Our friend Shalhevet Dvir recently had the chance to interview Bram van Splunteren  and she’s kindly shared her interview with us!

Here’s an extract:

…then one day I was wondering what happened to John after he split the band. I had filmed him several times also on a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and we always had a good relationship. I knew a friend in L.A. who knew John and I asked my friend, Dick Rude, to ask John if it was ok to come and film him. not long after that we heard that John was cool with that, so we made arrangements to look him up. I had heard some drugs stories but didn’t know then that he was heavily on heroin, so when he opened the door for us I was shocked to see the condition he was in. We probably spent something like two hours in his house -his girlfriend was there too- and we filmed as much as we could. during one of the breaks john went into another room and shot up some more heroin. I thought that was rather shocking. but on the other hand at times I thought he was very lucid and had interesting things to say about the peppers, about life, himself and about music making.
when we stepped out of his house two hours later we were kind of in shock ourselves about the shape john was in.
the blood on his shirt, his teeth that were very bad, the scars on his arms… it was a very emotional experience to find him in that state.
much later I found out that we were the only filmcrew that ever filmed him during that difficult period in his life. *

Read the full interview HERE

 * To clarify; this interview is talking about John’s first departure from the band in 1992 and not the more recent one.