John Frusciante Returns, Part 2

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today, we're excited to bring you the next installment of our John Fuschante interview series. John first came on the podcast back in April for the release of Unlimited Love. Then he was back a few weeks ago to pick up where they left off discussing Chili Pepper history one album at a time. This is part two of that conversation and it's shaping up to be a little bit different this time around. Instead of talking Chili Pepper history, John picks up his guitar to walk Rick through his pre show warm up. He also demonstrates how he came up with a now classic major to minor chord changes on Under the Bridge. They of course talk Return of the Dream Canteen, their second number one album in six months, and they also discussed how John was able to overcome his desire to impress others with his guitar plane while recording Stadium Arcadium. This is broken record line of notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell, here's Rick Rubin and John Fuschante from Shangola. So there's a new Chili Pepper album that just came out. Yeah, second one in a year, Yeah, a second one. Six months. We really think of them as kind of two halves of the same thing, because we recorded them all at the same time. And I think the second ones probably like the more eccentric, kind of strange one, if I had to generalize. But I was looking at a list the other day that I've made when we were trying to figure out what songs are going to make it on, you know, and what songs aren't, And I had a list like, songs that feel like to me, like my image of the second album, you know, and songs that sound like what I'm picturing the first album feeling like. And while most of those songs were on the album that they were on, there were songs that were the second album Vibe that we wound up putting on the first album, and first album five that we wound up putting on the second album. So to me, they seem pretty balanced between the two things. But but I think the new one goes to further extremes, both in like heaviness and in softness and in like weirdness and all that. And the first some of my favorites were on the second one, but I like songs on both. Yeah, that was really the problem was was like seventeen songs just born enough to satisfy any of us, like like, and some of your favorite ones didn't even make it on the second one, and those were those were some of your very favorite ones. Yeah, so it was really it was really hard to like to satisfy everybody, you know. So so it seemed essential to us to at least have have the two records. Yeah, because the making is similar, it's same, it's they were all record at the same time. Yeah, it's hard to talk about and interviews when they're the when they were made at the same time. But as it turns out, the second one has a to me, has a sort of a few feeling in the sound that it could have been recorded at a completely separate time, Like it has a to me, it has a spirit of brightness and fun, where Unlimited Love has kind of a darkness and a seriousness. I think a lot of the tunes that stood out to us as being like important sounding songs were some of the darker, more serious ones, and some of the ones that we felt more comfortable We're saving have like a light vibe that's not absent of meaning or anything, but yeah, more playful. Yeah, I see the second one is I hear it as being a brighter vibe and a more fun vibe. I remember I was classifying songs as like I did. Think I just said pop, funk, art. I think I just made it as simple as that. And there was the most of pop, there was, the middle of was funk, and the smallest amount was art. But yeah, and I just think we even the distributed them. But I think we got better at the mixing process as time went by, and that sort of gave the second record to me, like production wise, sound wise, it's it's got a distinct sound to it. I would also say that if anyone liked the first album, they're gonna like the second album. It's like the same diary entry, you know that. That however long two years of writing. You guys are writing for about two years. Oh no, we wrote for nine months, only nine months, amazing. Yeah, and then the recording I think for like fifty tracks we did, we did the basic traction three weeks of everything we did pre production though in the studio before we started right recording for real, right, yeah, there was about a month of that. Yeah, yeah, because then by the time we did the real recording, it was more focused on just getting the performance. We weren't working, we weren't really working on the songs. It was just more of the feel in the performance. Yeah, it's true, and I think that's historically the way we've we've always done it. It's like, well, usually when we're recording, we kind of know what we're doing by then. Yeah, it was it was different in that we were for me and that we were in a studio, even though we were just basically there to work out arrangements with you, Like usually you would have been in the rehearsal studio with us, and instead we were here at Changer Law. Yeah. Yeah, How did you decide to release the second album so soon after the first album? Well, I think our our original idea just wasn't possible. I at Anthony and Fully really wanted to just release a giant album. It would have been like a four everything, four records set and to double CD, and they were really big on that idea, and it just turned out that wasn't going to be possible mixing wise, we didn't have enough time to get an album out before the tour was scheduled. In order to do that, not to mention the record company wasn't crazy about that idea. It seemed like a pretty wild thing to do, but I think they liked the idea just because nobody does that. So the second best idea, which I'm pretty sure Anthony even wanted. When he found out we couldn't do that, he was like, well, could we have any other album come out two months later? It was a big Basically as soon as possible was the yeah idea. So six months wound up being the reasonable thing and the possible thing because mixing wise, we needed that extra six months. Oh, let's talk about the covers. I don't know anything about this, but I know that the cover of the first album is one kind of image and the cover of the second album is a very different kind of image. Yeah, and I felt like that wound up being good at wound up reflecting the musical difference that I feel in the two albums as well, and kind kind of a heavy thing. Yeah. The first cover came from Anthony had an idea that the asterisk with a black background would be the basic idea in some kind of neon light. But what he was getting from the record company wasn't fulfilling his vision, and so he passed it on to Marcy, my wife, and they started talking about it and we started taking these references. There's this Christian church that you see from the freeway going into Hollywood from the valley. It's a it's a big sort of neon sign, and that wound up being kind of the basis. Then we Marcy got to help some help from somebody she knows, designing what the sign would look like, and then it got passed on to some other people who actually built the sign to be photographed. Then we had people to move the sign somewhere where it would be good to to shoot it. That might have been the top of the Roosevelt Hotel. So there's a physical there is a physical object exactly. So yeah, So that was the first that was the first cover, and then the one we had done a video with these animators that Marcy knows, these French animators Tammy and Julian, who did a video for poster Child and a song from the first record, and they didn't have much time to do it. It winds up looping at a certain point. It was because releasing two records and so quickly like this in succession, we've had to rush through several stages of the process, and I feel like we came up with good things under the pressure, but it was it's been hard. Like it's just now that this record is out, like starting to feel like lightning up, even though we've just got off five months of tour. But that whole time, there's been constant stuff going on other than is preparing the second Yeah, and her and Anthony had actually had the same idea independently of each other. Used the animators to make a cover that has a lot of different images and that's colorful, and that our main reference. We were thinking of covers like Funkadelic Cosmic Slop cover, but there's several covers that I can think of, ones we weren't even using but that I think have been in that same category. Like Frank Zapp and the Mothers of Invention had an album called One Size Fits All. It's got like a couch and it's got a cigar, and it's got you know, some outer space themes, like just these kind of cartoon like covers, and so yeah, it seemed like that idea fit in really well with what the vibe had turned out to be of the second album, kind of more colorful, so they put that together and we actually made two covers. There's one for the indie record stores that there's a limited amount of, and then there's the cover for the normal cover, and those are two completely different covers. How do you think about sequencing an album? Yes, I think of it on a lot of levels. Like it was. That's why we had to do the voting that we did, was just because like we'd recorded like forty eight songs that we had finished vocals too, and I knew that at the most, you know, only like thirty four we're going to be able to be released on two you know, double record sets. So that was really hard when you don't even know what songs the two albums are going to consist of, you know. But for sequencing an album, I have certain things like the first song has to sound like a first song, the last song has to sound like a last song, and you know, the middle of the album should feel like the middle of the you know, the it should feel like it's gradually revealing something. And it's always worked out working in collaboration with you and with the other guys that like, some of my favorite songs have gone towards the end of albums, even though we do try to stick some of the best songs in the front. Like I always feel like the end of an album should really be delivering things that you didn't expect from the whole rest of the album. There it should still be revealing itself on the fourth side. When you think of it in vinyl, when you think of it as four sides, it's not the end of the you know, yes, it's the end of the album, but it's the beginning of the last part. Because of the experience of the vinyl. Yeah, vinyl changes everything. Yeah, I always thought of you know, growing up with vinyl, I always thought of albums as two sides, and you know, there's the first side has an ending, and then the second side starts, and then that has an ending. And in streaming, it's not like that. It's just one lie album. Yeah, And it's just different. It's just a different way of thinking about it. And but the way most people digest it now is the streaming way. But there is something to the art of the sequence based on the vinyl. There's like a tried and true feeling about that. Most of the things that I stream that I originally heard on vinyl I don't mind that there's not a sidebreak, you know, from the A side to the B side of the album, but there's still things that help you sequence the digital version about vinyl, like the halfway point, Like the end of the second side is usually the end of the halfway point. Yeah, And so it's cool if the album sort of feels like it restarts halfway through. It's a good effect for the last song on the second side to feel like an ending and for the first song on the third side to feel like a beginning. And if it's a CD or a digital download version that you still sort of get that by the album just seems to rejuvenate itself about halfway through. Yeah. It's interesting for artists who've never worked on vinyl, they probably have a whole different relationship to a sequence. And I imagine some of them who really grew up on playlists don't even think of a sequence as anything. It's just a bunch of songs because you can kind of make your own you know, you can make your own version of it in any way you want. But there is some magic to it. When you hear songs in a certain order, you relate to them in a different way, and sometimes you know, the wrong song in gives you an impression of an album them that doesn't start you off on the right foot or the opposite. You can hear, you can hear a great song, then if you don't like the second song, then it's like a feeling of like, oh, maybe it's just one song that I like of this band. You know, that's the first thought that I would have if if I love the first song, then I don't like the second song. That's there's already a red flag of like I might not listen as open mindedly to the third song. Yeah, after not liking the second song. Yeah. Interesting. Just the psychology of the order of songs. How does that relate to doing it live? How does sequencing work live? And is there ever does it ever not work? Like do you ever decide on an order to play the songs and then you do it and it just doesn't feel right. I guess that's a big difference in our band is because live, Anthony's always been completely in control of the set list. The rest of us might make comments. He might even show it to me before we get the copies printed out, just to get approval or some thing, but we pretty much let him be the master of the set list, and that's just always been how it's been. Whereas when we're making a record it's more collaborative. It's kind of impossible for a large group of people to make a sequence because it kind of requires still more person A lot of my memories of doing it, like in the old days of me and you would would drive around and you would have me in control of the CD player going from this song this end. Yeah, feeling what works? Is the transition work? Does the feeling work? Yeah, there's so many things to keep on your mind. I feel like it's a real multi level thing. Yeah, the end of one song has to sound good going into the beginning of another. You might make a set list that on paper seems like it would work really well, and then as soon as you hear it, it's like none of these transitions are making any sense you. Yeah, that's an interesting thing about Anthony too, And it makes sense because of everyone's job. Because he's relying on his voice, there's probably a pacing that makes it able for him to get through a show that no one else has that same consideration. Yeah, I'm just thinking there's so many new songs to play. There's seventeen new songs that is new to the audience, there are the seventeen songs that the audience has heard six months ago, and then there's the forty years of music that the Chili Meppers have made. Yeah, how do you keep a balance of playing things that people are you know, expecting to hear and all the things you want to play? And how are new songs received compared to old songs live? How does that all work? I think compared to other bands who have a history like we have, the new songs get a really good response, but especially Black Summer, Like I can't always tell because in my in ears, I don't have the audience super loud like like they might be might be a large percentage audience plotting, And just because of where the mics are that I get the audience from, I might not even hear it, you know. I take the inn ears out and it's always like much more deafening screaming and stuff than than I can hear. But yeah, the new songs go over good. But like there's there's certain songs off Unlimited Love that I really wish we were playing that just were some of the more challenging ones to do when we were rehearsing, and we never took the risk to play them live. And there's other ones that we did take the risk to play live and only played them a couple of times and then gave up, sticking to the ones that were working better. You're not worried about mistakes live in front of people. I'm actually way more worried about mistakes when I'm in the studio or even when I'm rehearsing live. You're not super worried about mistakes. And at the same time, the feeling of a song not working is fine when you're at rehearsal because you know it's it's leading somewhere and you're everybody's figuring at Flice figuring this thing out, Chad's figuring that thing out. I'm figuring out another. But to have that experience live when the four elements aren't functioning as a single unit, it really stands out in a show and it makes you feel really crappy to be up there when they're not aligne when you're playing them next to these songs like Californication or other Side that you have played a lot, and you can really have fun with and everything's always locked together no matter what. So that's why it's good we have this week of rehearsal coming up, so we can start. We can work on things that we were not feeling up for taking the risk to play, but try to get them together from Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen and better and luckily we have a lot of hits. I guess that's what helps at this point is that you tend to want to mainly make it about playing the hits when you're playing the fifty thousand people a night and stuff. But the new songs are definitely accepted, and Black Summer gets pretty much equal response to any of the hits we've had before. So people who were there often common to me after the show, like, Wow, people are cheering for your new songs just as much as the old ones, And so I can't always tell, but but I have got that gotten that feedback from people. Cool. Yeah, did you play songs from the new album on the five month tour? No, we just started playing our first song from from Return of the Dream Canteen. We just started playing it just a few shows ago. We've played it like three times, Eddie, but we rehearsed those a lot when we were rehearsing before the tour started, But after five months of being on tour and not playing those songs, it just felt too risky to start playing them. We wanted to start playing them when the album was announced, but it just and when the first single came out and stuff, but it just felt like we would have been and taking too big of a risk for the energy flow. We just need to be as good as it could be. Yeah, we want we want them to sound good. So it won't take us a lot of rehearsing to get them back under our fingers. But we're going to take like a week before we go on tour again. Great makes sense, Just again the volume of material. There's so many songs. Yeah, it's hard to keep everything straight. It's impossible. Yeah, and just live, You've got to find your voice. When I'm singing harmonies on the record, that could be like twenty voices, and then I've got to do it live in one voice. You've got to figure out, Okay, what's which one do I do at this chorus? Which one do I do at the second choruse you know, you try what kind of voice do I sing and then maybe it's not. Maybe it's completely dissimilar voice to what I did on the record at all, just to make it make it work in the live context. So are there other things like that? Tell me about things that can happen on record that have to be rethought to be able to do it live. I guess for me, multiple guitar parts is often a thing. It's not usually too hard for me to figure out, but that's always something to consider, whether to duplicate the effects. Sometimes it's better live to just not have any effects. And maybe on the record I did some modular synth treatment to the guitar that worked really well for the recording but might not be necessary for live, Like it might not even be able to hear it through the nature of a big sound system outside. Yeah, it's like it's much it's louder, but it's lower resolution, I think, Yeah, and there's a lot more natural ambience, so things. Yeah, you know, on the record we're doing all kinds of fancy reverbs and things, and on the guitar and certain drum hits and little things like that. Like live, we've got so much natural reverberation playing generally, we're playing stadiums that I have reverb pedals, I don't even I think I turned them on like twice per show or something, and I would and I did a lot of like slap back because I was listening to a lot of fifties music when we made the two records, so good percentage of songs had slap back delay on the basic track of the guitar. But live, there's just no point, like, yeah, the arena creates a slap yeah, and you can't control the speed of it. Yeah, So I got real used to playing the songs dry, you know, and like I have a big pedal board, and it's generally because there are certain songs that I would like to have the option of using a certain pedal board if we would do that song. So I'll have a pedal that's just in case we play one particular song, but generally, like that's how Jimmy Hendricks was live on the records. There's all kinds of signal processing to the guitar and stuff and and to the whole band really and live it's just either distortion or semi distorted clean sound and the rest you do with your energy and you're you know, you have a whole added energy that goes into what you play live. That and the visual part of it, the movement and the energy transference with the audience that like, I feel like all that you use effects and things on a recording to make the recording feel like it has a lift to it that those other things bring that left live and you don't need to use those decorations. Tell me more about the energy transference with the audience, because it's a really interesting feeling. Most of us who don't get on a stage and play in front of, you know, tens of thousands of people, don't know what that feeling is. Like. How would you describe the difference if you guys are playing in the afternoon in the same venue empty and then when it's packed with screaming people. How does it feel different? For one thing, you're hearing everything at a slower speed than you're actually playing it because you've got adrenaline going. I see you think you're playing at one tempo and you're actually playing at a faster tempo than that. And so it's something that I remember early on when I was in the band in like eighty nine, we started really zoning into it, listening to watching videotapes of ourselves or listening to cassettes, and we realized, wow, okay, let's yeah, everything's too fast, Like let's let's let's figure out like how we can how it can sound right to us on stage, how to bridge that gap between between what it appears to be live and what it actually is. Taking into consideration the audience has probably also got some adrenaline going, so you don't need to try too much to slow it down. But you've got to make sure not to get carried away with yourself live to be conscious of like going. If it feels even a little fast, you're probably going very very fast, you know. So that's one difference is every you're hearing everything different. I noticed that for the first time. When I was a kid. I used to go running and I'd be listening to music all day, and then I'd go running, and then i'd come back to my room and be doing like situps and stuff. And I put a record it on and it sounded too slow, and I couldn't account for it. I didn't understand what it was that was happening. But then I remembered it later when we noticed that live everything was faster, so it's you're going faster than your normal perception of time. So that's one difference. And I think you also play you play harder, and like I've always played completely differently live than I do on records, on records like Californication and by the way, in particular, like I was really playing in this style that I felt served the songs well and that I felt like I was doing something with rather than a blues kind of basic sense of melody or a rock basic sense of melody. I was listening to synthpop a lot, and I see that style of melody that sort of begins with Kraft Work and continued into the eighties with depeche Mode and things like that, being its own specific form of melody, and I was trying to apply that a lot to the music that we were doing while having a rock energy, And so I was playing in a in a way that it had a kind of a simplicity in common with that kind of music. You play melodies that try to sail out with every note being in it's perfect place, but creating a sort of a shape with the notes and not so much putting a lot of expression into the notes, but trying to find notes that paint a sort of a good picture in the song, and carry on for the melody with another when he's not singing, carry that on with another melody that's just as catchy as what he's doing. But live throughout those times, particularly by the way I was playing live like in a very like flashy, putting a lot of expression into it way. It's just that's what the audience brought out of me. I couldn't keep the same kind of restraint live that I that I could for the studio. We have to pause for a quick break, and then we'll be back with more from John Fashonte and Rick Rubin. We're back with more from Rick Rubin and John f Shante. What is your pre show ritual? Like? I have all these ways of doing scales that are creative. When I was a teenager, I would just play them in the normal way you play them, or a couple of variations of that. But as I've gotten older, it's a way of putting my creativity into my instrument that has nothing to do with the sound that comes out because my playing. I'm I really believe in the philosophy of you plays what sounds good, you don't you don't play something because it's physically interesting or anything like that, or impressive or anything like that. So I have these warm ups that are really based on Okay, let's forget about the sound that the instrument makes. What's what's doing something unusual with the fingers that they're not accustomed to doing. And how can I play games with my brain with the exercises that teach me things about the nature of the twelve note system that we all use. That's going to be challenging for my fingers as well as for my brain. And so over the years, just because I do it all the time, I did it a lot even when I wasn't in the band for the ten years that I wasn't in it. It's just it's interesting to me to look at the notes in these various ways. So I've come up with a whole series of things that are challenging and that I always learned from having to do with the organization of notes in relationship to scales and different kind of scales. And I'm just always improving on it. No, I'll get little inspirations from it from like I'll watch, you know, a guitar instruction thing by John McLoughlin or Allen Holdsworth. I watched one John McLoughlin thing. I think that got me through like six years of practicing. And then and then when Allen Holdsworth thing like went to the next five years, like I see, I see what they're talking about in there, and then it makes me think of new ideas about about how to approach scales and exercises just from little thing, one little thing they say might might give me a whole stream of ideas that like, I'm doing the same thing every day, and a year later, I get the idea. But what if I did it this way? What if what if I add what if I twist it in this direction or something? You see, if we give you a guitarget, you give me a demonstration of just how that works, I could try. Yeah, let's try. I'm curious to hear it. Okay, So here's an example with scales. If we if we do something like take four notes and I'm playing them now with no accents. It's four notes. But if now I'm going to start accenting it in threes, and if you look at that, the accents once you start doing that pattern, the accents went lowest note highest, note, second highest note, third highest note, fourth highest note. It creates a pattern. You've got four notes, and let's call this one one, two three four, But if you play them in threes, the pattern winds up being four one two three four one two three, And that's just something that exists in nature having to do with the relationship of rhythm and melody. Cool. So, so if we take the same four notes and instead play them in fives, like it's so it's four notes, but we go so again, we wound up with the same accenting pattern of it went from this note, this note to this note to this note to this note. It keeps going kind of in a circle, you know. And again if we take three notes and divide it into sevens, then we go so yeah, it's hard, yeah, like that it seems exhausting. Also yeah, so so so that's just that's trying to show like show it in in one in one position. Yes, um, so you do that in scales just what I do. So I'll take like a series of notes, like say, going down in sevens. So that's just going down in sevens. And there's a certain interval jump if you're going if you're playing a seven note scale, and you're going down in sevens, you're always jumping up at six interval, whether it's a minor or major six up to six, up to six. So there's this shape that you see in it. That's the distance that you're that you're that you're jumping up every time you go down in sevens on a seven note scale. That's you know, in this case, a major based on a major scale. So now I'm gonna go down in sevens, but I'm gonna I'm gonna accent in fives. So so it's so difficult, especially with numbers like fives, where it's not like the even numbers seem to feel more comfortable. Yeah, if you do in twos or threes or fives, your picking hand is going is going down for accent, then up for an accent, then down for an accent, up for an accent. So that's another good part of it, is to get your upstrokes feeling like as solid accents as as your down strokes. So that's like a good example of the kind of things that I do. But you know, it gets harder and harder the larger the distances and the bigger the numbers. Are, Like I generally when I practice, I'm probably staying in numbers under ten, both in terms of maybe eleven, but it's it's hard to go like go down eleven notes and and accent in thirteens. There's a pattern to it, but it's much it's it's really hard to do. It fucks you up. You start hearing the notes as as dictating the rhythm. And that's what the exercise in general helps you not do, is to for a moment while you're practicing, disconnect the rhythm from the pitch. Don't let the pitch determine the rhythm. I'm pretty sure from all the music that I've learned and everything that melodies that are interesting and melodies that don't just feel average have interesting ways of acting in a way that's rhythmic separately from the from them, that the two areas are sort of functioning independently of each other, yet in harmony that catchy. It's not. It's not just the order of the notes. It's an order the order of the notes and where the accents are yeah, and and and how the rhythm relates to the note. When you think of like songs like Mary had a Little Lamb or something it's almost like the notes and the rhythm are just one hundred percent like lined up with each other. Yeah, and when you get more you know, melodies like the Beatles or something like that, where where you wonder where this melody came from. It's because it doesn't have such an obvious relationship between the rhythm and the notes. There's something creative going on in their spin on it. So so that's why I feel like those exercises do have an effect on one sense of melody and one's awareness of because you normally you can't you don't. A note is the rhythm and the note, and it's where it falls in the in the bar and where what bar that is in the song? All those things make a note. What it sounds like to us? Yeah, Like I said, it's not music. It's purely for the physical part and the brain's conception of the relationships notes to each other and the relationship also of rhythm two notes. Yeah. To me, practicing and making music, they're these two completely separate things. I don't feel that you need to use what you practice in your music or apply it in any way. It's really they're two separate art forms. And I think you should look at practicing as its own sort of cool art forms. So when you do your rehearsals, do you do with an acoustic or an electric electric? Electric? Because it's the guitar you're going to be playing, or like the guitar I'm gonna be playing. So I start out with various exercises and scales, and then I move on to playing along with things that I like. And I try to play along with certain things because they're good for rhythm guitar, certain things because they're good for band ending and doing vibrato, things that have solos, so I like playing along with. I have a lot of things memorized right now that are They're mostly things that people improvised on a record or live, and so I have these solos by some of my favorite rock guitar players. And usually in my life, I just learn a stream of things, and I gradually forget things as I learn new things. But at the moment, it seemed best for my fingers if I were to only on show days play things that I know really well that I can play, that I should be able to play without making mistakes. So I've got a number of things memorized that I can do that with and I like to spend a couple hours doing that before this show. Nothing is as crazy as what I do on stage, because a lot of what I do on stage, I wouldn't even know how to figure it out myself, just pure a pure energetic transmission. Yeah, a lot of people would call it sloppy because you can't hear It doesn't so much sound like noe noe, noe, noe noe. A lot of the time there's some weird noise that you're like, well, I'm not sure where his fingers were there, but like I really like the sound of those things, and I like playing like that. You know, if you would listened to it, could you tell what you were doing or maybe? And I can do it with a most any guitar playing, like like Frank Zappa is a guitar player who I would put in that category. Like a lot of what he plays, I think it's a matter of opinion what he's actually playing. Two people could figure it out and do it two different ways. A lot of it's just not clear enough, some of it is, and then he goes into a section where it's just like, well, we can only guess what he's doing at that pen and in his case, does it always sound intentional or no. He definitely would admit to making what he called mistakes. To me, there's no mistakes. The sound he made is the music, and there's nothing it should have been, you know, yeah, yeah, but he may have been trying to do something different. Yeah, he was trying to do something different and he doesn't quite make it. And that happens with these guitar players who go out on a ledge, like Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendricks. They all have sections like this that it becomes hard to be sure exactly what they're doing. But I try to learn things like that. But a lot of what I'm playing live is stuff that there's no level of confusion about it, and it just it's a little beneath the level of what I'm going to do when I get on stage. But I find that if I do it for a couple hours, that prepares me. It's like a meditation. And it's like if I find that I'm making mistakes on something that I've played a zillion times perfectly and I'm forgetting it to some degree or my fingers aren't cooperating with me, it shows me I need to bring an extra focus to that thing. So cool. Yeah, they're so interesting. Yeah, I asked, because some of the craziest solos that I've ever seen somebody transcribe. And this is how I learned how to read music when I was a kid, was because I was so fascinated by the rhythms in them, where Steve had done these trends scriptions of Frank Zappa's guitar solos. There was a whole book of them, and I had no interest in reading music. But when I learned that there was this way of writing down when people are speeding up and slowing down across the bar line and when they're going into grooves that seemed completely separate from what the drummers doing but do have a relationship, it was fascinating to me. And it was really the only way to learn a lot of franksz Appa's written music was to understand how it was written down, because he would use those kind of rhythms both in his playing and in his writing. So I learned how to read. I just went directly to what turned out to be like the hardest stuff to you know, to sight read, and consequently I never learned to sight read but I asked Steve fi because I think a lot about polyrhythms. I used them a lot of my electronic music. I have machines I can program where you're playing like five against four or evenly or seven against three, or these strange ways of rhythmically relating to the other instruments. So I'd given a lot of thought to it for so many years. And I asked them, as you think of them as objectively accurate? And he said it was a matter of interpretation. When you're writing rhythms like that and the drummer is not playing to a click, but he himself is slightly speeding up and slowing down all the time, it's very hard to say the rhythm right here is the rhythms are all based on thirteen evenly across four quarter notes. There's no way to accurately to be able to objectively say, yes, that is the rhythm. Because as long as when you're dealing with rhythms that are that delicate to play accurately, the slightest little bit of timing change in the drummer, even a really good type drummer, makes the difference to where it's not what you conceived it to be. I think all that studying of Frank Zappa's music that I did when I was a teenager did a lot of good for me, because it showed me that not everything needs to line up perfectly rhythmically with everybody else the way most people tend to play, and melodies don't have to be this straightforward thing in order to be accessible or to be catchy. That that that you can be doing little twists with them all the time and taking all those liberties that he was taking, like and studying them. I just I just feel like gave me a sort of unique outlook for a pop musician on you know, on what notes are there for and what you're able to do with them. I feel like, even in the simplest things that I do, I feel like that familiarity I have with doing things in an unusual way winds up making the melodies unusual, you know, in some weird way. Do you feel like if it happened that you were playing a concert and it came time for solo, and if for some reason something happened where the audience could still hear you perfectly, but you couldn't hear yourself at all, could you play a solo without hearing yourself at all, and it be coherent for the audience, I think. So you know that that kind of happened at the LA show that we did a few months ago. I got out on stage and there was nothing in my ear monitors at all. They were they were silent, and so I went over to the side of the stage and it just sounded like a mess up there. Because we all used in air monitors, what it actually sounds like on stage is pretty incoherent. So I went to the side and was telling my guitar tack, telling the sound man what's going on. They're watching them try to solve the problem, and I went into playing a two handed tapping Eddie van Halen style solo. Barely could hear what I was doing. But after the show, my wife's cousin said that solo at the beginning of the show incredible. But yeah, I could barely hear what I was doing. But I do that kind of thing when i'm It's part of my practicing that when I warm up, I also do things like that, like just doing this at every part of the neck that I just doing these trills like everywhere that I can did Eddie actually invent that technique. No, he invented that use of it, like nobody did it sounding like what he sounded like doing it. There's certain details about patterns, like like like nobody was doing that, but Steve Hackett from Genesis was doing that using his right hand finger to tap notes, and Frank Zappa was doing the same thing but using the pick rather like that's what it sounds like with your finger, that's with a pick, And so he was calling that bagpipe guitar and that was a good Both those examples were good. Three years before Van Hilen influenced Eddie, Like did he hear those and then come up with his way of doing it? He claimed he came up with his on the toilet while he was taking a ship. Good story, But he went backstage at a Steve Hackett show and told Steve Hackett that he got the idea for it from being at a Genesis show and saw him doing it. So I tend to believe that. But Steve Hackett's definitely doing it. On selling England by the Pound, the Genesis album, He's definitely doing that technique. You can hear it, Yeah, when you're soloing live. How much do you take into account the recording version of the solo. Usually not at all. Yeah, Like sometimes if I'm in a certain mood, I'll do a variation of it. I'll do the same basic idea, or I'll start with the same idea. But usually that's even how it is on the record. Like people think of the solo on a record as being the one, but it was actually I had an idea of how I would start it, and that was all I had, and that was the one that you picked that day, or may have been the only one you played. In some cases, like just to be prepared for the studio, I often have an idea for a beginning and I figured the rest I'll just get through and it'll be reflected in the vibe of the moment. So live a lot of the time, I might start that the same way that I did in the studio, start with something that that's pre written, and then go off in another direction, because it's always going to feel differently depending on the groove of how Fully and Chat are playing. To play the same solo, it seems like it would be unnatural when you have a song in your head. Let's say you're bringing a song into the band you've worked on at home. Has there ever been a case where you come up with a like a part that you're going to play a rhythm a rhythm piece, and you play it for the band and they join in, and when they join in, it instigates you to change what your original part was based on what they're playing. Oh, yeah, completely. And Anthony's always the last part of that, like, like, I don't really know exactly what I'm going to do and how it can be, how the groove is going to be put into it and all that until I hear what he's thinking. But there is a certain amount if I bring in a song, if the drums that Chad aren't playing don't sound right, I might not have any idea of what the drums are supposed to be going in, but when I hear the wrong thing, Yeah, it feels like this doesn't make this thing do what it wants. Yeah, you know we often experiment. Yeah, we work on that, and so there's there's always a lot of healthy exchange with Chad. With Flea that that's been more difficult. We've had rough patches of working together because I had an idea of what I thought should be the low note of the chord and that kind of thing, and he just hears a difference and yeah, but you know, we managed to work that out. Always, when he brings in a song, either on piano or on bass, do you immediately know what to play? Quite often, especially if it's a sort of modal, funk based kind of thing that doesn't involve chord changes. A lot of the time, the first thing I play when when I come in is what winds up being on the record. But with piano, with with those songs that he's brought in on piano, I I definitely have to like put some thought into it and ask him what the chords are. We had a real nice exchange because in the old days, neither of us really communicated having anything to do with theory. It was more showing the person what you're playing and then responding to that. But as time has gone by and he went to music school and stuff for this new stuff, we would talk about the chord. He would if he didn't know the name of the chord, or one of us doesn't know the name of the chord, we tell the other one what the intervals that it has in it are, and when it's what it involves chord changes, that's really where the trouble, Where it involves more it's just you got to figure it out. Yeah, you've got to take some time. But yeah, Usually the songs that are jam style song, songs that come from us just jamming with each other, that's usually pretty automatic. And but sometimes you know, like some songs on the new album, we're like, we did a jam and the first thing we played is one song, and what we went into ten minutes later wound up being a completely other like we'd landed on something through playing the first thing that wound up being a whole other tune. So so there's this automaticness of fitting together when it's when it's things that are in one key, but when it's moving around a lot, it requires some thought both for him to come up with bass parts, for me to come up with guitar parts. If there's a difficult chord progression presented to you on piano, would your instinct first to be thinking about how to interact with it, or would it be to play along with it, like to double it first, to know what to do off of it from piano. I can't do that because she's got he can play more notes than I can on my guitar. On piano, it's so easy, for instance, to play a chord that's almost everything in it is a whole step away from each other, if a very close distance. Yes, guitar, you just can't do it. You can't. You've got to take notes out of the chord in order to be able to physically play it. I see. So you can't really duplicate it on the guitar, you do, right, Yeah, not if it has too many notes in it. He's doing a lot of chords that have ten notes in him, I see, don't even have that many strings or that range. And it comes down as always to doing what you hear in your heads, you know. But for chords to do what you hear in your head, you have to have a good idea of that's because that's one of the things I was thinking was when you hear something and you respond to it, are you responding with the guitar first or are you humming it in your head and then playing it? Would the singing version be faster than the guitar version to sing the idea or no? Yeah, It's an interesting question because it comes back to that thing that we touched on in the last episode having to do with that period of time where I was seeing music very clearly in my head with synesthesia or some form of synesthesia. And even though I don't have that the way I did when I was, you know, in my early twenties, I do see things and I can see, for instance, like if I'm playing live the beginning of a guitar solo, I'm not humming it. I just see it. Wow. When you say you see it, you don't see it like written music. No, would you describe it as shape? How would you describe it? That's the funny thing about it is it's not visual, at least I don't think it is. But it's in an instant like I might see two bars of a of a guitar solo, of the way I'm going to start the solo. I might see the first two bars in my head as a single picture, like as a How would you describe a single instant? I see those two bars. But when you say see the two bars, tell me what you're like. Describe what you're seeing. What do the bars look like? I don't know how. I really it's there for me because it's interesting. It's one of those things that because I could do this kind of thing so good when I was when I was like twenty, and I was literally seeing everything like as a movie that like you'd ask me, like you'd have the idea, like we would be working on Sold to Squeeze, and I remember you saying you should write a guitar intro, just a guitar only intro for this song, and I would just see a picture in my head, like a visual picture like a movie of the song, and I would think, Okay, what would be the right movie for the intro? And then I would just see the movie and then play the feeling of that like the school, like you're scoring an image. Yeah, but it's not an image that you could necessarily describe it not necessarily, but it very well could have been. In those days they were were there were things that were very clear, but they always there was this interaction between the music and the visuals in my head to where if I was hearing music, I saw a visual that perfectly represented that music. And it could be abstract shapes in black and white, or it could be color just like a movie, or you know it was And so as time went by and I went Californication time I start making music again, but without that clear visualness, I still have the same ability to see the feeling of music in my head. Yet there was no picture to it, but I could see it. I can only describe it as seeing because it's there in my head and it's clear, and I see the connection between that and what I would play to do that feeling. Yeah, but sometimes there's a visual thing, but it's more like spaces than it is like objects. Okay, And when you say spaces, do you mean spaces between things or a visual space like a location. I'm not really saying that. It's anything that I could expect anybody to be able to draw or something. Yeah, it's just the absence of objects I see as opposed to objects. It's it's something like you've seen what's missing? You don't have something? What I'm curious you just guys, you're asking me these questions. You must have something like, No, I don't know. I'm trying. I'm trying to visual I'm trying to visualize what you're experiencing, right, And I'm just looking for any clues to I want to see it, you know, I don't want to I want to see it. Yeah, pretty mysterious. I think I told you. I think I told you when I was gassed at the dentist's office. I told you that story a long time ago. Needle phobic, I got gassed to have a blood test and I was listening to music and they gassed me and I could see the music. I could see three D images, and I remember thinking, oh, now I know how to do this, because like now that I've been exposed to it, Yeah, I don't need laughing gas to do this. I see what this is, right. And then I've never been able to do it again, even not on laughing gas. I can't. I've never been able to do it again. But in that first time, I was able to clearly see and it was so cool. It was so cool to be able to see it. Yeah, that's how it was for me, real, consistently, from like nineteen ninety two. It's mysterious to me that that I was able to make music just as colorful and and emotional and shapely and all these things without it. And I can only say that even though I don't see the visuals like I did, they must be there just below the level of consciousness, because the effect of what that did remained with me. When you could see it. Maybe it was almost like training wheels, like it had to be that clear for whatever it was that was showing it to you for you to be able to see it, and then once you built the ability to see it, you could still see it without the visual there. Right. Yeah, it seems to me that that is that that is what happened. And I'm sure there are people who just go on seeing it their whole lives, but it didn't work that way for me. But yeah, there are a lot of ideas, don't you get it safe. For instance, you're looking through movies, you're thinking of watching a movie and you look through your DVD collection. There's nothing, nothing's leaping out at you all of a sudden, one DVD that's the one you want to watch. Yes, what happens in your head at that moment? I would say it's it's a feeling of the energy in my body raises. It's similar to when we're playing in the studio and it goes from a okay take to a great take. There's this feeling of just like I feel this lift of energy in my body that makes me want to sometimes makes me want to laugh. Sometimes it makes me want to lean forward and like listen closer. I would say it's interest. It's like you could be sitting around and like mindlessly not thinking, and then something grabs my attention. Nothing changed, volumes, not any louder, you know. It's like it's not like the music came on. Music has been playing for hours, but all of a sudden, like my attention gets drawn to this thing, right, and it's this wave of energy, I guess is the way to say it right and see for me, that's a part of it. But another part of it is there's something that presents itself to my mind that it's as if it's a condensed form of the feeling of that thing. Yeah. So like if if I'm looking through my movies and good Fellas is the movie I want to watch, the feeling of good Fellas comes over me in my head. Before when I saw things visually, that would have been a much more extreme like somehow visual concoction that that I literally see. But in this case, I don't see it, but I feel it in my brain. Yes, I'm going to next time that I'm choosing something to watch, I'm going to really pay attention to what's going on in my body to try to understand what I'm feeling. You know, I know, I know the feeling of where I get excited. Oh there it is, yeah, that feeling. Yeah, I'm going to try to tune into that more. It's interesting that you say in my body, because it's just for me. It's more like it's more my head. Yeah, for me, it's not. It's definitely not in my head, right, It's not a thinking thing for me. It's a whole body feeling draw interesting. Yeah, yeah, so that's what makes me think it's still leftover. Simple things like that. When I'm looking through my record collection, I see the record that I want to hear, the feeling of that record is produced in my head as if in one moment, I were feeling the entire listening experience of listening to that record, the sum of that, where each any aspect of it contains the whole. Yeah. Yeah. So so that ends up relating to what we were talking about in terms of when Fleet plays a bassline, I see in my head, what would be the counter to that, what would be the balancer to that? Where the holes in that and I see a picture of it in my head of what would balance his baseline, and I just start playing, and that balance is what I play. So I'm not thinking of notes in advance, but sometimes I do. But it's in that way that I that I was saying, where like I see them, but it's faster than real time. I see the whole pattern that I'm going to repeat in an instant. You know, we're only really taking note of what's happening consciously all the time. But I think just as much as dreams are this world that we don't really understand, I think everything in life is that there's some sort of subconscious echo that's taking place to what we're seeing consciously. Absolutely, and I think what we're seeing consciously barely scratches the surface of what's going on. Yeah, there's too many data points. We can't take it all in. Yeah. And you know that period of time that I mentioned in the last show where I had months when I first got off drugs completely of just being kind of bored. During that period of time when nothing was happening, I was seeing the music that I might make with the band in my head. I guess in some cases I might have actually been hearing music in my head. But a lot of it was just the overall concept of the way that the things would relate to each other. And I'm just bored, like just sitting there, like not doing anything, not excited about life or anything. But oftentimes when there's nothing going on, You're subconscious reveals itself to you in these ways, Like that's the time when it does it. If you're constantly having information in front of you all the time, or constantly doing things to entertain yourself or to combat that. Yeah, like oftentimes you're not going to be able to be in touch with the subconscious that has its own movement and that has its own reality. And a lot of the time, it seems like in that particular case like period that I thought nothing was happening with me, my life was going nowhere, it actually had a huge effect on something very productive that I did, which was making that record. You know, would you describe it as a premonition, I guess so. I guess I've had a lot of a lot of those in my life. Like you can imagine something and then it ends up coming to pass. Yeah, Like I see something. Sometimes I see things and things that they have nothing to do with me, and then all of a sudden, I see the real thing, or I hear the real thing. I realized, Oh my god, I heard that in my head like ten years ago, Like that Dice album that you brought over to my house to day Laughter Died Part two. Yeah, there's moments on that that I swear I heard in my head when I was fourteen years old, like seven years before it came out. I know, I understand that feeling, because sometimes I'll hear something and they'll be and I know I've never heard before, or it wasn't even possibly here before. But there's such a feeling of remembrance when I'm listening to it, or just a sense of yeah, that's how it goes. Do you know what I mean, like like I already know it, yeah, A knowing this. Yeah, there's and there's some kind of connection between memory and creativity. There's a connection between them. Yet, creating something new isn't the same thing as remembering something. But in some ways that's that's it's useful that it's not the same because we remember something and then we make it and then we realize that that's not what it was at all. It's like it is something new. Yeah, But there's a connection between the functions in the brain and it shows sometimes, Like the Beatles had that thing with Ringo. They would make fun of him because every time he tried to write a new song it was a song that already existed. He thought he was writing a new song, and they would start falling on the floor laughing because it was it was a Jerry Lee Lewis song or whatever, and he just didn't realize it was. And oftentimes, when when I get an idea for writing a song, it feels like I'm remembering something. It doesn't feel like I'm coming up with something new. What's turned out to be the most beneficial kind of practicing for me is that I'm just creating a sort of an encyclopedia of what has been done, yes, and that's all being stored in my subconscious I learned if I like a song, I learned how to play the guitar of it. I might even learn how to play the keyboard of it and the base of it. And this information is all stored in my head. So when I write, I'm drawing from that storeroom of all the stuff that of all the combinations that you've ever heard over the course of your life and that you get to a stage where Okay, I have this and I want to go to this, and there's somewhere and you, maybe conscious or unconscious, Yeah, like this sound, going to this sound feel satisfying. Yeah, And maybe that's because there's a something you heard twenty five years ago that you liked and lodged, but don't you know, don't remember the specifics of it. Yeah. Like if you eat a good meal, you feel satisfied. Yeah, and the same when you hear a good piece of music. There's this feeling of satisfaction. And you know, the different elements, all of the elements over the course of your life that have given you that feeling of satisfaction are all at your disposal to draw from. Whether you remember them or not, they're somehow in there. Yeah. They change us. Yeah. For me, that's the productive thing is just to have them all in there. And you're like doing this mixing and matching thing. It's really more you're subconscious doing it because like, for instance, like we were talking about under the Bridge, like when Anthony had that vocal and I basically had the idea to just do something starting with them in a major key, just because what he was doing seemed sad, and I wanted to cheer it up a little bit, because, aside from it being soft, that was another aspect to it that was weird for us. Our music was generally uplifting. Yeah, and it was a sad song. Yeah. If I sang the melody of that song, you hear the chords in your subconscious you'd hear the melody now, you know, now that you know what it's supposed to be. But when he was first singing it, we didn't know it wasn't it wasn't super clear whether it was yeah, And so I know that that was my thought going into it, aside from the Jimi Hendricks thing, was just the thought like, let's lighten this up a little bit, you know, And when it moved to a minor key for the chorus of the song, and the idea to have that part start on the later than the one instead of the one I drew from this song that I knew in my head at that moment. I could have thought of any song, but I thought this would be a nice little moment to have this space right before the course, you know. In a lot of ways, That's why I think learning a lot of songs is really the only way to develop your skill doing it, because when it's happening, it's not like a skill that you you know how to use the hammer in this particular way, so you use it. The skill is like sort of giving your subconscious the ability to be able to offer you the right thing at the right time, yes, you know, and sometimes giving it and giving it loads of options to choose from, exactly loads of options. Do you remember the song that inspired you to want to put that in under the bridge? Right? Do you remember what it was? Yeah? Can you play it? Okay? So, um, do you mind if I play a whole verse and anything you want? I can do it instrumentally if it's no good that way, but but it seems I'm anything you want to play. It's fun. I'm gonna try this. Um. So that Joe Jackson song goes one to f The guy who knows upstairs is a nator. They say, maybe words the same. He changed his name because someone with the same name made it first. His girlfriend comes to stay. We hear her screams and think that they rehearse. So maybe a play and maybe someone's really geting you prown every home town every na souse, every fair dealing, every good job, every swaming, every dream night. Okay, now I'm just gonna play it once, just guitar one, two, three, four one. Is it that long? Yeah, it's a long, long break. Yeah. It's also interesting the phrasing the bum bum bum after space sounds like it's answering something. It doesn't sound like it's saying something. Yeah, that's that's the way that that chorus generally goes. With his, it's a long um, it's just a stop and then goes into the chorus. But with ours, it's uh, it's a sustain right, yeah, yeah, we hold, we hold the chord which came from this which even that in itself came from another song. There's this t Rex song called rip Off that goes like it's funny. It's called It's funny, it's called I Really at the time that was a joke in my mind, like it would be cool if I ripped off rip off. But yeah, like it has this cycle in the verse that goes like uh hm, so, so I always thought that was cool that the verse had this break in it where the guitar just played this major seven chord. So in ours, when we got to the end of the to the to the verse and that's the happy verse. Yeah. And then when he got to the end of the singing, rather than just going straight into the chorus, when we went and then the Joe Jason Yeah, but instead of doing that, I went it sounds more to me that that sounds more introspective than the verse did. Yeah. Yeah, like like it was almost like in the in the writing of that song, we we brought in the darkness gradually, like to me the end of the song that that's the darkest part of the song. Yeah, you know, like like that was the feeling to me when Anthony first brought it in, but you got to it instead of opening with exactly like like gradually, and which gave it the effect of somehow feeling triumphant rather than feeling like you or a release, some kind of a release, yeah, rather than feeling some kind of rather than it feeling like a down or it made the whole thing made it made the chorus felt like an uplifting thing. We had another song earlier on the first album that I did with them, knock Me Down, where that it was like, as I might not be in the right key, so we had. We had this thing that went major chord to minor chord, and it's just one of those things that I've not There's a lot there's certain songs in history where somebody does that where I just noticed that that that it's a good feeling, and uh, that's another thing I can't because I know how to play so many songs. I have things categorized in my head to where there's all these sort of chord progressions. There's a lot of songs that have similar chord progressions, and so I have them sort of on some level, maybe not to where I can just play them right off the bat, but they're the principles at work. Yeah, they're they're categorized in my head is being oh, that's that type of chord. It's rare that in a rock song from history, I would hear a chord progression that I would go, oh, that that doesn't fall into any category, you know, but there are some, especially in progressive rocks and stuff. So yeah, like under the Bridge was just another attempt at doing the major to minor chord but taking time with it. And I think Beatles did that too, know, the major to the minor. I'm sure they Yeah, they definitely did. Like, like let's see, I was playing along in one the other A lot of the time it's like they already went to a F chord, say Laren C, and then they went to an F and then and then they went back to C. And then next time they do an F it's minor, and all of a sudden, that gives you a different feeling, like it's a chord you've already heard as a major chord, but then the second time they go to it, it's a it's a minor chord and it changes. Yeah. We'll be right back with the rest of John F. Shaunte and Rick Rubin's conversation. After a quick break, we're back with Rick Rubin and John F. SHAWNTA. Can you think of any songs that from the exercise that you showed earlier of the notes and rhythm? Yeah, any songs that you've written that have come from something related to that notes and rhythm technique? No, definitely can't. Like I said, I really I think of practicing. You think if it's separate, it's completely separate. I'm not trying to connect the two things. I do know that when I'm playing on stage it's not going to stop me from doing a certain thing that I want to do in my solo. If all of a sudden I have to do upstrokes and accent those rather than accenting the down strokes, like I'll be able to say whatever that thing is I wanted to say. Or if I want to fit a strange amount of notes in the bar, if I want to do if I want to fit seven notes into the four four instead of eight notes or whatever, like it's natural for me to do that. But other than that, I figure it just it gets in there somehow, But I don't know how for sure. Okay, this is a good question based on that, you want to get seven notes into a four you're doing a solo. What happens you're hearing the music, you start the solo, what dictates what where the next note? It goes like what's happening? Yeah, no, it's yeah, Like like I'm like, you can explain it after why yeah, but not in the moment? Yeah, no, time. Yeah. I think of it as you're placing yourself in a few points in time at the same time. Like I think if you can do all three of those things at once, be in the past, being the present, and be in the future. Yeah, that that's something like the ideal frame of mind to be to have some kind of a preconcept and about what you're about to do. Yes, to be in the moment, listening to what everybody else is doing right right in the moment at every point, and also listening to what's just happened. Yeah, I think it's It involves like a balancing of sort of being in those three points in time at the same time. If a lot of the time you're only able to listen to what's just happened and you're just judging it every step of the way, you're just going, oh, that sucked, Oh that was terrible, wow, like and you can't get out. Yeah it's bad. That's what it's like. When I'm having a bad show. I'm just listening to what's already happened. I don't have any idea of what I'm about to do, not in the moment. I'm listening to what's already come out, and I'm judging it. I see. But ideally you're in a balance between between those three points in time. How often does that happen? Though? Bad show like for you, a bad show like that I feel like that doesn't I've never seen that, but how you probably have seen me. Really. I remember even when we were doing the basic tracks to Stadium. I was kind of in that state of mind while we were doing the basic tracks for a week or two, and you just kept telling me, like I kept telling you what I was experiencing, that everything's sounding bad to me, and you were like, you're playing great, sounds great, you know, but but like so, it's just the it's your interpretation of what's happening. It's what's happening inside. It's yeah, I was judging everything as I was doing. It was so important to me to play in a certain way that I wanted to play on that record. I was trying to have a little more of the looseness of lives than I'd had on any of our records before, and the energy of the live playing. And I think I'd put too much pressure on myself to where most of the records float out really nicely. But the first week or two I was experiencing a really negative thing where I was just judging every moment as it happened successively, and I wasn't able to get into the groove. I wasn't able to anticipate it. I wasn't able to be in the moment. And what do you think shifted it? Because he said it was for the first few weeks the meditation thing I did, Yeah, because there was a bad feeling in my stomach that was associated with the mental state. And I did a guided meditation with somebody. First I meditated on this thing in my stomach, and then I meditated on He said, there's a secondary part where where you're feeling a similar kind of unease, similar kind of pain. Try to figure out. Let's get off the phone and figure out where in your body is that. And I found that it was this spot right here, just my wrist. On the opposite side is the palm of my hand, yeah, and back of the left wrist. Yeah. It might have been both risk but it was very subtle. I would have never even noticed that there was a feeling there, But when I tried to separate myself from the feeling in my stomach, it was there. And so I meditated on that for a long time, and then I got on the phone with him again, and then he said, there's a third point. You know. I can't remember what it was, but I want to what maybe it was the road or something, whatever it was, And eventually a whole explosion of thoughts came out about a friendship that I'd had when I was young that went bad. Wow. That was followed by a period of time of me intensely trying to play guitar in a way that impressed people. And the way I intended to play on that record had a connection with that point in time. That's what I was lodged in your body, Yeah, and so I'd some the thing up in that way. All of a sudden, all these memories came back of this friendship that went bad and the desire to impress people that was followed. Like before that, I was just more already just being creative. After that, I had a determined thing like I'm going to play in a way that's going to impress people, and that nobody's going to be able to tell me I'm not a good guitar player, and all this stuff like, which isn't possible. Like I've heard the people talk shit about the greatest guitar players ever, whether it's Jimmy Hendricks, Jimmy Page, Alan Holdsworth, that Evan Helen, Like I've heard loads of people say that they're bad guitarists, you know, like so you can't escape it. So I don't advise anybody to every Also, if you have that, if you're doing something new or going out on a limb, if you're really going forward, there are always people who resist. Yes, yeah, they have no context for it. Yeah. So with everything I'd learned about making music for how it sounds and going with your feelings and supporting the your bandmates and all that kind of stuff, when we went in the studio to do Stadium, I was just kind of like I had this idea that I was going to play in a way that was going to draw more attention to the guitar playing, and I think I really had to get my ego out of the way of it. Like I feel like that's where the conflict came from, that caused the pain. Yeah, I had to reel it in a little bit and just get inside the feeling of the songs and not worry about like the playing in a more flashy wave was going to have to just come naturally, couldn't. I had to get that because that's kind of what you're doing anytime that you're that you're thinking of a reaction that you want from people, separate from the feeling. It's just it never works. Yeah, it doesn't work. And so so that's where I had some intelligent part of me telling myself, you know this, you can't go down this path. So it was a little conflict. But once I had that memory and saw the relationship between those two things, losing that friend and focusing on being impressive to other people, I was able to go back into the record with my stomach feeling relaxed, with being able to be completely in the moment, without worrying about what people were going to think of it or anything, and just doing what came naturally. Cool. Yeah, I'm trying to say if we want to start talking about the other albums or whether it's better to stop and do another one, because I feel like, again, it's going to be long, and I feel like we've covered a lot of good ground. Now what do you think? Yeah, I'm and you're around for a few weeks, right, I'm here for a few weeks and we can do another one before I leave town. Oh okay in person? Sure, no mind coming out, not at all. Okay, great, because I feel like there's so much. Again, it's you know, I never know in the beginning, but once you start talking, it's like there's a lot to talk about. It's funny that we don't when we're working on stuff, there's not much talk of you know, we don't philosophy as much. We're you know, we have a job to do and we're focused on doing the job, so we rarely just talk about stuff. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, Well, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah. Again, always a pleasure talking to you. I always learned something's fun. Yeah, it's a lot of fun talking to you. Cool. So we do this again soon. Okay cool. Thanks to John F. Shante for stopping by. Shang a lot to chat with you. Be sure to keep an eye out on our feed for their next conversation. You can hear all of our favorite Chili pepper songs on my playlist at broke Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record broken Record. It's produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted, ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast staff. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats on Justin Richmond