John Frusciante On Creating A Different Little Harmony With Flea

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have made a flaming hot return to the rock scene with their most recent two albums, which did very well on the charts. The band has released more than 30 songs in the past year, and they attribute their success to their many years of working together. John Frusciante recently talked about his dynamic with Flea that evolved over the years Total Guitar.

“I think many people play guitar a certain way,” Frusciante said as he started talking about the dynamic he shares with Flea on stage. “It may be because they’re just playing with bass players who play simple root-note bass lines. Flea plays in such an interesting way; I think of intervals not only as the relationship between two notes on my instrument but also as a relationship between what I’m doing and what he’s doing.”

“Take something like the intro to ‘By The Way’ or the verses of ‘Otherside,’” continued the guitarist while speaking about how they create a unified sound with Flea. “I’m not thinking of my guitar as the center of it. I’m thinking of my guitar as a portion of it. I’m thinking of the pitch of Flea’s bass line and the pitch of my guitar. If Flea’s playing a note and I’m playing a note, we’ve got a two-note chord right there. And the interval is the space between that.”

He continued, “So it’s like, ‘How can I move in a way that’s different from how he’s moving?’ If he goes down, I may go up. And we start creating different little harmony things where we imply chords without either of us playing the whole chord, that kind of a thing. Or there are things like ‘Scar Tissue,’ where I’m doing those wide, two-note intervals on my own, but I’m thinking of it as two separate parts.”

John Frusciante’s return to RHCP was definitely a good decision, as the band has once again shaken the rock scene with their last two albums, ‘Unlimited Love’ and ‘Return of the Dream Canteen.’ Especially the dynamic between the two guitarists, Frusciante and Flea, has made the band’s live performances a feast for the eyes.