The trouble began when their guitarist John Frusciante descended into a journey of drug-induced self-destruc- tion. Four years later several near miracles have happened. Frusciante is off drugs, has a new set of teeth, some skin grafts on his arms and clearly still knows how to play the guitar. In My Light Lyrics: How do you walk through my wall of sleep / I see you in my head but you're right out of reach / And you are the backbone I grind with my teeth / Looking at life from just. 'After standing on the verge of death due to major drug issues, John Frusciante was reborn. He cleaned up his habits (and gained a new set of teeth in the process), unleashed his creative juices to flow wildly and freely, rejoined his former band Red Hot Chili Peppers and turned them from huge to one of the planet's biggest bands and he gave his solo career a firm kick in the ass, creating one.
- Josh Klinghoffer
- John Frusciante Invisible Movement
- John Frusciante Teeth Implants
- John Frusciante Teeth
- John Frusciante Drug Addiction Stories
This is a timeline of John's whereabouts and musical endeavours during his infamous and reclusive period from mid-1992 to 1998. In no way are we trying to glorify or romanticise John's mental illness or drug use. This is merely an attempt at clearing up a foggy period of a great man's life.
Sources, where available, are in [parentheses].
September 4 - John does heroin for the first time at Jane’s Addiction final ever show in California. However, this show was a benefit, and not a proper Jane’s show, and so he could be referring to this show. [Whores: An Oral Biography of Jane's Addiction and Perry Farrell]
April 19 - Robert Hayes, an old friend that John planned on making music with after the RHCP, dies in a car accident in Alabama, shaking him deeply .
May 7 - quits the Red Hot Chili Peppers while on tour in Saitama, Japan.
June - records the track “Running Away Into You”, later released on Niandra LaDes.
July - visits with the RHCP as they play the Lollapalooza festival in San Francisco [source] By this time, is depressed and addicted to heroin.
Summer - visits the studio where Flea is recording with Mick Jagger, does his best to avoid Anthony [SPIN Magazine, May 1993]
Later in the year - tries to join Meat Puppets in Arizona [Cris Kirkwood podcast with Bob Forrest, May 2015]
Late 1992 or early 1993 - 'Stuff' filmed by Johnny Depp and Gibby Haynes. Watch here.
October 31 - plays live at Viper Room with Flea in attendance - only gets through one song before throwing up on stage and giving up. River Phoenix dies at the club the same night. Phoenix had been on a drug binge with John in the period leading up to that night.
Later in the year - electrical fire in the house at 8505 Hollywood Boulevard. The day after, he moves to a rented house in New York, where Toni Oswald had already moved, occasionally coming back to LA and staying at the Chateau Marmont as his house is being repaired [Toni the Real Girl interview, September 2013]
While he’s away, John’s guitars are stolen. Many are not recovered.
December - is staying in New York [Niandra LaDes press kit]
At some point late in 1993 or early 1994 is back at 8505 Hollywood Blvd., However, in April - he's staying in Venice Beach [VPRO Interview]
Later in the year, is filmed playing guitar, seen at the end of the Life's A Bath video.
November 22 - Niandra LaDes & Usually Just A T-Shirt released on CD and cassette.
At some point, breaks up with Toni Oswald; has a house in Silverlake at some point [Toni the Real Girl interview, September 2013] Adobe reader x pro crack bandicam.
November 18 - plays live at Hollywood Moguls, Flea and Dave Navarro in attendance. Recording here.
December - checks into Exodus after urging from friends - Anthony visits him there. [Scar Tissue]
John later says he didn’t really want to quit drugs at the time, so possibly only did it for health reasons [An afternoon with John Frusciante interview, 2001]
Late in the year: is filmed taking heroin at his Hollywood Boulevard address for the Life's A Bathvideo. That footage and the footage from 1994 is then combined, but the video was never officially released.
At some point in 1996, records More, Estress and I Can't See Until I See Your Eyes, later released on Smile From The Streets You Hold.
Throughout 1996 John and Martyn Le Noble live together.
February: Almost dies of a blood infection. Cleans up for a few months. [Phoenix New Times, December 1996]
February or March: Possibly alluded to by Flea in this magazine article as having reluctantly agreed to check into rehab, 'near death,' which ties into the above.
Throughout the year is homeless, living in Toni Oswald's car, as also mentioned in the Greatest Hits liner notes.
August: House at 8505 Hollywood Boulevard is foreclosed.
October: visits Ozzfest with Toni Oswald in Devore, CA.
Late 1996 - living at the Chateau Marmont hotel. Does an interview with Phoenix New Times in very poor health. Later kicked out of more hotel rooms, then possibly homeless.
Late 1996 - supposedly kicks heroin [Guitar Player interview, November 1997]
At some point in early 1997 breaks up with Toni Oswald and moves in with Meg Holliday in a house in Beachwood Canyon, LA. He lies about the extent of his drug use to her. [Paparazzi Porn blog -- link down]
Early in the year has his teeth replaced [Guitar Player interview, November 1997]
January 3 - plays live in LA with Thelonious Monster, meets Josh Kinghoffer for the first time [Josh Mail, January 2017]
January 20 - plays disastrous show at the Viper Room, recording here. Anthony, Chad and Flea are present. Review here and here.
February 1 - as a result of news from the Viper Room show, RHCP fans rally together to support John.
February 6 - plays live at Small's, LA, with Bob Forrest. Recording here / article here.
February 26 - buys Gibson Acoustic / Fender Jaguar from 'Guitars-R-Us' in LA. Five years later said it was a Christmas present to himself, but he must have gotten his dates mixed up, or it was a late present
March - jams with Flea and Thelonius Monster at The Whiskey in LA.
March 28 - plays live at Hollywood Moguls, LA. Recording here.
April through May - plays throughout the US with the Nuttstalk Tour. Was supposedly newly sober. Recordings available for April ?, April 26, April 28, May 8, May 13, May 24, June 8.
July - Blaring Out interview - John seems wired on what is probably coke. Watch here.
August - interview with Bikini Magazine - avoids drug question, however..
August 26 - Smile From The Streets You Hold released.. purely for drug money. [Guitar One, August 1999]
Later in the year - recording session at Jimmy Boyle’s studio. Unreleased.
November 22: John and AK meet and talk at a Jane’s Addiction show; John is high at the time, but their interaction is later a catalyst for his rejoining the RHCP [Rock Sound, July 1999]
January - enters Las Encinas after mental health issues or possibly (though not confirmed) a suicide attempt. Finally clean. [MTV Article - May 1998, Kerrang! interview, March 2001]
February - leaves hospital, rents apartment in Silverlake
April 18 - rejoins the Red Hot Chili Peppers after a few weeks of discussions.
Josh Klinghoffer
Introduction To The Article:
This Article Is An Exact Reprint from The New Times, A Local LosAngeles Area Magazine: released in the November 14, 1996 issue. Isent a copy to the official RHCP Fan Club, and receivedconfirmation that the information here is correct.
John Frusciante Invisible Movement
John Frusciante Teeth Implants
Keep in mind that this article is over three-years old. I assumeJohn has quit (or seriously reduced) his drug use. Read this articleas just a little RHCP-History.
Reprinted Article:
His upper teeth are nearly gone now; they have been replaced by tinyslivers of off-white that peek through rotten gums. His lower teeth,thin and brown, appear ready to fall out if he so much as coughs toohard. His lips are pale and dry, coated with spit so thick it lookslike paste. His hair is shorn to the skull; his fingernails, or theSpaces where they used to be, are blackened by blood. His feet andankles and legs are pocked with burns from unfiltered Camel cigaretteashes that have fallen unnoticed his flesh also bears bruises, scabs,and scars. He wears an old flannel shirt, only partially buttoned, andkhaki pants. Drops of dried blood dot the pants. There had been rumorspassing through the Hollywood rock world-stories no one denied, mostlybecause they didn't much care any more. There were whisperings abouthow he was holed up in his Hollywood Hills home, a place few dared totread because of the stench; it was the smell of death, a few peoplemumbled during more Overwrought moments, or more likely just the smellof feces and urine collected over weeks and months. There were storiesof a former superstar rock star guitarist who now sees little of theoutside world, who stays in his house to read and write and paint andplay guitar. And shoot up.
But they're not just rumors. John Frusciante is living the cliche-therock star holed up at the Chateau Marmont, where bigger names than hehave checked in to check out Four years ago he was in one of rock androll's biggest bands, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist just as thegroup was climbing up from the college~radio ranks and into the arenas.Now he's a transient in the hideaway's hallowed hall-ways: The livingroom of his suite is fllled only with dozens of CDs (from Bowie to Devoto his favorites, King Crimson and Nirvana) scattered on the floor,bottles of mineral water, cigarettes, journals, and alcohol sterilepads
John Frusciante Teeth
Frusciante is holed up in the Chateau Marmont this night because he hasbeen kicked out of his Hollywood Hills home for not paying rent, and henow has no permanent address. After this interview, he was booted outof the Chateau, then kicked out of the Mondrian. As of a few days ago,a business acquaintance who until very recently spoke to Fruscianteevery day says he hasn't heard from the man for more than a week. whenthat happens, some people shrug: Well, maybe he's dead. It isFrusciante who first mentions his heroin use ~five minutes into theinterview, no less ~yet at the end of an exhausting night ofconversation, he also asks that the details of his life as a junkie beveiled; he explains that he doesn't want the cops fucking with him andthat any article describing his hobbies might bring the heat down onhim. But thats unlikely, and a quick glance at his fragile, decay^_ingfigure reveals the sad truth his silence could never hide anyway. Helooks 20 years older than he did during his Peppers days, and his voiceis harsh and slurred now. He doesn't eat food, instead gulping cannedhigh calorie formu^_la normally consumed by the elderly and invailds.He likes the way his body appear~a skeleton covered in thinskin-because that's how David Bowie looked in The Man Who Fell toEarth. Frusciante says he almost died in February; he explains hisbody had 'a twelfth of the blood its supposed to have, and thatblood was infected. My body.wasn't making any new red bloodcells.' So he quit the drugs for a few months and cleaned up, asmuch as he could. But the world didn't look right to him through deadsober eyes, didn't feel right to him through numb hands. The spiritsdidn't visit, the ghosts didn't talk to him; the door heroin opened forhim had been shut, and he would agan force it open even if it killedhim. when Frusciante joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988, he wastouted as a clean young thing~ fresh faced 17-year old SouthernCalifornia kid who would stand in direct contrast to original guitaristHillel Slovak, who died in June of that year of a heroin over-dose.Frusciante joined just in time to record Mother's Milk, whichcon^_tained the minor hit 'Knock Me Down,' an anti-smack songabout Slovak ('If you see me gettin' high~ knock me down')that would seem hilariously ironic now if it weren't so pathetic inretrospect After all, lead singer Anthony Kiedis himself just got offjunk after years of claiming he was clean; bassist Flea was a user: andcurrent guitarist Dave Navarro is a former junkie. The needle and thedamage indeed. Frusciante quit the Peppers in 1992 after spending ayear on the road with the band-a year of watching the crowds multiplywith almost every gig. Frusciante had come to hate the crowds who sangalong with every word and danced to every song; he couldn't understandthe conection hetween artist and audience, and he came to loathe thepeople who were cheering and adoring him without knowing' him. Andmusically he felt stifled by the tight structures of the songs and theway audiences expected the band to perform the hits exactly as they hadbeen recorded. Frusciante had been straitiacketed by expectations,stifled as a musician, cut off from the ghosts that wanted him to playtheir music. The first couple of years I was in the Chili Peppers, Idon't consider myself a very good guitarist by my own standards,'he says now. 'I don't feel like I was 100 percent taking thefeelings and colors in my head and adequately transferring them to theguitar and into the world where they became something concrete insteadof just a feeling that floats through outer space. But then I became asgood at that as a person could be, and every night when I would play, Iwould play different solos and different guitar parts. I just had agood relationship with the spirits and with the ghosts and with thecolors in outer space. 'A song is something spir^_its can getfeelings from, but its nothing a human being can be aware of~ except Iam.So they give it to me as just a color and as a vibe and as a feelingand as an aes^_thetic echo in my head, and then I'm able to take it andturn it into music. when he returned to LA, he sat on his couch fornearly a year, depressed and alone and unable to function. He wonderedwhether he had made the right decision in quitting the band, or injoining in the first place; he was con^_vinced he was pissing away histalent He had only experimented with drugs, smoked pot 'every daywhen I was 20,' and says he first shot heroin right after therecording of 1991's breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Mogik and then dalliedwith the drug on and off again. But he finally became a junkie as afinal salvation, and in time he again started writing in his journals,paint^_ing, and recording. Now he can't be without his needles or hisguitars; three guitars are scattered onthe floor of his Chateau suite,and he often fondles the neck of one as he talks. 'I used torecord every day' he explains. 'it's good that I do at allnow. When I quit the band, I couldn't look at art, I couldn't paint, Icouldn't read books, I couldn't play guitar, I couldn't listen tomusic, I couldn't do anything but lay on the couch depressed, and thenI became a junkie and came to life again and became happy and startedplaying music again. But I couldn't exist at first. I was so depressed~Icouldn't talk to people. I Was just the most hopeless, miser-ableperson you have evetr seen. I thought I was through with music and thatI was gonna die within a couple of weeks from depression. I thought,Where rI'm at in my head is the head of a person about to die. Ithought my body was literally gonna give up. 'And then I justdecided, I'm gonna become a fjunkie now' and the next day I was justhappy and better. I just decided without [heroin], I have no controlover what thoughts take over my brain. See, with this, I have controlover what I want to think about, and when something comes into my~headthat is useless to think about, it won't take over I can get rid of itI would sit there and think about the way things could have been if Iwould have done it this way, the way I didn't do it But those arepointless things to think about, but thats all I could think about, andI had to just forget it I always had a reallY good discipline as far asmy head goes, but that stuff was just too heavy. With heroin, I wasable to all of a sudden have the power to get rid of those things thatwould pop up into my head and think about something else. liike, all ofa sudden I wasn't the boss of my head any more. In the fall of 1994,he released his first solo album on American Recordings, the labelowned by Rick Rubin, who had produced Blood Sugar Sex Magik. WarnerBros. Records, the Peppers' label, had rights to the album because of aleaving-artist clause in Frusciante's chili Peppers contract, butbecause he was living as~a recluse who refused to do many inter^_views,the label happily handed it over to Rubin, who finally released thealbum at the insistance of River Phoenix, Butthole Surfer Gibby Hayesand Johnny Depp. In the end Frusciante's solo album Niandra Lades andUsually just a T-shirt sold about 15000 copies~'a tiny number comparedto the six nullion the Peppers moved of Blood Sugar. Niandra Lade: Is abizarre and complicated album, two dozen tracks that grow increasinglyfragmented and frightnening as the album wears on; any Chili peppersfans who listened to the record expecting more punk-funk likely thoughttheir stereos were broken. Still, Frusciante expects to releaseanother album at the beginning of the new year, and David Katznelson,vice president of A&R at Warner Bros. Records,.confirms he plansto issue Frusciante's tentatively titledSmile from the Streets You Holdsometime in the spring. The album will be released on Katznelson's ownBurbank-based Birdman Records label (home to such avant favourites asThree Headcoats and Omoide Hatoba), with Warner handling some of thedisrtibution. 'This stuff isn't alien to me' Katznelson saysof Frusciante's music. 'Rick and John had a great relationship,but I kept thinking about John and listening to the record, and therewere a couple of songs on there that I thought were so insipred, and Ithought that if we put out another record on an indie label it wouldget more focus than if it had been put out on American or Warners orsomething with so many other records. So I called John, and and hejumped at the chance.' 'It was done at various times,'Frusciante explains of the forthcoming album- One song even dates backa decade, to when he was 17 years old and just about to join thePeppers- 'These are some of the best things I ever recorded.'He wants to play some of the new music, so he goes to the portablestereo to find the cassette of the unmixed songs. But as he is fumblingwith the tape, forwarding and rewinding to just the right spot heacciden^_tally knocks the stereo off its milk-crate stand.'Motherfucker' he howls, and he kicks a small pile of CDsflying across the room. Then, in a second or two, he is again calm andfocused, his temper under control. This is not the tape of my newrecord,' he explainS. This is a tape of the things that are on mynew record, but not all of the things are on the record. Its got a lotof things that aren't on the record, but the things I'm gonna play youare are on my new record.' He hits play and turns up the volume,and the room fills with a song that sounds as though it has been liftedfrom an old Sergio leone spaghetti Western; its beautiful and eerie,feedback and restrained frenzy, lyrics slinking in between theoff-kilter melody. 'Kill your mama, kill your daddy,' goesone particularly memorable phrase. The song is followed by aninstrumental that seems to turn in on itself~ solo reverie filled outby backward tracks and other ethereal effects. It's hauntingmusic~quite literally the unexpurgated sounds of Frusciante's demonscome to life, an unedited electronic reproduction of the sounds insidehis head-and as he listens to his own music, Frus^_ciante seems oncemore tangled in^_side the notes. He closes his eyes and seems to nodoff, letting yet another freshly lit cigarette burn to its end anddeposit its ashes all over him. But when the songs end, he snaps tolife again. 'Heroin empha^_sizes whatever you are,'Frusciante explains 'Like, if you want to record music, it'll helpyou concentrate on that more, but if you want to lie in bed and not doanything, it'll help you do that better. It helps you do anythingbetter you want to do. At least forme, not for other people. Alot of people- close friends of mine who are clean, and I'm gladthey're clean-they know that when I'm clean I lose the sparkle in myeye, I lose my personality~ I'm not happy, I'm kinda empty. A lot ofpeople say they feel a wall when a person's on drugs, but I have threegirls who I love and consider my girls, and one of them came andvisited me when I was clean in February, and she called me after-wardand said she felt a wall. My head works differently than most people,so consequently drugs affect me differently.' Frusciente insistshe wants to get on a stage again-the last time he performed was at theViper Room the night his closest friend and champion and protector,River Phoenix, died out^_side its doors-and that he wants to assemble areal band to perform his pop songs, the ones that go verse-chorus-versein^_stead of just verse. And he still would like to release tapes ofthe Three Amoebas jam sessions he recorded with Flea and Porno forPyros drummer Stephen Perkins years ago. Katznelson says he'll try tohelp Frusciante get his music out there, book a few gigs, make him somemoney so he doesn't keep getting kicked out of home and hotel. But herealizes it isn't going to be easy; there are never any guarantees witha man who's slowly killing himself while no one does anything~to stophim. 'A lot of artists have their own demons, and he's one ofthem,' Katznelson says. 'If I made judgments on peoplebecause of their lifestyles, I wouldn't work with any^_one. I work witha lot of artists who have problems-illegal substanstances or personaldemons~but one is just as problematic as the other. If I was expectinghim to tour and play and there was a lot of money involved, I wouldtear the hair out of my head. But there's not a lot of money. I justwant people to hear what he's about. If he wants to play, fine; if hedoesn't, fine If he wants to do interviews, great; if he doesn't, fine.I think he's very. .he's very used to his own skin.' In the end,Frusciante has become just another gifted musician who plunges a needleinto his arm every few hour~between playing and painting, betweenreading and writing, between preparing a new record and finding a newhome, between living and dying; these days, record label rosters areonce again stockpiled with men and women just like Frusciante, thoughthey have publi^_cists to hide their artists' habits. Since Phoenix'sdeath, most of Frus^_ciante's other close friends have abandoned him,sometimes after trying to intervene and save his life; they're toofired of watching him decay in front of them, too sick of watching himunapologetically kill himself. He knows they don't like being aroundhim, but he doesn't give a fuck. -They're afraid of death, but I'mnot,' he says. 'I don't care whether I live or die.'
John Frusciante Drug Addiction Stories
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