John Frusciante’s former tech Dave Lee reveals that Eddie Van Halen once helped him source a hard-to-find wah pedal for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist. But as Lee tells Boss’s Rod Brakes, Ed wasn’t very impressed with the electric guitar icon's choice of gear and offered him some hilarious advice.

Lee, who currently lends a hand to Maroon 5's Adam Levine, became a member of the RHCP’s crew in 1995 to assist guitarist Dave Navarro, who had joined the band two years earlier. Navarro took over the guitar spot from Frusciante, who’d left in 1992 in the midst of a drug addiction.

By 1998, Navarro was battling his own demons. As Lee explains, on the very day of his departure from the RHCP, Frusciante indicated his interest in returning.

“When John returned, we did a handful of shows to see how it would go, and it all went great,” Lee tells Brakes. “After that, they went into the studio and recorded Californication.”

During the album's sessions, Frusciante became enamored of an original Ibanez WH10 wah and added it on his pedalboard when the band toured behind the album. Unfortunately, the pedal has a plastic housing and is notorious for breaking under heavy use, and Lee had to constantly replace it.

“He wouldn’t use anything else,” Lee explains. “I thought I could just keep buying more, but they became increasingly difficult to find.”

Eventually, Frusciante was down to his last WH10. In desperation, Lee turned to Eddie Van Halen’s guitar tech, Matt Bruck.

“Matt Bruck, was a genius at locating hard-to-find gear,” he says. “I was at John’s house when Matt called me and said,’I’ve found you a WH10. I’m at Eddie’s house. You can come on over and pick it up if you like.’”

Lee drove over, only to find Eddie himself waiting outside with the pedal.

“When I pull up outside, Ed is standing there with the WH10 wah in his hand, just kind of looking at it. He goes, ‘Why does John Frusciante want a piece of crap like this?’

“I laughed and said, ‘Yep. You’re right. It is made of plastic, and they break all the time. That’s why we need this one. We only have one left.’

“He looked at me very seriously and said, ‘Listen, man. You need to tell John this is the only one left. Because when I’m using a pedal, and I think it’s the only one I’ve got, I’m a lot more careful with it.’

“That was some good guitar tech advice from Eddie Van Halen. John thought that was hilarious.”

As Frusciante revealed to Guitar Player in 2022, shortly after the RHCP released Return of the Dream Canteen, he still enjoys living on the edge when it comes to playing guitar.

“It’s beautiful when you feel like somebody’s putting themselves out there and taking a risk and just barely holding on, and it could become terrible at any moment if they lose it,” Frusciante told writer Rich Bienstock. “I love the openness of that. It’s the vulnerability that I think is most appealing.”

The so-called lawsuit-era copy guitars made in Japan during the 1970s and ’80s have developed a cult following in recent years, seducing today’s guitarists for their ability to often surpass the quality of the American-made originals from the same period. But the most successful and acclaimed Japanese guitar of the late ’70s wasn’t a direct copy of anything. Instead, the Yamaha SG-2000 was a creative and original design – a “Les Paul killer” that proved to be an able assassin in the hands of a long line of big-name players, starting with none other than Carlos Santana.

Flashback, if you will, to the mid ’70s, when American-made electric guitars weren’t quite what they used to be. The Gibson Les Paul was coming off a run as the rock and blues-rock guitar to own, but everyone was chasing the relatively few versions that were made between 1958 and ’60, and those were reaching insane prices for the day: “Two thousand dollars for a used guitar? Are you crazy!?”

Meanwhile, Carlos Santana had segued from Gibson SGs to Les Pauls in a tone quest that was very much still underway when Yamaha approached him to endorse its new guitar, most likely the SG-175, released in 1974 or early ’75. Ostensibly a modified Les Paul, its neck was glued into a thick solid-mahogany body – albeit one with pointy dual cutaways – and sported dual humbucking pickups and other Gibson-inspired appointments. Yet, as far as Santana was concerned, it wasn’t quite there.

Feeling the effort was a little lightweight and lacking in sustain, Santana told Guitar Player in 1978, “I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man.’ I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is. You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Yamaha took these suggestions, and others, and ran with them, initiating an R&D and prototyping period that spanned nearly two years. The final results still looked something like a double-cutaway Les Paul – or a Les Paul Custom, given the elegant adornments – but the guitar was built like nothing else on the planet. Unveiled in 1976, the SG-2000 boasted myriad features and complex construction that seemed destined to define how top-tier electric guitars would be built from then on. That didn’t happen, but that isn’t to say Yamaha failed in its overall achievement either. Included in this ground-up redesign were:

• A neck-through-body construction, with a multi-piece laminate forming both the body core and the neck
• A proprietary T-Cross System construction of the body and neck, which used boards of mahogany and maple glued together at opposing vertical and horizontal orientations, plus a three-piece maple top
• An ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl, split-arrow inlays
• Extremely bend-friendly jumbo frets
• A brass sustain block sunken into a channel in the top of the body beneath the bridge
• Enclosed, permanently lubricated tuners with a highly efficient 15:1 gear ratio
• Fully shielded Alnico V humbucking pickups with three-point mounting for easy tilt adjustment
• A ribcage contour in the upper back for more comfortable playing
• In-house control knobs with fluted sides for easy gripping

Aside from these details, the SG-2000 was just made very, very well, displaying an overall level of quality, fit and finish that put many similar American-made examples of the time to shame. Plus, it had a look that celebrated its intended elitism, with seven-ply body binding, five-ply headstock binding, gold-plated hardware and a decorative scrolling engraved in the tailpiece, along with other upscale details.

Although the model was often compared to the Les Paul it was intended to “kill,” Yamaha had clearly taken pride in the design and made every effort to create an entirely different guitar, despite some outward similarities. Back to back, even the body shapes are more different than they might at first appear, the SG-2000’s lines describing what would be a more fully rounded upper bout (if the cutaways continued) and a shallower waist.

Big-name players lined up to play it, and the SG-2000 made one of the sharpest ascents into the hierarchy of premium electric guitars experienced by any new model, much less one designed and manufactured in Japan, when the country was still largely known for producing copies.

Santana embraced the new design, playing a couple of custom-made models with abundant decorative inlays (available briefly in 1976 as a Limited Edition Devadip model). He used it widely between 1977 and his move to Paul Reed Smith guitars sometime after 1982, an era that many longtime fans believe features some of his most distinctive and toneful playing. 

Standout moments include the live takes of “Europa” and “Let the Children Play/Jugando” from Moonflower; “Well All Right,” “Open Invitation” and “Wham!” from Inner Secrets; and similarly juicy SG-2000-meets-Boogie adventures from the albums Zebop! and Marathon.

Scottish new-wave guitarist John McGeoch logged several genre-defining moments playing his SG-2000 with Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bill Nelson embraced one with Be Bop Deluxe, and Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, Little Feat’s Paul Barrere, Boz Scaggs and Al Di Meola all frequently played Yamaha’s dominant electric.

As memorable as any of these are, some of the most distinctive examples of the guitar in action arguably came after Scottish guitarist Stuart Adamson ported his SG-2000 over from punk band the Skids when he formed Big Country in 1981. Alongside co-guitarist Bruce Watson, who also frequently played an SG-2000, Adamson applied the Yamaha electric to channel Celtic folk modes into hooky high-gain guitar riffs, logging hits like “In a Big Country” and “Fields of Fire” in the process.

Promoted alongside the SG-2000 were the SG-1500 – which initially had a set neck with sustain block before moving to neck-through construction without sustain block in 1981 – and the set-neck SG-1000, plus a handful of lesser variations. The upper-tier SG-3000, less often seen, was adorned with abalone purfling and split abalone and mother-of-pearl position markers, special pickups and other highly decorative treatments.

The SG-2000 itself has occasionally been available from Yamaha in reissue forms, sometimes more prominently so in the domestic Japanese market, while used examples have begun enjoying collectible status.

Essential Ingredients

• Gold-plated hardware
• Maple and mahogany neck-through-body “T-Cross System” construction
• 24.75-inch scale length
• Dual open-frame Alnico V Yamaha humbucking pickups
• Modified Tune-o-matic–style bridge mounted atop a brass sustain block
• Multi-ply body and headstock binding

Like so many Red Hot Chili Peppers fans there at the beginning, I first heard John Frusciante on his debut album with the group, 1989’s Mother’s Milk.

John was just 18 at the time of its recording, a fact unknown to me back then. Listening to his muscular, confident playing on tracks like “Knock Me Down,” “Pretty Little Ditty” and the cover of Stevie Wonder's “Higher Ground," I was sure the Chilis had snagged a guitarist a good 10 years older.

But it was his work on the group’s followup, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, that blew me away, just as it did every other fan.

It was immediately clear that Mother’s Milk had barely scratched the surface of his talent, that there was so much more to come – and John was not one to rest on his laurels.

More than 30 years after those albums, John continues to push himself and his talents toward virtuosity – not the kind of performative perfection we typically associate with the term, but a wholeness with his art and his fellow musicians.

Consider John’s view of music theory: “For me, the purpose of knowing the theory is to have an understanding of why I’m feeling a particular emotion,” he told Guitar Player.

Or his place in the band’s musical arrangements: “Because Flea plays in such an interesting way, I think of intervals not only as the relationship between two notes on my instrument but as the relationship between what I’m doing and what he’s doing.”

For that matter, consider John’s daily guitar regimen. It seems intense. It is intense. But John approaches is with such pleasure that it seems to be as replenishing as meditation.

Earlier this year, Flea launched his This Little Light podcast – an interview-based music education show created and hosted by the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and co-founder of the Silverlake Conservatory of Music (a portion of the podcast’s proceeds go towards this nonprofit organization’s operating costs and scholarship program.)

Inviting guests to talk about their relationship with music – including the teachers, influences, inspirations and lessons that helped shape them – This Little Light focuses on the “creativity, resilience and careers” of a diverse range of notables.

From Patti Smith, Stewart Copeland, and the band’s producer Rick Rubin to Jewel, Sheila E. and Tenacious D, there’s something for everybody.

Several days ago, Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis made an appearance following an interview with John Frusciante.

During his conversation with Flea, John recalls his first foray into guitar playing, his initial experience with teachers (good and bad), joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers and developing his own unique style. It’s a fascinating insight into the artistic life of a guitarist Flea describes as “the greatest musician I’ve ever played with.”

“I felt something going on inside of me that was bigger than me,” recalls John. “That thing instilled in me the belief that I had something to say to the world.”

“Yes may be the single most important of all the progressive rock bands,” claimed Geddy Lee while referencing the band's fifth studio effort, Close to the Edge, as among his “favorite rock albums of all time.”

For many fans of prog rock in the early 1970s, the arrival of the Yes album Close to the Edge in 1972 was not unlike the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band some five years earlier.

Like that early psychedelic landmark, Close to the Edge was a sprawling, genre-melding sonic wash of sound unlike anything anyone had heard before.

From its 18-minute title track, which took up all of side one, through the operatic sweep of the 10-minute-long “And You and I” and the hard rock-jazz fusion of its closing track, the evocatively titled “Siberian Khatru,” Close to the Edge wasn’t just another album; it was a sonic journey that you experienced from one end to the other (preferably on headphones), and then, in all likelihood, repeated once the needle reached the inner groove of side two.

It’s little surprise many fans thought Yes hadn’t just gone close to the edge – they’d gone clean over it.

Beyond the sheer grand scope of the album and level of musicianship displayed, what impressed me most about Close to the Edge was the ensemble playing on display. Just listening to it, you could tell Yes were a tight and supportive band.

The music gave equal room to Steve Howe’s breathtaking range of guitar virtuosity – from Duane Eddy-era rock and roll to John McLaughlin fusion – and Rick Wakeman’s dazzling keyboard skills, all of which was ably supported by the melodic “lead” bass work of Chris Squire and the mind-blowing jazz-tinged drum work of Bill Bruford.

The fact that they all performed this music on behalf of Jon Anderson’s cryptic lyrics made the group seem like a sect of some mysterious religion.

The underlying sense I had was that this was how a band was supposed to be: like a supportive team. Which is very much the way Steve Howe describes Yes at this time in its development.

“We were young, enthusiastic, and adventurous, and we had this incredible breakthrough success with Fragile,” the guitarist told GP. “We saw our next album as a real opportunity to prove our worth as a band. The door had been opened and we weren’t going to go backward. We wanted to sharpen our skills as far as writing and arranging.”

Although the success of the “Roundabout” single helped launch their top-ten 1971 album, Fragile, Yes eschewed radio-friendly hits while pursuing a different direction that allowed the band to expand their music without any regard for commercialization. “We cared if people listened to it,” Howe told Guitarist, “but we didn’t want to fit into the box of being a three-and-a-half-minute hit band.

“We went in the opposite direction. Sometimes Yes purposely decommercialized music.”

Order Close to the Edge here.

Even as a teenager, John Frusciante could shred with the best of them. 

Check out this rare clip of the guitarist performing with his band IKE in 1987, prior to joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers the following year.

Clearly influenced by the fretboard wizardry of ex-Frank Zappa guitarist Steve Vai, the ambitious virtuoso was aiming high from a young age.

Frusciante even considered auditioning for Zappa’s band, though decided against it once he realized his lifestyle wouldn’t be in step with the expectations of the unswervingly sober musical genius.

Nevertheless, Frusciante aspired to the reach same level of technical proficiency as his guitar hero.

In 2021, he spoke of his admiration for Vai on Sirius XM’s Guitar Greats show. “There was an issue of Guitar Player in [February 1983] that had [Zappa] on the cover with a tiny, little electric guitar,” he recalled. “It had an extra interview [with] who was then the guitar player in his band, Steve Vai, and it was called Zappa’s ‘Little Italian Virtuoso.’”

Of Italian heritage himself, Frusciante goes on to say, “I felt very connected to this person. I loved the way he talked about the instrument and the way he talked about his practice… There had never been a guitar player in Frank Zappa’s band who could do those things.”

“[Vai’s] duties in the band are mostly to play the hard-written lines and real complicated stuff that is beyond my capability,” Zappa told Bill Milkowski in 1983. “All that whammy bar stuff on Stratocaster.”

Vai’s superlative skills were the result of sheer hard work and dedication to practice. 

“I used to divide my day into about 12 hours,” he explained to GP’s Tom Mulhern. “The first nine hours were divided into three equal sections. I used to be ridiculous, because I would overload myself. I had finger exercises, scales, and chords. Eventually I added reading.”

Committing himself to a similarly intense regime, Frusciante regularly embarked on lengthy practice sessions, all the while lapping up as much of Vai’s recorded material as he could, including the Alcatraz album Disturbing the Peace and David Lee Roth’s Eat 'Em And Smile.

While speaking of Frusciante in this 2020 interview, Vai told Paul Reed Smith, “He’s such a dedicated player.”

In the above clip captured on tape in 1987, Frusciante is seen using a Vai-style SuperStrat and Zappa-endorsed Carvin X-100B amp.

He used the same rig to perform with the Chili Peppers after replacing founding guitarist Hillel Slovak in 1988.

In the following clip shot on October 8th that year, Frusciante is seen at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in L.A. playing one of his earliest gigs with the band.

This line-up includes former Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro (1959-2022) with whom Frusciante had struck up a musical friendship several months prior.

When they hit the stage, vocalist Anthony Kiedis introduces the Chili Peppers’ new recruit (who happens to be dressed in a comedy Superman outfit): “This is John. He’s only 18 years old.”

If you want to get your fingers and brain in sync with the exercises Frusciante uses before every gig, check out the John Frusciante Guitar Workout.

Back in April 2022, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Unlimited Love, their 12th studio effort and, more significantly, their first with John Frusciante, arguably their most fan-beloved guitarist, in more than 15 years.

If some listeners felt like they had waited a lifetime for this reunion album – and it’s quite possible that a few younger ones actually had – they didn’t have to hang on too much longer for the next one.

Rather, here we are just a handful of months later, and the Chilis – which also include singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith – have now followed up the 17-track, hour-plus Unlimited Love with the similarly 17-track, hour-plus Return of the Dream Canteen (Warner Records).

Given that, this time, the Chili Peppers entered the studio with a clutch of ideas and came out with not one but two new albums – and double albums at that – it can be surmised that Frusciante’s return has borne plenty of fresh creative fruit.

As the band has headed out on the road to play the new music and the classics onstage, that renewal has only continued.

“Aside from one or two shows in smaller places, all these shows have been a size that we’ve never done before,” Frusciante says. “We’ve been playing stadiums that are generally between, like, 40 and 60 thousand people a night.

“It’s a lot of people, and the energy’s very intense. There’s so much happiness being generated from the audience that sometimes it’s overwhelming.”

Nevertheless, Frusciante’s guitar playing has remained rock solid and unshakeable, not to mention mind-bendingly awesome.

Now 52 years old, he evidences the same beautifully idiosyncratic playing style – the elastic, slinky rhythm work; the alternately fluid and furious chording; the feedback-drenched, acid-fuzz solo freak-outs; the inspired improvisations; and the almost telepathic instrumental interactions with Flea and Smith – that made him an alt-rock guitar hero at the tender age of 21.

But everything feels both heightened and boundless. There’s an increased focus and intensity, and also what appears to be a greater willingness to let loose and take his playing right to the edge.

“It’s beautiful when you feel like somebody’s putting themselves out there and taking a risk and just barely holding on, and it could become terrible at any moment if they lose it,” Frusciante says. “I love the openness of that.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Guitar Player, Frusciante spoke about that openness, as well as the many aspects of his playing style and practice regimen that have helped make him the player he is today.

He also took us inside Return of the Dream Canteen and the creation of some of its standout tracks, and discussed how he employs technical facility and knowledge of theory in the service of making an emotional connection on his instrument.

“It’s the vulnerability that I think is most appealing,” he says.

Since your return to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band has written and recorded close to 50 songs and released two albums. That’s a significant amount of studio work. But you also returned to the stage with the band. How has it been to perform with Anthony, Flea and Chad again?

It’s a real different experience, just because of the size of the stadiums. It pulls a lot out of you, especially because I came back into the band in a spirit of giving. I really wanted to play for people, you know? But when we made the records, it was more about playing for the other guys in the band, or playing something that I’d want to play for my friends.

But going out onstage, there’s times where I go up to the mic to sing and I make eye contact with people, and I see two people that are clearly in love and really happy to be there, or a little kid who’s really happy, or a young girl who’s jumping up and down, or a group of guys that are jumping around in a circle because they’re so happy that we played the particular song that they really like.

Sometimes those moments, I start crying. Or I get choked up and I can’t sing and I have to shut my eyes and stare down at the ground and collect myself.

That’s intense.

There’s a lot of emotional moments like that. And I don’t know that in the band we’ve ever been so appreciative of being there with each other before. Because we have this lifetime behind us of these meaningful moments playing together. It’s very important to us. We all feel very supported by each other.

One very cool aspect of these shows it that you, Flea and Chad begin the set with an instrumental improvisation. When you’re dealing with audiences in venues of this size, the goal of a rock band is usually to hit the stage and blow the fans’ hair back. But you guys approach the music in a more open and creative way.

Yeah. It’s a good way to really get in touch with the particular energy that’s there that night. Because every crowd is different and every venue feels different, and we’re also in a different mood every night.

So by improvising right at the beginning, we get in touch with what the spirit of the moment is, and oftentimes that sets the tone for the rest of the show. And you know, throughout the show there’s lots of spontaneity.

Every time there’s a solo, whether it’s a song that we don’t play often or a song that we play every night, I feel really creative in those moments. Every second on the stage feels worthwhile.

Return of the Dream Canteen is culled from songs recorded during the same sessions as Unlimited Love. When you were in the studio, did you have an idea of which songs would ultimately wind up on which record?

I definitely gave it a lot of thought, but it really came down to what order we decided to mix the songs in.

I had my own personal idea of what would make a good second album and what would make a good first one, but I didn’t feel so strongly about it that I took the trouble to go to the band and say, “Look, guys, before we mix anything, let’s make this decision right here and now.” I planned on doing that, but I just never did.

It seemed like the way it went was sometimes Anthony would suggest mixing a particular song, sometimes I would, sometimes maybe Flea would. And we just kind of trusted that whatever was going to be was going to be. There really was no conscious idea about what the difference between the two albums should be.

That said, there were certain songs that I felt should wait for the second album. Like “Eddie”: I really wanted to put that one on the second album, because I felt like it might be kind of a crowd pleaser. And we didn’t want the first album to be all the best stuff and the second one to be the leftovers. So there were certain songs that, even though other people wanted to mix them, I said, “Let’s save that one.”

Now that the two records are out, do you notice certain defining characteristics of each one?

Before we started mixing Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, the band had the basic idea that we would try to cover the essential bases with the first record, and the second record would be the more eccentric, adventurous one.

But in several cases we contradicted this by saving certain staples for record two and putting some of the more unexpected things on record one. We decided in advance what the first and last song would be on each record, but the rest we figured out as we went along.

As it turned out, I hear Return of the Dream Canteen as a more fun record, and I think it goes to further extremes. This one has a more colorful, kind of “bright” thing to it. Not that it doesn’t have dark sections. But to me, Unlimited Love seems darker.

The new one also maybe has more surprising elements. There’s a little bit of that on the first album, too, but especially on the second half of this one, there’s probably more synthesizers and drum machines and stuff like that than people might expect from us. And it also feels more off the cuff and spontaneous.

There’s a certain feeling of relaxedness and looseness that distinguishes Return of the Dream Canteen from Unlimited Love.

You mentioned the Return of the Dream Canteen song “Eddie,” which is clearly a tribute to Eddie Van Halen, especially in regard to Anthony’s lyrics. While the music doesn’t much reflect the Van Halen sound, you incorporated some overt EVH flourishes into your solo – tapping, whammy-bar work, unique phrasings. What was your intention going into that one?

When we’re in the studio and between takes, I’m always doing things, like two-handed tapping. The engineers hear it all the time; I’ll play really flashy stuff during breaks. But when it comes to recording, I’m doing what I think is right for the song, and in most cases that doesn’t involve playing really flashy. But it is something I enjoy.

Still, doing that solo was a mind fuck, I’ll tell you that. And it was the last solo that I did out of all the solos on the 48 songs we recorded. I saved it for last, because the idea of having a song about Eddie Van Halen, you’re basically saying to people, “Think about Eddie Van Halen.” And then when it comes to this long guitar solo at the end, you’re going, “Now watch this!” And I did not like that idea.

I was even thinking of cutting the solo entirely, because I did not know how to go about it. I was trying for a while, and I wasn’t happy with anything I was doing. I was either going too far in the Eddie Van Halen direction, to where it was too busy and there was too much two-handed tapping and it didn’t sound like me, or I was just doing it and it only sounded like me… in a song about Eddie Van Halen.

How did you find a happy medium?

I just turned my mind off and stopped thinking about it. I stopped being self-conscious about the idea that the song was about Eddie Van Halen and just did what was natural. We were recording, and I took maybe a 15-minute break. And when I came back in, I just did the whole thing, like I said, in one take.

Whatever Eddie Van Halen is in there, it’s just there because of my love for him and the love that I’ve felt for his playing since I was eight years old – things like the fast tapping and accentuating different notes with the vibrato bar. He did that a lot.

And then there are also the parts of his style that don’t involve playing fast, that are just really exciting to me – playing in a way that feels spontaneous, or when you hear feedback because he recorded his parts in the same room as his amplifier.

To this day, those things give me chills. Like, this is real, what’s happening here. This isn’t some guy standing in the control room punching in. This is a guy going out on a limb and taking risks. Throughout both of these albums, I tried to do a lot of that.

As far as the hallmarks of your style, one thing that has always stuck out to me is your use of space. You hear it on songs like “Eddie” and “Shoot Me a Smile” on the new album, and also in some of the band’s classic tracks, like “Scar Tissue” as well as “Californication.” Another obvious one would be “Otherside,” where, for much of the rhythm track, you’re playing maybe two or three notes. Where does that approach come from?

It really comes from trying to figure out what I can do that makes Flea and Chad sound as good as they can. Back in the time of Mother’s Milk, I was trying to fill up more space and it just sounded too busy.

It wasn’t as busy as Flea, but Flea has a way of being busy on the bass that never sounds too busy. It always sounds like he’s doing what he’s doing in support of the song. I felt after making that record that I wasn’t supporting the songs and my bandmates as well as I could have.

That began to change on the follow-up, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

Another thing there was that Rick Rubin, when he started producing us at the Blood Sugar time, he kept adding ideas to the arrangements. Like, “Have no guitar for the first verse,” or, “Have no bass for the second verse.”

He came from this hip-hop experience, so he was essentially muting the instruments in certain sections. That was inspiring for me, because I was already going in the direction of playing less and seeing how much better that made the band sound as a whole.

 So I just got to a point where I really saw the musical value of space of all types, whether it’s the distance between one point in the bar line and another point in the bar line, or the distance between two sounds, in terms of using wide intervals or creating a chord out of me playing one note on my guitar and Flea playing one note on his bass.

It just seemed to make the band feel more whole. And to be honest, the other guys liked it when I started playing that way, and I felt supported.

You also employ intervals, and particularly wide intervals, in a very unique way.

I think a lot of people play guitar a certain way, and it may be because they’re just playing with bass players who play simple root-note bass lines. But because Flea plays in such an interesting way, I think of intervals not only as the relationship between two notes on my instrument but as the relationship between what I’m doing and what he’s doing.

Take something like the intro to “By the Way” or the verses of “Otherside”: I’m not thinking of my guitar as the center of it; I’m thinking of my guitar as a portion of it. I’m thinking of the pitch of Flea’s bass line and the pitch of my guitar.

If Flea’s playing a note and I’m playing a note, we’ve got a two-note chord right there. And the interval is the space between that. So then it’s like, “How can I move in a way that’s different from how he’s moving?”

If he goes down, maybe I go up. And we start creating different little harmony things where we imply chords without either of us playing the whole chord, that kind of thing. Or there’s things like “Scar Tissue,” where I’m doing those wide, two-note intervals on my own, but I’m really thinking of it as two separate parts.

Sonically, your use of space is complemented by the fact that you’re incredibly comfortable incorporating fully clean tones into your rhythm and lead work.

For me, it’s really about being punchy. That’s more important than distortion. Distorted guitar often sounds pretty wimpy to me. Even if the person’s got a rich, thick tone, if the way they’re hitting the instrument isn’t exciting and punchy, it doesn’t do anything for me.

What inspired your attraction to clean tones?

A lot of the basis for my guitar playing, stylistically, is in music that I loved when I was a kid that I’ve always continued to love. There’s a lot of post-punk stuff, or what we now call post-punk stuff. Back then we called it new wave.

But it’s guys like Ricky Wilson from the B-52’s and Matthew Ashman from Bow Wow Wow. Bands like the Cure and Scritti Politti and the Minutemen. The Pop Group is a really weird one, but I think they were some real originators, and the guitar playing is really good.

All these people and bands did really powerful things with clean tones. You listen to D. Boon’s playing in the Minutemen and you really hear what I’m talking about. He’ll rip into a solo, and the tone is clean as can be. But it’s got more power than a heavy-metal guitar player, just because he cares so much and he’s putting so much soul and feeling into the thing.

And Ricky Wilson, the first show I ever saw that was in a big place, like a 5,000-seater, was the B-52’s. This was in ’83. And his guitar playing was just incredible. Like, it made people happy. And I’m really about the emotional response.

For me, it’s more about reaching people than it is about wanting to say, “Look at how big and tough and macho I am.”

All that said, you can also conjure some truly thick and gnarly tones when the song calls for it. The chords you’re playing in the chorus of “Reach Out,” on the new album, would be a good example. Or, solo-wise, the fuzz-and-feedback frenzy in “The Heavy Wing,” on Unlimited Love. How did you achieve those sounds?

A lot of times it’s from using more than one distortion pedal at a time. I generally have a Boss distortion pedal on – the yellow [OD-3 OverDrive] or the orange [DS-1 Distortion] one – and also an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff or that brown MXR distortion pedal [the Super Badass Variac Fuzz].

It seemed like I used those a lot on the records. I can’t remember specifically what pedals I used where, but I’d say a lot of the time I’m combining different distortions and fuzz tones.

So it’s that, and then it’s also having the Marshalls really loud and being in the same room with them. Because even when you’re not getting feedback, when you’re right there in front of a loud amp, there is a form of feedback going on that contributes to the sense of the sound being kind of super blown-out.

I think the fact that almost all the distorted solos were done with me in the same room as the amp contributes to the tone in its own way.

Even with all of this focus on technique and sound and gear, the crux of your guitar playing is in the emotional content. How do you manage to play from your heart rather than your brain?

God, that’s a good question, and a hard one to answer. I feel like all that conflict took place in me between the ages of 14 and 18, and after that I learned the lesson. And luckily my brain was developing while I was learning that lesson. But during those years when I was learning it, I had all kinds of conflicts. But once I got to the point where I felt I could pretty much play whatever I wanted to learn, it was a very exciting period for me.

But there was also that question in my mind of “What is it that I have to say?” Because I was so in love with all these different people who made vastly different types of music, and guitar players who were also so different from one another. And it seemed to me that each one had their own little place in saying something that was different than what the other one was saying.

Even people who were kind of similar, like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen, to me they were saying completely different things. And so when I was a teenager, I would wonder about those things, like, “What is it that I have to say that’s different from anybody else?”

How did learning theory play into that?

My understanding of theory was a way for me to be able to analyze the things that I liked. So if I was playing along with, say, the guitar solo in “Something” by the Beatles, and there’s certain notes that [George Harrison] plays that make me go, “Wow, what the hell was he thinking? Why did he go from that note to that note? Why does it feel so good when he does it?” – I’m able to look at those notes in relationship to the chords and the intervals and so on and figure it out.

So for me, the purpose of knowing the theory is to have an understanding of why I’m feeling a particular emotion.

It’s interesting that you utilized theory as a means of tapping into your emotions. It’s sort of the opposite of how many people think about it, which is that a reliance on theory can result in a clinical and cold approach to the instrument.

Well, I think a lot of the time people want to sound confident on their instrument. But to me, vulnerability is one of the most endearing things to hear in a piece of music. And I realized it felt like I was giving more of myself if I was vulnerable on the instrument.

That ties into using the clean tones, to doing things that are understated, all these things. And I think that’s universal. As much as we admire confidence in people, we all know deep down that vulnerability is one of the hardest things to achieve.

And any little degree that you can allow yourself to be more vulnerable, with your friends or with your partner or with your playing, it’s one of the strongest things you can do.

I would say that’s a through-line in most of the guitarists you cited as influences in your youth.

As far as me having those thoughts when I was a kid about what do I have to say to people with my guitar playing, I feel like a lot of what I’ve wound up having to say has to do with vulnerability. It has to do with being supportive of other people, and also putting yourself out there in a way that’s scary sometimes.

It’s that thing where it feels like your heart’s too much out there and people could stomp on it, but also that you’re okay with that, you know?

John Frusciante first stormed the stage with a Fender Stratocaster in the late ‘80s while following in the footsteps of Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar progenitor Hillel Slovak (1962-1988).

Though he is certainly one of the best-known Strat players around, Frusciante's collection comprises a broad variety of instruments. 

These include some of the more left-field electric guitar models like the Fender Jaguar and Yamaha SG2000 in addition to those iconic axes that are a mainstay of his Red Hot Chili Peppers rig.

Guitar Player tagged along to the band’s Austin City Limits October 9 concert to get a look at several of them.

There we spotted an early Fender Telecaster Custom from the 1960s, a 1950s Gretsch White Falcon, and a 1940s Martin 00-15. All stone-cold classic vintage guitars with a great history to boot.

We also came across four of Frusciante’s Stratocasters: a 1955 maple neck sunburst; a 1962 rosewood ‘board sunburst; a 1961 Fiesta Red; and a 1964 Olympic White.

1955 Fender Stratocaster

“This was the first guitar John had that I know of when he came back to the band,” says Frusciante’s former guitar tech, Dave Lee.

“He was like, ‘Here’s the guitar, here’s a Marshall head and a cabinet.’ We had to build his setup from there. And it started with the ’55 Strat.”

“It’s a more mellow-sounding guitar,” points out Frusciante current tech, Henry Trejo. “And so he uses it for songs in the set that don’t require searing leads, like “Don’t Forget Me” [from By the Way] and also new songs like “Aquatic Mouth Dance,” “One Way Traffic,” and, oddly, “These Are the Ways” [all from Unlimited Love] which is heavier and in drop D.

“The ’55 is probably there for two or three songs a night. And it’s got a big chunk of fretboard that it looks like went missing, and then was replaced at some point.”

“That was Anthony [Kiedis]’s fault,” adds Lee. “It was sitting in the lounge at Cello Studios [now EastWest Studios in L.A.], and he accidentally knocked it over!”

1962 Fender Stratocaster

“This Strat was a big part of the two new albums,” explain Trejo. “It was pretty much John’s main guitar for the bodies of most of the songs, if not all of the songs.

“Whenever he would do solos or really heavy parts he would use a different guitar, but the ‘62 is the meat and potatoes of everything you hear.”

“I seem to recall the ’62 first showing up during the Californication sessions,” says Lee. “John had just come back to the band, and he did a few shows with them before they started writing and recording the record.

“I don’t think he had this guitar yet. I remember him only having the ’55 Strat, which was the only guitar he wanted to play. Then we got this one and he used it a lot on that record. When he got ready for the tour, it was one of the main ones we took out with us.”

1961 Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster and 1964 Olympic White Fender Stratocaster

See these awesome guitars and more in our latest issue. Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy.

Browse the John Frusciante catalog here.

Browse the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog here.

John Frusciante has played a number of 1950s Gretsch White Falcons over the years, and this DeArmond Model 2000-loaded single-cut electric guitar with a Melita bridge, Bigsby vibrato and winged headstock logo is currently his main squeeze.

Guitar Player tagged along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Austin City Limits October 9 concert to get a close look at several guitar from Frusciante’s arsenal.

In addition to the guitarist’s iconic Fender Stratocasters, Fender Telecaster Custom, and Martin 00-15, we spotted this rare bird…

“John used to have a ’55 White Falcon,” says Frusciante’s current guitar tech, Henry Trejo. “That guitar, I believe, was on loan to him from [artist, actor, filmmaker and musician] Vincent Gallo.

“Dave [Lee, Frusciante's former guitar tech] actually found the ’58 that he’s using now. 

"In the current set he uses this guitar on two songs: 'Otherside' and 'Californication' [both from 1999's Californication].

“I got this guitar at a truck stop during the By the Way period. No kidding,” recalls Lee.

“I had to meet a guy there because he was driving it down and it was a halfway point. I remember getting the cash and going to a Flying Jay truck stop in Gorman, California, and I felt so weird standing there with tens of thousands of dollars.

“The guy showed up, and he wanted 20 grand for it. And then I saw the guitar and I said, ‘Look, it’s had some refinishing work done.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, let me make a call.’

“He comes back and says, ‘Okay, we’ll take seven.’ Like, that’s quite a drop!”

See this guitar and more in our latest issue. Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy.

Every guitarist loves to play. But not every player loves to practice. John Frusciante loves both.

“I love the guitar, and I really love practicing,” he says. “I do it just for practicing’s sake. I always have. I don’t do it because I’m trying to get faster or because I think it’s going to make me smarter or anything like that.”

For Frusciante, the benefits of practice are considerably bigger-picture.

“It gets my mind straight in the morning,” he says. “And it tunes me to myself – my fingers to my body, my body to my mind. A lot of what I do is brain exercises as much as physical exercises.”

The only thing he doesn’t like about practicing? Not having enough time to do it.

“When I’m at home, I can do it leisurely. But sometimes on tour I get rushed, and it feels like a job. When we’re playing shows, I try to spend the maximum amount of time I can practicing, every day.”

Frusciante was gracious enough to run through a handful of the exercises that make up his daily practice regimen when he’s on the road with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

So sit back, relax, and carve out some time – two, four…10 hours, perhaps – to try them for yourself…

1. Hit the Scales!

“The very first thing I do is a scale exercise where I play four notes in every permutation of order, using all four fingers.

“It goes like this, where each number represents your first, second, third and fourth finger: 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 4, 3; 1, 3, 2, 4; 1, 3, 4, 2; 1, 4, 2, 3; 1, 4, 3, 2. Each of those starts with the first finger.

“Then you do all the ones that start with the second finger: 2, 1, 3, 4; 2, 1, 4, 3; 2, 3, 1, 4; 2, 3, 4, 1; 2, 4, 1, 3; 2, 4, 3, 1.

“Then you move on to the ones that start with the third finger, and so on.

“And there are a lot of variations on it. You can divide. You can do the first two digits on one string and do the other two digits on another string. You can do it backward. You can hold any random chord and do every permutation of each finger on every note of that chord as an arpeggio. It’s a real interesting exercise.

“Also, with all the initial scale exercises I do, I’m not adding any accents. That’s something I picked up from Bill Bruford. He has a practice routine that he does on the drums, and he said he starts out with no accents and gradually brings them in. I find that’s a really good approach.”

2. Divide and Conquer

“Next I do scales where I don’t play the notes in order. I have these ways of dividing up the pitches in groups of different numbers, like seven or five or six, and then doing these jumps. You kind of have to keep active all the time because you’re doing them in different ways, like four notes to the string, or three notes to the string, or two notes to the string.

“I can go on for hours with scales, doing a lot of creative things, like accenting in fives but playing notes in groups of, say, seven. That’s always fun. You can even just take four notes, play the same four notes over and over, but play accents in three and watch where the accents go.

“It creates all these interesting patterns. Where the accents wind up has a mathematical precision that’s pretty illuminating when it comes to just understanding the nature of music.”

3. À La Modes

“What I find to be a good exercise is to, say, start with what you think of as A Dorian [A - B - C - D - E - F# - G], starting on the fifth fret, but think of it as E Aeolian [E - F# - G - A - B - C - D]. Think of the Es in that position as being your center, rather than the As. And then stay in the same position, but go to E Phrygian [E - F - G - A - B - C - D], and then E Mixolydian [E - F# - G# - A - B - C# - D].

“Again, stay in the same position. You’ll start to see the mode as being whatever you’re calling it out as. I think it’s a really good exercise for your brain.

“I also bring this Nicolas Slonimsky book, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, on tour with me. I pick up little things from that, and those have been added to my exercises.”

4. Play Well With Others

“So that’s where I start. And hopefully by the time I get to the gig, about four hours before we play, I’m warmed up enough to start playing along with other people’s music. And lately, on days of shows, I’m not learning any new solos or new songs – I’m playing along with songs that I know, where I’m confident I won’t make many mistakes, if any at all.

“That’s another way of tuning myself to myself. So I play solos that I know all the way through and that aren’t too challenging. If I’m feeling really good at the end of the whole thing, I might play along with something that’s a little speedier, like [Ozzy Osbourne’s] ‘Over the Mountain.’

“But in general, what I’m trying to do is get my bends in place and get my vibrato in place and get my rhythm playing in place. I have something like 12 Frank Zappa instrumentals that I play along with, and they go in the order of how difficult they are. They’re not the most difficult ones, but they’re good because they get my fingers moving in ways that aren’t conventional. These are things I played when I was a teenager all the time, but I relearned them just before we went on tour.

“I play certain Jimi Hendrix songs, certain Jeff Beck ones, Mott the Hoople’s ‘Sucker,’ Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung.’ Cream covers like ‘Sitting on Top of the World’ or ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ are good to start with, because they have a lot of space. You do a little bending and vibrato and sliding, and all those little techniques that are in there, and you rest your hand while Jack Bruce is singing. Then you come back in and do the next one.

“Those warm you up better than you would think.”

5. Punk It Up

“In between the lead stuff, I’ll play along with punk, generally because things like the Germs or the Ramones are really good for your rhythm playing. The Ramones songs all use downstrokes. I’ll start with one that’s a little slower, like ‘Beat on the Brat,’ and then move on to most of the other songs from the first few albums, where you have to play really fast.

“I just try to stay relaxed and make sure the downstrokes are coming from my wrist and not from my arms or shoulders. If I start to feel myself getting stiff, I don’t go any further. I move on to something easier.

“And then the Germs have a lot of upstrokes, but it’s fast, so that’s good. Depending on what mood I’m in that day, I also might play along with Bow Wow Wow, because Matthew Ashman’s rhythm guitar playing is really good.”

6. Have a Soak

“I also soak my hands in this thing that’s used to cook meat – a sous vide machine, which heats up water to a high temperature. I had heard Allan Holdsworth didn’t warm up; he just soaked his hands in what he described as boiling water. I’m sure it wasn’t boiling, but it was probably pretty hot.

“But I had mentioned this to Henry, my guitar tech, when we were making the record. I wanted to be able to relax my hands in between takes, because you sit there playing the same thing over and over when you’re doing the basic tracks. So we started using the sous vide machine.

“I started with it at 114 degrees Fahrenheit, but now I’m setting it to about 118. If I feel any tension at all, I soak my hands and my forearms for anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on what I feel I need. I do that over and over for the four hours before we go onstage, at different times during my warm-up.”

7. Tap ’n’ Trill

“On top of all of this, I do other stuff that oftentimes doesn’t even come into play live, but it’s really good for me to do. Like, two-handed tapping is really good for warming up my left hand, as well as getting my right hand ready in case I do decide to do it onstage.

“That’s something that, if you do it fast enough, you can tense yourself up pretty quickly. If that happens, I’ll stop, soak my hands and come back to it again.

“It’s the same thing with trilling. I’ll do that between two fingers in every position I can think of, anywhere on the fretboard. I find that about five minutes of that really makes a big difference.”

8. Take Your Time

“Ideally I’d love to play for 10 hours before I go onstage. But most often, I’m really happy if I get in at least a couple hours of warming up in the morning, doing the exercises and stuff, and then maybe four hours at the gig, which includes eating and getting dressed.

“If I only have two hours total to practice, just due to traveling or whatever, I’m very unhappy with that. I don’t like having to jam it all into that short of an amount of time. It feels more like a job at that point.

“But practicing, I like for it to feel like something that I’m leisurely enjoying.”

Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy of our latest issue.

John Frusciante likes strapping on this 1960s Fender Telecaster Custom to kick off Red Hot Chili Peppers shows.

It was acquired from Californian vintage guitar veteran Norman Harris of Norman’s Rare Guitars around 20 years ago by Frusciante’s former guitar tech, Dave Lee.

Prior to this, the guitarist was rarely spotted playing a Telecaster.

Though he famously plays Fender Stratocasters, his collection now spans a diverse range of electric guitars.

Guitar Player tagged along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ October 9 gig in Austin, Texas for a look at some of Frusciante’s awesome vintage instruments.

There, we came across his 1940s Martin 00-15, a trio of Strats, a single-cutaway Gretsch White Falcon, and this beauty from Fender’s golden era...

“This was one we got from Norman’s Rare Guitars [in Tarzana, California],” recalled Lee. 

“John just decided he wanted a Tele – I believe this was around the time of By the Way – and I went to Norm and I said, “Hey, John wants a Tele.” And Norm said, 'What do you think of this one?'

“I brought it to John and he loved it. I normally don’t really like the sound of Teles that much, but that one just sounded so good. It had a lot of bite to it.”

“I’m pretty sure the guitar is stock,” says Frusciante’s current guitar tech, Henry Trejo. “John will use this guitar two or three times a night in the show.

“It’s always the guitar he uses at the beginning of the set, which will be either 'Can’t Stop' [from 2002’s By the Way] or 'Around the World' [from 1999’s Californication].

“He also uses it for “The Zephyr Song” [from By the Way] and “Tell Me Baby” [from 2006’s Stadium Arcadium].”

Watch this incredible guitar in action at the Austin City Limits 2022 concert on October 9 here...

See this guitar and more in our latest issue. Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy.

John Frusciante is most often seen on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing a vintage electric guitar, likely a Fender Stratocaster, Fender Custom Telecaster or Gretsch White Falcon.

But as fans will know, he is also an advocate of Martin’s mahogany top 00-15 acoustic guitars.

Having owned a pair of these criminally underrated small-bodied flat-tops for years, Frusciante has used them innumerable times on stage and in the studio to record both Chili Peppers and solo records.

Guitar Player tagged along to the band's October 9 gig in Austin for a closer look.

Frusciante’s tech, Henry Trejo, and former tech Dave Lee filled us in on the details…

“John has two of these,” says Lee. “He got one from Rick Rubin, I think during Californication, and it sounded so great that John said, ‘Yeah, let’s get another one.’

“Like the Tele Custom, this one came from Norman’s Rare Guitars. Norm usually gets people coming in looking for big dreadnoughts, but I said, ‘No, we want this.’ 

"We had a Trance Audio Amulet pickup system installed in it.”

“The two Martins are basically interchangeable,” adds Trejo. “During the recording of the two new albums, we had one in the live room and one in the room where John was staying so he could practice and write on it.

“Then he would come into the studio and grab the other one and pluck away at it. We never used the pickup systems during the recording. We would just set up microphones and he would play acoustically.

“It’s the guitar you hear on ‘Tangelo’ [from Unlimited Love].”

See this guitar and more in our latest issue. Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy.

As the Red Hot Chili Peppers drop their second album of 2022, Return of the Dream Canteen, Frusciante sat down with us to discuss the guiding philosophies that have shaped him as a guitarist and continue to drive his pursuit of excellence.

He also provides a step-by-step guide to his daily guitar workout regimen, a rigorous and thorough set of drills that cover all aspects of technique.

And we get up-close with the seven guitars behind the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hits, including John’s 1955 and 1962 Fender Stratocasters, 1960s Fender Telecaster Custom, 1958 Gretsch White Falcon and 1940s Martin 00-15.

Shot by Eleanor Jane, who brought us these amazing photos of Jack White’s gear earlier this year, these images deliver great insights into John’s collection.

Here’s a taster of this incredible interview where Frusciante talks about Eddie Van Halen…

You mentioned the Return of the Dream Canteen song “Eddie,” which is clearly a tribute to Eddie Van Halen, especially in regard to Anthony’s lyrics. While the music doesn’t much reflect the Van Halen sound, you incorporated some overt EVH flourishes into your solo – tapping, whammy-bar work, unique phrasings. What was your intention going into that one?

When we’re in the studio and between takes, I’m always doing things, like two-handed tapping. The engineers hear it all the time; I’ll play really flashy stuff during breaks. But when it comes to recording, I’m doing what I think is right for the song, and in most cases that doesn’t involve playing really flashy. But it is something I enjoy.

Still, doing that solo was a mind fuck, I’ll tell you that. And it was the last solo that I did out of all the solos on the 48 songs we recorded. I saved it for last, because the idea of having a song about Eddie Van Halen, you’re basically saying to people, “Think about Eddie Van Halen.” And then when it comes to this long guitar solo at the end, you’re going, “Now watch this!” And I did not like that idea.

I was even thinking of cutting the solo entirely, because I did not know how to go about it. I was trying for a while, and I wasn’t happy with anything I was doing. I was either going too far in the Eddie Van Halen direction, to where it was too busy and there was too much two-handed tapping and it didn’t sound like me, or I was just doing it and it only sounded like me… in a song about Eddie Van Halen.

How did you find a happy medium?

I just turned my mind off and stopped thinking about it. I stopped being self-conscious about the idea that the song was about Eddie Van Halen and just did what was natural. We were recording, and I took maybe a 15-minute break. And when I came back in, I just did the whole thing, like I said, in one take.

Whatever Eddie Van Halen is in there, it’s just there because of my love for him and the love that I’ve felt for his playing since I was eight years old – things like the fast tapping and accentuating different notes with the vibrato bar. He did that a lot.

And then there are also the parts of his style that don’t involve playing fast, that are just really exciting to me – playing in a way that feels spontaneous, or when you hear feedback because he recorded his parts in the same room as his amplifier.

To this day, those things give me chills. Like, this is real, what’s happening here. This isn’t some guy standing in the control room punching in. This is a guy going out on a limb and taking risks. Throughout both of these albums, I tried to do a lot of that.

Follow the link on our homepage to order your copy.

Right now, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are on the road following the release of their latest studio album, Unlimited Love.

Nowadays, the band are able to pack out stadiums the world over, but it wasn’t always that way.

Indeed, the Red Hot Chili Peppers had been together for the best part of a decade before 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik catapulted them to stratospheric heights of worldwide success.

To some extent, the Chili Peppers’ previous album – 1989’s Mother’s Milk – served as a runup to the era-defining masterpiece that followed.

By 1991, the classic lineup that formed in 1988 – comprising guitarist John Frusciante, bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith and vocalist Anthony Kiedis – was fully forged. That few years spent honing their craft together had solidified the band into a musical phenomenon greater than the sum of its parts.

Furthermore, Frusciante had developed significantly as an artist in his own right. 

And though it would have been difficult for him to appreciate at the time, the 21-year-old wunderkind would ultimately go down in music history as one of the most important and influential guitar players of his generation.

The following interview extract originally appeared in the October 1991 issue of Guitar Player…

“This is not a commercial studio,” says John Frusciante as he ascends the creaking staircase. Right – as if anyone could mistake the ramshackle Spanish-style mansion for a conventional recording facility.

“We rented the place for a few months and moved in our own gear. It cost the same as if we’d gone into a regular studio.

“The house is haunted,” adds the guitarist.

He indicates a candle-lit alcove off the second-floor landing.

“I was sleeping right here about a week after we moved in, and I heard the sound of a woman having sex, but there was definitely no woman in the house. And other people who worked on the project have seen things.”

The beautiful but decaying hacienda in Hollywood’s Laurel Canyon has been the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ home for the last two months.

“We sleep here, eat here, and every day we just wake up and start recording,” says John. “It’s a chance not many artists get – to not have to think about bills, answering phones, or shaking hands we don’t feel like shaking.”

Frusciante leads the way through a huge parlor, stopping to strike a single chord on a piano that probably hasn’t been tuned since talkies came in.

As the sour notes echo against the bare walls and hardwood floor, he outlines the band’s recording procedure: “We all play together facing each other downstairs in the living room. The board is in the next room over, and we mike all our amps down in the basement.”

John indicates a cement deck on the grassy hillside behind the house. “That’s where we recorded our rendition of Robert Johnson’s ‘They’re Red Hot.’ We ran cables up there, and Chad played drums with his hands. I think our version is almost as freaky by today’s standards as Johnson’s version was by his.”

The tour concludes in Frusciante’s bedroom, bare except for mattress, ghetto blaster and CDs, a few of John’s paintings and scribbles on the wall courtesy of bassist Flea’s young daughter.

“I recorded the acoustic guitars right here, and Anthony does all his vocals from his bedroom. Instead of looking through a window at three sweaty guys frowning in the control room, we’re looking out at trees and flowers.”

Judging by the assortment of rough and final mixes this writer heard, simple, well-focused living and a no-nonsense producer have done wonders for the Chili Peppers’ music.

The band’s fifth album (tentatively titled Blood Sugar Sex Magik) is a giant step forward for the group, a record that’s paradoxically rawer yet more sophisticated than any of the Peppers’ previous work.

Producer Rick Rubin’s unapologetically blunt approach makes no concession to prevailing rock production strategies. He captures all the blood and sweat of real musicians pounding the hell out of their instruments.

The true-to-life instrumental tones aren’t pumped up with digital steroids, and every song blasts from the speakers with naked, soulful ferocity.

But for all its audio vérité viciousness, the new material boasts a new level of ensemble sensitivity. Once-hyperactive parts have been pared down, revealing remarkable interplay and dynamics.

Flea, 28, largely abandons his trademark jackhammer slapping for fresh, understated lines, while John reveals a mature, egoless style that belies his 21 years.

For the first time, the Peppers scale the heights of funkiness attained by their long-time models, groove bands such as P-Funk, the Meters, and Sly & The Family Stone.

But the Chilis haven’t sacrificed their over-the-top humor and intensity.

The Peppers may now be the foremost practitioners of that near-extinct species, body music that moves to a human heartbeat.

“Nothing was recorded to a click,” insists Flea, and it shows: the group’s organic tempo fluctuations and near-telepathic polyrhythmic interplay evoke the great groove traditions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but with a relentless ‘90s edge.

Those who have previously dismissed the Chili Peppers as abrasive, unmusical clowns are in for a big surprise.

John Frusciante: I’m so psyched! This is the fastest we’ve ever done a record. We zipped right though the basics, 25 songs. We were tight as hell – we totally got inside each other’s heads and became one being.

Our music is so much more colorful than in the past, and I’m so happy about it. I never took anything so seriously in my life.

Flea: John is playing much freer and thinking less. I loved John’s playing on Mother’s Milk, but now he’s so pure and spontaneous.

He never considers doing something again and again – he’ll just record maybe one overdub. He likes capturing the natural feeling on tape.

Frusciante: Almost all the solos are first takes and some of them were cut along with the basics, like “My Lovely Man” and the first solo on “Funky Monks.”

On “Funky Monks” I played everything without a pick, even the solo. I’ve been playing that way more and more lately – in fact, I haven’t used a pick in weeks now.

The “Funky Monks” solo is very rhythmically free.

Frusciante: Yeah, I was thinking “rubber band.” I’ve gotten more into those kinds of rhythms, because they sound more natural than really straight stuff.

The second part of the solo is one of the few fast parts on the album. I thought of it as a parody of a rock star solo.

The intro has electric guitars not plugged in, just miked acoustically. It’s the same thing Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction does on “Been Caught Stealing,” though Snakefinger did it first.

Flea’s playing is much more subtle. There’s more groove, less flash.

Flea: I consciously avoided anything busy or fancy. I tried to get small enough to get inside the song, as opposed to stepping out and saying, “Hey, I’m Flea, the bitchin’ bass player.”

I can play fast things that make bass players say “Wow!” but it’s better to imply your technique with something simple.

Frusciante: You can get just as many “wows” that way. And after you’ve heard a million bass players rip off Flea’s slap thing, what’s the point of continuing to do it?

Flea: I hardly slap at all on the new record, aside from “Naked in the Rain.” You know, I was reading this Bass Player interview with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, who I really respect. She said she loved funk bass but hated the way white guys play it, because they’ve turned it into this macho-jock thing.

As I read that, I knew I was responsible for that tendency. But on the new record I don’t do any of that – I try to play simply and beautifully. And I hope she doesn’t hate me, ‘cause I think she’s great.

Having a relatively stable lineup seems to have benefited your music.

Flea: Between our first record [Red Hot Chili Peppers] and our second [Freaky Styley], our guitarist and drummer quit.

Between the third album [The Uplift Mofo Party Plan] and the fourth [Mother’s Milk], Hillel Slovak, our guitarist and dear friend, died.

This was the first time we’ve made two albums with the same band.

Frusciante: No – Mother’s Milk was Anthony Kiedis, John Frusciante, Chad Smith, and Flea; this album is the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It’s an entity made by the four of us jumping out of our bodies into a cosmic swell. We’ve all grown out of love and admiration for each other.

Some might call the punk-funk crossover you’ve popularized a trend.

Flea: Sometimes I hear music that we’ve influenced and think it’s being taken to a great place. Other times I think people only see the superficial aspects of our band.

I influenced a lot of white rock bassists with my athletic-style playing. After our last record all these long-haired metal guys started coming to our shows, and now it’s turned into this whole fast slapathon.

Frusciante: Axl Rose told us that Guns ‘N Roses had the Chili Peppers in mind when they did “Rocket Queen.”

Flea: And Extreme’s “Get the Funk Out” is a huge Chili Pepper rip-off. But it’s so slick and glossy – there’s no dirt in it. It sounds like a studio creation. It’s the most unfunky shit I ever heard.

Frusciante: I got into character for this record the same way an actor would prepare for a part. I wouldn’t have anything to do with anything that didn’t involve positive vibrations for the creative spirit of the band.

That applied to people as well as things like clocks, garbage cans, and ugly lights. If I knew there was going to be an Arsenio Hall billboard coming up down the street, I’d turn away from it so I didn’t have to see it.

I tried hard to expose myself to humor and creativity of all types: film, paintings, music.

What music inspires you?

Frusciante: My favorite guitarists: Eddie Hazel from P-Funk, Robert Johnson, James Williamson of the Stooges, Snakefinger, D. Boon from the Minutemen, Lightin’ Hopkins, Leadbelly, Tom Verlaine, Danny Whitten from Crazy Horse, and Zander Schloss and Dix Denney from Thelonious Monster.

But the most important inspiration is undoubtedly Zoot Horn Rollo’s playing on Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. If I listen to it first thing in the morning, I’m assure a day of unbridled creativity.

What do those players have in common?

Frusciante: They weren’t thinking about coming off as cool guys – they just played every note like it meant something.

A lot of people don’t understand how much it means to just beat the shit out of your guitar, to put every last ounce of energy and spirit into it. You should use it like a paintbrush, not a machine. It’s there for you to express yourself on.

Flea: John’s attitude is really pure, a reminder to me of why I started doing this in the first place. He gets the big picture so well, in terms of being able to love John Coltrane and two-chord punk rock with equal fervor.

The band’s musical philosophy seems largely based on perceiving those connections.

Flea: There are only two categories in music: soulful and non-soulful. Anything that has human emotion and spirit and is played with heart and sincerity is really happening.

We can see the beauty in Eric Dolphy, the Ramones, and everything in between. We love anything that has a groove that makes you want to live.

If you have an open mind, you can see the beauty in all kinds of music.

Frusciante: Not just music. Robert De Niro and Harpo Marx have influenced me as much as any guitar player. Think of how De Niro only says things that need to be said. He drops the unnecessary lines and gets his message across with small facial movements.

The lesson for a guitarist is that you don’t have to play a million notes, all really loud. 

And Harpo, the funniest person who ever lived, said everything with facial expressions and noises. Every single gesture really meant something, and all of that translates musically.

Flea: The best thing I did to prepare for the record was to lose my phone book and break my foot, both of which happened right when we moved into the house. That helped me concentrate – I had no contact with anyone for a couple of months.

Frusciante: There are no such things as accidents.

Flea: Well, I would have much rather not broken my foot.

Frusciante: Some guitarists have the idea that there are technical prerequisites to being a great player. But all it takes is the ability to make music with complete abandon and total concentration.

Take Lou Reed’s playing with the Velvet Underground – to me that was twenty times better than that of most guys who practice twenty hours a day.

As long as you’re excited about what you’re playing, and as long as it comes from your heart, it’s going to be great.

Order the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ latest album, Unlimited Love, here.

Along with an abundance of hooky grooves and catchy vocal lines Warpaint’s signature sound is defined by six-string twins Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman, whose ethereal guitar tones render the band immediately identifiable.

The pair are known for using mainly Fender offset electric guitars – Kokal a ’66 Olympic White Jaguar gifted to her by John Frusciante, and Wayman a '66 Dakota Red Mustang. 

Recently, however, Wayman has also taken to using a Jaguar, something she says she hopes will expand her sound even further.

Earlier this month, Guitar Player caught up with the co-frontwoman while the band was on the road in Europe promoting their new album, Radiate Like This.

Here, Wayman gives us the scoop on her current touring rig as she continues to evolve her unique sound…

Guitars

Usually, I’d play with my Fender Mustang, but I started playing this Jaguar and it’s been really interesting. There’s just so much you can do with the different pickup options and the tone switch. 

I basically decided to go with a Jaguar because I have a lot of single note lines and I was thinking it would have a more rounded sound than the Mustang, but also the ability to get a stronger attack in the high end.

I miss the Mustang, so maybe I’ll bring that out as well for the next tour.

I want to try experimenting with thicker strings on the Jaguar. Maybe a set of .011s would be a really good way to go. We got it set up, but this one doesn’t have the Mastery Bridge [Kokal's has been fitted with a Mastery Bridge.] 

I've realized I don’t like having the whammy bar there because if I want to jump around the thing just starts moving about and it’s really annoying.

Also, there were a few dead frets that needed sorting out. Emily said she had the same thing with her Jaguar.

Amps

I’m splitting my signal using a Radial unit into two different amps to try and broaden the tones. There’s been a lot to wrangle but it’s been really fun.

Having that versatility is great because there’s more I can do, although I feel like I’m just scratching the surface. At first it took more concentration to be dialed in but once I got into the flow of it it’s been so much more satisfying.

I’m excited to keep honing the tone. I’ve been finessing the combination of the amps. I wanted to create a really thick sound that has a lot of layers of character, but also definition.

The idea was to have a decent attack along with some length with the reverb, and a little bit of a delay too, so it almost sounds like there are two guitar players playing the same part.

I wanted to use a Fender Princeton Reverb as my second amp along with a Vox AC30, but I ended up with a Deluxe Reverb instead. And it’s actually really nice. I’ve always liked the tone of those Fender amps and I’m really enjoying what’s happening there. I have more effects hitting that amp. It seems to handle the pedals really well.

Pedals

I have a couple of pedals – a compressor and a distortion – that hit both of the amps (placed before I split the signal.) It’s an old peach colored Ibanez compressor. I was looking for something to help with sustain and I found that in a shop in Manchester [U.K.] 

That Ibanez compressor pedal works really well in combination with the [Electro-Harmonix] Holy Grail reverb, which I love. Right now, I’m thinking I might want one on both sides, but I don’t want to be too reverbed out.

My Boss [DS-1] Distortion pedal is really, really cool. I use that with the Jaguar bridge pickup to get a cool kind of wiry sound. 

I’m also using an EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master. You can use it in a subtle way or you can go really extreme with it but it always sounds good.

I’ve also got a couple of Boss Digital Delay pedals – a DD-6 and a DD-7. One I use to extend the sound and the other [the DD-6] I use for a reverse effect. 

One of my favorite pedals at the moment is a hand-built fuzz called the Classy Jen [by GlenCo] that was made by a guy from L.A. I use that on “Hips.” It’s so powerful. But I use it in a subtle way because Warpaint’s not really a crazy fuzz pedal band. [laughs]

Order Warpaint's latest album, Radiate Like This, here.

Although it became one of the hottest guitar amps among pro players from the mid-1970s to the ’80s, the Mesa/Boogie seemed utterly designed to propel the singing, sustainful tone and playing style of Carlos Santana, who adopted it as his amp in the 1970s.

For that matter, Santana literally named the thing.

Mesa/Boogie founder Randall Smith was working as an amp repairman in 1969 in the small San Francisco shop Prune Music when he decided to play a trick on Barry Melton, lead guitarist with Country Joe and the Fish.

Smith gutted Melton’s Fender Princeton, installed a modified 50-watt Fender Bassman-style tube amp, squeezed in a 12-inch speaker and took it to the front of the shop, where Carlos Santana was hanging out.

“He just wailed through that little amp until people were blocking the sidewalk,” Smith later recalled.

“When he stopped playing he turned and said, ‘Shit man. That little thing really boogies!’”

As demand grew, Smith continued modifying Princetons. When the supply dried up, he began making the amps – eventually known as the Boogie Mark I – from the ground up.

The key to the wailing, saturated tone lay in Smith’s chaining together of several tube stages in the preamp, a technique known as “cascading gain,” and under Santana’s fingers the result was sustain that could last for days.

The ‘70s also proved fruitful for Santana on the gear front when he began a collaboration with Japanese guitar building titan Yamaha.

After a somewhat uncomfortable bedding in period (“I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man,” Santana told Guitar Player in 1978) the team eventually settled on a design that was not only befitting for a guitarist of Santana's caliber but progressive also.

“I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is," recalled Santana. "You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Boasting fine tonewoods and a neck-through construction, along with the tone- and sustain-enhancing T-Cross System and brass Sustain Plate (the aforementioned “big chunk of metal,”) the new SG2000 model firmly established Yamaha as a bona fide pro level guitar builder.

Yamaha guitars were later played by the likes of John McGeoch who famously used an SG1000 with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

More recent proponents of the SG series include Ed O’Brien, Johnny Marr and John Frusciante.

In this 1977 clip, Santana is seen playing his custom built Yamaha with a Mesa/Boogie rig. Evidently, the guitarist is a great deal happier with his instrument by this stage.

“[Yamaha] go out of their way to make good instruments,” he told Guitar Player in the same 1978 interview. “You can feel it when you pick up that guitar.”

60 years ago today, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ founding guitarist Hillel Slovak (1962-1988) was born in Israel. When he was four years old, his family moved to the U.S. where he later became immersed in L.A.’s thriving music scene.

In 1983, Slovak formed the Red Hot Chili Peppers along with drummer Jack Irons, bassist Flea and vocalist Anthony Kiedis. Establishing the band’s unique funk-infused alt-rock sound, Slovak’s legacy in the guitar world is far-reaching and continues to inspire today.

While John Frusciante helped expand the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ sonic palette as they shot to worldwide fame with 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, their signature guitar style is rooted in Slovak’s vision. 

Indeed, it’s fair to say that countless electric guitar players have been influenced by Slovak’s pioneering technique and approach, even though they may not be aware of it.

Frusciante wasn’t the only guitarist to quit and re-join the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When the band formed, Slovak was also a member of L.A. art-rockers What Is This, playing alongside the immensely talented Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal.)

With commitments piling up either side, Slovak was forced to make a decision: Red Hot Chili Peppers or What Is This. Subsequently, guitar duties of the former were handed over to Jack Sherman (1956-2020) with whom Flea, Kiedis and newly-recruited Captain Beefheart drummer Cliff Martinez recorded the band’s eponymous 1984 debut album.

Whether or not Slovak backed the wrong horse by choosing the latter is a moot point as he soon returned to the Chili Peppers fold to record their sophomore album with funk legend George Clinton, 1985’s Freaky Styley.

In this rare 1984 interview with Johannes and Slovak filmed just a few months after the Red Hot Chili Peppers dropped their first album, the guitarist explains his predicament.

“It got too hard to be in both bands at the same time,” says Slovak. “We were both being approached by [record] companies at exactly the same time. So you had to make a choice.”

With Slovak back onboard, the Red Hot Chili Peppers continued to gain a steady following of fans during the mid-‘80s, entering the studio once again to record their third album, 1987’s The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

Produced by Michael Beinhorn (Soundgarden, Ozzy Osbourne, Hole) The Uplift Mofo Party Plan sees Irons’ return to the band. Thus, this is the only Red Hot Chili Peppers studio album to feature all four founding members throughout.

Early the following year, the band embarked on a European tour – their first major run of dates outside the U.S. Filmed during a snowy January/February in 1988, this unique time in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ history was captured in the VPRO documentary Europe by Storm.

In this clip, Slovak gives us a rundown of his effects chain which is firmly secured to the deck using good, old-fashioned duct tape (in the days when the stage itself served as a pedalboard!) 

Keeping things relatively straightforward, his pedals comprise a Univox Super-Fuzz, Cry Baby wah, Boss OD-1 Over Drive, and Boss CE-2 Chorus.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers continued to spread their fanbase far and wide, revisiting Europe in Spring 1988 to play a series of dates that included the Netherlands’ Pinkpop Festival.

However, all was not well in the Chili Peppers camp at this time. Writing in his 2004 biography, Scar Tissue, Kiedis notes, “I think we were sitting in the midst of a dark spirit... We both realized that we were at a point in our life when it was do or die.”

Having played what would ultimately be their last gig together on June 2 in Oslo, Norway, the original lineup of the Red Hot Chili Peppers flew back to L.A.

Sadly, just a fortnight or so later, Slovak passed away aged 26, a victim of untreated opiate addiction.

Next year will see the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 40th anniversary. And with their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame the band have come a long way from their days on the L.A. club circuit.

But none of it would have been possible without Hillel Slovak – a very special guitar player whose music has inspired generations, something the band regularly acknowledges in fond memory.

“The energy of Hillel Slovak has never truly faded,” Kiedis told NME in a recent interview. “Hillel’s still there in our hearts, whether it’s 30, 40, 50, 60 or even 100 [years].”

Browse the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog here or buy their latest studio album, Unlimited Love, here.

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Johnny Marr shared some fascinating insights into his extensive collaborations with other artists, including his experience of working with John Frusciante during the recording of the Chili Peppers guitarist's 2009 solo album, The Empyrean.

Recorded between 2006 and 2008, The Empyrean is an expansive, soul-searching work that also features Frusciante’s current bandmate Flea, along with multi-instrumentalist Josh Klinghoffer.

“John and I were recording in his house, which was nice,” said Marr. “There’s an almost zen-like stillness about his focus when he’s writing. There’s this underlying honor in what he’s doing. John has an approach to music which is almost sacred.”

The following Guitar Player exclusive is a previously unpublished extract from the same interview with Marr that centered on the release of his latest solo album, Fever Dreams Pts 1 – 4. 

Along the way, Marr talked about some of his most significant studio moments…

What stood out for you about the recording sessions with John Frusciante?

“What was cool about working with John was that it was just me and him. And maybe an engineer. So it really did feel like I was contributing to a solo record. It was nice.

“To make a comparison: when I worked on Beck’s album, Midnite Vultures, that was very much a band scenario – all the band were there all the time and making contributions to any idea that went down. You know, someone might shout out, ‘Why don’t you put the seventh in there?’ or whatever. It felt almost like a clubhouse, which was cool in some ways.

“So with Beck, there was a lot of humor and funny shit going on. But with John, it was quite serious. And I think that affected my approach.”

.

How did you approach writing guitar parts for The Empyrean?

“From what I remember, on almost every song, I put the guitar into a tuning that was sympathetic to the track. So I therefore didn’t know what I was doing. You have to be quite okay with yourself when you do that because you are going to make mistakes and you are going to fumble about a lot.

“If your ego is up and you’re thinking, ‘I have to impress,’ you’re taking your mentality off the music and putting it on yourself and your reputation. Then you’re going to have a bit of a problem. But I don’t mind rocking up to a session and saying, ‘Let me just get my sound.’

“That’s my process. I’ll say, ‘Don’t play me the track. Let me just get my sound and then record what I play.’ So when chord changes or key changes happen, you invariably are going to go off the road, but I don’t care about that because I know I’m good enough.

“I wanted to record my first impressions, and I think it surprised John that I didn’t want to know what the chords were. In fact, I didn’t even want to be in the same concert tuning. I was playing entirely with my ears and not with my mind.”

One of the songs Marr recorded with Frusciante that made it to the final cut is titled "Enough of Me." Listen out for Frusciante's incredible Robert Fripp-inspired solo that starts around 2:35.

On this day, in 2004, the music world lost one of its greatest post-punk pioneers, guitarist John McGeoch.

As a member of Magazine, Visage, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Armoury Show and Public Image Ltd, McGeoch was, and still is, regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.

Indeed, Johnny Marr, John Frusciante, Ed O’Brien and countless others have cited him as a major inspiration.

All three guitarists have been pictured with Yamaha SGs in recent times – a style of electric guitar now synonymous with McGeoch.

Scottish-born McGeoch moved to Manchester, England in the mid-‘70s to study art, just as punk rock hit the U.K.

Referred to by McGeoch as a “revolution,” this new music soon became the center of the young guitarist’s life, and in 1977 he formed Magazine with ex-Buzzcocks frontman Howard Devoto.

With Magazine, McGeoch virtually defined the post-punk guitar sound, which he continued to refine with Siouxsie and the Banshees after he joined the band in 1980 for the recording of their third studio album, Kaleidoscope.

The album’s opener, “Happy House,” appeared as a single in March of that year – almost 42 years ago to the day – and was McGeoch’s first release with the Banshees.

Speaking of his new creative venture with vocalist Siouxsie Sioux, McGeoch once told an interviewer, “They invited me along to their rehearsal studio in Camden [in London] and within two days, we'd routined ‘Happy House.’

“They really liked that guitar line, that was the clincher. I was going through a picky phase, as opposed to strumming. ‘Happy House’ was lighter and had more musicality in it. They invited me to join. I was sad leaving Magazine, but the Banshees were so interesting, and it felt like a good move.”

“John McGeoch was my favourite guitarist of all time,” Siouxsie Sioux later commented. “He was into sound in an almost abstract way... He was easily, without a shadow of a doubt, the most creative guitarist the Banshees ever had.”

In the “Happy House” music video, McGeoch’s absence speaks volumes as his beautifully eerie guitar lines embellish the song with the kind of signature tones, textures and melodies that continue to inform guitar players decades down the line.

Don’t miss the new John McGeoch biography titled The Light Pours Out Of Me. It’s due out on June 23, 2022 via Omnibus Press and you can pre-order it here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have released a second single from their highly anticipated new album, Unlimited Love. 

"Poster Child" is the fifth track from the band's latest long-player that was recorded with legendary guitarist John Frusciante after he rejoined the band again back in 2019.

The song heavily features Frusciante's signature wah sound which can be heard from the off. 

Known for his love of the Ibanez WH10 wah pedal, the guitarist has needed to track down numerous replacement/backup units over the years as the original WH10 version was constructed using plastic and inevitably cracked or wore out.

Nonetheless, "I don’t think there’s a better wah," Frusciante told Vintage Guitar in 2009. "When we were making [2006’s] Stadium Arcadium, there was so much wah I figured I’d use a variety of pedals and there wasn’t one that came close to the Ibanez."

But what makes the WH10 unique among wah pedals?

According to the Ibanez website, the WH10 is "the first wah pedal to utilize a multiple feedback opamp circuit, creating a much different tonal quality versus more common inductor based wahs."

Interestingly, around the time of Frusciante's return to the Chili Peppers fold in 2019, Ibanez released a third version of the WH10 using a more resilient metal enclosure, as per the unit's second incarnation, the WH10V2.

While the WH10V2 sports the same control features as the original, the new Ibanez WH10V3 introduces a handy true/buffered bypass toggle. 

Otherwise, the WH10V3 remains faithful to previous designs which include a depth knob along with a guitar/bass frequency range switch (350Hz - 2.2kHz and 175Hz - 1.1kHz respectively.)

Listen to "Poster Child" here...

An animated video accompanying the new single has also appeared on the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Facebook page.

Pre-order Unlimited Love here.

With their long-awaited new album – Radiate Like This – due to land in May, Warpaint are currently warming up to hit the road again.

It’s been a while. The quartet’s latest long-player follows up 2016’s Heads Up and, like so many other lockdown records, was tracked with band members in separate locations.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever made an album like that,” said founding guitarist and vocalist Emily Kokal. “But in a weird way, it made us take our time with everything. The process felt more meditative, less rushed.”

And while the music world eagerly awaits the release of Warpaint’s most recent studio effort, here Kokal takes time to reminisce about some of her earliest musical memories.

What are some of your earliest memories of music?

My parents had the Police album Ghost in the Machine and I remember “Spirits in the Material World” being one of my favorites. But the first thing I sang along to was the song “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” [from Zenyatta Mondatta.]

My mom says they were some of my first words. [laughs] After a few weeks of hearing it, one day I just started singing along!

Also, she used to sing “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor to me every night. She would sing five or six songs to me every night and I think that’s a big part of why I became a musician.

What made you want to write songs?

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I remember listening to the War album by U2, being struck by the seriousness of the lyrics, and asking my mom, “What does it mean, ‘We eat and drink while tomorrow they die?’”

To me, as a kid, it was a powerful image. As was the album cover. I was just so transfixed by it as a child. I was attracted to how much it made me feel a little bit afraid.

That was a turning point. I realized then that music can be rebellious, but also something people can use to help and educate each other.

What was the first song you learned to play?

I come from a pretty musical family and my grandmother had a piano. There were all sorts of books in the bench – stuff like Frank Sinatra and Engelbert Humperdinck – so I learned a little bit about music from that.

As far as guitar goes, my mom had a Beatles book and I learned “I Will.” That was the first time I taught myself guitar chords.

What was your first band, and did you do any covers?

When I was 20, I was in a band called Little Two’s in Eugene, Oregon. And if you listen to the record, I sung a little moment of “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the song “Shabasta.”

The first song that I ever covered properly was “Looking for You” [by Nino Ferrer.] Theresa [Wayman, Warpaint guitarist and vocalist] and I played it together when we were teenagers in high school. That was the first thing we ever did together. We learned it together, played the same chords and sang in harmony.

Which of your songs would you play to someone who’s never heard your music before?

“Burgundy.” I think it’s one of the most live-sounding recordings we have. The vocal was recorded at the same time as the music. I think it lands close to our vibe.

Is there an electric guitar solo you’d hold up as one of the best there is?

“Maggot Brain.” George Clinton told [Eddie Hazel] to think of the saddest thing he could – that his mother had died. I get emotional even thinking about it. It’s so powerful. It has such a primal voice.

Is there a riff you wish you’d written?

“1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” by Jimi Hendrix. I didn’t know he wrote riffs like that. I always thought Hendrix was cool, but when I heard that song it instantly became my favorite.

Is there a song that reminds you of home when you’re out on the road?

My mom is a huge fan of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Jackson Browne so I grew up with a lot of really emotional, heavy folk music, and the Bonnie Raitt cover of Joni Mitchell’s “That Song About the Midway” gets me every time. I can’t even remember a time in my life without that song. 

Bonnie Raitt nailed it in a bluesy fashion. It’s beautiful. I have a soft spot for the musical sincerity of that time. I miss the sincerity of that era, but I think it’s coming round again. It’ll be less cool to be cool as the political climate gets a little bit darker.

Have you got any songwriting tips?

To any aspiring songwriters, I would recommend trying to have your lyrics ready as soon as possible because once you have the melody it can be really hard to go back and try to plug in phonetically. Try to come with your purpose right away.

I often write in rhyme naturally, so that happens almost of its own accord. But I think trying to come in with an emotion later is tricky. I personally try to capture the feeling of the lyrical content, but I have made things very difficult for myself in the past trying to figure out lyrics later. I can change a melody easily if the lyrics are already there.

Are there any Warpaint songs you had to really fight to get finished?

“New Song” nearly didn’t make it. It was one of the last songs to be included [on Heads Up.]

Jen [Lee Lindberg, Warpaint bassist] gave me her demo which was mostly the whole song, and I was trying to work things out lyrically, but I got a little intimidated by it. I changed it a lot and I kind of gave up on it. But then I played it to Jake [Bercovici] our producer and he was like, ‘Are you kidding me? This song is done!’

Ultimately, I like to feel the least amount of resistance when it comes to writing music. Otherwise, I feel like I’m getting in my own way. I just want to be a conduit for whatever’s coming through me.

Pre-order the new Warpaint album Radiate Like This here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have released their lead single – “Black Summer” – from the highly anticipated new album Unlimited Love. Following John Frusciante’s return to the fold in 2019, the band’s latest long-player represents what many fans consider to be the classic Chili Peppers line-up.

“We spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another, to make the best album we could,” reads a band statement.

"For me, this record represents our love for, and faith in each other,” said Frusciante.

Unlimited Love also sees the return of producer Rick Rubin whose decades-long history with the Red Hot Chili Peppers spans several albums, namely: Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991); One Hot Minute (1995); Californication (1999); By the Way (2002); Stadium Arcadium (2006); and I'm with You (2011).

Track listing for Unlimited Love is as follows:

• "Black Summer"
• "Here Ever After"
• "Aquatic Mouth Dance"
• "Not The One"
• "Poster Child"
• "The Great Apes"
• "It’s Only Natural"
• "She’s A Lover"
• "These Are The Ways"
• "Whatchu Thinkin’"
• "Bastards of Light"
• "White Braids & Pillow Chair"
• "One Way Traffic"
• "Veronica"
• "Let ‘Em Cry"
• "The Heavy Wing"
• "Tangelo"

Frusciante is considered to be one of the greatest guitar players of his generation. And while the Red Hot Chili Peppers have brought him to the fore of rock stardom, the guitarist’s prolific collaborations and numerous solo ventures have proven equally as vital throughout his seemingly limitless creative life.

Frusciante was 18 years old when he played his first gig with the Chili Peppers, in November 1988. He had discovered the band when he was 15, was a regular at their L.A. club gigs, and knew their songs inside out.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers' first album with Frusciante, 1989’s Mother’s Milk, was their most successful up to that point, selling 500,000 copies in the U.S. But it was 1991’s Rubin-produced Blood Sugar Sex Magik that turned them into superstars. 

It was a measure of their success that both Nirvana and Pearl Jam opened for them in late 1991.

Yet, as record sales rose and shows got bigger, Frusciante found himself struggling with the scale of the band’s fame. “John would say, ‘We’re too popular, I don’t need to be at this level of success, I would just be proud to be playing this music in clubs like you guys were doing two years ago,’” vocalist Anthony Kiedis wrote in his book, Scar Tissue, adding that they would get into heated arguments backstage.

The snapping point came in summer 1992. As the band flew to Japan for a series of shows, the guitarist started to hear voices in his head: “You won’t make it through the tour. You have to go now.”

That’s precisely what he did. On May 7, 1992, just after playing a show in the city of Saitama, Frusciante walked out on the Red Hot Chili Peppers mid-tour, flew back to America and disappeared into a black hole of his own creation.

Frusciante’s sudden departure had left a hole that his former bandmates struggled to fill. A seemingly permanent solution was found with Dave Navarro, but the union didn’t quite deliver on its promise and the partnership officially dissolved in 1998. 

It was Flea who suggested they call Frusciante who had checked into rehab that January to clean up and save himself.

“When Dave left, Flea called me up and asked me what I thought about playing with John,” Kiedis told Kerrang! magazine “I told him it would be a dream, but that it was a very far-fetched concept. Then a week later we were playing together.”

Things moved fast. Within three months, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were onstage at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. with Frusciante. Soon, they were creating their first album with the guitarist since Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

Released in 1999, Californication felt less like the work of a band picking up where they’d left off almost a decade earlier, and more like the start of an entirely new chapter. The album would go on to sell more than 15 million copies worldwide – even more than Blood Sugar Sex Magik. 

But the record’s real triumph was that it saved the Chili Peppers. “Until John rejoined, Flea was at the end of his Chili Peppers rope,” Kiedis said. More importantly, as Frusciante acknowledged, it signified his own return from a journey that was sure to end in tragedy.

“It’s a second chance for all of us,” he told NYRock. “In a way, we’re all co-dependent and we know it, but we also trust each other.”

The guitarist bailed on the band for a second time in 2009 to pursue his solo career. But it was more amicable this time. Frusciante even recommended his own understudy, Josh Klinghoffer, as his replacement.

Yet, as today’s release proves, even that wasn’t the end of the story. In 2019, Frusciante returned to the band, displacing Klinghoffer.

“It’s just returning to family,” he said last year. “I’m extremely comfortable with those people. It was as if no time at all had gone by.”

You can pre-order Unlimited Love here.

***The following appeared in the November 1997 issue of Guitar Player***

John Frusciante sits under a rose-covered archway in the hills above Los Angeles, clutching a pack of cigarettes and a one-hitter of pot. He's barely recognizable at first. With a tousled mane of Jim Morrison-style hair, a huddled posture and oddly matched clothes, he looks more like a sleepless, absent-minded philosophy student than a rock star. 

Gone is the buff, mohawk-sporting 18-year-old who once energized arenas with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, co-wrote hits like "Under the Bridge" and "Breaking the Girl," and stripped funk-rock guitar to its raw essentials on Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

His first two solo records, 1994's difficult Niandra Lades [American] and the even darker Smile from the Streets You Hold [Birdman, 1409 W. Magnolia, Burbank, CA 91506], reflect even less of his former persona. 

Composed of splintered solo acoustic/electric 4-track bedroom demos rife with backward guitar, howling vocals, enigmatic lyrics and bare-bones guitar arrangements, they are the aural documents of an idealistic, art-obsessed 27-year-old who quit one of the world's biggest bands at its creative peak, descended into heroin addiction and barely made it out alive.

It was only in the last few weeks of 1996 that Frusciante was finally able to kick the three-year habit that contributed to the loss of his Hollywood Hills home and the gradual deterioration of his body; earlier this year, John's remaining teeth were removed and replaced by dentures in order to avoid a life-threatening infection. His right forearm appears badly burned, and his speech, though filled with interesting insights and word games, is slurred and erratic.

A voracious music listener, talented painter and devotee of tragic, fallen angels like Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, Kurt Cobain and Sid Vicious, Frusciante is a mixture of passion, self-taught cultural erudition and naïveté – particularly regarding rock and roll mythology.

He constantly refers to death in the warmest possible terms. "Death is a place I'm really looking forward to being in," he says later, strumming a vintage Gibson acoustic in a small room crammed with videos, CDs and art books on Van Gogh, Duchamp, Basquiat and Da Vinci. "I can also be very happy in this life, but it's usually happiness that I get from other lives I've lived and other dimensions. This life is hardly important to me. It's very small compared to the importance that I think the fourth and fifth dimension have. Those places are much more real to me, like when you have a dream and it's more real to you than real life. Compared to where I'll be going, this life seems like a dream that just feels like a dream."

The recent release of Smile, new sessions in producer Jimmy Boyle's L.A. studio, an interest in releasing tapes of 3 Amoebas (his improv trio with Flea and Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins) and his participation in this summer's Nuttstalk tour with members of P-Funk and Fishbone represent Frusciante's first forays back into the land of the living.

But it's an uneasy peace he maintains with what we call reality. "I think the reason he embraces death so much," says his friend and former bandmate Flea, "is that he wants his spirit to be free. He really doesn't care about being alive in the physical world."

Listening to Smile from the Streets You Hold can be unnerving. Raw, vulnerable and stream-of-consciousness, it's a dark ode to the demons and spirits that inhabit Frusciante's head – the sound of an extremely talented guitarist in search of himself.

"The title song was a very intense moment," says Frusciante quietly, "because I was having verbal communication with the spirits while I was recording, and I started crying at the end of it. The spirits give you ideas for things, and what's important to them is what's important to me. I'm much more concerned with my fame in their world than with my fame in this one. That's why it's been difficult for me to adjust to being alive at all."

John Frusciante was born in New York in 1970 to John and Gail Frusciante. John Sr. was a Juilliard-trained pianist who became a lawyer and later a judge. Gail, too, was a promising musician, a singer who became a homemaker, says her son, because her husband ruled out the possibility of a musical career, though she now sings for her church and provided the background vocals on "Under the Bridge." 

The family lived in Queens, relocated to Tucson, Arizona, and then moved to Florida for a year, during which time John's parents separated. Moving with his mother to Santa Monica, California, John, like a million other California kids, became obsessed with skateboarding, Aerosmith and Kiss.

By age nine he was already a budding punk rocker, wearing out copies of the Germs' G.I. record. By then he'd figured out most of the Germs' songs in his own tuning that allowed him to play everything with a single-finger barre. It was a habit he'd have to break when he started lessons a year later while living in nearby Mar Vista with his mom and new stepdad, an avid philosophy reader and black belt who listened to Beethoven and '50s R&B but "understood where punk rock was coming from. He really supported me and made me feel good about being an artist."

From the Germs, John graduated to Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix, tackled the almighty barre chord and blues scale, and began pursuing increasingly complicated rock like King Crimson, Yes, early Genesis and Frank Zappa, whose work he'd study for hours, learning solos and syncopations in detail.

Captain Beefheart, the Residents and other out-rock prophets became John's pantheon, and by 17 he'd dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles, where he and a friend figured out a way to punch in for classes at G.I.T. without actually attending in order to appease their parents' desire that they get an education. He even showed up at a Zappa audition, only to leave the rehearsal room before stepping up to the plate.

Cold feet? "Nah. I realized that I wanted to be a rock star, do drugs and get girls, and that I wouldn't be able to do that if I was in Zappa's band."

In 1988 Frusciante first jammed with Michael Balzary, a.k.a. Flea, the bass player of his favorite local band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Frusciante had begun jamming with former Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro, who would soon temporarily replace Jack Irons in the Peppers, and when Peligro learned of the young guitarist's fascination with the band, he invited John to jam with him and Flea at Flea's house on Fairfax Avenue.

Less than a year later, following original guitarist Hillel Slovak's fatal heroin overdose and a short collaboration with former Funkadelic guitarist Blackbyrd McKnight, Flea called the 18-year-old Frusciante with the news: He was the new Chili Peppers guitarist. "There were bootmarks five feet high on the wall in my room for months after that call," Frusciante remembers.

"He was just a kid when he joined," says Flea, "totally overexuberant about everything. His playing was amazing. He was technically very competent and much more theoretically knowledgeable than I was, with a bit of the Steve Vai guitar wizard damage. I've always relied on intuition and emotion to get me through, and I think that concept is something he latched onto real quickly."

From the start Frusciante wrote with the band. "Pretty Little Ditty" was salvaged from his and Flea's first jam, and the hit "Knock Me Down" – a knockoff of Zeppelin's "The Wanton Song" – took the band's writing to a new level of tunefulness and economy. By the recording of the enormously successful Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991, Frusciante had developed into an intuitive and technically astute player who played funk as if it were second nature.

"But I wasn't really a funk player before I joined the band," says Frusciante. "I learned everything I needed to know about how to sound good with Flea by studying Hillel's playing, and I just took it sideways from there."

It was a half-hour before showtime at a gig in Japan in 1992 when Frusciante announced his intention to leave the group. "He just said, 'I can't do it. I can't play anymore,'" says Flea. "He didn't even want to play that night, so we had to beg him to do the last gig." Frusciante's disaffection had been brewing for months. "Toward the end you could tell that his playing was angry at the band. If the band got really soft, he'd start playing louder, and vice versa. He did it just to be anti. He was really hating it, so as much as I loved playing with him, it was a huge relief when he left."

"When I quit the band I couldn't do anything but lay on the couch depressed, and then I became a junkie and came to life and started playing music again," Frusciante told L.A.'s New Times in late '96. Earlier that year, he said, he had nearly died, a result of his body having "a twelfth of the blood it's supposed to have, and that blood was infected."

John's house in the Hollywood Hills became notorious for its horrific mess and graffiti-covered walls ("My eye hurts" and "Stabbing pain with discipline's knife" were among the scrawled epithets), and after an accidental fire and difficulty with payments, John eventually moved out, bouncing through a succession of short-lived hotel stays at the Chateau Marmont and the Mondrian.

Due to the arrest of a friend under whose name the room was booked, John's many notebooks, crammed with poetry, mathematics, word games, drawings and story ideas, are presently locked away in the Mondrian. He wants them back, but his concern is less for his past work than for what's going through his head at any given moment.

"All he wants to do is be creative," says Flea. "He doesn't care about money or personal hygiene or anything else. And he never has. If we made $10,000, he'd give it to the pizza delivery guy. He only cares about art." 

Flea, a former drug user himself, tells Frusciante what he thinks about his habits. "John once told me, 'I don't have a problem with drugs, you have a problem with me doing drugs.' In retrospect, I realize, yeah, I do have a problem with drugs. I do have a problem with my friends dying. It makes me really fucking sad. I don't want him to do any drugs at all, and I tell him that. That's all I can do as someone who loves and respects him."

One of the most popular classical guitarists, and a successful pop crossover artist, Liona Boyd has been hailed by no less than Andrés Segovia and Chet Atkins for her musical virtuosity. Here are five reasons she is an acoustic guitar legend…

1. Masterful Education

Born in London in 1949, and raised in Canada, Boyd began playing guitar at 13 and quickly excelled on the instrument. While a student at the Guitar Society of Toronto, she studied with classical guitar greats like Segovia, Julian Bream, Narciso Yepes and Alexandre Lagoya. 

“Segovia told me I was playing too fast… Julian Bream helped me with Bach… Lagoya, of course, concentrated more on tone,” Boyd told Guitar Player in 2006. “But the one thing all of these masters provided more than anything else was inspiration. It wasn’t just technical advice – they would get me fired up.”

2. Collaboration

Unusually for a classical guitarist, Boyd took an interest in popular music genres early in her career and has frequently performed with rock and folk artists. In the 1970s, she was Gordon Lightfoot’s opening act on a successful tour that saw her play in sold-out ice hockey arenas. 

A performance in Nashville brought her to the attention of Atkins, and, together with John Knowles and John Pell, they recorded the country/classical crossover album The First Nashville Guitar Quartet in 1979. Boyd has also recorded with Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson and Rik Emmett, among others.

3. Off the Beaten Track

Boyd has occasionally performed in uncommon settings. In 1975, she went on the road in British Columbia and Yukon, where she paid her dues touring in frigid temperatures and playing for appreciative crowds “in all the remote, snowbound communities of northwest Canada,” she writes in her 1998 memoir, In My Own Key: My Life in Love and Music. 

With Atkins’ help, she landed an appearance on the NBC morning news/talk show Today early in her career. Most unusually, during O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial, Boyd performed in a federal courthouse to entertain “bored-stiff jurors” at the request of the presiding judge, Lance Ito.

4. Diversity

After recording in the classical genre for many years, Boyd began exploring Latin, jazz, easy-listening and new age music starting in the mid 1990s. Her 2002 release, Camino Latino, showed off her talents as an interpreter and composer of Latin styles and saw her performing with guitarists like Al Di Meola, Steve Morse, and Strunz and Farah.

5. Adaptability

Following the release of Camino Latino, Boyd was diagnosed with focal dystonia, a neurological condition that causes involuntary muscle contractions and abnormal postures. To compensate, she developed her songwriting and vocal skills and performed less-demanding guitar arrangements. 

Her later albums – including 2009’s Seven Journeys: Music for the Soul and Imagination and 2015’s Relaxing Guitar for Insomnia, Dreaming and Romance – have leaned increasingly toward a mix of classical and new age.

In all, Boyd has racked up five Gold and three Platinum albums over her career and earned five Juno awards, Canada’s Grammy equivalent. She’s also a five-time winner of the Guitar Player Readers’ Poll for Best Classical Guitarist and has been inducted into the magazine’s Gallery of Greats.

30 years ago, the Red Hot Chili Peppers stood poised on the edge of international stardom as they prepared for the release of their breakthrough masterpiece, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The album proved John Frusciante to be one of the greatest guitarists of his generation and he rapidly ascended to guitar hero status.

Many hours of fly-on-the-wall video footage were captured for the Funky Monks rockumentary which chronicles the recording of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Among the film's many great moments is the sequence where Frusciante nails his solo for the song “Mellowship Slinky in B Major.”

Speaking to Guitar Player in 1991 about the recording Frusciante said, “I like to keep things simple. Those MESA/Boogie amps were too hard for me to understand. For most of the basics, I used two Marshalls: a guitar head for edge and a bass head for punch and low end. I split the signal with a DOD stereo chorus pedal. For some overdubs I used a Fender H.O.T. practice amp, but for a lot of parts, even solos, I just went straight into the board. You can get amazing, funky tones that way. In fact, a lot of my distortion is from overdriving the board."

And when asked about his choice of electric guitars the guitarist revealed, “My main guitar was a ’58 Strat, though I used a Les Paul reissue on a couple of things. I also have a ’57 Strat, which someone had screwed up by putting on those big stupid frets that everyone uses these days. I vomited and told them to make it fretless. That’s what I used for the “Mellowship Slinky” solo. Some people think those big frets help your vibrato, but I make a point of using as little vibrato as possible, though I might do it more if I had long, pretty black hair. And I didn’t use any whammy bar.”

Buy Funk Monks here.

During a recent internet radio broadcast from dublab in Los Angeles, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea and John Frusciante talked about some of the music that helped shape them as musicians, spinning some of their favorite tunes in the process.

In the bumper slot known as Timely Inspirations, Frusciante pulls out a number of influential tracks, highlighting their importance in terms of his development as a guitarist.

From the seminal electric blues of Johnny “Guitar” Watson to the superlative jazz-fusion genius of Allan Holdsworth, here are a dozen of the finest from Frusciante’s eclectic collection…

1. The Tony Williams Lifetime – "To Whom It May Concern – Them" from 'Turn It Over' (1970)

Frusciante discovered the hard rock chops of jazz fusion pioneer John McLaughlin on the 1970 track "To Whom It May Concern - Them" at age 13. Described by Jeff Beck as “the best guitarist alive" McLaughlin moved to the US from the UK in 1969 to join jazz drummer Tony Williams’ Lifetime power trio. 

As well as recording two early jazz fusion classics with the group – 1969’s Emergency! and Turn It Over the following year – Mclaughlin appears on several Miles Davis long-players from the same period.   

2. Ramones – "I Don't Care" from 'Rocket to Russia' (1977)

When it comes to punk rock, Frusciante was an aficionado at the tender age of 9. He was also surprisingly resourceful in his musical pursuits for someone so young, at first retuning his guitar in order to play Sex Pistols songs with one finger and using a “jar of pennies” to finance the purchase of a Ramones record. 

But after hearing the New York punk pioneers on the radio, nothing was going to stop him. “I’d heard [the Ramones’] “Beat on the Brat” on the radio,” he remembers, “and I was just like: I’ve got to have a record by that band.”

3. Public Image Ltd – “Go Back” from 'The Flowers of Romance' (1981)

Referred to as the ‘Jimi Hendrix of post-punk’ and described by Frusciante as “spectacular” guitarist Keith Levene’s prolific career in music includes being a founding member of both The Clash and Public Image Limited, not to mention working as a roadie for his guitar hero, Steve Howe of Yes, at age 15! 

Interestingly, Keith Levene and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ founding guitarist Hillel Slovak (one of Frusciante's more obvious influences) recorded a track together in 1985 called “Clothesline”. Black Flag's original bassist Chuck Dukowski had a rare vinyl copy for sale here.

4. Marvin Gaye – "I Want You (Vocal)" from 'I Want You' (1976)

Although Frusciante is well-known for his jaw-dropping technique and can certainly turn on the showmanship when he wants to, his musical sensibilities dictate that the balance of the song as a whole is equally important. 

Speaking of the stellar lead guitar work on Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You (Vocal)” Frusciante highlights that it requires a certain skill to play “in a way that doesn’t draw attention to itself but fits in with the surrounding context.”

5. Butthole Surfers – “Jimi" from 'Hairway to Steven' (1988)

When Frusciante was finding his voice as a guitar player in the late ‘80s, he happened to catch one of the Butthole Surfers’ infamously intense live shows and was struck with genuine awe. “I saw them live and had a similar experience to when I first saw Jane’s Addiction where I was scared,” recalls Frusciante. 

Though he was immediately taken aback by what he saw in Butthole Surfers’ guitarist Paul Leary, Frusciante ultimately found the identification he needed to define himself more clearly. “Before that, I was just lost,” he adds.

6. Johnny "Guitar" Watson – “Too Tired” (1955)

Johnny "Guitar" Watson was a true pioneer of the electric guitar and one of the wildest guitarists on record by anyone’s standards. Just listen to 1954’s “Space Guitar” to hear his radical use of reverb and feedback, or 1955’s “Too Tired” for a great example of early guitar distortion. 

According to Frusciante, Watson had a “very mean approach to electric guitar that I don’t think anybody before him had come anywhere close to.”

7. Iggy Pop – “China Girl” from 'The Idiot' (1970)

Iggy Pop was a huge influence on Frusciante from an early age. In addition to the Chili Peppers’ 1991 “Search and Destroy” Stooges cover the guitarist has performed solo renditions on acoustic guitar of Iggy Pop's “China Girl” and “Neighborhood Threat”. “David Bowie and Iggy pop co-wrote this song on the wonderful album The Idiot,” points out Frusciante. “And it’s got some of my favorite guitar playing ever on it.”

8. Big Brother and the Holding Company – “Down on Me” from 'Big Brother & the Holding Company' (1967)

Frusciante is a self-confessed Nirvana devotee. But when Le Butcherettes’ Teri Gender Bender asked him which singer he thought was better, Kurt Cobain or Janis Joplin, he found it difficult to answer. “I’m not one to say one person’s ‘better’ than another,” says Frusciante, “but [Joplin] is about as effective a singer emotionally as there could ever be. And the guitar players in her band at this time were really exceptional.” 

Bringing to mind the days in the lead up to recording Blood Sugar Sex Magik Frusciante recalls, “Around 1990, I was starting to realise: fuck playing fast and clean! It’s about the feeling that’s in it and sometimes playing sloppy can be a way more exciting feeling than playing clean.”

9. Allan Holdsworth – “Three Sheets to the Wind” from 'Road Games' (1983)

Allan Holdsworth was arguably the ultimate guitarist’s guitarist with a singular technique developed from his intense studies of freeform jazz and alternative scales. And while nobody has been able to beat Holdsworth at his own game, many guitarists continue to look to him as a source of inspiration, including Frusciante. 

“I don’t think somebody has to be technically advanced to be soulful at all, but,” he concedes, “I really don’t think there’s anyone better than Allan Holdsworth… I’m sure I’ll always learn from him and never in a million years will I be able to do what he did.”

10. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band – “Peon” from 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' (1970)

The music of Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band has long been a source of inspiration for Frusciante, notably Bill Harkleroad aka Zoot Horn Rollo’s guitar contributions for the band’s 1969 avant-garde masterpiece Trout Mask Replica. Its follow-up, 1970’s Lick My Decals Off, Baby is also cited by many as a Captain Beefheart classic, along with its standout guitar/bass instrumental track “Peon”. 

Donning metal fingerpicks, Frusciante and Flea literally pulled off this challenging number live in front of thousands of Chili Peppers fans. “There’s no way to count it,” Frusciante remarks. “You really have to read each other’s minds to play it properly.”

11. T.S.O.L. –  “Thoughts of Yesterday” from 'Weathered Statues' (1982)

Growing up with punk rock, Frusciante was naturally drawn to guitarists such as Black Flag’s Greg Ginn and Pat Smear of Germs, while hearing Joy Division’s Bernard Sumner and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ John McGeoch broadened his musical horizons even further. 

Here he cites T.S.O.L.’s Ron Emory as another of his favorite punk guitarists. “This song has sort of a Siouxsie and the Banshees influence to my ear,” says Frusciante. “But they did all kinds of sounds throughout those early days of the band. One song would be real different from the next.”

12. T. Rex –  “Cosmic Dancer” from 'Electric Warrior' (1971)

Marc Bolan was a big influence on Frusciante as a songwriter, as was the backwards guitar on this track from 1971’s Electric Warrior. Backwards guitar has long been a Frusciante hallmark, as those familiar with his landmark debut solo release Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt and the “Give It Away” solos will know. 

“The lead guitar playing in this song is beautiful; it’s got backwards lead guitar that was very influential on me,” reminisces Frusciante. “I have really nice memories of listening to this when we were making Blood Sugar Sex Magik and staring out the window late at night, or being 17 years old when I’d just moved to Hollywood.”

Listen to the full show at dublab here.

Today marks the anniversary of Tim Buckley’s untimely death in 1975, some 22 years prior to the tragic passing of his estranged yet similarly gifted son, Jeff Buckley. Previously covered by the likes of Robert Plant and John Frusciante, “Song to the Siren” is considered by many to be the finest (and most eerily prophetic) song penned by Tim Buckley, and this live clip from 1968 to be his greatest rendition of it. 

12-string acoustics reached their peak of popularity during the American folk music revival while electric versions of the instrument made by Rickenbacker and Fender were endorsed by The Beatles and Bob Dylan (respectively) during the mid-Sixties. At this time, some of the finest 12-string flat-tops were produced by Guild at their Hoboken factory in New Jersey – including the F-212, F-212XL, and F-312 jumbo models. Here, Buckley shows us exactly why these guitars are sometimes referred to as a ‘one man orchestra’.

On September 24, 1991, three albums were released that would go on to change my world. Two were from bands out of Seattle, and the third from Los Angeles. Care to guess which albums? 

Here are some hints: Both bands from Seattle named their albums with words spliced together to form one perplexing title. 

One was a colloquialism that a youthful grunge culture with no spellcheck at the ready blindly accepted, while the other was a snarky play on words meant to scoff at a Montrose song. The L.A.-based band named theirs with not a care in the world for syntax or for spelling all the words properly. 

Despite all three bands disregarding the written word, this trifecta would go on to sell in the millions, define a generation, and basically change everything for everyone. Give up? It was Nirvana’s Nevermind, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik.  

For me, the latter’s impact was so great that it altered my own artistic trajectory almost overnight and set me on a path that I still enthusiastically follow nearly 30 years later. This is due, in large part, to the fearless playing and composing of a then 21-year-old guitarist named John Frusciante in his first tenure with the Peppers.

Together with his bandmates – vocalist Anthony Kiedis, drummer Chad Smith, and bassist Flea – and lauded über-producer Rick Rubin, Frusciante created this seminal suite of well-written songs that featured some of the phattest and funkiest riffs and grooves ever.

Armed with vintage Fender Strats and Jaguars, mythic Marshall amps, such as the 100-watt Super Bass and the beefy 200-watt Major heads, and an array of scrappy pedals, including a Boss DS-1, an Ibanez WH-10 wah, and a pivotal Boss CE-1 analog chorus, Frusciante wrote the manual for ’90s funk guitar that still invaluably informs today’s players.

Blood Sugar Sex Magik is not only the album that made the RHCPs superstars, it’s also the one that made every aspiring rock and pop guitarist (including yours truly) grab a Strat, take an ad out in a local music rag, and start a funk band.

Whether you had an established connection to funk music or you were a clean slate, after hearing Blood Sugar Sex Magik you were hooked and wanted to sound like it. In this lesson, I’m going to show you what I did to do just that.

To wrap my head and hands around any new style, I examine its best practitioners by studying and learning an entire record.

Whatever sticks I then morph, or “recompose,” into my own. The examples throughout this lesson follow that ethos and highlight the essential concepts I gleaned from Frusciante’s stellar work throughout Blood Sugar Sex Magik. 

Starting it off is a look at his clever uses of 4th intervals, or 4ths, for short. Example 1 is a riff in D minor not unlike the intro from “If You Have to Ask.”

Making use primarily of a perfect 4th (C-F) on the G and B strings, this two-bar vamp rocks to a foundational 16th-note polyrhythm featuring percussive, fret-hand-muted “scratch” strums. Indicated by Xs in the notation, those pitchless scratches are achieved by loosening your fret-hand’s grips on the strings while still lightly touching them as you strum with the pick.

To play this figure without any unwanted string noise creeping in, try fingering the C-F dyad with the tips of your 2nd and 3rd fingers while your 1st finger lightly lays across the top three strings. For the final two chords in bar 2, shift your hand so that your 1st finger frets the G string at the 5th fret and the rest will fall into place. 

Inspired by the open high-E-string idea that Frusciante employed in the intro and verses of “The Power of Equality,” Example 2 incorporates additional harmony (Dmaj9). 

In this example, the initial perfect 4th (D-G) should be fretted with your 3rd and 4th fingers, with the 1st finger then reaching back to grab the 5th-fret E note on the B string. In the Dmaj9 chord, switch to the fingering scheme from Ex. 1 for the fretted C# and F# notes (2nd and 3rd fingers). 

This will set you up nicely for the melodic movement on top of the chord during beat 3 of bar 2. At all times, be careful not to arch your 1st finger so that you don’t inadvertently dampen the open high-E string.  

Frusciante is a master of crafting irresistibly catchy single-note melodic verse riffs that sit perfectly behind vocals, as epitomized by the chart-topping single “Give It Away.”

Example 3 similarly travels from 5th to 8th positions as it juxtaposes major and minor tonalities. Like Frusciante, use an aggressive pick attack to coax the most tone from each note, and don’t overlook the quarter-step pull-bend inflection applied to the 5th-fret C note on beat 3 in bar 1. 

Using these subtle bends, also known as “curls,” is a staple phrasing technique that Frusciante liberally employs in his playing.   

Example 4 offers more single notes and curls with our first mash-up, which is inspired by elements from the verse riff to “Mellowship Slinky in B Major” and the intro to “Funky Monks.” 

Our original offering starts with a staccato lick on the upbeat of beat 1. To get more snap in your pick attack, try pinching the B string between your pick and whichever finger you use to hold it against your thumb. 

Be mindful not to overbend the double-stops at the 7th and 9th frets beyond a half step; keep them closer to a quarter-step curl. It takes only a slight pull-down to get the intended effect. 

Shifting gears to a harmonic approach, Example 5 mashes together ideas inspired by the intro to “Apache Rose Peacock” and the chord interlude in “If You Have to Ask.” 

As you play through bar 1, use only your 1st finger to fret both the single notes and to perform the sliding three-string barre across the top three strings, which, by the way, creates an upper-structure harmony move that’s sometimes referred to as the “6-9 slide,” even though you’re moving from a dominant 9th chord to a major 6th. (“6-9” just rolls off the tongue better than “9-6.”) 

For the more robust middle-string voicings of Fmaj9, C7, and E7#9 in bar 2, you’ll need to employ a few more digits. A tone as exposed and up-front as Frusciante’s leaves no room to hide, so for the best chance at clean chord changes, try forming their shapes, or grips, in the air before clamping the fingers down onto the strings. 

Examples 6 and 7 demonstrate Frusciante's penchant for using barred double- and triple-stops on the treble strings.

Example 6 is informed by the “Mellowship” chorus groove while at times incorporating a minor add9 sound by raising the note on the 1st string a whole step (two frets) above the barre. You can hear these same kinds of voicings in the intro riff and chorus sections in “Naked in the Rain.”

While this two-bar groove doesn’t have you playing consistent 16th notes like Ex. 1, it’s still to your advantage to have your strumming strokes follow a constant 16th-note motion, which some call 16th-note pendulum strumming, and apply the downstroke or upstroke attacks to the strings when needed.

Example 7 takes inspiration from the interlude in “The Power of Equality.” For the ricochet action between the 13th- and 11th-fret barres, use your fret hand’s 3rd and 1st fingers, respectively.  

Frusciante’s chorus riff writing is another brilliant aspect of his musicality. My personal favorite is the deep pocket heard in “My Lovely Man,” an homage to fallen founding RHCP guitarist Hillel Slovak, whom Frusciante credits as his main source of inspiration and guidance when he was first getting his own funk chops together.

Example 8 captures the spirit of the iv-v-i changes (Am7 - Bm7 - Em7) in the chorus. Note the use of eighth and 16th rests on several of the downbeats in bars 1 and 2, as well as the jumps from the whole-step hammer-ons on the 4th string to the perfect-4th dyads on the top two strings. 

Although in this song Frusciante played his finishing touches in Em in 7th position, I shifted the idea up to 12th position and added an additional lower E root note on the D string’s 14th fret, much like “Catfish” Collins did on funk standards such as “Soul Power” and “Flashlight.” 

Once more resting on the downbeat, Example 9 chromatically descends a Dm riff starting on the root, much like Frusciante does in the chorus riff in “Power of Equality,” before it switches to a more minimalist approach in bar 2, reminiscent of “If You Have to Ask.”

For extra “stink,” be sure to nail the staccato phrasing throughout bar 1 and keep it clean as you play the syncopated 10th-fret C notes (the b7) in bar 2 following the slinky three-fret slide from A (the 5th) to C. 

Example 10 offers another example of Frusciante's super-catchy and grooving chorus riff-writing style, with a concentrated approach inspired by his phrasing in “Funky Monks.”

Bar 1 is close to the original idea, with an added pull-down bend on the low-E string borrowed from “The Greeting Song.” Bar 2, however, takes John’s riff and displaces it up an octave while maintaining the pitch range of the low-F and low-E root notes. 

Stepping away from riffs that serve verse and chorus sections, Example 11 offers up a brawny mash-up riff in G minor that’s a condensed amalgamation of the “Suck My Kiss” and “Funky Monks” intro figures.

As you’ve come to know, a consistent ingredient in Frusciante’s secret musical sauce is the use of staccato (short and crisp) articulations and phrasing throughout.

Taking a cue from the mammoth, yet carefully spaced outro riff from “Apache Rose Peacock,” Example 12 strategically applies a couple of Frusciante’s go-to chord voicings on the middle four strings for E7#9 and the 2nd-inversion major chords G/D and A/E. 

Applying Frusciante-style tight 16th-note syncopations to a single-note line, Example 13 twists the intro riff to “Mellowship” into a Hendrix-like vibe on the bottom two strings. The influence of both Hendrix and Curtis Mayfield is undoubtedly heard in John’s rhythm work. Consider his playing throughout the breakout single “Under the Bridge.”

In Example 14, a similarly styled approach is shown, demonstrating that time-tested style of clean-electric chordal embellishment, with tastefully soulful, decorative hammer-ons and pull-offs to “chordal extensions” nested within larger common barre chord shapes. 

Example 15 takes you on an eight-bar journey reminiscent of the outro section of “Sir Psycho Sexy.” Throughout this jam, you’ll find defining Hendrix-style elements, such as the clearly stated major or minor chord or root of the implied chord at the start of bars 1–7.

In addition to the nested, ringing legato embellishments throughout, oblique, pedal steel–style bends are featured in bars 1–4, which bring to mind Hendrix's classic riffing in his solo in “Little Wing.” Finally, regarding the mash-up elements, look for added expanded motives from Frusciante’s own trick bag that we’ve presented in this lesson. 

Hopefully, playing these recomposed renditions of John Frusciante’s rhythm guitar creations featured on Blood Sugar Sex Magik will inspire you to do the same on your own. While it’s a challenging journey, it’s also one that’s fun and potentially very rewarding. Keep the funk alive!