Josh Klinghoffer served as the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a ten-year period between the second and third tenures of John Frusciante with the band. It was a decade that had its ups and downs for Klinghoffer.
The guitarist tells Guitar World in a new interview that his time with the band was “a blessing and a beautiful experience.” However, he also mentioned, “Obviously, it’s sad when something is taken from you. I did a perfect 10 years with them, but for as much as I love those guys and loved playing with them, it was also enormously stifling creatively. They’re an established band with an established sound, and I learned over time how little deviating from that was possible.”
Klinghoffer added, “When I first joined, I wouldn’t use certain chords when I was writing if they sounded like something John would play. Or if it sounded like a choice they would have made on their last album, I purposely went the other way.”
The guitarist also faced issues bringing new ideas to his Chili Pepper bandmates.
“I thought I was doing a good job of writing music with them, but it wound up not kind of becoming part of my story, or if it is part of my story with them, it’s a small part,” Klinghoffer said. “As much as I thought they were up for experimentation, they generally stayed in their own lane.”
