Albuquerque,NM, june 21st 2003

I couldn´t get any sleep after the Denver show. I was lying in bed wondering if everything had been a dream. Anthony´s words kept echoing over and over in my head.
We drove to Albuquerque on the last show day. We were supposed to meet Anthony early at the venue for the "round 2".
I lost probably around 4 kilos on those 3 weeks, that has to be one of the many side effects of eating gas station food.
The coffee at the gas stations though, was a different thing. We got addicted to the French Vanilla coffee in the Shell´s stations.
My sun tan was gone, and in spite of having been so close to Anthony, the emotion of the beginning of the tour was fading. I was too tired.

We arrived to New Mexico and eventually Albuquerque. One of the ugliest places I have ever seen. The venue was in fuck´s end, at the top of a dry, dusty and dead bit of land in the middle of the desert. Geli was freaking out. We drove through Albuquerque running into prohibition after prohibition and threats upon the law breaking. We were kind of scared of being there.
We got off the car and started walking down to the venue. As we were descending the hill approaching the backstage access a little golf cart came over and picked us up and drove us into the backstage area. That was proper VIP treatment

The band weren´t there yet and we needed to find a good place to drink a beer in the shade because it was a really hot day and the sun was burning everything underneath it, including my brain.
Somebody from the Snoop crew walked by and we said hi. We were pretty familiarized with everyone, even Snoop´s crew. The guy, whose name I can´t even remember asked us if we wanted to check out his tour bus. It sounded a bit dodgy,not to say REALLY dodgy, but we couldn´t stand under the sun one more minute because the beer would get warm. Plus I was very curious to see their buses.
It turned out that Snoop´s people were pretty nice guys too. Geli and I sat in there, and they even lent Geli a nail clipper because she broke a nail or something. They were really funny. Another guy came into the bus with some merchandise t shirts and there seemed to be some problem with them.

Geli and I got really excited because by the end of this tour, we ended up really loving Snoop´s crappy music. We had to. Either that or shoot ourselves in the ass after listening to him one night after the other. I loved to see Geli lip synching to Snoop´s speech. I just loved it, it was really hilarious. The t-shirts were printed with Snoop´s coolest lyrics "Smoke weed, get drunk and fuck". We sooo wanted a t shirt. We asked them if we could have one and they were happy to give us one. But suddenly the RHCP buses arrived and we just jumped off very quickily. Sorry Snoop's people. And we forgot our free t shirts .

We waited for more than 10 minutes. Flea saw me from the distance and waved at me. Geli and I were sitting under the sun, checking out this and that when John came close to where we were and just stood there leaning against a wooden pole. There was nobody else there.

"Hi John" I said. He said hi and smiled as wide as the universe.

There is something incredibly unique about John´s smile that makes you want to protect him from all the evilness of the world.
"Are you the girls making the documentry?" he asked.
"Aren´t we the popular ones" I thought. Even John knew about us! We hadn´t talked to him at all during the whole tour. I didn´t think people would be talking about us (think again)
"Yes we are" I said.
"Do you want me to be in it". John said.
"Bloody fuck". I thought. "Would you mind?" I said

John is a true angel walking our Earth and I love him. Not that Anthony wasn't what I expected him to be, he was absolutely wonderful and more, but for a long time after all this insanity I wished it was John I had fallen in love (or whatever that feeling was)with . He's the kind of man that can bring sunshine to your heart in the stormiest day.

We sat down on that sunny day to have a little chat:

B: ...(we must have been talking about films before) have you seen happiness?
John (trying to clip his microphone): what am I doing wrong? …no I haven’t seen happiness… is it ok if the microphone is inside, you think?…
Geli: yeah…
B: Is it?
JF: I don’t know…I think it should be like this (he clips it to his shirt) even though it doesn’t look right.

B: I’m going to fix it...

B: So you haven't seen happiness, that's a very strong and sad movie.

So, how are you, are you very tired?

JF: I’m tired. I’ve been working really hard for the last couple of years. I haven’t really taken any breaks…I can’t remember…I guess the last time I wasn’t really doing anything was a few months before we started writing BTW and then I went on a solo tour for my solo record and then the day I got home we started writing BTW and I’ve been working all through that and the second I had a spare moment I started recording my solo record and I did that during all my breaks
B: But you’re doing one solo album right now, aren’t you?
JF: Well, I finished the one that I was working on and that’s coming out in September and now if I do recordings is not for an album, it’s just to record my songs because I wanna have all my songs recorded, it’s my goal to have all my songs recorded, you know, ‘cos I have a lot of songs, they’re just in notebooks until I can record them in a studio and I just feel like it’s my responsibility as a song writer to record everything that’s good that I write, so.
Geli: What do you mean by that though, so people won't be able to buy that stuff?
JF: For me at the moment that part is secondary because there’s already an album that people can buy but what’s more important for me is just that I know that with my life that I’ve done the best that I can do that I know I’ve used my time well. To have a bunch of songs and then to sit around and not record them to me just seems like not doing your function as a person, so people buying it will take care of itself , but me recording it is something that I have to do to in order to make anything happen, so… I was gonna go record a few songs in DC tomorrow but I changed my mind at the minute, I’m gonna do it another time because I feel all the time now the way I usually feel at the end of the day after recording for 12 or 14 hours, that’s how I feel now when I wake up, so I’m gonna give myself a couple of weeks of just sitting around my house I think it’ll do me some good and then I don’t have to take a break for another couple of years.
B: What makes you happy most in life?
JF: What makes me happy?.. hmm…well, Anthony makes me happy, Flea makes me happy, my friends all make me happy and I’m happy when Chad is beating the hell out of his drums while we’re on stage, I’m happy listening to the Incredible String Band, and I’m happy listening to Fairport Convention. Led Zeppelin makes me happy, music, and Godard movies.
B: Dark movies?
JF: Godard movies, Jean Luc Godard movies.
B: Oh, have you seen Breathless?
JF: Yeah
B: How did you like that?
JF: It’s great
B: Which one is your favorite?
JF: I think… band of outsiders! Band of outsiders, I personally like any of the B&W ones though.
B: I love Breathless that’s my favorite
JF: I like Anna Karina a lot, she’s not in breathless, so I prefer the ones that she’s in.

B: You spend a lot of time studying music don’t you?
JF: You mean when I was a kid?
B: No, all the time, all I hear from you is that you’ve been listening to African music, South American music, you know, music from everywhere…
JF: Yeah I’m always trying to find out about new music, from my stand point I think the Earth is a really incredible place, the amount of music that there is, is amazing you know, you can go your whole life obsessing on music and still be finding out about new stuff when you’re 60 years old , 70 years old, it seems like there is an infinite amount of music here right now and to me any planet that gets it together to make that much beautiful stuff for your senses and for your ears and stuff is really doing a good job. A lot of people complain about the planet and complain about things but I don’t think you’d get that much beautiful things if there wasn’t an ugliness on the other side of it. I think anything that’s ugly in the world has to be there to make as much beautiful things as there is in the world, that seems really obvious to me and I feel really grateful to be living this life, it’s a good planet.
B: Do you believe in God?
JF: I believe in the lack of such questions, I don’t think there’s any reason for… for me in my life I have no place for any sort of image of God. I appreciate that other people do, and for them I’m glad that their God is there for them but for me is like when I drive through the country I look out the window of the bus and I see all these houses and I know that every single house is the centre of the universe for the people who live there, they think that house is being the center of the world and for them it is the center of the world but at the same time it doesn’t mean that everybody else’s houses are also the center of the world, it’s a bunch of things at once and to me that’s what God is, it’s one thing for one person, it’s another thing for another person, and another thing for another person times the whole world. Everybody in the world who has the need to have a God to believe in or to be faithful to or whatever their reasons are, I personally don’t have a place for it in my life, so lucky me.
B: What do you think it’s the most beautiful place you’ve been to?
JF: The most beautiful place I’ve been to?
B: Can you mention one?
JF: It’s hard to say, as far as nature goes I’ve been to really beautiful places like Costa Rica and Big Sur, California, Australia, I’ve seen really beautiful nature places like that but I like to see like just nice architecture, nice shades of buildings and stuff, I like walking down the street in Vienna, I have good memories of being in Vienna, Austria.
B: I’ve heard so many things about Vienna but I’ve never been there
JF: It’s a nice place, (grinning wonderfully and continuously) it’s the kind of place you can imagine just stopping everything, getting yourself a little apartment, smoking hash all the time, living café life
(we just laughed)
B: How about London? We lived there for some time, how do you like London.
JF: I like London. It’s a nice place, so much music that I love comes from London or from England, I really like it there just because of that alone it makes me think it’s a great place.
Geli: You’re going to England next right? Where are you going in England?
JF: V Festival
Geli: Where is that?
JF: It’s a couple hours away from London.
Last time I was in London I had a good time because I got to record with one of my heroes, Brian Eno.
B: who?
JF: Brian Eno
B: Ohhhh Brian Eno, he’s the U2 producer, isn’t he?
JF (grinning) : That’s what he’s known for now but that’s not what I think when I meet him
We both laugh
B: You don’t like U2?
JF: I li… U2 is fine but for me my image of Brian Eno goes back to when I was like 11 years old before he ever… before U2 existed.
B: But most of his work now is based on U2?
JF: No, he makes his living from U2, but he does work on other than U2 solo records, collaborations with people, museum installations, the way I think of him is the producer of the three best Talking Heads albums, he was in the band Roxy Music, and he’s made tons of incredible solo records and he produced Ultravox and he’s just always been a really inventive person, he’s always been inspirational to me, and for me he’s made some of the most ground breaking records that have ever been made so it’s always nice when you can hear those.
B: What do you listen to lately?
JF: I listen to different things for different reasons and different times, I mean, if it’s a nice sunny day and I’m gonna drive to the grocery store or something I like to put on the album Slade Alive!, the live album by the group Slade which I think is one of the most powerful live albums that anybody ever did, there’s something about driving in the daytime on a sunny day that really makes me feel great, but if it’s night time and I’m just relaxing I could put on an album by this guy called John Hassel which is also something that was a collaboration with Brian Eno called “Dream theory in Malaya”, that’s a good album for mellowing out and relaxing, letting your brain go wherever it might. But I have a huge record collection, I listen to different things for different reasons

To be continued.