Justin Hawkins of The Darkness has doubled down on his view that Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante is overrated.
“Somebody said to me it's deliberately minimalist,” the singer said of Frusciante’s style, after describing it as “completely devoid of any expression.”
Hawkins added: “Maybe it's that thing when you become a super-accomplished painter and start doing some naive child-like daubings, and that's your phase. That might have been one of the things that he was exploring – but it doesn't stop it from being s**t.”
Pat Finnerty of What Makes This Song Stink, Hawkins' guest on the May 15th episode of the Justin Hawkins Rides Again podcast, backed him up.
“I do think that he’s overrated. We’re aligned on that,” he said. "I don't know why he is so revered. I feel like whoever’s listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers only listens to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”
Hawkins singled out the RHCP hit “Californication” as “a bad song with a terrible guitar solo.”
It is not the first time Hawkins has shared his thoughts on Frusciante – and he admitted he fully expects to get backlash from RHCP fans.
“Why are the Red Hot Chili Peppers fans so sensitive? … My issue with Red Hot Chili Peppers is that I get nothing from John Frusciante's guitar playing. I feel like if we can call Mark Knopfler an underrated player, I would describe John Frusciante as an overrated player. And In fact, I have done that more than once,” he said.
“They want to f**king kill me. I’m not allowed to have that opinion somehow. It’s always like, ‘You’re jealous because he sold more records than you have.’ And it’s like, well, Mark Knopfler has sold a lot more, more, more records than me, and I’m not jealous of him. I love his guitar playing. So that argument doesn’t really hold any water.”