Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're sharing one of Rick Rubin's
Speaker 1: most intimate conversations ever Unbroken record with Red Hot Chili
Speaker 1: Peppers guitarist John Frushante. Rick last spoke to John back
Speaker 1: in April when the Peppers were getting ready to release
Speaker 1: Unlimited Love, their first record with Rushante in sixteen years.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard Rick series of individual interviews with
Speaker 1: the band, I highly recommend you go back and listen.
Speaker 1: Those conversations are a testament to the band's deep, soulful
Speaker 1: connection and their unique creative partnership that has proven time
Speaker 1: and again to soar as a result of Frushonte's songwriting
Speaker 1: and gorgeous guitar work, and Frushante rejoining the band again
Speaker 1: has reinvigorated the group. On April, first Unlimited Love debut
Speaker 1: at number one in the US and fifteen other countries.
Speaker 1: In July, the band anounced the release of a second
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin produced album that's out today, Return of the
Speaker 1: Dream Canteen. On today's episode, we'll here John Frushonte talk
Speaker 1: about the making of Blood Sugar, Sex Magic and how
Speaker 1: has contributions on slower, more melodic songs like Under the
Speaker 1: Bridge and Breaking the Girl helped expand the Chili peppers
Speaker 1: funk punk sound. John also talks candidly about the dark,
Speaker 1: drug addicted years that followed the intense success of Blood Sugar,
Speaker 1: and he explains how he was able to finally get
Speaker 1: sober and rejoin the Chili Peppers to record their classic
Speaker 1: commercial comeback album Californication. This is broken record liner notes
Speaker 1: for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: and John Frushonte And just a heads up, this is
Speaker 1: part one of a two part conversation, so keep your
Speaker 1: eye on our feed for part two soon. What's happened
Speaker 1: to man? Hey? Rag? How are you feeling good? How
Speaker 1: are you good? What's life on the road like these days?
Speaker 1: It's been really good. Yeah, we're in a great like
Speaker 1: playing has been really fun and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a different kind of lifestyle, just like everything is aimed
Speaker 1: towards being able to get up on stage and do that.
Speaker 1: And it took me like about a month and a
Speaker 1: half pretty much the whole European tour. Every time I
Speaker 1: walked out into one of those stadiums to play, I
Speaker 1: was shocked about the amount of people, you know, like,
Speaker 1: like I thought we had played stadiums before in Europe,
Speaker 1: and now I realized we hadn't. Maybe we'd played some festival,
Speaker 1: we hadn't played anything that looked like that. Wow, every night,
Speaker 1: that amount of energy coming from the people and putting
Speaker 1: out what you feel like you have to put out.
Speaker 1: It's just every day when I wake up, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine going up on stage and in front of that
Speaker 1: many people and doing that. But you just gradually build
Speaker 1: yourself towards it throughout the day, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just a real different state of mind. But I enjoy.
Speaker 1: I enjoy practicing all the time. That's the main thing
Speaker 1: I do, is just practice and the energy of the audience. Like,
Speaker 1: can you use the energy coming from the audience to
Speaker 1: channel that into what you're doing. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: that happens. That's what I'm preparing myself to take place,
Speaker 1: because what I play when I'm practicing, it's not nearly
Speaker 1: as intense. Ever, no matter what I warm up with,
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as intense as what I do once
Speaker 1: I'm up there. It's just like, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: something about the people and the general feeling of happiness
Speaker 1: that brings that out of me. And you can practice
Speaker 1: all you want, but there's really no practice for doing
Speaker 1: that other than doing it, you know, because there's no
Speaker 1: way to simulate it. So yeah, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: just warming up. I'm looking forward to next year and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so, I think the last time we talked,
Speaker 1: we were starting to talk about playing on albums and
Speaker 1: we got through Mother's Milk and then we got distracted.
Speaker 1: It never kept going exactly. So Mother's Milk. It was
Speaker 1: not a great experience for you. And was that I
Speaker 1: can't remember now. Was that your first time in a
Speaker 1: proper recording studio recording or no, Well, the first time
Speaker 1: was when we did the song Taste the Pain and
Speaker 1: that went really well, Like did it in one take
Speaker 1: and everything, you know, went really smoothly. Yeah. Michael Binhorn
Speaker 1: was just hyped when we were making the record, and
Speaker 1: he was taking on a lot of pressure. I think
Speaker 1: he had put a lot of pressure on himself that
Speaker 1: it's got to be the greatest album ever and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and he definitely imposed that on me and
Speaker 1: me especially because I think he felt like I was
Speaker 1: young and you know, he could really guide me and
Speaker 1: stuff like this, and you know, so the album felt forced. I've,
Speaker 1: you know, since doing interviews recently, I've kind of reflected
Speaker 1: on that period, especially once we got on tour, because
Speaker 1: once we started touring with Chad after the record had
Speaker 1: come out and stuff, it really we really had a thing.
Speaker 1: Like I think even a couple of years later, I
Speaker 1: didn't appreciate what that was. I was such a fan
Speaker 1: of the band before I was in the band that
Speaker 1: I thought of the magic of that band really highly
Speaker 1: with Helleo and Jack. But I recently heard, just heard.
Speaker 1: I listened to one song of us around that time
Speaker 1: of the Mother's Milk tour, doing what was usually our
Speaker 1: first song back then, the first song they ever performed
Speaker 1: on stage out in LA and Man, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: we were really good. I was like I was because
Speaker 1: I always think I was bad at that time, and
Speaker 1: I listened back to it and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: we really had something that that that that other band
Speaker 1: didn't have, Like we had this very intense energy, like
Speaker 1: there was something kind of mellow in comparison about about
Speaker 1: the previous band, Like we really did play every note
Speaker 1: like it was going to be our last, Like there
Speaker 1: was this passion and intensity, and I don't know, considering
Speaker 1: that it was basically funk music and that we were
Speaker 1: playing it that hard, I just don't feel like there's
Speaker 1: ever only been anything like it. And I even though
Speaker 1: I had an ego about it at the time, I
Speaker 1: don't think I really appreciated like how special it was.
Speaker 1: And I think when I really felt like I found myself,
Speaker 1: I kind of mellowed out a bit, you know, and
Speaker 1: stopped pushing myself on the music so much. And but
Speaker 1: there really was something we had then in eighty eight
Speaker 1: eighty nine that was I guess, in particular eighty nine
Speaker 1: that was really like powerful. I saw you guys at
Speaker 1: the Greek Theater at that time and it was mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah. That was the very last show of that tour,
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah. And I think part of it also
Speaker 1: has to do with Chad, because if you think of
Speaker 1: what drummers and funk bands sound like, like, you think
Speaker 1: about James Brown's drummers, they're super groovy, but they played
Speaker 1: almost like jazz, like, like very subdued groovy but not loud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Chad's rocking like crazy, which is not your typical
Speaker 1: funk drum right, But he's got a he's got a
Speaker 1: good funk feel, you know, it's incredible. It's a great combination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like there's this heaviness to it, but it's
Speaker 1: still got this funk thing, but it's also got this
Speaker 1: extra speed to it. And it was just there's all
Speaker 1: four of us. It was just like it was a
Speaker 1: real explosion when we came out on stage and there
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, somehow it took me like
Speaker 1: thirty three years to realize to realize what that thing
Speaker 1: was we had. Because there's other things about that period
Speaker 1: of time, like I can be critical about myself in
Speaker 1: the sense that I wasn't improvising as much as I
Speaker 1: did after that, Like my solos weren't as like ever
Speaker 1: since then. You know, when I play a solo, it's
Speaker 1: usually pretty unique to that night. It's rare that I
Speaker 1: do the same thing in the same place twice, you know,
Speaker 1: And at that time, I feel like I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to take that risk. But that was part of the intensity.
Speaker 1: It was so important to me that it was maximum
Speaker 1: intensity all the time. When I did start improvising, there
Speaker 1: was this feeling of like indifference to the outcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels much it feels much riskier to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, And like in nineteen eighty nine, I energetically
Speaker 1: like the energy was the main thing to me, and
Speaker 1: like I couldn't afford to let that energy slip at
Speaker 1: all the way I felt, you know. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: glad I went. I'm glad I moved past that to
Speaker 1: being able to relax and allow mistakes to happen and
Speaker 1: allow allow myself to do a solo that's not great
Speaker 1: in knowing that like taking the same risk the next
Speaker 1: time a great one might come. You know. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: also makes sense that because you were such a big
Speaker 1: fan of the original lineup of the band and knowing
Speaker 1: you're just a different person. It's, you know, it's you
Speaker 1: always feel like how do I fit in? You know,
Speaker 1: how do I step up to this thing that I
Speaker 1: love so much? It didn't it doesn't even really have
Speaker 1: to do with how good of a guitar player you are,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? It's like, those guys
Speaker 1: do this thing that I love, and now I get
Speaker 1: to do it. But it's weird, you know, it's just weird.
Speaker 1: It's it's a weird thing. No, it's really strange and
Speaker 1: Anthony and Fleet. All my memories of seeing them prior
Speaker 1: to my being in the band, including had videotapes. I
Speaker 1: managed to get a hold of of early live shows
Speaker 1: of Theirs and stuff that I used to watch when
Speaker 1: I was, you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and they and
Speaker 1: they still have it to this day. They have this
Speaker 1: thing that happens on stage and in a way, they're
Speaker 1: kind of like that in life too. They somehow simultaneously
Speaker 1: appear to be trying very hard and at the same
Speaker 1: time they seem like they're kicking back and they really
Speaker 1: don't care about the impression they make on anybody, and
Speaker 1: they're there to be themselves. Like there's this balance in
Speaker 1: the persona of who they are on stage that somehow
Speaker 1: has this combination of a careless, kind of relaxed, I
Speaker 1: don't give a shit thing, and I'm trying really hard
Speaker 1: at the same time to be the best entertainer I
Speaker 1: can be up here. It's a it's something. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems contradictory, and so coming into it, I think
Speaker 1: my first thought was that I was going to be
Speaker 1: as crazy as them on stage, you know, like, and
Speaker 1: I think possibly the reason I didn't have that same
Speaker 1: balance is because I think I cared a lot for
Speaker 1: the reason that you're saying. You know, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: that relaxed indifference. That's this very cool sense that I
Speaker 1: used to get from them on stage. For me, if
Speaker 1: I was going to go up there and go crazy,
Speaker 1: that's all it was was a guy going crazy. There
Speaker 1: was no cool kickback aspect to it. You know. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't me being trying to be wild and crazy
Speaker 1: like my it's not my personality and it wasn't the
Speaker 1: best way for me to serve the overall chemistry of
Speaker 1: the group, you know. So having a relaxed mental attitude
Speaker 1: to the performance part, to the playing part, to everything
Speaker 1: was what turned out to be best for everybody, I think.
Speaker 1: But like I say, there was something about the fact
Speaker 1: that I was just so all, you know, all out
Speaker 1: in that first couple of years that you know, never
Speaker 1: got that back again again, you know what I mean, Like, no,
Speaker 1: but that it's cool and it's cool that that's a
Speaker 1: period of time, and that's like you wouldn't change your
Speaker 1: diary entries either, you know. It's like that's a moment
Speaker 1: in time and that was then and now you get
Speaker 1: to do this and it's great, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's different versions of good. It's not like they're in
Speaker 1: competition with each other. Yeah. I remember I went to
Speaker 1: see Radiohead two nights in a row at Radio City Musical,
Speaker 1: and the first night it looked like Tom York didn't
Speaker 1: want to be there and he was just standing at
Speaker 1: the mic and playing and singing and stone faced, not
Speaker 1: moving perfectly still, and it just felt like he was
Speaker 1: just waiting for the show to end. And then the
Speaker 1: next night, which was the last show of the tour,
Speaker 1: he was the most animated I've ever seen him, Like
Speaker 1: it was the opposite person. Two nights in a row, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was running all over and happy. It. It
Speaker 1: was fascinating to see. I've had that same thing a
Speaker 1: few times on this tour, Like I'm specifically DC to
Speaker 1: Boston was the same thing as what you just described,
Speaker 1: Like there's certain nights where for some reason, I can't
Speaker 1: put any physical energy into the show, including just the
Speaker 1: normal sort of crouched down, kind of leaning back kind
Speaker 1: of stance that's pretty normal for Flee and I to
Speaker 1: play in. And Anthony stands the same way too. It's
Speaker 1: just like I can't even do that. I can just
Speaker 1: stand there perfectly straight up and with my legs straight
Speaker 1: and stand by Chad and just walk up to the
Speaker 1: mic when it's time to sing or press an effect
Speaker 1: and walk back to Chad after that, and just like
Speaker 1: I can't look at the audience, I can't feel anything.
Speaker 1: Probably the best that ever comes out of my playing
Speaker 1: on a night like that is a kind of intensity
Speaker 1: that comes out of anger that I just focus into
Speaker 1: the playing, and I can't really enjoy it. But that's
Speaker 1: probably if I listened back, I would imagine that would
Speaker 1: be the redeeming part of the show. Is just some
Speaker 1: sort of focus that can come from being in a
Speaker 1: bad mood like that that I can put into my
Speaker 1: lead playing in a certain way. But if that happens,
Speaker 1: do you always know it's like, oh, I had this
Speaker 1: argument earlier with someone and that's it. Or is it
Speaker 1: just like a feeling you wake up that way and
Speaker 1: it's not related to anything specific that you could point
Speaker 1: finger at. Yeah, if I analyze it, I could have
Speaker 1: a theory, but there's really like no way to know.
Speaker 1: There's really no way to know. I sense it when
Speaker 1: I'm walking towards the stage and when I'm on stage.
Speaker 1: I realize it in that moment that I'm first on
Speaker 1: stage and I realize, Okay, I'm in one of those
Speaker 1: moods and I'm not going to be able to get
Speaker 1: out of it, you know. And the same thing happens
Speaker 1: to flee or you know, but he has a different
Speaker 1: way of handling it, like he might go extra physically
Speaker 1: crazy to work his way through it. For me, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't try to do that. I just uh yeah,
Speaker 1: just stand there and get through it. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: musically the show's great, Like it's it's great either way.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've got definitely when I've had nights like that,
Speaker 1: Anthony'll give me back some report like so and so
Speaker 1: said that somebody who's seen us a lot of times.
Speaker 1: So and so said it was the best show he's
Speaker 1: ever seen of us. So you know, it's so I'm
Speaker 1: I'm learning to just let it be that way when
Speaker 1: it's a nice night like that, and don't beat myself
Speaker 1: up about it while I'm on stage or anything. And
Speaker 1: in my radio hit example, I can't say one show
Speaker 1: was better than Together. It was right. I was going
Speaker 1: to be interesting to see how different it could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that so, yeah, the night following the night that
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of in Boston, like like it was the freest,
Speaker 1: most loosest I could imagine feeling on stage, like it
Speaker 1: was particularly like one of the best shows of the tours.
Speaker 1: So sometimes those maybe those nights are just to remind
Speaker 1: myself to really be able to feel it completely, because
Speaker 1: if you know, if you felt good every night, you
Speaker 1: might never feel particular high because there isn't a load
Speaker 1: of balance it for granted. Also, yeah, so there's something
Speaker 1: about that. And it's like with meditation. You know, when
Speaker 1: you sit to meditate. At the end of the meditation,
Speaker 1: there is in a sense of sometimes we'll say to
Speaker 1: ourselves or that was a good one, or that wasn't
Speaker 1: a good one, and neither those are true. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's if you sat down to do it, you did it,
Speaker 1: and that's all that matters. And then sometimes the experience
Speaker 1: of it is euphoric, and other times it feels like
Speaker 1: you don't go anywhere and that's what it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be that day to get to the next one. It's
Speaker 1: just the path on the road, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really hard concept for people to understand and
Speaker 1: for you to try to make yourself always remember, is
Speaker 1: that like that there's not a good and bad meditation,
Speaker 1: you know, It's it's a hard thing to understand because
Speaker 1: when your head is full of thoughts and you just
Speaker 1: feel like this is not going well. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: really never know. And I know it from history of
Speaker 1: other bands too. I know, like certain nights when somebody
Speaker 1: was you know, supposedly like not in a good mood
Speaker 1: that night, and they played really good. It was just
Speaker 1: different than how they normally played, you know. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm trying not to be too judgmental about it,
Speaker 1: but it's not as fun, that's for sure. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the band was really rocking after Mother's Milk Live and
Speaker 1: now it's time to make the next album, and that's
Speaker 1: when we started working together. And tell me from your perspective,
Speaker 1: what was the experience like of making Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Well,
Speaker 1: pretty much right around that time that we played at
Speaker 1: the Greek, I guess we had. We took a couple
Speaker 1: of months off, and during that couple of months I
Speaker 1: really was And around that time, I remember I ran
Speaker 1: into you at Canters when we weren't we didn't know
Speaker 1: who was going to produce the record, and a lot
Speaker 1: of things were lining up for me as a musician
Speaker 1: and as a person right around that time, and I
Speaker 1: just had I had some epiphanies in terms of taking
Speaker 1: the direction of my playing and my songwriting in a
Speaker 1: different in a different direction. We were so close by
Speaker 1: that point as a as a band and as friends.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel anymore like I had to prove myself
Speaker 1: or to be to be what my idea of a
Speaker 1: Chili Pepper was or anything. I was confident that in
Speaker 1: my place in the band, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: I wanted to try just being myself, even though I've
Speaker 1: been gradually being more and more myself as a person
Speaker 1: and as a musician as that tour went on. But
Speaker 1: around that time, I was having all these realizations just
Speaker 1: listening to music that was that was my favorite music
Speaker 1: at the time, and that was different from what the
Speaker 1: band was always listening to together, because we were always
Speaker 1: we were always listening to like Curtis Mayfield, the Meters
Speaker 1: Signed The Family, Stone zz Top, the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack,
Speaker 1: like different, different little things that we would listen to together.
Speaker 1: That and even at home, that was a lot of
Speaker 1: what I'd been listening to that Fishbone, you know, like,
Speaker 1: and so I just started now the tour was over
Speaker 1: and everything, and I was living in this house, living
Speaker 1: in the in the Hollywood Hills for the first time,
Speaker 1: and and just having really strong feelings listening to things
Speaker 1: like The Velvet Underground and television and Peter Gabriel era Genesis,
Speaker 1: and I was realizing that, like that, a lot of
Speaker 1: power can come from from not hitting the strings super
Speaker 1: hard all the time, you know, from from not filling
Speaker 1: up all thiss with notes, from leaving big spaces listening
Speaker 1: to that guitarist from Bow Wow Wow, and listening to
Speaker 1: how how spacious is playing was and how well it
Speaker 1: supported the bass. I've been a fan of them forever,
Speaker 1: but just hadn't specifically wanted to play like that. And
Speaker 1: so I was really starting to realize, like how much
Speaker 1: music was starting to really produce these intense feelings inside me.
Speaker 1: That that period only really lasted for a few years
Speaker 1: where I really I had a kind of a synesthesia
Speaker 1: where I could oftentimes it was seeing, but it was
Speaker 1: something in between seeing and hearing in my brain that
Speaker 1: if I put on a record, the feeling was produced.
Speaker 1: If I put the needle back, the same exact feeling
Speaker 1: was produced again, and it was like watching a movie
Speaker 1: or something. So certain records were bringing up those feelings
Speaker 1: really intensely, or that bringing up that phenomena, and so
Speaker 1: those were the things I focused on. Captain Beefheart was
Speaker 1: a real big one for me at the time that
Speaker 1: was producing I think more of those types of sensations
Speaker 1: than anything else was. So started writing things because I
Speaker 1: knew it Flee and Anthony's taste so well, and I
Speaker 1: knew the breadth of it, and I knew their open mindedness.
Speaker 1: Like I was still trying to make stuff that I
Speaker 1: thought they would like, as I still do today, but
Speaker 1: I was coming from an angle that they weren't going
Speaker 1: to expect, you know, And so like that, Breaking the
Speaker 1: Girl's Song was one of the first things that I
Speaker 1: wrote before we ever started rehearsing, and Funky Monk's song
Speaker 1: was one that I sort of collaborated with Anthony. He
Speaker 1: was playing the guitar part, but it was it wasn't
Speaker 1: really the guitar part. It was just one finger and
Speaker 1: he was hitting all the strings and he was going
Speaker 1: bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
Speaker 1: bum bum bum. And so I took that basic rhythm
Speaker 1: and made a thing out of it. And power of
Speaker 1: Equality I think was the basic riff for that was
Speaker 1: something I came up with early. And it was just
Speaker 1: like I was really starting to understand how to get
Speaker 1: power out of simplicity and wasn't trying to compete with
Speaker 1: Flea as far as being busy and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where I finally had
Speaker 1: it through my head like Flea's allowed to be busy somehow,
Speaker 1: Like he can be busy and not sound like he's
Speaker 1: showing off. If I do it, it sounds like I'm
Speaker 1: eating into everybody else's space. You know. Was appreciating stuff
Speaker 1: like led Zeppelin, where you noticed Jimmy Page is playing,
Speaker 1: He's he gives so much space to the drums. He's
Speaker 1: often not playing. He'll often hold a note and leave
Speaker 1: it to allow the snare drum to be the maximum
Speaker 1: size that it can be. And so, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: putting all those things together in my head and that
Speaker 1: having that synesthesia thing, and so when we started rehearsing,
Speaker 1: just everything was falling into place like magic and yeah,
Speaker 1: I had that talk with you. It canters and I
Speaker 1: became really psyched about the I of you producing us,
Speaker 1: and we all talked about it, and that's what everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to do. And the real exciting thing that we
Speaker 1: all noticed right off the bat was that you were
Speaker 1: the opposite of what Michael Beinhorn had been. You. You
Speaker 1: you weren't putting any pressure on us. You your skill
Speaker 1: of listening was apparent immediately you were. You were there
Speaker 1: to listen, and you had no thought to impose yourself
Speaker 1: on the music or the direction at all. Like you
Speaker 1: spoke when there was something you had to say, and
Speaker 1: you were silent the rest of the time. And it
Speaker 1: was really inspiring to us because that in a way,
Speaker 1: that not pushing yourself on things. That's exactly what I
Speaker 1: had come to right around that time when I ran
Speaker 1: into Incannters, was like, Wow, like I don't need to
Speaker 1: force myself on the music. I can. I can let
Speaker 1: music happen without proposing to attack it, you know. And
Speaker 1: me me playing that way made Flee sound better and
Speaker 1: that inspired him and he backing off and not playing
Speaker 1: quite as busy himself, and we all just got really
Speaker 1: into listening to each other and supporting each other, and
Speaker 1: so it was neat. It was like that time, I
Speaker 1: guess in nineteen ninety we really started to realize what
Speaker 1: we had as a band and what the chemistry was
Speaker 1: that was completely separate, you know, like where in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine maybe it was just a more energetic, you know,
Speaker 1: more powerful version of the same thing. Like this felt
Speaker 1: like something that was unique to us. And not to
Speaker 1: say that Jack and Hollel didn't have a huge influence
Speaker 1: still on the basic parameters of what we were doing,
Speaker 1: but we had fallen into a thing where we were
Speaker 1: realizing who we were as a as a group, and
Speaker 1: you being there just helped to solidify it and support it.
Speaker 1: And every time you had an idea, it felt like
Speaker 1: something that had to be said. And that's what I
Speaker 1: was trying to do with my play, was like, if
Speaker 1: you don't have anything to say, just play one note,
Speaker 1: and if you hear that a second note needs to
Speaker 1: be added, then play a second note, you know. And
Speaker 1: seemed to me that that's that's how your contributions when
Speaker 1: everything you did made a huge difference to the overall thing,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was about creating space. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of your ideas had to
Speaker 1: do with with like we were all being more conscious
Speaker 1: of the space that we were creating between each other's
Speaker 1: instruments and each other's notes, and you emphasized that that
Speaker 1: same thing, like telling me not to play for a
Speaker 1: whole verse, or telling you know, Chad to lay out
Speaker 1: for this part, or Flee to lay out for this part,
Speaker 1: or everybody to do a complete silent pause right here.
Speaker 1: You know, Like all those kind of ideas were mind
Speaker 1: blowing for us at the time. There were things we
Speaker 1: never would have thought of, you know. And and your
Speaker 1: whole drum machine what I perceived at the time, your
Speaker 1: experience with drum machines, because I don't know how had
Speaker 1: you worked with a lot of drummers at that point.
Speaker 1: You had, well, mostly drum machines, right, yeah, so it
Speaker 1: mostly programmed everything. Yeah, So it was really neat, like
Speaker 1: you were when you were helping Chad with a kick
Speaker 1: drum pattern or whatever, and like it really seemed like
Speaker 1: it was this drum machine mentality going into a real drummer,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was really inspiring, and it felt
Speaker 1: really fresh and new, you know, and all that stuff
Speaker 1: was really inspiring in that period of time of writing
Speaker 1: that record, I think of as being like the happiest
Speaker 1: time of being in the band, you know, in that
Speaker 1: first period. That's great. I can remember being at the
Speaker 1: alley one time exactly this story told I can't remember
Speaker 1: what song it was, but I remember saying, and I
Speaker 1: can't remember who I suggested it to, is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: not everybody has to play from the beginning of the song.
Speaker 1: What's it like if he lays out until the chorus
Speaker 1: or John lays out till the course, Let's try. What
Speaker 1: was it like if we lay out to the second verse?
Speaker 1: What does it do? Let's hear it? Yeah, And just
Speaker 1: like thinking about it, and I didn't have a idea
Speaker 1: of what would work or not. It was just a
Speaker 1: way of thinking of how can we create more space
Speaker 1: and how can we do things that allow the material
Speaker 1: to develop without having to keep adding more things later,
Speaker 1: you know, like like if you take something away in
Speaker 1: the beginning, then when the normal third instrument comes in,
Speaker 1: it feels like an event and we haven't had to
Speaker 1: add anything. We did it by taking something away. And
Speaker 1: I remember I remember having that conversation. It felt like
Speaker 1: it was a big deal at the time because it
Speaker 1: whatever thing we were trying it on it worked. It
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is a new tool in the
Speaker 1: bag of tricks of things that can work. You know. Really,
Speaker 1: and again, I think I'm assuming that your experience producing
Speaker 1: hip hop was an influence on it because of the
Speaker 1: constant muting and un muting that takes place when you're
Speaker 1: making that kind of music. It was absolutely It was
Speaker 1: basically like you were muting the guitar for the first
Speaker 1: verse and saving it for the second verse. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we were all conscious that that was where you
Speaker 1: were coming from, and it was so neat to hear
Speaker 1: those ideas being applied to a rock band, you know,
Speaker 1: like and yeah, it just made us think in a way,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't never have occurred to us. We write
Speaker 1: the verse, that's what we play in the verse, you know.
Speaker 1: We think of ourselves as a unit. We don't think
Speaker 1: of ourselves as like separate. So it was it was
Speaker 1: really neat to hear how how space could move things along.
Speaker 1: And I and I wound up needing to do less
Speaker 1: overdubs on that album as a result of exactly what
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like, I've often looked back and go like,
Speaker 1: how did I get away with doing so few overdubs,
Speaker 1: and still the songs feel like they developed from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. And yeah, I think it's the arrangements absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: be back with more of Rick Rubin's conversation with John Frushante.
Speaker 1: We're back with Rick Rubin and John Frushante. I remember
Speaker 1: we were again. I don't remember which songs were when,
Speaker 1: but we had gotten to the point where it seemed
Speaker 1: like we were ready to make an album, and then
Speaker 1: there was some record label stuff going on where we
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to go into the studio and ended up
Speaker 1: writing for probably close to another year, So there was
Speaker 1: already an album's worth of material that had things been normal,
Speaker 1: we probably would have recorded, and then instead we used
Speaker 1: that time to just write a bunch of more songs
Speaker 1: than Again. I don't remember which ones came earlier, which
Speaker 1: ones came late, but I know a bunch of good
Speaker 1: ones came late too, you know, I think there were
Speaker 1: good ones on both sides. Yeah, we decided that there
Speaker 1: was no way we were going to be on EMI
Speaker 1: anymore because they were taking too much control away from
Speaker 1: the band, like editing the record without consulting us. The
Speaker 1: mix was done without consulting us. We didn't We never
Speaker 1: approved any mixes, putting things out without asking us. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is, twelve inches or whatever, just like I guess
Speaker 1: we hadn't noticed because the label just hadn't cared about
Speaker 1: the band in the first few albums, so nobody had
Speaker 1: noticed that we didn't have artistic finals say. And so
Speaker 1: we really wanted to be with a label that trusted
Speaker 1: us and was going to allow us to be ourselves
Speaker 1: and allow us to have artistic finals say. And it
Speaker 1: turned out there were several who were willing to give
Speaker 1: us that, and so it was hard for somebody to
Speaker 1: talk m I out of letting into letting us go.
Speaker 1: But Mo Austen made a deal with them and made
Speaker 1: a deal with us, and that was the label that
Speaker 1: we felt comfortable with. And we really liked him, you
Speaker 1: know himself. Even when we had decided at one point
Speaker 1: not to go with Warner Brothers. He made a point
Speaker 1: of calling each person in the band and saying some
Speaker 1: really nice things, and that was what did it. We
Speaker 1: were just like, Okay, this is a really warm, sweet
Speaker 1: guy here. Yeah, you know, and he always was the
Speaker 1: whole my entire you know, I got to work with
Speaker 1: him for I don't know, twenty something years and never
Speaker 1: a bad moment, never a bad moment. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he was great and so so yeah, so we we
Speaker 1: took a couple of months off. At one point, I
Speaker 1: remember from from the rehearsing writing process, fleet did my
Speaker 1: own private Idaho. Yeah. But I think even during that time,
Speaker 1: maybe like Anthony might have and I might have written,
Speaker 1: I could have lied at that time, which came from
Speaker 1: a very real experience a girl he really liked didn't
Speaker 1: want to be with him. And we drove around all
Speaker 1: day talking about it. Drove to the bank and it
Speaker 1: was a rainy day and we were just having a
Speaker 1: conversation about it. And I'd been recording stuff on my
Speaker 1: four track and with a sort of fingerpicking style on
Speaker 1: the acoustic guitar, but oftentimes putting wild, crazy guitar solos
Speaker 1: on top of them. So we'd been having this conversation
Speaker 1: all day. I guess I thought it would be cool
Speaker 1: to do something like this four track stuff I'm doing,
Speaker 1: which is the stuff that later came out on your label.
Speaker 1: That's the music, the four track music I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And I was like, we should write a song about
Speaker 1: this thing that Anthony's going through, but in the style
Speaker 1: of this stuff I've been recording on my four track,
Speaker 1: and we did it that night. We recorded, or I
Speaker 1: think we came up with a basic idea for the
Speaker 1: for the music, and then and Anthony wrote some stuff,
Speaker 1: and then I seem to remember him going to his
Speaker 1: house and writing some lyrics and then driving back and
Speaker 1: recorded the vocal and we weren't even the demo was
Speaker 1: so good we were considering even if the if the
Speaker 1: recording of the band didn't come out good, we would
Speaker 1: use that demo on the record. So yeah, pretty yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure that was around that was in
Speaker 1: that break. And then yeah, when when when everything cleared
Speaker 1: and we were we were allowed to go in the studio,
Speaker 1: I guess we probably rehearsed for another month or two
Speaker 1: or something, and then and then moved into the mansion,
Speaker 1: which was another thing, Like to live in this house
Speaker 1: that was like again or just a warm, cozy feeling
Speaker 1: as opposed to a sterile, you know, professional feeling. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't have ever known that that was a possibility, you know,
Speaker 1: to us, you had to go in a studio to
Speaker 1: record a song, and you were just like, no, we
Speaker 1: could make one. And I don't know why I thought
Speaker 1: that either because I'd never done it before. I don't
Speaker 1: really know why it was a strange. I think the
Speaker 1: thought was they had made these this group of albums
Speaker 1: that I didn't get the feeling that there was ever
Speaker 1: a great recording experience for the Chili Peppers. And they
Speaker 1: were all similar in that they all went into a
Speaker 1: corporate studio and recorded what can we do to make
Speaker 1: this one? The first one? That's not like that? And
Speaker 1: I would drive over Laurel Canyon all the time, and
Speaker 1: I loved that house. And then I just tracked down
Speaker 1: the owner and asked if there was any way that
Speaker 1: we could rent it and it worked out. We looked
Speaker 1: at other houses before that, and it wouldn't it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been as good. That was a really special place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. Yeah, And we were so excited by stuff,
Speaker 1: just like hearing all that natural room sound on the
Speaker 1: snare and stuff. It's like it's it's when I hear
Speaker 1: it today, it sounds really overblown, But it was exciting,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was yeah, like and it felt
Speaker 1: it was perfect for that record, and how we had
Speaker 1: arranged the tunes because it's smart. They were, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It filled up the space whenever the guitar wasn't playing
Speaker 1: or the bass wasn't playing. The drums it almost sounded
Speaker 1: like you didn't need anything but drums to fill up
Speaker 1: the space. Everything else sounded like extra. So yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was really magic. And I remember when we did
Speaker 1: the overdubs where everybody played percussion instruments. I remember when
Speaker 1: we recorded up at midnight behind the house outside. Remember
Speaker 1: how in the Red Hot you did good stuff. It
Speaker 1: was fun. And I remember Anthony was singing upstairs in
Speaker 1: one of the bedrooms. Yeah. Yeah, Flei was saying that
Speaker 1: that moment of recording the Robert Johnson song in the
Speaker 1: behind the house and the outside was it's like his
Speaker 1: favorite recording experience ever. Yeah. It was some card drove
Speaker 1: on down Laurel Canyon. You could hear it was filled
Speaker 1: with girls and they screamed like right before we started
Speaker 1: recording it. It was like so cool. It just felt
Speaker 1: like that was right as we had breast record and
Speaker 1: were it was just like, oh, yeah, that's the magic
Speaker 1: sound that's supposed to go right there. You know, when
Speaker 1: you brought in the songs that didn't sound like previous
Speaker 1: Chili Pepper songs. What was the reaction from the band
Speaker 1: at first when you came to rehearsal with let's say,
Speaker 1: breaky in the Girl music, Total openness, total excitement, Like wow,
Speaker 1: that to me, it felt so easy to write something
Speaker 1: like that. It felt like I could have been doing
Speaker 1: that all along. I didn't know that it was going
Speaker 1: and be okay, you know, yeah, because up until that point,
Speaker 1: what the Chili Peppers were was a very specific thing.
Speaker 1: It was hard funk with rap vocals always yeah, and
Speaker 1: on this album that that mold got broken to just
Speaker 1: be good music. Whatever the good music was. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized how much those limitations that we were
Speaker 1: working in as far as the musical style. I think
Speaker 1: I thought of that as just as intentional. I didn't
Speaker 1: think of it as that they just weren't able to
Speaker 1: write something like breaking the Girl or something. I thought
Speaker 1: specifically they didn't want to do that. And the more
Speaker 1: I got to know them, like on the Mother's Milk tour,
Speaker 1: Anthony and I we had a really nice drive in
Speaker 1: Germany at one time, just like we'd never listened to
Speaker 1: David Bowie together, and we listened to Hunky Dory. We
Speaker 1: had a cassette of it that a nice woman from
Speaker 1: e M I gave to us, And yeah, just seeing
Speaker 1: him feel that music so intensely and so along the
Speaker 1: way throughout the Mother's Milk tour, I'm starting to put
Speaker 1: it together in my head that like, they would really
Speaker 1: like it if I wrote stuff like this, And in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, it was the most natural thing
Speaker 1: that I could do, and I just but it was
Speaker 1: also that not just not just that there might have
Speaker 1: been an inability to write stuff like that before, but like,
Speaker 1: like I really loved the band within those limitations, Like
Speaker 1: I really like I that that funk punk sometimes heavy metal,
Speaker 1: but really good version of heavy metal thing that they had.
Speaker 1: Like as a fan, I thought it was such a
Speaker 1: brilliant combination of things that I didn't want to mess
Speaker 1: with it myself for purely artistic reasons, you know, I didn't.
Speaker 1: And also you never know something till you've tried it,
Speaker 1: And I didn't know how good we would sound playing
Speaker 1: something like under the Bridge, or I could have lied
Speaker 1: like like we were saying, like even what I could
Speaker 1: have liked, we had doubt as to whether it would
Speaker 1: even sound good with chat and fully playing on it.
Speaker 1: You know. I can remember when we were putting songs
Speaker 1: on the album decide that what's the song that ended
Speaker 1: up on the cone Head soundtrack sold to squeeze Y.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that couldn't be on the album because
Speaker 1: it was like too mellow and we already had a
Speaker 1: mellow So like, do you remember that? Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: really did your best to convince us to put it
Speaker 1: on there. You were like, I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the best songs, you know. And when we were writing
Speaker 1: this last batch of material that we wrote for these
Speaker 1: couple albums, I listened to the whole album. I listened
Speaker 1: to each of the whole albums at some point during
Speaker 1: the making of it, just to see where we were
Speaker 1: at and what we might be missing. And and when
Speaker 1: I listened to Blood Sugar, particularly, I, you know, as
Speaker 1: great as it is and everything, I was just like
Speaker 1: we were insane for not putting Sould to Squeeze on
Speaker 1: that record, Like I remember clearly fleasing my thinking and stuff.
Speaker 1: Of course, I remember us both particularly being like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: too much as it is. We've got three songs like
Speaker 1: this and that's that's already way more than Enough or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's just such a good song. It's
Speaker 1: such a good song, but you never know, like you
Speaker 1: really never know. And it's like if the Ramones would
Speaker 1: have made an album like Hunky Dorry, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we would have liked it, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's like sometimes when the formula is good
Speaker 1: or a CDC, you know, we there are bands that
Speaker 1: you want to sound like the way they sound, So
Speaker 1: in some ways it was it was risky. Now in
Speaker 1: retrospect it worked out, but it was risky. The other
Speaker 1: thing that it did was they were already a handful
Speaker 1: of those albums, so it wasn't like this was the
Speaker 1: band's second album of their career. Yeah, they had already
Speaker 1: mind those fields for some time. Yeah, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like good timing to expand, and we didn't expand like crazy.
Speaker 1: It's still if you liked the old band, I don't
Speaker 1: think you would have not liked the new bad. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't like one hundred and eighty degrees in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. It just was widening the scope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there definitely were people who didn't like us, like who
Speaker 1: turned on us at that point for sure when when
Speaker 1: Blood Sugar came out, Like for sure, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: definitely people that like the fast punk punk thing and
Speaker 1: and felt that we were selling out or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: I remember when interviewer came to the Blood Sugar house
Speaker 1: and he said, so, when you guys playing Vegas? And
Speaker 1: I said, and I said, I said, oh, we're playing
Speaker 1: in Vegas in August or whatever, Like I thought, he
Speaker 1: actually meant, yeah, when you're playing in Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and then and then I, oh, okay, I see
Speaker 1: what you meant. Yeah, like like and I'm sure I
Speaker 1: said something really rude to him, but but yeah, like
Speaker 1: we got a little of that. I even remember like
Speaker 1: some punk kids like protesting at one of our shows
Speaker 1: and flee walking out and talk talking to them and
Speaker 1: stuff like. But uh, in the long run, it definitely
Speaker 1: worked out, you know, like something similar happening by the
Speaker 1: way time as well, Like like we went so far
Speaker 1: in this other direction that wasn't what people expected. And
Speaker 1: in the big picture, I think we gained more fans
Speaker 1: than we lost. But but there were people who felt
Speaker 1: like like the thing that they liked about the band,
Speaker 1: we weren't doing that anymore. You know. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think artistically it's good to take those
Speaker 1: you know, to take those risks, and absolutely, and I
Speaker 1: think for us it worked out career wise in the
Speaker 1: long run, because I think people definitely think of us
Speaker 1: more as this band that makes these melodic, you know,
Speaker 1: pop tunes than they think of us as a funk
Speaker 1: punk band anymore, you know. Yeah, And we're still able
Speaker 1: to compete with bands who do go for a complete
Speaker 1: heavy onslaught type. We still have a very intense power,
Speaker 1: like we never lost that, you know, which is I
Speaker 1: think why maybe even though sometimes we might have thrown
Speaker 1: some people off and initially they might not have liked
Speaker 1: the new direction or whatever, like I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the time those people it grew on them. You know.
Speaker 1: I've never talked to you about this. Obviously, I talked
Speaker 1: to Anthony about it because I was with him at
Speaker 1: the beginning when it happened. But for Under the Bridge,
Speaker 1: I remember finding the lyrics in his book. I've told
Speaker 1: the story before, but I remember finding the lyrics and
Speaker 1: I remember him saying, that's not chili pepper song, because
Speaker 1: it was still in those days that couldn't be a
Speaker 1: chili Pepper song, and I said, well, try sing it
Speaker 1: to the band, see what happens. And he was very resistant,
Speaker 1: very resistant, and then he ended up playing it for
Speaker 1: you or singing it to you, and then you came
Speaker 1: up with the music, and I remember he was still
Speaker 1: terrified for you and him to present it to the
Speaker 1: rest of the band because it seemed so far outside
Speaker 1: of anything that had come before it. But I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about it. What was your experience when
Speaker 1: he first because I wasn't there when he when he
Speaker 1: sang it to you, what was that Like My memory
Speaker 1: of it's a little different. I remember you and Anthony
Speaker 1: coming to rehearsal and you really urging him to do it,
Speaker 1: and him making a bunch of disclaimers, and you just
Speaker 1: really encouraging him to sing it to us, and he
Speaker 1: sang it to us and Flee and I flee drove
Speaker 1: me home off and in those days and Flee and
Speaker 1: I driving home, and it made us really sad under
Speaker 1: the bridge. Hearing it just made us feel like, boy,
Speaker 1: Anthony's really bummed out, like like heavy yeah, like heavy words. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We just felt really like bad form And it was
Speaker 1: just this like sad kind of experience. And and going
Speaker 1: back to my house and just singing, Boy, that song
Speaker 1: is a real bummer, you know, like not meaning that
Speaker 1: it's bad, meaning like emotionally, yeah, Like I thought of
Speaker 1: it as a song about that he doesn't have any friends.
Speaker 1: That's that was how I described it in my head.
Speaker 1: But with your encouragement and with feeling having a feeling
Speaker 1: that there was something there, Anthony and I made a
Speaker 1: plan for me to go to his house. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't super looking forward to the thing, Like I thought
Speaker 1: of it as a depressing and as a friend, not
Speaker 1: really knowing how to like how to be there for
Speaker 1: that part of him, you know, like like I guess
Speaker 1: I felt maybe in some ways like he didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I was there for him as a friend or something.
Speaker 1: But we got together to do it, and I had
Speaker 1: I had some vague ideas in my head. I thought,
Speaker 1: there's these Jimi Hendrix songs. There's a couple of them
Speaker 1: on Access Boldest Love. The song Boldest Love and it's
Speaker 1: it's got this kind of chord progression that's very similar
Speaker 1: chord progression to the chord progression of Under the Bridge,
Speaker 1: where it starts on a major chord, but it goes
Speaker 1: to a minor chord in the course of the chord progression,
Speaker 1: so it's basically happy, but it's also got this slight
Speaker 1: sadness that it moves right through. And I think, I
Speaker 1: so even though I didn't know exactly what we were
Speaker 1: going to come up with, like driving there, I remember
Speaker 1: I specifically thought, do something like Bold's Love like because
Speaker 1: we'd also been we've been performing a cover of Castles
Speaker 1: Made of Sand, which is off that same Jimmie Hendricks album,
Speaker 1: and it worked live like. Our audience liked it. You know,
Speaker 1: that's my favorite Jimmie Hendricks song, right, and so so yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've been doing that all through the Mother's Milk
Speaker 1: tour and everybody loved it. So so I knew we
Speaker 1: could sound good playing something like that, and so I thought,
Speaker 1: just write something like that, and we figured out how
Speaker 1: to have the chords and the lyric and the melody
Speaker 1: and all work together with that. And there was a
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson song that I was particularly fond of called
Speaker 1: in Every Dream, Home and Nightmare, where when it gets
Speaker 1: to the chorus, there's nothing on the one, there's the
Speaker 1: verse happens, and then there's a little drum break and
Speaker 1: so the verse ends and then the drums go to
Speaker 1: good bomb bomb bomb bomb, So it's this interesting kind
Speaker 1: of groove just where it where it where there's nothing
Speaker 1: on the one, and there's a little drum break right
Speaker 1: before the chorus. So when Anthony I came up with
Speaker 1: it that that was I what I envisioned my head
Speaker 1: was we could do a chorus like that Joe Jackson song.
Speaker 1: So what I came up with that have a similar
Speaker 1: kind of drum break after the verse is over, this
Speaker 1: little breath and then and then in our case, it
Speaker 1: went one to the bomb, bomb bomb, So like the
Speaker 1: chord was arting at a different time. It's sooner in
Speaker 1: the bar line, but it was the same basic idea
Speaker 1: I played. I played Ryan, our engineer, that song, saying
Speaker 1: this is where I got the idea for under the
Speaker 1: Bridge chorus in the song. The chorus went by him
Speaker 1: and he was like, I don't hear it, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but conceptually it was that it was that idea
Speaker 1: of start later than the one rather than on the
Speaker 1: one for the chorus. That's a really interesting point in general,
Speaker 1: how we can be inspired by a piece of music
Speaker 1: or a technique and a piece of music and then
Speaker 1: make something inspired by it and it's nothing like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nothing like it. It's just some underlying rhythm or
Speaker 1: organization or principle that gets you to the next place.
Speaker 1: But it's not the song at all. It's just the technique. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. We did a lot of that back then.
Speaker 1: Flee and I were really on a roll with that.
Speaker 1: What we perceived is ripping. We called it ripping something off.
Speaker 1: But there is one example of that that I would
Speaker 1: just think that I would say comes anywhere near plagiarism,
Speaker 1: you know, it was. It's really inspiration and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we could do something like that, and that the context
Speaker 1: is so different that it has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the original. Yeah, And a lot of the time it
Speaker 1: might be in the guitar part or the bass part,
Speaker 1: but then that gets covered up and interacted with by
Speaker 1: the drums and the guitar or whatever, and you wind
Speaker 1: up with a completely different texture and a completely different
Speaker 1: sound and a completely different musical statement. Where a lot
Speaker 1: of musicians I've known have been paranoid about stealing from
Speaker 1: anybody else, and then for some reason, those same musicians
Speaker 1: actually have bass lines or guitar parts that are exactly
Speaker 1: something director rip offs and they didn't and they didn't
Speaker 1: know they were doing it, you know. So somehow I
Speaker 1: feel like by being conscious of it, we were controlling it,
Speaker 1: you know. And it would be a theoretical idea that
Speaker 1: we were taking, or or an idea that has something
Speaker 1: to do with the relationship of the instruments, or and
Speaker 1: it's it's not actually taking music from somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like architecture. Yeah, we'll be right back with more
Speaker 1: from Rick Rubin and John Fuschante. We're back with Rick
Speaker 1: Rubin and John Fuschante, who are talking about the making
Speaker 1: of the Chili Peppers nineteen ninety one album Blood Sugar
Speaker 1: Sex Magic. So then we finished that album. I remember
Speaker 1: we had a really good party at that house. It
Speaker 1: was really fun. It felt like a thousand people were there.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that. Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: That was really good. Yeah, playing music everywhere in the
Speaker 1: house and stuff and people playing ping pong and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you went on the road and then how
Speaker 1: long was it before it stopped being fun? Well, we
Speaker 1: had a pretty big break between especially because we weren't
Speaker 1: really involved in the mixing, so as I remember it
Speaker 1: from the time I left the recording studio. I think
Speaker 1: of it as being like a six month period or
Speaker 1: something that we weren't doing anything. Was probably shorter than that,
Speaker 1: but I seem to remember having a nice long break,
Speaker 1: you know, And during that time there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things that happened to me that I think like switched
Speaker 1: my mental gears around. Like one was a bad acid trip,
Speaker 1: like taking acid in the wrong environment and feeling at
Speaker 1: the time like I was never going to be the same,
Speaker 1: and being stuck in that mindset, and then waking up
Speaker 1: and feeling like, Okay, I'm I'm normal now, I'm not
Speaker 1: stuck like that. But as the weeks went on, starting
Speaker 1: to realize that I don't think I am the same anymore,
Speaker 1: and also started I won't get into too much into
Speaker 1: the drug thing, but they did seem like pivotal things
Speaker 1: that took place that that started occasionally using heroin around
Speaker 1: the same time and gradually and you know, as I
Speaker 1: had already been smoking pot all day long, but it
Speaker 1: was having a very positive effect, you know, up till then,
Speaker 1: but especially when that happened with the acid trip, it
Speaker 1: was just like I think my brain definitely needed like
Speaker 1: a clearing, and I didn't allow myself for that. I
Speaker 1: was so attached to the relationship between pot and my
Speaker 1: creativity that I couldn't stop doing that. And gradually we
Speaker 1: went we went on tour, and gradually that synesthesia that
Speaker 1: I was talking about, it was gradually getting weaker and weaker,
Speaker 1: like there was a distinct feeling of it drifting away
Speaker 1: and it was fading. I would guess it would be
Speaker 1: a good way to describe it. And with the limited
Speaker 1: experience I'd had in my life up till then, it
Speaker 1: seemed like if I didn't have that, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to have creativity. Like I thought that they were the
Speaker 1: same thing, and I thought, if I didn't have that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to being how I was
Speaker 1: at mother's milk time or something or And the one time,
Speaker 1: the one activity that I could do that still was
Speaker 1: producing that phenomenon was drawing and painting. And I guess
Speaker 1: that had a lot to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: there was no purpose to it. I wasn't doing it
Speaker 1: for an audience. I wasn't doing it to be good.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing it to impress anybody. I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: it to make money. So somehow that part of my
Speaker 1: creativity gradually was the thing that I was clutching to
Speaker 1: more and more, and music itself was starting to seem
Speaker 1: more and more meaningless, and I was having a lot
Speaker 1: of strange experiences. Were like I couldn't find any CDs
Speaker 1: or records on the shelves that I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: Everyone had some sort of bad connotation to me, and
Speaker 1: those experiences were really scary. And so where music had
Speaker 1: felt like it like it was my best friend, it
Speaker 1: was starting to feel like music itself was turning on
Speaker 1: me or something. It felt like the voices in my
Speaker 1: head that had been guiding me towards what had been
Speaker 1: by far the most creative period of my life, we're
Speaker 1: starting to seem like angry at me or opposed to
Speaker 1: me in some way. We weren't we weren't. We weren't
Speaker 1: working as a team anymore. And I felt like as
Speaker 1: the tour went on, I couldn't explain any of this
Speaker 1: stuff to anybody. I don't think I even knew the
Speaker 1: word synesthesia. I don't, I just knew it felt like
Speaker 1: my creativity was disappearing, and the painting and the drawing
Speaker 1: and the drugs as well, were with my sense if
Speaker 1: that if those feelings that I was having in me
Speaker 1: were what creativity was, those seemed like the way, it
Speaker 1: seemed like the way to hold onto it was to
Speaker 1: take drugs as much as I wanted and to paint
Speaker 1: and draw as much as possible. And that was really
Speaker 1: you know, you learn different ways of doing this kind
Speaker 1: of thing of staying connected to creativity in your life.
Speaker 1: But at that time, you know, I was twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, it seemed to me that you just followed
Speaker 1: whatever those feelings that you have inside you are. You
Speaker 1: just you stay connected to whatever gives you that feeling,
Speaker 1: like the Dennis Joplin lyric about you know you've got
Speaker 1: it if it makes you feel good, that that's that's
Speaker 1: I thought that that was the path to follow. So
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to me to do anything like stop
Speaker 1: smoking pot or stop taking drugs, or you know, meditate,
Speaker 1: not you know, these things just we're not We're not
Speaker 1: anything that me or anybody that I was close to
Speaker 1: was considering at the time. Did you even meditate back then? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned when I was fourteen, of course, But I
Speaker 1: remember I remember coming to see you when it was
Speaker 1: bad at your old house, and it was you didn't
Speaker 1: have many teeth then, if any, and the walls had
Speaker 1: blood all over them. There was a lot of vomit everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I think you may have still had one guitar,
Speaker 1: but maybe not even that. And I remember you being
Speaker 1: resolute in what you were doing. There was a sense
Speaker 1: of it wasn't like you were trapped and you wanted
Speaker 1: to get out. It was just the opposite. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: this is I am following my path and I'm following
Speaker 1: it to its end wherever it takes me. And you
Speaker 1: definitely owned it, you know, you owned your choices and
Speaker 1: were going it was again like I respect you. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't tell you didn't do anything different. Like if
Speaker 1: you say this is what I want to do, it's
Speaker 1: like I used and I wouldn't want anyone telling me
Speaker 1: to do something different than what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, whatever it is right or wrong or
Speaker 1: good or bad or wherever it goes, Like I support
Speaker 1: you in your journey, and if this is the journey
Speaker 1: that feels like the one that you want to be on,
Speaker 1: it's sad for me to see because it felt like
Speaker 1: you were going away. I think you weighed very little
Speaker 1: at that time too, and we're really weak, but you
Speaker 1: were still you, and you were still smiley and like
Speaker 1: you were. It wouldn't be so different than the conversation
Speaker 1: we're having now, you know, other than it just seemed
Speaker 1: more harrowing from an outsider coming in that this was
Speaker 1: a scary situation. Yeah, it's just so we have no
Speaker 1: context for this situation at any point in my life. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do other than I love you,
Speaker 1: I support you, whatever it is. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is, you know, it's just scary. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: that was a funny thing about me during that period
Speaker 1: comparison to other people that I was friends with who
Speaker 1: went down in a similar path with drugs, was that
Speaker 1: they all felt guilty about it always, like they all
Speaker 1: denied it took them a long time to even admit
Speaker 1: that they were an addict, and took them a long
Speaker 1: time to and they would they would always be talking
Speaker 1: about how they were going to quit. They were always
Speaker 1: talking about how this is the last time. And I
Speaker 1: never did any of that. Like, while I was doing it,
Speaker 1: I was really happy doing it. I was so happy
Speaker 1: to still be in touch with that spark of creativity
Speaker 1: inside myself, and I really felt that it was drifting
Speaker 1: away while I was playing with the band, and when
Speaker 1: I as long as I had to do publicity and
Speaker 1: you know, and touring and all these things, performing in
Speaker 1: front of people, it just felt like it was there
Speaker 1: was no It seemed to me there was no direction
Speaker 1: for it to go to but to disappear completely. And
Speaker 1: I felt that in what I was doing, I was
Speaker 1: keeping it alive. And really the hard time for me
Speaker 1: was when I was when I attempted to stop, Like
Speaker 1: there was about a year there where I just didn't
Speaker 1: feel like myself anymore and the feelings went completely away,
Speaker 1: Like once I stopped taking drugs, there was nothing. My
Speaker 1: head was blank, there was no there was no seeing
Speaker 1: music as colors or music as shapes or anything like
Speaker 1: that anymore. It was just tell me the story of
Speaker 1: deciding to stop. You told me a story when I
Speaker 1: first saw you after that, and I want to see
Speaker 1: if it is still what it was then or close
Speaker 1: to what it was then. Yeah, the last time I
Speaker 1: saw you at your house when things were scary for
Speaker 1: me to see you were very positive on this journey
Speaker 1: that you were on and it was an unflinching move
Speaker 1: wherever it was going to go. And then the next
Speaker 1: time I saw you was at Lachma at a Bunuelle
Speaker 1: movie festival, and I didn't recognize you because you looked
Speaker 1: so radically different, but you were great and healthy, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I was so happy. I was
Speaker 1: so happy to see you, so happy to see you alive.
Speaker 1: It was so happy to see you, and you were
Speaker 1: your your again, your happy self. So tell me about
Speaker 1: what happened in between for that to happen, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: getting specific, I'm pretty sure that that time when I
Speaker 1: saw you at the nuel thing was during that first
Speaker 1: year that I had gotten over the addiction of heroin
Speaker 1: that I've never since then had to be medicated to
Speaker 1: get off heroin. But but it was about a year
Speaker 1: where most of the time I was clean, but I
Speaker 1: also was had certain points during it where I had
Speaker 1: a speed binge or a crack binge or something like
Speaker 1: I was I had this idea that I could do things.
Speaker 1: I really always wanted to be able to do things occasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, And so that was my first attempt to
Speaker 1: do that, And and it was a It was a
Speaker 1: hard period because that thing where you didn't recognize me,
Speaker 1: like a lot of a lot of people had that
Speaker 1: with me at the time, like my body's ability. My
Speaker 1: body had forgotten how to process food, you know, like
Speaker 1: like and I didn't know anything. Really I was. I
Speaker 1: was trying to eat what I thought was health food,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really super helping. And I felt very
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in my body, and so I was that first
Speaker 1: year was really a struggle because I not only was
Speaker 1: I trying to exist in the world knowing I don't
Speaker 1: have those things that I was describing as feelings and
Speaker 1: vibes connected with music anymore, at least it wasn't in
Speaker 1: the pronounced way that it was when I had synesthesia.
Speaker 1: But boy, did joy division mean everything to me back then?
Speaker 1: Did like Nirvana Bob Marley Joy divisions those three things
Speaker 1: in particular, Like I was so crazy about those particular things,
Speaker 1: like I just they meant so much to me, And
Speaker 1: I didn't have that specific, colorful reaction to them that
Speaker 1: I was describing that you know, from the Blood Sugar time.
Speaker 1: But I don't think music had ever meant so much
Speaker 1: to me because life seemed so bleak. Otherwise, people didn't
Speaker 1: really enjoy being around me. People felt sorry for me
Speaker 1: a lot. The same sense of humor that used to
Speaker 1: be funny when I was like the young, handsome, cool guy,
Speaker 1: now like the same jokes didn't work anymore, Like the
Speaker 1: same sense of humor it wasn't working. I'm convinced that
Speaker 1: I was that when I was twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 1: could have been an actor. At that time twenty seven,
Speaker 1: I had the distinct feeling I could never be an
Speaker 1: actor again. After this experience of realizing like how much
Speaker 1: of myself was on the surface that was the reason
Speaker 1: that my personality was what it was. It was very traumatic,
Speaker 1: and so that year was tough, and it ended with
Speaker 1: a few months of me making sure I avoided heroin addiction,
Speaker 1: but just doing whatever I wanted and going really off
Speaker 1: to deep end and having these crazy experiences where they
Speaker 1: were hallucinations but they were very real for me, where
Speaker 1: like people were in my house that weren't there, and
Speaker 1: I spent hours talking to them and stuff. Marcel Duchamp,
Speaker 1: Flee and Clara like Perry Farrell, all kinds of people
Speaker 1: were there and I thought they were there. I would
Speaker 1: call them afterwards talking about what we had done yesterday,
Speaker 1: why did you leave when? Because they would just disappear
Speaker 1: after a matter of hours of hanging out with each other,
Speaker 1: and then they would just disappear, and I would call
Speaker 1: them wondering what happened? Where did you go? And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I'd had that experience a bunch of times
Speaker 1: that I realized, Wow, these things I'm hanging out with
Speaker 1: people really late at night, and that was that was
Speaker 1: the way to know for me, like if somebody's here
Speaker 1: and it's two in the morning, they're not actually here.
Speaker 1: So that was a that was a pretty mind blowing
Speaker 1: period of time because I remember trying to make four
Speaker 1: track recordings at that time and finding that I was
Speaker 1: completely unable to follow a musical idea from to its completion.
Speaker 1: But as far as experientially, what was happening during that
Speaker 1: period of time, as far as my experience is listening
Speaker 1: to music and having feelings, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was communication with people's astrabodies or hallucinations, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what it was, but it was very real and
Speaker 1: I remember getting there was a very loud voice in
Speaker 1: my head that said, you're going to be dead by
Speaker 1: your birthday. This is in December, and my birthday would
Speaker 1: have been four months later. And the voice said, you're
Speaker 1: going to be dead by your birthday unless you get clean.
Speaker 1: And so I was pondering this, not sure, because throughout
Speaker 1: that year that I tried to be clean, it didn't
Speaker 1: seem like anybody wanted to be my friend. It didn't
Speaker 1: seem like anybody wanted to really connect with me. It
Speaker 1: didn't seemed like I knew how to interact with people.
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden, that voice came saying
Speaker 1: that I was gonna that I was going to die
Speaker 1: in a few months. And all of a sudden, all
Speaker 1: these things started happening that forced me into a position
Speaker 1: of having to get clean. I had several thousand dollars
Speaker 1: probably six seven thousand dollars in cash in my closet
Speaker 1: and that I would carry around with me, and I
Speaker 1: went downtown to buy some drugs and I came back
Speaker 1: and well, no, the first thing that happened was the
Speaker 1: landlord came to my house said he had to look
Speaker 1: inside my house, and I said, I can't let you
Speaker 1: in because there was needles and blood and different things.
Speaker 1: And it was a real mess. Even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the needles and blood. It was just messy and disgusting,
Speaker 1: and I knew he wouldn't be happy, and so he said, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't let me in buy tomorrow, I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to come here with the police. And I
Speaker 1: already had a warrant for my arrest because I'd gotten
Speaker 1: picked up downtown buying drugs. But they let me go,
Speaker 1: and I mean they let they let me out. There
Speaker 1: was a court date coming in the future. So that
Speaker 1: was the first thing I did, was I got everything
Speaker 1: I needed out of that house and had had an
Speaker 1: acquaintance drive me to a hotel. And then I had
Speaker 1: that six or seven thousand dollars and came back from
Speaker 1: buying drugs and the money just was gone. I had
Speaker 1: no idea where it could have gone. My best bet
Speaker 1: was that somehow I lost it in the taxi, but
Speaker 1: that was all the money I had. And then Bob,
Speaker 1: the friend of mine, put me on the phone with
Speaker 1: Bob Forrest, and he said, I can get you in
Speaker 1: a clinic to get off drugs. You can do it
Speaker 1: however you want, you know, I told him I'm not
Speaker 1: addicted to anything. I don't need. I don't need pills
Speaker 1: or anything. And he said, if you don't want to
Speaker 1: take them, you don't have to take them. You need
Speaker 1: to go in there just to reset your mind. And
Speaker 1: and uh, I really had no choice. I mean it
Speaker 1: would have been between that and just being a bomb
Speaker 1: on the street, you know, like moving into a tent
Speaker 1: or something. And so I did it. And this for
Speaker 1: the first time. I tried a few times to get
Speaker 1: off drugs, but this time I had had a feeling
Speaker 1: for the people who were there. Instead of arguing about
Speaker 1: the wisdom of being completely clean and admitting yourself an
Speaker 1: addict and that means you can't ever take anything, instead
Speaker 1: of arguing with this stuff, I really tried my best
Speaker 1: to help the other people who I was in there with.
Speaker 1: And by some weird fluke, like DH, the original drummer
Speaker 1: I played in the band with, wound up in the
Speaker 1: same hospital with me at the same time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so I just felt this empathy for the people that
Speaker 1: I like, I thought, regardless of what happens with me,
Speaker 1: like I want to, I don't want to mess up
Speaker 1: anybody else's experience because they're all they've all been having
Speaker 1: a harmful effect on their loved ones and people around them,
Speaker 1: and like, I'm not going to say anything to argue
Speaker 1: with their attempt to better themselves, you know. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: so I went through that that thirty days and that
Speaker 1: was the December of nineteen ninety seven, and nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight turned out to be really productive. You're the first
Speaker 1: few months again, we're really boring. I didn't feel good
Speaker 1: inside myself. And I feel like, especially nowadays with the
Speaker 1: Internet and stuff, people forget how valuable it can be
Speaker 1: to just be really bored, you know, absolutely how valuable
Speaker 1: it can be to realize I'm not comfortable in my body,
Speaker 1: you know, to realize I have no ability to communicate
Speaker 1: with people, you know, to push yourself and to try
Speaker 1: to get better at at at listening to people and
Speaker 1: talking with people and having fun with people all that stuff,
Speaker 1: like to actually have to make an effort for it,
Speaker 1: not to be able to just be some automatic thing
Speaker 1: you can do by saying something you think is witty
Speaker 1: that you don't actually see the reaction to, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so I had several months that were really boring,
Speaker 1: and then I think other people, you know, saw me
Speaker 1: as being at a really good place. And before I
Speaker 1: knew it. They asked me to be in the band
Speaker 1: again and we started writing Californication. How many years was
Speaker 1: it between leaving the band and coming back that time,
Speaker 1: I think about four and a half years, maybe five years,
Speaker 1: And yeah, like I didn't know what I was capable
Speaker 1: of anymore, but it didn't matter. I think something had
Speaker 1: turned around in my head where I realized that making
Speaker 1: music wasn't about making music so you could generate these
Speaker 1: intense feelings within yourself, Like I think I was almost
Speaker 1: looking at it before, at the Blood Sugar time, as
Speaker 1: if making music was a way of creating a sort
Speaker 1: of a painting in my head or something. You know.
Speaker 1: Throughout those all those years, the music that I really
Speaker 1: felt strongly about, like those people I just mentioned, and
Speaker 1: Jane's addiction and the Germs and David Bowie, the things
Speaker 1: that really meant something to me from music, it felt
Speaker 1: as if those people were giving me their friendship. It
Speaker 1: felt like like when I was alone, they were my friends.
Speaker 1: So I think I had it in my head that
Speaker 1: I suspected and I wasn't sure that making music can
Speaker 1: be a way of helping other people, a way of
Speaker 1: giving to other people, not taking yourself from the music
Speaker 1: that your own experience might be very bland, but you
Speaker 1: might have something in your soul that you can by
Speaker 1: attempting to do something that you think is good, that
Speaker 1: you can give to other people that can function much
Speaker 1: like a good doctor does, where you're making people feel better.
Speaker 1: And those are the kind of ideas that were swimming
Speaker 1: around in my head at the time, and I had
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas. I had never regretted quitting the
Speaker 1: band during that five years, but towards the end of it,
Speaker 1: I started having these visions of what we could have
Speaker 1: done back in those days if if I had stayed
Speaker 1: with the band, What new musical territories could we have covered,
Speaker 1: you know what? What what new ways could we have
Speaker 1: combined that melodic aspect with the funk aspect and things
Speaker 1: like this. Because I'm that Blood Sugar album, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of segregated. It's like there's the mellow melodic songs,
Speaker 1: and there's there's the funky, fun kind of songs, and
Speaker 1: and there's a little bit across over here and there,
Speaker 1: but mostly they're distinctly separate. And so I started seeing
Speaker 1: how the two things could have fused together in different ways,
Speaker 1: and so when they asked me to be in the band,
Speaker 1: immediately I started being excited about, Wow, that maybe those
Speaker 1: that music I've was hearing in my head that was
Speaker 1: you know, that was something that I thought was just
Speaker 1: something that could have happened in the past that never
Speaker 1: can happen again. Maybe it can actually, maybe I can
Speaker 1: actually do those things. And we did them and we
Speaker 1: were really excited about them. So and once that album
Speaker 1: was done and it did as well as it did
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it made people as happy as it
Speaker 1: did it just like it made me realize, Yeah, it's true,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't really matter if you have if you're
Speaker 1: blank in your head or if you have a ton
Speaker 1: of swirthly you know, colorful scenes going on in your
Speaker 1: head while you're making music. That's not what it's about.
Speaker 1: It's about really connecting with the people you're playing with,
Speaker 1: supporting the people you're playing with. You know, writing music
Speaker 1: that you feel is somehow connected to the music that
Speaker 1: you really love that means something to you. And to
Speaker 1: have that mindset of wanting to share something with with
Speaker 1: the people that you're making music with and with the
Speaker 1: people in the world who might eventually hear it. You know,
Speaker 1: even as something as specific as going into the studio
Speaker 1: and playing a song together and getting a good take
Speaker 1: is a wildly exciting feeling. Yeah, you know, like when
Speaker 1: it comes together and you hear it really sound good.
Speaker 1: I find it thrilling because a lot it doesn't always
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes playing it's like, oh, that's it's okay.
Speaker 1: But when it really does something beyond the regular, it's
Speaker 1: a very thrilling feeling being in the room and feeling
Speaker 1: it happen. Yeah. And there's something about that thing that
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier that I feel like you
Speaker 1: kind of infused on us. Where your object going into
Speaker 1: it isn't to have a premonition that that's the feeling
Speaker 1: you're going to get. You go in with a kind
Speaker 1: of a humility and a kind of an innocence, not
Speaker 1: knowing how it's supposed to sound, not knowing what it's
Speaker 1: going to come back sounding like. And yeah, so when
Speaker 1: you go in with that mindset of just being ready
Speaker 1: for whatever to happen, and then you realize you're really
Speaker 1: happy with what's coming out of the speakers, it's true,
Speaker 1: it's really thrilling. It's a great feeling. It's different than
Speaker 1: I want it to be this way, and like check
Speaker 1: I did it. It's different than Matt. It's when it
Speaker 1: when when it feels like something bigger is happening than
Speaker 1: what we can control ourselves, and I see it happened.
Speaker 1: I see it happen a lot in your band, where
Speaker 1: something happens where the way everybody feels it and when
Speaker 1: everyone leans in the same way together, something big happens, right,
Speaker 1: and it feels bigger than the individual parts. Not to
Speaker 1: take anything away from the individual parts, but the combo
Speaker 1: does some thing and it's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: all really conscious of giving to each other and supporting
Speaker 1: each other. You know. We see the space between the
Speaker 1: parts as being the fundamental thing. I don't think any
Speaker 1: idea is overconcerned with their own part, you know, like
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to find the right relationship between their part
Speaker 1: and the and the bass part there. Or it's like
Speaker 1: for me, my part in the bass part, my part
Speaker 1: and the drum part, my part in the vocal part,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to find a relationship to the other things.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to do your part as if your
Speaker 1: part exists in one bubble and their part exists in
Speaker 1: another bubble, so it seems like that mindset, it definitely
Speaker 1: contributes to the to the effect that you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that Californication record really like, like when I listened to
Speaker 1: all our records, it's my favorite one in terms of
Speaker 1: the band's connection to each other. And it seems like
Speaker 1: we were we were really all opening up this door
Speaker 1: that made us able to to do that that we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen was there. And and like a lot of
Speaker 1: people think like that my playing was like less developed
Speaker 1: then or something that I got better as it went
Speaker 1: towards stadium and I get arcadium, And I can see
Speaker 1: how people think that, but because maybe technically I got better,
Speaker 1: but I really wanted to play in the way that
Speaker 1: I was playing then, Like stylistically, I felt like having
Speaker 1: a tone that was like clean to the point of
Speaker 1: being like weak sounding. I felt like it made Chat
Speaker 1: and Flee sound really good, you know. And to play
Speaker 1: in a way that was simple and kind of feminine,
Speaker 1: like not so much the macho, you know, guitar god guy,
Speaker 1: but to play in a way that that was again
Speaker 1: just as simple as possible and supportive of everything else.
Speaker 1: I felt like it made them sound really good, you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't know. It's something I try not to
Speaker 1: lose connection with because I really do love just going
Speaker 1: off on the guitar and playing in a wild way.
Speaker 1: But but there's definitely something to be said for for
Speaker 1: the way I approached it on that record. I was
Speaker 1: really inspired. I went into it knowing, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: sound like Jimmy Hendricks right now, you know, like I
Speaker 1: played guitar on and off for those four years, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have the same kind of muscular ability that
Speaker 1: I did then, So like my vibrato didn't sound like
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that Jimmy Hendricks kind of vibrato. But
Speaker 1: I practiced really hard and I got to the point
Speaker 1: where I think I could have done it, but I
Speaker 1: was by the time we went in the studio, But
Speaker 1: I was along the way. I developed this style that
Speaker 1: I thought was better that was rooted more in stuff
Speaker 1: like Joy Division and Bow Wow Wow and The Cure
Speaker 1: and stuff like this, where I felt the guitar playing
Speaker 1: is really television where the guitar playing is really powerful,
Speaker 1: but it's not particularly muscular. And I felt that I'd
Speaker 1: hit on something as far as a new way of
Speaker 1: rounding out the band's chemistry. You know, in that album
Speaker 1: you also started singing harmony in a big way. That
Speaker 1: that's where it really harmony came into the picture on
Speaker 1: that album as well. Exactly. Yeah, and that was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent you like, like because I definitely was not
Speaker 1: open to the idea initially, like like you really had
Speaker 1: to talk me into it. I can remember we were
Speaker 1: at the village and we were listening. I was playing
Speaker 1: use of Simon and Garfunkel stuff just chill, like, look
Speaker 1: how cool it is when the harmony crosses over. It's
Speaker 1: like it does some whole other there's some whole other
Speaker 1: level of sophistication to the music when you have this
Speaker 1: other harmonic thing going on that we didn't have at
Speaker 1: that time. It's like maybe there's a place for it,
Speaker 1: and it could have not worked, but it works. You know,
Speaker 1: it could have who knows. We remember there were also
Speaker 1: many experiments we tried it would failed, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like you never know. But that was one time where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a day when I listened to it and
Speaker 1: I came back and feeling like, you know, harmonies are lame,
Speaker 1: you know, like like and and but I continued listening
Speaker 1: to music at home every night when I went home,
Speaker 1: and then I started realizing that there were harmonies and
Speaker 1: all kinds of music that I love that I hadn't
Speaker 1: even noticed. You would think I'm a singer. I'm a musician,
Speaker 1: like I would have noticed, But somehow we hear it
Speaker 1: as if it's in the lead vocal, and we don't.
Speaker 1: Our ear doesn't consciously it's a backing vocal, so it's
Speaker 1: doing its job. It's it's not the vocal of attention,
Speaker 1: and your attention just stays with the lead vocal and
Speaker 1: you don't realize that there's this harmony part that's really
Speaker 1: giving it depth. And the more music I listened to
Speaker 1: where I was listening for that because you'd been pushing
Speaker 1: me to do it, I started realizing, geez, all my
Speaker 1: favorite records have these great harmonies on them, you know.
Speaker 1: So I started getting excited about it and at least
Speaker 1: enough to try it. And I don't think it was
Speaker 1: till the record was done and Gee Pechoto from Fugazi
Speaker 1: told me that specifically he loved the harmonies on the record.
Speaker 1: That was when I realized, like, oh wow, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: keeping good. Then, you know, it seemed just passable when
Speaker 1: I was doing it. It didn't. I wasn't. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a dred percent convinced. You know, it was really good.
Speaker 1: I remember it was regally and it just felt like again,
Speaker 1: like another door was open, you know, just of what
Speaker 1: another thing that could possibly happen. Yeah, it's true. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine all our records since then. You haven't done that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe we should stop now and then
Speaker 1: we're going to do this again, because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's going to take us a couple of hours to
Speaker 1: talk about each album. I think based on how long
Speaker 1: we've been going, right, Okay, you mean like sometime soon,
Speaker 1: you mean like a year from now, whatever, whatever you want,
Speaker 1: we'll do. We'll do a part three whenever you want.
Speaker 1: But I feel like there's enough for us to talk
Speaker 1: about where to go in depth where we need. We
Speaker 1: just need a lot of time. Okay, great, but this
Speaker 1: was a great like it's a great next chapter from
Speaker 1: where we were, right, Okay, so let's let's plan on
Speaker 1: doing that. Okay, cool? Cool, it sounds good. I love
Speaker 1: talking to you, and I love I feel like again
Speaker 1: I know you forever, and I feel like I learned.
Speaker 1: Every time we talk about stuff blows my mind. Thanks Man,
Speaker 1: and you know you're the best person to do an
Speaker 1: interview with. It's really pleasant talking to you, cool Man.
Speaker 1: Thanks for John from Shante. Be sure to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for the second half of this conversation with
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin coming soon. You can hear all of our
Speaker 1: favorite red Hot Chili Pepper songs on a playlist at
Speaker 1: broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 1: where you can find all of our new episodes. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record
Speaker 1: is produced Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bentaladay, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others
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Speaker 1: us on your podcast app Our theme is Expect Candy Beats.
Speaker 1: I'm Justin Richmond,