John Frusciante has been the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers across three stints, and has released 11 solo albums and 7 EPs, ranging in style from acoustic guitar to electronic music.
99 Facts About John Frusciante
2.
John Frusciante was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2012.
3.
John Frusciante joined the Chili Peppers at the age of 18 after the death of guitarist Hillel Slovak, and first appeared on their album Mother's Milk.
4.
John Frusciante became a recluse and entered a period of heroin addiction, during which he released his first solo recordings: Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt and Smile from the Streets You Hold.
5.
John Frusciante released six albums in 2004, each exploring different genres and recording techniques.
6.
In 2009, John Frusciante released The Empyrean, which features Chili Peppers bassist Flea and guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and again parted ways with the Chili Peppers before rejoining them in 2019.
7.
John Frusciante was born in Queens, New York City, on March 5,1970.
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John Frusciante's mother, Gail Bruno, was a promising vocalist who gave up her career to be a stay-at-home mother.
9.
John Frusciante's family moved to Tucson, Arizona, and then Florida, where his father served as a Broward County judge until October 2010.
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John Frusciante's parents separated, and he and his mother moved to Santa Monica, California.
11.
John Frusciante became involved in the Los Angeles punk rock scene.
12.
John Frusciante began studying guitarists such as Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour and Jimi Hendrix at 11.
13.
John Frusciante discovered Frank Zappa, whose work he would study for hours.
14.
John Frusciante dropped out of high school at age 16 with the permission of his parents and upon completion of a proficiency test.
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John Frusciante began taking classes at the Guitar Institute of Technology, but turned to punching in without actually attending and left shortly thereafter.
16.
John Frusciante discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers around 1984 when his guitar instructor was auditioning as a guitarist for them.
17.
John Frusciante attended a Red Hot Chili Peppers performance at age 15 and rapidly became a devoted fan.
18.
John Frusciante idolized guitarist Hillel Slovak, familiarizing himself with virtually all the guitar and bass parts from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' first three records.
19.
John Frusciante became acquainted with Slovak; the two spoke months before Slovak's death; as part of the conversation, Frusciante said he wouldn't like the band if it became popular enough to play the Forum, Inglewood and preferred smaller audiences.
20.
Around the same time, John Frusciante intended to audition for Frank Zappa's band, but changed his mind as Zappa strictly prohibited illegal drug use.
21.
Around this time, John Frusciante began a side project with Flea and Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins, the Three Amoebas.
22.
John Frusciante was blindsided by his newfound fame and struggled to cope.
23.
John Frusciante began to feel that destiny was leading him away from the band.
24.
John Frusciante was persuaded to perform but left for California the next morning.
25.
We were on a major label then, we just got signed, and those guys had blown up to where they were at and John Frusciante needed to get out.
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John Frusciante had developed serious drug habits while touring with the Chili Peppers; he said that when he "found out that Flea was stoned out of his mind at every show, that inspired me to be a pothead".
27.
John Frusciante used heroin and was on the verge of full-scale addiction.
28.
John Frusciante spent the next three years in his Hollywood Hills home, the walls of which were badly damaged and covered in graffiti.
29.
In 1993, John Frusciante briefly performed with the band P, alongside Depp, the Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes, the actor Sal Jenco, and the songwriter Bill Carter.
30.
John Frusciante released his first solo album, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt, in 1994.
31.
John Frusciante denied that it was recorded while he was on heroin, saying it was released when he was a heroin addict.
32.
John Frusciante's arms were fiercely scarred from self-harming as well as improperly shooting heroin and cocaine, leaving permanent abscesses.
33.
John Frusciante released his second solo album, Smile from the Streets You Hold, in 1997.
34.
John Frusciante said he released the album to get "drug money" and withdrew it from the market in 1999.
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In late 1996, after more than five years of addiction to heroin, John Frusciante went cold turkey.
36.
In January 1998, urged by his longtime friend Bob Forrest, John Frusciante checked into Las Encinas, a drug rehabilitation clinic in Pasadena.
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John Frusciante was diagnosed with a potentially lethal oral infection, which could only be alleviated by removing his rotten teeth and replacing them with dental implants.
38.
John Frusciante received skin grafts to help repair the abscesses on his ravaged arms.
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About a month later, John Frusciante checked out of Las Encinas.
40.
John Frusciante changed his diet, becoming more health-conscious and began eating mostly unprocessed foods.
41.
John Frusciante considers it a period of rebirth, during which he found himself and cleared his mind.
42.
John Frusciante has since stopped practicing yoga due to its effects on his back, but he still tries to meditate daily.
43.
When Flea visited him at his home and asked him to rejoin the band, John Frusciante began sobbing and said "nothing would make me happier in the world".
44.
John Frusciante's return restored a key component of the band's sound, as well as a healthy morale.
45.
John Frusciante brought with him his deep devotion to music, which affected the band's recording style during the album.
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John Frusciante has frequently stated that his work on Californication was his favorite.
47.
In 2001, John Frusciante began recording his fourth album with Red Hot Chili Peppers, By the Way ; he considered the time to be among the happiest in his life.
48.
John Frusciante relished the chance the album gave him to "keep writing better songs".
49.
John Frusciante wanted to listen to these musicians "who weren't just about technique but more about textures", or as he put it, "people who used good chords".
50.
John Frusciante wrote and recorded a plethora of songs during and after the By the Way tour.
51.
Later that year, five songs provided by John Frusciante appeared on The Brown Bunny soundtrack.
52.
John Frusciante released his fourth full-length solo album Shadows Collide with People on February 24,2004.
53.
John Frusciante wanted to produce these records quickly and inexpensively on analog tape, avoiding modern studio and computer-assisted recording processes.
54.
In early 2005, John Frusciante entered the studio to work on his fifth studio album with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium.
55.
John Frusciante's guitar playing is dominant throughout the album, and he provides backing vocals on most of the tracks.
56.
John Frusciante changed his approach to his playing, opting to contribute solos and let songs form from jam sessions.
57.
Several reviews have stressed that the influence of Hendrix is evident in his solos on the album, with John Frusciante himself backing this up.
58.
John Frusciante expanded the use of guitar effects throughout the album, and used various other instruments such as the synthesizer and mellotron.
59.
John Frusciante worked continuously with Rubin over-dubbing guitar progressions, changing harmonies and using all his technical resources.
60.
John Frusciante contributed guitar solos on their 2005 album Frances the Mute.
61.
John Frusciante quit the group on July 29,2009, but did not publicly announce his departure until December 2009, two months after the band ended their hiatus in October 2009 and began work on their next album with Josh Klinghoffer as their new guitarist.
62.
On September 25,2012, John Frusciante released his ninth studio album, PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone.
63.
John Frusciante released an instrumental, "Wayne", on April 7,2013, through his website.
64.
The album of the same name is John Frusciante's first experimenting with the acid house genre.
65.
John Frusciante previously released an EP, Sect In Sgt under this alias in 2012.
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On November 24,2015, John Frusciante announced that he was releasing free unreleased songs dating from 2008 to 2013 on his official Bandcamp and SoundCloud pages.
67.
John Frusciante debunked the interview about him retiring from the music industry, saying that his words were taken out of context.
68.
The announcement was made via John Frusciante's rarely updated website in an open letter titled "Hello audience," where John Frusciante provides an in-depth response to the website that, according to him, took his words out of context.
69.
On December 15,2019, the Red Hot Chili Peppers announced that John Frusciante had rejoined, replacing Klinghoffer.
70.
On February 8,2020, John Frusciante performed with the Chili Peppers for the first time in 13 years at a memorial service held by the Tony Hawk Foundation for late film producer Andrew Burkle, son of billionaire Ronald Burkle.
71.
John Frusciante said he had found it exciting to play guitar again after having focused on electronic music in his solo work for several years.
72.
In 2020, John Frusciante released the EPs Look Down, See Us and She Smiles Because She Presses the Button under his electronic alias Trickfinger and the instrumental electronic album Maya under his real name.
73.
John Frusciante said he had become less interested in singing and writing lyrics, and that he enjoyed "the back and forth with machines and the computer".
74.
John Frusciante played guitar on five of The Mars Volta's studio albums, as well as Rodriguez-Lopez's solo albums Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo and Calibration.
75.
John Frusciante functioned as executive producer for Rodriguez-Lopez's directorial film debut, The Sentimental Engine Slayer.
76.
John Frusciante uses the specific guitar that he finds appropriate for a certain song.
77.
John Frusciante's most-often used guitar is a 1962 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster that was given to him as a gift from Anthony Kiedis after Frusciante rejoined the Chili Peppers in 1998.
78.
John Frusciante has played this guitar on every album since rejoining the Chili Peppers, and their ensuing tours.
79.
John Frusciante owns a 1955 Fender Stratocaster, his only Strat with a maple fretboard.
80.
John Frusciante's most highly appraised instrument is a 1955 Gretsch White Falcon, which he used twice per show for the songs Californication and Otherside.
81.
John Frusciante thoroughly enjoyed his role in the Chili Peppers as backing vocalist, and said that backing vocals are a "real art form".
82.
When he returned to the Chili Peppers in 1998, Kiedis wanted the band to record "Living in Hell", a song John Frusciante had written several years before.
83.
John Frusciante refused, feeling that the creative freedom he needed for his solo projects would have conflicted with his role in the band.
84.
John Frusciante's guitar playing employs emphasis on appropriate melody, tone, and structure rather than virtuosity.
85.
John Frusciante feels that in general, guitar mastery has not evolved much since the 1960s and considers the greatest players of that decade unsurpassed.
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John Frusciante tries to break as many "stylistic boundaries" as he can to expand his musical horizons.
87.
John Frusciante has stated that he became serious about creating and engineering his electronic music in 2007.
88.
John Frusciante has noted that these and other new techniques were all influences on his EP, Letur-Lefr.
89.
PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone was recorded while John Frusciante looked to find new ways to play the guitar with the new forms of music and production that he had been studying.
90.
John Frusciante prefers to record his albums on analog tapes and other relatively primitive equipment.
91.
John Frusciante currently uses the music tracker Renoise as his main digital audio workstation along with some drum machines, sequencers, and other hardware, along with his Doepfer, Arp, and other modular synthesizers.
92.
John Frusciante then saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers in concert in 1985, after which their then-guitarist Hillel Slovak became his second major influence, with Frusciante coming to idolize Slovak.
93.
John Frusciante seems to be much influenced by progressive rock acts like Genesis, King Crimson, and Yes, mentioning them in multiple interviews.
94.
John Frusciante wrote an essay for the Yes box set, The Word Is Live, released in 2005.
95.
John Frusciante has a new brilliant idea for each song.
96.
John Frusciante has mentioned Steve Howe as his favorite guitarist in his early teens.
97.
John Frusciante originally intended By the Way to be made up of "these punky, rough songs", drawing inspiration from early punk artists such as the Germs and The Damned.
98.
John Frusciante has used his guitar to emulate the synthesizer melodies of Depeche Mode, the Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, drawing inspiration from how those acts "were playing in a very minimal way, where every note means something new".
99.
John Frusciante's interests are constantly changing, as he believes that without change he will no longer have any interest in playing: "I'm always drawing inspiration from different kinds of music and playing guitar along with records, and I go into each new album project with a preconceived idea of what styles I want to combine".