John Frusciante named his favourite Jimi Hendrix album: “My bible”
Just as The Beatles changed the realm of popular music forever with their songwriting, Jimi Hendrix rejuvenated guitar playing and catapulted it into its dynamic, multifarious future. While he was a blues purist at heart, he recognised the guitar for what it was: a piece of wood with electronic specs and pushed it to its absolute brink.
Not only did he force the established players of his era to level up after his arrival, but he also founded a lineage of Stratocaster players. One of the most celebrated adherents is John Frusciante.
Like Hendrix, Frusciante was a talent from practically the outset of his musical journey. Joining his favourite band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, in the late 1980s after the tragic death of Hillel Slovak, it is remarkable that for such a young age, he filled the void left by the late member and also dragged the group by the lapels and elevated the quality of their work.
1989’s Mother’s Milk, his first album with the group, was a success. Yet, it was still characterised by the ghosts of their creative and personal past – including the presence of Slovak on the cover of Hendrix’s ‘Fire’ – and duly, it pales in comparison to his first full release with the band, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik. This opus saw Frusciante assert the full scope of his talent with classics such as ‘Under the Bridge’, ‘Give it Away’ and ‘Suck My Kiss’.
A Stratocaster-wielding fretboard force, while Frusciante is inextricable from the funk-rock of Red Hot Chili Peppers, he has made good on the influence of Hendrix and covered many different genres in his time, continuing to push himself into new realms. Unsurprisingly, he considers rock’s original guitar-playing innovator as one of his ultimate heroes, with several parallels between them musically and in their wider lives.
He once explained: “When you hear Jimi Hendrix play, it’s a pure expression of him as a person.” Offering insight into his own widely influential approach forming in light of Hendrix’s power, he added: “You see him on stage, and there’s absolutely no separation between him and his guitar—they’re completely one because he’s just putting every single bit of energy, everything in his whole psyche, and every single part of his body into his guitar playing.”
Frusciante is so greatly indebted to the work of the late Hendrix that he has discussed his brilliance on numerous occasions. He’s even been kind enough to offer more glimpses of his internal workings as an artist by naming his favourite album by the ‘Purple Haze’ legend. He once created the list John Frusciante: 40 Albums You Must Hear for Discogs, which included the likes of Aphex Twin, Butthole Surfers, Fugazi, Syd Barrett, Talking Heads and more.
Brimming with classic titles, one of the standouts from the list that made the most sense was 1968’s Electric Ladyland, the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. For many, this is the ultimate Hendrix offering, featuring definitive moments such as the bombastic cover of ‘All Along the Watchtower’, ‘Voodoo Chile’ and ‘Crosstown Traffic’. It distils every element of his playing, from the fierce hard rock and proto-metal fire to the moments of pure blues ice.
Elsewhere, when speaking to Music Radar in 2006 about his band’s mammoth album Stadium Arcadium, Frusciante explained how Electric Ladyland was his “bible” when making the record and why it is so essential.
The guitarist said: “Pretty much everything on Electric Ladyland was my bible when we were making this record because, not only is his guitar playing always speeding up and slowing down, he was playing around with lots of rhythmic expression and off-time playing, which was what I wanted to do with this album. The production and sense of constant movement and motion on [Electric Ladyland] that Hendrix caused as a producer was what I wanted to have my own version of.”