With a near-fatal bout with drug addiction in the past and in the midst of a triumphant return to the Red Hot Chili Peppers after a five-year absence, guitarist John Frusciante would, you'd think, be happy to leave the past behind. But he's recorded a solo album that draws largely on his experiences and writings from the years he was out of the band and in a drug haze. And it's quite at the opposite end of the scale from the Peppers' party music. Titled "To Record Only Water for Ten Days" and due from Warner Bros. Records on Feb. 13, the album is a true solo project, with Frusciante, 30, the only musician.

"During the five years that I really didn't do anything, what was taking place inside me was to me very significant," he says. "I didn't actually do anything in the physical sense, but there was a lot of inward life, but I was so scattered when it came to bringing these thoughts to the world . "Once I stopped taking drugs, I found I still believed the same things as when I was on drugs, but I realized that then I was capable of putting these thoughts in a coherent structure. I was actually able to make sense of them, unlike some people who stop doing drugs and think everything they did on drugs was worthless."

Frusciante is hoping to play a few solo acoustic shows around the time of the album's release, but his attention will soon turn to the Chili Peppers' follow-up to last year's hit album, "Californication."
"I love [the Peppers] a lot," he says. "When I was a kid, I loved them, and now we've grown up together as people."

(Special thanks to Thomas of WEA/Warnermusic for this article!)