One of my favourite shots of John Frusciante from 2004. I think it really captures a special moment of vulnerability and strength. He had been crying in the interview shortly before and you can still see his tears on his t-shirt.
— Scarlet Page
“I had so many years of terrible, terrible…” He breaks down. “I’m sorry,” he says, turning the tape recorder off and drying his eyes. “Sometimes I get into situations of just being so overwhelmed by what I’ve been through, so many years of regretting everything, all the things I could have done when I was 22 years old…” The tape is back on. “But I was totally incapable of it, I had just so many mental problems. It wasn’t until I was 28 that my brain actually felt like a spacious place. When I was 18, 19, 22, my brain was just clogged all the time – non-stop voices. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. There was a lot of confusion inside me, this flood of voices, often contradicting each other, often telling me stuff that would happen in the future and then it would happen, voices insulting me, telling me what to do. I might have made things a bit more balanced if my head had been a little clearer, but it wasn’t the amount of pot I smoked – 24 hours a day by the time I was 20. I had this feeling that there was something else I needed to do for myself the inside that had nothing to do with my outward presentation to the world, so playing in the Chili Peppers was making me severely depressed. If I had quit at the end of Blood Sugar, I think I could have gone through this stuff easier, without becoming a drug addict. But by the time I did leave, hard drugs were the only way I could be happy enough to live and not just be the most hopeless person who can’t even listen to music and is about to die. I took a clear-cut decision that I was going to be a drug addict.”
— MOJO magazine, July 2004