John Frusciante recently talked about his feeling to play arena-filling shows with the Red Hot Chili Peppers once again. He gets emotional when he sees how much the band means to some fans. The return of Frusciante has been a major milestone in the Chilis’ career. It paved the way for so much creative energy that the band managed to record two jam-packed LPs when they got back in the studio together, both of which boast runtimes of over 70 minutes.
Josh Frusciante explains
Just as “Unlimited Love” and “Return of the Dream Canteen” allowed many fans to lose themselves in the undeniable magic of Kiedis, Flea, Frusciante, and smith Smith working together, so too did this year’s massive RHCP world tour proves that years did nothing to undermine that iconic lineup’s popularity. If anything, the hype only seems to have grown.
“Aside from one or two shows in smaller places, all these shows have been a size that we’ve never done before,” Frusciante tells Guitar Player in a new interview.
He continued:
“We’ve been playing stadiums that are generally between, like, 40 and 60 thousand people a night.
“It’s a lot of people, and the energy’s very intense. There’s so much happiness being generated from the audience that sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
However, it wasn’t only fans who got emotional over the course of the massive tour. Speaking about how his own experience of the tour, Frusciante said:
“It’s a real different experience, just because of the size of the stadiums. It pulls a lot out of you, especially because I came back into the band in a spirit of giving. I really wanted to play for people, you know? But when we made the records, it was more about playing for the other guys in the band, or playing something that I’d want to play for my friends.
“But going out onstage, there’s times where I go up to the mic to sing and I make eye contact with people, and I see two people that are clearly in love and really happy to be there, or a little kid who’s really happy, or a young girl who’s jumping up and down, or a group of guys that are jumping around in a circle because they’re so happy that we played the particular song that they really like.
“Sometimes those moments, I start crying. Or I get choked up and I can’t sing and I have to shut my eyes and stare down at the ground and collect myself.”
