What Steve Vai Told John Frusciante About Bad Early Guitar Lesson

Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante shared the adverse expertise of his solely guitar lesson when he was misdirected into following in Steve Vai’s footsteps. He additionally shared what Vai mentioned about it years later. At 16 years previous, Frusciante had already began recording music, impressed by a textural method. When he performed the tapes for a tutor his mother had organized for him, he was dealt a heavy blow.

“This guy, he said, ‘Let me see you play a blues scale as fast as you can,’” Frusciante instructed bandmate Flea in a brand new episode of the bassist’s This Little Light podcast. “And I played a blues scale as fast as I could, and he’s like, ‘That’s not fast. You’re not a good guitarist.’”

Up till that time, Frusciante famous, he was sure he was “playing in the way that I should have been.” But the tutor instructed him, “That noise you’re making on your recording is OK, but if you can’t play a fast blues scale, you can’t go around telling people you’re a good guitarist. … [It] was about the worst feeling I could imagine.”

You can hear the interview under.

On telling the tutor that he couldn’t resolve between exploring textural or flashy enjoying, Frusciante was suggested: “Of course flashy guitar player, because flashy guitar players can do whatever they want, but the textural guitar player can’t do what a flashy guitar player does.”

He accepted the purpose to an extent, and so when he was suggested to emulate Vai, Frusciante started exploring the shred icon’s catalog and studying to play like him, although he couldn’t escape the notion that it was the mistaken transfer for him. “I knew that what mattered was that you were feeling something and saying something,” Frusciante mentioned.

He by no means sat by way of one other guitar lesson once more and finally rediscovered his sense of creative route. “I actually told Steve Vai that story about five years or so ago, and he made me feel so good about it,” he recalled. “He told me a story about a music teacher that he had, who fucked up his brain for a while. Oh, man, I can’t tell you how good it was to have Steve Vai sympathize with my position in that.”