FRUSCIANTE, UNLIMITED

IN THIS CANDID CONVERSATION, JOHN FRUSCIANTE EXPOUNDS ON THE BENEFITS OF KICKING YOUR EGO TO THE CURB, TRUSTING YOURSELF AS A PLAYER, RELIGIOUSLY MEMORIZING CHARLIE CHRISTIAN’S GUITAR SOLOS AND — OH, YEAH — HOW THE PIECES FELL INTO PLACE FOR HIS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED RETURN TO THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

- RICHARD BIENSTOCK

JOHN FRUSCIANTE WAS JUST 18 WHEN HE WAS OFFERED THE GUITAR slot in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. By that time, he had spent years honing his skills on the instrument, immersing himself in the playing of Hendrix, Beck and Page; Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads; Steve Howe, Steve Hackett and Steve Vai; Frank Zappa and Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew. He listened to the Germs and the B-52’s and Siouxsie and the Banshees, to Sly Stone and James Brown and Parliament, to funk and punk and rock and prog and shred and new wave and goth. “I went through many phases,” Frusciante says. “Every year I was kind of a different person when I was growing up playing guitar, because as I kept getting better, my tastes kept changing toward something that was a little more difficult to play.”

But for all the music he loved — and he loved a lot of music — Frusciante loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers the most. “They were my favorite band,” he tells Guitar World one afternoon over Zoom. Living in L.A. at the time, he says, “I saw them as often as I could. You went to one of their shows, and there was this magic energy that was happening. It was like being in a dream.”