John Frusciante Returns, Part 4

Today we have part four of our John Frusciante Returns series. This is the latest installment of Rick Rubin’s on-going series of in-depth interviews with the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist. And if this is the first interview you’re hearing, make sure to go back and check out the first three parts.

On this episode we'll hear John Frusciante play through more of his guitar parts, and he’ll explain how he came up with some of the best guitar melodies in modern rock history. John also talks about how playing along to classic heavy metal albums from Black Sabbath and Van Halen, as well as dancing all night at drum and bass clubs helped shape his style on the 2002 album, By The Way. He also explains how listening to Brandy, Destiny’s Child and Wu-Tang Clan helped influence his playing on Stadium Arcadium.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Today we have part four of our John Freshante
Returns series. This is the latest installment of Rick Rubin's
ongoing series of in depth interviews with the Red Hot
Chili Peppers guitarist, and if this is the first interview
you're hearing, make sure to go back and check out
the first three parts and also John's appearance from earlier

(00:37):
in the year promoting Unlimited Love. Today we'll hear John
Fuschante played through some more of his guitar parts. Then
he'll explain how we came up with some of the
best guitar melodies and modern rock history. John also talks
about how playing along to classic heavy metal albums from
Black Sabbath and Van Halen, along with dancing all night
at Drum and Bass Clubs, helped shape his style on

(00:57):
the two thousand and two albums. By the Way, he
also explains how listening to Brandy Destiny's Child the Wound
tang Clan helped influence his playing on Stadium Arcadium. This
is broken record line of notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman. Here's part four of Rick Rubin with

(01:17):
John Fraschante from Shangola So over the course of touring
for Californication, did you feel like you came back guitar
wise to where you could play like you could before
in terms of your strength and skill. I did, But
when it came time to record, by the way, I
didn't want to go back to that kind of Jimmy

(01:38):
Hendricksy way of playing File Change. Yeah, like I wanted
to go even further with what I felt were the
real developments on Californication. I was really into sixties music
at the time. I was really into surf guitar style,
like I'd learned about certain things because I played a
bit that way on Californication, mainly being inspired by by

(02:01):
the guy from Bow Bah Wow and stuff. But I
guess Johnny had shown me the Ventures and stuff, and
then Jerry from Fugazi showed me the Shadows, which I
didn't know about, and Johnny wasn't super familiar with either,
and they were really good. It was just like an
English version of surf guitar music, and they were really

(02:23):
popular in England from you know all the Beatles stories
I hear, yeah, well, especially because they were Cliff Richard's
backing band and he was the biggest rock I didn't
know that. Yeah, he was the biggest English rock and
roll thing before the Beatles. So that was just Hank Marvin,
his guitar player sort of had his side thing was
Hank Marvin and the Shadows and they were huge, like

(02:44):
they were an instrumental band and they were like they
were one of the biggest things in England with the
kids before the Beatles. So I got really into learning
while we were touring for Californication. I got really into
learning how to play all the Shadows stuff and playing
along with the Ventures all the time, and I was
seeing the commonality between that surf guitar sense of melody

(03:04):
and synthpop sense of melody. To me, they have something
in common. And so for when when we started writing
for By the Way, I think I just I didn't
want to have any blues in my playing. Like if
Fleet Block brought in something that seemed bluesy to me,
even in a funk way, I didn't like it. Like
it wasn't so much I was trying to control flee

(03:25):
or anything. I just really didn't like, yeah, anything that
had that feeling. It was like just at that time
where I had landed really great blue song on the
new album by the way, right, yeah, carrying Me Home,
Yeah yeah. A working title was New Blues as you Remember,
but yeah, like you know, right after that on Stadium Arcadium,

(03:47):
I was really into blues and I had a new
take on it by that time. Like by that time,
I was playing along with Jimmy Hendricks a lot and
learn learning his improvised solos a lot, like in a
more detailed way than I'd ever learned them in my
whole life. I was listening to a lot of modern
R and B at the time, so I was listening
like Destiny's Child and Brandy, Brandy was my favorite, and

(04:10):
her sense of rhythm and her sense of melody that blues,
the blues that's in that I felt like I want
to take that feeling and combine it with Jimmy Hendrix's
guitar playing style, like to have Brandy be my basic
reference rather than like you know, Elmore James or whatever

(04:31):
the old things. You know. It made it feel fresh
to me, like and I was doing a lot of
what we were talking about last time, where you're you're
not playing straight across the bar, You're not you're not
on a gridge, you're not on a sixteenth note gridge,
you're kind of speeding up and slowing down and playing
because she was singing like that and really good, and
method Man was Woutang in general was rapping like that,

(04:54):
especially on their first couple of records, and so like
I was like obsessing on all that music and feeling
like I got to put this kind of rhythm in
my solos, in my playing and stuff. So like there
were times where I was like, because of the Frank Zappa,
you know, education, like there's one song we believe on

(05:15):
that album stage and Marcadium, and like I'm for a
lot of the reverse guitar part. I'm playing quintuplets, I'm
playing five against four, but I'm doing it in this
way that I'm hearing on rap records because when they're
doing it, they just have five words and they're going
to land on the one on the next bar, sixth word,
yeah and so and so like as long as you land,

(05:39):
as long as you punctuate what you're doing on the one,
you can fit any any amount of notes in between.
And that's what I was hearing in a lot of
this R and B and rap. So that's what sort
of got my excitement about incorporating blues into the band again,
that a new version of the blues, Yeah, a way
that it hadn't been played before. Yeah, So that started

(06:01):
with By the Way, where like and when By the
Way started, I had all these ideas for these certain
types of melodic things. And I was learning more about
chords than ever because I'm practicing piano for the first
time in my life out of songbooks. So and that
was affecting the way that I played guitar because I'm
seeing chords more clearly than I'd ever seen them before,

(06:22):
understanding the Beatles music better than I'd ever understood it before.
And Yeah, continuing to listen to the synthpop, also going
out to drum and bass clubs to dance every week.
So the song by the Way was the result of
having been a club the night before playing drum and
bass and sometimes jungle. Would going out dancing inspire the

(06:48):
way you played guitar, Yeah, exactly, Like how would that
work well the song at the end of that album
Venice Queen. Yeah, the way I'm just trying to play
get I mean, it's it's it's not like it's a
way that nobody ever played the guitar. I don't know
if I can do it justice right now. I'm not
super warmed up, but for the idea. But the song

(07:08):
has a whole intro it's slower, but then it has
a fast part that comes in and the rhythms I'm
doing on the guitar, if you listen to it, it
sounds like a jungle drummer, like improvising, Like it sounds
like the kind of stuff people were programming than like.

(07:42):
So it's particularly interesting about that, is the right hand,
I imagine it's right unusual, Yeah, the right hand I'm trying.
I'm I'm I'm basically there's more parts to it than
that where and see if I remember the chords where
I'm going even mart So like the way I'm playing

(08:28):
there is definitely I'm trying to play the way I
hear the drums at the drum and Bass Club. Yeah,
Chad's kind of just going. He's not really doing a
lot of ghost snares that I can tell. But but
I'm trying to play all those all those kind of
rhythms that because it's the chords are I can say

(08:51):
it's an ordinary chord progression. It's cool. It's a cool
ordinary chord progression, but the rhythm makes it sound like
very new, very different, right, and like it has a
who like energy. But you never hear beat Townsend playing
a rhythm like that, right, Yeah, like that's that that
would be a good comparison. But yeah, not that precise rhythm.

(09:13):
It wouldn't be that. No, it sounds almost like a
programmed rhythm, right yeah. So so yeah, so so that
was a big influence on it. And what's cool about that?
Like I never knew that, right, but it always sounded
interesting to me. I never knew why, right, But it's
like this doesn't sound like the who you know, there's
something else going on. I never stopped to analyze what

(09:36):
it was. Yeah, but hearing how it happened, it's fascinating. Yeah,
because I would go it was on Thursday nights. There
was this club, Concrete Jungle in Silver Lake, so I
would go there and dance all night. There was this
girl who used to go there with me, and yeah,
I'd just be dancing. So when I get to rehearsal, like,
I'd want to put that kind of energy into the

(09:56):
into the band. A lot of the time that was
just the rhythms that were going through my head. And
but when we started the record, as you remember, I
had to there was another side to it, like like
I wanted to do like I was really into The
Damned at the time, and I wanted to do like
I wanted to do punk, like in a way that

(10:17):
the band hadn't done it, you know, like I wanted
to do real punk, you know, like inspired by like
early English punk and stuff, and so I thought we
would do the My original concept was that we would
have like these sixties inspired melodic songs I was. I
was really into Discharge as well, I remember, and I

(10:37):
just that we would have like sort of straight punk,
not straight I don't know what you call it, but
just like real punk is opposed to punk inspired pop,
like I wanted to do like actual I was writing
songs that to me sounded like like actual punk. So
I thought the album would have this like you know,
start contrast between really pretty things and these punk things.

(11:00):
And at a certain point you said to me, the
punk things that you're bringing in, they're good, but it
sounds like I've it's I feel like I've heard it before.
These melodic things that you're bringing in. I feel like
I've never heard anything like it in my life. Yeah,
you know, so you definitely like guided me away from

(11:22):
from continuing in the pretty early on as I remember it.
But we had made we had written a bunch of stuff,
like there was there was a certain amount of Yeah,
I really loved the Damned, and maybe it was just
like I feel like I've heard this before, but I
had that feeling before, you know, like I didn't really
get gun some roses because I felt like I really
experienced this. This doesn't feel new to me. But a
neat thing to me about that album is that kind

(11:45):
of what we were talking about about the chords or
this implied thing that's underneath, but what Flee and I
are playing over them is something that that's separate from that.
That's how it was with musical styles for that album.
Like to me, there is a punk energy there in
the record despite that we never we're never going in
that sort of distorted you know, like obviously punk direction.

(12:09):
And at the same time, another sort of underlying aspect
was that every time there was a day of rehearsal
that Flee and Anthony couldn't go for whatever reason, maybe
there was a game or one of them was busy
with something, so we were supposed to not rehearse that day.
Chad was always up for rehearsing anyways. So me and Chad,

(12:29):
from time to time throughout the writing of that record
would get together. I'd just say to him, let's play
the whole first Black Sabbath album, and me and him
would just go there. And all he needs to do
to learn how to play a record is listen to
it while he's driving in his car on the way.
You know, he can just play it that. It's the
fact that it's drums. There's only so many drums. He

(12:51):
all he has to do is listen to it to
be able to play it. Like for guitar, you have
to do a little more like work. So we would
play whole albums of Black Sabbath, Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne.
We were doing Diver, Madman and Or at least we
were doing a bunch of the songs from that and
Blizzard of Oz, but it was just guitar and drums.

(13:12):
But we were doing these heavy metal rehearsals of Deep
Purple as well. We were doing whole We did the
whole album of Machine Head, whole album in rock like
so we were just pick an album and we'd show
up and we'd just play that whole album, not straight through,
like sometimes we'd have to stop so I could explain
that the arrangement, No, it does this part for this

(13:32):
long or whatever it is, because he hasn't focused on
it how I have. But like, but we'd get through
the whole album of all those things, and when I
hear that album, I hear that in the connection of
Chad and Mice playing like it's in there. It's not.
There's no there's no real heavy metal on the album,
but it's not an album by people who can't play

(13:55):
heavy metal, you know what I mean. Yeah, Like Chad
and I were really dialed into it at the time.
I always feel like it's cool to have things like that.
I feel like it seems like if you're good at
any aspect, even if it's not being demonstrated, it makes
what you're doing better. It has to, right, it has to,
and it has not only does it have to make
it better, but it it informs it in some way

(14:18):
that that can't be explained. Right. Yeah, No, totally. I
feel like it's it's magical to have things that you
can do that you're not throwing on the surface for
people to see. The way I play on that album,
it's it's a real synthpop based, a new wave based,
surf guitar based style. Yet at home I was playing

(14:43):
along with Van Halen and playing those solos like I
was probably never as good at playing Eddie van Halen
stuff as I was at the time of by the way,
and nothing, nothing like that. There's not a hint of
that in the way that I play. I feel like
it's in there still. There's a certain confidence between the
way that I'm playing those simple things that I'm playing

(15:04):
in a certain precision, in the accenting of things, and
in the rhythm playing. It's it's a lot of things
that I got from his style that just aren't the obvious,
you know, frontal parts of his style. So yeah, I
think I think it adds a magic to things when
there's something hidden. Yeah. What I don't remember is my

(15:26):
favorite song on that album, although I don't remember and
I haven't listened in a while, is that universally Speakings
on that album, isn't it. I like that one a lot, Yeah,
And that one has just a it doesn't sound like
any other chili pepper song, and it definitely sounds like
it's rooted in you know, maybe early sixties music more
than late fifties music. Yeah. I was just watching something

(15:49):
that made a comparison between two things that universally fits
into Oh okay, So they were talking about the first
song on Brianians. It's an album Here come the warm Jets.
It goes those you know, don't let it show, and

(16:19):
the drums are going and then waiting for my man. Uh,

(16:40):
it's the same rhythm basically when you put that. I
saw it on YouTube. Somebody had put those two things
next to each other and they said, look, the the
Ino song is obviously inspired by the Velvet Underground song,
and universally speaking, I don't know if I made the
connection the you know thing, but I was trying to
do something like Velvet Underground. I thought we should have
something that's just like a straight rhythm. All our songs

(17:02):
have these funky, kind of syncopated kind of rhythms to them,
like that would be cool if we had a song
that just had a real straight rhythm to it like that.
So I don't, you know, I don't remember specifically what song,
but it is the same type of rhythm as waiting
really interesting, So I don't I don't hear Velvet undergrounding

(17:23):
it at all, right, at all? Yeah, but yeah, for
in ours, it was a so that's partially like coming. Yeah,

(17:47):
I was definitely trying to do something that was a
Velvet Underground type groove what I saw as being their
type of groove. Yeah, and it's also the drumbeat if
I remember correctly, it's more like a motown. It's like
a I think you might have added a drum bot
might have, but it's definitely different than everything else we
ever did. It was. It's a really unique song, right,
and I think we might have obos on it too, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(18:11):
there's really cool orchestra stuff. Yeah. That was inspired by
Sunny and Share. Right from my perspective, is just like,
oh there's a sound on Sunny and Share, So I
never heard on anything else, Like maybe we can get
that instrument. That's so cool because I remember I remember
specifically trying to do a velvet like like thinking it
should be a straight rhythm like the Velvet Underground. But
I also remember you being the one who suggested that

(18:33):
drum beat. Yeah. Yeah, if I would have known we
were going for Velvet Undergroud. I wouldn't suggest that that's
what's so cool about it as well. That's what I
was saying, is that the EUMO song has that drum
beat of universally speaking, wow, Waiting for the Man has
that drum beat wow. Yeah. So so all three of
those songs have that beat. Yeah. I have a feeling

(18:53):
everyone got it from Motown. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, you're right.
Even though everything comes from the Velvet Underground, everything else
comes from the Motown comes before that probably comes from Motown. Yeah,
you know, totally. And that's really what Louid wished he was,
was a soul singer. I think I remember Anthony sang
that song different than all the other songs too. Yeah,

(19:15):
he's sang in a lower in a lower key than
he normally sings, like like a bassy voice. Yeah. So cool. Yeah,
such an interesting record. I know, there's so many there's
so many surprises when I listen to that record, like
after having not heard it from like, WHOA, how the
fuck did I do that? I didn't know anything about synthesizers?

(19:35):
How did I do that? That's so cool. Yeah, we'll
be back with more from Rick and John. After the break,
we're back with more from Rick Rubin and John from Chante.
I think there's something really fun about putting on instruments
you don't know how to play. Yeah, do you know, Like,
like it's the same reason that the first version of

(19:59):
a new style of music is interesting. It's because the
person who's making it doesn't even really know what it
is yet. Yeah, you're in the process of figuring it out.
You kind of you can never beat that, No, it's
so excited. Yeah, Yeah, it's a good argument to always
like pick up a different instrument and just get sounds
out of it. Yeah, it's my understanding. David Bowie when
he record records, he'd have the person still trying to

(20:21):
figure this out what to play, and he'd stopped them
at the point where they were just about to figure
it out. That's when he'd stop him. Like he'd be like,
that's when he caught what he wanted to catch. He
doesn't want to right before they figured it out, Like,
he doesn't. He didn't want the sound of it once
they're confident with it. He wants it just as they're

(20:42):
as it's just becoming clear to them. Yeah, that's the
group that he wanted to hear, you know, so he'd
often stop people like before they felt I think they've
only done takes. Would often would play a song once
or maybe twice before, and no one else in the
room had ever heard the song before. Yeah, so like
you played along whatever sounded right and that would be it. Yeah.

(21:04):
But again, like aside from the Velvet Underground, like that
that group where that the car is generally doing for
a lot of that song, like where where you're going
hard soft The Ramones like they have that in their music,

(21:28):
like over and over. It's a lot of fast down strokes,
but a lot of the time where these chords coming from,
because these are really interesting chords though, you know, you
tell me about the chords that universe is. Yeah, you know,

(21:52):
I was just playing along with the Beatles a lot
and learning all their songs and feeling more free with
chord progressions, and I'd ever felt like previously the stuff
that I've done on like Blood Sugar and Californication, it
felt more like formulas that I knew that progression works.
It's in a lot of songs. This chord progression works.

(22:13):
It's in a lot of songs. You know what I
mean this was where by the way, I'm starting to
sort of create chord progressions from scratch sort of, there's
not a yeah, it's not a it's not a formally,
it's almost like I started seeing chords as harmonies rather
than chord progressions, per say, So I'm I'm seeing it

(22:37):
as a certain kind of harmonic movement, and I'm starting
to do interesting what's called modulations, where like when when
I'm doing this, you're basically like in an A major thing.
We're still in an A major thing, but when I
go that chord is unexpected, that's all of a sudden

(23:02):
it has a B minor feel to it. When I
go to that G chord, I haven't even gone to
the B minor chord, but all of the sudden, you
get a minor even though it's a major chord that
I've gone to, you get a minor feeling when it
goes to that Gee. I'm starting to figure out things
like that that doing these kind of I was starting

(23:26):
to see these patterns that they used in classical music
and stuff, but comprehending what the idea was. Not taking
somebody else's pattern, but seeing, oh I see I can
instead of thinking of it as chords, I can think
of it as just general harmonic movement. The first two
of the chords of the Bram Bram is um also

(23:48):
I never again, I never heard it in the song,
but hearing it just like that played slowly, it reminds
me of the chords and the led Zeppelin song. I
don't know the name of the song, Bran Branne. I

(24:09):
think he's in a different tuning in that song, so
I can't play it. But like I was just playing
along with a couple of Beatles songs that I would
put in this category, like like um okay and you're
you know that and your bird can say, like it

(24:33):
sounds like it's gonna be one of those you hear
the first two chords, it sounds like it's going it's
not the same two chords exactly, that idea of where
where where you feel it's moving down, sending it in
a form that we're expecting. Yeah, and then but then
that g to be minor changes it. So but yeah,
that that that led Zeppelin song. Oh. I remember seeing

(24:57):
a YouTube video where a guy is taking apart one
of your guitar parts and he's saying that you purposely
detuned one of not not not that you changed the tuning,
but you de tuned one string slightly. And that's the
only way to play the song. That anyone who plays
a song and plays it wrong because the secret is

(25:18):
de tuning. Is that possible? That true? It wasn't unconsciously,
I just was out of tune. Yeah, like like it's
scar tissue that that's about. My guitar tech told me
about that, like like, uh, it was. It was a
fascinating video, right, yeah. Like like I guess you're gonna
you're gonna sound a little I get that all the

(25:40):
time when I play along with old blues records. Yeah,
a lot of the time. Like electric blues players, you
think that think they're playing different sixties. No, you just
have to tune your guitar to it because each one
of their strings has tuned a little a little different,
like Albert King and stuff like that. When you're learning
a song, you gradually figure out, Okay, his string is here.

(26:03):
You just try to match the strings for it to
sound like it's not for it to not rub. Yeah yeah, yeah.
So in that case, I guess one of my strings
was a little out of tune and it sounded good.
So nobody ever said like you would have been said
if it hadn't sounded good, you would have been the
first one. Yeah, but like clearly like it sounded good

(26:23):
because you know, like on synthesizers, like on the d
X seven, you can do these micro tunings where you
can have like a different amount of notes to the octave.
You know, you can have you know whatever, nineteen notes
to the octave or something, and so you have you
have notes in between what the normal twelve notes that
we all use, and there's a lot of good expression

(26:47):
in there by using these notes there in between, if
they're exactly in between in a precise kind of way.
And so I guess I was out of tune in
a way that really worked, you know, because that doesn't
sound out of tune to me. But yeah, it doesn't
sound out a tune to me either. Interesting, And next
time I listened to the Scar tissue, I'll listen for that. Yeah.
I couldn't remember what song it was, but the the

(27:09):
guy really went in depth. It was good. It was
a good Uh. It's so interesting people who get into stuff,
who can look at it in a much deeper way
from the outside than you know you weren't aware of
you made it, and you weren't aware of it, you know. Yeah.
I wanted to point out that. A lot of the time,
like because as we're talking about these things where something
was the source of I remember it as being the

(27:32):
source of something. A lot of the time it was
usually because I'm playing along with so many different things
at the time. I'll see a few songs that have
all the same thing in it in some way. Maybe
it's in a different key, maybe it's you know, but
I'll see some theoretical sort of theme that a couple
of songs have in common, and I'll just be like, oh,

(27:55):
that's cool, those have that in common. I'm gonna write one, Yeah,
you know what I mean. It's a lot of the
time and I might remember it as one being one,
but a lot of the time it's more in three
different songs like oh, I wonder what Yeah, And a
lot of the time because I notice it, like that
thing you're talking about where you're going, Like I'm noticing,
I start thinking like I must be noticing it for
a reason. I must be supposed to write something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(28:18):
Because it's generally the way my brain works. Yeah, me too,
Like I feel like if you hear the same thing
three times, it's like, hmm, yeah, something somebody wants me
to notice. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Should we look at some
guitar parts and some songs from the new albums? Sure? Fun, Sure,

(28:38):
let's do newest album first. We'll work backwards, okay, hopefully.
The first one I noticed was on my little list
was Eddie Well Eddie just Fleet came in. Fleet Fleet
came in with the bass bassline and and uh, and

(29:03):
I just started playing that melody. The part I wrote
in that song is the bridge. It's still interesting to
talk about how you hear what Flee's playing and what
you choose to play. It's fascinating because I don't think
anyone else would play what you played, right, It's just yeah,
he came in with that, with that bass line, and
I came in with the melody that remember do you

(29:24):
remember what you remember? What the bass line does? I know,
I know what the tonality of it is, yeah, but
I don't know. And basin, but that's the bass also

(29:45):
sounds more like a guitar part than a bass line,
because I'm playing I'm making up a guitar part that's
the chord. I know what he's doing basically implies in
F seven A G six and like I don't know
what he's playing. IM stand. One time we did a
sound check where Flee played guitar and I played bass. Yeah,
and we played Chili Pepper's songs. Yeah, it was so funny.

(30:06):
I bet it was great. It were completely different songs.
We you know, we didn't know. We didn't know. No,
Like we tried to play each other's parts based on
our conception conceptions, and neither of us had any idea
what enjoying. It was really comical. It's kind of cool though,
you know. I for it's my understanding that in the
Police they all knew how to play all the parts.

(30:28):
They could have switched instruments and done a show that
maybe that's just a fake. I don't know if that's
a good or a bad thing. I thought it was
pretty neat, just that they're that inside the songs are
I don't know, just weave together in this way. That
they're simpler than our songs for sure. But but like
I thought that was cool that somebody would would know it.

(30:49):
But like I'm incapable of playing bass, like Fleas. Fleas
are capable of playing guitar like me, so it's we
have a sort of a vague idea of what the
other one's doing. You know, we're good at listening to
each other, but yeah, I can't play like each other. Yeah,
and I love the way you can complete each other's
thoughts in like an this example, Flee came in with

(31:10):
the bass line and what you played with it is
not again, I don't believe it would be what anyone
else would play, and that combination is what makes it
sound like the Chili Peppers, you know. Yeah, and the
same when you come in with something what he chooses
to do, it never seems like the regular thing. Yeah. Yeah,

(31:32):
So Eddie van Halen, we we just found out that
he died, I guess that morning or the night before
or something. And then that was our first rehearsal and
that was something Fleet happened to have written. So that
was what was on all. If you write it on
bass or did you write it on piano bass? And yeah,
again the verse I think I was. We're again doing

(31:54):
that kind of thing where where we're in harmony to
each other. If you heard just my guitar part, it
wouldn't sound like the song the song, right, but but
it sounds like I was kind of thinking of part
of so part of the orchestration of the song. Yeah, yeah,
And I guess for Gods you must have had a
certain amount of things like that, because because that first
part it reminds me of for Godsy just when they

(32:16):
would sometimes do these sort of soft sections. I don't
know that's what I was thinking of when I was
making the guitar part to that, but I guess I'm
just doing that same thing that Plea and I've done
a bunch, you know. Well, I feel like it's part
of It's like, in some ways, it's become thus sound
of the band, even though it's still something to it's
a jump off point for it to do a lot

(32:38):
of other things. But it's a specific thing that you
guys do that I don't hear anyone else do. Right
In the same way, like Depeche Mode has a sound
that could be part of the Chili Pepper sound is
the way that the bass notes and the guitar notes
harmonized together to create a chord that is implied but
nobody's playing it. Yeah. Yeah, so that's what we're doing there,

(33:00):
and we just needed a bridge. So I think there
was a face off for a bridge, and do you
remember what it was? No, I just I just it's
the bridge to the song. Just had that idea, I
don't remember what. We would just all start by doing
hits all together go yeah. So do you have any

(33:39):
idea of why that occurred to you coming out of
what it's coming out of. Yeah, it just seemed like
the song had such a nice flowy thing, So I thought,
what would what would be good for a bridge? I
was thinking of Black Sabbath, even though there's no distortion
or anything obviously, but the contrast. But to have the

(34:00):
whole band do those hits together and leave these big spaces.
I just thought that was like a Sabbathy kind of
thing to do, which is we're that. That That was what
I was thinking because because I really wasn't listening to
Sabbath while we were for some reason. That's like all
the records in the Californication, I was always listening to Sabbath,
like this album, these two albums, I wasn't listening to them,

(34:22):
just as I was playing along with sometimes the first
two AUSI albums. But like I can't think of what
song or there is that that does that. But but yeah,
I just thought, like, have something where the whole band
is punctuating this chord progression, doing them as stabs altogether,
and then for the second half of the bridge play

(34:43):
it as a groove instead of stabs. Cool. And it's
cool that it the idea of looking for contrast in
a song that the most interesting thing that you can
do in the middle of a song that needs another
part is not necessarily the thing that obviously goes with
what came before it, right, Yeah, yeah, to do something

(35:04):
different like and it's also as I listen into these
chords by themselves, like I knew that if Fleet was
playing the roots of those chords like like that these
chords would sound good. They're they're they sound pretty like
partial like it sounds strange to have that open string there,

(35:25):
but but with the bass it ties it all together,
you know, like I and I had I had a
feeling that it would you know, also probably sounds weird
on acoustic but um bella, So yeah, there's a there's
a song. Um well, basically Fleet came in with the
verse to Bella and course I could find this, but

(35:50):
um hm, so this this is a song by a
group called Black Heat in two three four, five seven
one two three four, five six seven one two three four,

(36:16):
five six seven the it's a really cool funk groove
and it's in seven four, which is like and Fleet
came in when and that's just something that I'm into
because I collect that kind of music, and like, I
really I thought that was, you know, a cool song.
But Fleet came in with a funk groove and he
didn't realize it was in seven four. I was gonna say,

(36:37):
if you didn't count it, I wouldn't have realized that
was in seven Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly, such a good yeah,
it's such a good groove. Yeah. And so Fleet came
in with something in seven four, and I immediately thought
of that song. I was like, oh, this is great,
Like we can do a funk song in seven and
so work that out with the with the drums. Like
I've made a lot of my electronic music in seven four,

(36:57):
and my friend Aaron has made who I make electronic
music with, has made a ton of music in seven four.
So it's real familiar to me at this point. Like,
aside from the being into aggressive rock when I was
growing up, Like in the last twelve years, I've spent
a lot of time in that time signature. So I
was showing I was showing flee, like we'll see. There's

(37:19):
there's two main ways that you can break this up.
It can be a bar of four and a bar
of three, but how I hear this group is that
it should be a bar of three and a bar
of four, like, uh, the drums like being like one.
I don't know if I can play it and say it,
but one two three, two three four one two three

(37:44):
one two three four three four so cool. Yeah, So

(38:06):
it's just it's just that's why I like, nothing's it's
weird about it because three sounds pretty natural to people.
Four sounds pretty natural to people. It's just the two
ones next to each other. They just happened to add
up to seven, you know. Yeah, so we had that
groove and then the chorus came from just doing a
faceoff and yeah, I just went in the other room.
This maybe one of the ones. They's somewhere like I

(38:28):
don't understand the underpinning musical underpinnings, Like I don't know
that I didn't know that it was seven four and
I know then when I was working with Anthony on
the vocals, there were some cases where it's like, for
the sake of the vocal, we would try to shorten something,
and when you try to do an edit and it's
not the way you think it is, it creates havoc.

(38:53):
But we didn't. We didn't know it going in because
it doesn't sound like it doesn't sound like a weird groove.
It sounds like very straightforward. Yeah, until you try editing
it based on oh, the vocal is going to continue
hanging and it pauses. Then we come into the chorus.
Can't do it, you know, like it just it it
goes crazy. Yeah, And it doesn't make sense because it
seems so normal right until you try changing it. Right.

(39:18):
So yeah, and that's the same way that that Black
Heat song is. Their chorus is in four four, like
the rest of their songs in four four. It's just
that verse groove that's in seven And that's the way
our song wound up being as well. So really, you know,
Fleet hadn't heard the Black Heat song. I just knew
it it just the second I heard him come in

(39:38):
with a funk thing in seven four. I just thought
of that song and yeah, so it might be kind
of hard to play him this guitar, But yeah, was

(40:14):
it obvious to you that the in the chorus there's
an a half and a behalf, that the behalf would
be the lower half instead of starting with the behalf
and men doing me vocal. No, in what you just played,
not just an intonations that great, but oh yeah, that's

(40:43):
the way I do it. It's like, is that what
you're talking about? I think so right. I'm just you know,
I think ever since, by the way, time, like when
I write chord progressions, I'm thinking of it as almost

(41:06):
as if it were voices in harmony. Like so it's
it's there's a melody a lot of the time in
there that's being implied, you know, like when I play
that solo at the end, Yeah, I'm just playing what
I hear is being the melody that's already implied in
the chord progression. It's just you're hearing it with other notes,
so it so you don't hear it the same way.

(41:28):
But one of the ways that that heavy metal, you know,
Eddie van Halen playing wound up influencing, by the way,
was because there's a lot of chords on there where
I'm doing really difficult stretches to do everything I'm trying
to do between the chord and the melody that's weaving
in and out of the chord, and so there's a
lot of stuff that's like challenging guitar. Wise, if somebody

(41:50):
who doesn't play guitar hurt it, they or even somebody
who does play guitar, you might not think of it
as something that sounds difficult to play, but it's actually
a really awkward stretch, which edievan Halen was known for.
But it sounds like he's doing a big stretch because
he's doing sort of fancy lead playing and stuff. But
so to me that that chord progression is just sort
of me hearing chords more like a group of melodies

(42:14):
as opposed to a chord progression. So like if you
broke it down, it's a pretty simple common chord progression.
But between the ways that I'm inverting the chords and
the fact that Flees playing notes in the bass that
aren't that wouldn't normally be the notes that the bass
would do on those chords, a person with a good

(42:37):
ear for chords like me wouldn't necessarily know what they're
hearing because inversions are the thing that sort of an inversion,
meaning you turn the chord around. The lowest note in
the name of the chord isn't the lowest note in
the chord anymore. Some other note is the lowest note.
So it throws your ear off because it's like it's
like sliding let's say half an octave. If you could

(43:00):
play a chord in one octave, or you could play
it in an octave up, you're playing it in between
those two in between exactly. So like and so consequently,
with that kind of thinking, you can do you can
play chords that are actually far apart, but play them
so they sound like they're right next to each other.
So like if I went that actual if you went

(43:31):
by the chord name and just played the roots in
the right way, that would be like that's with no inversion,
but doing an inversion right next to each other. Yeah,

(43:54):
they're right next to each other. So you play little
games with that between. You can often do things like
the base stays on one note, but the chord is
moving because those two chords happen to have a note
in common, and it works for the base to stay
on one note. Even though the chord you're changing, just
little like tricks like that. That's what I noticed. The
Beatles did that a lot when we were making by

(44:15):
the Way, and so I just started getting really into
like sort of tricking the ear of the listener by
being clever with inversions and stuff. Super cool. I can't
remember the working title, but there's song on the record
called Roulette. Do you remember what the working title was? Yeah? Yeah,

(44:35):
So Roulette was that one that started here in the
studio in the other room where me and Chad and
Flee were playing and Flee's just playing like a funk baseline,
like he's playing some kind of funk groove, and then
I was going, yeah, so this one came out of

(45:12):
a jam in the room. Yeah. So we were jamming
and Anthony came up to me and he was like,
what are those chords that you're doing, And I said,
just Genesis type chords because that chord sequence that I'm doing.
The reason I'm able to write something like that is
because I've done a thorough study of Tony Bank's keyboard
playing in Genesis, and I know his style pretty well.

(45:35):
And so anytime I want, if somebody's playing, if the
bass is just staying in one basic tonality. If the
bass is just playing in one mode one key, I
can improvise chords all over the place really fast, and
stuff that modulate and that most guitar players wouldn't play
because it really is a keyboard technique. It's a keyboard. Yeah,

(45:57):
it's it's the mind of somebody who knows classical music
really well and understands that like like most guitar players,
you would never think if the bass players playing because
that chord regression actually has a G major chord in it,
you just wouldn't think if the bass players centered on
F sharp, you just wouldn't think that it's one of

(46:17):
the chords that you could play. But if it's got
a flow to it and it resolves in the right way,
you can, you know. And that's what Tony Banks playing
has taught me that. You know. That's even cooler is
that it's classical knowledge through a keyboard player transposed into guitar. Yeah.

(46:40):
I understand classical music better from learning Tony Banks stuff
than I do from any others. So it's amazing. Yeah,
he makes those types of modulations so apparently simple sounding,
you know, And do you think he's doing it if
you're guessing that it's an intellectual thought or it's just

(47:01):
this sounds good, Like I just know how to play,
and this is what I would play. What do you
think it's like a computation. Well, he definitely developed the
style gradually. Like the very first Genesis singles, he's not
playing that way yet. He was really into Keith Emerson
from The Nice who was doing classical things the in
like sixty six, he was starting to incord sixty seven.

(47:23):
He was starting to incorporate like classical ideas into a
rock framework, and Tony Banks just wound up with his
own way of doing it. But they Genesis had like
for a while they're progressive band, but then they had
hits where he's still playing in that kind of style.
He just really figured out how to Of all the
progressive bands, Genesis I think made the best pop music

(47:47):
when they decided to go pop, you know, And he
just had a really good mind for figuring out how
to simplify things. They're very complicated, you know, or that
used to be complicated before he did what he did
to them, you know, like something like they had to
hit this song called Turn It On Again that goes,

(48:10):
he's changing keys, but the bass isn't changing keys. It's
so fucking cool and and uh yeah, it's just an
example when you that songs in an odd time signature,
the keyboards modulating the bass is not. This is a
huge hit. When I was a kid, when I was
like twelve years old, I heard it on the radio.
I was like, whoa, what is that feeling? You know,
I never heard that feeling in a song before. At

(48:31):
the same time, my dad was a classical pianist, so
like I had a reference point for it, you know.
But that music spoke to just everybody. You know. It's
interesting when the complex can be presented in a simple
form and compete with something simple. Yeah, do you know
what I mean? It's it's it's interesting. And I again,

(48:54):
I don't I wonder if the people who are making
this are trying to make something complex sounds simple, or
if they're just playing music the way they hear it. No,
because he was Janesis made an effort to simplify, like
because because when Peter Gabriel was in the group, and
for the first couple albums after Peter Gabriel left the group,
their music is intentionally complex. And the songs are long

(49:16):
and and there's no there's no verse chorus verse type things.
Very rarely is there. And they just made an effort
to simplify. But he retained a lot of these aspects
of the essence of his style and he just made
it work as pop music. But there was definitely a
clear it was definitely clear that he at that point

(49:39):
he made an effort to simplify. But even in the
progressive stuff, compared to Beethoven or something, it's it's simple.
And he probably doesn't I get the impression he doesn't
think of his knowledge of classical music as being particularly broad.
But I think, you know, compared to someone like me,
it is so. Yeah, all through that early Genesis and

(50:00):
I say early, I mean Peter Gabriel era Genesis stuff,
he's doing things in that same style as he does
on that Turned It On Again song. It's just but
more long winded. It's not not as repetitive. It goes further.
We'll be back with the rest of Rix conversation with
John for Shante after the break. We're back with the

(50:21):
rest of Rix Conversation with John for Shante. We'll just
do one more song and it's not it's not a
recent song, but it's so I always loved of yours.
I don't even know where it is that well, we
don't have to go over the chorus of that, but
that Roulette is Lett has that chorus, but show me,
show me um. That's another kind of modulation thing. So

(51:18):
like the chorus, both halves of it and differently, but
both feel like modulations. You think you're just doing a
real simple chord progression that you've heard a zillion times,
but you don't expect this chord to come in and
that takes it somewhere else. That also you've heard a

(51:39):
million times and then and then, but you don't expect
them to be together, you know, and then and then
this time it ends differently. So again it's because modulation
is just when I'm writing chord progressions, it's what's interesting

(52:01):
to me, and especially that you can do it in
a way that doesn't sound like you're trying to be fancy.
David Bowie used to do it all the time and
really in ways we're really simple, and so a lot
of the time when I write songs, that's what's going
to make me think that something's interesting. It adds a
dramatic layer to it. Right, that's really interesting. Reminds me

(52:23):
of like sixties instrumental music. Yeah, and at the same time,
like punk songs because they're all major chords a lot
of the time, they're often doing modulations within themselves just
because of which major chords they're sticking next to each other.
Like it's not like it's just a thing coming from
progressive rock, and people who understand classical music like like

(52:46):
like that has a modulation. You would expect the like that,
you would expect the G to be a natural G.
But because it goes that's a modulation right there. It's
that last chord is a little like unexpected just because

(53:09):
that's a remote song there. But I'm just showing how
like three simple punk chords still have have the modulation
and then you can do it in really simple ways. Yeah.
The other song I wanted to ask you about was
the death song. Oh my song, dying song. Yeah right,

(53:29):
it's so good. Uh yeah, again, it's because I'm listening
to the Beatles. I'll yeah that that I'm that I'm

(53:51):
seeing how to go take these these chords that were
strange that I might not have understood, how to find
a context for Before that, I was starting to like
see how to use them. They sound normal when you
hear the flow of them. But there was a time
when I would just be like, I don't know what

(54:12):
to do with that chord. You know, After a while
I understood, Oh, okay, if if you're in a key
the whole step lower than that and you're just playing
a minor kind of predictable thing, that chord can work,
and then augmented chord can be. Yeah. I don't know.
I just that's that's written at the same time, I

(54:34):
guess is By the Way. It was like a four
track recording I'd made at that time, and you tried
to get the Chili Peppers to do it, and I
would and I wouldn't do it. Yeah. Yeah, So we
were so Yeah, we were in the studio for By
the Way, and you were like, why don't we do
it in the band? And I told you, like, no,

(54:54):
I have to keep my solo music separate from the band. Yeah,
like like yeah, because it was like, you wrote this
beautiful song, you write beautiful songs for the band. I
don't understand. Yeah no, But I, for some reason, I
had a clear in my head that when I when
I rejoined that, Like, once I realized that I could

(55:14):
write songs again, I was like, I'm going to keep
my solo music separate, like stuff that I write for
the band, Like basically it was anything I wrote lyrics
to was me my music, I see. So if I
was inspired to write lyrics to something, I considered that
my music. And if the idea was basically just a

(55:36):
chord progression or just a melody or just a riff
or whatever, then that was for the band. And if
the band was writing a record, I generally wasn't writing lyrics,
Like lyrics were something I more did on tour, right,
like like because I wanted to make sure that the
band got my best stuff, you know, while we were

(55:57):
writing a record. So but that was written prior to
having written, by the way I guess, or I was
also curious to see what the band version would sound like,
which I never got to hear. Yeah, I mean I
would be. It was sung in a kind of a
high falsetto voice, so it didn't really seem like something
that would be natural for Anthony and you were saying,
like switching to a different key, But it wasn't just

(56:18):
just like how I told you there was those certain
bands that I didn't play along with their stuff that
wasn't so much that I thought it would be a
good idea, to be honest, I was superstitious about it,
like like it came to me that it would be
a good idea to have a couple of things that
that you never play along with, since you play along
with everything that you like, just just leave that breathing

(56:41):
room for And it just felt like something inside me
was telling me to do that completely. And it was
the same with my solo music. It was like, to
keep your head on straight. You should have this music
that you do that's not a part of this machine.
You know, that's not a part of this personality, these personalities,
that's not a part of their career, that's not a

(57:01):
part of you know that you should have a side
of your musicality that's separate from all that. And I
think like in retrospect, it turned out to be a
good thing because I had I had a writing path
that never got it never got like mushed up with
the band and the way like it's like some people

(57:23):
like when the when the songwriter sort of is the band, Yeah,
you never you never got lost in the band. Yeah, exactly.
I think there was a fear of that, and there
was the desire to always know that I had a
place that I could go that didn't have anything to
do with with all the things around being in a
popular band. It was like a it was like having
a having a little sacred temple or something, you know,

(57:45):
just and so like you could you could have never
talked like you tried, but like you would have never
no matter how much you tried, no matter how good
your arguments would have been, nothing would have overridden. No,
I'm glad, No, I'm glad that that's the case. Yeah,
because I've been able to you know, not everybody who's
in a band's able to do that. I've been able
to have a sort of a musical several musical lives

(58:05):
completely separate from the band, without that ever interfere with
what I do with the band. I'm always able to
when I am playing with the band, I'm completely like
immersed in it. And it feels like now there have
been cases where like my Cigarette is a song that
started as a solo piece of music. I think that's

(58:27):
actually flee song it is. Yeah, so how did that start?
You remember the story of that. Flee made a drum
beat on his phone and then he played bass to it,
and he played a SyncE. He played a synthesizer over it,
and so cool and so yeah. Because my plan was
to have no drum machines, no synthesizers, I just wanted

(58:49):
to play guitar. Fleet brought that in and when we
did in the studio, I programmed all the drum machines
and synths and stuff. But I'm basically doing just the
better sounding version of what fleas doing, kind of like
what we were saying about Depeche Modes earlier demos. It's
just like I just programmed it more skillfully, like like, uh,

(59:11):
made better sense sounds and stuff. But Flee fully played
it on my d X seven, and I was turning
the sliders because I had I had made a sound
that I could sort of modulate in subtle ways while
while he was playing, so we were actually like both
at the keyboard at the same time, him playing it
and removing the sliders. When he did the basic U,

(59:31):
what is it that's my son's favorite solo on the
album something like that. Yeah, and so so yeah, so
like it's such a funny song. It's such an unusual song. Yeah,

(59:55):
some of the sense overdubs were things I thought of,
But even some of the overdubs were things like Flee
was sitting here and he was like, what if you
just have a part that does straight rhythm just one note?
And then I converted that into a into a synth
part on the modular. But yeah, there were other drum
machine things like Drown or the drummer started. It used

(01:00:18):
to be called Drown, and that started with drum machines
with at my house with me doing it and the
slow Rodeo song, and the Slow Rodeo one also was
drum machine at my house. But my studio got torn
apart because I had to move out of my house
just a couple of months into the writing. So I
thought we would do a lot more of that, like
do like weird electronic even after we'd written songs. My

(01:00:39):
idea was that we would do a weird electronic version
of it just to see what happens. Yeah, and it
could even be a part of the song. Yeah, that
you never know what you could wind up doing with
make weird electronic demos. But we wound up. I wound
up being basically homeless for the whole time we were
making the records, so I didn't really have a studio.
So I think those are the only songs that Black

(01:01:01):
Summer had a demo with a breakbeat did. Yeah, well,
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, you heard
it when we were recording it. We listened to it
and you talked to Chat. We were talking. You talked
to Chat about how to get the drums groove to
be more like the break being cool. Yeah, no, no recollection.
It's so funny. It's like it literally happens in the

(01:01:23):
moment and then it's like it never happened. I think
we realized we were playing it too fast. I think
the demo made us realize that we had to get
into a funkier groove with it. And it's not a
funk song, but it needs to have a sort of
a funk groove at the core of it. And I
think also because we recorded like fifty songs, yeah, it
was all blur. Yeah. Yeah. For me, I have these

(01:01:44):
memories because I'd been living with them for longer than you. Like,
Black Summer was the first thing I wrote for the
but still, like fifty new songs, it's impossible to grasp. No,
I couldn't get my head around each other. It was
so weird because like normally making a record, even when
we made Stadium where we had, you know, maybe thirty
songs or something, I was able when I was playing

(01:02:06):
guitar solos and overdubs to go, Okay, this will be
the one that I do this little trick on. This
will be the one that I play in this style on.
You know, when when you have less songs, you can
cover all your basses and you know, like, okay, I've
I've done I've done this thing that I do on
this one, I've done that thing that I do on
this one. When with this album, there was no way

(01:02:27):
for me to know what I had done. I couldn't
tell if I'd even repeated myself, like I had to know.
It's list so much information. Yeah, it's so much information. Yeah.
I was really relieved when I realized I hadn't played
the same solo on two songs, you know, or done
the same riffs on two songs, because it's it's a

(01:02:48):
It was just too many to have your head around
it once. Yeah, it's amazing. I still can't believe Anthony
wrote all those words. I know, I know. It was
like forty eight tunes. Yeah, yeah, four or five normal albums. Yeah, yeah,
that was done so much work and the words are great.
He did so good. I kept acting him to stop,

(01:03:10):
and I kept wanting to stop the writing process earlier. Yea,
like thinking, I don't want to overwhelm and these are
good songs. I want them to I want them to
write lyrics to them. I don't want them to get overwhelmed.
But we just kept writing more and more. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm I'm a big proponent of keep writing because you
never know, like you never know when the best song
is going to come. So if you stop, it's like

(01:03:33):
they don't always come. You know, you've never written this
many songs before, right, so it's we know it doesn't
always happen because it's never happened before. Yeah, but if
they're coming, you gotta get them. Yeah. Whether you decide
to use them now or not, it's fine, but when
they're coming, you gotta get them. Yeah, you won't write
the same songs that at another time. It's true, you'll

(01:03:57):
never write those songs again. Yeah, it's something that's come
from electronic music for me though, Like I used to
think of it like you're talking about, you know, And
now I just I think of it like kind of
like what we started talking about, Like I can make
songs to order, you know, like when Anthony liked that
that one chord progression that we used for Roulette, just

(01:04:19):
went my room that night and wrote a chorus to it,
or you know, or or when when I was thinking,
I think we need another heavy song and I wrote
that nerve flip, like like I just felt like that
sludgy kind of feel. I was like thinking about what
we had and I was like, we don't have anything
like that. And I was listening to Flipper and stuff,

(01:04:42):
and just like like, uh, I just listened to Flipper
the other day on my beat twalk. It was so
much fun. Yeah, So electronic music, the fact that I
can sit down and just start making breakbeats or just
start programming a drum pattern, just start making synthesizers, sounds,
not parts necessarily. Pretty soon a song just comes. I

(01:05:04):
just sort of I think of the guitar the same way,
you know, Like like when I stopped writing, I honestly
thought I was doing the best because I stopped writing
songs like three times when we were writing these songs, remember,
and it was and it was just like I just
felt that I was doing the best thing for Anthony
to have the best to give, to give the songs
the best chance of Anthony writing over them. Yes, and

(01:05:27):
I had no idea that he would, you know, write
forty eight full sets. I thought it would beware. They
were one or two left, and he's just like, I
gotta get him, Like I don't, he would say, He's like,
I don't really have an idea, but but he was
so wanted to get everyone because he loved them. It
was so beautiful and it was so it was such

(01:05:48):
a beautiful like outpouring from him, and the lyrics were
so good, like like it wasn't like he'd done an
assignment or something. There was so much heart, so much
self Like That's something for me as a rock songwriter,
like I've never been able to put my heart out
there so much as Anthony does, to put myself out there,

(01:06:10):
to make myself vulnerable to that degree. Some people might disagree,
but that's that's that's where I feel like my shortcomings
are as a lyricist of rock music. It's just like
Anthony has this rare talent of being able you you're
really in his head when you're hearing him. He's really
putting himself out there for you and making himself vulnerable,

(01:06:33):
heavy or sad, sad. It's unbelievable and it's not it's real.
It's like he's feeling it and we get to hear it,
like we get to hear what's in his head. It's unbelievable. Yeah.
When I started doing the backing vocals and really reading
the lyrics as opposed to just hearing them more to
hear what he's doing more so than what he's saying. Yeah, yeah,

(01:06:56):
Like it was intense, Like, like, God, him in good
shape for the road though, you know, five months or whatever. Yeah, No,
he's been kicking ass on the road. But yet. Do
you know that Negative Trend record that's Will Shotter, this
band before Flipper. Yeah, Oh my god, that's great. Yeah,
it's a single. It's really good, and his bass is

(01:07:18):
so good in it, and the songs are so good,
really like top notch punk songs on that. I remember
the name Negative Trend and I remember that they were
like a popular band. Yeah, that's his band before Flipper. Yeah,
and and yeah, his vibe is like all over it
and they're really good songs. One of the songs was

(01:07:39):
covered by an LA artist Rico Rick. I think covered Meadhouse.
I got to hang out with him in San Francisco,
was Rick Rick? No, Yeah, no, I know. Remember you
used to tell me that I reminded you of him. No,
you don't remember that. No. When when you came over

(01:07:59):
to my house, you brought the Flipper record with you
and you gave it to me, and you said, um,
I used to have this friend that was in this band.
He died. When I'm with you, I feel like I'm
with him, I see. And that was all you said.
I And you wanted to see if I liked the record.

(01:08:20):
I put it on. I'd never heard it before, and
I love that. This is great. But I never knew
what you were talking about. And I've always wondered that
thing that you were seeing in me, that you related
to him. Was that gone by the time Californication? So
that was only me at that time, right? So yeah,
And it's just a spiritual thing, not a not It

(01:08:42):
wasn't was it something about how we looked was it
had nothing to do with physical right? Nothing physical right?
It was more of the energy, right, Yeah, And it
may have had to do with practices at the time. No, no,
because I wasn't doing hero I'd never done Heroin at
that time. Yeah, I don't know. It was just an
energetic feeling of just like like that there was something

(01:09:04):
else going on. Hard to explain, right, hard to explain. Yeah,
that should have was going on in my head, and
I'm sure other people experienced it, but it was really
just impossible to explain to people what's happening. Sometimes I
used to think, like, because you know you get goose
pimples like on your arm or sometimes on your head,

(01:09:26):
it was like they were in my brain. It was
really like strong reaction to everything, not just pictures. It
was all kinds of things. It was really intelligent voices.
It was those things like goose pimples in my brains.
It was just these explosions of like movement of shadow
and light and things like that that had this form

(01:09:47):
that not only did they inspire me when I was
making music, but like when I made music, that changed
the picture. So whatever I did change the movement of
the shadows, and you just had to sort of stay
a line with it. And it's one of the reasons
that I was able to do something then that I've
never really been able to do since, is play totally
fucked up and wrong and have it sound right. Yeah.

(01:10:10):
I could do it if I stayed in connection with
that stuff, those patterns in my brain. And ever since,
you know, I regained all kinds of talents and more.
But that was something I've never really been able to
be that like out yes and sound good, sound sound

(01:10:31):
like yeah, like I'm doing that on that first solo
record of mine that you released, And I've never been
able to play like that since. And he has that
in his bass playing, like even on that negative trend
stuff there, these are punk songs with real clear chord progressions.
He's playing wrong notes and they sound so right, Like,

(01:10:52):
they sound so perfect it would ruin the song if
it didn't have them. Yeah, I just sometimes people have
some tripped out way. Yeah, it's a different connection. Still,
you're you're showing me examples today on the guitar where
it seems like it shouldn't work right, you know, it's
still it doesn't make sense. Yet in the context of

(01:11:14):
the song, it sounds beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I looked for
stuff like that, but yeah, it's done with a much
more organizational part of my brain than what that was.
That was just like whoa, what's happening in my head? Okay,
and you think it's not luck, it's something else. Oh
back then, Yeah, Luck is connected to whatever that was.

(01:11:36):
It was happening part of it, but it's not the
whole story. I'm saying. Whatever the power was that was
putting that made it possible for my head to be
that way that it was then has something to do
with luck as well. It's like it controls the universe
or something. Because I stayed connected to that thing all
through the years of being on drugs. And there was

(01:11:56):
one morning I woke up and it had always told
me I was safe, that I could do anything and
I'm not going to die. And I tested it. I
came very close to dying many times, always got through it,
got close to being arrested many times, never had a
fear of it, and never got arrested. There was one
morning I woke up and the voice said, your luck's

(01:12:16):
run out. If you go out and buy drugs today,
you're going to get arrested. And I got arrested that day. Wow, yeah,
Like so what you know to be able to do
something unintentional and random and have it just work out
just because you're seeing something in your head or something

(01:12:38):
has something to do with why some people go their
whole lives and never break a bone and other people
injure themselves all the time. All I know, I don't
understand it. I just know there's some connection between whatever
that was that was my state of mind, was those
things that were happening in my head that I couldn't
explain to anybody, and that I still can't really explain.

(01:12:59):
There's some connection between that and luck. And I love
the idea that it told you like you had a
sense of complete confidence when it was appropriate. Yeah, and
it told you, it warned you, Yeah, and it was
it was true, it was right, yeah, wild, Yeah, it's wild.

(01:13:22):
It was really weird. There's so much we don't understand.
I know, if there's one thing, But if there's one
thing I've learned from all that that I went through
and in that first half of my life that I
that I can't explain, it's that I don't know anything. No,
none of us do. It's the mistake people make is

(01:13:43):
that they think they know. Yeah, and we just don't know.
It's why whenever I hear people getting strongly opinionated about things,
where if I've ever had the misfortune to go through
a period where all of a sudden I've learned about
some new subject and I'm getting cocky about it and stuff,
I always know I feel it in my heart like
this is wrong. Like like we you you sometimes have

(01:14:04):
the illusion that you understand things, and it's really a
mistake to believe to take too much pride in that
or to to get too cocky about it, because you're
you're just seeing a little fragment of the big picture,
you know. Yeah, And that's I think that's all we'll
ever see. All we get to see is a little
a little piece, and that's that little piece that we

(01:14:26):
get to see is enough to keep us going. Yeah, yeah,
you see, you see what we all are seeing everything
we need to see to be you know. And it's
like I think it's like a magic trick where I
don't know that if we knew how it worked, it'd
be better. No, I'm sure that that it wouldn't be better.
I'm sure it would be a lot worse and worse
than people could ever imagine. People strive their whole lives

(01:14:49):
to try to figure it out, understand things, and there's
there's there's no way I can say it other than
straight to you like that. I saw. I saw the
big picture of it several times. I was showing it.
I see and and and it's way worse. Yeah. It's
just like like we we tend to pick on certain

(01:15:10):
things about the world is being imperfect. Yeah, and we
don't know what imperfection is. It could be so much worse.
Life it's so good. Life is so good. I'm very
thankful to be here. Yeah, I mean too thankful to
be here. And I'm thankful to be here with you.
It's the best. Yeah, I'm so thankful to be here

(01:15:31):
with you too. Well. I feel like we still learned done,
but we have to do. We get to do another
one one of these days. It was so good. It's endless.
You never know where it's gonna go. Oh, thanks so much.
I love talking about stuff. I mean I love hearing
about the music stuff, But the the tangents are so interesting,

(01:15:56):
Like I'll be up all night thinking about what we
talked about. Right, I love it. As you heard, Rick
and John will be back with more conversations soon in
the meantime. If you haven't heard the other episodes in
the series, picture to check those out, including episodes with
the rest of the band promoting unlimited Love from back
in April. You can hear all of our favorite red

(01:16:18):
Hot Chiecopper songs on our playlist at broken record podcast
dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
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(01:16:39):
Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is
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