( Articles de presse )
_

Dave Navarro : red, hot & bothered


( << Préc | [ index ] | Suiv >>
_

( Extrait du magazine "GUITAR WORLD" (n°? - Mars 1996). )


From the bowels of his self-haunted house,
the Red Hot Chili Peppers Dave Navarro
hatches spellbinding riffs and bravely
confronts his demons.

Alongside one of the narrow, winding roads that lead up into the Hollywood Hills stands Dave Navarro's house. From the outside, the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist's abode looks fairly ordinary. But inside, the place could be mistake for the Addams Family's vacation home. The walls and furniture are swathed in heavy, dark velvet. Up on the living room mantel, two skulls and twin statuettes of the pagan god Pan flank a silver crucifix; directly above which hangs an Andy Warhol "electric chair" print. The coffee table is a coffin. Downstairs in the bedroom, a human skeleton lies languidly on a divan. Another hangs next to the bed.

At one point, Navarro excuses himself and reappears moments later, a big, black shotgun in his grip. "It's for protection," he says reassuringly as he snaps open the ammunition chamber to show that the gun isn't loaded. "Imagine you're a robber. First you hear this," he says, releasing the safety catch with a loud click. "Then you see this," he continues, flicking on the weapon's barrel-mounted flashlight, which emits a beam so piercing that it would paralyze a would-be intruder with fear, blindness and confusion. "That's the point," says Navarro. "You don't want to shoot people."

Dave Navarro overcame a troubled early life to emerge as one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. His passionately trippy guitar work with Jane's Addiction did much to set the tone of Nineties alternative rock. In 1993, he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers and his lava-hot touch is all over the Chili's One Hot Minute. He lubricates the album's grooves with slick funk rhythms and power riffs, imbues song structures with strange sonic twists and drenches the whole affair in layers of intoxicating leads.

Navarro was recently divorced, and apparently the parting was not easy. In Dave's kitchen, in a cabinet below a counter, he keeps a box filled with several copies of a solo CD that he recorded in his home studio and had pressed on his own. The album deals with Dave's feelings about his failed marriage. The front cover photo shows his ex-wife's hand carving her name into Dave's chest, his blood dripping from the slashed letters. The inside photo depicts blood splattered over the marriage certificate. One can only imagine what the music on the disc must be like.

"It's interesting," says Dave, "but I don't want anybody to ever hear it. It's one of the things I did down there [indicates his home studio]. That record's filled with a lot of hate and bitterness. I just don't think it's a very positive energy to put out there. My initial intent was to leave stacks of them for free at record stores. Just put them up at the register, and if anybody was interested, they could have it. But when it came right down to it, [the record] was a pretty negative thing and potentially very hurtful to my wife. And it gives away some pretty heavy secrets of mine. So by the time I had the discs printed up, I'd decided I didn't want to have them out there. So now I've got all these in the kitchen cabinet. I'm trying to get rid of them."

Despite everything you've just read, Dave is no monolithically dark being. He has an understated sense of humor and radiates a quietly intense friendliness. Which isn't to say that it isn't a little unnerving to sit in his skeleton-filled living room and talk.

GUITAR WORLD: To paraphrase a television show, there is a strong dark side to your reality. What is its source ?

DAVE NAVARRO: It basically comes from having gone through a hell of a lot in my life. I've gone through drug addiction; I've gone through the murders of my mother and my aunt [by an ex-boyfriend of his mother when Navarro was 15,-GW Ed.] I come from a divorced household. I spent a lot of time with the wrong people. I've seen that just about anybody will stab you in the back, given the opportunity.

It also comes from the fact that I'm now prepared for all that. But at the same time, I feel that I have a good outlook and a realistic sense of humor about life. I feel very lucky.

Does art or music that's dark help you deal with the darkness in life ?

NAVARRO: When I listen to music that's really dark, I get this overwhelming sensation that I'm not alone, that I'm not crazy. It's a little comforting.

Now that you've recorded One Hot Minute and toured with Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith and Flea, do you like a full-fledged Red Hot Chili Pepper ?

NAVARRO: Sometimes I do. I feel like a full-fledged Chili Pepper right now because I have intruders in my house, and it's because of what I do. Other days, I don't feel that way. Sometimes I wake up and wish I never was. But I think that's part of being me. Sometimes I don't know what I want. But all in all, I'm pretty happy to be doing what I'm doing.

One Hot Minute has a lot of mod shifts. Did some of those ups and downs stem from the process of your becoming a member of the group ?

NAVARRO: Probably. In any relationship, you're not completely comfortable at first. And I wasn't in this band; sometimes I'm still not. But that's what happens when you work with human beings day in and day out. It's not always going to be easy, and it's not always going to be hard. It's going to be all of the above.

Was there a main guitar and amp you played on One Hot Minute ?

NAVARRO: I used a Marshall JCM900 amp for the majority of the recording and an old Silvertone on a couple of tracks. I mostly used Fender Custom Shop Strats and a few Paul Reed Smith guitars.

I was playing Paul Reed Smiths through the last days of Jane's Addiction, but theys sounded too chunky, too heavy on the chili peppers' early stuff, so I bought a Fender Custom Shop Strat. I've also got the Parker Fly guitar that I use onstage for songs like "My Friends." Those guitars sound great.

How does being on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers differ from being onstage with Jane's Addiction ?

NAVARRO: It's like night and day. The Chili Peppers are less of a one-man show. With the Chili Peppers, the attention is distributed a little more evenly on stage. Yet, in Jane's Addiction I felt a little more of a connection between the band members. Which is ironic, because I feel like I'm better friends with the members of the Chili Peppers than I was with the members of Jane's Addiction.

At the end of Jane's Addiction, there were times when Perry and I literally hated each other. We got into fistfights off stage. We once got into a fight on stage during a performance in Australia. But even with that much animosity and hatred flowing between and around us, I still felt really connected to him and everybody else when we were playing music.

You've said that you hate some of the songs on One Hot Minute.

NAVARRO: Let's just say that if I were listening to the CD, there are some songs that I would skip, such as "Tearjerker," "Walkabout" and, perhaps, "One Hot Minute." They don't really speak to me. I think that they could have been better. It's a little hard for me to listen to something that I know could have been better.

Often that's presented in the press as, "Dave doesn't like funk and all the others do."

NAVARRO: What I meant when I said that was that I don't listen to funk music. It doesn't really speak to me. But then again, when I'm playing with three other guys who I love and feel camaraderie with, it's enjoyable to perform funk.

There have been times when I've laughed out loud at the stuff that I was playing. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I enjoy dark music. And there was something so opposite about this, that, in a way, it was the darkest thing I've ever done. The guitar part in "Walkabout" is somehow the darkest music I've ever played. It's the exact opposite of how I feel. It's very unusual for me, and somehow it makes me sad.

It's no secret that everyone in the band has been a heavy drug user, with serious addiction problems in some cases. Is that an element of the bond you share as friends ?

NAVARRO: We're all very open and honest about our emotions, having gone through a lot of pain in trying to deal with our personal lives, but I don't think that the bond comes from sharing tragedy. The bond comes from having grown as people through tragedy. We are really sensitive to one another, and really respectful of one another's emotional frames of mind.

There was a period where it was rumored that the tracks for One Hot Minute were all completed, but that [singer] Anthony [Kiedis] was having trouble coming up with lyrics, delaying the album's completion.

NAVARRO: No matter what industries are knocking at your door, you can't rush a man to do his artwork. Anthony writes about personal things. Sometimes those things aren't as easy to get into as might be assumed by someone who doesn't do that kind of writing. I've heard a lot of talk about writer's block, but I wouldn't call it that.

Was there anxiety among the other three of you while you were waiting for the lyrics, like, "Gee, what if he doesn't think of anything ?"

NAVARRO: You want the diplomatic answer to that ? It's one for all and all for one in the Chili Peppers. We stand behind one another's artistic needs. We had a lot of faith in our brother; we knew that love and support would bring out his best. If you print that, I'll sound really charming. Or I'll sound full of shit.

How did you approach the guitar tracks for the record ?

NAVARRO: I fill up as many tracks as are available with guitar ideas. Usually, when I go into the studio, I don't necessarily know what it is I'm going to try and accomplish. It usually ends up taking on its own life. Then I step back and delete tracks or combine tracks and see what kind of tapestry can be woven. I prefer that to going into the studio with a concrete idea and then trying to accomplish that, because I've found that if I have a concrete idea of what I want, I usually can't get it.

At the end of "Coffee Shop," the guitar gets noisier and noisier with feedback. What you were doing to generate those tones ?

NAVARRO: In the middle of the outro, I put on my Boss delay pedal. It has multiple delay times on it. I set it on infinite repeat mode so it would continuously slap back. When the bulk of the song had been finished, the delay was still hanging over the end of the song. I just turned the delay-time knob back and forth between two delay settings. Like, "brrrrrr . . . keh . . . brrrrrr. . . keh . . keh."

What's generating those envelope filter sounds on "Falling Into Grace" ?

NAVARRO: A Heil Talk Box. I left it on and played one note throughout the whole song, with the exception of the chorus, which was a direct input Strat-very clean. There's a bridge that has an E-bow. I'm a big fan of the E-bow; I always have been. I used it on "One Big Mob," too.

Who is the Baby James Gabriel Navarro heard crying on "One Big Mob" ?

NAVARRO: That's my little brother. He's not yet 14 months old. I recorded his voice on a Dictaphone. I collect little sounds on tape, thinking they might serve some purpose later on. When that song came up in the studio, I didn't know what to do with that section. If I played a guitar solo, it would be really retro Seventies. Anthony doesn't sing in that spot, and I was banging my head against the wall, trying to come up with something to put there. Then I realized, "Wow, I have the perfect thing!" I ran home and got that tape of my brother. It seemed to fit the mood perfectly.

Have you stayed in touch with the guys from Jane's ?

NAVARRO: Oh, yeah. Flea and I played on the Porno for Pyros record that's coming out. We're still friends with all those guys. It was great to play with Perry again. Everything was fluid and loose. When Perry sang, I got the chills. There's something about playing with him that's magical. It's like playing with nobody else in the world. We did just one song, called "Freeway."

Has Perry had a lasting influence on you as a person and as an artist ?

NAVARRO: Definitely. When I hooked up with Jane's Addiction, I was a kid-very impressionable. I had strong opinions about what music should be. Playing with them contributed to that in a very broad way. It opened my eyes to a whole lot of different possibilities as to what music is about-what it should do and how it should speak to people. That remains with me to this day.

Is there any chance of Jane's Addiction reforming ?

NAVARRO: I don't think so, but I would definitely be into it.

You've been doing a lot of sessions lately-for Alanis Morissette, that Joy Division tribute [A Means To An End: The Music Of Joy Division (Virgin)], a Nine Inch Nails remix...

NAVARRO: Most of those things came about through phone calls from friends who were working on those albums. Like, "Do you want to come and play some guitar on this?" "Sure." Alanis Morissette wasn't even in the studio when I did that. The studio was down the street, and I was out of there in two hours. Same thing with Nine Inch Nails. I didn't meet Trent Reznor, either.

Do you see yourself becoming a session guitarist one day ?

NAVARRO: Actually, what I would like to do after this band is produce other bands and possibly do A&R;-not necessarily working at a record company, but just trying to help out bands that I see and like. Personally, I don't want to be out on tour past the age of 30.

Any plans to do another solo record ?

NAVARRO: Oh yeah. I intend to do many. And they'll all probably be really low budget, really low-fi, done in my home studio, printed up on my own and probably given out for free. I really like the idea of making records that will be free. No distribution. No labels. I'll pay for everything, record and produce everything, do the artwork myself and then drive to record stores and say, "Here's a bunch of free records that I made." And that'll be the end of it. I figure I can distribute a thousand records every year.

No one could accuse you of doing it for commercial reasons.

NAVARRO: I don't feel like selling myself. I'm not really into that. It's one thing to be in this band; it's like a huge machine. But when it comes down to my own personal feelings and creativity, I don't want to try and turn a buck on that.


par Alan di Perna


(   )


GuitarWorld.com

( << Préc | [ index ] | Suiv >>
_

[retour en haut de la page]