In 1987, one year before he joined Red Hot Chili Peppers, the then-17-year-old John Frusicante scored an audition to join Frank Zappa's band. The teenager was a huge Zappa fan, who could play every guitar solo on every Zappa album by the time he was 16, but when within touching distance of scoring a gig with the legendary bandleader, he opted to walk away.
In a 2004 interview with UK music magazine MOJO, Frusciante explained why.
"I don't know if this is a nice thing to print but he was very grumpy," the guitarist told music writer Sylvie Simmons. "I watched the way that he was dealing with people, ignoring people. At that point I was doing cocaine – it was a part of my life I really liked – and I knew about his attitude to that. So I was sitting there thinking, do you want to be a rock star and write your own songs and draw all the girls and things like that, or do you want to be not allowed to take drugs, and it's kind of a square band so there's not going to be a lot of girls at the shows? And I thought, Nah, and I walked out."
