John Frusciante Returns, Part 3

Published Dec 13, 2022, 10:00 AM

We’re back with the third episode in our John Frusciante Returns series. Over the past couple of months Rick Rubin and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers have come together to tape an on-going series of conversations that dives deep into John’s philosophical and practical approach to writing music and playing guitar. If you haven’t heard the previous episodes, make sure to check them out.

Today, we’ll hear John talk about his love of electronic music and how he struggled to fall back in love with guitar-based rock before recording the Chili Peppers latest set of albums. He also talks about the process of making Californication, and near the end of the interview, John picks up a guitar to play through some of his most well known guitar parts from that album.

You can listen to a playlist of some of our favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers songs HERE.

Pushkin. We're back with a third episode and our John Fruschante returns series. Over the last couple of months, Rick Rubin and John Fushawnte have the Red Hot Chili Peppers have come together to tape an ongoing series of conversations that dives deep into John's philosophical and practical approach try to music and playing guitar. If you haven't heard the previous episodes, I highly recommend going to check him out. Today, we'll hear John talk about his love of electronic music and how he struggled to fall back in love with guitar based rock before recording The peppers latest set of albums. He also talks about the process of making Californication, and near the end of the interview, picks up a guitar to play through some of his most well known guitar parts from that album. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond is Rick Rubin and John Fuschante from Shango La. Have you ever taken a principle that you've learned in painting or from another art form and brought it into music. I think so, but but you know it's it's it's not specific, not conscious, not that I can think of anyways. But those years that I was just painting and drawing and writing in notebooks, that's what made me see how I could make music again, because I thought I was done making music. But it was through doing that and realizing that I was realizing what I was incapable of in that that I was capable of in music, like what I wanted to do with that I couldn't do. I didn't have enough technic, Like I didn't used to appreciate the technical, theoretical and all that. But once I realized what I wanted to do as a visual artist that I couldn't do it in visual art, it was real clear that I could do it exactly that in music. And do you think it's because you've spent so much time practicing music before? Is that why that was? That's why like like had you started as a painter, Oh yeah, then I would have had that technique. So it's really just the time in commitment, previous commitment. It was strange because I just I did so much in terms of the thinking, in terms of theory and technique that by the time I found myself as a guitar player that what I thought I was doing was forgetting about all that stuff. Yeah, And when I painted, I continued to just be free. And then when I realized the things I saw in my head, I wanted to be able to do, and I knew what aspects of whose styles I wanted to combine, and I didn't have the technical ability to do it. And I thought, God, with music, I can do that. If I want to make something that has like the melodic sense of this person and the rhythmic sense of this person, and the you know, the sound is this person, I knew how to do it. Is that all art? I feel like maybe it is like all art is all of the different things that we've taken in and seeing, Oh, this aspect of what this person does is really interesting, and this aspect of what they do is interesting. Yeah, and this aspect of what someone else is interesting, and no one has put those together before. And that's a that's a new form, and it's probably the lineage of art has always been built on things of the past, shown in a new way that we've never experienced them before. Yeah. In playing along with other people's music, I constantly noticed that somebody's taken one part of one thing and another part of another thing, and they're together. And I don't know if the things were conscious, but you see it all the time. Yeah, I figure there's just so many combinations, and so we're just spinning them out and we get them from different places. And sometimes I imagine it happens by mistake, where you'll be playing in one style, yeah, and then a mistake will lead you into a different style. But it works, and then it's like, oh, these two styles go together. And I wouldn't have consciously thought that. Yeah. Do you remember when you heard that Joe Jackson song? Like, did you hear it? Within a year of right? I was just listening to that record a lot. I mean I knew I was really into his music when I was growing up, like, and I was into him since I was a little kid, like since I was like nine or something. But what's interesting is that, for whatever reason, at that moment in time, you were going through a Joe Jackson phase. The world was not going through a Joe Jackson phase in that moment. No, yeah, you were, and that was the information that allowed you into a new thing. And I feel like that's where the magical part of it isn't that it comes from the Joe Jackson song. It's that why were you listening to Joe Jackson then? And the theory would be because it had the information you needed, even though that's that's not why you were looking for. Do you know what I'm saying? You weren't listening to it as a reference material. You were listening to it because you liked it. No, particularly like that record at that time, Beat Crazy that it's on. I was listening to it a lot. There were certain records. I was really into the new George Michael record as well that listened Without Prejudice Volume one. When we were writing Blood Sugar, I was listening at all the time, like they were just examples of pop music where somebody was going in a direction that was different from what they were known for. Like Joe Jackson did that even more on his following album. But on that album there's certain things on it. He has this song called One to One that's like a ballot, a really strong kind of ballad song. It was just different than the kind of power pop. You could tell he was he was trying to go in a different direction. So I don't know if it was conscious, but it was definitely worked out to be related to what we were doing as far as you know, with Blood Sugar, Like, I'm sure it wasn't conscious. And that's what's interesting. It's like that that the way we live in the world impacts the things that we make. Yeah, you know, the way we're paying attention, what we're paying attention to, yah works its way in. Yeah, it's like and it often seems like it's the other. We think of causality, that the one causes the other, and in actuality, yeah, you often get the sense that it's the other way around. That you were listening to that thing because you had to write that song. Yeah, like just to point out for people as far as the space, like the difference is what would be the regular way it would have been like this, that's the normal, Yeah, that that would have been the first ends and you go into the chorus and everybody plays on the one. But but because of that song, it wasn't just that I wanted the guitar part to go. I wanted Chad to do it with me. I wanted Plea to do it with me, you know what I mean, Like like Anthony's the only one who's saying something on the one, which is different from the Joe Jackson, where the vocal and the music all are on the two of the bar. So I had that realization that it's just space basically that I was it's fascinating and interesting where where these things come from? And it could have also happened in an unconscious way. Like in this case, it's conscious because you know that it happened, but it also can happen on an unconscious level, where just depending on what you're listening to, there's something that your mind's like, oh, that's interesting, and then lady, you're writing something, it's like, oh that's interesting. Do you know what I'm saying? Without it being conscious, it can still happen and it's not trying to rip anything off. It's like we are made of the things we listen to. Yeah, that's how it works. Yeah, that's all we're made of. Yeah, it's not like there's other stuff we're adding on top of what we hear. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like our bank, our reference bank, our files are whatever we heard that somehow got stored, whether we knew it was getting stored or not. Yeah, Joe Jackson's an interesting artist also to talk about, just because even in punk times, I felt like he was an outlier, like he wasn't like anyone else. Yeah, No, his story's really interesting. He wrote a really interesting book. It basically just goes up to where he started having a career, and he had a real strange life up till then, Like he went to a music school, Like he was reading Beethoven scores when he was a little kid, like playing in cover groups to make money and pubs for years, and had an opportunity to get a record contract and had a clear concept of how the band would look, what the style of music would be, what the songs would be. He had a very calculated approach to being a part of what wound up being like the new wave, you know, post punk world. But I think wrote some of the best pop songs of the time, and really, like his book only goes up to that point, but it's real. You can't imagine that person winding up doing that. But he had a really good idea about how to fit in with what was going on at the time. You know. Interesting. I think the Police were kind of similar. I think they were such good musicians that what they were playing was a calculated thing based on what was currently going on in England at the time, what was cool at the time, and it could either be calculated or when you're a kid and there's a new music movement and you're into it, it's not unusual to morph into it. I know that in my case, I was really into punk rock and then hip hop came along and I didn't like punk rock any less, but there was this momentum around hip hop and it was fun to be part of this other new music scene that seemed related because they were both about not being able to play really, you know, they were both more about the content than the virtuosity in both cases. Yeah, but there were you know, some people were calculated at the time because the punk thing was this new thing and it's real crappy music. And in the case of the Police and Joe Jackson, their music has tons of heart. It's really good music, you know, Like, but I think I've heard from quotes of Sting and from Joe Jackson's book that it really was like I could do anything that I want to do, Yeah, but I'm gonna do this specific thing mixed the reggae rhythms with the faster punk rhythms like you know, but make pop songs out of that, like you know. And in Joe Jacksins case, he wrote all the parts for everybody in his band. There was no He approached it like a composer where everything was written, like like Frank Zapper or something, where like he tells each person exactly what to play. I didn't mean to speak disparagingly about it being calculated because something like The Monkeys was a group that was put together. Yeah, and I love the Monkeys and I love those songs that yeah, yeah, And there's not a right way to do it. It's whatever yields something that you like to listen to is fine. Yeah. It's funny how some people, you know, like I think Lou Reid's songwriting style that he did in The Velvet Underground, a lot of it came from that he was working for that Pickwick record company where he's just writing songs on a similar to like a Tin Pan Alley type situation where they've just got a lot of writers. They say, write a surf song, write a motorcycle song. You're just sitting there all day cranking out imitations of these trendy things from that time. And I think when he wrote songs like Heroin or Waiting for the Man, he's taking an idea for a song and approaching the writing of the song in the same sort of calculated way, like that this song is about motorcycles, this song is going to be about Heroin being a junkie, you know what I mean. Like, I don't think without that experience of writing songs on an assembly line that he would have ended up writing those types of songs that he did. And probably the same for the way Andy Warhol eventually made art where it was more of a He had the idea for the piece and then it would be crafted essentially by the people because it would be silkscreened or something. Maybe in some cases he would do the silk screen himself, but it didn't really matter because it was more the idea of the silkscreen piece and the composition. Yeah, so he composed it, but he didn't have to physically manufacture. Yeah. Now, that idea of music being manufactured, this is inherent in the whole, our whole what pop music is to us and how it was created. It happened hand in hand with the manufacturing of records and hand in hand with the selling of sheep music as a product. Like like pop music, it changes styles, but it doesn't change its basic form. It comes from these things what existed before that. I don't think has any real direct relationship to pop music. The folk music and stuff like that. Even folk music that we think of as like folk music from the sixties on pop folk, yeah, is really all derivative of old folk music and sort of like appropriated from the past, yeah, but presented new to us now we look back at sixties is like that was the folk revolution, but it really was the folk revival, Yeah, into the recorded medium, which was a completely different thing. But Yeah, I've always been real conscious every time we've made a record. I've always been as we're moving towards making the record, my mind is thinking what am I going to play along with, which means what am I going to listen to? Because I sit around playing along with CDs the way a lot of people might sit around reading the newspaper or something. It's just it. That's how I relax, And I'm just well aware that the final thing is going to carry aspects of those things in it. But the fun thing is not knowing what but seeing how where where my imagination is leading me. It is what things am I excited about, what things are giving me intense feelings, and also making sure that there's some kind of variety where the things have a contrast with each other. It's like, well, how am I going to put those things together? But it's got to be things that I picked that I'm excited about it. I wouldn't be able to do it, but it was somebody else's idea on assignment, You couldn't do it. That's it's more just like it's what you happen to be into. And I know, for anything, if you're going to do a deep dive into anything, I don't know how it's possible to do unless you're really into it. It's not possible. Yeah. Could you imagine listening all day to music that you didn't choose to listen it'd be crazy making Yeah. Yeah. Actually, when we started making the new stuff, I sent everybody a ton of music and dropbox, you know, and like, I don't think anybody listened to anything. Like everybody's got their own ideas about about what they need to hear to get them through a career. Yeah, and that's great too, because in a way. What makes a band great is not everyone being on the same page. It's being able to come together on a page. Yeah, but with everyone bringing different, you know, aspects of themselves and what's exciting to them, yield something more interesting than what a solo project would be. Yeah. Just those combined energies, you know, amplifying something bigger. Yeah. No, that's the thing. It's like, It's like I know that no matter what that combination of things that I'm listening to is, I can't predict what aspects of it are going to be a parent by the time everybody else has done their contributed their part to it. Do you ever play along to non guitar based music? Yeah? And what does that look like? How does it work? You mean? Example? And what would you play? Lots of things. I've had periods where I'm like figuring out the harmonies to Beethoven and Wagner and things like that, where if I'm listening to it and I have a and I can see in my head how I would how I could approach some of the harmonies in it and get some kind of conception of it. I do that, but more often I guess, since I was a kid, I used to figure out like the heads of jazz tunes and stuff like that. But in my adult life, like in the Chili Peppers, I think the thing I've probably done the most is play along with synthesizers. Whether it's like I know how to play all the synth parts on all the Depeche Mode records from like from their first album up through like ninety four, Like I know every little melody that comes in, I know how to play it, so I can just play along with the same song like four or five times, and every time play it differently because I'm playing with different group of parts. And so yeah, Like there's lots of synthpop that I play along with the synth parts too. There's lots of electronic music and rave music that I play along with the samples, or I play along with the synth part or the bassline. So I've done a lot of that. I've also done a lot of playing along with hip hop. When we were making Stadium Arcadium, because it was so simple, I would I would play it on bass because there was a lot of bass, Like bass was there and the stuff I was listening to more than other more than melodies were. And when I play bass along with it, I'd just play with my pinky because I was trying to strengthen up my pinkie, so I'd do the whole thing with just the one finger, with the weakest finger. And then there's certain things that I just make a conscious effort. Okay, I'm not going to play along with that. I can usually see in my head how you would play along with it. But it's nice to have a couple of things you just never play along with, ye Like I used to really like Rim at the time that we did Californication, but I had a rule for myself. I just never played along with them. And at the time, by the way, I really liked the band Hannary Rocks a lot. I was listening to them a lot, but I never played along with them, Like I just didn't want to do it. Hannah Rox was an interesting out of time band. Yeah yeah, because they're just they're more like a post glam thing. They're they're not really like a too late to be glam yeah and too early to be a hair metal yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I always thought I like them since I was a teenager. There was just like there's something really fun about their music. To me, I like the bands that don't fit anywhere there. There's always something interesting when either a band it's part of a scene that they don't really belong in, Like Joe Jackson would be an example. It's not obvious that he belonged in that scene, even though he was popular in that scene, or where there is no scene associated. We're just sort of a fringy thing, like I think of them, or albums that don't sound like other albums that The Love Forever Changes album It's one of my favorite albums, and I don't know any other albums particularly like that. It's so nothing sounds, it's so good, and it's one of a kind, like how come there's not fifty more like that in the wake of that. Yeah, it's just a singular thing. Yeah, there's a lot. Jungle is probably my favorite kind of music, and I collect it and the stuff from like ninety two to ninety six, and every so often there's a song there's musical style of it. It's there's not one other song that's like that one song. You find these weird. A lot of it's similar to each other in certain ways, and then there's certain songs that somebody could have nab that and it could have become a trend, but it just never did, and so it just it just winds up being this one obscure song that doesn't sound like anything else. That's also when you're into something, you notice those differences more. You know, to somebody else that forever changes might just sound same. Is like a folk rock many other folk rock album. You know, like when you really like something, I feel like you wind up zoning into the details of it that make one thing this similar. Do you decide on a new for you old genre music to dive into deeply? At times? Does that come up where like I'm going to really research a particular style of music only if I'm excited about it. Yeah? Yeah, Do you remember the last one? The last one and the only thing that's popping into my head is ghetto house from Chicago? Like it developed into a style called juke and then a style called footwork. And I was really into footwork when I first heard that, but I wasn't aware of the ghetto house that it had come from, that the people who made footwork had been listening to when they were growing up, you know. But I mean I got into it like ten I don't know, seven years ago or something like that. Is it a blend of rap and house not rap because it's it's repetitive and the lyrics are generally kind of funny, dirty sex lyrics. But one sample of something repeated, so it's spoken. It's not really rapping, but it's it's because there's no flow. Really, it's just a sentence or a phrase that keeps getting repeated over and over and over. It comes from Chicago house music, so you have like Chicago acid and then you have this label dance Mania that there was a Chicago label that kept developing as the music was developing at the time, and ghetto house was one of the things that developed into And there's nothing fancy about it. It's it's like a real simple version of funk. It's like an electronic it's real. It's a really strange kind of electronic funk that's very minimal. It'll usually be like, you know, a baseline, a simple drum part, maybe one simple sent melody, one sam bowl. They get a lot of mileage out of very little. And I'm so in with my electronic music. I'm so into being fancy that I really enjoy listening to people who can who can say so much, so simply and with so little effects, so little programming, to have a loop that feels good, that's just one bar going over and over, but it's really funky and you want to hear it over and over, or a sample that you want to hear the same sample over and over really hard. Yeah, And for them it came naturally. So it's fascinating music for me to listen to. So, you know, I feel like joining the joining the band again. This time it was really sort of about going back to I was trying to figure out what out of rock music would I'd be interested in now because I just listened to this, you know, to I'd be on a drive home from the dentist and I'd listen to the Rolling Stones, and I'd think I was really cool. I used to make meaningful kind of music like this with the band, you know, like as much as I love electronic music, there would be certain things, whether it was like Peter Hamill and Vandergraft Generator, or I'd listened to a record now and then and it just had a certain sort of meaningfulness, like sometimes like makes you cry or it gives you chills. In this way, that's a different feeling from what I get from electronic music, and that feeling of vulnerability and the of the human being that's doing it because you don't have the machine in between. But I didn't specifically, I wasn't obsessed with any rock music in particular. I would just listen to this now and then you know or that. So when I rejoined, I had to start start to figure out, Okay, what out of rock music would I actually be like I want to hear over and over and be excited about, you know? Was it? What was the thing that not too many things like, I know, fifties music really, yeah, fifties was the thing that was the thing that in general was the most exciting to me when I rejoined this time was just like because because of the purity of it, and because because of the feeling that it was new in the state of mind I was in. All other rock music after say, like nineteen fifty nine sounded to me like a fake version of the real thing. It was only the things from like fifty six through fifty nine that sounded authentic to me. I think ac DC felt that way the whole entirety of their career, right like music ended sort of with Chuck Berry, like everything past Chuck Berry doesn't matter. Yeah, I'd never seen it exactly from that perspective until whatever that was twenty twenty that started playing together and I started and I started writing music with them. I was like, Wow, the only rock music that really that does the same thing for me that electronic music does emotionally is the fifties stuff, because because it's the same with electronic music, I like my favorite thing or when a style has just blossomed, when it's when when when they've just come across a certain way of doing things and a certain kind of spirit and emotion and style. I like it for that first two or three years that they're doing it, and then I don't like it. I then I like whatever the thing was that came a few years after that where somebody was influenced by it but was doing something completely different. Generally, I'm not saying that's one hundred percent true, but that's generally how I my taste is with electronic music. I like a particular style for like three I would say that's true for all music, not even just just electronic music, because like, I'll get interested in something and then once it becomes regular to me. Yeah, it's less interesting, right, yeah, when you when you can expect what people are going to do. But there's a certain freshness that comes from Wow, nobody's ever sounded like this, you know, because there was great R and B in the early fifties, But like, but that thing that Elvis was doing, there's not somebody else that sounds like that before him. Yeah, he's influenced by things, but what that sound, what he was doing with his voice, the way those musicians were playing together, those precise kind of rhythms. There just wasn't something that sounded like that. So if you're studying what came before and you're and you're familiar with it, and then you hear that, you can see, wow, you can put yourself in the time and place of what that would have felt like at the time. And Buddy Holly's songwriting and stuff like that. It was just and the way Johnny guitar Watson played guitar like where it's distorted and mean and fucked up, sounding like like nasty. Before him, I don't know if I know a lot of like electric blues players who like who were playing before him, Nobody was that nasty is that like it? It's really there's there's a there's a few people Clarence Gaymouth Brown and who who was going for a while before Johnny Guitar watch him and I guess he got to a point where he was having a similar kind of nastiness. But but yeah, there's these certain certain things when they first come up. So I was so into those kind of players that stuff like Cream and the Yardbirds wasn't seeming as exciting to me as or Jimmy Hendrix even like wasn't sounding as exciting as the people that they were listening to, because that's where that's where I heard that freshness. So I was definitely into fifties music the whole time. But also Susie and the Banshees sounded good to me right away, right when I rejoined, and that was something I was enjoying playing along with a lot. And gradually, as as the band played together more and as I started to see the direction that we were going, because having no idea of what that was going to be at first, it was hard, but as as time went by, I started getting into more like psychedelic things and stuff. It's interesting how regardless of the influences going back to what you were listening to, let's say on Californication up through now. The influences could be could change wildly over the years, and you and the band sound like you and the band, Yeah, which is great. Do you know what it's like. It's it's beautiful that the new inspirations can open new channels. But they don't change who you are, you know, like, they don't. They don't make it a different band. Yeah, nothing can change your spirit. I would say I've never I've never heard a musician sound like another musician. For all the talk that people do about this person stole from that person, I've never heard one other musician sound like another musician. I just I've seen people try to and they don't, you know, like like And that even goes for electronic music, even when it's drum machines and synthesizers. I've heard plenty of people try to imitate, say Aphex Twin, and I've never heard that somebody actually sound like him. Like the human spirit, it's unique to each person, and a person's soul is unique to them. And I think you're stuck with that. You're stuck with whoever you are as a soul. You can use influences to give you ideas or to guide your ideas in different directions that you might not have gone otherwise. But the one thing that you can't avoid is sounding like yourself. And I would say the opposite side of being stuck with it is it's the reason for you to make art, because if you don't do it, no one else can play your part. You know what I'm saying. It's like, the only you can play what you play, whatever that is, and what you bring to it, that's your sound. Yeah, and maybe in the beginning it might be based on other people sounds until you find really what your direction is because most most people making music might start by copying someone else very quickly that falls away into being who you are. Yeah. Yeah, like althor being a teenager. I was definitely obsessed with trying to be just like certain musicians. But I always looking back, I sounded like me. It was me playing a different style. Yeah, I hadn't found the style of my own, but the spirit of it still sounded like me. I didn't sound like those other people. I can't. It's not that we have to find our own sound, because our own sound is there. It's when the influences start falling away, what's left is your sound? Do you know what I mean? It's less of a discovery and more of a coming into who we are. Yeah, but yeah, Sidbarra like Bad Brains Nirvana. I gradually started like seeing a connection between what I wanted to do, you know, and what became our new records and that stuff, and was just just moved by like it. But I've never had I've never been into so little rock music as I was when we when we made these records. It really I had to really strive to like find like, Okay, what can get me excited about it? Just because like I said, I would get excited about it and burst I didn't. I've never loved it any less, but I would. I just wasn't as obsessed with it. I get more obsessed with with electronic music. We're gonna take a quick break here and then we'll be back with more from Rick Rubin and John for Shauntey. We're back with more from Rick Rubin and John for shaunte How has playing live changed from the early days in the band to now for you? Well, as we discussed like the first six months I was. I didn't know what to do with myself up there. I was really nervous and just and just confused, maybe in relation to the music more than how to be do you know what I mean? I guess if I'm thinking like from Cali Fornication on, like like, it really hasn't changed that much. You know, playing live is just a more intense version of what we do in the studio, and and I don't feel like my basic approach to it has changed because it has so much room to be in the moment and to do things that are unique. At that point, I was really I was excited about playing live and I was experimenting. Like on Blood Sugar Tour, I wasn't super excited to be playing live, but I was doing real neat sort of experimenting on stage and stuff. But from Californication on, it's like I'm I'm exploring things and I'm excited to be there. So it's got that same indifference that I had on the Blood Sugar tour where where I'm not worried if if I fuck up, or if or if I or if something if the energy falls apart for a second, I'm not worried about it, but it's backed by like enthusiasm about playing with the guys and about you know, So, how would you say it is from night to night for you? I didn't mean enthusiasm wise, I mean like musically, how would you say, Well, Flee and Chad and I are improvising like all the time. Yeah, Like I feel like no bands do that. I don't know of any other bands I do. I mean jazz bands do that, but I don't know of big rock bands playing for a lot of people who do that. Yeah, and certain songs allow for it more than others for me. Yeah, Flee I think is improvising from the beginning of this show till the end of the show. Yeah, Like, like there's enough. The bass parts are all kind of almost all kind of built for that. And Chad, I notice, especially right now, he's doing it more. He's more sensitive to us than he ever was in the past. Like he's interacting with us in ways that I don't remember him doing on the in any of the previous times I was in the band's he used to sort of he helped things together and he pushed us and all that, but he wasn't listening to us in the way that he listens now, like he's really sensitive as a person too. He has a sensitivity that I did not associate him with having anything like that when I rejoined, you know, because he's an incredible musician. Yeah, he's an incredible musician. We're always really listening to each other. And for me on guitar, there's certain songs where like the chords of the chords, and I have to play the chords. But even with those maybe nobody notices, but I'm I'm putting notes in the chords that weren't in the chord on the record. There's sometimes what I'm the difference is subtle and sometimes the difference is extreme. And this is just in the guitar parts. Like Flee and I are always throwing in little extra riffs, like Anthony says a line and Fleet does a little riff, and then he says another line, and I do a little riff sort of imitation of what Flee did or something, you know, and then or I'll do something some certain weird kind of fast rhythm and a solo, and then Chad responds by doing that same rhythm as a as a drum fill. Like it's not just during the instrumental sections that we're improvising. We're doing it all the time. And can you hear each other well enough to be able to play off each other in that way? Yeah, we can hear each other really well. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I'm always surprised Cha Chad really hears every little thing I do. Like there's tons of moments during the show where I do something that I think is subtle that he's not going to notice, and he either shows me that he notices by playing a certain thing in response or he or by looking at me a certain way or something. And then depending on how Flee does something new, might that impact what you do new in relation to it? Yeah, exactly, Like like like just bouncing off each other as ibas all the time, that's what we're always doing. Yeah, so let's keep it so fresh. It does, like the set list always changes, but I feel like even if it didn't, I would be creatively satisfied up there because that type of interaction it means so much to me, especially because the weird part of it is that nothing ever falls apart, Like we're doing all these things that are only done that one time, and doing all this kind of interaction, and you can you can never quite predict what the other guys are going to do. And yet we play like a like we're one entity. Yeah, you know, like especially playing in these big stadiums, you're aware, like the details of what you're doing aren't even that important. The important thing is that you make one sound together. And so if I'm hitting the guitar and Chad's hitting the snare and Fleas hitting the bass all at the same time, that's one big sound that goes out there to the back, to the people in the back. It's like how the pieces fit together. Yeah. Yeah, so that so to be able to have that and to be able to make it spontaneous at the same time is just a unique thing that we've developed over the years. And to do it in the context of familiar songs that the audience can sing along with the whole time. Yeah, So it doesn't stray so far. I mean, the song is still the song, but it's more like the songs the scaffolding to allow all of the interesting playing to happen. Yeah, and we're always listening to Anthony, like the important thing. It's part of the challenge of it. If Anthony wasn't singing the vocals and depending on us to give him a proper groove. Yeah, we would go further out, but like, but got to keep it in the song because he's there. We like, I make sure if I'm going to do some unexpected thing and he's going to come and singing right after I do it, I better be right on time, you know, Like I better nail this new rhythm that I'm trying to do because he's got to come in and the right groove and he's got to be feeling the right thing before he comes in. So you're always making sure to support everybody else and to not go off on such a tangent that you're throwing anybody else off. Sounds super fun, it really is. It sounds it. It just sounds like the most fun playing music. Yeah, I I never knew growing up that it could be like that. I don't think there were any bands that that I was into that had that exact thing where everybody's really listening and changing in subtle ways all the time. It's in a different way. But the T shirt I'm wearing King Crimson, that that lineup of them was really good in that way, Like they like that when I think of who did I like when I was a teenager, that showed me that that was possible. That's probably the closest thing. Yeah. Yeah, most most groups when I was growing up, you just assumed that the song is the song, and the band plays the song. It might sound different for one reason or another, but and for most bands, that's what it was. For most bands, that what it was. That's why I feel like the Chili Peppers is such an unusual thing. Live there's so much more life in it than the live version of the record. Right, It's so much more musical. Even when you can't hear what's different, I subconsciously feel there's more going on, right, and it's and it doesn't feel like MOR's going on and it's screwing it up, which can also happen. It doesn't feel like that. It feels like a mind expanded version of it. Yeah. In learning other people's music, I always notice that there's sometimes the hardest things to memorize are apparently very simple things like it's much easier to learn what sounds like an impressive kind of busy guitar solo than it is to learn a rhythm guitar part that doesn't repeat itself too much, that keeps changing and s little ways for five minutes straight. That's actually a lot harder for the brain to memorize what sounds like it's the easiest thing in the world. Would actually be a real pain in the ass to sit there and memorize in comparison to what sounds like a hard to play solo and always that the guitarist who's playing it doesn't even know it. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean, is to memorize something because those are that's not really a part so much as somebody playing along yeah to something like like say funk Adelic, like has a lot of stuff like this where they're clearly they're guys in a room jamming with each other and it became a song. But there wasn't a flat like this is the guitar part. You repeat this every four bars like that's the verse the other there's there's a lot of sort of rhythm guitar parts that just they flow from the beginning of the song to the end. They're not a repetitive pattern, but feels like a groove from beginning to end, you know what I mean? Like those things, there's something in the brain that just doesn't want to memorize something when it's that simple. Yet it keeps changing. But it's beautiful to listen to. It's like it feels more like you're looking at the ocean or watching the clouds move in the sky or something. To listen to. This a much more natural, random quality that's more real than the same perfect cloud every time. You know, to say, what would it be like if every wave was the same wave, It's not so interesting. Yeah, So it's the kind of things like cha Chad notices when I'm say I'm playing a funk rhythm, and the funk rhythm on the record is one thing, and I'm playing a different rhythm. He hears that I'm doing a unique thing that's only happening on that one night. Could be nobody in the audience even notices that I'm doing anything different because it still sounds like the song. You know. We have to take another quick break here, and then we'll come back with more from Rick Rubin and John Fashante, who will play through some of his most well known guitar parts and dissect them. We're back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Santa I thought it would be fun. I just wrote before I came here, I wrote down a bunch of songs to talk about the guitar parts, just to see what comes up. Okay, you know, hopefully I remember them. Yeah, and if not, we can even listen to a little reference. Yeah, if I heard. I started with Californication, because I think that's where we left off our conversation. I think did we talk everything about Californication last time or just I feel like we touched on it. But it wouldn't hurt if we're gonna if we're gonna go through the other through Californication by the way and stadium, it might be good to talk a bit about more about Californication. Yeah, so going into that project, you're back in the band. I remember we talked about you being out of the band. I think we talked about you coming back to the band. Yeah, right, I think I think where we left off when we talked about it was I was kind of talking about how my technique wasn't where it had been, so I had to come up with a different style of playing and be inspired by more like new wave guitar players as opposed to guitar hero kind of guitar players and found a style from that when they asked me to be in the group again, Like especially at that time, I had for years at that point I thought I would never make music again, and even when I did start to want to make music, didn't feel that I could ever make music that would touch people again. Didn't feel I could make a good sound with my voice anymore. I'd had extensive dental stuff and singing was much more difficult than it had ever been, And didn't feel that I could ever again make a beautiful sound with my voice, and felt like I was missing whatever that thing was that had once been able to touch people with music. And yet to those guys, I was the same as I'd ever been like, and I don't think I had any other friends who saw me that way, you know, like Anthony and Flee specifically, like their belief in me made me able to be reborn. At that time, like I had tried to start bands with other people and stuff like that, there was there was no magic in it, no magic coming from me. And from playing with them that started, I started to feel like there I was generating magic, you know, Like there was a really neat time in that way, and especially because we really believed in our in ourselves and what we were doing, even if like the record company didn't seem particularly interested, you know, like like we were just very excited about about what we were doing and ended up carrying us through you know. Yeah, And the real exciting thing for me about that time was just sort of starting from a place where where we were able to take those melodic sort of ideas that we'd done on the slower, softer songs on Blood Sugar and combine that with the energy of the other types of funk things that we did, and for me to be able to play guitar in a way that has some blues aspects in some parts, but but had more of a more of an influence coming from the late seventies and early eighties new wave what's now called post punk, that I was finding ways to incorporate those influences more than I had previously, and I was depending on Hellel's style less than I ever had. Like I was able to really like find a like there was a place for that Hellel influence stuff. It's certainly there on Californication, but all those things like Californication and other Side and easily, and you know, all these all these songs, they were just I felt like it was a style that I was creating specifically for the band, and it I hadn't heard those things go together before, you know, I think I before I had had a fixed idea of what Flea's role is supposed to be or what my role is supposed to be. And I just started to be able to find that I could put those things aside, you know, Scar Tissue just play things that really sounded like nobody but me, and it worked really perfectly in the context of the band, and everybody just made it better. It did seem like some of the influence writing wise were more from synth based bands. You're playing guitars in the band, but the songwriting didn't necessarily sound like guitar based music. Yeah, because my favorite music at that time was like Massive Attack and Tricky and depeche Mode and The Human League, and I was listening to all this electronic music. It was actually really hard at first because similar to what I was saying about the current time, in a different way, when I first joined, I found rehearsal seemed really boring. If I listened to the kind of music I liked to listen to before I went to rehearsal. So like if I started my day listening to like depeche Mode and Massive Attack, if I went to rehearsal, I would just be sitting there thinking, God, we sound really boring, and you know, like this sounds like it didn't have anything textually interesting about it. It seemed like a bland kind of color. So I had to force myself to listen to guitar based music, and I found that there were a small amount of certain guitar based things that seemed to my ears seemed as colorful as depeche Mode and those things I mentioned, But it wasn't a whole lot of rock things again, you know. It was when I would get home from rehearsal, the first thing I do would be put on Depeche Mode, you know, like like that was really what I wanted to hear, and would have loved to go to rehearsal and have a drum machine guy sitting there, you know, like roods really wanting to hear drum machines. But that pattern worked out really well because those things, because I could warm up to the ramones. I was really into warm up to the Ramones and Fugazi and the Yardbirds and stuff, and then and then go to rehearsal and something about that combination of that. On one hand, I'm inspired by these other people who've done things with guitar, and on the other hand, the melodic things that are exciting to me are coming from this other style of music that's done with other types of Did you ever hear the acoustic depeche Mode demos? Yeah, I'm familiar with some of their demos, bootlegs of them and stuff. They're acoustic lens where's either on the piano or guitar. And it's interesting because I think most of the songs were written with traditional instruments and then turn into Depeche Mode songs. Yeah, but yeah, in the early days he used Martin Gore used to make like synth demos that were pretty developed, like you must have done them on like a four track or an eight track or something, and a lot of those they're kind of just like a shitty or sounding version of what wound up on the record. But I think as time went by he started bringing the songs in more just on guitar, so the producer and Alan Wilder and stuff, could come up with more of an electronic vision of it. They got really good results from doing it that way both ways though, But anyways, Yeah, so the sense of melody there on Californication had definitely more of a Even though the sound of the band is more like sixties seventies music, the melodic aspect had a lot more to do with things that were more modern at the time. Can you grab the guitar because there's we could talk about, like a song like, let's talk about other Side. That'd be a good one too. That see that that guitar part. You can't play it without the bass part because because because it's uh, it wouldn't sound Yeah, it doesn't sound like the song. It sounds like a part of it. It's just because we're Yeah, he's playing notes that are basically between but they're they're different. They're different notes, but they're basically the same rhythm. But together it forms together they form a chord. Yeah, how did that get written? How did it? How did it come to be like that? I came in with, yeah, something like that. It was those chords, and then I think I started by playing them, but I had a plan before I had even gone in I was like, I'm gonna start with those chords, but I'm gonna wait for him to start to fuck around with it, and then I'm gonna start. I think I already had that melody in my head. I knew that that would that that melody would sound good with those chords, so I started playing them, figuring he would pick up on the chords. Are all of the songs that work where it's the guitar and the bass making chords? Do they always start as on the writing side? Did they start as traditional chords that then turn into I don't know about always, because because we did that was something like other side, and we gradually realized that that was a thing we could do, so you could start writing in that style without ever starting with the original chords. I think so that's interesting. I think so because I'm I'm pretty sure when we're doing it later on the song by the way, Yeah, I don't think we've figured out the chords. I think maybe the chords still that was still sort of our version of the chords from the chorse. I know that they're not exactly the chords from the chorus and the intro to by the way, there's definitely like we were. It was a looser interpretation of it than but I know it is a way that we can play now like we do our Californication intro, where we're just like playing you know, fast notes all at the same time and playing different things and still we lock up again. There is a chord change that's implied in it. Yeah, it does help to have to be able to do that on a guitar and a bass. It's good to have an invisible chord that you both know what it is, you know, because then you know you know the framework of where you can go. Yeah, and it makes you be able to sound connected yea, even though there's no apparent reason to the listener why you should be connected, because you seem to both be doing different things, but you're both thinking a minor f whatever it is, and that what's interesting about that is that's like depeche Mode writing a song on guitar or piano and turning it into a depeche Mode song where the chords are implied. Even though there might not be an instrument playing the chords exactly. The composition of the different sounds give you the feeling that there's a chord happening, but it's invisible chord right exactly. Yeah, So I think that Californication time, I was so excited about what happened when we just walked into a room together and started playing, as opposed to sitting there with the whole thing of like, well, here's my song I wrote at home, I'm gonna show it to you, Like I wanted to try to avoid that. I felt like that that whole setup and that whole like because I used to play games with it. At Blood Sugar time, I had this act I would put on where I would act like what I was about to play with shitty. I thought it was good, but I found that I was getting the best reaction from them if if I acted like it was some no big deal, you know, they would they were more supportable or something. So there would always be the setup to it. So by calib Fleet did the same thing. I mean, I don't know how much an act necessarily, but but but yeah, like it really used to feel like if you acted like you were not confident with what you were doing, or if you weren't confid and what you were doing, the other guys would be supportive of you and stuff and and whereas if you walked in and said, like, I got this riff, It's the best fucking riff you've ever heard in your life, you just weren't going to get a good reaction from him, you know. So so yeah, so I'm starting to realize like, like I don't have to say anything. I can come in with those because I don't know how I knew those would go. But maybe I'd recorded him on a cassette recorder and I was just I was probably playing these chords, and I was playing guitar to the cassette recorder, and I was probably going bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. So I knew the two things went together good. But I was like, I'm not going to go in and show fully, so hey, man, play a f see you know what I mean. I'm just going to go in and play the chords and see what happens. And you know, like ten minutes later, like we had to, it's beautiful, you know thing where we're weaving in and out of each other and he's going up when I'm going down, and all you know, it's just like when I when I hear it, it definitely makes me wonder how it happens, you know, like, it's not that it I mean, it works together so magically that without me knowing that there is an invisible chord at play behind the scenes, it's impossible to even know how anything like that ever gets written, right, Yeah, it's cool when you take away the source of where something came from, you know, Like, so it's a good device. And in that song, is it just those chords over and over again because the chorse is the same. Yeah, yeah, exactly it is. So it changes from the verse of the chorus. Well, there's the bridge is different, but the chorus and the verse are basically the same chord progression, the sparse version and the chord version. Yeah. I don't even know if I actually fully play the chords. I think Fleet just plays differently. See oh no, no, the verse is different. Sorry, Yeah, the verse has a different guitar part. So yeah, that's that's the verse guitar part. So that other part is the chorus and rather than play the chords, Flee and I had that thing worked out that we did, and then that verse also feels like that would also make the guitar part in the chorus seem less like it's related to chords, because what you just played for the verse doesn't seem related to chords. It is. It's a to e Okay, you know, just it feels more like a riff because the way you're playing it. Yeah, because that that, Yeah, I like that idea. I was of putting big intervals between the notes and a guitar using using the guitar itself to create a sense of space. So with that guitar, those two notes are so far apart from each other and there's so much space between them. It seemed like it gives space to the rest of the band to fill it, to fill it in, as opposed to if I was playing the full chord, it would be like, you know, to me, that's less meaning. There's more going on, and it's less meaningful. So I was just I really like that guitarist Ricky Wilson from the B fifty twos, he had this way of playing where he just had he only had four strings. He had the low two strings and the high two strings were tuned to the same note, and he had no G string and no D string, and he would essentially be playing two different guitar parts at the same time because it sounds like two different guitar parts because he's sort of playing a bar chord on the low strings and then the high strings. He's playing a kind of a melody. And it gave him a real unique right hand style to be able to do that because sometimes they alternate, the right hand alternates from the high string to the low string to the high string. Sometimes they play at the same time, so they have two separate motions to them. So that was somebody who I know I was inspired by in that way, but it's something i'd just been messing around with, even a Blood Sugar time just and it was when I remember when I first did it. It was inspired by listening to him. But that whole sort of style of playing where you're going like like like so much space. Yeah, it creates all this space, and it makes it fun to just play guitar by yourself because you're kind of doing a bass part and you're doing a melody part. But it's really different than finger picking. Yeah, yeah, exactly because it's simpler and and but I used to just find it was fun to just it's more like just yeah, just improvised. It's like playing piano with one finger on each channel. Yeah, so uh so, yeah, so that other side verse part definitely comes from thinking that way and scar tissue. It's the same kind of thing, the same same kind of thing, just wanting to put big intervals between things. Because I'd always, you know, play along with music all the time. There's certain things like that that I'd wonder, like I'd noticed, like, not that many people have done this for some reason. It's a stupid thing, you know. It's like it's nothing complicated or anything, but I just hadn't heard a lot of people doing it. So I'm always on the lookout for things like that, like what I what somebody maybe hinted at but hasn't really done that much. I think some of my references for playing like that. Eric Avery and Jane's Addiction had a couple of bass lines that were like that, Yeah, he has that thing, and I think Summertime Summertime Roles has a baseline kind of like oh I would for you has a bassline that I think has has those kind of distances in it. He would kind of play these. He had a few songs where he'd he'd have these like big intervals like that on his bass and I thought that would be cool to do on guitar. Yeah, you know, so cool. Yeah, Parallel universe. Uh yeah, so again again that that one is Flee and I sort of playing in harmony with one another. And that's actually I can't think. I don't think there was a chord. I think I don't even remember which of us was playing first, but one of us was playing and the other played to that, if I remember correctly. Yeah, and definitely forgotten the discussion about it being rhythmically unison for the whole song or did that just sort of happen it started and never stopped. Yeah, that there definitely wasn't discussion that it would be cool. You know, it's hard to remember exactly how that came about. I remember writing the chorus at home. I think that was probably like pretty like Nirvana inspired, you know, like you know, they have these songs like all right, it's called Even in His Youth at two songs same key like that. They have another song that goes I just like, I really liked those songs that had that sort of minor kind of dark feeling. They don't sound at all the same to me, but it's interesting that they do that. Yeah, I think in my mind I was gonna. I was like, I write something like even in his youth, and that was that seems more like Ramones the anthemic to me. Yeah, I mean I'm also listening to the Ramones a lot at that time. Also, you know, for me to say, I think I used to kind of try to hide the Nirvana influence because I felt like they were contemporaries and I didn't want people to know how much I loved them. But like, but like I mentioned you before, like when when I was down and out and there was like all those those years where there was no future, their music, their music, along with a few other people like David Bowie and Black Sabbath, that just meant the world to me. It just meant everything to me, and partially in their case because I felt like it was something I felt inside me since I was a kid, because I because I loved punk. Punk was the music that got me into playing guitar, but also loved all different kinds of pop music and stuff. So for somebody to combine punk with pop as well as they did, just and somebody to be that good of a screamer because Darby Crash was my favorite singer when I was a kid. And then so to have somebody who's screaming like as good as Darby Crash, yet he's singing like melodically in this way that Darby didn't really sing. Yeah, their music just meant a lot to me. So I remember them opening for you. Was that on the Blood Sugar tour that they were opening for you only for three shows? Oh, I must have been on all three shows and because for me it felt like, oh that they're on the tour. Yeah, I was in California only, but and I wasn't into them then. I resented the whole idea of a pop punk thing at the time, like I was so funny. Yeah, I didn't like them till after he'd already died. Yeah, he just died. I think when I started to Tony Oswald started playing playing I first heard him when I was in the I was in a rehab, and I mean when I first heard them and liked them, I was in a rehab and that in Udoro album had come out, and she played me the song raped me over the telephone, and I was stuck in a rehab for thirty days, and I kept calling her upcoing play me that song again. It's playing like however it sounded on the fine. I just had to hear it again. I loved it so much. Yeah, it was it was really that in Udoro. It might have been before he died, at no, I think it was still after he died. But I just hadn't heard that album in Udo and that was the and I still think that's their best album, and that that was what got me real excited about them. Yeah, maybe the things about never Mind that Cured himself didn't like were the things that didn't appeal to me about it when it came out or something. Because when so I heard them sound actually like raw and sound like just like guys playing in a room, that's when I realized. And I didn't even watch them when they opened for us. I was just in my own head. And so anyways, so so I saw that courts as like Nirvana thing. But like I said, a lot of times, things like I like, a lot of times, the things we love, we don't hit us to write it first. Yeah that's not unusual at all. Yeah, I know it was that way for you with the Ramones. Yeah, I just made me laugh. Yeah. But yeah, but anyways, being into punk since I was a kid. It was like, once I got into them, I was surprised that I hadn't landed on these ideas like when I first joined the band, you know, this way of sort of combining punk and pop, because like I just thought the band didn't want to be I didn't think that. I didn't even think the Red Hot Chili Peppers would want to do something like that anyways, you know, like I would to find they might not have wanted to write when you joined. Actually, if you think about it, because it was until it took time for it to for the mold to open of what the Chili Peppers could be. Yeah, it wouldn't have suited really the way Anthony was singing then. Yeah, you know, like it took time for it to turn into anything we like. You know that took time. Yeah, But anyways, it came real naturally. That song's definitely a combination of Fugazi and Nirvana in my mind, like probably quite a bit of our songs I could sum up in ways like that. I could say it's a combination of this artist and that artist or whatever, but really it sounds like us. Yeah, I was gonna say, it doesn't sound like either of them. Yeah, what is the verse guitar part in parallel universe? It's hard to play on this, but yeah, it's it doesn't sound like anything like, Yes, it doesn't sound like music without the base. It's so interesting though, but when they're together, it's so unique and so cool. Yeah, yeah, that one. It might have come up in a similar way to to other side with me coming in with chords, but somehow I don't think so. I think Fleet. I think Fleet was probably playing that on the bass and the do you know what his part is? You know, so that does sound we're root. Yeah that you can hear the music more. My part doesn't even sound like the song, like unless you hear it with that part with that his harmony makes it makes the whole thing feel like thick. Yeah, yeah, exactly like his part. You hear the song and it yeah, because he's playing the root notes and I'm playing the different intervals. But yeah, I guess come to think of it, that it must have been that that like that, I like those couple, those three notes of even in his youth there, so I wanted to do something with those that started with that basic tonality. But like, but the way I'm strumming. It is like the Ramons like that, it's all down strokes, and I was playing along with the Ramones every day. It was good for my rhythm hand. It got me stronger and stronger as as we rehearsed, I kept being able to do down strokes faster and faster, and became friends with Johnny Ramone at that time, which also like, yeah, I had an influence on on me and in a lot of ways, He's the person who got me into fifties music. So I started like, like, I learned all the guitar solos on all the Ricky Nelson's. You were ready into old movies before Johnny Ramone, or was Johnny really I was into? Yeah, I was into you know, old movies, but he was able to show me a lot more about them and stuff that I that I didn't know, Like he used to give me Humprey Bogart movies that he would record off TV when they would show a rare one and stuff, and yeah, it got me into collecting such an interesting person. I really miss him. Yeah, he's one of the more interesting people I've ever met. No, that's truly true. Very um like knew what he liked you know what I mean, Like very saw the world his way clearly. Yeah, he was very sure of it, and he didn't mind if you disagreed with not at all at all, not at all. And at the same time it just didn't it didn't but it didn't it didn't make sense. Yeah, you see how anyone could see it differently. Yeah, he would just say okay, yeah, yeah, Like he's like, I think I know more about no more about this than you. I saw that you did one of one of the remote songs that at Flee's thing last week. It was I saw a little clip Linda sent me. It was so beautiful. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, I've done it a few times now. I didn't once for the day that he that he died, for his birthday, which came not long after that, and then the other day because DH died so and because Linda was there. So yeah, I didn't know that. You didn't know DH died. Oh yeah, Flick called me up and I before that show. Have you heard so? Yeah, I can't remember. Did you play together with him in the band? Yeah for six six months. We see the drummer when you joined. Yeah, me and him, we're playing with another friend of mine who who died just a few years later, but a really great bass player, and me and him and DH were trying to get a band going, and then DH joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then I joined, and I think it was actually probably just a total of about four or five months that I was in the band. And did you gigs? I can't remember. Yeah we did. We did a tour for like three weeks in the Midwest. We played San Francisco, we played La I think twice, we played in Arizona, we played Scattered, played a few scattered gigs in other places. But yeah, I mean he's the person who introduced me to Flee, you know, And yeah, and like his feel as a drummer. It's just like it was really fun playing punk with him. I remember the very last time, I was pretty sure we were going to fire him, or I knew we were going to fire him at this point, but we were. We had a last rehearsal and I remember it being just Meme, Flee and DH there and we played Foreign Policy by Fear because you could pretty much just go into whatever punk song and DH do how to play it really well. And I really love that song Foreign policy. It's a really beautiful It's just a beautiful emotive song, and it was a real emotional moment. It was one of those moments I was like, I'm never going to forget this, like the feeling, you know, the feeling of this, like because him and me and Flee had such a good connection, but he he just he wasn't willing to give up the things that were separating him from the rest of us, you know, and it had to go that way. But yeah, we used to have a good time playing together. So when he died, I like listened to those first couple of Dead Kennedy's records that he's on and just listening to his groove and stuff. It just felt really good to remember him. But I hadn't talked to him in like twenty years. We were at the same rehab like twenty years ago, right before Californication, and he left after a few days. But that was that was the last time I'd seen him. But the other guys had been in touch, and I'd been recently like sending Anthony pictures of us with him. That came my way to like show him, and he was like wanting to see the pictures and stuff like he was going in a good direction. I thought, we have to pause a conversation right here, but we'll be dropping the next episode in our Fraschante series next week. In that episode, John continues to play through about hot chili pepper songs, and he plays a snippet of a solo track dying Song and tells us why that didn't end up on by the way, So be sure to keep an eye out on our feed. We can hear all of our favorite chili pepper songs on our playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad pre listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for pushkm plus on Apple podcast subscription and if you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast at our theme musics by Kenny beats On Justin Richmond

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

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