Toni the girl, yle

article about Niandra LaDes translated

So there was a link to this finnish article about John and I figured people would like to have it translated so here is my attempt. There will be some lost nuances but shit happens.

I exist no more - The wild origin of John Frusciante's debut album and the love story behind it

(caption: John in 1993)

Actors Johnny Depp and River Phoenix, LSD-guru Timothy Leary, a fire that almost destroyed all the material - famous artists and weird incidents are associated with the publishing of John Frusciante's first solo album. When Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt came out Frusciante was a 24 year old drug addict and a painter, isolated at his home. Yet at the beginning of the 90's he was the worshiped guitarist of one of the most famous bands in the world, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. How was the album made and what kind of love story is related to it? The Culture Cocktail has a special interview of Frusciante's partner of that time, Toni Oswald. The article includes material that has not been released before.

Thank God I found you Beautiful talking well it was to me Do you see? There's no more me I'm happy as can be

– John Frusciante

I like to read books written by these intelligent people, but I get awkward when they talk about music. It's like the writers started to have a monologue about their cats. I just don't get it, even when the upper class -pop essays ooze the bits of lyrics from anxious men. -Jantso Jokelin

There are people who find nothing as boring as talking about dreams or to see any deeper meanings in them. I am not one of them. The basis of this article is a dream I had. In the dream an elderly man holding a lantern asked me to find out about the background of John Frusciante's first solo album, Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirtin (1994) When I woke up I decided to take the initiative.

Niandra LaDes has been familiar since I was 14. I bought it from a record store in Oulu, where an uppity and by all odds a rather tedious salesperson told me the album is bad and weird. Keep your opinion, man, I thought.

In the cover Frusciante has dressed as a woman. Inside you can find lyrics in handwriting on dirty notes that look like they've caught some fire. In the back says: "For Toni Lovingly, Niandra LaDes." I already thought by then who Toni is.

(caption: The back cover of Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt)

The easiest thing to do when defining art is to claim that some piece has a cult status. When I read texts about music albums I rather often see album that has a "cult status", usually defined having a "mystical aura" and being "under appreciated". These definitions have also been carelessly used in many a text about Niandra LaDes.

I do not know what position Frusciante's debut actually holds in the history of music or what do people think about it. Only thing I can say for sure is that is has a lot of meaning to me. And what comes to the definition of the album by the music store keeper from Oulu, the latter part is true. The album is weird for sure.

When I heard the record for the first time in my room, I felt like for the first time in my life I got to explore the subconsciousness, sex, depression, insanity and drugs. Niandra LaDes was a secred gate I went trough like Alice, to the twisted Wonderland of Frusciante.

After the dream I had I decided to find Toni, whom Frusciante had dedicated his album. I did not try to contact Frusciante, because he is reluctant to give interviews and because I didn't want to approach him because of my fandom. I was afraid I'd break a spell if I got close to him or if I fucked up an interview. Fandom is fragile.

The Twins Meet

Toni Oswald and John Frusciante met in early 90's when they were twenty, introduced by common friends. Frusciante was the prodigy guitarist of Red Hot Chili Peppers who had just reached fame. He could play ecen the most complicated solos from Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix.

Oswald had recently moved to Los Angeles from Houston, Texas. Her background was in dance, theatre and performance art. In school she had played the flute. Oswald told she especially adored the choreographies of movies by Bob Fosse. With the help of Frusciante she found music - and in a way, herself.

-It is hard to say what happened between me and John when we met. I saw myself in him. I had the feeling that I'm not alone anymore. That was when I finally realised there is a person in this planet that feels similarly how it feels to exist, Oswald recalls.

It was not just about romantic crush but also about being a sibling. On one of their first nights together Frusciante played her the vinyl Foxtrot (1972) by Genesis.

-When the last track Supper's Ready started I had a vision that me and John were twins a long time ago. That song is a good description of our dreams and emotions at the time.

(caption: Toni Oswald and John Frusciante as kids of same age. A detail from a collage they made together.)

Frusciante was living a double life as an artist at the time. His main job was to compose and play in Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were making their breakthrough album. Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) sold eventually 13 million copies - most of the most well known melodies by Frusciante's hand.

The other side of him was a rebel, fortified in his home. He was against the commercialism of art, big arenas and screaming fans. He was reading Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley and William S. Burroughs, watching Marx brothers' movies, often listening to Captain Beefheart and painting.

Balancing between two different frequencies, Frusciante needed Oswald's support. She saw more in her boyfriend than just a financially successful and more and more famous guitarist.

(caption: Frusciante pictured by Oswald. Oswald pictured by Frusciante, dressed in his clothes.)

While listening to music as a little girl, Oswald would examine her mother's album's cover art for hours. According to her, she learned there to feel connection and understanding to the musicians who lived outside the normal society and knew how to refine pain and sadness into beauty. This is exactly the kind of artist Frusciante was - performing at stage people easily only saw just his technical skill, youth and wildness.

The young couple started to dress in each others clothes and live in symbiosis. They drank red wine, painted, wrote together on their notebooks and smoked cannabis. On Red Hot Chili Peppers tours they would lock themselves on the hotel rooms to play together, Oswald her flute and Frusciante his clarinet.

-In early 90's they took us for two crazy weirdos, especially John. Spiritual realm and ghosts were important part of our being. We both felt that this world we live in is just a small part of consciousness. We enjoyed riding to the edges of consciousness. After meeting John I could talk about these things without feeling that someone thinks I'm crazy, Oswald says.

(caption: sights from Frusciante's and Oswald's hotel room. The clarinet in the pictures below were played by John on the last track of the album. The cello on the pictures on top was John's gift to Oswald.)

Frusciante started to alienate from his successful band and the rock and roll world even more. Selling millions of copies and the tour life was hard for him. Frusciante demanded on having Oswald on the tour with him, even if the number one rule for the band had been "no girl friends on tour".

In 1992 before the concert in Japan Frusciante announced he would break up from Red Hot Chili Peppers. He asked to forward the reason " Tell them I became insane."

(caption: Oswald and Frusciante dressed in each others clothes. Taken in Paris on Peppers tour)

Marcel Duchamp and the expertise of forgetting oneself

After the announcement to leave the band Frusciante went home and isolated from the world for a while. He sat on the roof of his Hollywood hills apartment and fought a war against ghosts - his equipment was security goggles, a ski mask and an overall that covered the whole body. -"You couldn't touch me on any level" Frusciante has described that part of his live later.

How did Oswald react to her lover sitting on the roof on full fight gear? With love and acceptance.

-"We never had any feelings of shame when we were fulfilling ourselves around each other. We were celebrating freedom and creativity.

They shared a common target of admiration, French artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp (1887–1968) didn't represent just the famous urinal and concrete art installments to Oswald and Frusciante. He represented an inspiring attitude towards life.

-Duchamp knew how to let go of himself and look at life in an absurd way, take your work seriously but never yourself. My view is that the most important and best moment of making art is the moment I forget myself - when I don't exist anymore. All my favourite people have a healthy underestimating relationship to themselves. Who even manages to stay with a person who takes themselves too seriously in these times that everything has been said, asks Oswald.

It was Duchamp who got the couple to dress on each others clothes and swap the gender roles. Duchamp's female alter ego Rrose Selavy (a play on words "eros, c’est la vie") inspired Frusciante's solo albums name and cover art. Niandra Lades became Frusciante's femine alter ego, who is standing on a beach on the albums cover art. The clothes on the picture belonged to Oswald, except the jacket.

-We used to dress on each other's clothes also when we were separated. Once John called me after receiving a package of my clothes. He asked me which shirt I used to wear with certain orange coloured pants. I answered "usually just a T-shirt". This reply of mine later became the name of the second part of John's album.

(caption: The front cover of Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt by John Frusciante)

In addition to Duchamp their way of thinking was affected by a few year old girl Clara Balzary, the daughter of Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Flea. She was around 4 years old when Niandra LaDes was released.

-Clara was the only child we were on contact at the time. She once told us "Be lazy!". John was so fond of this rule that he painted it on the wall of our home as a motto. It wasn't just about doing, it was also about just being. I still try to go by this rule, says Oswald.

(caption: Toni Oswald pictured by Frusciante, dressed on his clothes, 1992)

The earplugs River Phoenix made out of toilet paper

Along with painting and playing with gender roles, John Frusciante spent the early nineties smoking cannabis and recording his own songs in the living room with a Tascam four track recorder. He did not plan on publishing them. After many steps Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt was born out of those recordings.

Frusciante has said:" Cannabis got me to a level that I could step away from my playing and could hear myself on second person. This helped me to step out of myself. I no longer saw the guitar I was holding in my hands as an object, but as a part of outer space and emptiness. "

Oswald says Frusciante was inspired to experiment and not publish his recordings by The Residents' album Not Available from the 1970's. The idea of the album was to lock it in a safe after recording and not to release it until the band members forgot it's existence. Frusciante was planning on doing the same with his recordings, they would stay forever in his home archive and would be released after his death.

Oswald sat next to Frusciante during almost all of the recordings, either drawing or listening to him play. The time was always really late, so that no sounds from nearby streets could be heard and their friends would have gone to sleep.

The lyrics came from dreams, visions and flow. The biggest inspiration was the mutual love and sexual desire the couple had.

(caption: Toni Oswald in hotel room 1992, pictured by Frusciante)

Sometimes Frusciante would ask Oswald to sing or talk on top of his recordings. Two of those recordings ended on the final recording. For the first one Oswald chose Patti Smith's Witt (1973) and Allen Ginsberg's The Gates of Wrath (1973) from the bookshelf, and proceed to sing parts on the first take.

On the second time Oswald had sat on the kitchen table drawing with a friend.

-Suddenly John came to us and asked us to sing on his recordings without any rehearsal. John recorded our talk and singing and edited everything on the fly. He gave commands like "hiss like a cat" or "say words you like". We used to smoke a lot of weed during the recordings.

Oswald was there when Frusciante recorded two songs with River Phoenix (big brother to actor Joaquin Phoenix) in 1992. For the other one, titled "Well, I've Been" Frusciante asked Phoenix to improvise something in the middle of the evening. The actor took the microphone and started to speak and recite poems he made up in the moment.

Height Down was made in Phoenix' hotel sweet in Hotel Argyle, Sunset Bulevard, located next to the hill where Frusciante and Oswald used to live.

-John and River wrote the song during our night out at the hotel and on the next day taped it in our Hollywood Hills home. They stayed up really late on the living room and played music. I slept in the second floor in our bed room, one with straight visual and hearing connection to the living room. River was worried about me because I had an audition in the morning and he was afraid I couldn't sleep. He brought me earplugs he had made out of toilet paper so I could sleep better- they didn't help at all. River was a really sweet and considerate person.

Frusciante produced their songs into a cassette, which he played in Oswald's car and played to their friends who had came to visit. On top of Phoenix, actor Johnny Depp and Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers were also encouraging Frusciante to release the songs. Frusciante was encouraged but getting the songs in to a album did not work without problems.

(captions: A painting John Frusciante made with the help of Clara Balzary, daughter of Flea, the bassist of Red Hot Chili Peppers, in early 1990's. A painting by Frusciante)

Kill pigs by letting them become shits peanuts

On top of cannabis Frusciante started to use heroin. He was making massive paintings under the influence of heroin and was frantic with the note books. He didn't use the guitar and recorder anymore much.

At first the drugs gave inspiration and strength but after few months it started to get out of hands and they would increase Frusciante's depression. He would hallucinate and might call his friends that the cat was inside his head or that there were snakes inside his eyeball.

Oswald had a hard time accepting that her lover had turned into an addict. The presence of daily shooting heroin addict became too big of a burden and she started to spend time in their New York apartment.

-John thought it would be good for me to be able to have some time off because he knew I was suffering. It didn't work because the distance made me worry about him constantly. We did talk daily on the phone and John would occasionally fly to me.

After a weeks long separation a horrible scene was waiting for Oswald: the walls of their home were scribbled full with cryptic texts, the floors were full of wine bottles, paintings, trash, drug needles - pretty much everything was all over. In the wall, the words "Kill pigs by letting them become shits peanuts" and " My eye hurts" were painted on red paint.

-When I left the house it was clean and orderly.

The writings on the wall and the chaos can be seen on short movie called Stuff (1993) by Johny Depp and Gibby Haynes. Depp and Haynes had spent a day watching a frantic Frusciante painting. The experience had made such a big impact on Depp that he decided to come back to film all the chaos and art.

-Depp brought LSD-guru Timothy Leary with him, who both me and Depp liked very much. You can see Leary talking at the end of "Stuff". We played him some unreleased solo album from John and Timothy liked it a lot, Oswald says.

The House Burns

Few months after filming "Stuff" the house burned. Oswald was in New York at the time. The fire started from the painting room where the floor was full of spray cans and oil paints. Because of the fire the glass doors on the balcony exploded. Frusciante woke up on the noise and run outside to ask the neighbours to call the fire brigades.

-Almost all of his paintings were destroyed, including two painted by William S. Burroughs, all our notebooks and stuff. Only John's recordings on cassette and guitars were spared by the fire - it was almost like the fire had went around them. John took the tapes to New York, where he flew the next day to me. The guitars were stolen by somebody.

On the song Your Pussy Is Glued to a Building on Fire on Niandra LaDes Frusciante sings about painting and a burning house. The half screamed song is like a omen of what kind of destruction and chaos was around when the album was finally released.

Frusciante started to edit the old recordings with Oswald to a presetable condition. Oswald helped with naming the tracks and with the album art. The album was released in 1994 without much notion.

The two songs with River Phoenix didn't make it to the album, because the parents of Phoenix who had overdosed a year earlier had forbidden using the songs. Frusciante later published them on his second solo album.

(caption: Frusciante and Oswald in 1996 just before their break up)

In the end

Nobel prize winning professor Bengt Holmström said in his interview in HS 15.7. :"It is thought that creativity comes from freedom. That is fundamentally delusional. Creativity is born from challenges, restrictions and questions."

Holmström's idea of creativity and freedom not being compatible is against the idea of Frusciante's first solo album. Oswald says a person can only be free without a goal to reach.

-John wanted to be as free as possible in his songs. For him the pursue to freedom is most important.

Frusciante has said that for him it was a liberating process to think that the songs he was making would never be released.

-When I was creating this music I had no idea it would make an album. I was so deep in the spiritual realm, where the music is created, that I never thought people would buy the album and listen it in their homes, said Frusciante on Guitar World- magazine in 1995.

Oswald sees Niandra Lades handling love on two levels: between two people but also as a love letter from cosmos to humans, delivered by Frusciante.

-It is dedicated to the people who have suffered, who have experienced sadness and traumatized, but who still believe in love and magic. I don't only hear John speaking to me, I hear myself speaking to me. That's what great art is, it speaks to our deepest levels. I don't know any other music that sounds similar to this album.

(Caption: Oswald's painting of him and John.)

Toni Oswald and John Frusciante broke up in 1997. Oswald had rehabbed herself out of drugs a year before, Frusciante in 1998. Both of them still make art.

Thanks to Toni Oswald, Anni Emilia Kajula and to the shopkeeper working in record shop Diileri in Oulu in 1994.