The New Guitar Gods

The guitar has been the king of rock & roll instruments for more than half a century. What you are about to read are twenty reasons why the present and future of rock guitar are as exciting and explosive as its history. In attack, technique, lyrical ambition and experimental drive, these players are all descendants of the original heroes -- including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and Jimmy Page -- who transformed the electric guitar in the Sixties and Seventies. As John Frusciante says, "For me, the genuine guitar heroes had a lot to say musically and put themselves out there. They tried to take the instrument to new places."

But Frusciante, Derek Trucks, John Mayer and the other guitarists in these pages are all heroes and gods in their own, often extreme, right. They are also proof that, long after Chuck Berry minted the fundamental twang and addicting joy of rock & roll guitar on his 1955 debut single, "Maybellene," there remains much to discover and study in the unlimited alchemy you get from wood, six strings, electricity and the highly personal poetry of touch and strum. The distinguishing mark of rock's greatest guitarists is, Mayer insists, "they're all stuck on what they're seeking, not where they are."

This celebration differs from our 2003 survey, "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," in some ways. The guitarists here are, by the measure of rock's extended history, new. Most are under forty, and all have made their impact in the last two decades. Also, there is no ranking. Numbered lists can be fun; we still get blowback from last time about who should have been up, out, in or down. But nerve and originality are not easily quantifiable, and that goes for record sales too. Frusciante and Mayer are among the few multiplatinum sellers here. Yet everyone in these pages is a true star of the instrument.

In one central way, however, this tribute to the guitar and those who play it is exactly like the 2003 issue: You cannot turn a page without a reference or a deep bow of gratitude to Hendrix. Frusciante, Mayer and Trucks all speak of him with informed reverence, and Hendrix's cataclysmic influence appears repeatedly in the sound and vision of the other players. In the Rock & Roll Guitar Hall of Fame, Jimi Hendrix is, by every standard, Number One. Everyone else -- including the hundreds of great guitarists who will be cited in the blizzard of letters and e-mails sure to follow -- is Number Two.


Ask John Mayer if he is a guitarist or a singer-songwriter, and he replies immediately: "Always a guitarist." As a kid, he goes on, "I had this vision -- sitting by a window on a rainy afternoon, just playing guitar. I said to myself, 'If I have enough strings and electricity, I can play guitar forever. I don't need anything else.'" Today, Mayer, 29, is more famous as a singer-songwriter. His first two albums, 2001's Room for Squares and 2003's Heavier Things, have sold a combined 6 million copies, and his latest record, Continuum, is nominated for five Grammys, including Album of the Year. But as a teenager, Mayer -- who was born in 1977 in Bridgeport, Connecticut -- was so obsessed with Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan that, Mayer recalls, laughing, "in my mind, I was on my way to being the next Stevie Ray." Instead, Mayer is a pop star and a dynamic, accomplished guitarist with an electric-Chicago attack and melodic concision best heard on Try!, his 2005 live album with the John Mayer Trio. He is also a passionate apostle for the blues elders he loves so much, such as Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Eric Clapton. "I never practice," Mayer insists. "I'm always playing. I want to write songs people can just jam on."

In your Jimi Hendrix essay in our 2004 "Immortals" issue, you wrote, "Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix." Can you elaborate on that?
If I could play more like Hendrix, I would. I'd want to do it all the time. But who I am is an amalgam of pop and something rootsier. It's not a choice. As for Jimi Hendrix, all guitar players feel that way: "I'm not him."

When did you get your first guitar?
It was January 1991. I was thirteen. My father rented a Washburn acoustic guitar from a music store. I took it to the bathroom, closed the door and sat there, thinking, "How do I find out what's in here? What are you hiding?"

I'm attracted to what I don't know. Everyone else I knew said things like, "I watched him play, and it made me want to quit." I never wanted to put the guitar down. I watched guys who made me want to pick it up. That's when you have the disease: You get your ass kicked, and you say, "I'm going to figure out why I lost that fight."


When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights," says John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Then he gives an example of how high he gets with six strings and electricity: his hair-raising solo on a recent Chili Peppers B side, "Lyon 6.06.06," recorded live in France last year. "I remember my brain completely going off. The energy flows to such a degree that there's no reason to think." But Frusciante, who turns thirty-seven on March 5th, is also one of the most advanced technical guitarists in rock, a vibrant, chameleonic stylist whose melodic precision and invention were pivotal on the Chili Peppers' commercial breakthrough, 1991's BloodSugarSexMagik. Born in New York and raised in Southern California, Frusciante obsessively practiced guitar in his bedroom, playing along to records, until he joined the Chili Peppers in 1989, replacing the late Hillel Slovak. Frusciante abruptly quit in 1992, beginning a seven-year descent into drug-fueled isolation. But since his return for 1999's Californication, Frusciante's early fusion of punk energy and the exploratory grandeur of Jimi Hendrix has bloomed into a colorful, explosive originality that is all over the Chili Peppers' recent double album, Stadium Arcadium.

Who are your guitar heroes?
I always felt it was limiting to stick with guitarists for your inspiration. I also draw inspiration from what you might call guitar anti-heroes -- people with an originality that goes beyond the guitar-hero aesthetic.

OK, who are your anti-heroes?
Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground. In the Seventies, Keith Levene of Public Image, Ltd. and John McGeoch of Magazine invented interesting styles. I'm a big fan of Matthew Ashman of Bow Wow Wow. I have nothing against flash. But I grew up in a time when heroism and flashiness were overtaking the desire to make beautiful music. Kurt Cobain took guitar playing further than anyone with way more technique had done in a while.

Who made you want to play guitar?
It was Ace Frehley, Jimmy Page and Joe Perry. But it was a while before anybody would buy me an electric guitar. By then, I was into [Black Flag's] Greg Ginn, [the Germs'] Pat Smear, and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones [of the Clash].

But the point of punk was that you didn't have to be a great player to get your angst across.
It was a long time before I thought of technique meaning anything at all. But Pat has an amazing rhythm-guitar style. Most punk guitarists base their thing on down strokes. Pat has an interesting combination of up-and-down strokes. I can't describe it. But the colors and feelings in what he did were meaningful to me as a kid. They spoke to my brain.

What is your role in the Chili Peppers? You have big room to roam amid Anthony Kiedis' vocals, Flea's bass and Chad Smith's drums.
Before I joined, the Chili Peppers were all style. The sound wasn't about harmonic movement or musical texture. It was purely energy. Hillel's playing was much simpler than other guitar players can get away with, because of how busy Flea was on bass.

Once I felt like I understood that simplicity, I put aside my idea of the guitar's original role in the band. I wasn't just writing things that reminded me of the Chili Peppers. "Under the Bridge" [on BloodSugarSexMagik] was an attempt to do a song in the style of Jimi Hendrix's prettier songs -- "Castles Made of Sand," "Bold as Love."

How did you write the guitar part for "Under the Bridge"?
Anthony wrote the lyrics and vocal melody. I went over to his house, and we put his melody in shape according to chords I thought would be good behind it. I got the idea for the chorus from a Joe Jackson song, "In Every Dream Home (a Nightmare)" [from 1980's Beat Crazy]. It has this drum break before the chorus, then the music starts on the offbeat. In "Under the Bridge," I did the same thing.

The chord I play before the drum break -- I got that from "Rip Off," by T. Rex. I figured I'd rip it off [laughs]. You just hold the major-7th chord. In his song, it's a C major 7th. In mine, it's E major 7th.

How much of a solo is improvisation -- and how much is advance planning?
Most are spur-of-the-moment. But I make it a point to come up with a way to start a couple of them. On Stadium Arcadium, I have a few written solos, on "Dani California" and "Make You Feel Better." The solos in "Hey" and "Only 18" were different from take to take. In "Hey," that's the solo I played on the basic track, only it was from a different take. So we edited in that solo section.

Did you play or practice music in the seven years you were out of the Chili Peppers?
I pretty much put down the guitar that whole time.

Did you have your chops when you rejoined?
I didn't have my chops at all. But I've come to deeply understand that it doesn't matter. I could have been a defeatist: "I remember when my left hand used to be strong like Jimi Hendrix's." That's a sign of somebody's strength as a guitar player -- the sound of the strength of their left hand. But everything I learned as a person in that period, everything I had been through as a soul -- that all went into the music. I'm happier with my playing on Californication than with my playing on BloodSugarSexMagik. Even though I had way less ability, I see myself doing the best I could and coming from the right places. On BloodSugar, I'm still seeing everything in relationship to Hillel. On Californication, it's "What can we do? It's four friends playing music. We can do anything."

Do you have a favorite Hendrix album?
I'm an Electric Ladyland guy. His music always sounds perfect to me, because he's bending sound, taking care of music in every dimension. Where most people think of it in two dimensions, he's thinking of it in four.

I don't think there's a better guitar player in history. He's not something that can be improved on. And there's the spirit that goes into it. He creates a place where you can be high and hang out and lose yourself. He's bringing out aspects of sound we didn't know were there. I feel there are people moving ahead on that front, but they're not so much guitar players -- like [electronic artists] Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. They continue the work Jimi Hendrix started, but not on the guitar.

Do you ever wonder if, after half a century of rock guitar, there is anything left to discover?
Luckily, I've always thought of myself as a musician more than a guitar player. Since I'm always changing as a person and my tastes are always changing, that is reflected in the ways I approach my instrument. I never feel like I'm running out of ideas, because it is clear to me -- music is infinite.

Who's The Most Depraved???

Sex, drugs and rock and roll — isn't that the great rock-star dream? For Tommy Lee, Anthony Kiedis and Dave Navarro, those sex-and-drug fantasies became both dreams and nightmares, which all three of them detail at length in their new autobiographies: "Tommyland," "Scar Tissue" and "Don't Try This at Home," respectively. The rockers offer up their lives of debauchery as a cautionary tale — their roads to rock stardom were marked by stints in rehab and jail, ODs, divorce, deaths of friends and loved ones, and suicide attempts. But their lives were not all drug-addled misery, of course, which is abundantly clear when, say, Kiedis gleefully relays the story of his naked romp with Cher — when he was in eighth grade.

So who actually wins the dubious honor of having lived the most depraved existence? Here's a taste of some of the immoral, illegal and downright foul behavior from the three books, and you can decide for yourself. And remember, as Navarro warns, don't try this stuff at home, people.

Best Pick-Up Line: There's really no competition in this category. Tommy woos Pamela Anderson by serenading her on her answering machine to the tune of the Oscar Mayer jingle: "My baloney has a first name, it's L-A-R-G-E ..."

Worst Parental Guidance: Anthony's drug-dealer dad scores twice here, for being the one to introduce his son to both sex and drugs. He gives Anthony his first contact high at age 4, and his first joint, Quaaludes, Tuinals and more at age 12. By 13, Anthony's doing coke. By 14, heroin. Dad also loans a 12-year-old Anthony his then-18-year-old girlfriend Kimberly, so that his son can have a proper first time. "Whenever he'd have a new beautiful girlfriend," Anthony writes, "I'd say, 'Remember that night with Kimberly? How about if ...' He'd always cut me off. 'That was a one-time deal.' "


Most Creative Use of Blood: Dave gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion for misbehaving in the "orgy room" — instead of playing with the three naked women there, he fills a syringe and uses it to squirt his blood on the walls. Anthony's a close second, but instead of writing messages, he fills his mouth with blood so that he can leave bloody kisses all over his girlfriend's windshield.

Strangest Adventures in Babysitting: Anthony's left with the rock and roll crowd at the Rainbow Room while his dad makes his deals, and the Who's Keith Moon would always take a moment to check that he was OK. But a naked Cher crawling into bed with Anthony when she's "babysitting" the eighth grader tops the list: "I remember thinking, 'This is not bad,' " Anthony writes.


Best Quickie: Tommy Lee goes to an adult-film set, asks porn star Ron Jeremy who someone is, Jeremy sends Tommy to the bathroom, and two minutes later, Tommy is joined by Debbi Diamond for an intimate encounter. Too bad her makeup artist is best friends with his then-wife Heather Locklear's makeup artist.

Best Quickie Marriage: It's a tie. At 19, Tommy marries a Penthouse Pet named Candice; after she stabs him and he socks her in the mouth and kicks her out of a car, it's annulled a month later. At 27, Dave marries a woman named Rhian after knowing her for two weeks; it's annulled after a month.

Best Sex Partners: Two out of three rock stars agree — overweight chicks rule. Tommy says that "she'll be a screaming, crazy hot, big yummy time, trust me." And Anthony describes it as "some of the best road sex imaginable."

Best Sex Aid: Tommy suggests eating a bushel of celery the day before and drinking pineapple juice every morning. Just trust him.

Best Cheating of Death: It's a tie, between Anthony and Anthony. First, he dives from a five-story building into a swimming pool, overshoots, and, while managing not to die, does break his back. Then later, he drives drunk without a seatbelt and crashes into a tree, splitting his head open: "I resembled a plate of spaghetti and meatballs," he says.

Most Creative Place to Hide Your Stash: Tommy substitutes Jack Daniel's for windshield-wiper fluid so that he and his buddies could grab a secret squirt during high school. Deplorable mention: Dave's drug dealer leaves packages in hidden spots like inside the spout of the drainpipe, underneath the turntables, behind the security camera over his doorbell, and in the slots on the back of his Mac. She would then leave phone messages for him like, "Dave, I just want to let you know I got this new CD. It's called 'Check the Drain by the Garage.' "

Luckiest With the Law: Anthony gets out of one arrest thanks to the Star of David he'd drawn on his sneakers, and out of another because he swallows three balloons of heroin before the cop sees them. Deplorable mention: After Dave pulls a shotgun on what he thinks are home invaders but are actually Water and Power employees (who have the misfortune of mistaking the address for a late-night emergency call), the police show up and search the premises. Despite finding Dave's drugs and hiding places, they don't arrest him and stick around to take pictures in his photo booth and ask him questions like whether the Red Hot Chili Peppers are gay. As if.

Anthony Kiedis: The Pursuit of Happiness

How Red Hot Chili Pepper–in–chief Anthony Kiedis triumphed over a quarter-century of crippling drug addiction, band tragedy and regrettable crotchwear to become the zen-est dude in rock.


Longtime fans of the Chili Peppers know that their vibe has been more than a bit on the randy side — despite the rootsy elegies and soaring psychedelia that characterize their latest work. And, as the band evolved from rubber-faced nudists to battered soul survivors, their singer was always the one walking point, honing their decidedly West Coast blend of carnal, humanist and mystical. So if Kiedis sounds a bit New Age for an American rock star, it’s helpful to remember that he isn’t really American. He’s Los Angelan — alongside Beck, Ice Cube and Vince Neil, one of the most profoundly L.A.-made members of his generation.

Raised mostly in Hollywood by his father, a sometime actor and Sunset Boulevardier, he grew up splitting time between the druggy corners of downtown L.A. and the woodsy arcadias of northern California (also making periodic trips to Michigan to stay with his mom). Ensconced in the late-’70s rock scene and the early-’80s film biz (playing Sylvester Stallone’s son in F.I.S.T.), he wandered an erratic path through Hollywood decadence, punk aggression and Big Sur spirituality. With Fairfax High buddies Flea and Slovak he formed a gag band for a talent show, tapped unexpected rockingness and began a two-decade process that would leave him a strange, highly paid combination of Laguna bohemian, Venice muscle boy, recovering junkie, Tantric-sex god, Gen X mosh star and, most recently, confident rock singer. “We were all trying to have fun and meet girls and take drugs and live the kind of life we’d read about in books,” says Bob Forrest, singer for L.A. band Thelonious Monster, Kiedis’s former roommate and his decades-long friend. “No one ever thought this would happen.”

As he would be the first to admit, Kiedis’s success is the Chili Peppers’ success. Almost no other band shares the kind of brotherhood that he has with childhood pal Flea and the two newer members — the four have been together for well over a decade. Their songs, too, are a group effort, a product of jams and free association. But on Stadium Arcadium and its supporting tours, Kiedis was hands-down Most Improved: supporting the mighty grooves with a sure and full vocal presence and supplying the lyrical ruminations on wayward girls, drowsy civilizations and mass Californiapocalypse. It’s the voice of a banged-up, chastened and compassionate low-life veteran.

No one would have bet on this. On just the second page of Kiedis’s best-selling 2004 memoir, Scar Tissue, the list of stuff that’s gone into his veins includes “cocaine, speed, Black Tar heroin, Persian heroin and, once, even LSD.” (What, no Drano?) And the tabloid accounts of his former paramours read so much like a who’s-who of the beautiful and famous as to suggest a postpunk Frank Sinatra. Instead of Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe and Mia Farrow, we’ve got Ione Skye, Sofía Coppola, Sinéad O’Connor, Heidi Klum — plus wild cards like German punk-cabaret singer Nina Hagen thrown in for good measure. When you’ve loved and lost like Kiedis has, then you know what life’s about. Or at least you look like you do.

And indeed the man who sits coffee-sipping before Blender is no fresh-faced kid. His straight chestnut hair is shoulder-length and center-parted, giving his narrow face a carved American Indian look that may show early signs of Iggy Pop syndrome. His dark eyes seem warm if slightly guarded, his demeanor easygoing, his speech thoughtful. He obligingly reveals the latest tattoo on his famously inked-up body: a beautifully rendered koi fish on his forearm. “It’s a symbol of overcoming adversity,” he says. “Of swimming up current, so to speak.” Around his left wrist he wears a diver’s watch and a red string. The latter, he says, “reminds me not to fuck with people. It’s supposed to prevent you from receiving the negative intentions of other people, which I’m not terribly worried about. But I do need a reminder not to throw negative fireballs at others.”

It’s a thoughtful gesture. Because, simply by surviving and thriving, Kiedis has become one of the foremost potential bad influences for a new generation. For decades, whenever youngsters were inclined to experiment with their lifestyle, certain public figures were there to make the choice seem viable. There was Beat writer William S. Burroughs: unrepentant heroin, pill and Moroccan-boy aficionado — lived to be 180. Keith Richards: incorrigible partier and millionaire — once quipped, “I’ve never had a problem with drugs, I’ve had problems with police.” And now Kiedis — who has survived the drug-related deaths of bandmate Slovak and friends River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain and many others, stayed a junkie for years after and finally made it to health, wealth and sobriety — unscathed. Does he feel responsibility to counsel others against bad choices?

“I don’t,” he says. “I’ve lost the need to push my ideas or experiences on other people.” He does, however, make a savvy point. “It’s easy to be a junkie. It’s not easy to be one of the greatest >> guitar players of all time, or one of the greatest writers.” As an alt-rock-credentialed artist with incongruously great abs, Kiedis acknowledges he’s walking a different path from most of his cultural heroes. “The majority of the music that I love comes from people who are in rebellion against the physical part of their lives,” he says. “Joey Ramone, for instance. But I think the two go together great. There’s something absolutely freeing about being able to turn your body into a whirling dervish. There’s a reason why people have danced for 20,000 years. Dancing gets the attention of the spirits.”

If not the spirits, something’s clearly working in Kiedis’s favor. At 44, he has the body of a surf stud. While in his book he has copped to shooting ozone — as treatment for hepatitis C — there’s got to be some other health secret. Ashtanga yoga? Tai chi? Strippercise?

Nope. He doesn’t even work out. “The last time I worked out was probably in 1990,” he says. “Somewhere along the way I realized that I could get my body to be the way I wanted without working out.”

His only secret, he says, is Pepperdom. “Performing, dancing and singing simultaneously — if you can do all that and hit the notes, you’re in there. My nurse recently went to karaoke and tried to do ‘Can’t Stop’ and said that halfway through she was out of breath. And she’s an athlete.”

Indeed, the life of a funk-rock shaman is no day at the gym. One might assume that even sans drugs, this arm-candied bachelor still pursues various libidinal excesses. Few public figures have made sex such a central part of their message as did the frontman who blazed through rock’s flannel-clad, bummer-nursing ’90s as an odd-stud out — only seeming part of rock’s sexual mainstream during our regretful ho-macking Limp Bizkit era. But this is not an association he cherishes.

“Yeah,” he says, after a lengthy exhale. “Energetically, I’ve certainly been guilty of that which I don’t support. Obviously, sex can have a dark side.” And it’s one the modern world can make darker. “When I finally got a computer, I discovered this limitless world of pornography. And I recognized the feeling that I was having was like the feeling that I used to get when I’d go score drugs. I actually had to make a commitment to myself to stop.”

So, ix-nay on the o’s-hay? “I don’t really attract that kind of energy now, anyway,” he says of casual hookups. “You really get what you put out there.” A serial monogamist — albeit a monogamist whose recently reported squeezes were models Jaime Rishar and Jessica Stam — Kiedis is now more interested in permanence. “And you don’t want to date a fan. I don’t think I would be attracted to someone who’s too attracted to me. My Spidey sense doesn’t allow that.”

Instead, his Spidey sense most recently drew him to a young woman he first espied at a rooftop party in Hollywood. “I saw this beautiful face smiling throughout the night,” he recalls. He said hello, found out she had a boyfriend, but cadged a commitment to have coffee. After some time apart, he and 20-year-old Heather Christie reconnected and began dating, and they are now cohabitating. “On paper there was no reason whatsoever we should have gotten along,” he says of Christie, who on their first date took him on a tour of her hometown of Simi Valley. “But when I hung out with her, I didn’t want to hang out with anybody else.”

They’re even considering a little Kiedis. “Yes, I wanna have kids,” he confirms.

Thus, the new Kiedis. He lives in L.A. but not Hollywood. He prefers his Vespa to his Harley. (“Not as fast, but quieter and I can write songs while I ride.”) And as far as music goes, Kiedis’s tastes have broadened if not mellowed. “I’ll listen to anything now,” he says. “I even try to keep an open mind for simple pop music, which I used to make a living detesting.”

Shortly after we wrap at the hotel, Blender meets a source of this broadmindedness. After he begged off to go check on his slightly under-the-weather girlfriend, Kiedis cell-phoned to say she’d invited Blender for lunch.

Slim and angel-faced, with auburn hair and a flannel shirt, Christie sits at the bar of a gourmet diner across the street from the hotel, wearing a butterfly pendant from celebrity designer Tarina Tarantino around her neck — a recent gift from Kiedis. While the two chat over tuna salad with truffle oil, Kiedis obliges Blender by following up an earlier line of questioning: “Maybe you can clarify something,” he says to Heather. “He asked if we had musical arguments. I told him that you were a big Nick Lachey lover.”

“What!?” Heather says. “Not really.” Then she adds, “Oh, and by the way, John Frusciante also likes Nick Lachey.”

“No!”

“I’m serious.”

Heather explains that the former Mr. Jessica Simpson shared an afternoon with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on TRL and took three takes performing his hit. “By the third time he sang it, John was like, ‘I really like this song,’” she reports. “And he learned it on his guitar.”

Kiedis resumes the questioning: “So what do I play that you’re just like, ‘No. Turn it off’?”

“You mean, besides the Rolling Stones?!” she exclaims.

Later, Kiedis reveals that Heather was one of the inspirations for the new song “She’s Only 18.” It begins “She’s only 18/Don’t like the Rolling Stones.” It’s an immutable law of love that you can’t enjoy or detest a song with the same passion once someone you love feels otherwise.

“Hey,” Kiedis says, gently nudging Heather. “Did I ruin Nick Lachey for you?”

Ataxia II is due out on March 6th!

ATAXIA was a band for about two weeks in February 2004. It’s members are Joe Lally of Fugazi, Josh Klinghoffer and John Frusciante. The word ‘Ataxia’ is Greek for ‘disorder’. We were unaware at the time that it also has a meaning in English which is: total or partial inability to coordinate voluntary bodily movements, as in walking. In keeping with our names’ Greek meaning (quite unintentionally), the sections of our songs never had an arranged order. All our songs’ foundations are the bass which always plays one part throughout. The drums and guitar move about and generally use the vocal as their guide. The vocals and words were written, but the order the vocal sections occurred in, and how long the spaces between were, was different every time. So we would all stay on our toes to stay together for dynamics, changes in groove, switches to new sections, etc. We played two shows and recorded two records. The first record was released in August 2004. It was named after the surrealist activity called Automatic Writing. That was where people like Andre Breton and Max Ernst would write words in the form of sentences and paragraphs, but with absolutely no conscious attempt at meaning. They would observe the structure of their subconscious and it’s peculiar methods of organization (or the lack thereof) this way. And if there is one sure answer I can give to the question, “How did you write and record two albums in a week and a half?”, it is that we gave absolutely no thought to what we were doing, whatsoever. This music is unblemished by any expectations of a specific result, on our part. The three of us simply got together to hear what music had to say that week. We had fun together and this is the record of that fun. - John Frusciante

Funny stuff about John Frusciante

* Can make buckets sexy and has been since 2003
* It's also a widely known fact that John Frusciante is cooler than everybody, including you and your mom.
* Is the God of the guitar world.
* Frusciante is 8 million times better at playing guitar than Dave Navarro (John is also 9 million times hotter).and navarro smells like crack
* Can actually hit a high note, unlike Justin Timberlake who was born either a woman or a unik
* He cuts his hair for Locks of Love. It's rumored that if one touches a Frusciante wig, miracles happen.
* The coolest Italian-American ever. Take that Frank Sinatra and Al Capone.
* He also had long beautiful, long, curly hair but recently killed it and by shaving his head. But as said earlier it went to lock of love and fans get the pleasure of watching it grow back like a Chia Pet.

Spring collection of photos - Anthony Kiedis

Anthony's new hearcut