On John Frusciante’s 54th birthday today, we’re paying tribute by throwing it back to his earliest days with the Red Hot Chili Peppers by serving up this saucy performance from 1990. At the time, the band was simultaneously recovering from the tragic death of Hillel Slovak and coalescing as a new unit into something that would become truly “magical” with the release of their classic Blood Sugar Sex Magik album that arrived the following year. This shit-hot jam session is disgustingly rad, with every member of the band clicking on all cylinders, but it’s arguably Frusciante who’s the most impressive, displaying some ridiculous chops on guitar for someone who was only 20 years old at the time. He would, of course, go on to evolve his playing style into a distinctly more melodic/nuanced direction, and retrospectively criticized some of his guitar playing during this Mothers Milk era as “too macho”.
Whatever the case, there’s no denying that this straight-up scorching jam session is a beautiful thing to behold, capturing the Chili Peppers close to their peak before they became FM rock radio darlings and still had an element of unbridled funky rawness to their sound. They may be passe elder statesman of alt-rock these days, but in their prime, they were not to be funked with, thanks in large part to John Frusciante (happy birthday)! Crank it!
