The Real Reason John Frusciante Keeps Leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers

February 22nd, 1992. Studio 8H, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. Saturday Night Live is live. The hosts are Roseanne and Tom Arnold, which tells you everything you need to know about the cultural atmosphere. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are the musical guests — four guys from Los Angeles who have just released "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", an album so good it's actively rewriting what a rock record can sound like. They are on the edge of becoming the biggest band in the world. Then it's time for "Under the Bridge". The guitarist plays the opening riff. You know this riff. Everybody knows this riff — it's one of the most recognizable guitar introductions in the history of popular music. Frusciante has played it a thousand times. He could play it in his sleep. He does not play it in his sleep tonight. He plays something else. Something wrong. The notes sit in the wrong places, the rhythm breathes in unfamiliar ways, the whole thing sounds like the song heard through a dream. Kiedis walks up to his microphone, opens his mouth to sing, and realizes with the slow cold horror of a man discovering his parachute is actually a backpack that he has no idea what key his own guitarist is playing in. He sings anyway. Because what else do you do on live television? By the end of the song, Frusciante has cranked up his volume and is howling — actually howling — into his microphone during the background vocal. As the song finishes, Kiedis stares long and hard at his guitarist. It's not difficult to sense the animosity. In his memoir "Scar Tissue", Kiedis would write: "We were on live TV in front of millions of people, and it was torture. I started to sing in what I thought was the key, even if it wasn't the key he was playing in. I felt like I was getting stabbed in the back and hung out to dry in front of all of America." This is the story of John Frusciante. And it is, depending on how you look at it, either the strangest act of artistic self-destruction in rock history, or one of the most honest. By the way, Californication, Otherside, Dani California, RHCP, you know the deal.