John "Jesus" Frusciante
By Ethan Maurice | January 20, 2022
There is speculation that John Frusciante — the guitarist most renowned for face-melting licks with the Red Hot Chili Peppers — is a modern day Jesus Christ. While this speculation is largely fueled by a few photographs of John floating around the web dressed as Jesus, I’d like to add to the internet that the similarities go deep than appearance.
While I am half-joking, I am also half-serious.
Without knowledge of Frusciante outside of his playing in the Peppers, this article may at first seem the raving of a fanatic loon. I won’t deny it: I do have great love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Scar Tissue was the book that hooked me on an ever-since reading habit as a college freshman. Red Hot Chili Peppers Live at Slane Castle is one of my favorite concerts on YouTube of all time. I saw them live once, and attended Flee’s Acid for the Children book tour two years ago.
By the end of this article, however, I think you may agree that John Frusciante does in fact reside on a plain of existence remarkably different than the most of us.
The John Frusciante Interview on Creativity and Inspiration
To grasp the “Jesus” of John Frusciante, you needn’t go further than this forty-five minute interview. It’s from the documentary, The Heart is A Drum Machine. I can’t remember how I first stumbled upon it, however, it was the impetus for a deep, incredulous dive into John’s solo records the past year.
I’ve listened to the interview five or six times now. Each time I come back, I grasp something deeper and more profound from John’s perspective. Last week, I decided to mine the wisdom for my commonplace book, playing and replaying sections as I penned the most profound quotes from the interview onto index cards. John sees and speaks from a perspective so different than cultural standard that it took the repetitive listening and writing his words out to really grasp them.
For your fellow enlightenment, I will include my ten favorite index cards from the interview below:
The Messianic Mistake
The interview above flips the general perception of John Frusciante on its head. Often described as a “guitar god” and placed high atop a rock & roll pedestal, John is actually the literal opposite of such high and mighty: a worshiper of interest and sidestepping servant to “that current, the creative force of the universe, or the source, or God, or whatever you want to call it.”
Fully aware that “the force that was making me feel what I feel to be the thing that was carrying the whole thing,” the specialness repeatedly ascribed to him is not some genius, self-generated thing, but a connection to and exploration of something larger. Again, as he says in the interview, “the idea of somebody considering themselves responsible for a piece of music is ridiculous. We're only acting into the laws of nature that have given us the possibilities that we are exploring with the intelligence that we've been given.”
This is the paradox, the messianic mistake we always make: we idolize and fixate on the individual who’s gifts come from connecting with something larger — “that current, the creative force of the universe, or the source, or God, or whatever you want to call it.” The individual who gives their self over to that “creative force” is mistakenly seen as possessing special gifts, being chosen, or the generative source of divine acts. Paradoxically, it is precisely their ability connect with, trust in, and go with this thing much larger than themselves that allows them to divinely do.
This is why we can compare John Frusciante to Jesus, and why (I’d venture to guess that) John felt comfortable dressing up as Jesus for a photoshoot: both tapped into something much larger, gave themselves over to it, and are endlessly misunderstood and idolized as the source of “their” gifts.
Is this not what John’s expressing in the photograph below?
Photograph by: Ross Halfin
This interview offers a sort of paradigm shift. A shift from ego-centric cultural standard to a perspective more expansive, wondrous, and mystic.
If we look to John Frusciante not as a who but a how, instead of idolizing him as divinely touched or unreachably gifted, we can see him as an example of how we might be able to do the same. His approach to making music is a map for how we could tap into something much larger ourselves.
Pulling from the above interview and quotes this looks something like:
Recognizing “the force that created us is expressing itself through our existence” and that “we're only acting into the laws of nature that have given us the possibilities that we are exploring with the intelligence that we've been given.”
“Allowing the force that [is] making [you] feel what [you] feel to be the thing that [is] carrying the whole thing.”
“Follow[ing] the interests inside you that compel you to do things.”
“By consistently reading, or consistently practicing an instrument, or by consistently studying the laws of science you… gradually grow in a way that's inward, but will always give you a fascination for where you are and what you are and why you're here… Going more and more away from worrying about the outer presentation of what you are and being concerned with what you are on the outside, you can gradually enrich what you are on the inside.”
To keep “look[ing] for things and find[ing] things yourself. You'll find that something is guiding you toward the things you need to be listening to. The more you do it, the more in touch with that force you will be.
To me, this seems to add up to passing the reigns from the logical, reasoning, part of the mind to our deeper, subconscious, intuitive, and creative centers of mind. However, there’s also something much larger and deeper going on too:
Frusciante’s perspective offers a leap from self to Self — a way to live and act through a wider lens than individual lens. Blurring the lines of the idea of the egoic, isolated, everlasting soul, John’s view casts of the concept of identity across the whole of space and time and offers a way to live our daily lives in reverence and harmony with “that current, the creative force of the universe, or the source, or God, or whatever you want to call it.”
Consider it: are we not the present form of a process that has been long at work — big bangs, the laws of nature playing out in orbits and galactic collisions of matter, complex molecules cooking into existence in the nuclear hearts of stars — endless happenings all somehow leading to life sparking here on our planet growing increasing complex and capable “into the laws of nature that have given us the possibilities that we are exploring with the intelligence that we've been given” right up to this present moment where we find ourselves the current crest of a wave that dates back farther than we can conceptualize?
We need not be musicians “to explore the laws of nature… with the intelligence that we’ve been given.” From bacteria to blue birds to babies, more or less, all beings are doing this. Through John’s lens, life itself can be seen as a creative force exploring the possibilities of the laws of nature, finding infinite ways forth in an endless array of forms we call “species” across almost all environments on planet Earth. John recognizes himself as an expression of this creative force, and seeks to align his actions and life with it.
A prophet like example not to idolize, but to emulate.
More Wisdom of John Frusciante
In researching for this article, I found two more profound pieces penned by John that I’m just going to tack onto the end of this article. If you’ve come this far, trust me, take the time to dig each:
The Creative Act (Or The Will to Death)
A 2013 post from John’s (since deleted) blog that defines and explains “The Will to Death,” his theory of the creative act.
A description of the story, meaning, and intention of one of Frusciante’s highest flying albums. To me, the idea that art can spring from intentions like these is incredible and worthy of intense consideration.
Frusciante’s Transcendent Tunes
Enough textual explanation, though. The truest experience of John’s transcendence is surely his music. Spotify’s This is John Frusciante playlist is a great place to start.
I’ll also leave you five of my favorite of Frusciante’s songs for your auditory enlightenment. I find each and the message contained within — dare I say — holy work.