Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante has revealed that Kurt Cobain and other iconic musicians influenced the band’s song tribute to Eddie Van Halen on their track ‘Eddie’.
“I really love guitar players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen for the way that they could make the instrument explode through hand and whammy bar techniques,” he told Guitar World.
“But I also really like the way people like Greg Ginn or Kurt Cobain play without it being so much about technique – although there are all kinds of unconventional techniques in there – the focus is definitely a more visceral thing.”
“Eventually, by the time we were recording, my concept was to find a bridge between those two conceptions of the instrument: that idea of making it explode with the electricity of the human energy that comes through the strings.”
In the same interview, Frusciante extended praise to English rock band Genesis.
“I really love the band Genesis, their prog stuff, as well as their pop stuff. And their keyboardist Tony Banks, I put him up there with the Beatles as far as really coming up with imaginative chord progressions all over the place. He’s really one of the most masterful chordsmiths that I think we’ve ever had.”
“He makes these chord progressions that are so fluid, they’re more like a melody than they are a chord progression. I definitely became really fluent in that style of progression during the time that I wasn’t in the band.”
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Frusciante joined Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988 but announced his departure from the group in 1992. He was replaced by Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro for their One Hot Minute album in 1994.
The popular guitarist then returned again from 1998 until 2009 and then in 2019.
For more on this topic, follow the Classic Rock Observer.
