to anybody. I don't think I even knew the word synesthesia. I don't, I just knew it felt like my creativity was disappearing, and the painting and the drawing and the drugs as well, were with my sense if that if those feelings that I was having in me were what creativity was, those seemed like the way, it seemed like the way to hold onto it was to take drugs as much as I wanted and to paint and draw as much as possible. And that was really you know, you learn different ways of doing this kind of thing of staying connected to creativity in your life. But at that time, you know, I was twenty two years old, it seemed to me that you just followed whatever those feelings that you have inside you are. You just you stay connected to whatever gives you that feeling, like the Dennis Joplin lyric about you know you've got it if it makes you feel good, that that's that's I thought that that was the path to follow. So it didn't occur to me to do anything like stop smoking pot or stop taking drugs, or you know, meditate, not you know, these things just we're not We're not anything that me or anybody that I was close to was considering at the time. Did you even meditate back then? Yeah, I learned when I was fourteen, of course, But I remember I remember coming to see you when it was bad at your old house, and it was you didn't have many teeth then, if any, and the walls had blood all over them. There was a lot of vomit everywhere, and I think you may have still had one guitar, but maybe not even that. And I remember you being resolute in what you were doing. There was a sense of it wasn't like you were trapped and you wanted to get out. It was just the opposite. It's like, no, this is I am following my path and I'm following it to its end wherever it takes me. And you definitely owned it, you know, you owned your choices and were going it was again like I respect you. You know, I wouldn't tell you didn't do anything different. Like if you say this is what I want to do, it's like I used and I wouldn't want anyone telling me to do something different than what I want to do. Whatever it is, whatever it is right or wrong or good or bad or wherever it goes, Like I support you in your journey, and if this is the journey that feels like the one that you want to be on, it's sad for me to see because it felt like you were going away. I think you weighed very little at that time too, and we're really weak, but you were still you, and you were still smiley and like you were. It wouldn't be so different than the conversation we're having now, you know, other than it just seemed more harrowing from an outsider coming in that this was a scary situation. Yeah, it's just so we have no context for this situation at any point in my life. Like, I don't know what to do other than I love you, I support you, whatever it is. I don't know what that is, you know, it's just scary. Yeah, no, I that was a funny thing about me during that period comparison to other people that I was friends with who went down in a similar path with drugs, was that they all felt guilty about it always, like they all denied it took them a long time to even admit that they were an addict, and took them a long time to and they would they would always be talking about how they were going to quit. They were always talking about how this is the last time. And I never did any of that. Like, while I was doing it, I was really happy doing it. I was so happy to still be in touch with that spark of creativity inside myself, and I really felt that it was drifting away while I was playing with the band, and when I as long as I had to do publicity and you know, and touring and all these things, performing in front of people, it just felt like it was there was no It seemed to me there was no direction for it to go to but to disappear completely. And I felt that in what I was doing, I was keeping it alive. And really the hard time for me was when I was when I attempted to stop, Like there was about a year there where I just didn't feel like myself anymore and the feelings went completely away, Like once I stopped taking drugs, there was nothing. My head was blank, there was no there was no seeing music as colors or music as shapes or anything like that anymore. It was just tell me the story of deciding to stop. You told me a story when I first saw you after that, and I want to see if it is still what it was then or close to what it was then. Yeah, the last time I saw you at your house when things were scary for me to see you were very positive on this journey that you were on and it was an unflinching move wherever it was going to go. And then the next time I saw you was at Lachma at a Bunuelle movie festival, and I didn't recognize you because you looked so radically different, but you were great and healthy, and I couldn't believe it. I was so happy. I was so happy to see you, so happy to see you alive. It was so happy to see you, and you were your your again, your happy self. So tell me about what happened in between for that to happen, right, Okay, getting specific, I'm pretty sure that that time when I saw you at the nuel thing was during that first year that I had gotten over the addiction of heroin that I've never since then had to be medicated to get off heroin. But but it was about a year where most of the time I was clean, but I also was had certain points during it where I had a speed binge or a crack binge or something like I was I had this idea that I could do things. I really always wanted to be able to do things occasionally, you know, And so that was my first attempt to do that, And and it was a It was a hard period because that thing where you didn't recognize me, like a lot of a lot of people had that with me at the time, like my body's ability. My body had forgotten how to process food, you know, like like and I didn't know anything. Really I was. I was trying to eat what I thought was health food, but it wasn't really super helping. And I felt very uncomfortable in my body, and so I was that first year was really a struggle because I not only was I trying to exist in the world knowing I don't have those things that I was describing as feelings and vibes connected with music anymore, at least it wasn't in the pronounced way that it was when I had synesthesia. But boy, did joy division mean everything to me back then? Did like Nirvana Bob Marley Joy divisions those three things in particular, Like I was so crazy about those particular things, like I just they meant so much to me, And I didn't have that specific, colorful reaction to them that I was describing that you know, from the Blood Sugar time. But I don't think music had ever meant so much to me because life seemed so bleak. Otherwise, people didn't really enjoy being around me. People felt sorry for me a lot. The same sense of humor that used to be funny when I was like the young, handsome, cool guy, now like the same jokes didn't work anymore, Like the same sense of humor it wasn't working. I'm convinced that I was that when I was twenty twenty one, I could have been an actor. At that time twenty seven, I had the distinct feeling I could never be an actor again. After this experience of realizing like how much of myself was on the surface that was the reason that my personality was what it was. It was very traumatic, and so that year was tough, and it ended with a few months of me making sure I avoided heroin addiction, but just doing whatever I wanted and going really off to deep end and having these crazy experiences where they were hallucinations but they were very real for me, where like people were in my house that weren't there, and I spent hours talking to them and stuff. Marcel Duchamp, Flee and Clara like Perry Farrell, all kinds of people were there and I thought they were there. I would call them afterwards talking about what we had done yesterday, why did you leave when? Because they would just disappear after a matter of hours of hanging out with each other, and then they would just disappear, and I would call them wondering what happened? Where did you go? And it wasn't until I'd had that experience a bunch of times that I realized, Wow, these things I'm hanging out with people really late at night, and that was that was the way to know for me, like if somebody's here and it's two in the morning, they're not actually here. So that was a that was a pretty mind blowing period of time because I remember trying to make four track recordings at that time and finding that I was completely unable to follow a musical idea from to its completion. But as far as experientially, what was happening during that period of time, as far as my experience is listening to music and having feelings, and I don't know if it was communication with people's astrabodies or hallucinations, I'm not sure what it was, but it was very real and I remember getting there was a very loud voice in my head that said, you're going to be dead by your birthday. This is in December, and my birthday would have been four months later. And the voice said, you're going to be dead by your birthday unless you get clean. And so I was pondering this, not sure, because throughout that year that I tried to be clean, it didn't seem like anybody wanted to be my friend. It didn't seem like anybody wanted to really connect with me. It didn't seemed like I knew how to interact with people. And so all of a sudden, that voice came saying that I was gonna that I was going to die in a few months. And all of a sudden, all these things started happening that forced me into a position of having to get clean. I had several thousand dollars probably six seven thousand dollars in cash in my closet and that I would carry around with me, and I went downtown to buy some drugs and I came back and well, no, the first thing that happened was the landlord came to my house said he had to look inside my house, and I said, I can't let you in because there was needles and blood and different things. And it was a real mess. Even if it wasn't for the needles and blood. It was just messy and disgusting, and I knew he wouldn't be happy, and so he said, well, if you don't let me in buy tomorrow, I'm going to have to come here with the police. And I already had a warrant for my arrest because I'd gotten picked up downtown buying drugs. But they let me go, and I mean they let they let me out. There was a court date coming in the future. So that was the first thing I did, was I got everything I needed out of that house and had had an acquaintance drive me to a hotel. And then I had that six or seven thousand dollars and came back from buying drugs and the money just was gone. I had no idea where it could have gone. My best bet was that somehow I lost it in the taxi, but that was all the money I had. And then Bob, the friend of mine, put me on the phone with Bob Forrest, and he said, I can get you in a clinic to get off drugs. You can do it however you want, you know, I told him I'm not addicted to anything. I don't need. I don't need pills or anything. And he said, if you don't want to take them, you don't have to take them. You need to go in there just to reset your mind. And and uh, I really had no choice. I mean it would have been between that and just being a bomb on the street, you know, like moving into a tent or something. And so I did it. And this for the first time. I tried a few times to get off drugs, but this time I had had a feeling for the people who were there. Instead of arguing about the wisdom of being completely clean and admitting yourself an addict and that means you can't ever take anything, instead of arguing with this stuff, I really tried my best to help the other people who I was in there with. And by some weird fluke, like DH, the original drummer I played in the band with, wound up in the same hospital with me at the same time. And yeah, so I just felt this empathy for the people that I like, I thought, regardless of what happens with me, like I want to, I don't want to mess up anybody else's experience because they're all they've all been having a harmful effect on their loved ones and people around them, and like, I'm not going to say anything to argue with their attempt to better themselves, you know. And so yeah, so I went through that that thirty days and that was the December of nineteen ninety seven, and nineteen ninety eight turned out to be really productive. You're the first few months again, we're really boring. I didn't feel good inside myself. And I feel like, especially nowadays with the Internet and stuff, people forget how valuable it can be to just be really bored, you know, absolutely how valuable it can be to realize I'm not comfortable in my body, you know, to realize I have no ability to communicate with people, you know, to push yourself and to try to get better at at at listening to people and talking with people and having fun with people all that stuff, like to actually have to make an effort for it, not to be able to just be some automatic thing you can do by saying something you think is witty that you don't actually see the reaction to, you know. And yeah, so I had several months that were really boring, and then I think other people, you know, saw me as being at a really good place. And before I knew it. They asked me to be in the band again and we started writing Californication. How many years was it between leaving the band and coming back that time, I think about four and a half years, maybe five years, And yeah, like I didn't know what I was capable of anymore, but it didn't matter. I think something had turned around in my head where I realized that making music wasn't about making music so you could generate these intense feelings within yourself, Like I think I was almost looking at it before, at the Blood Sugar time, as if making music was a way of creating a sort of a painting in my head or something. You know. Throughout those all those years, the music that I really felt strongly about, like those people I just mentioned, and Jane's addiction and the Germs and David Bowie, the things that really meant something to me from music, it felt as if those people were giving me their friendship. It felt like like when I was alone, they were my friends. So I think I had it in my head that I suspected and I wasn't sure that making music can be a way of helping other people, a way of giving to other people, not taking yourself from the music that your own experience might be very bland, but you might have something in your soul that you can by attempting to do something that you think is good, that you can give to other people that can function much like a good doctor does, where you're making people feel better. And those are the kind of ideas that were swimming around in my head at the time, and I had a lot of ideas. I had never regretted quitting the band during that five years, but towards the end of it, I started having these visions of what we could have done back in those days if if I had stayed with the band, What new musical territories could we have covered, you know what? What what new ways could we have combined that melodic aspect with the funk aspect and things like this. Because I'm that Blood Sugar album, it's it's kind of segregated. It's like there's the mellow melodic songs, and there's there's the funky, fun kind of songs, and and there's a little bit across over here and there, but mostly they're distinctly separate. And so I started seeing how the two things could have fused together in different ways, and so when they asked me to be in the band, immediately I started being excited about, Wow, that maybe those that music I've was hearing in my head that was you know, that was something that I thought was just something that could have happened in the past that never can happen again. Maybe it can actually, maybe I can actually do those things. And we did them and we were really excited about them. So and once that album was done and it did as well as it did and stuff, and it made people as happy as it did it just like it made me realize, Yeah, it's true, Like it doesn't really matter if you have if you're blank in your head or if you have a ton of swirthly you know, colorful scenes going on in your head while you're making music. That's not what it's about. It's about really connecting with the people you're playing with, supporting the people you're playing with. You know, writing music that you feel is somehow connected to the music that you really love that means something to you. And to have that mindset of wanting to share something with with the people that you're making music with and with the people in the world who might eventually hear it. You know, even as something as specific as going into the studio and playing a song together and getting a good take is a wildly exciting feeling. Yeah, you know, like when it comes together and you hear it really sound good. I find it thrilling because a lot it doesn't always you know, like sometimes playing it's like, oh, that's it's okay. But when it really does something beyond the regular, it's a very thrilling feeling being in the room and feeling it happen. Yeah. And there's something about that thing that we were talking about earlier that I feel like you kind of infused on us. Where your object going into it isn't to have a premonition that that's the feeling you're going to get. You go in with a kind of a humility and a kind of an innocence, not knowing how it's supposed to sound, not knowing what it's going to come back sounding like. And yeah, so when you go in with that mindset of just being ready for whatever to happen, and then you realize you're really happy with what's coming out of the speakers, it's true, it's really thrilling. It's a great feeling. It's different than I want it to be this way, and like check I did it. It's different than Matt. It's when it when when it feels like something bigger is happening than what we can control ourselves, and I see it happened. I see it happen a lot in your band, where something happens where the way everybody feels it and when everyone leans in the same way together, something big happens, right, and it feels bigger than the individual parts. Not to take anything away from the individual parts, but the combo does some thing and it's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah, we're all really conscious of giving to each other and supporting each other. You know. We see the space between the parts as being the fundamental thing. I don't think any idea is overconcerned with their own part, you know, like everybody's trying to find the right relationship between their part and the and the bass part there. Or it's like for me, my part in the bass part, my part and the drum part, my part in the vocal part, like you're trying to find a relationship to the other things. You're not trying to do your part as if your part exists in one bubble and their part exists in another bubble, so it seems like that mindset, it definitely contributes to the to the effect that you're talking about. Yeah, that Californication record really like, like when I listened to all our records, it's my favorite one in terms of the band's connection to each other. And it seems like we were we were really all opening up this door that made us able to to do that that we hadn't seen was there. And and like a lot of people think like that my playing was like less developed then or something that I got better as it went towards stadium and I get arcadium, And I can see how people think that, but because maybe technically I got better, but I really wanted to play in the way that I was playing then, Like stylistically, I felt like having a tone that was like clean to the point of being like weak sounding. I felt like it made Chat and Flee sound really good, you know. And to play in a way that was simple and kind of feminine, like not so much the macho, you know, guitar god guy, but to play in a way that that was again just as simple as possible and supportive of everything else. I felt like it made them sound really good, you know, And I don't know. It's something I try not to lose connection with because I really do love just going off on the guitar and playing in a wild way. But but there's definitely something to be said for for the way I approached it on that record. I was really inspired. I went into it knowing, Okay, I don't sound like Jimmy Hendricks right now, you know, like I played guitar on and off for those four years, but I didn't have the same kind of muscular ability that I did then, So like my vibrato didn't sound like I couldn't do that Jimmy Hendricks kind of vibrato. But I practiced really hard and I got to the point where I think I could have done it, but I was by the time we went in the studio, But I was along the way. I developed this style that I thought was better that was rooted more in stuff like Joy Division and Bow Wow Wow and The Cure and stuff like this, where I felt the guitar playing is really television where the guitar playing is really powerful, but it's not particularly muscular. And I felt that I'd hit on something as far as a new way of rounding out the band's chemistry. You know, in that album you also started singing harmony in a big way. That that's where it really harmony came into the picture on that album as well. Exactly. Yeah, and that was one hundred percent you like, like because I definitely was not open to the idea initially, like like you really had to talk me into it. I can remember we were at the village and we were listening. I was playing use of Simon and Garfunkel stuff just chill, like, look how cool it is when the harmony crosses over. It's like it does some whole other there's some whole other level of sophistication to the music when you have this other harmonic thing going on that we didn't have at that time. It's like maybe there's a place for it, and it could have not worked, but it works. You know, it could have who knows. We remember there were also many experiments we tried it would failed, you know, it's like you never know. But that was one time where like, yeah, there was a day when I listened to it and I came back and feeling like, you know, harmonies are lame, you know, like like and and but I continued listening to music at home every night when I went home, and then I started realizing that there were harmonies and all kinds of music that I love that I hadn't even noticed. You would think I'm a singer. I'm a musician, like I would have noticed, But somehow we hear it as if it's in the lead vocal, and we don't. Our ear doesn't consciously it's a backing vocal, so it's doing its job. It's it's not the vocal of attention, and your attention just stays with the lead vocal and you don't realize that there's this harmony part that's really giving it depth. And the more music I listened to where I was listening for that because you'd been pushing me to do it, I started realizing, geez, all my favorite records have these great harmonies on them, you know. So I started getting excited about it and at least enough to try it. And I don't think it was till the record was done and Gee Pechoto from Fugazi told me that specifically he loved the harmonies on the record. That was when I realized, like, oh wow, okay, cool, keeping good. Then, you know, it seemed just passable when I was doing it. It didn't. I wasn't. I wasn't a dred percent convinced. You know, it was really good. I remember it was regally and it just felt like again, like another door was open, you know, just of what another thing that could possibly happen. Yeah, it's true. I can't imagine all our records since then. You haven't done that. Yeah, I feel like maybe we should stop now and then we're going to do this again, because I feel like it's going to take us a couple of hours to talk about each album. I think based on how long we've been going, right, Okay, you mean like sometime soon, you mean like a year from now, whatever, whatever you want, we'll do. We'll do a part three whenever you want. But I feel like there's enough for us to talk about where to go in depth where we need. We just need a lot of time. Okay, great, but this was a great like it's a great next chapter from where we were, right, Okay, so let's let's plan on doing that. Okay, cool? Cool, it sounds good. I love talking to you, and I love I feel like again I know you forever, and I feel like I learned. Every time we talk about stuff blows my mind. Thanks Man, and you know you're the best person to do an interview with. It's really pleasant talking to you, cool Man. Thanks for John from Shante. Be sure to keep an eye out for the second half of this conversation with Rick Rubin coming soon. You can hear all of our favorite red Hot Chili Pepper songs on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bentaladay, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and un disrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review, us on your podcast app Our theme is Expect Candy Beats. I'm Justin Richmond,