He is best known as the guitarist of the band "Red Hot Chili Peppers", but he is certainly not only that.
Let's read a little about the great talent called John Frusciante:
(Photo: Jeffrey Mayer)
1. His full name is John Anthony Frusciante and he was born on March 5, 1970, in Queens, New York.
2. His parents are immigrants from Italy, his father is a piano player and his mother is a singer. Later when he was 9 years old, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother and stepfather to Los Angeles.
3. There he connected to punk rock music and became a fan of the "Germs" (remember Pat Samir?).
At the age of 10, he already learned to play the band's only album.
4. Since he realized that he did not know how to play properly, he began to learn to play songs of other guitarists such as Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jimi Hendrix when he was only 11 years old.
5. At the age of 16 he left school and with the support of his parents, he began to look for his way as a musician and began studying at the "Guitar Institute of Technology" school.
6. That year he discovered the "Red Hot Chilli Peppers" through his guitar teacher who auditioned for the band, he immediately fell in love with them and became a devout fan. He admired the band's guitarist Hillel Slovak and learned to play all the guitar and bass roles on the band's first three albums. The two even formed a friendship a few months before Hillel's death.
(Photo: rhcpsessions.com)
7. At the beginning of 1988, John auditioned for Frank Zappa's band but he did not continue the process when he heard that Frank forbids the use of drugs. In the same year, he also played with Flea the bassist of the "RHCP" with several close friends and from there the chemistry between the two started.
8. After three albums that were not commercially successful but created a large fan base for them, there was a turnaround in the RHCP band. Hillel died of an overdose and Jack Irons who was the band's drummer at the time was devastated by Hillel's death and left the band.
9. The band tried to recruit guitarist DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight and drummer Darren Henley but the former did not fit musically and the latter did not survive due to excessive drug use.
10. Flea offered John to the band and after a short audition he got the role, the lifelong dream of every die-hard music fan... is that the band he likes the most will add him to its group! a dream come true!!!
With John on guitar, Flea on bass, and Anthony Kiedis on vocals, they added drummer Chad Smith and began recording the album that was the starting point, "Mother's Milk".
(Photo: Red Hot Chili Peppers)
11. John said he wasn't a punk player and to get into and learn the style, he studied what Hillel did and took it his own way. The producer of the album Michael Beinhorn did not like what John was doing and tried to produce metal and heavy sounds with him instead of funk and lightness.
12. In August 1989, the album "Mother's Milk", John's first album with the band, was released. The album marked the beginning of the band's path toward great success. Although it only reached number 52 on Billboard and was not really successful in Europe and the UK, it undoubtedly paved the way for the next album.
13. In 1990, the band again asked producer Rick Rubin who refused the previous time because he did not agree to work with the band because of all the drugs they consumed. This time he agreed and took them to record in Houdini's mansion, the master of illusions, cut off from the environment.
14. In September 1991 the band released their breakthrough album, "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" with their breakthrough single "Give It Away". The album went straight to number three on Billboard and earned the band a 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocal. The album entered Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
15. After the release of the album, the band released a documentary called "Funky Monks" which follows the recording of the album, and embarked on a world tour to promote the album.
16. The band's crazy, fast, and unimaginable success caught John off guard and hit him hard. We know this in the history of music, which happened to quite a few artists. John said that before he joined the band, he fell in love with the vibe that the band had at shows, that the audience felt part of the band, part of the show and there was something magical about it. He didn't want to be that popular, he didn't want to be a rock star (maybe just for the drugs and the girls but not beyond that).
17. He said that he felt that the band didn't need it and that he didn't need it, he didn't know how to deal with it and almost after every show, he would confront his friends to stop this crap. Before the show that took place in Tokyo in May 1992 he refused to go up to perform, after many confrontations he did go up in the end, but the next day he left (or was forced to leave) the band.
18. After leaving he auditioned for the band "Meat Puppets" but the collaboration did not materialize and he was not added.
19. The use of drugs was nothing new to John and he used to smoke marijuana in large quantities during the band's tour. After leaving the band and returning to California he fell into a deep depression as he felt that he had no more meaning in life and that he would never play again. In order to deal with the depression, he started consuming heroin and over time became a heavy addict of the drug that kept him between life and death.
(Photo: Karen Miller)
20. In 1994 John released his first album "Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt". An avant-garde and experimental album that you could say, reflects the hallucinatory journeys and euphoria that John had during the consumption of drugs.
21. John's condition continued to deteriorate, and his house became a ruin and filth. Johnny Depp and Gibby Haynes created a documentary about 12 minutes long called "Stuff" which documents John's condition and the house he lived in at the time.
22. In August 1997 John released his second album "Smile from the Streets You Hold" which had one goal !! Get him money for drugs!! Even in the recordings for the album he sounds in poor condition and coughs often.
23. In January 1998 when his body was skin and bones, suffering from an extreme mouth infection and severe skin scarring from injections, John entered a rehab facility in Pasadena. He was treated for the scars on his body and all his teeth were extracted and replaced with dentures as a result of the infection.
24. A month later he was released from the rehab center and began to adopt a lifestyle of spirituality and health, such as yoga, meditation, and proper nutrition. He changed many habits in life and decided to dedicate his life to music.
25. In a cosmic coincidence... that year the "RHCP" decided to fire the guitarist who replaced John, Dave Navarro with whom they released one album "One Hot Minute". The band that was on the verge of disbanding decided to turn to John who was done with drugs and was fit for work, John was, of course, happy with the offer and returned to the "RHCP".
26. The members entered the studio and began to record the next album, the band members testified that John's return made everyone enthusiastic about the work and had a profound effect on them. In June 1999 the band released their seventh album "Californication" which is one of John's favorites.
27. During the tour for the album John began writing his own material and at the end of the tour, in 2001 John released his third album "To Record Only Water for Ten Days". An album that is far from alternative rock and with a lot of electronic and new wave elements, but still kicks you in the stomach.
28. That year was very fruitful and creative for John, he worked on the band's eighth album "By the Way" released in July 2002, and began writing material for his fourth solo album "Shadows Collide with People" released in February 2004 when in addition he also writes material for the soundtrack movie "The Brown Bunny".
29. In 2004 he started a side project called "Ataxia" which was an experimental supergroup for two weeks in which they recorded several songs and even held two shows but then disbanded. In the same year, they released their debut album "Automatic Writing".
30. If we thought that the year 2001 was fruitful, in 2004 John decided to release 6 albums in 6 months with all of them recorded on analog equipment without computers or digital equipment.
He released: "The Will to Death", "Ataxia's Automatic Writing", "DC" EP, "Inside of Emptiness", "A Sphere in the Heart of Silence" and "Curtains".
Absolutely crazy!!
31. In May 2006, the band released their ninth album "Stadium Arcadium" and in this album, John gives freedom to his creativity, he uses more effects than before and in different styles and even adds solo pieces that were not in the previous albums, which by the way were all recorded while improvising and not written in advance.
32. In 2007 he released with the experimental group "Ataxia" their second album "AWII". Another thing that happened that year was his first electronic album under the name "Trickfinger".
33. Later that year, after the "Stadium Arcadium" tour, the band suffered from exhaustion and severe burnout and decided to take a break when at its end in 2009, John announced that he was not coming back and he was replaced by guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. In the same year, John released his eighth solo album called "The Empyrean".
34. In 2010 John took a slight turn towards electronic music, a passion he had for many years. He began to learn to create electronic music and together with Aaron Funk and Chris McDonald he founded the electronic group "Speed Dealer Moms".
35. In September 2012 he released his ninth album "PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone" where he abandoned the guitar sounds in favor of electronic sounds and a combination of pop and hip-hop elements.
36. In April 2014 he released his tenth album "Enclosure".
37. In September 2017, he released his second electronic album as Trickfinger called "Trickfinger II".
38. After releasing two albums with Josh, "I'm with You" in 2011 and "The Getaway" in 2016.
The "RHCP" announced in December 2019 that it was reuniting with John.
39. John has collaborated with many diverse artists including Wu-Tang, Josh Klinghoffer, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Dewa Budjana, and many others.
40. He was supposed to arrive in Israel together with the "RHCP" on June 10, 2020, but the performance was postponed to the summer of 2023 and we can only pray that this time it will happen...
41. In October 2020 he released his 11th album "Maya", we called it a glitch... This album is entirely dedicated to the beloved cat of Frusciante who left the world that year.
42. On February 4, 2022, he released together with "RHCP" the band's first single "Black Summer" after 6 years of silence (the band's longest), from the album "Unlimited Love". That year the RHCP released their 12th and 13th albums, "Unlimited Love" in April and "Return of the Dream Canteen" in October.