Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / John Frusciante Returns, Part 3

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John Frusciante Returns, Part 3 · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. We're back with a third episode and our John
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Fruschante returns series. Over the last couple of months, Rick
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Rubin and John Fushawnte have the Red Hot Chili Peppers
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: have come together to tape an ongoing series of conversations
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: that dives deep into John's philosophical and practical approach try
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to music and playing guitar. If you haven't heard the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: previous episodes, I highly recommend going to check him out. Today,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: we'll hear John talk about his love of electronic music
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and how he struggled to fall back in love with
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: guitar based rock before recording The peppers latest set of albums.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: He also talks about the process of making Californication, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: near the end of the interview, picks up a guitar
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to play through some of his most well known guitar
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: parts from that album. This is broken record liner notes
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond is Rick Rubin
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and John Fuschante from Shango La. Have you ever taken
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a principle that you've learned in painting or from another
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: art form and brought it into music. I think so,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: but but you know it's it's it's not specific, not conscious,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: not that I can think of anyways. But those years
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that I was just painting and drawing and writing in notebooks,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: that's what made me see how I could make music again,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: because I thought I was done making music. But it
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: was through doing that and realizing that I was realizing
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: what I was incapable of in that that I was
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: capable of in music, like what I wanted to do
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: with that I couldn't do. I didn't have enough technic,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Like I didn't used to appreciate the technical, theoretical and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: all that. But once I realized what I wanted to
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: do as a visual artist that I couldn't do it
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in visual art, it was real clear that I could
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: do it exactly that in music. And do you think
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it's because you've spent so much time practicing music before?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Is that why that was? That's why like like had
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you started as a painter, Oh yeah, then I would
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: have had that technique. So it's really just the time
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: in commitment, previous commitment. It was strange because I just
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I did so much in terms of the thinking, in
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: terms of theory and technique that by the time I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: found myself as a guitar player that what I thought
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I was doing was forgetting about all that stuff. Yeah,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: And when I painted, I continued to just be free.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And then when I realized the things I saw in
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: my head, I wanted to be able to do, and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I knew what aspects of whose styles I wanted to combine,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have the technical ability to do it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And I thought, God, with music, I can do that.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: If I want to make something that has like the
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: melodic sense of this person and the rhythmic sense of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: this person, and the you know, the sound is this person,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I knew how to do it. Is that all art?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like maybe it is like all art is
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: all of the different things that we've taken in and seeing, Oh,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: this aspect of what this person does is really interesting,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and this aspect of what they do is interesting. Yeah,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and this aspect of what someone else is interesting, and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: no one has put those together before. And that's a
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: that's a new form, and it's probably the lineage of
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: art has always been built on things of the past,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: shown in a new way that we've never experienced them before. Yeah.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: In playing along with other people's music, I constantly noticed
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: that somebody's taken one part of one thing and another
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: part of another thing, and they're together. And I don't
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: know if the things were conscious, but you see it
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, I figure there's just so many combinations,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: and so we're just spinning them out and we get
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: them from different places. And sometimes I imagine it happens
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: by mistake, where you'll be playing in one style, yeah,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and then a mistake will lead you into a different style.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: But it works, and then it's like, oh, these two
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: styles go together. And I wouldn't have consciously thought that. Yeah.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Do you remember when you heard that Joe Jackson song? Like,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: did you hear it? Within a year of right? I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: was just listening to that record a lot. I mean
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I knew I was really into his music when I
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: was growing up, like, and I was into him since
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I was a little kid, like since I was like
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: nine or something. But what's interesting is that, for whatever reason,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: at that moment in time, you were going through a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Joe Jackson phase. The world was not going through a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Joe Jackson phase in that moment. No, yeah, you were,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and that was the information that allowed you into a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: new thing. And I feel like that's where the magical
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: part of it isn't that it comes from the Joe
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Jackson song. It's that why were you listening to Joe
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Jackson then? And the theory would be because it had
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the information you needed, even though that's that's not why
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: you were looking for. Do you know what I'm saying?
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: You weren't listening to it as a reference material. You
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: were listening to it because you liked it. No, particularly
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: like that record at that time, Beat Crazy that it's on.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I was listening to it a lot. There were certain records.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I was really into the new George Michael record as
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: well that listened Without Prejudice Volume one. When we were
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: writing Blood Sugar, I was listening at all the time,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: like they were just examples of pop music where somebody
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: was going in a direction that was different from what
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: they were known for. Like Joe Jackson did that even
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: more on his following album. But on that album there's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: certain things on it. He has this song called One
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: to One that's like a ballot, a really strong kind
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of ballad song. It was just different than the kind
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: of power pop. You could tell he was he was
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: trying to go in a different direction. So I don't
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: know if it was conscious, but it was definitely worked
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: out to be related to what we were doing as
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: far as you know, with Blood Sugar, Like, I'm sure
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: it wasn't conscious. And that's what's interesting. It's like that
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: that the way we live in the world impacts the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: things that we make. Yeah, you know, the way we're
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: paying attention, what we're paying attention to, yah works its
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: way in. Yeah, it's like and it often seems like
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: it's the other. We think of causality, that the one
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: causes the other, and in actuality, yeah, you often get
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the sense that it's the other way around. That you
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: were listening to that thing because you had to write
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that song. Yeah, like just to point out for people
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: as far as the space, like the difference is what
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: would be the regular way it would have been like this,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that's the normal, Yeah, that that would have been the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: first ends and you go into the chorus and everybody
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: plays on the one. But but because of that song,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just that I wanted the guitar part to go.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I wanted Chad to do it with me. I wanted
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Plea to do it with me, you know what I mean,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Like like Anthony's the only one who's saying something on
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the one, which is different from the Joe Jackson, where
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the vocal and the music all are on the two
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: of the bar. So I had that realization that it's
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: just space basically that I was it's fascinating and interesting
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: where where these things come from? And it could have
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: also happened in an unconscious way. Like in this case,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it's conscious because you know that it happened, but it
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: also can happen on an unconscious level, where just depending
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: on what you're listening to, there's something that your mind's like, oh,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that's interesting, and then lady, you're writing something, it's like,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: oh that's interesting. Do you know what I'm saying? Without
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: it being conscious, it can still happen and it's not
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: trying to rip anything off. It's like we are made
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: of the things we listen to. Yeah, that's how it works. Yeah,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: that's all we're made of. Yeah, it's not like there's
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: other stuff we're adding on top of what we hear.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying. It's like our bank,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: our reference bank, our files are whatever we heard that
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: somehow got stored, whether we knew it was getting stored
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, Joe Jackson's an interesting artist also to
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: talk about, just because even in punk times, I felt
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: like he was an outlier, like he wasn't like anyone else. Yeah, No,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: his story's really interesting. He wrote a really interesting book.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: It basically just goes up to where he started having
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a career, and he had a real strange life up
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: till then, Like he went to a music school, Like
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: he was reading Beethoven scores when he was a little kid,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: like playing in cover groups to make money and pubs
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: for years, and had an opportunity to get a record
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: contract and had a clear concept of how the band
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: would look, what the style of music would be, what
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the songs would be. He had a very calculated approach
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to being a part of what wound up being like
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the new wave, you know, post punk world. But I
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: think wrote some of the best pop songs of the time,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and really, like his book only goes up to that point,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: but it's real. You can't imagine that person winding up
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: doing that. But he had a really good idea about
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: how to fit in with what was going on at
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the time. You know. Interesting. I think the Police were
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: kind of similar. I think they were such good musicians
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that what they were playing was a calculated thing based
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: on what was currently going on in England at the time,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: what was cool at the time, and it could either
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: be calculated or when you're a kid and there's a
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: new music movement and you're into it, it's not unusual
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to morph into it. I know that in my case,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I was really into punk rock and then hip hop
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: came along and I didn't like punk rock any less,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: but there was this momentum around hip hop and it
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was fun to be part of this other new music
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: scene that seemed related because they were both about not
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: being able to play really, you know, they were both
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: more about the content than the virtuosity in both cases. Yeah,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: but there were you know, some people were calculated at
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the time because the punk thing was this new thing
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: and it's real crappy music. And in the case of
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the Police and Joe Jackson, their music has tons of heart.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: It's really good music, you know, Like, but I think
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I've heard from quotes of Sting and from Joe Jackson's
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: book that it really was like I could do anything
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: that I want to do, Yeah, but I'm gonna do
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: this specific thing mixed the reggae rhythms with the faster
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: punk rhythms like you know, but make pop songs out
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of that, like you know. And in Joe Jacksins case,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: he wrote all the parts for everybody in his band.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: There was no He approached it like a composer where
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: everything was written, like like Frank Zapper or something, where
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: like he tells each person exactly what to play. I
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: didn't mean to speak disparagingly about it being calculated because
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: something like The Monkeys was a group that was put together. Yeah,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and I love the Monkeys and I love those songs
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that yeah, yeah, And there's not a right way to
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: do it. It's whatever yields something that you like to
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: listen to is fine. Yeah. It's funny how some people,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: you know, like I think Lou Reid's songwriting style that
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: he did in The Velvet Underground, a lot of it
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: came from that he was working for that Pickwick record
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: company where he's just writing songs on a similar to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: like a Tin Pan Alley type situation where they've just
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: got a lot of writers. They say, write a surf song,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: write a motorcycle song. You're just sitting there all day
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: cranking out imitations of these trendy things from that time.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And I think when he wrote songs like Heroin or
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Waiting for the Man, he's taking an idea for a
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: song and approaching the writing of the song in the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: same sort of calculated way, like that this song is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: about motorcycles, this song is going to be about Heroin
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: being a junkie, you know what I mean. Like, I
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: don't think without that experience of writing songs on an
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: assembly line that he would have ended up writing those
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: types of songs that he did. And probably the same
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: for the way Andy Warhol eventually made art where it
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: was more of a He had the idea for the
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: piece and then it would be crafted essentially by the
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: people because it would be silkscreened or something. Maybe in
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: some cases he would do the silk screen himself, but
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: it didn't really matter because it was more the idea
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of the silkscreen piece and the composition. Yeah, so he
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: composed it, but he didn't have to physically manufacture. Yeah. Now,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that idea of music being manufactured, this is inherent in
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the whole, our whole what pop music is to us
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: and how it was created. It happened hand in hand
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: with the manufacturing of records and hand in hand with
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: the selling of sheep music as a product. Like like
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: pop music, it changes styles, but it doesn't change its
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: basic form. It comes from these things what existed before that.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think has any real direct relationship to pop music.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: The folk music and stuff like that. Even folk music
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: that we think of as like folk music from the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: sixties on pop folk, yeah, is really all derivative of
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: old folk music and sort of like appropriated from the past, yeah,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: but presented new to us now we look back at
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: sixties is like that was the folk revolution, but it
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: really was the folk revival, Yeah, into the recorded medium,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: which was a completely different thing. But Yeah, I've always
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: been real conscious every time we've made a record. I've
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: always been as we're moving towards making the record, my
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: mind is thinking what am I going to play along with,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: which means what am I going to listen to? Because
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I sit around playing along with CDs the way a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: lot of people might sit around reading the newspaper or something.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: It's just it. That's how I relax, And I'm just
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: well aware that the final thing is going to carry
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: aspects of those things in it. But the fun thing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: is not knowing what but seeing how where where my
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: imagination is leading me. It is what things am I
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: excited about, what things are giving me intense feelings, and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: also making sure that there's some kind of variety where
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the things have a contrast with each other. It's like, well,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: how am I going to put those things together? But
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: it's got to be things that I picked that I'm
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: excited about it. I wouldn't be able to do it,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: but it was somebody else's idea on assignment, You couldn't
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: do it. That's it's more just like it's what you
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: happen to be into. And I know, for anything, if
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you're going to do a deep dive into anything, I
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: don't know how it's possible to do unless you're really
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: into it. It's not possible. Yeah. Could you imagine listening
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: all day to music that you didn't choose to listen
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: it'd be crazy making Yeah. Yeah. Actually, when we started
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: making the new stuff, I sent everybody a ton of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: music and dropbox, you know, and like, I don't think
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: anybody listened to anything. Like everybody's got their own ideas
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: about about what they need to hear to get them
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: through a career. Yeah, and that's great too, because in
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a way. What makes a band great is not everyone
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: being on the same page. It's being able to come
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: together on a page. Yeah, but with everyone bringing different,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: you know, aspects of themselves and what's exciting to them,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: yield something more interesting than what a solo project would be. Yeah.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Just those combined energies, you know, amplifying something bigger. Yeah. No,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's like, It's like I know that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: no matter what that combination of things that I'm listening
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to is, I can't predict what aspects of it are
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: going to be a parent by the time everybody else
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: has done their contributed their part to it. Do you
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: ever play along to non guitar based music? Yeah? And
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: what does that look like? How does it work? You mean? Example?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: And what would you play? Lots of things. I've had
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: periods where I'm like figuring out the harmonies to Beethoven
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: and Wagner and things like that, where if I'm listening
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to it and I have a and I can see
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: in my head how I would how I could approach
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: some of the harmonies in it and get some kind
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: of conception of it. I do that, but more often
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I guess, since I was a kid, I used to
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: figure out like the heads of jazz tunes and stuff
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: like that. But in my adult life, like in the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Chili Peppers, I think the thing I've probably done the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: most is play along with synthesizers. Whether it's like I
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: know how to play all the synth parts on all
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the Depeche Mode records from like from their first album
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: up through like ninety four, Like I know every little
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: melody that comes in, I know how to play it,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: so I can just play along with the same song
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: like four or five times, and every time play it
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: differently because I'm playing with different group of parts. And
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: so yeah, Like there's lots of synthpop that I play
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: along with the synth parts too. There's lots of electronic
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: music and rave music that I play along with the samples,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: or I play along with the synth part or the bassline.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: So I've done a lot of that. I've also done
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of playing along with hip hop. When we
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: were making Stadium Arcadium, because it was so simple, I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: would I would play it on bass because there was
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of bass, Like bass was there and the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: stuff I was listening to more than other more than
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: melodies were. And when I play bass along with it,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I'd just play with my pinky because I was trying
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: to strengthen up my pinkie, so I'd do the whole
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: thing with just the one finger, with the weakest finger.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And then there's certain things that I just make a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: conscious effort. Okay, I'm not going to play along with that.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I can usually see in my head how you would
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: play along with it. But it's nice to have a
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: couple of things you just never play along with, ye
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Like I used to really like Rim at the time
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: that we did Californication, but I had a rule for myself.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I just never played along with them. And at the time,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, I really liked the band Hannary Rocks
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a lot. I was listening to them a lot, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I never played along with them, Like I just didn't
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: want to do it. Hannah Rox was an interesting out
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: of time band. Yeah yeah, because they're just they're more
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: like a post glam thing. They're they're not really like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: a too late to be glam yeah and too early
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: to be a hair metal yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: always thought I like them since I was a teenager.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: There was just like there's something really fun about their music.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: To me, I like the bands that don't fit anywhere there.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: There's always something interesting when either a band it's part
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of a scene that they don't really belong in, Like
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Joe Jackson would be an example. It's not obvious that
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: he belonged in that scene, even though he was popular
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: in that scene, or where there is no scene associated.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: We're just sort of a fringy thing, like I think
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of them, or albums that don't sound like other albums
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that The Love Forever Changes album It's one of my
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: favorite albums, and I don't know any other albums particularly
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: like that. It's so nothing sounds, it's so good, and
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: it's one of a kind, like how come there's not
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: fifty more like that in the wake of that. Yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: it's just a singular thing. Yeah, there's a lot. Jungle
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: is probably my favorite kind of music, and I collect
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: it and the stuff from like ninety two to ninety six,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and every so often there's a song there's musical style
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: of it. It's there's not one other song that's like
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: that one song. You find these weird. A lot of
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: it's similar to each other in certain ways, and then
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: there's certain songs that somebody could have nab that and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: it could have become a trend, but it just never did,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and so it just it just winds up being this
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: one obscure song that doesn't sound like anything else. That's
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: also when you're into something, you notice those differences more.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You know, to somebody else that forever changes might just
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: sound same. Is like a folk rock many other folk
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: rock album. You know, like when you really like something,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I feel like you wind up zoning into the details
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of it that make one thing this similar. Do you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: decide on a new for you old genre music to
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: dive into deeply? At times? Does that come up where
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: like I'm going to really research a particular style of
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: music only if I'm excited about it. Yeah? Yeah, Do
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: you remember the last one? The last one and the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: only thing that's popping into my head is ghetto house
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: from Chicago? Like it developed into a style called juke
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and then a style called footwork. And I was really
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: into footwork when I first heard that, but I wasn't
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: aware of the ghetto house that it had come from,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: that the people who made footwork had been listening to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: when they were growing up, you know. But I mean
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I got into it like ten I don't know, seven
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: years ago or something like that. Is it a blend
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of rap and house not rap because it's it's repetitive
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: and the lyrics are generally kind of funny, dirty sex lyrics.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But one sample of something repeated, so it's spoken. It's
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: not really rapping, but it's it's because there's no flow. Really,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: it's just a sentence or a phrase that keeps getting
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: repeated over and over and over. It comes from Chicago
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: house music, so you have like Chicago acid and then
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you have this label dance Mania that there was a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Chicago label that kept developing as the music was developing
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: at the time, and ghetto house was one of the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: things that developed into And there's nothing fancy about it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It's it's like a real simple version of funk. It's
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: like an electronic it's real. It's a really strange kind
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: of electronic funk that's very minimal. It'll usually be like,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you know, a baseline, a simple drum part, maybe one
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: simple sent melody, one sam bowl. They get a lot
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of mileage out of very little. And I'm so in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: with my electronic music. I'm so into being fancy that
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy listening to people who can who can
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: say so much, so simply and with so little effects,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: so little programming, to have a loop that feels good,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: that's just one bar going over and over, but it's
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: really funky and you want to hear it over and over,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: or a sample that you want to hear the same
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: sample over and over really hard. Yeah, And for them
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: it came naturally. So it's fascinating music for me to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: listen to. So, you know, I feel like joining the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: joining the band again. This time it was really sort
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: of about going back to I was trying to figure
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: out what out of rock music would I'd be interested
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: in now because I just listened to this, you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to I'd be on a drive home from the dentist
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and I'd listen to the Rolling Stones, and I'd think
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I was really cool. I used to make meaningful kind
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of music like this with the band, you know, like
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: as much as I love electronic music, there would be
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: certain things, whether it was like Peter Hamill and Vandergraft Generator,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: or I'd listened to a record now and then and
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: it just had a certain sort of meaningfulness, like sometimes
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: like makes you cry or it gives you chills. In
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: this way, that's a different feeling from what I get
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: from electronic music, and that feeling of vulnerability and the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: of the human being that's doing it because you don't
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: have the machine in between. But I didn't specifically, I
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: wasn't obsessed with any rock music in particular. I would
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: just listen to this now and then you know or that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So when I rejoined, I had to start start to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, what out of rock music would I
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: actually be like I want to hear over and over
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and be excited about, you know? Was it? What was
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the thing that not too many things like, I know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: fifties music really, yeah, fifties was the thing that was
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the thing that in general was the most exciting to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: me when I rejoined this time was just like because
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: because of the purity of it, and because because of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the feeling that it was new in the state of
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: mind I was in. All other rock music after say,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: like nineteen fifty nine sounded to me like a fake
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: version of the real thing. It was only the things
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: from like fifty six through fifty nine that sounded authentic
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to me. I think ac DC felt that way the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: whole entirety of their career, right like music ended sort
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of with Chuck Berry, like everything past Chuck Berry doesn't matter. Yeah,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I'd never seen it exactly from that perspective until whatever
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that was twenty twenty that started playing together and I
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: started and I started writing music with them. I was like, Wow,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the only rock music that really that does the same
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: thing for me that electronic music does emotionally is the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: fifties stuff, because because it's the same with electronic music,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I like my favorite thing or when a style has
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: just blossomed, when it's when when when they've just come
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: across a certain way of doing things and a certain
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: kind of spirit and emotion and style. I like it
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: for that first two or three years that they're doing it,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and then I don't like it. I then I like
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: whatever the thing was that came a few years after
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that where somebody was influenced by it but was doing
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: something completely different. Generally, I'm not saying that's one hundred
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: percent true, but that's generally how I my taste is
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: with electronic music. I like a particular style for like
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: three I would say that's true for all music, not
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: even just just electronic music, because like, I'll get interested
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: in something and then once it becomes regular to me. Yeah,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: it's less interesting, right, yeah, when you when you can
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: expect what people are going to do. But there's a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: certain freshness that comes from Wow, nobody's ever sounded like this,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you know, because there was great R and B in
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the early fifties, But like, but that thing that Elvis
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: was doing, there's not somebody else that sounds like that
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: before him. Yeah, he's influenced by things, but what that sound,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: what he was doing with his voice, the way those
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: musicians were playing together, those precise kind of rhythms. There
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: just wasn't something that sounded like that. So if you're
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: studying what came before and you're and you're familiar with it,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and then you hear that, you can see, wow, you
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: can put yourself in the time and place of what
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that would have felt like at the time. And Buddy
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Holly's songwriting and stuff like that. It was just and
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the way Johnny guitar Watson played guitar like where it's
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: distorted and mean and fucked up, sounding like like nasty.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Before him, I don't know if I know a lot
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: of like electric blues players who like who were playing
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: before him, Nobody was that nasty is that like it?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: It's really there's there's a there's a few people Clarence
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Gaymouth Brown and who who was going for a while
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: before Johnny Guitar watch him and I guess he got
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to a point where he was having a similar kind
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: of nastiness. But but yeah, there's these certain certain things
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: when they first come up. So I was so into
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: those kind of players that stuff like Cream and the
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Yardbirds wasn't seeming as exciting to me as or Jimmy
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Hendrix even like wasn't sounding as exciting as the people
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: that they were listening to, because that's where that's where
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I heard that freshness. So I was definitely into fifties
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: music the whole time. But also Susie and the Banshees
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: sounded good to me right away, right when I rejoined,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and that was something I was enjoying playing along with
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a lot. And gradually, as as the band played together
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: more and as I started to see the direction that
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: we were going, because having no idea of what that
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: was going to be at first, it was hard, but
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: as as time went by, I started getting into more
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like psychedelic things and stuff. It's interesting how regardless of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the influences going back to what you were listening to,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: let's say on Californication up through now. The influences could
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: be could change wildly over the years, and you and
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the band sound like you and the band, Yeah, which
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: is great. Do you know what it's like. It's it's
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: beautiful that the new inspirations can open new channels. But
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: they don't change who you are, you know, like, they don't.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: They don't make it a different band. Yeah, nothing can
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: change your spirit. I would say I've never I've never
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: heard a musician sound like another musician. For all the
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: talk that people do about this person stole from that person,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I've never heard one other musician sound like another musician.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I just I've seen people try to and they don't,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: you know, like like And that even goes for electronic music,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: even when it's drum machines and synthesizers. I've heard plenty
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: of people try to imitate, say Aphex Twin, and I've
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: never heard that somebody actually sound like him. Like the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: human spirit, it's unique to each person, and a person's
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: soul is unique to them. And I think you're stuck
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: with that. You're stuck with whoever you are as a soul.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: You can use influences to give you ideas or to
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: guide your ideas in different directions that you might not
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: have gone otherwise. But the one thing that you can't
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: avoid is sounding like yourself. And I would say the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: opposite side of being stuck with it is it's the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: reason for you to make art, because if you don't
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: do it, no one else can play your part. You
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. It's like, the only you can
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: play what you play, whatever that is, and what you
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: bring to it, that's your sound. Yeah, and maybe in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the beginning it might be based on other people sounds
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: until you find really what your direction is because most
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: most people making music might start by copying someone else
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: very quickly that falls away into being who you are. Yeah. Yeah,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: like althor being a teenager. I was definitely obsessed with
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: trying to be just like certain musicians. But I always
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: looking back, I sounded like me. It was me playing
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: a different style. Yeah, I hadn't found the style of
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: my own, but the spirit of it still sounded like me.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't sound like those other people. I can't. It's
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: not that we have to find our own sound, because
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: our own sound is there. It's when the influences start
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: falling away, what's left is your sound? Do you know
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: what I mean? It's less of a discovery and more
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of a coming into who we are. Yeah, but yeah,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Sidbarra like Bad Brains Nirvana. I gradually started like seeing
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a connection between what I wanted to do, you know,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: and what became our new records and that stuff, and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: was just just moved by like it. But I've never
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: had I've never been into so little rock music as
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I was when we when we made these records. It
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: really I had to really strive to like find like, Okay,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: what can get me excited about it? Just because like
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I said, I would get excited about it and burst
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I've never loved it any less, but I would.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't as obsessed with it. I get more
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: obsessed with with electronic music. We're gonna take a quick
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: break here and then we'll be back with more from
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and John for Shauntey. We're back with more
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: from Rick Rubin and John for shaunte How has playing
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: live changed from the early days in the band to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: now for you? Well, as we discussed like the first
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: six months I was. I didn't know what to do
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: with myself up there. I was really nervous and just
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: and just confused, maybe in relation to the music more
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: than how to be do you know what I mean?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I guess if I'm thinking like from Cali Fornication on,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: like like, it really hasn't changed that much. You know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: playing live is just a more intense version of what
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: we do in the studio, and and I don't feel
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: like my basic approach to it has changed because it
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: has so much room to be in the moment and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: to do things that are unique. At that point, I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: was really I was excited about playing live and I
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: was experimenting. Like on Blood Sugar Tour, I wasn't super
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: excited to be playing live, but I was doing real
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: neat sort of experimenting on stage and stuff. But from
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Californication on, it's like I'm I'm exploring things and I'm
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: excited to be there. So it's got that same indifference
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: that I had on the Blood Sugar tour where where
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not worried if if I fuck up, or if
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: or if I or if something if the energy falls
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: apart for a second, I'm not worried about it, but
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: it's backed by like enthusiasm about playing with the guys
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and about you know, So, how would you say it
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: is from night to night for you? I didn't mean
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm wise, I mean like musically, how would you say, Well,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Flee and Chad and I are improvising like all the time. Yeah,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like no bands do that. I don't
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: know of any other bands I do. I mean jazz
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: bands do that, but I don't know of big rock
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: bands playing for a lot of people who do that. Yeah,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and certain songs allow for it more than others for me. Yeah,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Flee I think is improvising from the beginning of this
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: show till the end of the show. Yeah, Like, like
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: there's enough. The bass parts are all kind of almost
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: all kind of built for that. And Chad, I notice,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: especially right now, he's doing it more. He's more sensitive
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to us than he ever was in the past. Like
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: he's interacting with us in ways that I don't remember
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: him doing on the in any of the previous times
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I was in the band's he used to sort of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: he helped things together and he pushed us and all that,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't listening to us in the way that
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: he listens now, like he's really sensitive as a person too.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: He has a sensitivity that I did not associate him
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: with having anything like that when I rejoined, you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: because he's an incredible musician. Yeah, he's an incredible musician.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: We're always really listening to each other. And for me
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: on guitar, there's certain songs where like the chords of
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: the chords, and I have to play the chords. But
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: even with those maybe nobody notices, but I'm I'm putting
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: notes in the chords that weren't in the chord on
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the record. There's sometimes what I'm the difference is subtle
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and sometimes the difference is extreme. And this is just
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: in the guitar parts. Like Flee and I are always
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: throwing in little extra riffs, like Anthony says a line
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and Fleet does a little riff, and then he says
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: another line, and I do a little riff sort of
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: imitation of what Flee did or something, you know, and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: then or I'll do something some certain weird kind of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: fast rhythm and a solo, and then Chad responds by
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: doing that same rhythm as a as a drum fill.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Like it's not just during the instrumental sections that we're improvising.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: We're doing it all the time. And can you hear
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: each other well enough to be able to play off
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: each other in that way? Yeah, we can hear each
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: other really well. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I'm always surprised
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Cha Chad really hears every little thing I do. Like
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: there's tons of moments during the show where I do
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: something that I think is subtle that he's not going
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to notice, and he either shows me that he notices
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: by playing a certain thing in response or he or
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: by looking at me a certain way or something. And
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: then depending on how Flee does something new, might that
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: impact what you do new in relation to it? Yeah, exactly,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Like like like just bouncing off each other as ibas
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: all the time, that's what we're always doing. Yeah, so
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: let's keep it so fresh. It does, like the set
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: list always changes, but I feel like even if it didn't,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I would be creatively satisfied up there because that type
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of interaction it means so much to me, especially because
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the weird part of it is that nothing ever falls apart,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Like we're doing all these things that are only done
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: that one time, and doing all this kind of interaction,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: and you can you can never quite predict what the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: other guys are going to do. And yet we play
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: like a like we're one entity. Yeah, you know, like
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: especially playing in these big stadiums, you're aware, like the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: details of what you're doing aren't even that important. The
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: important thing is that you make one sound together. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: so if I'm hitting the guitar and Chad's hitting the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: snare and Fleas hitting the bass all at the same time,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: that's one big sound that goes out there to the back,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to the people in the back. It's like how the
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: pieces fit together. Yeah. Yeah, so that so to be
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: able to have that and to be able to make
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: it spontaneous at the same time is just a unique
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: thing that we've developed over the years. And to do
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: it in the context of familiar songs that the audience
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: can sing along with the whole time. Yeah, So it
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't stray so far. I mean, the song is still
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the song, but it's more like the songs the scaffolding
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: to allow all of the interesting playing to happen. Yeah,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: and we're always listening to Anthony, like the important thing.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: It's part of the challenge of it. If Anthony wasn't
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: singing the vocals and depending on us to give him
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: a proper groove. Yeah, we would go further out, but like,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: but got to keep it in the song because he's there.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: We like, I make sure if I'm going to do
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: some unexpected thing and he's going to come and singing
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: right after I do it, I better be right on time,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you know, Like I better nail this new rhythm that
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to do because he's got to come in
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and the right groove and he's got to be feeling
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the right thing before he comes in. So you're always
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: making sure to support everybody else and to not go
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: off on such a tangent that you're throwing anybody else off.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Sounds super fun, it really is. It sounds it. It
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: just sounds like the most fun playing music. Yeah, I
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I never knew growing up that it could be like that.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think there were any bands that that I
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: was into that had that exact thing where everybody's really
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: listening and changing in subtle ways all the time. It's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: in a different way. But the T shirt I'm wearing
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: King Crimson, that that lineup of them was really good
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: in that way, Like they like that when I think
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: of who did I like when I was a teenager,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that showed me that that was possible. That's probably the
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: closest thing. Yeah. Yeah, most most groups when I was
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: growing up, you just assumed that the song is the song,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and the band plays the song. It might sound different
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: for one reason or another, but and for most bands,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: that's what it was. For most bands, that what it was.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: That's why I feel like the Chili Peppers is such
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: an unusual thing. Live there's so much more life in
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: it than the live version of the record. Right, It's
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: so much more musical. Even when you can't hear what's different,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I subconsciously feel there's more going on, right, and it's
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel like MOR's going on and it's
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: screwing it up, which can also happen. It doesn't feel
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: like that. It feels like a mind expanded version of it. Yeah.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: In learning other people's music, I always notice that there's
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: sometimes the hardest things to memorize are apparently very simple
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: things like it's much easier to learn what sounds like
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: an impressive kind of busy guitar solo than it is
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: to learn a rhythm guitar part that doesn't repeat itself
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: too much, that keeps changing and s little ways for
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: five minutes straight. That's actually a lot harder for the
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: brain to memorize what sounds like it's the easiest thing
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: in the world. Would actually be a real pain in
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the ass to sit there and memorize in comparison to
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: what sounds like a hard to play solo and always
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that the guitarist who's playing it doesn't even know it. Yeah, exactly.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean, is to memorize something because those
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: are that's not really a part so much as somebody
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: playing along yeah to something like like say funk Adelic,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: like has a lot of stuff like this where they're
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: clearly they're guys in a room jamming with each other
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and it became a song. But there wasn't a flat
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: like this is the guitar part. You repeat this every
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: four bars like that's the verse the other there's there's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of sort of rhythm guitar parts that just
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: they flow from the beginning of the song to the end.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: They're not a repetitive pattern, but feels like a groove
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: from beginning to end, you know what I mean? Like
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: those things, there's something in the brain that just doesn't
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: want to memorize something when it's that simple. Yet it
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: keeps changing. But it's beautiful to listen to. It's like
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: it feels more like you're looking at the ocean or
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: watching the clouds move in the sky or something. To
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: listen to. This a much more natural, random quality that's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: more real than the same perfect cloud every time. You know,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: to say, what would it be like if every wave
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: was the same wave, It's not so interesting. Yeah, So
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: it's the kind of things like cha Chad notices when
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I'm say I'm playing a funk rhythm, and the funk
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: rhythm on the record is one thing, and I'm playing
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a different rhythm. He hears that I'm doing a unique
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: thing that's only happening on that one night. Could be
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: nobody in the audience even notices that I'm doing anything
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: different because it still sounds like the song. You know.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: We have to take another quick break here, and then
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: we'll come back with more from Rick Rubin and John Fashante,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: who will play through some of his most well known
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: guitar parts and dissect them. We're back with the rest
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: of Rick's conversation with Santa I thought it would be fun.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I just wrote before I came here, I wrote down
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a bunch of songs to talk about the guitar parts,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: just to see what comes up. Okay, you know, hopefully
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I remember them. Yeah, and if not, we can even
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: listen to a little reference. Yeah, if I heard. I
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: started with Californication, because I think that's where we left
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: off our conversation. I think did we talk everything about
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Californication last time or just I feel like we touched
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: on it. But it wouldn't hurt if we're gonna if
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: we're gonna go through the other through Californication by the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: way and stadium, it might be good to talk a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: bit about more about Californication. Yeah, so going into that project,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you're back in the band. I remember we talked about
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: you being out of the band. I think we talked
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: about you coming back to the band. Yeah, right, I
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: think I think where we left off when we talked
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: about it was I was kind of talking about how
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: my technique wasn't where it had been, so I had
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to come up with a different style of playing and
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: be inspired by more like new wave guitar players as
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: opposed to guitar hero kind of guitar players and found
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: a style from that when they asked me to be
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: in the group again, Like especially at that time, I
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: had for years at that point I thought I would
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: never make music again, and even when I did start
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: to want to make music, didn't feel that I could
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: ever make music that would touch people again. Didn't feel
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I could make a good sound with my voice anymore.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I'd had extensive dental stuff and singing was much more
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: difficult than it had ever been, And didn't feel that
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I could ever again make a beautiful sound with my voice,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: and felt like I was missing whatever that thing was
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: that had once been able to touch people with music.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: And yet to those guys, I was the same as
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I'd ever been like, and I don't think I had
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: any other friends who saw me that way, you know,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: like Anthony and Flee specifically, like their belief in me
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: made me able to be reborn. At that time, like
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I had tried to start bands with other people and
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, there was there was no magic in it,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: no magic coming from me. And from playing with them
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: that started, I started to feel like there I was
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: generating magic, you know, Like there was a really neat
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: time in that way, and especially because we really believed
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in our in ourselves and what we were doing, even
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: if like the record company didn't seem particularly interested, you know,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like like we were just very excited about about what
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: we were doing and ended up carrying us through you know. Yeah,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: And the real exciting thing for me about that time
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was just sort of starting from a place where where
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: we were able to take those melodic sort of ideas
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: that we'd done on the slower, softer songs on Blood
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Sugar and combine that with the energy of the other
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: types of funk things that we did, and for me
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to be able to play guitar in a way that
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: has some blues aspects in some parts, but but had
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: more of a more of an influence coming from the
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: late seventies and early eighties new wave what's now called
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: post punk, that I was finding ways to incorporate those
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: influences more than I had previously, and I was depending
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: on Hellel's style less than I ever had. Like I
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: was able to really like find a like there was
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a place for that Hellel influence stuff. It's certainly there
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: on Californication, but all those things like Californication and other
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Side and easily, and you know, all these all these songs,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: they were just I felt like it was a style
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: that I was creating specifically for the band, and it
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I hadn't heard those things go together before, you know,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I think I before I had had a fixed idea
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: of what Flea's role is supposed to be or what
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: my role is supposed to be. And I just started
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: to be able to find that I could put those
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: things aside, you know, Scar Tissue just play things that
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: really sounded like nobody but me, and it worked really
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: perfectly in the context of the band, and everybody just
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: made it better. It did seem like some of the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: influence writing wise were more from synth based bands. You're
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: playing guitars in the band, but the songwriting didn't necessarily
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: sound like guitar based music. Yeah, because my favorite music
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: at that time was like Massive Attack and Tricky and
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: depeche Mode and The Human League, and I was listening
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: to all this electronic music. It was actually really hard
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: at first because similar to what I was saying about
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the current time, in a different way, when I first joined,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I found rehearsal seemed really boring. If I listened to
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the kind of music I liked to listen to before
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I went to rehearsal. So like if I started my
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: day listening to like depeche Mode and Massive Attack, if
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I went to rehearsal, I would just be sitting there thinking, God,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: we sound really boring, and you know, like this sounds
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: like it didn't have anything textually interesting about it. It
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: seemed like a bland kind of color. So I had
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: to force myself to listen to guitar based music, and
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: I found that there were a small amount of certain
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: guitar based things that seemed to my ears seemed as
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: colorful as depeche Mode and those things I mentioned, But
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a whole lot of rock things again, you know.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: It was when I would get home from rehearsal, the
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: first thing I do would be put on Depeche Mode,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like like that was really what I wanted
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: to hear, and would have loved to go to rehearsal
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: and have a drum machine guy sitting there, you know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: like roods really wanting to hear drum machines. But that
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: pattern worked out really well because those things, because I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: could warm up to the ramones. I was really into
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: warm up to the Ramones and Fugazi and the Yardbirds
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and then and then go to rehearsal and
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: something about that combination of that. On one hand, I'm
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: inspired by these other people who've done things with guitar,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and on the other hand, the melodic things that are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: exciting to me are coming from this other style of
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: music that's done with other types of Did you ever
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: hear the acoustic depeche Mode demos? Yeah, I'm familiar with
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: some of their demos, bootlegs of them and stuff. They're
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: acoustic lens where's either on the piano or guitar. And
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it's interesting because I think most of the songs were
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: written with traditional instruments and then turn into Depeche Mode songs. Yeah,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: but yeah, in the early days he used Martin Gore
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: used to make like synth demos that were pretty developed,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: like you must have done them on like a four
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: track or an eight track or something, and a lot
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: of those they're kind of just like a shitty or
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: sounding version of what wound up on the record. But
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: I think as time went by he started bringing the
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: songs in more just on guitar, so the producer and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Alan Wilder and stuff, could come up with more of
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: an electronic vision of it. They got really good results
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: from doing it that way both ways though, But anyways, Yeah,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: so the sense of melody there on Californication had definitely
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: more of a Even though the sound of the band
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: is more like sixties seventies music, the melodic aspect had
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a lot more to do with things that were more
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: modern at the time. Can you grab the guitar because
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: there's we could talk about, like a song like, let's
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: talk about other Side. That'd be a good one too.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: That see that that guitar part. You can't play it
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: without the bass part because because because it's uh, it
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: wouldn't sound Yeah, it doesn't sound like the song. It
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: sounds like a part of it. It's just because we're Yeah,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: he's playing notes that are basically between but they're they're different.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: They're different notes, but they're basically the same rhythm. But
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: together it forms together they form a chord. Yeah, how
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: did that get written? How did it? How did it
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: come to be like that? I came in with, yeah,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: something like that. It was those chords, and then I
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: think I started by playing them, but I had a
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: plan before I had even gone in I was like,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with those chords, but I'm gonna wait
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: for him to start to fuck around with it, and
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: then I'm gonna start. I think I already had that
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: melody in my head. I knew that that would that
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: that melody would sound good with those chords, so I
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: started playing them, figuring he would pick up on the chords.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Are all of the songs that work where it's the
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: guitar and the bass making chords? Do they always start
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: as on the writing side? Did they start as traditional
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: chords that then turn into I don't know about always,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: because because we did that was something like other side,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and we gradually realized that that was a thing we
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: could do, so you could start writing in that style
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: without ever starting with the original chords. I think so
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. I think so because I'm I'm pretty sure
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: when we're doing it later on the song by the way, Yeah,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think we've figured out the chords. I think
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: maybe the chords still that was still sort of our
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: version of the chords from the chorse. I know that
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: they're not exactly the chords from the chorus and the
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: intro to by the way, there's definitely like we were.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: It was a looser interpretation of it than but I
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: know it is a way that we can play now
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: like we do our Californication intro, where we're just like
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: playing you know, fast notes all at the same time
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: and playing different things and still we lock up again.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: There is a chord change that's implied in it. Yeah,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: it does help to have to be able to do
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: that on a guitar and a bass. It's good to
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: have an invisible chord that you both know what it is,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: you know, because then you know you know the framework
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of where you can go. Yeah, and it makes you
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: be able to sound connected yea, even though there's no
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: apparent reason to the listener why you should be connected,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: because you seem to both be doing different things, but
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you're both thinking a minor f whatever it is, and
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: that what's interesting about that is that's like depeche Mode
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: writing a song on guitar or piano and turning it
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: into a depeche Mode song where the chords are implied.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Even though there might not be an instrument playing the
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: chords exactly. The composition of the different sounds give you
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: the feeling that there's a chord happening, but it's invisible
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: chord right exactly. Yeah, So I think that Californication time,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: I was so excited about what happened when we just
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: walked into a room together and started playing, as opposed
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: to sitting there with the whole thing of like, well,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: here's my song I wrote at home, I'm gonna show
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: it to you, Like I wanted to try to avoid that.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: I felt like that that whole setup and that whole
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: like because I used to play games with it. At
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Blood Sugar time, I had this act I would put
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: on where I would act like what I was about
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to play with shitty. I thought it was good, but
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I found that I was getting the best reaction from
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: them if if I acted like it was some no
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: big deal, you know, they would they were more supportable
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: or something. So there would always be the setup to it.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: So by calib Fleet did the same thing. I mean,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much an act necessarily, but but
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: but yeah, like it really used to feel like if
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: you acted like you were not confident with what you
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: were doing, or if you weren't confid and what you
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: were doing, the other guys would be supportive of you
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and stuff and and whereas if you walked in and said, like,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I got this riff, It's the best fucking riff you've
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: ever heard in your life, you just weren't going to
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: get a good reaction from him, you know. So so yeah,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: so I'm starting to realize like, like I don't have
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: to say anything. I can come in with those because
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I knew those would go. But
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: maybe I'd recorded him on a cassette recorder and I
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: was just I was probably playing these chords, and I
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: was playing guitar to the cassette recorder, and I was
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: probably going bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: bum bum bum bum. So I knew the two things
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: went together good. But I was like, I'm not going
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: to go in and show fully, so hey, man, play
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: a f see you know what I mean. I'm just
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: going to go in and play the chords and see
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: what happens. And you know, like ten minutes later, like
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: we had to, it's beautiful, you know thing where we're
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: weaving in and out of each other and he's going
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: up when I'm going down, and all you know, it's
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: just like when I when I hear it, it definitely
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: makes me wonder how it happens, you know, like, it's
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: not that it I mean, it works together so magically
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: that without me knowing that there is an invisible chord
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: at play behind the scenes, it's impossible to even know
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: how anything like that ever gets written, right, Yeah, it's
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: cool when you take away the source of where something
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: came from, you know, Like, so it's a good device.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And in that song, is it just those chords over
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: and over again because the chorse is the same. Yeah, yeah,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: exactly it is. So it changes from the verse of
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the chorus. Well, there's the bridge is different, but the
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: chorus and the verse are basically the same chord progression,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: the sparse version and the chord version. Yeah. I don't
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: even know if I actually fully play the chords. I
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: think Fleet just plays differently. See oh no, no, the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: verse is different. Sorry, Yeah, the verse has a different
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: guitar part. So yeah, that's that's the verse guitar part.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: So that other part is the chorus and rather than
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: play the chords, Flee and I had that thing worked
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: out that we did, and then that verse also feels
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: like that would also make the guitar part in the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: chorus seem less like it's related to chords, because what
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: you just played for the verse doesn't seem related to chords.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: It is. It's a to e Okay, you know, just
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: it feels more like a riff because the way you're
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: playing it. Yeah, because that that, Yeah, I like that idea.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I was of putting big intervals between the notes and
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: a guitar using using the guitar itself to create a
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: sense of space. So with that guitar, those two notes
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: are so far apart from each other and there's so
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: much space between them. It seemed like it gives space
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: to the rest of the band to fill it, to
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: fill it in, as opposed to if I was playing
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: the full chord, it would be like, you know, to me,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: that's less meaning. There's more going on, and it's less meaningful.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: So I was just I really like that guitarist Ricky
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Wilson from the B fifty twos, he had this way
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: of playing where he just had he only had four strings.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: He had the low two strings and the high two
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: strings were tuned to the same note, and he had
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: no G string and no D string, and he would
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: essentially be playing two different guitar parts at the same
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: time because it sounds like two different guitar parts because
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: he's sort of playing a bar chord on the low
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: strings and then the high strings. He's playing a kind
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: of a melody. And it gave him a real unique
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: right hand style to be able to do that because
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: sometimes they alternate, the right hand alternates from the high
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: string to the low string to the high string. Sometimes
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: they play at the same time, so they have two
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: separate motions to them. So that was somebody who I
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: know I was inspired by in that way, but it's
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: something i'd just been messing around with, even a Blood
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Sugar time just and it was when I remember when
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: I first did it. It was inspired by listening to him.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: But that whole sort of style of playing where you're
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: going like like like so much space. Yeah, it creates
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: all this space, and it makes it fun to just
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: play guitar by yourself because you're kind of doing a
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: bass part and you're doing a melody part. But it's
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: really different than finger picking. Yeah, yeah, exactly because it's
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: simpler and and but I used to just find it
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: was fun to just it's more like just yeah, just improvised.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: It's like playing piano with one finger on each channel. Yeah,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: so uh so, yeah, so that other side verse part
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: definitely comes from thinking that way and scar tissue. It's
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: the same kind of thing, the same same kind of thing,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: just wanting to put big intervals between things. Because I'd always,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: you know, play along with music all the time. There's
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: certain things like that that I'd wonder, like I'd noticed, like,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: not that many people have done this for some reason.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: It's a stupid thing, you know. It's like it's nothing
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: complicated or anything, but I just hadn't heard a lot
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: of people doing it. So I'm always on the lookout
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: for things like that, like what I what somebody maybe
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: hinted at but hasn't really done that much. I think
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: some of my references for playing like that. Eric Avery
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: and Jane's Addiction had a couple of bass lines that
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: were like that, Yeah, he has that thing, and I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: think Summertime Summertime Roles has a baseline kind of like
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: oh I would for you has a bassline that I
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: think has has those kind of distances in it. He
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: would kind of play these. He had a few songs
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: where he'd he'd have these like big intervals like that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: on his bass and I thought that would be cool
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: to do on guitar. Yeah, you know, so cool. Yeah,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Parallel universe. Uh yeah, so again again that that one
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: is Flee and I sort of playing in harmony with
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: one another. And that's actually I can't think. I don't
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: think there was a chord. I think I don't even
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: remember which of us was playing first, but one of
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: us was playing and the other played to that, if
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: I remember correctly. Yeah, and definitely forgotten the discussion about
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: it being rhythmically unison for the whole song or did
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that just sort of happen it started and never stopped. Yeah,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: that there definitely wasn't discussion that it would be cool.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to remember exactly how that came about.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I remember writing the chorus at home. I think that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: was probably like pretty like Nirvana inspired, you know, like
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: you know, they have these songs like all right, it's
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: called Even in His Youth at two songs same key
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: like that. They have another song that goes I just like,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I really liked those songs that had that sort of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: minor kind of dark feeling. They don't sound at all
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: the same to me, but it's interesting that they do that. Yeah,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I think in my mind I was gonna. I was like,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I write something like even in his youth, and that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: was that seems more like Ramones the anthemic to me. Yeah,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm also listening to the Ramones a lot
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: at that time. Also, you know, for me to say,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I think I used to kind of try to hide
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the Nirvana influence because I felt like they were contemporaries
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want people to know how much I
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: loved them. But like, but like I mentioned you before,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: like when when I was down and out and there
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: was like all those those years where there was no future,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: their music, their music, along with a few other people
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: like David Bowie and Black Sabbath, that just meant the
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: world to me. It just meant everything to me, and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: partially in their case because I felt like it was
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: something I felt inside me since I was a kid,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: because I because I loved punk. Punk was the music
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: that got me into playing guitar, but also loved all
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: different kinds of pop music and stuff. So for somebody
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: to combine punk with pop as well as they did,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: just and somebody to be that good of a screamer
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: because Darby Crash was my favorite singer when I was
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: a kid. And then so to have somebody who's screaming
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: like as good as Darby Crash, yet he's singing like
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: melodically in this way that Darby didn't really sing. Yeah,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: their music just meant a lot to me. So I
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: remember them opening for you. Was that on the Blood
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Sugar tour that they were opening for you only for
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: three shows? Oh, I must have been on all three
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: shows and because for me it felt like, oh that
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: they're on the tour. Yeah, I was in California only,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: but and I wasn't into them then. I resented the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: whole idea of a pop punk thing at the time,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: like I was so funny. Yeah, I didn't like them
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: till after he'd already died. Yeah, he just died. I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: think when I started to Tony Oswald started playing playing
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: I first heard him when I was in the I
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: was in a rehab, and I mean when I first
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: heard them and liked them, I was in a rehab
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: and that in Udoro album had come out, and she
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: played me the song raped me over the telephone, and
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: I was stuck in a rehab for thirty days, and
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I kept calling her upcoing play me that song again.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: It's playing like however it sounded on the fine. I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: just had to hear it again. I loved it so much. Yeah,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: it was it was really that in Udoro. It might
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: have been before he died, at no, I think it
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: was still after he died. But I just hadn't heard
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: that album in Udo and that was the and I
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: still think that's their best album, and that that was
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: what got me real excited about them. Yeah, maybe the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: things about never Mind that Cured himself didn't like were
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: the things that didn't appeal to me about it when
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: it came out or something. Because when so I heard
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: them sound actually like raw and sound like just like
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: guys playing in a room, that's when I realized. And
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't even watch them when they opened for us.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I was just in my own head. And so anyways,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: so so I saw that courts as like Nirvana thing.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: But like I said, a lot of times, things like
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I like, a lot of times, the things we love,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: we don't hit us to write it first. Yeah that's
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: not unusual at all. Yeah, I know it was that
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: way for you with the Ramones. Yeah, I just made
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: me laugh. Yeah. But yeah, but anyways, being into punk
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: since I was a kid. It was like, once I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: got into them, I was surprised that I hadn't landed
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: on these ideas like when I first joined the band,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: you know, this way of sort of combining punk and pop,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: because like I just thought the band didn't want to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: be I didn't think that. I didn't even think the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Red Hot Chili Peppers would want to do something like
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: that anyways, you know, like I would to find they
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: might not have wanted to write when you joined. Actually,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: if you think about it, because it was until it
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: took time for it to for the mold to open
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: of what the Chili Peppers could be. Yeah, it wouldn't
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: have suited really the way Anthony was singing then. Yeah,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: you know, like it took time for it to turn
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: into anything we like. You know that took time. Yeah,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: But anyways, it came real naturally. That song's definitely a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: combination of Fugazi and Nirvana in my mind, like probably
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of our songs I could sum up
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: in ways like that. I could say it's a combination
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: of this artist and that artist or whatever, but really
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: it sounds like us. Yeah, I was gonna say, it
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound like either of them. Yeah, what is the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: verse guitar part in parallel universe? It's hard to play
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: on this, but yeah, it's it doesn't sound like anything like, Yes,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like music without the base. It's so
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: interesting though, but when they're together, it's so unique and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: so cool. Yeah, yeah, that one. It might have come
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: up in a similar way to to other side with
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: me coming in with chords, but somehow I don't think so.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I think Fleet. I think Fleet was probably playing that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: on the bass and the do you know what his
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: part is? You know, so that does sound we're root.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah that you can hear the music more. My part
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't even sound like the song, like unless you hear
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: it with that part with that his harmony makes it
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: makes the whole thing feel like thick. Yeah, yeah, exactly
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: like his part. You hear the song and it yeah,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: because he's playing the root notes and I'm playing the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: different intervals. But yeah, I guess come to think of it,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: that it must have been that that like that, I
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: like those couple, those three notes of even in his
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: youth there, so I wanted to do something with those
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: that started with that basic tonality. But like, but the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: way I'm strumming. It is like the Ramons like that,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: it's all down strokes, and I was playing along with
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: the Ramones every day. It was good for my rhythm hand.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: It got me stronger and stronger as as we rehearsed,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I kept being able to do down strokes faster and faster,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: and became friends with Johnny Ramone at that time, which
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: also like, yeah, I had an influence on on me
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways, He's the person who
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: got me into fifties music. So I started like, like,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I learned all the guitar solos on all the Ricky Nelson's.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: You were ready into old movies before Johnny Ramone, or
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: was Johnny really I was into? Yeah, I was into
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: you know, old movies, but he was able to show
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: me a lot more about them and stuff that I
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: that I didn't know, Like he used to give me
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Humprey Bogart movies that he would record off TV when
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: they would show a rare one and stuff, and yeah,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: it got me into collecting such an interesting person. I
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: really miss him. Yeah, he's one of the more interesting
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: people I've ever met. No, that's truly true. Very um
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: like knew what he liked you know what I mean,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Like very saw the world his way clearly. Yeah, he
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: was very sure of it, and he didn't mind if
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: you disagreed with not at all at all, not at all.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: And at the same time it just didn't it didn't
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: but it didn't it didn't make sense. Yeah, you see
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: how anyone could see it differently. Yeah, he would just
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: say okay, yeah, yeah, Like he's like, I think I
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: know more about no more about this than you. I
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: saw that you did one of one of the remote
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: songs that at Flee's thing last week. It was I
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: saw a little clip Linda sent me. It was so beautiful. Thanks. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I've done it a few times now. I didn't once
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: for the day that he that he died, for his birthday,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: which came not long after that, and then the other
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: day because DH died so and because Linda was there.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I didn't know that. You didn't know DH died.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Flick called me up and I before that show.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Have you heard so? Yeah, I can't remember. Did you
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: play together with him in the band? Yeah for six
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: six months. We see the drummer when you joined. Yeah,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: me and him, we're playing with another friend of mine
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: who who died just a few years later, but a
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: really great bass player, and me and him and DH
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: were trying to get a band going, and then DH
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then I joined,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: and I think it was actually probably just a total
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: of about four or five months that I was in
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: the band. And did you gigs? I can't remember. Yeah
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: we did. We did a tour for like three weeks
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: in the Midwest. We played San Francisco, we played La
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I think twice, we played in Arizona, we played Scattered,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: played a few scattered gigs in other places. But yeah,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: I mean he's the person who introduced me to Flee,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you know, And yeah, and like his feel as a drummer.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: It's just like it was really fun playing punk with him.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I remember the very last time, I was pretty sure
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: we were going to fire him, or I knew we
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: were going to fire him at this point, but we were.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: We had a last rehearsal and I remember it being
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: just Meme, Flee and DH there and we played Foreign
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Policy by Fear because you could pretty much just go
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: into whatever punk song and DH do how to play
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: it really well. And I really love that song Foreign policy.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: It's a really beautiful It's just a beautiful emotive song,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: and it was a real emotional moment. It was one
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: of those moments I was like, I'm never going to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: forget this, like the feeling, you know, the feeling of this,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: like because him and me and Flee had such a
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: good connection, but he he just he wasn't willing to
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: give up the things that were separating him from the
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: rest of us, you know, and it had to go
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: that way. But yeah, we used to have a good
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: time playing together. So when he died, I like listened
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: to those first couple of Dead Kennedy's records that he's
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: on and just listening to his groove and stuff. It
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: just felt really good to remember him. But I hadn't
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: talked to him in like twenty years. We were at
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: the same rehab like twenty years ago, right before Californication,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: and he left after a few days. But that was
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: that was the last time I'd seen him. But the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: other guys had been in touch, and I'd been recently
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: like sending Anthony pictures of us with him. That came
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: my way to like show him, and he was like
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: wanting to see the pictures and stuff like he was
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: going in a good direction. I thought, we have to
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: pause a conversation right here, but we'll be dropping the
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: next episode in our Fraschante series next week. In that episode,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: John continues to play through about hot chili pepper songs,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and he plays a snippet of a solo track dying
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Song and tells us why that didn't end up on
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: by the way, So be sure to keep an eye
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: out on our feed. We can hear all of our
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: favorite chili pepper songs on our playlist at broken record
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. We
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced with
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday, Eric Sandler,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad pre listening for
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  Speaker 1: four ninety nine a month. Look for pushkm plus on
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  Speaker 1: Apple podcast subscription and if you like our show, please
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: at our theme musics by Kenny beats On Justin Richmond