Justin Hawkins thinks John Frusciante is “overrated”: “I get nothing from [his] guitar playing”

The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins has made his less-than-impressed feelings about John Frusciante’s guitar skills known, calling the man an “overrated” player he ‘gets nothing’ from.

• READ MORE: Noel Gallagher thinks his younger self would “knife himself in the bollocks” over his 2017 collab with Damon Albarn

Delivering his critique on the latest episode of his podcast Justin Hawkins Rides Again, Hawkins began by questioning “Why are the Red Hot Chili Peppers fans so sensitive?”

“The videos that we do on them receive a lot of ‘critique’ from RHCP fans,” he said, adding that his “issue” with the band 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. In fact, I have done that, more than once.”

“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.”

“He doesn’t give me any of the… [plays a single note vibrato]. He goes like this… [plays a single note without vibrato],” Hawkins explained.

“Somebody said to me it’s deliberately minimalist. Maybe it’s like that thing where you become a super-accomplished painter and start doing some naive child-like daubings, and that’s your phase. I think that might have been one of the things he was exploring, but it doesn’t stop it from being shit.”

Check out the full interview below.