Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today, we're excited to bring you the next installment
Speaker 1: of our John Fuschante interview series. John first came on
Speaker 1: the podcast back in April for the release of Unlimited Love.
Speaker 1: Then he was back a few weeks ago to pick
Speaker 1: up where they left off discussing Chili Pepper history one
Speaker 1: album at a time. This is part two of that
Speaker 1: conversation and it's shaping up to be a little bit
Speaker 1: different this time around. Instead of talking Chili Pepper history,
Speaker 1: John picks up his guitar to walk Rick through his
Speaker 1: pre show warm up. He also demonstrates how he came
Speaker 1: up with a now classic major to minor chord changes
Speaker 1: on Under the Bridge. They of course talk Return of
Speaker 1: the Dream Canteen, their second number one album in six months,
Speaker 1: and they also discussed how John was able to overcome
Speaker 1: his desire to impress others with his guitar plane while
Speaker 1: recording Stadium Arcadium. This is broken record line of notes
Speaker 1: for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell, here's Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: and John Fuschante from Shangola. So there's a new Chili
Speaker 1: Pepper album that just came out. Yeah, second one in
Speaker 1: a year, Yeah, a second one. Six months. We really
Speaker 1: think of them as kind of two halves of the
Speaker 1: same thing, because we recorded them all at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I think the second ones probably like the more eccentric,
Speaker 1: kind of strange one, if I had to generalize. But
Speaker 1: I was looking at a list the other day that
Speaker 1: I've made when we were trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: songs are going to make it on, you know, and
Speaker 1: what songs aren't, And I had a list like, songs
Speaker 1: that feel like to me, like my image of the
Speaker 1: second album, you know, and songs that sound like what
Speaker 1: I'm picturing the first album feeling like. And while most
Speaker 1: of those songs were on the album that they were on,
Speaker 1: there were songs that were the second album Vibe that
Speaker 1: we wound up putting on the first album, and first
Speaker 1: album five that we wound up putting on the second album.
Speaker 1: So to me, they seem pretty balanced between the two things.
Speaker 1: But but I think the new one goes to further extremes,
Speaker 1: both in like heaviness and in softness and in like
Speaker 1: weirdness and all that. And the first some of my
Speaker 1: favorites were on the second one, but I like songs
Speaker 1: on both. Yeah, that was really the problem was was
Speaker 1: like seventeen songs just born enough to satisfy any of us,
Speaker 1: like like, and some of your favorite ones didn't even
Speaker 1: make it on the second one, and those were those
Speaker 1: were some of your very favorite ones. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was really it was really hard to like to satisfy everybody,
Speaker 1: you know. So so it seemed essential to us to
Speaker 1: at least have have the two records. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: making is similar, it's same, it's they were all record
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, it's hard to talk about
Speaker 1: and interviews when they're the when they were made at
Speaker 1: the same time. But as it turns out, the second
Speaker 1: one has a to me, has a sort of a
Speaker 1: few feeling in the sound that it could have been
Speaker 1: recorded at a completely separate time, Like it has a
Speaker 1: to me, it has a spirit of brightness and fun,
Speaker 1: where Unlimited Love has kind of a darkness and a seriousness.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the tunes that stood out
Speaker 1: to us as being like important sounding songs were some
Speaker 1: of the darker, more serious ones, and some of the
Speaker 1: ones that we felt more comfortable We're saving have like
Speaker 1: a light vibe that's not absent of meaning or anything,
Speaker 1: but yeah, more playful. Yeah, I see the second one
Speaker 1: is I hear it as being a brighter vibe and
Speaker 1: a more fun vibe. I remember I was classifying songs
Speaker 1: as like I did. Think I just said pop, funk, art.
Speaker 1: I think I just made it as simple as that.
Speaker 1: And there was the most of pop, there was, the
Speaker 1: middle of was funk, and the smallest amount was art.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I just think we even the distributed them.
Speaker 1: But I think we got better at the mixing process
Speaker 1: as time went by, and that sort of gave the
Speaker 1: second record to me, like production wise, sound wise, it's
Speaker 1: it's got a distinct sound to it. I would also
Speaker 1: say that if anyone liked the first album, they're gonna
Speaker 1: like the second album. It's like the same diary entry,
Speaker 1: you know that. That however long two years of writing.
Speaker 1: You guys are writing for about two years. Oh no,
Speaker 1: we wrote for nine months, only nine months, amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the recording I think for like fifty tracks
Speaker 1: we did, we did the basic traction three weeks of
Speaker 1: everything we did pre production though in the studio before
Speaker 1: we started right recording for real, right, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: about a month of that. Yeah, yeah, because then by
Speaker 1: the time we did the real recording, it was more
Speaker 1: focused on just getting the performance. We weren't working, we
Speaker 1: weren't really working on the songs. It was just more
Speaker 1: of the feel in the performance. Yeah, it's true, and
Speaker 1: I think that's historically the way we've we've always done it.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, usually when we're recording, we kind of
Speaker 1: know what we're doing by then. Yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: was different in that we were for me and that
Speaker 1: we were in a studio, even though we were just
Speaker 1: basically there to work out arrangements with you, Like usually
Speaker 1: you would have been in the rehearsal studio with us,
Speaker 1: and instead we were here at Changer Law. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: How did you decide to release the second album so
Speaker 1: soon after the first album? Well, I think our our
Speaker 1: original idea just wasn't possible. I at Anthony and Fully
Speaker 1: really wanted to just release a giant album. It would
Speaker 1: have been like a four everything, four records set and
Speaker 1: to double CD, and they were really big on that idea,
Speaker 1: and it just turned out that wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: possible mixing wise, we didn't have enough time to get
Speaker 1: an album out before the tour was scheduled. In order
Speaker 1: to do that, not to mention the record company wasn't
Speaker 1: crazy about that idea. It seemed like a pretty wild
Speaker 1: thing to do, but I think they liked the idea
Speaker 1: just because nobody does that. So the second best idea,
Speaker 1: which I'm pretty sure Anthony even wanted. When he found
Speaker 1: out we couldn't do that, he was like, well, could
Speaker 1: we have any other album come out two months later?
Speaker 1: It was a big Basically as soon as possible was
Speaker 1: the yeah idea. So six months wound up being the
Speaker 1: reasonable thing and the possible thing because mixing wise, we
Speaker 1: needed that extra six months. Oh, let's talk about the covers.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this, but I know that
Speaker 1: the cover of the first album is one kind of
Speaker 1: image and the cover of the second album is a
Speaker 1: very different kind of image. Yeah, and I felt like
Speaker 1: that wound up being good at wound up reflecting the
Speaker 1: musical difference that I feel in the two albums as well,
Speaker 1: and kind kind of a heavy thing. Yeah. The first
Speaker 1: cover came from Anthony had an idea that the asterisk
Speaker 1: with a black background would be the basic idea in
Speaker 1: some kind of neon light. But what he was getting
Speaker 1: from the record company wasn't fulfilling his vision, and so
Speaker 1: he passed it on to Marcy, my wife, and they
Speaker 1: started talking about it and we started taking these references.
Speaker 1: There's this Christian church that you see from the freeway
Speaker 1: going into Hollywood from the valley. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: big sort of neon sign, and that wound up being
Speaker 1: kind of the basis. Then we Marcy got to help
Speaker 1: some help from somebody she knows, designing what the sign
Speaker 1: would look like, and then it got passed on to
Speaker 1: some other people who actually built the sign to be photographed.
Speaker 1: Then we had people to move the sign somewhere where
Speaker 1: it would be good to to shoot it. That might
Speaker 1: have been the top of the Roosevelt Hotel. So there's
Speaker 1: a physical there is a physical object exactly. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was the first that was the first cover,
Speaker 1: and then the one we had done a video with
Speaker 1: these animators that Marcy knows, these French animators Tammy and Julian,
Speaker 1: who did a video for poster Child and a song
Speaker 1: from the first record, and they didn't have much time
Speaker 1: to do it. It winds up looping at a certain point.
Speaker 1: It was because releasing two records and so quickly like
Speaker 1: this in succession, we've had to rush through several stages
Speaker 1: of the process, and I feel like we came up
Speaker 1: with good things under the pressure, but it was it's
Speaker 1: been hard. Like it's just now that this record is out,
Speaker 1: like starting to feel like lightning up, even though we've
Speaker 1: just got off five months of tour. But that whole time,
Speaker 1: there's been constant stuff going on other than is preparing
Speaker 1: the second Yeah, and her and Anthony had actually had
Speaker 1: the same idea independently of each other. Used the animators
Speaker 1: to make a cover that has a lot of different
Speaker 1: images and that's colorful, and that our main reference. We
Speaker 1: were thinking of covers like Funkadelic Cosmic Slop cover, but
Speaker 1: there's several covers that I can think of, ones we
Speaker 1: weren't even using but that I think have been in
Speaker 1: that same category. Like Frank Zapp and the Mothers of
Speaker 1: Invention had an album called One Size Fits All. It's
Speaker 1: got like a couch and it's got a cigar, and
Speaker 1: it's got you know, some outer space themes, like just
Speaker 1: these kind of cartoon like covers, and so yeah, it
Speaker 1: seemed like that idea fit in really well with what
Speaker 1: the vibe had turned out to be of the second album,
Speaker 1: kind of more colorful, so they put that together and
Speaker 1: we actually made two covers. There's one for the indie
Speaker 1: record stores that there's a limited amount of, and then
Speaker 1: there's the cover for the normal cover, and those are
Speaker 1: two completely different covers. How do you think about sequencing
Speaker 1: an album? Yes, I think of it on a lot
Speaker 1: of levels. Like it was. That's why we had to
Speaker 1: do the voting that we did, was just because like
Speaker 1: we'd recorded like forty eight songs that we had finished
Speaker 1: vocals too, and I knew that at the most, you know,
Speaker 1: only like thirty four we're going to be able to
Speaker 1: be released on two you know, double record sets. So
Speaker 1: that was really hard when you don't even know what
Speaker 1: songs the two albums are going to consist of, you know.
Speaker 1: But for sequencing an album, I have certain things like
Speaker 1: the first song has to sound like a first song,
Speaker 1: the last song has to sound like a last song,
Speaker 1: and you know, the middle of the album should feel
Speaker 1: like the middle of the you know, the it should
Speaker 1: feel like it's gradually revealing something. And it's always worked
Speaker 1: out working in collaboration with you and with the other
Speaker 1: guys that like, some of my favorite songs have gone
Speaker 1: towards the end of albums, even though we do try
Speaker 1: to stick some of the best songs in the front.
Speaker 1: Like I always feel like the end of an album
Speaker 1: should really be delivering things that you didn't expect from
Speaker 1: the whole rest of the album. There it should still
Speaker 1: be revealing itself on the fourth side. When you think
Speaker 1: of it in vinyl, when you think of it as
Speaker 1: four sides, it's not the end of the you know, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the end of the album, but it's the beginning
Speaker 1: of the last part. Because of the experience of the vinyl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: vinyl changes everything. Yeah, I always thought of you know,
Speaker 1: growing up with vinyl, I always thought of albums as
Speaker 1: two sides, and you know, there's the first side has
Speaker 1: an ending, and then the second side starts, and then
Speaker 1: that has an ending. And in streaming, it's not like that.
Speaker 1: It's just one lie album. Yeah, And it's just different.
Speaker 1: It's just a different way of thinking about it. And
Speaker 1: but the way most people digest it now is the
Speaker 1: streaming way. But there is something to the art of
Speaker 1: the sequence based on the vinyl. There's like a tried
Speaker 1: and true feeling about that. Most of the things that
Speaker 1: I stream that I originally heard on vinyl I don't
Speaker 1: mind that there's not a sidebreak, you know, from the
Speaker 1: A side to the B side of the album, but
Speaker 1: there's still things that help you sequence the digital version
Speaker 1: about vinyl, like the halfway point, Like the end of
Speaker 1: the second side is usually the end of the halfway point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it's cool if the album sort of feels
Speaker 1: like it restarts halfway through. It's a good effect for
Speaker 1: the last song on the second side to feel like
Speaker 1: an ending and for the first song on the third
Speaker 1: side to feel like a beginning. And if it's a
Speaker 1: CD or a digital download version that you still sort
Speaker 1: of get that by the album just seems to rejuvenate
Speaker 1: itself about halfway through. Yeah. It's interesting for artists who've
Speaker 1: never worked on vinyl, they probably have a whole different
Speaker 1: relationship to a sequence. And I imagine some of them
Speaker 1: who really grew up on playlists don't even think of
Speaker 1: a sequence as anything. It's just a bunch of songs
Speaker 1: because you can kind of make your own you know,
Speaker 1: you can make your own version of it in any
Speaker 1: way you want. But there is some magic to it.
Speaker 1: When you hear songs in a certain order, you relate
Speaker 1: to them in a different way, and sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: the wrong song in gives you an impression of an
Speaker 1: album them that doesn't start you off on the right
Speaker 1: foot or the opposite. You can hear, you can hear
Speaker 1: a great song, then if you don't like the second song,
Speaker 1: then it's like a feeling of like, oh, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just one song that I like of this band. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the first thought that I would have if if
Speaker 1: I love the first song, then I don't like the
Speaker 1: second song. That's there's already a red flag of like
Speaker 1: I might not listen as open mindedly to the third song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after not liking the second song. Yeah. Interesting. Just the
Speaker 1: psychology of the order of songs. How does that relate
Speaker 1: to doing it live? How does sequencing work live? And
Speaker 1: is there ever does it ever not work? Like do
Speaker 1: you ever decide on an order to play the songs
Speaker 1: and then you do it and it just doesn't feel right.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a big difference in our band is
Speaker 1: because live, Anthony's always been completely in control of the
Speaker 1: set list. The rest of us might make comments. He
Speaker 1: might even show it to me before we get the
Speaker 1: copies printed out, just to get approval or some thing,
Speaker 1: but we pretty much let him be the master of
Speaker 1: the set list, and that's just always been how it's been.
Speaker 1: Whereas when we're making a record it's more collaborative. It's
Speaker 1: kind of impossible for a large group of people to
Speaker 1: make a sequence because it kind of requires still more
Speaker 1: person A lot of my memories of doing it, like
Speaker 1: in the old days of me and you would would
Speaker 1: drive around and you would have me in control of
Speaker 1: the CD player going from this song this end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: feeling what works? Is the transition work? Does the feeling work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many things to keep on your mind. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a real multi level thing. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: end of one song has to sound good going into
Speaker 1: the beginning of another. You might make a set list
Speaker 1: that on paper seems like it would work really well,
Speaker 1: and then as soon as you hear it, it's like
Speaker 1: none of these transitions are making any sense you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting thing about Anthony too, And it makes
Speaker 1: sense because of everyone's job. Because he's relying on his voice,
Speaker 1: there's probably a pacing that makes it able for him
Speaker 1: to get through a show that no one else has
Speaker 1: that same consideration. Yeah, I'm just thinking there's so many
Speaker 1: new songs to play. There's seventeen new songs that is
Speaker 1: new to the audience, there are the seventeen songs that
Speaker 1: the audience has heard six months ago, and then there's
Speaker 1: the forty years of music that the Chili Meppers have made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you keep a balance of playing things that
Speaker 1: people are you know, expecting to hear and all the
Speaker 1: things you want to play? And how are new songs
Speaker 1: received compared to old songs live? How does that all work?
Speaker 1: I think compared to other bands who have a history
Speaker 1: like we have, the new songs get a really good response,
Speaker 1: but especially Black Summer, Like I can't always tell because
Speaker 1: in my in ears, I don't have the audience super
Speaker 1: loud like like they might be might be a large
Speaker 1: percentage audience plotting, And just because of where the mics
Speaker 1: are that I get the audience from, I might not
Speaker 1: even hear it, you know. I take the inn ears
Speaker 1: out and it's always like much more deafening screaming and
Speaker 1: stuff than than I can hear. But yeah, the new
Speaker 1: songs go over good. But like there's there's certain songs
Speaker 1: off Unlimited Love that I really wish we were playing
Speaker 1: that just were some of the more challenging ones to
Speaker 1: do when we were rehearsing, and we never took the
Speaker 1: risk to play them live. And there's other ones that
Speaker 1: we did take the risk to play live and only
Speaker 1: played them a couple of times and then gave up,
Speaker 1: sticking to the ones that were working better. You're not
Speaker 1: worried about mistakes live in front of people. I'm actually
Speaker 1: way more worried about mistakes when I'm in the studio
Speaker 1: or even when I'm rehearsing live. You're not super worried
Speaker 1: about mistakes. And at the same time, the feeling of
Speaker 1: a song not working is fine when you're at rehearsal
Speaker 1: because you know it's it's leading somewhere and you're everybody's
Speaker 1: figuring at Flice figuring this thing out, Chad's figuring that
Speaker 1: thing out. I'm figuring out another. But to have that
Speaker 1: experience live when the four elements aren't functioning as a
Speaker 1: single unit, it really stands out in a show and
Speaker 1: it makes you feel really crappy to be up there
Speaker 1: when they're not aligne when you're playing them next to
Speaker 1: these songs like Californication or other Side that you have
Speaker 1: played a lot, and you can really have fun with
Speaker 1: and everything's always locked together no matter what. So that's
Speaker 1: why it's good we have this week of rehearsal coming up,
Speaker 1: so we can start. We can work on things that
Speaker 1: we were not feeling up for taking the risk to play,
Speaker 1: but try to get them together from Unlimited Love and
Speaker 1: Return of the Dream Canteen and better and luckily we
Speaker 1: have a lot of hits. I guess that's what helps
Speaker 1: at this point is that you tend to want to
Speaker 1: mainly make it about playing the hits when you're playing
Speaker 1: the fifty thousand people a night and stuff. But the
Speaker 1: new songs are definitely accepted, and Black Summer gets pretty
Speaker 1: much equal response to any of the hits we've had before.
Speaker 1: So people who were there often common to me after
Speaker 1: the show, like, Wow, people are cheering for your new
Speaker 1: songs just as much as the old ones, And so
Speaker 1: I can't always tell, but but I have got that
Speaker 1: gotten that feedback from people. Cool. Yeah, did you play
Speaker 1: songs from the new album on the five month tour? No,
Speaker 1: we just started playing our first song from from Return
Speaker 1: of the Dream Canteen. We just started playing it just
Speaker 1: a few shows ago. We've played it like three times, Eddie,
Speaker 1: but we rehearsed those a lot when we were rehearsing
Speaker 1: before the tour started, But after five months of being
Speaker 1: on tour and not playing those songs, it just felt
Speaker 1: too risky to start playing them. We wanted to start
Speaker 1: playing them when the album was announced, but it just
Speaker 1: and when the first single came out and stuff, but
Speaker 1: it just felt like we would have been and taking
Speaker 1: too big of a risk for the energy flow. We
Speaker 1: just need to be as good as it could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want we want them to sound good. So it
Speaker 1: won't take us a lot of rehearsing to get them
Speaker 1: back under our fingers. But we're going to take like
Speaker 1: a week before we go on tour again. Great makes sense,
Speaker 1: Just again the volume of material. There's so many songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to keep everything straight. It's impossible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just live, You've got to find your voice. When I'm
Speaker 1: singing harmonies on the record, that could be like twenty voices,
Speaker 1: and then I've got to do it live in one voice.
Speaker 1: You've got to figure out, Okay, what's which one do
Speaker 1: I do at this chorus? Which one do I do
Speaker 1: at the second choruse you know, you try what kind
Speaker 1: of voice do I sing and then maybe it's not.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's completely dissimilar voice to what I did on
Speaker 1: the record at all, just to make it make it
Speaker 1: work in the live context. So are there other things
Speaker 1: like that? Tell me about things that can happen on
Speaker 1: record that have to be rethought to be able to
Speaker 1: do it live. I guess for me, multiple guitar parts
Speaker 1: is often a thing. It's not usually too hard for
Speaker 1: me to figure out, but that's always something to consider,
Speaker 1: whether to duplicate the effects. Sometimes it's better live to
Speaker 1: just not have any effects. And maybe on the record
Speaker 1: I did some modular synth treatment to the guitar that
Speaker 1: worked really well for the recording but might not be
Speaker 1: necessary for live, Like it might not even be able
Speaker 1: to hear it through the nature of a big sound
Speaker 1: system outside. Yeah, it's like it's much it's louder, but
Speaker 1: it's lower resolution, I think, Yeah, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: more natural ambience, so things. Yeah, you know, on the
Speaker 1: record we're doing all kinds of fancy reverbs and things,
Speaker 1: and on the guitar and certain drum hits and little
Speaker 1: things like that. Like live, we've got so much natural
Speaker 1: reverberation playing generally, we're playing stadiums that I have reverb pedals,
Speaker 1: I don't even I think I turned them on like
Speaker 1: twice per show or something, and I would and I
Speaker 1: did a lot of like slap back because I was
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of fifties music when we made
Speaker 1: the two records, so good percentage of songs had slap
Speaker 1: back delay on the basic track of the guitar. But live,
Speaker 1: there's just no point, like, yeah, the arena creates a
Speaker 1: slap yeah, and you can't control the speed of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I got real used to playing the songs dry,
Speaker 1: you know, and like I have a big pedal board,
Speaker 1: and it's generally because there are certain songs that I
Speaker 1: would like to have the option of using a certain
Speaker 1: pedal board if we would do that song. So I'll
Speaker 1: have a pedal that's just in case we play one
Speaker 1: particular song, but generally, like that's how Jimmy Hendricks was
Speaker 1: live on the records. There's all kinds of signal processing
Speaker 1: to the guitar and stuff and and to the whole
Speaker 1: band really and live it's just either distortion or semi
Speaker 1: distorted clean sound and the rest you do with your
Speaker 1: energy and you're you know, you have a whole added
Speaker 1: energy that goes into what you play live. That and
Speaker 1: the visual part of it, the movement and the energy
Speaker 1: transference with the audience that like, I feel like all
Speaker 1: that you use effects and things on a recording to
Speaker 1: make the recording feel like it has a lift to
Speaker 1: it that those other things bring that left live and
Speaker 1: you don't need to use those decorations. Tell me more
Speaker 1: about the energy transference with the audience, because it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting feeling. Most of us who don't get on
Speaker 1: a stage and play in front of, you know, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, don't know what that feeling is. Like.
Speaker 1: How would you describe the difference if you guys are
Speaker 1: playing in the afternoon in the same venue empty and
Speaker 1: then when it's packed with screaming people. How does it
Speaker 1: feel different? For one thing, you're hearing everything at a
Speaker 1: slower speed than you're actually playing it because you've got
Speaker 1: adrenaline going. I see you think you're playing at one
Speaker 1: tempo and you're actually playing at a faster tempo than that.
Speaker 1: And so it's something that I remember early on when
Speaker 1: I was in the band in like eighty nine, we
Speaker 1: started really zoning into it, listening to watching videotapes of
Speaker 1: ourselves or listening to cassettes, and we realized, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: let's yeah, everything's too fast, Like let's let's let's figure
Speaker 1: out like how we can how it can sound right
Speaker 1: to us on stage, how to bridge that gap between
Speaker 1: between what it appears to be live and what it
Speaker 1: actually is. Taking into consideration the audience has probably also
Speaker 1: got some adrenaline going, so you don't need to try
Speaker 1: too much to slow it down. But you've got to
Speaker 1: make sure not to get carried away with yourself live
Speaker 1: to be conscious of like going. If it feels even
Speaker 1: a little fast, you're probably going very very fast, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's one difference is every you're hearing everything different.
Speaker 1: I noticed that for the first time. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I used to go running and I'd be
Speaker 1: listening to music all day, and then I'd go running,
Speaker 1: and then i'd come back to my room and be
Speaker 1: doing like situps and stuff. And I put a record
Speaker 1: it on and it sounded too slow, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: account for it. I didn't understand what it was that
Speaker 1: was happening. But then I remembered it later when we
Speaker 1: noticed that live everything was faster, so it's you're going
Speaker 1: faster than your normal perception of time. So that's one difference.
Speaker 1: And I think you also play you play harder, and
Speaker 1: like I've always played completely differently live than I do
Speaker 1: on records, on records like Californication and by the way,
Speaker 1: in particular, like I was really playing in this style
Speaker 1: that I felt served the songs well and that I
Speaker 1: felt like I was doing something with rather than a
Speaker 1: blues kind of basic sense of melody or a rock
Speaker 1: basic sense of melody. I was listening to synthpop a lot,
Speaker 1: and I see that style of melody that sort of
Speaker 1: begins with Kraft Work and continued into the eighties with
Speaker 1: depeche Mode and things like that, being its own specific
Speaker 1: form of melody, and I was trying to apply that
Speaker 1: a lot to the music that we were doing while
Speaker 1: having a rock energy, And so I was playing in
Speaker 1: a in a way that it had a kind of
Speaker 1: a simplicity in common with that kind of music. You
Speaker 1: play melodies that try to sail out with every note
Speaker 1: being in it's perfect place, but creating a sort of
Speaker 1: a shape with the notes and not so much putting
Speaker 1: a lot of expression into the notes, but trying to
Speaker 1: find notes that paint a sort of a good picture
Speaker 1: in the song, and carry on for the melody with
Speaker 1: another when he's not singing, carry that on with another
Speaker 1: melody that's just as catchy as what he's doing. But
Speaker 1: live throughout those times, particularly by the way I was
Speaker 1: playing live like in a very like flashy, putting a
Speaker 1: lot of expression into it way. It's just that's what
Speaker 1: the audience brought out of me. I couldn't keep the
Speaker 1: same kind of restraint live that I that I could
Speaker 1: for the studio. We have to pause for a quick break,
Speaker 1: and then we'll be back with more from John Fashonte
Speaker 1: and Rick Rubin. We're back with more from Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: and John f Shante. What is your pre show ritual? Like?
Speaker 1: I have all these ways of doing scales that are creative.
Speaker 1: When I was a teenager, I would just play them
Speaker 1: in the normal way you play them, or a couple
Speaker 1: of variations of that. But as I've gotten older, it's
Speaker 1: a way of putting my creativity into my instrument that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the sound that comes out
Speaker 1: because my playing. I'm I really believe in the philosophy
Speaker 1: of you plays what sounds good, you don't you don't
Speaker 1: play something because it's physically interesting or anything like that,
Speaker 1: or impressive or anything like that. So I have these
Speaker 1: warm ups that are really based on Okay, let's forget
Speaker 1: about the sound that the instrument makes. What's what's doing
Speaker 1: something unusual with the fingers that they're not accustomed to doing.
Speaker 1: And how can I play games with my brain with
Speaker 1: the exercises that teach me things about the nature of
Speaker 1: the twelve note system that we all use. That's going
Speaker 1: to be challenging for my fingers as well as for
Speaker 1: my brain. And so over the years, just because I
Speaker 1: do it all the time, I did it a lot
Speaker 1: even when I wasn't in the band for the ten
Speaker 1: years that I wasn't in it. It's just it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me to look at the notes in these various ways.
Speaker 1: So I've come up with a whole series of things
Speaker 1: that are challenging and that I always learned from having
Speaker 1: to do with the organization of notes in relationship to
Speaker 1: scales and different kind of scales. And I'm just always
Speaker 1: improving on it. No, I'll get little inspirations from it
Speaker 1: from like I'll watch, you know, a guitar instruction thing
Speaker 1: by John McLoughlin or Allen Holdsworth. I watched one John
Speaker 1: McLoughlin thing. I think that got me through like six
Speaker 1: years of practicing. And then and then when Allen Holdsworth
Speaker 1: thing like went to the next five years, like I see,
Speaker 1: I see what they're talking about in there, and then
Speaker 1: it makes me think of new ideas about about how
Speaker 1: to approach scales and exercises just from little thing, one
Speaker 1: little thing they say might might give me a whole
Speaker 1: stream of ideas that like, I'm doing the same thing
Speaker 1: every day, and a year later, I get the idea.
Speaker 1: But what if I did it this way? What if
Speaker 1: what if I add what if I twist it in
Speaker 1: this direction or something? You see, if we give you
Speaker 1: a guitarget, you give me a demonstration of just how
Speaker 1: that works, I could try. Yeah, let's try. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear it. Okay, So here's an example with scales.
Speaker 1: If we if we do something like take four notes
Speaker 1: and I'm playing them now with no accents. It's four notes.
Speaker 1: But if now I'm going to start accenting it in threes,
Speaker 1: and if you look at that, the accents once you
Speaker 1: start doing that pattern, the accents went lowest note highest, note,
Speaker 1: second highest note, third highest note, fourth highest note. It
Speaker 1: creates a pattern. You've got four notes, and let's call
Speaker 1: this one one, two three four, But if you play
Speaker 1: them in threes, the pattern winds up being four one
Speaker 1: two three four one two three, And that's just something
Speaker 1: that exists in nature having to do with the relationship
Speaker 1: of rhythm and melody. Cool. So, so if we take
Speaker 1: the same four notes and instead play them in fives,
Speaker 1: like it's so it's four notes, but we go so again,
Speaker 1: we wound up with the same accenting pattern of it
Speaker 1: went from this note, this note to this note to
Speaker 1: this note to this note. It keeps going kind of
Speaker 1: in a circle, you know. And again if we take
Speaker 1: three notes and divide it into sevens, then we go
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's hard, yeah, like that it seems exhausting.
Speaker 1: Also yeah, so so so that's just that's trying to
Speaker 1: show like show it in in one in one position. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: so you do that in scales just what I do.
Speaker 1: So I'll take like a series of notes, like say,
Speaker 1: going down in sevens. So that's just going down in sevens.
Speaker 1: And there's a certain interval jump if you're going if
Speaker 1: you're playing a seven note scale, and you're going down
Speaker 1: in sevens, you're always jumping up at six interval, whether
Speaker 1: it's a minor or major six up to six, up
Speaker 1: to six. So there's this shape that you see in it.
Speaker 1: That's the distance that you're that you're that you're jumping
Speaker 1: up every time you go down in sevens on a
Speaker 1: seven note scale. That's you know, in this case, a
Speaker 1: major based on a major scale. So now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go down in sevens, but I'm gonna I'm gonna accent
Speaker 1: in fives. So so it's so difficult, especially with numbers
Speaker 1: like fives, where it's not like the even numbers seem
Speaker 1: to feel more comfortable. Yeah, if you do in twos
Speaker 1: or threes or fives, your picking hand is going is
Speaker 1: going down for accent, then up for an accent, then
Speaker 1: down for an accent, up for an accent. So that's
Speaker 1: another good part of it, is to get your upstrokes
Speaker 1: feeling like as solid accents as as your down strokes.
Speaker 1: So that's like a good example of the kind of
Speaker 1: things that I do. But you know, it gets harder
Speaker 1: and harder the larger the distances and the bigger the numbers. Are,
Speaker 1: Like I generally when I practice, I'm probably staying in
Speaker 1: numbers under ten, both in terms of maybe eleven, but
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to go like go down eleven notes
Speaker 1: and and accent in thirteens. There's a pattern to it,
Speaker 1: but it's much it's it's really hard to do. It
Speaker 1: fucks you up. You start hearing the notes as as
Speaker 1: dictating the rhythm. And that's what the exercise in general
Speaker 1: helps you not do, is to for a moment while
Speaker 1: you're practicing, disconnect the rhythm from the pitch. Don't let
Speaker 1: the pitch determine the rhythm. I'm pretty sure from all
Speaker 1: the music that I've learned and everything that melodies that
Speaker 1: are interesting and melodies that don't just feel average have
Speaker 1: interesting ways of acting in a way that's rhythmic separately
Speaker 1: from the from them, that the two areas are sort
Speaker 1: of functioning independently of each other, yet in harmony that catchy.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not just the order of the notes.
Speaker 1: It's an order the order of the notes and where
Speaker 1: the accents are yeah, and and and how the rhythm
Speaker 1: relates to the note. When you think of like songs
Speaker 1: like Mary had a Little Lamb or something it's almost
Speaker 1: like the notes and the rhythm are just one hundred
Speaker 1: percent like lined up with each other. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you get more you know, melodies like the Beatles or
Speaker 1: something like that, where where you wonder where this melody
Speaker 1: came from. It's because it doesn't have such an obvious
Speaker 1: relationship between the rhythm and the notes. There's something creative
Speaker 1: going on in their spin on it. So so that's
Speaker 1: why I feel like those exercises do have an effect
Speaker 1: on one sense of melody and one's awareness of because
Speaker 1: you normally you can't you don't. A note is the
Speaker 1: rhythm and the note, and it's where it falls in
Speaker 1: the in the bar and where what bar that is
Speaker 1: in the song? All those things make a note. What
Speaker 1: it sounds like to us? Yeah, Like I said, it's
Speaker 1: not music. It's purely for the physical part and the
Speaker 1: brain's conception of the relationships notes to each other and
Speaker 1: the relationship also of rhythm two notes. Yeah. To me,
Speaker 1: practicing and making music, they're these two completely separate things.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that you need to use what you
Speaker 1: practice in your music or apply it in any way.
Speaker 1: It's really they're two separate art forms. And I think
Speaker 1: you should look at practicing as its own sort of
Speaker 1: cool art forms. So when you do your rehearsals, do
Speaker 1: you do with an acoustic or an electric electric? Electric?
Speaker 1: Because it's the guitar you're going to be playing, or
Speaker 1: like the guitar I'm gonna be playing. So I start
Speaker 1: out with various exercises and scales, and then I move
Speaker 1: on to playing along with things that I like. And
Speaker 1: I try to play along with certain things because they're
Speaker 1: good for rhythm guitar, certain things because they're good for
Speaker 1: band ending and doing vibrato, things that have solos, so
Speaker 1: I like playing along with. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: things memorized right now that are They're mostly things that
Speaker 1: people improvised on a record or live, and so I
Speaker 1: have these solos by some of my favorite rock guitar players.
Speaker 1: And usually in my life, I just learn a stream
Speaker 1: of things, and I gradually forget things as I learn
Speaker 1: new things. But at the moment, it seemed best for
Speaker 1: my fingers if I were to only on show days
Speaker 1: play things that I know really well that I can play,
Speaker 1: that I should be able to play without making mistakes.
Speaker 1: So I've got a number of things memorized that I
Speaker 1: can do that with and I like to spend a
Speaker 1: couple hours doing that before this show. Nothing is as
Speaker 1: crazy as what I do on stage, because a lot
Speaker 1: of what I do on stage, I wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: how to figure it out myself, just pure a pure
Speaker 1: energetic transmission. Yeah, a lot of people would call it
Speaker 1: sloppy because you can't hear It doesn't so much sound
Speaker 1: like noe noe, noe, noe noe. A lot of the
Speaker 1: time there's some weird noise that you're like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where his fingers were there, but like I
Speaker 1: really like the sound of those things, and I like
Speaker 1: playing like that. You know, if you would listened to it,
Speaker 1: could you tell what you were doing or maybe? And
Speaker 1: I can do it with a most any guitar playing,
Speaker 1: like like Frank Zappa is a guitar player who I
Speaker 1: would put in that category. Like a lot of what
Speaker 1: he plays, I think it's a matter of opinion what
Speaker 1: he's actually playing. Two people could figure it out and
Speaker 1: do it two different ways. A lot of it's just
Speaker 1: not clear enough, some of it is, and then he
Speaker 1: goes into a section where it's just like, well, we
Speaker 1: can only guess what he's doing at that pen and
Speaker 1: in his case, does it always sound intentional or no.
Speaker 1: He definitely would admit to making what he called mistakes.
Speaker 1: To me, there's no mistakes. The sound he made is
Speaker 1: the music, and there's nothing it should have been, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he may have been trying to do something different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was trying to do something different and he doesn't
Speaker 1: quite make it. And that happens with these guitar players
Speaker 1: who go out on a ledge, like Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendricks.
Speaker 1: They all have sections like this that it becomes hard
Speaker 1: to be sure exactly what they're doing. But I try
Speaker 1: to learn things like that. But a lot of what
Speaker 1: I'm playing live is stuff that there's no level of
Speaker 1: confusion about it, and it just it's a little beneath
Speaker 1: the level of what I'm going to do when I
Speaker 1: get on stage. But I find that if I do
Speaker 1: it for a couple hours, that prepares me. It's like
Speaker 1: a meditation. And it's like if I find that I'm
Speaker 1: making mistakes on something that I've played a zillion times
Speaker 1: perfectly and I'm forgetting it to some degree or my
Speaker 1: fingers aren't cooperating with me, it shows me I need
Speaker 1: to bring an extra focus to that thing. So cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're so interesting. Yeah, I asked, because some of the
Speaker 1: craziest solos that I've ever seen somebody transcribe. And this
Speaker 1: is how I learned how to read music when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, was because I was so fascinated by
Speaker 1: the rhythms in them, where Steve had done these trends
Speaker 1: scriptions of Frank Zappa's guitar solos. There was a whole
Speaker 1: book of them, and I had no interest in reading music.
Speaker 1: But when I learned that there was this way of
Speaker 1: writing down when people are speeding up and slowing down
Speaker 1: across the bar line and when they're going into grooves
Speaker 1: that seemed completely separate from what the drummers doing but
Speaker 1: do have a relationship, it was fascinating to me. And
Speaker 1: it was really the only way to learn a lot
Speaker 1: of franksz Appa's written music was to understand how it
Speaker 1: was written down, because he would use those kind of
Speaker 1: rhythms both in his playing and in his writing. So
Speaker 1: I learned how to read. I just went directly to
Speaker 1: what turned out to be like the hardest stuff to
Speaker 1: you know, to sight read, and consequently I never learned
Speaker 1: to sight read but I asked Steve fi because I
Speaker 1: think a lot about polyrhythms. I used them a lot
Speaker 1: of my electronic music. I have machines I can program
Speaker 1: where you're playing like five against four or evenly or
Speaker 1: seven against three, or these strange ways of rhythmically relating
Speaker 1: to the other instruments. So I'd given a lot of
Speaker 1: thought to it for so many years. And I asked them,
Speaker 1: as you think of them as objectively accurate? And he
Speaker 1: said it was a matter of interpretation. When you're writing
Speaker 1: rhythms like that and the drummer is not playing to
Speaker 1: a click, but he himself is slightly speeding up and
Speaker 1: slowing down all the time, it's very hard to say
Speaker 1: the rhythm right here is the rhythms are all based
Speaker 1: on thirteen evenly across four quarter notes. There's no way
Speaker 1: to accurately to be able to objectively say, yes, that
Speaker 1: is the rhythm. Because as long as when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with rhythms that are that delicate to play accurately, the
Speaker 1: slightest little bit of timing change in the drummer, even
Speaker 1: a really good type drummer, makes the difference to where
Speaker 1: it's not what you conceived it to be. I think
Speaker 1: all that studying of Frank Zappa's music that I did
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager did a lot of good
Speaker 1: for me, because it showed me that not everything needs
Speaker 1: to line up perfectly rhythmically with everybody else the way
Speaker 1: most people tend to play, and melodies don't have to
Speaker 1: be this straightforward thing in order to be accessible or
Speaker 1: to be catchy. That that that you can be doing
Speaker 1: little twists with them all the time and taking all
Speaker 1: those liberties that he was taking, like and studying them.
Speaker 1: I just I just feel like gave me a sort
Speaker 1: of unique outlook for a pop musician on you know,
Speaker 1: on what notes are there for and what you're able
Speaker 1: to do with them. I feel like, even in the
Speaker 1: simplest things that I do, I feel like that familiarity
Speaker 1: I have with doing things in an unusual way winds
Speaker 1: up making the melodies unusual, you know, in some weird way.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like if it happened that you were
Speaker 1: playing a concert and it came time for solo, and
Speaker 1: if for some reason something happened where the audience could
Speaker 1: still hear you perfectly, but you couldn't hear yourself at all,
Speaker 1: could you play a solo without hearing yourself at all,
Speaker 1: and it be coherent for the audience, I think. So
Speaker 1: you know that that kind of happened at the LA
Speaker 1: show that we did a few months ago. I got
Speaker 1: out on stage and there was nothing in my ear
Speaker 1: monitors at all. They were they were silent, and so
Speaker 1: I went over to the side of the stage and
Speaker 1: it just sounded like a mess up there. Because we
Speaker 1: all used in air monitors, what it actually sounds like
Speaker 1: on stage is pretty incoherent. So I went to the
Speaker 1: side and was telling my guitar tack, telling the sound
Speaker 1: man what's going on. They're watching them try to solve
Speaker 1: the problem, and I went into playing a two handed
Speaker 1: tapping Eddie van Halen style solo. Barely could hear what
Speaker 1: I was doing. But after the show, my wife's cousin
Speaker 1: said that solo at the beginning of the show incredible.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I could barely hear what I was doing.
Speaker 1: But I do that kind of thing when i'm It's
Speaker 1: part of my practicing that when I warm up, I
Speaker 1: also do things like that, like just doing this at
Speaker 1: every part of the neck that I just doing these
Speaker 1: trills like everywhere that I can did Eddie actually invent
Speaker 1: that technique. No, he invented that use of it, like
Speaker 1: nobody did it sounding like what he sounded like doing it.
Speaker 1: There's certain details about patterns, like like like nobody was
Speaker 1: doing that, but Steve Hackett from Genesis was doing that
Speaker 1: using his right hand finger to tap notes, and Frank
Speaker 1: Zappa was doing the same thing but using the pick
Speaker 1: rather like that's what it sounds like with your finger,
Speaker 1: that's with a pick, And so he was calling that
Speaker 1: bagpipe guitar and that was a good Both those examples
Speaker 1: were good. Three years before Van Hilen influenced Eddie, Like
Speaker 1: did he hear those and then come up with his
Speaker 1: way of doing it? He claimed he came up with
Speaker 1: his on the toilet while he was taking a ship.
Speaker 1: Good story, But he went backstage at a Steve Hackett
Speaker 1: show and told Steve Hackett that he got the idea
Speaker 1: for it from being at a Genesis show and saw
Speaker 1: him doing it. So I tend to believe that. But
Speaker 1: Steve Hackett's definitely doing it. On selling England by the Pound,
Speaker 1: the Genesis album, He's definitely doing that technique. You can
Speaker 1: hear it, Yeah, when you're soloing live. How much do
Speaker 1: you take into account the recording version of the solo.
Speaker 1: Usually not at all. Yeah, Like sometimes if I'm in
Speaker 1: a certain mood, I'll do a variation of it. I'll
Speaker 1: do the same basic idea, or I'll start with the
Speaker 1: same idea. But usually that's even how it is on
Speaker 1: the record. Like people think of the solo on a
Speaker 1: record as being the one, but it was actually I
Speaker 1: had an idea of how I would start it, and
Speaker 1: that was all I had, and that was the one
Speaker 1: that you picked that day, or may have been the
Speaker 1: only one you played. In some cases, like just to
Speaker 1: be prepared for the studio, I often have an idea
Speaker 1: for a beginning and I figured the rest I'll just
Speaker 1: get through and it'll be reflected in the vibe of
Speaker 1: the moment. So live a lot of the time, I
Speaker 1: might start that the same way that I did in
Speaker 1: the studio, start with something that that's pre written, and
Speaker 1: then go off in another direction, because it's always going
Speaker 1: to feel differently depending on the groove of how Fully
Speaker 1: and Chat are playing. To play the same solo, it
Speaker 1: seems like it would be unnatural when you have a
Speaker 1: song in your head. Let's say you're bringing a song
Speaker 1: into the band you've worked on at home. Has there
Speaker 1: ever been a case where you come up with a
Speaker 1: like a part that you're going to play a rhythm
Speaker 1: a rhythm piece, and you play it for the band
Speaker 1: and they join in, and when they join in, it
Speaker 1: instigates you to change what your original part was based
Speaker 1: on what they're playing. Oh, yeah, completely. And Anthony's always
Speaker 1: the last part of that, like, like, I don't really
Speaker 1: know exactly what I'm going to do and how it
Speaker 1: can be, how the groove is going to be put
Speaker 1: into it and all that until I hear what he's thinking.
Speaker 1: But there is a certain amount if I bring in
Speaker 1: a song, if the drums that Chad aren't playing don't
Speaker 1: sound right, I might not have any idea of what
Speaker 1: the drums are supposed to be going in, but when
Speaker 1: I hear the wrong thing, Yeah, it feels like this
Speaker 1: doesn't make this thing do what it wants. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know we often experiment. Yeah, we work on that, and
Speaker 1: so there's there's always a lot of healthy exchange with Chad.
Speaker 1: With Flea that that's been more difficult. We've had rough
Speaker 1: patches of working together because I had an idea of
Speaker 1: what I thought should be the low note of the
Speaker 1: chord and that kind of thing, and he just hears
Speaker 1: a difference and yeah, but you know, we managed to
Speaker 1: work that out. Always, when he brings in a song,
Speaker 1: either on piano or on bass, do you immediately know
Speaker 1: what to play? Quite often, especially if it's a sort
Speaker 1: of modal, funk based kind of thing that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: chord changes. A lot of the time, the first thing
Speaker 1: I play when when I come in is what winds
Speaker 1: up being on the record. But with piano, with with
Speaker 1: those songs that he's brought in on piano, I I
Speaker 1: definitely have to like put some thought into it and
Speaker 1: ask him what the chords are. We had a real
Speaker 1: nice exchange because in the old days, neither of us
Speaker 1: really communicated having anything to do with theory. It was
Speaker 1: more showing the person what you're playing and then responding
Speaker 1: to that. But as time has gone by and he
Speaker 1: went to music school and stuff for this new stuff,
Speaker 1: we would talk about the chord. He would if he
Speaker 1: didn't know the name of the chord, or one of
Speaker 1: us doesn't know the name of the chord, we tell
Speaker 1: the other one what the intervals that it has in
Speaker 1: it are, and when it's what it involves chord changes,
Speaker 1: that's really where the trouble, Where it involves more it's
Speaker 1: just you got to figure it out. Yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: to take some time. But yeah, Usually the songs that
Speaker 1: are jam style song, songs that come from us just
Speaker 1: jamming with each other, that's usually pretty automatic. And but
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, like some songs on the new album,
Speaker 1: we're like, we did a jam and the first thing
Speaker 1: we played is one song, and what we went into
Speaker 1: ten minutes later wound up being a completely other like
Speaker 1: we'd landed on something through playing the first thing that
Speaker 1: wound up being a whole other tune. So so there's
Speaker 1: this automaticness of fitting together when it's when it's things
Speaker 1: that are in one key, but when it's moving around
Speaker 1: a lot, it requires some thought both for him to
Speaker 1: come up with bass parts, for me to come up
Speaker 1: with guitar parts. If there's a difficult chord progression presented
Speaker 1: to you on piano, would your instinct first to be
Speaker 1: thinking about how to interact with it, or would it
Speaker 1: be to play along with it, like to double it first,
Speaker 1: to know what to do off of it from piano.
Speaker 1: I can't do that because she's got he can play
Speaker 1: more notes than I can on my guitar. On piano,
Speaker 1: it's so easy, for instance, to play a chord that's
Speaker 1: almost everything in it is a whole step away from
Speaker 1: each other, if a very close distance. Yes, guitar, you
Speaker 1: just can't do it. You can't. You've got to take
Speaker 1: notes out of the chord in order to be able
Speaker 1: to physically play it. I see. So you can't really
Speaker 1: duplicate it on the guitar, you do, right, Yeah, not
Speaker 1: if it has too many notes in it. He's doing
Speaker 1: a lot of chords that have ten notes in him,
Speaker 1: I see, don't even have that many strings or that range.
Speaker 1: And it comes down as always to doing what you
Speaker 1: hear in your heads, you know. But for chords to
Speaker 1: do what you hear in your head, you have to
Speaker 1: have a good idea of that's because that's one of
Speaker 1: the things I was thinking was when you hear something
Speaker 1: and you respond to it, are you responding with the
Speaker 1: guitar first or are you humming it in your head
Speaker 1: and then playing it? Would the singing version be faster
Speaker 1: than the guitar version to sing the idea or no? Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's an interesting question because it comes back to that
Speaker 1: thing that we touched on in the last episode having
Speaker 1: to do with that period of time where I was
Speaker 1: seeing music very clearly in my head with synesthesia or
Speaker 1: some form of synesthesia. And even though I don't have
Speaker 1: that the way I did when I was, you know,
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, I do see things and I
Speaker 1: can see, for instance, like if I'm playing live the
Speaker 1: beginning of a guitar solo, I'm not humming it. I
Speaker 1: just see it. Wow. When you say you see it,
Speaker 1: you don't see it like written music. No, would you
Speaker 1: describe it as shape? How would you describe it? That's
Speaker 1: the funny thing about it is it's not visual, at
Speaker 1: least I don't think it is. But it's in an
Speaker 1: instant like I might see two bars of a of
Speaker 1: a guitar solo, of the way I'm going to start
Speaker 1: the solo. I might see the first two bars in
Speaker 1: my head as a single picture, like as a How
Speaker 1: would you describe a single instant? I see those two bars.
Speaker 1: But when you say see the two bars, tell me
Speaker 1: what you're like. Describe what you're seeing. What do the
Speaker 1: bars look like? I don't know how. I really it's
Speaker 1: there for me because it's interesting. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that because I could do this kind of thing
Speaker 1: so good when I was when I was like twenty,
Speaker 1: and I was literally seeing everything like as a movie
Speaker 1: that like you'd ask me, like you'd have the idea,
Speaker 1: like we would be working on Sold to Squeeze, and
Speaker 1: I remember you saying you should write a guitar intro,
Speaker 1: just a guitar only intro for this song, and I
Speaker 1: would just see a picture in my head, like a
Speaker 1: visual picture like a movie of the song, and I
Speaker 1: would think, Okay, what would be the right movie for
Speaker 1: the intro? And then I would just see the movie
Speaker 1: and then play the feeling of that like the school,
Speaker 1: like you're scoring an image. Yeah, but it's not an
Speaker 1: image that you could necessarily describe it not necessarily, but
Speaker 1: it very well could have been. In those days they
Speaker 1: were were there were things that were very clear, but
Speaker 1: they always there was this interaction between the music and
Speaker 1: the visuals in my head to where if I was
Speaker 1: hearing music, I saw a visual that perfectly represented that music.
Speaker 1: And it could be abstract shapes in black and white,
Speaker 1: or it could be color just like a movie, or
Speaker 1: you know it was And so as time went by
Speaker 1: and I went Californication time I start making music again,
Speaker 1: but without that clear visualness, I still have the same
Speaker 1: ability to see the feeling of music in my head.
Speaker 1: Yet there was no picture to it, but I could
Speaker 1: see it. I can only describe it as seeing because
Speaker 1: it's there in my head and it's clear, and I
Speaker 1: see the connection between that and what I would play
Speaker 1: to do that feeling. Yeah, but sometimes there's a visual thing,
Speaker 1: but it's more like spaces than it is like objects. Okay,
Speaker 1: And when you say spaces, do you mean spaces between
Speaker 1: things or a visual space like a location. I'm not
Speaker 1: really saying that. It's anything that I could expect anybody
Speaker 1: to be able to draw or something. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: the absence of objects I see as opposed to objects.
Speaker 1: It's it's something like you've seen what's missing? You don't
Speaker 1: have something? What I'm curious you just guys, you're asking
Speaker 1: me these questions. You must have something like, No, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm trying. I'm trying to visual I'm trying
Speaker 1: to visualize what you're experiencing, right, And I'm just looking
Speaker 1: for any clues to I want to see it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to I want to see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty mysterious. I think I told you. I think I
Speaker 1: told you when I was gassed at the dentist's office.
Speaker 1: I told you that story a long time ago. Needle phobic,
Speaker 1: I got gassed to have a blood test and I
Speaker 1: was listening to music and they gassed me and I
Speaker 1: could see the music. I could see three D images,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, oh, now I know how to
Speaker 1: do this, because like now that I've been exposed to it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't need laughing gas to do this. I see
Speaker 1: what this is, right. And then I've never been able
Speaker 1: to do it again, even not on laughing gas. I can't.
Speaker 1: I've never been able to do it again. But in
Speaker 1: that first time, I was able to clearly see and
Speaker 1: it was so cool. It was so cool to be
Speaker 1: able to see it. Yeah, that's how it was for me, real, consistently,
Speaker 1: from like nineteen ninety two. It's mysterious to me that
Speaker 1: that I was able to make music just as colorful
Speaker 1: and and emotional and shapely and all these things without it.
Speaker 1: And I can only say that even though I don't
Speaker 1: see the visuals like I did, they must be there
Speaker 1: just below the level of consciousness, because the effect of
Speaker 1: what that did remained with me. When you could see it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was almost like training wheels, like it had
Speaker 1: to be that clear for whatever it was that was
Speaker 1: showing it to you for you to be able to
Speaker 1: see it, and then once you built the ability to
Speaker 1: see it, you could still see it without the visual there. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that that is that that is
Speaker 1: what happened. And I'm sure there are people who just
Speaker 1: go on seeing it their whole lives, but it didn't
Speaker 1: work that way for me. But yeah, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas, don't you get it safe. For instance,
Speaker 1: you're looking through movies, you're thinking of watching a movie
Speaker 1: and you look through your DVD collection. There's nothing, nothing's
Speaker 1: leaping out at you all of a sudden, one DVD
Speaker 1: that's the one you want to watch. Yes, what happens
Speaker 1: in your head at that moment? I would say it's
Speaker 1: it's a feeling of the energy in my body raises.
Speaker 1: It's similar to when we're playing in the studio and
Speaker 1: it goes from a okay take to a great take.
Speaker 1: There's this feeling of just like I feel this lift
Speaker 1: of energy in my body that makes me want to
Speaker 1: sometimes makes me want to laugh. Sometimes it makes me
Speaker 1: want to lean forward and like listen closer. I would
Speaker 1: say it's interest. It's like you could be sitting around
Speaker 1: and like mindlessly not thinking, and then something grabs my attention.
Speaker 1: Nothing changed, volumes, not any louder, you know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's not like the music came on. Music has been
Speaker 1: playing for hours, but all of a sudden, like my
Speaker 1: attention gets drawn to this thing, right, and it's this
Speaker 1: wave of energy, I guess is the way to say
Speaker 1: it right and see for me, that's a part of it.
Speaker 1: But another part of it is there's something that presents
Speaker 1: itself to my mind that it's as if it's a
Speaker 1: condensed form of the feeling of that thing. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: like if if I'm looking through my movies and good
Speaker 1: Fellas is the movie I want to watch, the feeling
Speaker 1: of good Fellas comes over me in my head. Before
Speaker 1: when I saw things visually, that would have been a
Speaker 1: much more extreme like somehow visual concoction that that I
Speaker 1: literally see. But in this case, I don't see it,
Speaker 1: but I feel it in my brain. Yes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to next time that I'm choosing something to watch, I'm
Speaker 1: going to really pay attention to what's going on in
Speaker 1: my body to try to understand what I'm feeling. You know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know the feeling of where I get excited.
Speaker 1: Oh there it is, yeah, that feeling. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to tune into that more. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: you say in my body, because it's just for me.
Speaker 1: It's more like it's more my head. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's definitely not in my head, right, It's
Speaker 1: not a thinking thing for me. It's a whole body
Speaker 1: feeling draw interesting. Yeah, yeah, so that's what makes me
Speaker 1: think it's still leftover. Simple things like that. When I'm
Speaker 1: looking through my record collection, I see the record that
Speaker 1: I want to hear, the feeling of that record is
Speaker 1: produced in my head as if in one moment, I
Speaker 1: were feeling the entire listening experience of listening to that record,
Speaker 1: the sum of that, where each any aspect of it
Speaker 1: contains the whole. Yeah. Yeah. So so that ends up
Speaker 1: relating to what we were talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: when Fleet plays a bassline, I see in my head,
Speaker 1: what would be the counter to that, what would be
Speaker 1: the balancer to that? Where the holes in that and
Speaker 1: I see a picture of it in my head of
Speaker 1: what would balance his baseline, and I just start playing,
Speaker 1: and that balance is what I play. So I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking of notes in advance, but sometimes I do. But
Speaker 1: it's in that way that I that I was saying,
Speaker 1: where like I see them, but it's faster than real time.
Speaker 1: I see the whole pattern that I'm going to repeat
Speaker 1: in an instant. You know, we're only really taking note
Speaker 1: of what's happening consciously all the time. But I think
Speaker 1: just as much as dreams are this world that we
Speaker 1: don't really understand, I think everything in life is that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of subconscious echo that's taking place to
Speaker 1: what we're seeing consciously. Absolutely, and I think what we're
Speaker 1: seeing consciously barely scratches the surface of what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's too many data points. We can't take it all in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know that period of time that I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the last show where I had months when I
Speaker 1: first got off drugs completely of just being kind of bored.
Speaker 1: During that period of time when nothing was happening, I
Speaker 1: was seeing the music that I might make with the
Speaker 1: band in my head. I guess in some cases I
Speaker 1: might have actually been hearing music in my head. But
Speaker 1: a lot of it was just the overall concept of
Speaker 1: the way that the things would relate to each other.
Speaker 1: And I'm just bored, like just sitting there, like not
Speaker 1: doing anything, not excited about life or anything. But oftentimes
Speaker 1: when there's nothing going on, You're subconscious reveals itself to
Speaker 1: you in these ways, Like that's the time when it
Speaker 1: does it. If you're constantly having information in front of
Speaker 1: you all the time, or constantly doing things to entertain
Speaker 1: yourself or to combat that. Yeah, like oftentimes you're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to be in touch with the
Speaker 1: subconscious that has its own movement and that has its
Speaker 1: own reality. And a lot of the time, it seems
Speaker 1: like in that particular case like period that I thought
Speaker 1: nothing was happening with me, my life was going nowhere,
Speaker 1: it actually had a huge effect on something very productive
Speaker 1: that I did, which was making that record. You know,
Speaker 1: would you describe it as a premonition, I guess so.
Speaker 1: I guess I've had a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: those in my life. Like you can imagine something and
Speaker 1: then it ends up coming to pass. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: see something. Sometimes I see things and things that they
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with me, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I see the real thing, or I hear
Speaker 1: the real thing. I realized, Oh my god, I heard
Speaker 1: that in my head like ten years ago, Like that
Speaker 1: Dice album that you brought over to my house to
Speaker 1: day Laughter Died Part two. Yeah, there's moments on that
Speaker 1: that I swear I heard in my head when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen years old, like seven years before it came out.
Speaker 1: I know, I understand that feeling, because sometimes I'll hear
Speaker 1: something and they'll be and I know I've never heard before,
Speaker 1: or it wasn't even possibly here before. But there's such
Speaker 1: a feeling of remembrance when I'm listening to it, or
Speaker 1: just a sense of yeah, that's how it goes. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like like I already know it, yeah,
Speaker 1: A knowing this. Yeah, there's and there's some kind of
Speaker 1: connection between memory and creativity. There's a connection between them. Yet,
Speaker 1: creating something new isn't the same thing as remembering something.
Speaker 1: But in some ways that's that's it's useful that it's
Speaker 1: not the same because we remember something and then we
Speaker 1: make it and then we realize that that's not what
Speaker 1: it was at all. It's like it is something new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But there's a connection between the functions in the brain
Speaker 1: and it shows sometimes, Like the Beatles had that thing
Speaker 1: with Ringo. They would make fun of him because every
Speaker 1: time he tried to write a new song it was
Speaker 1: a song that already existed. He thought he was writing
Speaker 1: a new song, and they would start falling on the
Speaker 1: floor laughing because it was it was a Jerry Lee
Speaker 1: Lewis song or whatever, and he just didn't realize it was.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes, when when I get an idea for writing
Speaker 1: a song, it feels like I'm remembering something. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like I'm coming up with something new. What's turned
Speaker 1: out to be the most beneficial kind of practicing for
Speaker 1: me is that I'm just creating a sort of an
Speaker 1: encyclopedia of what has been done, yes, and that's all
Speaker 1: being stored in my subconscious I learned if I like
Speaker 1: a song, I learned how to play the guitar of it.
Speaker 1: I might even learn how to play the keyboard of
Speaker 1: it and the base of it. And this information is
Speaker 1: all stored in my head. So when I write, I'm
Speaker 1: drawing from that storeroom of all the stuff that of
Speaker 1: all the combinations that you've ever heard over the course
Speaker 1: of your life and that you get to a stage
Speaker 1: where Okay, I have this and I want to go
Speaker 1: to this, and there's somewhere and you, maybe conscious or unconscious, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this sound, going to this sound feel satisfying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And maybe that's because there's a something you heard twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago that you liked and lodged, but don't
Speaker 1: you know, don't remember the specifics of it. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: if you eat a good meal, you feel satisfied. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the same when you hear a good piece of music.
Speaker 1: There's this feeling of satisfaction. And you know, the different elements,
Speaker 1: all of the elements over the course of your life
Speaker 1: that have given you that feeling of satisfaction are all
Speaker 1: at your disposal to draw from. Whether you remember them
Speaker 1: or not, they're somehow in there. Yeah. They change us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, that's the productive thing is just to have
Speaker 1: them all in there. And you're like doing this mixing
Speaker 1: and matching thing. It's really more you're subconscious doing it
Speaker 1: because like, for instance, like we were talking about under
Speaker 1: the Bridge, like when Anthony had that vocal and I
Speaker 1: basically had the idea to just do something starting with
Speaker 1: them in a major key, just because what he was
Speaker 1: doing seemed sad, and I wanted to cheer it up
Speaker 1: a little bit, because, aside from it being soft, that
Speaker 1: was another aspect to it that was weird for us.
Speaker 1: Our music was generally uplifting. Yeah, and it was a
Speaker 1: sad song. Yeah. If I sang the melody of that song,
Speaker 1: you hear the chords in your subconscious you'd hear the
Speaker 1: melody now, you know, now that you know what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. But when he was first singing it,
Speaker 1: we didn't know it wasn't it wasn't super clear whether
Speaker 1: it was yeah, And so I know that that was
Speaker 1: my thought going into it, aside from the Jimi Hendricks thing,
Speaker 1: was just the thought like, let's lighten this up a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, And when it moved to a
Speaker 1: minor key for the chorus of the song, and the
Speaker 1: idea to have that part start on the later than
Speaker 1: the one instead of the one I drew from this
Speaker 1: song that I knew in my head at that moment.
Speaker 1: I could have thought of any song, but I thought
Speaker 1: this would be a nice little moment to have this
Speaker 1: space right before the course, you know. In a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, That's why I think learning a lot of
Speaker 1: songs is really the only way to develop your skill
Speaker 1: doing it, because when it's happening, it's not like a
Speaker 1: skill that you you know how to use the hammer
Speaker 1: in this particular way, so you use it. The skill
Speaker 1: is like sort of giving your subconscious the ability to
Speaker 1: be able to offer you the right thing at the
Speaker 1: right time, yes, you know, and sometimes giving it and
Speaker 1: giving it loads of options to choose from, exactly loads
Speaker 1: of options. Do you remember the song that inspired you
Speaker 1: to want to put that in under the bridge? Right?
Speaker 1: Do you remember what it was? Yeah? Can you play it? Okay? So, um,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I play a whole verse and
Speaker 1: anything you want? I can do it instrumentally if it's
Speaker 1: no good that way, but but it seems I'm anything
Speaker 1: you want to play. It's fun. I'm gonna try this. Um.
Speaker 1: So that Joe Jackson song goes one to f The
Speaker 1: guy who knows upstairs is a nator. They say, maybe
Speaker 1: words the same. He changed his name because someone with
Speaker 1: the same name made it first. His girlfriend comes to stay.
Speaker 1: We hear her screams and think that they rehearse. So
Speaker 1: maybe a play and maybe someone's really geting you prown
Speaker 1: every home town every na souse, every fair dealing, every
Speaker 1: good job, every swaming, every dream night. Okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna play it once, just guitar one, two, three,
Speaker 1: four one. Is it that long? Yeah, it's a long,
Speaker 1: long break. Yeah. It's also interesting the phrasing the bum
Speaker 1: bum bum after space sounds like it's answering something. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like it's saying something. Yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 1: way that that chorus generally goes. With his, it's a
Speaker 1: long um, it's just a stop and then goes into
Speaker 1: the chorus. But with ours, it's uh, it's a sustain right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we hold, we hold the chord which came from this
Speaker 1: which even that in itself came from another song. There's
Speaker 1: this t Rex song called rip Off that goes like
Speaker 1: it's funny. It's called It's funny, it's called I Really
Speaker 1: at the time that was a joke in my mind,
Speaker 1: like it would be cool if I ripped off rip off.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like it has this cycle in the verse
Speaker 1: that goes like uh hm, so, so I always thought
Speaker 1: that was cool that the verse had this break in
Speaker 1: it where the guitar just played this major seven chord.
Speaker 1: So in ours, when we got to the end of
Speaker 1: the to the to the verse and that's the happy verse. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when he got to the end of the singing,
Speaker 1: rather than just going straight into the chorus, when we
Speaker 1: went and then the Joe Jason Yeah, but instead of
Speaker 1: doing that, I went it sounds more to me that
Speaker 1: that sounds more introspective than the verse did. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like it was almost like in the in the
Speaker 1: writing of that song, we we brought in the darkness gradually,
Speaker 1: like to me the end of the song that that's
Speaker 1: the darkest part of the song. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 1: like that was the feeling to me when Anthony first
Speaker 1: brought it in, but you got to it instead of
Speaker 1: opening with exactly like like gradually, and which gave it
Speaker 1: the effect of somehow feeling triumphant rather than feeling like
Speaker 1: you or a release, some kind of a release, yeah,
Speaker 1: rather than feeling some kind of rather than it feeling
Speaker 1: like a down or it made the whole thing made
Speaker 1: it made the chorus felt like an uplifting thing. We
Speaker 1: had another song earlier on the first album that I
Speaker 1: did with them, knock Me Down, where that it was like,
Speaker 1: as I might not be in the right key, so
Speaker 1: we had. We had this thing that went major chord
Speaker 1: to minor chord, and it's just one of those things
Speaker 1: that I've not There's a lot there's certain songs in
Speaker 1: history where somebody does that where I just noticed that
Speaker 1: that that it's a good feeling, and uh, that's another
Speaker 1: thing I can't because I know how to play so
Speaker 1: many songs. I have things categorized in my head to
Speaker 1: where there's all these sort of chord progressions. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of songs that have similar chord progressions, and so
Speaker 1: I have them sort of on some level, maybe not
Speaker 1: to where I can just play them right off the bat,
Speaker 1: but they're the principles at work. Yeah, they're they're categorized
Speaker 1: in my head is being oh, that's that type of chord.
Speaker 1: It's rare that in a rock song from history, I
Speaker 1: would hear a chord progression that I would go, oh,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't fall into any category, you know, but
Speaker 1: there are some, especially in progressive rocks and stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like under the Bridge was just another attempt at doing
Speaker 1: the major to minor chord but taking time with it.
Speaker 1: And I think Beatles did that too, know, the major
Speaker 1: to the minor. I'm sure they Yeah, they definitely did. Like,
Speaker 1: like let's see, I was playing along in one the
Speaker 1: other A lot of the time it's like they already
Speaker 1: went to a F chord, say Laren C, and then
Speaker 1: they went to an F and then and then they
Speaker 1: went back to C. And then next time they do
Speaker 1: an F it's minor, and all of a sudden, that
Speaker 1: gives you a different feeling, like it's a chord you've
Speaker 1: already heard as a major chord, but then the second
Speaker 1: time they go to it, it's a it's a minor
Speaker 1: chord and it changes. Yeah. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: the rest of John F. Shaunte and Rick Rubin's conversation.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, we're back with Rick Rubin and
Speaker 1: John F. SHAWNTA. Can you think of any songs that
Speaker 1: from the exercise that you showed earlier of the notes
Speaker 1: and rhythm? Yeah, any songs that you've written that have
Speaker 1: come from something related to that notes and rhythm technique? No,
Speaker 1: definitely can't. Like I said, I really I think of practicing.
Speaker 1: You think if it's separate, it's completely separate. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to connect the two things. I do know that
Speaker 1: when I'm playing on stage it's not going to stop
Speaker 1: me from doing a certain thing that I want to
Speaker 1: do in my solo. If all of a sudden I
Speaker 1: have to do upstrokes and accent those rather than accenting
Speaker 1: the down strokes, like I'll be able to say whatever
Speaker 1: that thing is I wanted to say. Or if I
Speaker 1: want to fit a strange amount of notes in the bar,
Speaker 1: if I want to do if I want to fit
Speaker 1: seven notes into the four four instead of eight notes
Speaker 1: or whatever, like it's natural for me to do that.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I figure it just it gets
Speaker 1: in there somehow, But I don't know how for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a good question based on that, you want
Speaker 1: to get seven notes into a four you're doing a solo.
Speaker 1: What happens you're hearing the music, you start the solo,
Speaker 1: what dictates what where the next note? It goes like
Speaker 1: what's happening? Yeah, no, it's yeah, Like like I'm like,
Speaker 1: you can explain it after why yeah, but not in
Speaker 1: the moment? Yeah, no, time. Yeah. I think of it
Speaker 1: as you're placing yourself in a few points in time
Speaker 1: at the same time. Like I think if you can
Speaker 1: do all three of those things at once, be in
Speaker 1: the past, being the present, and be in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's something like the ideal frame of mind to
Speaker 1: be to have some kind of a preconcept and about
Speaker 1: what you're about to do. Yes, to be in the moment,
Speaker 1: listening to what everybody else is doing right right in
Speaker 1: the moment at every point, and also listening to what's
Speaker 1: just happened. Yeah, I think it's It involves like a
Speaker 1: balancing of sort of being in those three points in
Speaker 1: time at the same time. If a lot of the
Speaker 1: time you're only able to listen to what's just happened
Speaker 1: and you're just judging it every step of the way,
Speaker 1: you're just going, oh, that sucked, Oh that was terrible, wow,
Speaker 1: like and you can't get out. Yeah it's bad. That's
Speaker 1: what it's like. When I'm having a bad show. I'm
Speaker 1: just listening to what's already happened. I don't have any
Speaker 1: idea of what I'm about to do, not in the moment.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to what's already come out, and I'm judging it.
Speaker 1: I see. But ideally you're in a balance between between
Speaker 1: those three points in time. How often does that happen? Though?
Speaker 1: Bad show like for you, a bad show like that
Speaker 1: I feel like that doesn't I've never seen that, but
Speaker 1: how you probably have seen me. Really. I remember even
Speaker 1: when we were doing the basic tracks to Stadium. I
Speaker 1: was kind of in that state of mind while we
Speaker 1: were doing the basic tracks for a week or two,
Speaker 1: and you just kept telling me, like I kept telling
Speaker 1: you what I was experiencing, that everything's sounding bad to me,
Speaker 1: and you were like, you're playing great, sounds great, you know,
Speaker 1: but but like so, it's just the it's your interpretation
Speaker 1: of what's happening. It's what's happening inside. It's yeah, I
Speaker 1: was judging everything as I was doing. It was so
Speaker 1: important to me to play in a certain way that
Speaker 1: I wanted to play on that record. I was trying
Speaker 1: to have a little more of the looseness of lives
Speaker 1: than I'd had on any of our records before, and
Speaker 1: the energy of the live playing. And I think I'd
Speaker 1: put too much pressure on myself to where most of
Speaker 1: the records float out really nicely. But the first week
Speaker 1: or two I was experiencing a really negative thing where
Speaker 1: I was just judging every moment as it happened successively,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't able to get into the groove. I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to anticipate it. I wasn't able to be
Speaker 1: in the moment. And what do you think shifted it?
Speaker 1: Because he said it was for the first few weeks
Speaker 1: the meditation thing I did, Yeah, because there was a
Speaker 1: bad feeling in my stomach that was associated with the
Speaker 1: mental state. And I did a guided meditation with somebody.
Speaker 1: First I meditated on this thing in my stomach, and
Speaker 1: then I meditated on He said, there's a secondary part
Speaker 1: where where you're feeling a similar kind of unease, similar
Speaker 1: kind of pain. Try to figure out. Let's get off
Speaker 1: the phone and figure out where in your body is that.
Speaker 1: And I found that it was this spot right here,
Speaker 1: just my wrist. On the opposite side is the palm
Speaker 1: of my hand, yeah, and back of the left wrist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It might have been both risk but it was very subtle.
Speaker 1: I would have never even noticed that there was a
Speaker 1: feeling there, But when I tried to separate myself from
Speaker 1: the feeling in my stomach, it was there. And so
Speaker 1: I meditated on that for a long time, and then
Speaker 1: I got on the phone with him again, and then
Speaker 1: he said, there's a third point. You know. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it was, but I want to what maybe
Speaker 1: it was the road or something, whatever it was, And
Speaker 1: eventually a whole explosion of thoughts came out about a
Speaker 1: friendship that I'd had when I was young that went bad. Wow.
Speaker 1: That was followed by a period of time of me
Speaker 1: intensely trying to play guitar in a way that impressed people.
Speaker 1: And the way I intended to play on that record
Speaker 1: had a connection with that point in time. That's what
Speaker 1: I was lodged in your body, Yeah, and so I'd
Speaker 1: some the thing up in that way. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all these memories came back of this friendship that went
Speaker 1: bad and the desire to impress people that was followed.
Speaker 1: Like before that, I was just more already just being creative.
Speaker 1: After that, I had a determined thing like I'm going
Speaker 1: to play in a way that's going to impress people,
Speaker 1: and that nobody's going to be able to tell me
Speaker 1: I'm not a good guitar player, and all this stuff like,
Speaker 1: which isn't possible. Like I've heard the people talk shit
Speaker 1: about the greatest guitar players ever, whether it's Jimmy Hendricks,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page, Alan Holdsworth, that Evan Helen, Like I've heard
Speaker 1: loads of people say that they're bad guitarists, you know,
Speaker 1: like so you can't escape it. So I don't advise
Speaker 1: anybody to every Also, if you have that, if you're
Speaker 1: doing something new or going out on a limb, if
Speaker 1: you're really going forward, there are always people who resist. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have no context for it. Yeah. So with everything
Speaker 1: I'd learned about making music for how it sounds and
Speaker 1: going with your feelings and supporting the your bandmates and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, when we went in the
Speaker 1: studio to do Stadium, I was just kind of like
Speaker 1: I had this idea that I was going to play
Speaker 1: in a way that was going to draw more attention
Speaker 1: to the guitar playing, and I think I really had
Speaker 1: to get my ego out of the way of it.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that's where the conflict came from,
Speaker 1: that caused the pain. Yeah, I had to reel it
Speaker 1: in a little bit and just get inside the feeling
Speaker 1: of the songs and not worry about like the playing
Speaker 1: in a more flashy wave was going to have to
Speaker 1: just come naturally, couldn't. I had to get that because
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you're doing anytime that you're that
Speaker 1: you're thinking of a reaction that you want from people,
Speaker 1: separate from the feeling. It's just it never works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. And so so that's where I had
Speaker 1: some intelligent part of me telling myself, you know this,
Speaker 1: you can't go down this path. So it was a
Speaker 1: little conflict. But once I had that memory and saw
Speaker 1: the relationship between those two things, losing that friend and
Speaker 1: focusing on being impressive to other people, I was able
Speaker 1: to go back into the record with my stomach feeling relaxed,
Speaker 1: with being able to be completely in the moment, without
Speaker 1: worrying about what people were going to think of it
Speaker 1: or anything, and just doing what came naturally. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say if we want to start talking
Speaker 1: about the other albums or whether it's better to stop
Speaker 1: and do another one, because I feel like, again, it's
Speaker 1: going to be long, and I feel like we've covered
Speaker 1: a lot of good ground. Now what do you think? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm and you're around for a few weeks, right, I'm
Speaker 1: here for a few weeks and we can do another
Speaker 1: one before I leave town. Oh okay in person? Sure,
Speaker 1: no mind coming out, not at all. Okay, great, because
Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much. Again, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I never know in the beginning, but once you start talking,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a lot to talk about. It's funny
Speaker 1: that we don't when we're working on stuff, there's not
Speaker 1: much talk of you know, we don't philosophy as much.
Speaker 1: We're you know, we have a job to do and
Speaker 1: we're focused on doing the job, so we rarely just
Speaker 1: talk about stuff. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for doing this. Yeah. Again, always a pleasure
Speaker 1: talking to you. I always learned something's fun. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun talking to you. Cool. So we
Speaker 1: do this again soon. Okay cool. Thanks to John F.
Speaker 1: Shante for stopping by. Shang a lot to chat with you.
Speaker 1: Be sure to keep an eye out on our feed
Speaker 1: for their next conversation. You can hear all of our
Speaker 1: favorite Chili pepper songs on my playlist at broke Record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record broken Record. It's produced
Speaker 1: with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Our theme musics by Kenny Beats on Justin Richmond