(Paris) The event within the event: album in sight for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a successful factory that finds John Frusciante, virtuoso guitarist with a crazy career, between dream come true, addiction-monsters tamed and baroque solo projects.
Posted at 10:38 a.m.
To announce their return last week, the American group released a few seconds on social networks, with their logo on a background of Frusciante chords, recognizable among a thousand. Two days later, a first single, BlackSummerharbinger of a future album, Unlimited Love scheduled for 1er April.
“Everyone is talking about Flea (bassist, co-founder and extraordinary character, editor’s note), but the Red Hot, musically, is John”, deciphers for AFP Salomon Hazot, producer of their concerts in France for decades .
“We are so lucky to have him, he came so close to death”, complete with AFP Waxx, French guitarist, host on RTL2 radio and the music capsule zine on Youtube.
Back on a “completely crazy” trajectory as described by Waxx. With drugs as a red thread from the first pages: it was to replace Hillel Slovak, guitarist of the RHCP who died of an overdose, that Frusciante joined the group, of which he is a fan, at 18 years old.
He participates in the albums Mother’s Milk (1989) and especially Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) which changes their lives. From figures of the alternative scene in Los Angeles, the Red Hot become megastars transported in limousines for shows on MTV.
“Pain Sufferer”
the riff success Under The Bridge, it’s Frusciante. The guitarist also plays this piece live in a daze, undermined by drugs, on the set of the prestigious Saturday Night Live.
The crutch he thought he’d find in heroin to get over his new life is eating him up.
“Today, things have changed, but when he arrives in the group, it’s a bit of a whipping boy,” says Waxx. Salomon Hazot also describes him at the start as “the child at the back of the class who lowers his head, follows the others, even when stones are thrown at him, he is gifted, but nobody knows it and he doesn’t dont play “.
Success doesn’t fix anything. “He went from child to adult with them and with the megasuccess, I’m not a shrink, but it’s probably very complicated to build yourself,” Waxx abounds.
In 1992, Frusciante left the group, in the middle of a world tour, to go solo and sink into self-destruction. “I have become a junkieit was a decision, the only times I was happy were on drugs, I thought I had to take them all the time,” he once told the magazine. Spin.
In stuffdocumentary filmed by actor Johnny Depp, a relative, we see him in the mid-1990s, a cadaverous figure, loose teeth and arms eaten away by bites that have become lesions.
“Their George Harrison”
And the skin remaining on his arms will burn in the fire of his house…
A rehab saved his life at the end of the 1990s. New teeth, skin grafts, he was called back by the RHCP who did not get along with their new guitarist, Dave Navarro. It’s the miracle Californication (1999), album full of success. Frusciante imposes her paw there with melodies that transpire the Beatles or the Beach Boys.
“Each time the Red Hot are not well, that something is wrong, they bring back Frusciante, it’s a bit their George Harrison, who was essential to the balance of the Beatles”, slips Waxx.
Because Frusciante left the ship again in 2009, without falling back into drugs, to participate in various projects. Even within the Red Hot, he has always remained apart, “mysterious”, as Salomon Hazot says. Solo, he opens up to all experimentation like his unclassifiable PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone (2012).
After the passage of guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, Frusciante, fifty-something with a Christian look, therefore returns again as the messiah. “He had a profound impact on everything we did, even when he wasn’t there,” summarizes Flea on American radio.