Cover Story: The Naked Truth

Then in Japan on May 7th, four shows into an extensive Far East tour, Frusciante abruptly quit the group, forcing the band to abort two more Japanese shows as well as a major swing through Australia and New Zealand, when Flea came in and dropped the bomb. "Flea looked at me with this completely puzzled and surreal, sad face," Kiedis says a few days later. "He said, `John wants to quit the band and go home right now.' It stunned me and shattered me because things had been going so well."

When the whole band sat down to talk it out, it was apparent that the guitarist was not playing mind games. "I could tell by the look in his eye that he was really serious," Kiedis says. "He said: `I can't stay in the band anymore. I've reached a state where I can't do justice to what we've created, because of stress and fatigue. I can't give what it takes to be in this band anymore."

There had been warning signs. General on-tour morale had been rocky over the past year, but Frusciante, especially, "didn't seem happy on the road," Kiedis says. "We could tell there was an unpleasant tension with him."

A wiry, spaced ranger of twenty-two, Frusciante was not your archetypal gonzo Chili Pepper, at least in conversation. During a recent interview, he sat in his Hollywood living room with the troubled air of someone beamed in from a parallel universe against his will. He was suspicious and painfully withdrawn, wincing at most questions and snapping back impatiently at others. It was easy, though, to understand his discomfort. Only eighteen when he joined the band shortly after Slovak's death, Frusciante quickly went from being a bedroom guitar prodigy and staunch Chili Peppers fan to playing the band's first hit record, Mother's Milk. But the pressures, it appears, mounted rapidly over the past year.

"We kept a positive face on the operation," Kiedis says, "hoping that it was going to work out. He's one of the most deeply soulful guitar players that we've ever been connected with. Also, he's a good friend, and we had something going that was cosmic and special. And we're going to have to find that elsewhere."

"The Chili Peppers will have a new guitarist in time for the mid-July opening date of the Lollapalooza tour. Yet Kiedis admits to having mixed feelings about the excursion-in particular, the Chili Peppers' lack of creative input, even as headliners, on the package. "If I didn't get off on it so heavily last year, I wouldn't have been so inclined to be a part of it this year," Kiedis insists. But the '92 lineup, he says, is "way too male" and "way too guitar oriented" for his tastes. "I wanted [the all female band] L7 on the bill, and everybody in the agency just scoffed. They said, `They don't mean anything,' What do you mean? They rock, and they're girls."

Kiedis has also been frustrated by his inability to speak with Perry Farrell personally about the tour. Kiedis claims that when he tried to get Farrell's phone number so he could call him directly, he was instructed to fax Farrell in care of the booking agency. "It was kind of upsetting to me," Kiedis says.

He agrees nonetheless that Lollapalooza's success-along with that of Nirvana, their Seattle-Sub pop brethren, and the Chili Peppers themselves-is emblematic of a healthy and vital discontent revitalizing rock & roll: "The world at large is just completely bored with mainstream bullshit. They want something that not only has a hardcore edge but that is real music, written by real people who wake up and have the unignorable need to create music."

Even by Top Forty's post-Nirvana standards, the "Under the Bridge" is an impressive fuke. Gently anchored by a lilting, skeletal guitar riff that faintly echoes Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing," the song is light on radio-friendly pomp and direct in its confessional detail ("Under the bridge downtown/Is where I drew some blood...Under the bridge downtown/I gave my life away"). "It doesn't really have a hook," admits Chad Smith. "And not to take away from Anthony, but he's not the greatest singer in the world. It's just cool and soulful. It's not like the guy who wins all the awards, Michael Bolton." He punctuates the name with a pig-snort laugh. "But maybe that's why it's so great."