The resurrection of John Frusciante, the guitarist who may have lost his arms due to syringes and a fire in which he found himself alone

“What’s considered smart for the world and for parents is memorizing things and doing well in school. And what I’ve found is that those who can fly are smart. And the drugs help with that. You’re not smart to memorize something, even a monkey can do that,” one deteriorated said. John Frusciante in front of a television camera in the Netherlands. He leaned forward, spoke slowly, his face thin, his hair dirty and his teeth yellow. It was 1994 and by then his addiction to hard drugs had trapped him. It was the first step with Hot red peppers and Frusciante was using it – in equal parts – to make music and self-destruct.

During these years, he seemed lost, close to a tragic and imminent end: he injected heroin and accepted it, but as something positive: “Drugs do not destroy my body, I feel good , if I didn’t feel well would change the way I lived”. Slovak hillelguitarist and founder of the band led by Anthony Kiedisdied of a heroin overdose.

It was clear that John’s demons were leading him down the wrong path, but fame grew, flashes and fans stalked him, tours were endless and he was making money like never before. She couldn’t take it anymore: it was too much, she needed to isolate herself. And hurt yourself.

“You have the power to get sucked in by corporate bosses. I got sucked into American movie companies. It’s cute, I end up in their fucking cameras,” he told a reporter in 1994. , interviewed for VPRO, a multimedia from the Netherlands. When the columnist broaches the subject of self-destruction, he cuts himself off and goes straight to the point, with irony: “Do you want me to tell you something sincere, from the soul? I’m a drug addict and I love to inject, which means I’m self-destructive… Is that enough? The journalist, ill at ease, asks him if he is really sincere. Frusciante smiled and said yes.

Marginal and provocative, the musician did not hesitate to confess at the time: “The only thing I read when I was 17 and I bought cocaine in the street every day… J was hungry and had no money, so I took the biography of david bowie and I looked up where he was talking about cocaine, I read those passages and that’s how I felt like I took cocaine. And I really liked seeing the pictures. Attracted by his imposing image, Frusciante believed that the white duke “It made things brighter when I was on a lot of cocaine.”

“It’s for these things that I got into rock and roll in the first place, bisexuality and drugs were the two things I associated with rock and roll when I was nine or 10. When I was 17 years old, I had never really tried drugs, and I moved to Hollywood and decided that instead of practicing guitar 10 to 15 hours a day, which I did for five years, I was going to live my life and do cocaine and wear makeup every day,” he explained of his fulfilled aspirations.

These times were the hardest. Although he continued to record solo albums, by age 24 he had become a junkie. Her arms were constantly infected from injecting heroin and cocaine, they became abscesses and burst with pus.

The journalist Robert WilonskyExcerpt from the newspaper new times from Phoenix, USA, had the opportunity to meet him in person and described him thus, in December 1996: “His upper teeth are almost gone; they were replaced by small whitish shards emerging from the rotten gums. His thin, brown lower teeth seem ready to fall out if he coughs too hard. His lips are pale and dry, covered in saliva so thick it looks like paste. His hair is torn to the top; his fingernails, or the spaces where they were, are blackened with blood. Her feet, ankles, and legs are covered in burns from the Camel cigarette ash that went unnoticed; his flesh is also bruised, scabbed and scarred. He wears an old flannel shirt, partially buttoned, and khaki pants. Drops of dried blood splatter the pants.”

The darkest stage of John Frusciante’s life was lit only by a raging fire. He was at home when everything started to catch fire and he, eclipsed by the poisonous cocktail that ran through his body, let himself be carried away in the flames to save his collection of guitars. The unconscious feat resulted in the complete burning of his arms as well as his instruments: none were saved. Neither did his tattoos, since his skin suffered irreparable damage that ended up distorting the designs he had and even the shape of his upper limbs, the source of his talent and working tools. Not only was her skin a warning sign of ill health: she had also lost her teeth to a mouth infection, had to treat her gums and before she turned 30 she was already sporting false teeth.

Faced with this panorama of death and despair, hitting rock bottom was lucky for John: thanks to it, he survived and entered rehab. And he returned to the RHCP. In 2019, it was his second comeback. The guitarist participated in the discs Breastmilk there Sex Magik Blood Sugarleft in 1992, came clean six years later and recorded Californication, one of the Chili Peppers’ most successful records. He was also part of Besides and he stayed until 2009, when he again retired to work on his own.

In these comings and goings with the group and with his addictions, John Frusciante had his loves who accompanied him at different stages. He was seen for a time with the actress and model Thousand Jovovichalso with his colleague Emilie Kokalbut he was only married to the musician too Nicole Turleygang leader blonde swahili. The couple lived happily from 2011 to 2015 until they decided to go their separate ways and the harmony disappeared when the lawyers arrived.

To obtain a divorce, Nicole asked for $75,000 a month to support herself, and Frusciante refused. Finally, the couple finalized their divorce in October 2016 (they had effectively separated in 2015) and the guitarist agreed to a one-time payment of $1.6 million from Turley. “Nicole will keep her four paintings by the artist Laurie Anderson (widow of Lou Reed), a recording studio that her ex-husband had built for her and their Toyota Prius, while John has the keys to four houses in Los Angeles and keeps all the recordings and masters made before, during and after their marriage, including including his contributions to the album Sugar Hot Sex Magik from 1991 by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the hit give it away“, announced at the time the site TMZ.

Nearly a decade after saying goodbye to the band that made him famous and mad beyond belief, with whom he had artistic and personal differences, Frusciante has returned to RHCP. To this day (this Sunday he turns 53), he is still there. And tomorrow? One day at a time…

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