FNM ANGEL DUST ERA (1992-1993)

Metal CD Magazine Feb. 1992

N/A

June Noise of the

1992 90s

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FAITH NO MORE | 22.02.1992 | KERRANG!

Kerrang! | Issue 380 | 22.02.1992 | Steffan Chirazi

Testing The Faith

Recording their third studio LP - currently in the mixing stage and titled 'Angel
Dust' was always going to be a trying time for FAITH NO MORE. The band
thrive on friction and confrontation, guitarist BIG JIM MARTIN doesn't even
rehearse with the others, and the whispers of spoilt-brat syndromes get louder.
But this is where the FNM creative flow stems from, claims STEFFAN CHIRAZI,
who just switched on the tape in front of RODDY BOTTUM, BILLY GOULD and
the Big Sick Ugly One, and watched the shit hit the fan
CHAOS IS abundant, voices are raised, people are destroying their apartments
in anger and the music is wickedly diverse and loopy. You wouldn't expect it
any other way.
"There will be no middle ground for this album," states Bill Gould. "It's either
gonna be absolutely huge or it'll be a total f**king flop."
Faith No More are mixing their third studio album, titled 'Angel Dust'. Jim
Martin's been in the doghouse since before Christmas, and but for the fact that
Faith No More is a democracy, certain ideas would've hit the toilet long ago.
But this turmoil is intrinsic to Faith No More's work. They need to piss each
other off to work, and they achieve this in fine fashion. A cheap dive-bar around
the comer from San Francisco's Coast Recorders sees myself, Bill Gould,
Roddy Bottum and producer Matt Wallace drinking cheap beers and
exchanging cheap talk. What's the pressure involved in following up a hugely
successful album?
"Everyone's pretty much left us alone," sighs Roddy, "for ourselves more than
anybody.The record company were worried about what we were going to do but
they kept it from,us."
"Before, we've always stuck together because we were totally broke and we '
needed to put out another album for the money," furthers Gould. "When you
take that incentive away you realise there's a chemistry there, because you
always get something out of it."

ISN'T THERE pressure to, avoid taking the easy option on record? "We were
sick of doing that old style stuff," Could says. "We'd toured it for the last two
years so we knew we didn't want that."
Roddy: "We all knew specifically what we wanted to avoid - the whole Funk
Metal thing!"
At what point do you stop. caring what people say?
Bill: "About six years ago!"
Do you find yourselves wondering Just how this whole thing took off?
Roddy: "No, touring as long as we did left us with plenty of time to realise how it
was happening and why, and to deal with it.
"Everyone was aggravated because it was such a long haul touring, and for the
most part we were in pretty bad moods."
Bill: "When it all happened we were more nonchalant because we felt it
should've happened a long time ago; it was like, 'F"K... FINALLY!' as opposed
to, 'Wow, it's happening so fast'. When you begin touring you imagine what's
going to happen. And when things don't happen feel like you're a horse
dragging your record company wagon along, and they're beating you with a
stick holding a carrot in front of you. But when things finally pay off, at least you
know they were working too."

WHEN YOU came to putting the material together for this album, you obviously
diversified as much as possible.
"I don't know if you can put it like that," says the fired-up Gould. "But this whole
Funk Metal thing is really disgusting. The last thing I ever want to be in is a
Funk Metal band - we're gonna try to be anything except that!"
People will still want to hear those old songs live though.
"But those are just songs. They're NOT Funk Metal, f**k that! I would say that
any band which plays Funk Metal, I hate, and would safely say that most of the
band feel the same way."
In the new material, you have songs which sound as if they're from sleazy '70s
cop shows and songs that'd strip the flesh off a dog's back, so where's it all
coming from? And how much is Mike Patton involved?
"He's involved a lot more , than the last record - he's handling pretty much all
the lyrics and he's into it."
You don't like admitting that friction makes the whole thing work, but you need
that tension.
"We go through a major trauma twice a week!" '
What was this week's?
Bill grins."The album cover was one. (The front cover is actually a fantastic shot
of a heron in mid-rise on a lake of sorts, at the back a bunch of meat hooks with
dead carcasses and a cow's head hanging...)

THERE'S THIS attitude now coming from most of the Seattle bands - they're
anti-rock star and don't like being famous. Do you feel like that?
"Luckily I found the Lord Jesus Christ," says Gould sincerely, "and I've put all
those drug-type of evils behind me... hahahaha! l discovered the Lord when I
saw other bands being more successful than Faith No More!
"No, seriously, being successful is pretty good, I wouldn't know about whether
people around me think I've changed or not, because I live in a Chinese
neighbourhood where no-one speaks English! When they see me walking down
the street they could be talking a lotta shit and I wouldn't know!"
Gould's landlord, however, on hearing that the band were famous rock stars,
upped his rent by 30 per cent. "That's true," Gould confirms, "but I'm gonna pour
cement down the drains when I leave. Then again, what's a mere 30 per cent
after all the millions and millions of dollars I made last year - a cheap price to
pay..."
It's Bill's round, I announce unequivocally in reaction to his last comment.

WHEN IT comes to Patton's lyrics, do you get involved? Do you want to know
what he's writing about?
"We pretty much leave it to him," says Roddy. "That's his job in the band.
Everyone has .their input and words are his."
Bill: "He's really into his words, and as long as he's into them..."
You don't care.
Roddy: "No, I care what he sings about, but he's probably gonna get a lot of flak
this time around. He's gonna offend a lot of people and I think it's great.
"He likes to capture characters in his songs. There's this one song about a
white trash trailer park person who's really repulsive. But that's a really good
angle to follow. If singers wanna do something like that then they should be able
to, in the same way that actors who take on really sleazy roles don't get shit for
it..."
Gould: "Like playing a child-molester..."
Roddy: "A singer is the is the same as an actor. People Shouldn't take what
singers say so seriously."
But the more it offends, the better it is, right?
"It's just good to stretch things to extremes," affirms Roddy.
What other new songs could be considered as 'stretching' and 'offensive'?
Roddy: "I wrote some good lyrics on one song which Mike'll probably get flak
for, it's about swallowing..."
I'm all confused. From any particular angle?
"Probably from down on knees! He'll definitely get flak for that..."

I CHOKE. Roddy might have written those words, but Patton is going to be the
one singing them.
"There's a day of reckoning for everyone. It's not even about offending anyone,
just about trying out different characters and being challenging."
Gould: "Characters can be offensive to people, but entertainment as a medium
can't be wrong or right, only offensive or inoffensive."
This is as strong an illustration of band democracy as you'll ever see - the group
totally split on song subject-matter. But how Has that writing come together?
Have you found you've been bitching at each other like you always do?
"Jim's getting a lot more comfortable with the songs now," admits Roddy. "He's
uncomfortable rehearsing; he'd rather have a tape of the finished product and
work on it at home."
Bill: "It makes for a weird tension. He's working on stuff at home but you
visualise everything, including the guitar, when you write the song. And then it
comes back different to your perception - but if the person isn't there from day
one they can't be expected to read your mind."
It seems as if you lot bicker on like grannies at a bus stop!
"It's just another manifestation of the same old story. It'll all work out though..."

JIM MIGHT be a grouchy old man, but it seemed only fitting to allow him his
chance to comment. Has it been a pleasant experience, making this album?
"Absolutely not, it's been an unpleasant experience from the very beginning! It's
been very unpleasant, but not really much different to my experiences in making
records with Faith No More before. It's always been a very unpleasant
experience - a lot of people scrambling to get henchmen on their side to play
silly games, to blow smoke on a situation.
"It's very difficult to say it all in a short amount of time. There's certain things
that certain people worry about at certain times, and certain other people
choose to play upon it to increase the tension of a given situation, until
everything's way out of hand."

But hasn't that always been the Faith No More way?

"More than ever now."
Is it pressure?
"I'm not sure if it's that or someone else's desire to be a teen idol. Things aren't
that much different. At one point there was a problem, because everyone
seemed so frightened that I wondered if we'd actually be able to anything! But
at this point there's no worries on my part that's all."
How is it that you don't work with the rest of the band when writing and
rehearsing (Recording's different, Martin is going in at 10am sharp.)
"Because I have to drive a long way in, and I get there and we'll play something
and all of a sudden someone decides they wanna leave! Or somebody decides
they're not having a nice day, they decide they wanna blow it off, and I've driven
all that way to go there. I'm not too agreeable to begin with, so that stokes the
flames up."

WHEN YOU do something different musically, then the bricks come tumbling
down?
"That's mostly Bill's fault," Big Jim gumbles. "When somehow somebody gets
Bill to think something's wrong I dunno how! - and Bill's the figurehead because
he's always willing to say something. So if someone can get Bill going then
they've got a good shot at getting their own way.
"I'm not trying to do anything different, I'm just trying to play these songs the
way I see 'em, the way it should go. We're not reinventing ourselves, I'll tell you
that, we're just going along as we can. Anything we play will pretty much sound
like us, so don't let any of that 'doing something new' bullshit creep in because
that's a load of f**king crap!"
Without this pushing and shoving, would Faith No More really cease to exist?
"I guess so... it's the nature of the beast. As long as these people are around
that's the way it is. Some people are spoiled filthy little brats, rich parents, been
handed everything on a golden platter..."
Careful, Jim, they could just as easily sling the mud back at you! "That's bullshit!
Anybody can say anything, anybody can sling shit at anybody they want! What's
the point of doing this interview?! Come on! Here it is - guys sometimes act like
spoilt children, and this is an industry and a job that encourages and permits
that sort of behaviour."

Thank goodness they're hating each other right now through gritted teeth. It's
the only way. Faith No More, monkeys trapped in a cage with each other,
slinging shit all over the place.
Faith, Dope and Anarchy!
– FNM

Noise Of The Nineties magazine – April 1992

Faith No More is a strange name for a group – Wilks Barre is a

strange name for a town. Stoko is a bloody weird name for a

journalist, so everybody got on famously when the ‘Angel

Dust’ circus hit America prior to the band’s UK tour!

“Hands up who wants to die? Someone is going to die very seriously.”

screams Mike Patton who is, at the best of times, the rinky dinkiest of

scamps and is now attempting to feign mock concern. His mouth is

stretched uncontrollably into a smile wider than Slack Sally’s sloppy

section as a thousand of America’s chosen few celebrate their

impending doom.

It has been a few curious days. Myself and the Good Lord Dennis (so

called because when he enters the room, all the women present run

out screaming ‘Good Lord!’) had basically been on the piss, on the

road and on the track of some dodgy Country & Western singer called

Faith No more to little avail. Like tracking a legless woman, the trail

was getting fresher. But wait; the plot thickens…

The band were proving evasive. We’d spied a few T-shirts on our

travels, curiously all sported by shaggy long-haired types or escapees

from varying institutions. So, unlike the three-legged donkey I backed

at Huntington yesterday, we were on the right track.

The biggest clue we had was the album ‘Angel Dust’, an absolutely

fucked-up exorcism of neurosis that was obviously the work of

potentially dangerous men. All we had to do was follow the trail of

happy/clinically insane faces across America to find out precisely how

Faith No More had transformed from a nice, pretty, MTV-friendly

poppy Rock band into this beautifully ugly, quivering lump of

nonsense.

‘Angel Dust’ is a perplexing little Johnny. It also happens to be the

most innovative and surprising album since ‘Nothing’s Shocking’

shocked so many. ‘Angel Dust’s’ element of surprise is it’s chief asset.

The musical and mood variation is so intense that I’m sure half the

band didn’t know what the fuck was coming next.

By the time we caught up with the blighters they were in the middle

of their extensive American tour, taking in many towns nearly as

small as my genitals (population 27). Well known for their ‘oddball

behaviour’ (i.e. unpretentious good old-fashioned character) and their

‘original music’ (bollocks-free bollockingly good bollocks), the band

are disturbingly normal and refreshingly friendly and released.

What do you think about the new album? Some people think it’s a

little strange.

“Yeah. What do I think? We were RIGHT!” laughs drummer Mike

‘Puffy’ Bordin. The man who normally lets his drums do the talking is

chatty, charming and chummy today.

Was the album a conscious attempt to evade the commercialism of

‘The Real Thing’?

“Well I didn’t think ‘The Real Thing’ was a conscious attempt at

commercialism. It wasn’t made with commercial intent. We were

never formed with that intent and, if we had, then we wouldn’t sound

like we do. Our purpose or mission to produce records that are good

fun for us, by our standards. I think we were right. I actually prefer

listening to this record than the other because, to me, this one’s a hell

of a lot more satisfying… it stands up better.”

Will you take such a brave stance on your future work? Will you get

‘worse’?

“Worse? or better? I don’t know, ‘better or worse’ is your job! to

predict what someone will like, to predict what will catch someone’s

fancy, that’s not the right way to make music. If you do that, you’re

not a musician, you’re a pimp. It’s like saying ‘I’m a pimp, I’ve got 27

girls who do this, a couple of guys who can do certain things, and a

couple of mules in the stable because I’ve got to predict what

everyone wants. You’re pandering to people.”

The new album seems a lot more natural for Faith No More in it’s

musical eccentricities.

“If you let something play itself out naturally… it’s like if you’ve got

to fart…” (he leans ominously into the tape recorder revelling in the

analogy), “and you’re at a dinner table and you hold it in forever…

doesn’t it seem sometimes that when the fart comes out it’s worse?

It’s built up, it’s nastier and your fucking shorts are… fucked! When

you let something work itself out, it balances itself and finds its own

equilibrium.”

Perhaps the most notable progression is Mike Patton’s rather

distinctive vocal styles (that’s plural). Both on record and live, the

precocious whining-brat-Chili-Peppers impressions that never actually

were the real thing have gone.

“I think I’m more comfortable with myself and with everyone in the

band.” Says Mike, who joined just before their third album. “With the

last record, they’d already written the music, gave me a tape and I
went back to my mom’s house and locked myself in my bedroom for

two and-a-half weeks and got the whole thing out. Since then I’ve had

three years of experience as opposed to two and-a-half weeks. I’ve

grown up and got more confidence.”

Confidence? Yes. Commercialism? No. The majority of ‘Angel Dust’ is

not to be whistled on the number 9 bus. Brutal noise with more

emphasis on song structure than melody is not what record

companies dream of.

“If we have a hit single then it’s just as commercial. Here, goat…

goat… her! You miss the ball with your head, you graze it and you

knock it to the side, how fine is the line?” Puffy is once again

animated, even if I haven’t got a fucking clue what he’s on about!

“We’re not an overnight band. We don’t make Bon Jovi songs [neither

to Bon Jovi judging by their new single], we make things that are

maybe a little weird, maybe eccentric, maybe not just familiar to

people. Things take time. It’s like the guy who won the Nobel prize for

economics today. They thought he was a fucking maniac. They called

him eccentric and rejected everything he said in the Fifties but now

they think his work was the first revolutionary stroke of genius. You

can’t stop… there’s no reason to back out by what they heard.”

Wilkes Barres is an odd fucker of a place. Nestled somewhere on the

wrong side of the Atlantic, the quaintly anglicised slab of Americana is

so laid-back that all the locals have pillows sewn into the back of their

head. ‘The Civic Centre For The Performing Arts’ is a lavishly ornate

music hall where you can’t drink, can’t dance, can’t smoke, can’t

leave your seat and probably can only breathe in the inhale’ sections

of the theatre. The local inbreeds probably know who Faith No More

are marginally less than they care. A band’s a band, so Wilkes Barre

put on its best togs and rocked the night away… sort of.

Introducing themselves with a Hi-NRG lo-fi Eurobeat version of ‘The

Final Countdown’, the band tumbled onto the stage as the circus

came to town. They seem subdued beforehand and, for the first

number, (a screaming ‘Caffeine’) the crowd go absolutely fucking

crazy as they hesitantly tap their feet, watching a real Rock band

misfiring on about two cylinders.

A gang of about six silly sausages attempting horizontally parallel

slam dancing in their regimented seats towards the back of the hall
realise how daft they look, but carry on regardless. A few banging

fists and clenched heads offer their support down at the front but, on

the whole, you’d see more enthusiasm at an Ann Summers party in a

convent.

“Yeah, party” drones Patton as he launches into a tirade telling

people to remove their bottoms from seats. Faced, some for the first

time, with genuine Rock ‘n’ Roll attitude, a bizarre thing happens as

Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania becomes, on short-term loan only,

Woodstock or Monterey. ‘Land Of Sunshine’ sees the place wig-out.

The backwater crowd are curiously more familiar with the new

material. Each song sees a fresh barrage of testosterone-fuelled brats

braving the increasingly confused security resulting in said stewards

waving the white flag and limping, tail between their legs, to the back

of the hall cursing these ‘damned metalheads’. Anarchy ensues. What

was initially a half-hearted gig-by-numbers was rapidly turning into an

‘event’, a transformation that Faith No More can produce on a

startlingly regular basis.

Now the band love it! Patton is surfing on top of the crowd, Billy the

bassist is stomping around with his head, Roddy (as the keyboard

player) becomes the new visible frontman and even Jim Martin, ZZ

Top’s stand-in guitarist, is smiling. Throughout it all Puffy pounds

away with sheer adrenaline overcoming the pain of a sprained ankle

that’s been troubling him all day. A marvellously vicious circle ensues.

The harder the band play, the wilder the crowd go. The wilder the

crowd go, the harder the band play and so on. Both camps are

incapable of stopping until the other gives way.

Neither does… it’s the floor instead. Mid way through ‘We Care A Lot’

the band are forced to halt by the local police who’ve been present all

night.
“You’ve broken the floor so we’re gonna have to leave. We can’t play

anymore.” laughs Mike as the band amble around confused and

unsure. It looks like the evening is doomed to failure.

“I suppose the only way we could play is if we come in the crowd and

play down there.” Blessed is the man who can laugh in the face of

adversity, commiserating the crown with a parting gag.

Mike was being serious. Billy climbs down into the pit, Jim and Roddy

move into the wings thus avoiding the danger area and Mike dives

into the crowd who are unbelievably more confused than myself –

bands on MTV don’t do this.

The band launch into ‘Jizzlobber’ as Mike disappears. The crowd are

too confused to dance, the police are too confused to act and stand

helpless on the stage and I’m laughing my tits off at the back as the

security, popcorn vendor and management run round like chickenless

heads screaming at each other. Mikes voice appears and no one’s got

a fucking clue what’s happening. Patton, perched in a seat by the left-

hand wall, is rapidly noticed and is soon surrounded, singing merely

inches away, face-to-face with the crowd. The spectacle becomes

odder as the band play from various positions to an audience facing

away from the stage. This is excitement and energy and the closest

to Rock ‘n’ Roll legend that Wilkes Barre will ever see.

Once more the floor packs in and Mike is stopped. The band launch

into ‘Woodpeckers From Mars’ after which Mike, once again on stage,

declares “We’ve got to go. Someone is seriously going to die.”

“If you can all make it back to the first row of seats, then your

chances of dying will seriously decrease,” adds Billy as Jim takes off

his guitar and the first people make it to the door.

Oddly, the entire mass at the front moves as one, twenty yards

backwards and screams for more.

“Why the fuck not?” mouths Billy in disbelief and launches into ‘Easy’

(yes, that one). The crowd sway, laugh and singalong. Perhaps they

think every gig is like this.

With the house lights on and grown policemen nearly in tears, Jim

comes back and kicks off ‘Epic’. The management concede defeat

and turn the house lights down. An ironic ‘Small Victory’ and an apt

‘Kindergarten’ and it’s over.

Backstage, the band are satisfied. Not ecstatic… but satisfied. It could

only happen to Faith No More.

“That show wasn’t particularly special,” notes Roddy. “We tend to let

what happens at our shows go over our heads.”

The rest of the band act similarly.

“To do a good show, that’s our main priority. That’s what we need to

do to justify ourselves.”

Jim is absent.

“He’ll be with some girls.” laughs Mike, who, like the others, is not, as

they sit around discussing the show over sodas and ‘chips’ (Chips?

They’re bloody crisps! We invented the bastard language.)

“There was one guy who though you were God,” Mike teases to

Roddy. “He was watching you, mouth open… you ruled!”

“Yeah, I saw him playing air keyboards.” screams Roddy leaping to

his feet in a dramatic organ impression.

I tell Mike that his remarks to the crowd, including ‘if you go any

wilder the whole place will collapse’ sounded as if he was egging

them on to do it.

“I was.”

By the time you read this, Faith No More will be (or will have been if

you’re a slow reader) in Europe.

If you miss them, you should insert skewers through your nipples and

twist anti-clockwise!
JIM MARTIN | 09.05.1992 | KERRANG!
He's justly proud of his reputation as one of the most repulsive characters in Metal
today. His drinking is legendary, his debauchery knows no bounds. His name is
frequently prefaced by 'Big Sick Ugly'. No, dummies - we ain't talking about STEFFAN
CHIRAZI! We're talking about the man who spills the beans here about his daily
routine...

Kerrang! | Issue 391 | Steffan Chirazi

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JIM MARTIN
JAMES BLANCO Martin, 30, is the lead guitarist for Faith No More.
He has played guitar since his teenage years with a variety of bands, such as Pigs Of
Death, E-Z Street, Recluse, and the (almost) world-famous Vicious Hatred. He is also
well-known in Hayward, California as a connoisseur of fine ales and a mean hand at
the pool table. A keen viewer of quality over-the-counter pornography, he is also a
marksman of note, taking target practise whenever his schedule permits.
Amongst his other talents are playing the hurdy-gurdy, a keen interest in bagpipes and
the ability to express extreme social belligerence without offending anybody. Martin
isn't married and lives in a two-room area of the Hayward house that he grew up in.

"USUALLY I'LL just lie in until everybody leaves the house about 2.30pm," says Jim,
"which is a comfortable time for rolling out of bed. Within 45 seconds of waking up I
light up a cigar or a cigarette. Right now it's different, because I have to be in the studio
at 1am so I have to start early in the morning to make use of available time. But this is
about how I normally like to spend a day at home, right? By the time I get up I'll have a
bursting full bladder but I'll go to the kitchen and put my water in the microwave first so
I can get my tea going before I have a piss. I'm a real tea man. I like Liptons Standard
tea best of all, but Lil (Jim's mother)
ends to get the cheapest shit she can find so currently we have Rose tea. While I drink
that I pull out the old toaster; a favourite of mine is waffles.
I'll pop one of those in, and when it's done I'll put peanut butter and jam on it and
munch. Then I'll have another cup of tea and more waffles before hurrying down to the
toilet again to spray an alcoholic shit into the bowl (courtesy of last night's drinking).
Whenever I'm on the toilet I have to have something to read. Never the mail, never the
paper, generally a book or a magazine. See this (a camping supplies magazine)? I've
read this about 20 times but I do try for fresh reading materials. I've managed to read
quite a few books over the years whilst on the throne, including the 'The Official
Bartender's Guide'.

AFTER THAT I'll look at myself in the mirror and decide whether need a shower. I
pretty much always need a shower but I tend to put it off - like now, haven't showered
in about a week! Can't seem to find the time. Then I'll laze on the bed and read some
more, maybe f**k around with the of hurdy gurdy or banjo. I play the mandolin a lot -
and maybe I'll even pick up a guitar. By this time it's about 5pm and I realise that I need
something substantial to eat even though I've already had a few snacks. Usually I go
out to eat, so I'll put on the same filthy, greasy clothes I've had on for a few days. The
trousers I have on now... I was thinking about washing them but I never got around to
it. And most of the trousers i have now are too small for me, so these stay on for
comfort, I dress, leave the house in my large brown truck and drive down to a bar
where a girl I went to school with bartends. It's called 'Cheers' in Hayward. I don't like
the proprietor - she's a crabby old battle-axe! Having had the first drink of the day, it
stretches to two or three, I'll get something to eat, maybe ribs at Emil Villas, or
Chinese; recently it's been
Mexican at Los Compadres. I usually run into someone I know, and go off to drink
beers and shoot pool.

IN A nut-shell, what I do all day is hide from everybody. That way I don't have to
answer any questions or do anything, I end up going home after a few drinks, and work
on my computer some or look at the mail or watch videos. I love watching cheap, shitty
TV movies, drinking beer and eating food. Eating food pretty much keeps me awake,
and I've often wondered why I'm not a fat bastard - even though I'm getting there! I put
it down to taking lots of craps. Usually I'll watch movies until 6am, by which time I hit
the sack so I can start all over the next day. I never, ever spend time thinking about
anything much. If you start reflecting on your troubles and strives you start thinking
your life's measly and alienate your friends. That's a standard day, but
there are others where I might only leave the house to get a pack of cigarettes. Maybe
I'll go out on my motorcycle or in my truck; quite often I'll get a wild hair up my ass and
just keep on going and going for two or three days on by myself, to the mountains or
the desert (recently Death Valley and Reno). I do that for no reason at all, and that's
the great part. I don't have to have a reason.

AND A typical tour day? In London, for example, if there are no interviews I'll get up
about 11am for my full English breakfast, immediately after which I go back up to my
room to read a book and take a large crap. Then I'll go find the nearest bar. The beer of
my choice? Bitter. I know people talk about stronger beers, but a couple of those and
you're all washed up for the evening. I don't just drink to get drunk, I sincerely enjoy the
soothing, cool fluids running down my throat and bathing the membranes. So I'll have a
few beers, maybe have some pub food, shamble around and go to the gig. After the gig
I'll retire with some friends, usually to the Columbia Hotel whether we're staying there
or not. It's a very happy hotel where everybody just lets you drink until you're through, i
don't like to try to keep the same schedule wherever I am in the world!"
Kerrang! Magazine – No. 393 –
May 23, 1992
Sure, We Can Compare Ourselves To Gods'
By Chris Watts

Yup, Faith No More are back and Mike Patton’s still got his tongue

planted firmly in his cheek. Their new LP ‘Angel Dust’ has ruffled a

few feathers at the record company but thankfully, Faith No More still

don’t give a shit. Chris Watts was dispatched to Los Angeles to catch

the band shooting a video for their up-coming single ‘Midlife Crisis’,

and uncovered Big Jim Martin and co’s welcome return to their MTV-

hostile roots…

For your information, Los Angeles is a piss-factory. On one hand

they’ve burnt down the ghettos of South Central and Compton.

They’ve even firebombed Fredericks’ lingerie superstore on

Hollywood Boulevard to prove that all that glitters makes great

firewood.

Domestic TV coverage of the riots has reached saturation level. On

the other hand, life in LA simply has to go on. You can still join the

aerobics and fitness militia on Channel 13 or order omelettes on room

service from the lisping faggot waiters with their sparkling teeth and

bouffant haircuts. It’s a fitting place to meet Faith No More.

High up beside the hotel roof pool, Roddy Bottum and Bill Gould face

the cameras. It’s the same setting chosen by Spinal Tap for their end-

of-tour party in the ancient rockumentary. MTV’s Riki Rachtman tells

the keyboard player and bassist how much he likes their new album.
“It’s a much bigger album, isn’t it, guys? I love it! I hear you used a

completely new recording desk?”

“Oh, man,” Mike Patton chuckles, “look at Rod’s face!” Roddy listens

stonily to Riki’s stream of banality. Eventually, the host of America’s

‘Headbangers Ball’ asks him about the band’s notorious cover of

“Black Sabbath’s ‘War Babies’ “!

Patton collapses. Into laughter. Years ago the singer once explained

to a British journalist that the band covered ‘War Pigs’ because they

all loved Led Zeppelin!

Left to their own devices, Faith No More would not be here at all.

Down there in a derelict patch of Ewan estate beside the Hyatt, Mike

Patton watches a vagrant dig the earth with his bare hands.

“The meaning of life I guess,” he sighs, “I don’t think people will like

this record at all!”

Four years ago Faith No More played their first European date at

London’s Dingwalls club. Chuck Mosley blacked out his face, sported a

rasta frightwig and spazzed it up like a cartoon. ‘The Real Thing’ was
18 months away and nobody quite knew what to make of it all.

Certainly, no one could predict the Platinum success of The Real

Thing, the five Bammy and numerous Band Of The Year awards which

followed.

Faith No More were the hairy, rubbery, logical conclusion to Thrash

Metal. When Mike Patton (now known to the band by his surname only

to avoid confusion with Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin) replaced Chuck in January

1989, the band were complete. ‘The Real Thing’ turned into a

monster and one of the few classics of the decade. Everybody else

was pissing into the wind in comparison. It was fun and sick and

gleaming and priceless. Funk Metal (now long buried six feet under)

was an insult. Compared to the one-hit wonder of their ‘Introduce

Yourself debut, ‘The Real Thing’ became a yardstick for the

mainstream. One magazine even described it as ‘the only Heavy

Metal album worth having in your collection’!

Right now, the problems of releasing a successor are being calmed by

the band and management. Outsiders have even suggested that Faith

No More could never better ‘The Real Thing’. Is there any point in

releasing another record at all?

“We have to,” comments Jim Martin, hillbilly death guitarist. “We’re

legally obliged to release more records. We can’t split up just to

preserve our historical integrity. That’s all very nice to think about,

but the truth is we’re due another record. Here it is. Can I bum a

cigarette?”

Despite the guitarist’s words, the task of re-launching Faith No More

across the world on the back of ‘Angel Dust’ is causing some people
sleepless nights. What did Patton mean when he said that no one is

going to like this record?

“It means that the record company got really scared when they heard

the finished album,” says Roddy Bottum. “That was the only way we

knew we’d done something right. If they’d liked it then something

would be wrong. There were a lot of worried faces before we started

mixing.”

“Don’t you think it’s great to see someone twitch?” Patton asks. “You

know, they get really nervous? That happened with our record

company. They tried working on each of us individually, persuading

us that we didn’t know what we were doing. They said it would

alienate fans of ‘The Real Thing’ Ideally they’d like another ‘Epic’ on

there somewhere,”

“What does that mean?” queries Jim. “They Just wanted our last

record, period. Anything that would make their job easier.”

Patton: “This way they’re going to work hard because they’re worried

about their house payments!”

Record companies get nervous when bands talk like this. Faith No

More love it.

Angel Dust is, in fact, a big step sideways. Produced, like “The Real

Thing’, by Matt Wallace and Faith No More, on the surface the new

record is another slice of state-of-the-art junk. To original fans of

‘Introduce Yourself’ it is a welcome return to Faith No More’s MTV-

hostile roots. To fans of the far more commercial ‘Epic’ and ‘Falling To
Pieces’ singles, however, ‘Angel Dust’ is going to be a cruel surprise.

Surprise, you’re dead. Is it any good?

“It’s just weirder,” says Roddy. “The record company said it was ‘a

little bit too far left-field’ That means it’s less rock. They also accused

of us ‘gratuitous sampling'”.

Patton: “What was that great phrase they used? ‘Too much role-

playing in the vocals’? That was their fault anyway!”

“Why compare it to ‘The Real Thing’?” asks Jim. “We’re tired of ‘The

Real Thing’. We toured it for three years. Is it any good? You tell us,

man. It’s so fucking fickle.”

Like Faith No More themselves, their third studio album is awkward,

graceful and schizo. From the familiar industrial funk of ‘Land Of

Sunshine’ and ‘Caffeine’ to the jokey Country and Western of ‘RV’ and

the heavily instrumental, typically titled ‘Jizzlobber’, ‘Angel Dust’ is a

problem child. ls it the big deal it will doubtless become?

“That sounds pompous and self-important,” Puffy says. “We’re

generally just very fucking thrilled. It could’ve been awkward but in

the end the only tough thing about making this record was making

the best one possible. Having to follow a successful record was not

important to us. The last one, do you?”

Maybe not yet.

“I hope you get to like it as much. It’ll grow on you. If I were a fan and

I knew a band had been touring a record for two or three years I’d be

expecting something different. I’d be expecting something like this.

But…” “You want us to explain our music with words,” Jim interrupts.
“If we could do that then we wouldn’t need music. Anything you write

will be misrepresented anyway. Let’s go back to the very beginning of

Journalism. Do you see any quotes from God in the Bible? I can

compare it to that.”

“Fuck, man,” Patton exclaims. “Yeah, sure, we can compare ourselves

to God!”

Just one day on the set of a rock video shoot will prove that God is

dead. 20 hours Faith No More are stuck in a shed with a Californian

film crew and the entire supporting cast of lackeys, go-fers, fetch-its

and bozos. All this, at a cost of 200 grand, to supply the likes of Riki

Rachtman with a four-minute-and-18-second promo clip for the first

single, ‘Midlife Crisis’.

The plot has eluded just about everybody save director Kevin

Kerslake. Kerslake has directed videos for the likes of Soundgarden,

Mr Bungle and Nirvana. He’s Puffy and Gould’s mate and

consequently trusted implicitly.

“Which is Just as well,” the drummer comments, “otherwise there’s

no way we’d be doing all this shit!”

The plot involves the band dressing up as a telephone engineer

(Patton), a desert stormtrooper (Big Jim) and a ’20s gangster (Gould).

It’ll probably be art eventually.

During a break for lunch, Jim Martin finds the nearest Tex-Mex

homeboy bar and settles down for a game of pool and a Jug of cold

beer.
Big Jim has his priorities sorted. The guitarist will talk fondly of his

travels to Scotland and up into the mountains just outside San

Francisco. Nothing much seems to bug Big Jim, “I love it in Britain,” he

comments. “You’re always within walking distance of a pub! I’d like to

spend more time there knowing I don’t have to play a gig in the

evening. Just to travel around for a bit as a tourist.”

The video shoot marks the end of a period of stability for Faith No

More. The following months will see ‘Angel Dust’ released to a

gagging public, preceded by two months of touring supporting Guns

N’ Roses in Europe.

“Right now we’re going through the first stages of the touring

process,” says Bill Gould. “There’s always a bit of resistance at first

because we’ve been used to the comforts of home. We’re used to

cooking breakfast in a kitchen! We’re gearing up now. We’re getting

used to doing interviews and stuff again. It’s like a cold bath – a bit of

a shock but you get used to it after a while. The last time out we

didn’t really know what to expect. This time we know.”

“It’s like the old days are back again,” says Jim. “The only difference

is that we now have a bigger bus.”

Patton: “Promoting the band in interviews can be awkward but it’s our

job. feel like an ass hole no matter what I say I feel like a wet rag. A

bad interview is an exercise in how to bullshit. My first instinct is to

lie!”

“Sometimes you don’t really have to be there at all,” comments Jim,

whose standard photo pose is to stand immobile in one position for as

long as it takes.
“All they need is your presence. No one wants to really know what

you think.”

Patton: “It makes me sick. It’s like a porno movie at times. You know

when they pan in right up close on the insertion and you just don’t

want to see it? That’s Faith- No More.” “It’s still as chaotic as it ever

was,” says Bill Gould. “We’re not businessmen. Maybe we seem like

we sometimes don’t give a f**k, even about our own jobs and each

other, but for us it’s like sitting together in our living room.

“There are never business things hanging over anyone’s head like

song writing splits and stuff. It’s fun and comfortable but chaotic. It

takes us two months to decide on a T-shirt design! It took us two

months to come up with the album cover!”

What’s the worst thing about Faith No More? Bill frowns for a minute.

“Probably the bad aspects are having five headstrong people who

won’t listen to each other. We don’t give as much of a f**k as we

should because we’re collectively cynical. When it’s bad it’s really

bad.”

Bad enough to disintegrate?

“No, not that bad, but there’s a lot of bullshit out there. Sometimes

it’s hard to be there with it. Like doing that thing with MTV yesterday?
That left a really bad taste in my mouth. It’s difficult to be patient with

the bullshit that came with our last record. When we first started

playing we were smart-arses! If we didn’t like someone then we’d tell

them to f**k off! We were sharp in trying to be taken seriously. We’re

still the same people but because of our success we’re in a position

where we almost have to give in. We’ve had to learn tolerance and

that’s a compromise none of us enjoy.”

Do you ever feel like a real ass hole being in Faith No More?

“Sometimes,” the bassist grins. “Definitely! It’s an unnatural thing.

There’s a good chemistry when it works but being in a band is not like

it was 20 years ago. People and their chemistry cannot last forever.

Sometimes you go through a creative and mental dead spot and you

wonder why you bother! But that’s just a human rhythm and it

passes. What keeps the band together is having a dream and making

it real. We’re all bonded with this thing. This is what we do. I don’t

want to leave and so it must be a good thing. We’re getting closer to

what it all means all the time. If anything we’re following our souls,

our own voices. Hopefully people will learn from us that it’s okay to be

in a band and have a sense of humour Faith No More get rewarded for

helping to sell the myth of rock ‘n’ roll.”

I leave Faith No More in the piss factory with Mike Patton hanging

from a cardboard tree in the name of art. The band that went out to

save rock ‘n’ roll are back in the ring. Stand by your jukeboxes.

“What we hope this record will achieve,” says Bill Gould, “is to give

the band more creative power for the future. We’re trying to buy our

freedom. We’re Just stretching our wings a little.”

“What we’ve basically decided since ‘The Real Thing’,” announces

Mike Patton, “is that what we have as a band is worth listening to. It’s

our job to entertain the masses!”

Melody Maker | May 23rd 1992.
Is There A Doctrine In The House?
By Andrew Mueller.

They're mad, bad and dangerous to know, so why are FNM so bloody popular?
Andrew Mueller travelled to riot-born LA to discover what the kings of chaos
think about MTV, hoax phone calls to stars, GnR support slots and their new
album, 'Angel Dust'.

ITS FOUR DAYS SINCE THE last petrol cocktail was thrown in anger, 24 hours
since the dawn to dusk curfew was lifted, and Los Angeles bears the
demeanour of the shell-shocked veteran; dazed by sudden turmoil, tense for the
next upheaval, seeking reassurance anywhere its offered. The already
notorious air is doubly unbreathable, the smoke trapped alongside the smog by
a stubborn lid of cloud. The view from the Hollywood Hills now
includes pockmarks of gutted rubble punctuating the familiar dusty drabness of
the suburbs. Tanks and armoured cars have joined Sunset Strip's more
traditional parade of oddities. It came down hard here, no doubt about it. Back
on LA's idea of the real world - television - anybody in uniform or in vaguely
responsible office, blames everybody else all day, live, more details at nine. The
innumerable Oprah-like chat shows have put the my-spouse-left-me-for another
man/another woman/an alien/the circus/our daughter/my compulsive
exhibitionism stoogeson hold in favour of ghastly concerned urban strife
voyeurism. The city's two most famously brutal gangs, the Crips and Bloods,
hold a mildly hilarious
press conference to tie their blue and red bandannas together in an expression
of brotherhood and to announce open season on the LAPD. There is serious
debate as to the wisdom of arming the fire department. The world, or at least
this corner of it, has gone utterly, infuriatingly, upsettingly, excitingly and
interestingly mad. And we're here to talk to a rock group.

FORTUNATELY, your Melody Maker is staying at the Hyatt hotel on Sunset,

which is possibly the only place in the world this week where you stand a
chance of doing such with a straight face. Even the most spectacular civil
carnage couldn't wake this place from its endless rock'n'roll dream. All
America's constitutionally protected weaponry couldn't stop Van Helen's tour
buses from gliding in polished bullets on ice. No amount of Mr Molotov's party
tricks could exercise the ghosts of Led Zeppelin's televisions from the corridors.
And nothing short of thorough-going demolition could obstruct the irresistible
urge the first-time visitor to the rooftop pool feels to start discussing a musical
based on the life of Jack The Ripper in a dimwitted English accent Fiddling
while Rome burns? Oh, you betcha. Fit to bust our elbows.
Faith No More, with whom we will shortly be discussing their very fine new
album, "Angel Dust", and related things, are up here as well, taking in the view,
attempting to harass a drunk in a lot across the street, and fending off the
attentions of an MTV film crew. The interviewer, a pitifully clueless specimen
who looks like the drummer in an A&R man's idea of a metal band, takes turns
in asking two or three of them why they called the album that, where they got
their name from and why they covered Black Sabbath's "War Babies" on their
last record. (Answers: because they felt like it, they can't remember, and "War
Babies" is a Tom Robinson song, Faith No More covered "War Pigs").
The three or two not required at any given moment take turns in standing
behind the camera suppressing (not!) chortles. Their interrogator bears the
wretched expression of the one not entirely sure if he's being laughed with or at,
but suspecting probably the latter without quite knowing why. There's one in
every classroom. He probably makes more money than any of us."I think"
shrugs vocalist Mike Patton between giggles, "he's big with kids in Nebraska or
somewhere. I mean, I assume MTV have their reasons."
Patton (he's usually known by his last name) is the most immediately
approachable of the five, followed in rapid succession by drummer Mike Bordin,
bassist Bill Gould, keyboardist Roddy Bottum (we'll let it go) and guitarist Jim
Martin, who says very little and it seems kind of appropriate that way. His
unique unique configuration of eyewear, he confides in a rare burst of self-
aggrandisement two days later, is the result of losing his pair of combined
sunglasses/focals and never really getting it together to replace them.
Which seems fair enough.

NEXT morning, over breakfast with Bill and Mike, I start with the investigative bit
the very moment the grapefruit hits the table, quizzing a visibly startled Bill
about his
legendary hobby of collecting the home phone numbers of certain celebrities
and depositing large heaps of virulent abuse on their answering-machines.
"Jesus," he says. "How did you know about that?"
Ah, now that would be telling. "Well," he begins, swiftly deciding that it's best to
come clean, "I did have some, quite a number of them in fact, stowed in my little
pocket computer. And just the other day, my battery died and I lost all my
information. So I'm starting all over again from scratch. But I've got zero
celebrity phone numbers now. So if anyone's coming to our shows who's got
any...."
He fixes me with something approaching a steely glare. Have you got any?"
One or two. But they'd probably make the connection. So, uh, whose did you
have?
"I couldn't tell you that."
"Good ones," whispers Mike. "The kind that change their numbers after
you ring them twice. The kind that get results."
What did you say to them? "Depends on the person," replies Bill, working up
some steam. "I believe in treating everyone as an individual, with their own set
of needs and, uh, weaknesses, ha ha."
Let's pick a hypothetical example then. Say, ooh, completely at random, a
famous Irish folk singer known for singing dull songs about ex-managers in a
voice like a car alarm. Who might not be Irish.
"Well," says Bill, warming to the point, "what you'd do, with this alleged famous
Irish folk singer who is female and bald, is call up at, say, 11pm San Francisco
time, which is five in the morning English time, and then.. "
Theoretically...
"Theoretically, you'd wait for her answering-machine to go off and then you, or a
friend of yours, would talk about a particular sexual encounter involving Lenny
K..."
Let's make that an imaginary reconstructed hippy with a sad Lennon fixation.
And, quickly.
"Ah, okay. And then listen to this particular person's boyfriend pick up the phone
and hang up. That's pretty much how a hypothetical conversation with this
theoretical bald Irish singer would go."
Mike is highly impressed with the line of questioning thus far.
"Boy, you don't mess around, do you?"
You'd be surprised. Do you have any strange hobbies?
"Being normal amid the other four."

THOSE among you who've never been invited to spend a day out on a pop
video shoot may simulate the experience in the comfort and privacy of your own
home by installing a partially working pool table in your lounge, removing the
vertical hold on your television, laying out insufficient amounts of rancid food on
the kitchen table and getting a few friends in to charge about waving clipboards
and shouting.
Its the next day, and in a studio lot somewhere in the wilds of Burbank, this is
exactly what we're doing in the name of a clip for the album's first single,
"Midlife Crisis", a glorious, enormously likeable stomper with a glorious, likeably
enormous chorus and Patton' s trademark snarl delivering some terrific lines
about menstruating hearts and the like.
The idea seems to revolve mostly around Faith No More as a re-incarnated
Village People (mechanic, commando, hippy, gangster, um, drummer) who
stomp around a sandlot hitting things with a shovel. This is all great fun for at
least the first nine hours. In off-moments. Faith No More pass the time signing
jovial obscenities on Promotional album covers and taking in the series finale of
"Beverly Hills 90210". (The dim bulb blond shags the home help while her mum
marries the class geek's father and Dylan gets bladdered and has a ruck with
Shannon's dad. God, but I'm cruel.)
They also find time to discuss the album and upcoming support spot with Guns
N'
Roses with the patient journalist. Patton is quick to warn that he is perhaps not
on top form, regarding the imminent and extensive promotional schedule for the
new record like most of us look forward to Christmas with the relatives.
"Yeah. I can't decide if I'm not used to it, or if I've just started hating it. Maybe
both. Maybe I'm just not really any good at it any more."
Have you done much?
"No," he sighs. "That's the frightening bit."
Patton knows. Faith No More know, with tired certainty, that hacks of every
medium from here to Timbuktu are going to want to know why they've made
such a wilfully perverse new LP when enormous stardom was apparently there
for the taking in the wake of 1989's "The Real Thing" LP and crossover smash
single "Epic". The album contains Holy Joy-ish laments ("RV"), children's
choruses ("Be Aggressive"), an instrumental, accordion-led John Barry cover
("Midnight Cowboy") all jammed into the band's more familiar and no less
fantastic tangled, twisted visions of rock'n'roll. It's a madhouse. It's also rather
brilliant.
Given the easy option of picking three adjectives each. Faith No More are as
weary as they are deadpan as they are hilarious. All of the following are
delivered as if recorded at 45 and played at 33.
"So...F***in'...Hot."
"Over... The... Top."
"Heavy... F***ing... Metal." "Funk...O'... Metal."
"Works... For... Me."
"Tastes... Real... Neat."
"I... Love... It."
Moving. .Right.. .Along, we come to the question of the GN'R support. Faith No
More are looking forward to it hugely and cheerfully admit that it's "probably a
career move, but what the hell". When pressed, they also own up to more
workaday motivations.
"It'll be interesting," ponders Roddy, "to tap into the Guns N' Roses camp, their
little soap opera. So then I can tell all my friends what Axl does in his spare
time."
Can you empathise with him at all? I mean, can you see yourselves ever
being that big?
"I honestly don't think we're that, uh, likable."
"Now," concurs Patton, "I don't think we can reach that many people. I don't
think our appeal is that wide."
Impeccably judged silence.
"I don't think we're that good, is what I'm trying to say." Patton's
timing would shame Paul Merton.

ROUND about here, the interview kind of loses it when people at the same table
ask, with that total, wide-eyed sincerity where Faith No More came up with the
name. Truly. Without blinking, Patton spins some lovely nonsense about it being
the name of a horse upon which the then nascent combo won a sufficient
fortune to pay for equipment, management and the takeover of a record
company.
Wow, they say, you really went out and bought a whole label, just like that.
"Goddamn right," winks Patton.
"Pretty damn inspirational, doncha reckon?"
There's no arguing with that. Everyone at the table is united in thinking - if for
wildly different reasons - that that's a hell of an inspirational story.
And you did it, they say and shake their heads disbelievingly. By yourselves,
without the majors.
"F**k 'em," declares Patton. "F**k 'em all, man. F** majors."
Another magnificent silence.
"I haven't liked him since he was in 'The Fall Guy'."
No one bats an eyelid. No one listens to the famous.
Faith No More | Raw - May 27th 1992
FAITH NO MORE are about to return with a new album, 'Angel
Dust', and a special guest slot on the Guns n' Roses European
tour. PAUL REES discovers that things are still decidedly
bizarre...

Raw Magazine | Issue 98 | 27.05.1992 Strangers in a

strange land by Paul Rees "WE CAN'T leave Jim on his own
anymore 'cause he won't talk to anyone," Mike Bordin says
with a smile. "Forget it, he's just giving you a hard time." The
Interview is finished. Jim Martin, Faith No More's big, sick and
ugly guitarist, has sat behind his shades throughout, staring
Into the distance apparently oblivious to Bordin (drums), Mike
Patton (vocals), Roddy Bottum (keyboards) and Bill Gould
(bass) as they talk about the band's forthcoming 'Angel Dust'
album. The only time he does speak is when his companions
are being made-up for the photo-shoot and, ironically, he is on
his own. "Probably this new stuff is a little weirder than our
last record just to confuse our fans and alienate our public,"
Roddy Bottum begins half an hour earlier, with Martin a silent
figure in the corner. "At least that's what we've been accused
of. It's not really an attempt to push any kind of point, it's just
music that we wrote." Alone Martin offers: "I don't personally
think that I'll ever be satisfied with anything that we make,
but that's recording. I didn't enjoy working on the album very
much, it took me a long time to get used to the songs. When I
first heard them I thought they were very contrived and I
thought that the band was trying too hard. It took me a while
to figure out where I was going to fit in. I don't know, why do
people like it all? I think you can form your own opinion about
it." 'Angel Dust' is a difficult record to get to grips with, a set
that does nothing the easy way, a weird excursion from the
point where 'The Real Thing' closed to the furthest reaches of
a collective warped imagination. It's an album that also moves
Faith No More even further into a domain of their own. Live
with it for while and a work of considerable power and depth
begins to emerge, thirteen songs that demand and expect
patience and bewilderment. "It was a really good feeling with
the last record when It confused a lot of people," Bordin
affirms. "They came along to the shows and didn't know what
to expect. I hope that happens again. You should always press
play and be confronted." "I got really hung up on this positive
thinking kick for a while," Patton says of his bizarre lyrical
view. "There's these late night TV programmes that you can
watch in America, they're like seminars where they teach you
how to think positively and strive for your goals. It's a huge
scam, it's great. I tried really hard at that and I'm still working
on it." "It was pretty uncomfortable In the studio," Bottum
continues. "We were a little unsure of ourselves, we panicked.
I'm really pleased with the cover we did of 'Midnight Cowboy'
(the Instrumental soundtrack to John Schleslnger's film that
closes the album), because that's taken us into one direction
that we've never gone before. That's the way of the future,
easy listening is where it's at. We're going to come out real
soon with an EP of music for elevators." "Our primal influences
from the ages of 2-3, are sitting in our parents cars or being
pushed around shopping malls listening to muzak," Bill Gould
confirms. "It would be flattering to have our music heard in a
supermarket, keeping people from shoplifting." WITH THIS
record, even more so than it's predecessor, Faith No More are
asking questions of the people that buy their records. How far
are they willing to go with the band? How much of a mind-fuck
are they prepared to accept? You wonder if they feel any
responsibility at all to live up to their audience's expectations?
"No responsibility whatsoever, we keep ourselves amused,"
Roddy answers. "All we have to do is write good songs tor our
own benefit. We get to be really selfish. People give us a lot of
money-well, not that much money - to go into a studio and do
what ever we want. We go in, have a good time, goof around
and laugh." The others, Martin excepted, crack appreciative
grins and you don't know whether they're enacting a
continuous wind-up or being blatantly honest. It's another
question: whether Faith No More are naturally strange at all
times or if the whole thing has became a conscious effort?
"We don't really talk about anything, we just kind of do it," is
Patton's straight-faced reply. "It's like a bodily function or a
habit, and there's no point asking Jim because he doesn't
actually have anything to do with anything." Martin is a blank.
"The only people that say that we're weird, man, are
journalists," Gould insists. "Everybody else just kind of likes it
or they don't. It's your problem, it's not something that I
normally pay any attention too." "I hang out with a guy that
finger fuck's his dog on a regular basis," Patton interjects, "So
I know that I'm definitely normal." Behind this
out-there/normal stance, though, is there a particular cause
that the band have associated themselves with? "I would like
to save the whole cast of the TV show Different Strokes," says
Bottum, "All those kids in the cast really got into trouble, they
lost their money and became bank robbers and drug fiends.
The little guy (Gary Coleman) is the worst, his family have
been after all his money and his manager has made him sue
them. The girl got busted for holding up a laundromat, and
the guy who played Willis is in jail for shooting someone in the
neck six times. I would like to start a fund on their behalf."
Patton leans forward: "The message is Rock The Vote, dude.
Smash the state, anarchy, Satan." ASIDE FROM the Faith No
More group mentality, there's the continuing spectre of five
people i that, with their differing Personalities, struggle to
tolerate one another. During their break from touring Bordin
played golf, Gould worked with a Mexican Death Metal outfit,
Martin starred in Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey and "Pretty
much avoided the rest of the band as much as I could" and
Patton finally recorded with Mr. Bungle. "I did a tour, made a
record, period," he explains. "When we have time, sure, we'll
do something else." "I'm actually jealous of Mike," Bottum
reflects. "I think we're all going to start following his example,
because he's doubling his money. I'm going to jump into my
solo project just as soon as I've kicked my drug habit. I hope
to do Disco 12-inches and acid-house raving." Take the
humour away for a moment. Do you actually get on with each
other as people? "I would like to say yes and I would like to
say many, many things," is Bottum's response, "l like
everyone in the band,I really do." "Do you know how to
insinuate sarcasm in print?" Patton laughs. "We have a really
hard time making a collective decision that we're all happy
with, so we spend our time backstabbing each other and
talking behind each others backs." "You can't put your finger
on any one thing that we dislike about each other," Gould
considers. "I guess we come close to falling apart about every
couple of weeks, which is good because it keeps you on your
feet. We've all learned how to survive living the way we do. I
mean, if we actually sat around and had a political discussion
with each other over a cup of coffee that would get ugly." This
fragile balancing act is about to join the equally combustible
Guns n'Roses on their European stadium trek. "I don't really
know what to expect," Roddy shrugs. "Big shows and a lot of
people, sorrow and agony, soap opera acting. I've never heard
them to tell you the truth." "We haven't really experienced
anything like that yet," Gould reveals. "This is our I first time
going out on the road with a band like that. We did do the
Billy Idol tour and we were a little bit uncomfortable with that.
It'll be interesting to see exactly how many Bodyguards Axl
Rose has, I want the inside story. More than anything it's just
something to poke fun at. Not to say that's what we're going
to do,but..." "We're the reporters and were going to get our
scoop," Patton hollers. "We don't do any of those glamour
things like flying first class and riding in limos I guess we're
just dumb. Everybody always tells us that we can't afford to
do it, so someone is walking around with a lot of money. We
even flew over to the UK miserably this time. I couldn't get up
and go to the bathroom 'cause I was sat in between two fat
pigs slobbering over each other." WHICH JUST leaves us with
the title 'Angel Dust' and it's obvious connotations. "I think
experimentation in every field is really important," Bottum
asserts. "I would be a hypocrite if I made any statement
against drugs on my part. We have a really positive attitude
to everything, including drugs." "I tried acid, I got scarred,"
Patton nods. "I don't know what the do's and don'ts are
because I haven't done enough to be able too say. I think
you'd better ask Bill about that." "No, I'm actually into health
food these days," the bassist contends. "I'm not going to say
drugs are bad, though.There are smart drugs where you can
take them and be real stupid, yet still end up being clever
somehow." "Angel Dust is just a really beautiful name for a
really hideous drug," Patton concludes. "It goes with the
cover, which is this gorgeous big white bird. Doesn't it make
sense?"

Des Moines Register Issue ? 1992

On Tour with Guns is Boring

by J.D. Considine
Baltimore Sun

Given the group's reputation for hell-raising, you might think that
there would be no wilder place on Earth than backstage at a Guns N'
Roses concert.
Boy, would you be mistaken.
Just ask Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum. He and his
bandmates recently spent a couple of months touring Europe as Guns
N' Roses' opening act, and they will reprise their role for the band's
American outing with Metallica. Bottum knows whereof he speaks
when it comes to backstage life with Axl Rose, Slash and the rest of
the crew. In a word, it's dull, he says.
"It's like, seriously, the most boring backstage scene I've ever seen,"
he says, laughing.
How so? "Because there's so much security around," he says over the
phone from his home in San Francisco. "There are so many rules and
so many regulations happening, it's just boring more than anything
else."
"But I think that's the way they like it, honestly," he adds. "Their
security is so intense...everywhere it's hard to imagine that people
would get away with anything without their permission."
Backstage security aside, though, Bottum and his bandmates like
playing with Guns N' Roses. Naturally, some of it has to do with the
exposure Faith No More is gaining from the shows.
The Faith No More crew also enjoyed the fact that Guns N' Roses fairly
light concert schedule left time for the band actually to see the cities
it was playing.
"Guns N' Roses played, like maybe two or three shows a week," he
says. "We had a whole bunch of time to do stuff on our own, so the
past two months that we've been touring with them has been a
complete European vacation."
As far as he's concerned, playing concerts shouldn't be about selling
the new album - the recently released "Angel Dust" - but about
making interesting music.
"We play the new stuff because it's fun," he says. "On the last record,
we toured for a really long time with that old stuff; we pretty much
beat it into the ground, so for that reason, we'll be playing the new
stuff, but I don't think it's for sale purposes, or anthing like that."
Admittedly, this outlook doesn't exactly endear the band to its record
company's marketing staff, but Bottum doesn't care a lot about that
sort of thing. He would rather his bnad make music that stands on its
own than worry about writing songs that fit into somebody's sales
strategy.
Though he admits the band's insistence on going its won way
"confuses people," he doesn't mind. "That's fine. We don't have a
problem with that," he says. "I think it's kind of what we're best at -
confusing people."

1992

Circus Magazine 1992

PATTON ENJOYS THE DINER THINGS IN LIFE:

Maybe that was Mike Patton you thought you saw loitering outside a
truck stop last year. The eccentric singer sought such fertile
conceptual soil to write songs for Angel Dust, Faith No More's new
album. "I drove around a lot in my Honda," Patton says, "Drove to a
real bad area of town, parked and just watched people. Coffee shops
and white-trash diner-type places were great for inspiration."

May 30, 1992

NME, Issue May 30, 1992

May 14, 1992 London, Marquee Club

"You guys should be round the corner watching Sepultura. C'mon,

what's your excuse?"

Goateed singer Mike Patton, skatepunk bum turned beatnik geek, is

having an on/off Yugoslavian type war with the stage-divers. They
come in droves, thrusting themselves past him and into the sweat
box moshpit in elegant tumbles and feet-first stumbles. Adopting a
wishful moniker for a pre-Guns N'Roses stadium tour support warm-
up, Faith No More are back in their natural habitat and the divers'
bastard choreography adds the right touch. This is a group whose
wayward spirit hasn't been settled by success and who are still
capable of turning tables and remoulding the basest of Metal
component parts.

The Faith That Kills goad and taunt their audience, telling them: one,
to pull a fire alarm or call a bomb-scare if they go to see their shows
with Axl and Co; (Alex says: any of you who have the bootleg of the
band at Wembley that month, maybe this might explain why Patton
asks 'How many of you phoned in bomb threats today' at the
beginning of The Real Thing?) two, the address of their hotel for an
after-show party; and three, that among special guests waiting
backstage is a very pissed off Rodney King. In between they
unleashed a lacerating, pounding musical blitzkrieg that showed they
ascribed to no rules and were headed for the outer limits with
renewed fervour.

Their set starts with a sampled heartbeat turned to ear-bleeding

volume, steadily increasing, until, by the time this eccentric bunch
take the stage, you feel there's some defiantly martial rite being
enacted. Haircuts No More take this keynote, run it into their songs
and pummel, scour and batter it to death throughout their set.
Central to their modus operandi is drummer Mike Bordin, king hell
Teutonic tribal beatmaster, whose exploding heartbeat polyrhythmic
thrashing defines the path taken by his cohorts.

Bordin's beat is the detonating force that blows the songs apart, the
recurring calamity that holds them together. By turns hysterically
funny, queasily obscene, inflamed, scizoid and shocking, Faith No
More are the most futuristic, bowdlerising Metal force for the '90s.
Fuelled by testosterone madness and showing versatility as a kind of
Tom Waits from MTV high school hell, Patton's characterisations get
caught in doom and bile-filled terror trips. The guy mightn't be much
of a singer (?-Alex), but his vocals capture a well of feeling in a furious
stream of high-pitched yells, screams, moand and larynx shrapnel.

They ended with the house lights on, inviting their good friends
(FACT) Right Said Fred up onstage. But the Freddies weren't 'In the
house' so they lived dangerously by using the none-too-amused
skinhead bouncers as stand-in props. The guy they singled out as
Michael Bolton wouldn't join them either, despite the memorable
protestation ("C'mon Michael, we *know* you got soul").

Then it was time to go home. Patton smiled, waved goodbye;

"Goodnight, and remember - smoke crack," he said. And they were
gone.

June 1992

FAITH NO MORE | JUNE 1992 | CIRCUS MAGAZINE

Circus Magazine | June 1992 | Marina Zogbi

No one can ever accuse Faith No More of playing it safe. During the quinlet's
ten-year existence, music styles have come and gone, but Faith's sound
remains uncategorizable. Angel Dust, their fourth LP (second with vocalist Mike
Patton), pushes rock's—and
Faith's own—boundaries even further than '89's The Real Thing, with splashes
of hard rock, dance pop, industrial death metal, and even country. And that's
justice judging by the five songs ("Kindergarten," "Caffeine. "RV," "Malpractice"
and "Small Victory") completed at press time! According to keyboardist Roddy
Bottum. the rest of the album is just as diverse:
"There's a couple of songs that almost have a pop sort of feel. then there are a
couple that are really ultra heavy and loud and kind of abrasive. in your face."
Or as Mike P. puts it, "It's rated G. There's something for each family member
on the record."
Although all of the songs on Angel Dust (except the theme to Midnight Cowboy,
a cover) were written recently.
"Before it's a song. it goes through many, many life cycles and some of the
ideas were generated a long time ago," says Mike.
Generally, the new stuff was written in the traditional FNM way: Roddy, bassist
Bill Gould and drummer Mike "Puffy" Bordin came up with musical ideas that
were later expanded upon.
"Mike P. was in on it a lot earlier this time, " notes Roddy. New to the band
when The Real Thing was recorded, the singer's contributions to that LP were
limited.
"I'd never written songs with these guys before," says Mike. "It's alright! You feel
each other out and you always reach some kind of understanding." He also
composed one song completely on his own ("Malpractice'") as well as all lyrics
except those on "Be Aggressive." Cracks Roddy of the latter, "I think we both
kind of hated the song to the point where lyrics were needed and he didn't want
to write them. so I gave it a go." Then there's the charmingly-titled "JizzLobber."
guitarist Jim Martin's main musical donation to the album. 'It's a great song,"
describes Mike. "A tortured-soul type of thing."
Faith's "country'' tune. "RV." is a definite album stand-out with its boozy
keyboards and deep. Southern-fried vocals. "I like that one a lot, agrees Roddy.
"It started out as a piano thing I was doing, then Billy and I just started playing
around with it and we finished it when we were on tour in Brazil and started
playing it live."
"The words are really messed up," says Mike. explaining its theme. "It's the
white trash saga: You wake up. you do nothing and you talk a lot of shit .. . and
that's what the song does."
One can imagine a middle-aged heavy-set guy singing it. "Oh yeah." agrees
Mike. "A lot of the tunes are like character sketches. I don't see anything wrong
with that. A lot of people maybe will want to give me shit for that."
A lot of people will assume that these characters are him, as he sings in the
first person. "You have to do it." he believes, "even though it has nothing to do
with me. pretty much always. I think it's horrible to write about yourself; I mean.
who cares?"
On the more cheerful end of the spectrum, song-wise. are the catchy "Small
Victory" and "Land of Sunshine." Mike wrote the latter's lyrics "after staying up
for three days and watching self-help programs and reading fortune cookies . . .
"it's a totally disgusting, grotesque positive song!"
"I love it, it's real uplifting." says Roddy. "Almost angelic."

Although nothing in particular inspired Mike's lyrics this time. he cites a definite
new hero. "When I was up a really long time. I kind of discovered this late night
TV evangelist who I really admire now called Robert Tilton. He's quite a guy.
You may have seen the
Dallas-based preacher: "He asks you to put your hand on the television set and
he'll heal you through the power of TV. using the demon spirit of television to
cut off the devil's head . . . We're going to visit his church when we go to
Dallas.!" enthuses Mike.
Even though most FNM fans know by now to expect the unexpected. does
Mike think that anything on Angel Dust will really surprise people? "Yeah, I think
so." he says. ' I would say 'Surprise! You're Dead' was one of the more extreme
things on the last record. There are things on this that are so extreme in the
opposite direction that I think they'll freak people out: also stuff in the same
direction, but pushed way further. I mean. you can't really put your finger on
what's disturbing about it and I think that is what's disturbing about it. so it's
a good thing.'"
Angel Dust, like all of Faith's albums. was recorded in the band's hometown of
San Francisco and co-produced by Matt Wallace.
"He's been in there since the start.' says Roddy.
"He has a hands-off sort of thing with us and just lets us do what we want.
which is really important." Says Mike of Matt. "Since he's worked with us before
he's just as much a candidate for torture as the rest of us and that's a
comforting thing."
He describes this recent recording process as "a little more trying" than the last
album "just because of the mental torment we inflict upon each other: we like to
split up into little fractions and try and destroy the other fractions. Like four fifths
versus one fifth. but the good thing is we can all be five fifths when we're
fighting the record company."
Record company battles aren't something Faith No More are used to., as
they've always done their own thing relatively hassle-free. This time however,
no doubt due to the success of The Real Thing, it was a little different. Mike
explains. "They left us alone for the whole recording and then when we were
just about to come to mix, there was suddenly this concern that they didn't
know how to market it. They didn't really understand it and who did we think we
were making a record like this!" Continues Mike, obviously still bothered by the
experience. "Basically, it's a cheap tactic to try and get you worried and feeling
insecure about your own work, to have to justify your work to them. You
shouldn't have to do that but by the same token, you have to work with these
people because they sell your records, so they have to understand at least a
smidgeon of what you're doing."
Recalls Roddy. "They flipped and got a little paranoid. I think they wanted it to
sound a lot more like our last record."
Eventually, fears were allayed and problems got worked out. Roddy: "Judging
from the way the last record went. I think they realized back then that we were
best left alone and we kind of proved that. It just goes to show that if we just do
what we think is right on this one, the same sort of thing will happen. hopefully."
The band is currently in the midst of a seven-week European tour with Guns N'
Roses and Soundgarden that includes Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Spain,
countries Faith have never
played before. In July. they begin touring the States, but no dates had yet been
set at press time. They're prepared to be on the road a long time, maybe even
as long as they toured in support of The Real Thing. Because Faith had already
been on the road a solid year before that album started climbing the charts, they
wound up touring for almost two years.
"If we have to do it again, we will." laughs Mike. "We kind of set a precedent for
ourselves."
Faith No More have always set precedents, not only for themselves, but for rock
music in general (though they'd modestly be the first to deny it). By remaining
true to their selves and refusing to play it safe with Angel Dust, they're keeping
the world safe for other adventurous outfits. Not that it's something the band
plotted, they just don't know how to do it any other way.
Getting into writing mode for this album was a little tough, according to Roddy.
'"We hadn't been at it for a long time, we'd been on tour for so long that writing
seemed like a
farfetched thing, almost. It was hard to pin ourselves down and start, but once
we did it got pretty easy." He's definitely pleased with Mike's lyrics: "They're
really clever
this time around, just because he did have a lot more time. The lyrics are good,
I'm really happy with them."

Mike says the Angel Dust LP title "goes really good with the cover because the
cover's really serene and sappy, 101 Strings: It's a big swan or heron with this
blue background, contemplative and sentimental and with those two words
below it, it makes sense."

Things got a bit hectic for the band when it got down to the wire during mixing,
as Mike Patton had to leave for his tour with Mr. Bungle. "He was here for the
first week and a half, and then he went on tour, so we Federal Expressed him
stuff to listen to," Roddy explained. "We were able to cover a lot of it before he
left; We kind of chose songs he was really concerned about and paid attention
to those first and foremost."
FNM recorded 18 songs in the studio, which took longer than anticipated.
Roddy: "When we were going in we thought we had maybe 12; but then a lot
happened, we remembered a lot of other stuff."
This included the "Midnight Cowboy" and "I'm Easy" covers, and a re-recording
of an old song, "As the Worm Turns." The latter two will be b-sides.

Faith No More | Rock Power - June 4th,

1992
FAITH NO MORE toured the ragged arse off 'The Real Thing' and
made it one of the most significant rock releases of the past five
years. Now, with the new 'Angel Dust', they're set to do it all over
again. ANDY STOUT takes the powder.
ROCK POWER | Issue #2 June 4th 1992
By Andy Stout
Photos by Pete Cronin

Angel Dust, PCP. The substance the LAPD reckoned to be coursing

through Rodney King's veins when four of the force's finest 'restrained'
him using 'acceptable force' Acceptable force? Yeah, right. "Rodney
King pretty much inspired the title," says Billy Gould,
Faith No More's bassist with the serial killer fascination. And it's hard to
think of a more appropriate title. Maybe 'Elephant Tranquilizer' or
'Intense insanity' (though they're not as glamorous as a, y'know, drug
thing) - when the opening track, 'Land Of Sunshine' slams in with its
moments of cascading keyboard dribbling madness, they just seem
right.
Produced by Matt Wallace (also the man behind The Real Thing'),
'Angel Dust' is everything you wanted from a Faith No More album.
One that dispels the naff parts of 'Introduce Yourself' and welds
together the more fragmented elements of 'The Real Thing', an album
where all the power is focused in one blinding spot.
But Faith No More only touched down on British shores yesterday, so
they need to catch up with news Brit-side before we delve into the
machinations behind the new album. "Whats happened to Kylie?"
they ask. Er she's mutated into SexKylie, a brazen, lust-filled
temptress, "SexKylie?"
"Yeah, it's a Madonna thing."
"Oh, I tried that once," says Mike Patton, but before he has a
chance to continue, Jim Martin wants to know what happened to the
bird with the "big tits" After a while, we work out he's talking about
Samantha Fox, and tell him she's apparently big in Germany, but
rumors persist that her breasts have shrunk. He has the grace not to
look too upset.

Talking to Faith No More, especially when all five of them are lounged
out drinking coffee in the corner of a photo studio, is easy. Whatever
bullshit has been written in the past about the chemistry or lack of it
between the band members, they've all got their opinions, they all want
to stick their own oars in.

Roddy Bottum, the man who's single-handedly rehabilitated the cause

of keyboards in rock from the likes of Mess rs Wakeman etc, isn't too
sure about the coffee, though. He wants to know if it'll affect his
diarrhea.
"Drink coffee, and it'll come out like cappuccino: all frothy on
the top," he's informed reliably.
Charming.
It certainly doesn't sound like a band who hate each other- more like a
band who're just as mildly sadistic as anyone else would be after
spending long periods of time living in each other's pockets. But what
about the old quote of Billy's about the secret of success being to hate
each other?
"I never said that," he retorts, "I don't think I ever said that. If I
did, it's a misquote."
Yeah, but somewhere along the line you've picked up a reputation for
mutual self loathing.
Billy: "We can be really boring, which is why I think sometimes
angles like that are easy to pick out. Like bitching at each
other maybe there's nothing else that the writer wants to
hear"
"It's opportunistic," shouts someone.
"If someone's in a shitty mood," says Patton, "rather than Just
lying about it and covering it up, it all comes into the open."
"Yeah, we do a whole lot of backstabbing," says Roddy. "We
don't usually do interviews with the five of us together if
there's two of us we'll really come down on the other three."
"I don't think that's really that unusual," says drummer Mike
Bordin, "but how many bands hide it? Like how many bands
threw out members this year? All the bands that were
brothers to the end that's crap."

And while we're on the subject of throwing out band members, it

seemed for a while that FNM were going to be recording three albums
with three separate vocalists. Chuck Mosley, the original singer who
helped make 'Introduce Yourself' such a black, cathartic affair was
booted out in '88, and last time they were over on these shores, his
replacement Patton was reportedly heading for the same 'career
rationalization' mouthing off about his other project, Mr Bungle.
Mouthing off to such an extent that everybody else hated him, wanted
his balls for earrings, etc.
Ah well, journalists will make things up. Mention it, and there's a mass
chorus of "Bullshit!. In defense of him," says Bordin, gesturing in
Patton's direction, "he goes up to the people and he says, "Mr
Bungle is different; Mr Bungle is fucking completely different.
It's away from this band; it's a completely separate thing. So,
that happens, then the record comes out, and lo and behold
everybody says, "And you got panned right?" Patton nods.
"Everybody says, 'This record is fucking shite. It's nothing like
Faith No More. It's crap."
There's a drawn and very sarcastic intake of breath all round. "My
friends love it," says a voice.

For Faith No More, the press is really a double-edged sword. Probably

only Guns N' Roses have ever had so much journalism of a dubious
nature written about them. Wherever they go, a web of intrigue and
rumour tends to trail in their wake. Mention the name of one writer who
decided Jim was an asshole, and kept referring to him as such
throughout the piece, and you're met with hoots of derision.
Roddy: "Jim said, 'Are you gay?' and he quoted it as, 'Are you a
faggot?' He totally misquoted him."
Billy: "He kept going on about Labour and talking about shit
like that. You'd answer him back, and if he saw you were
going to come up with a good answer he'd just change the
subject,"
Patton: "He's the one that said, 'So are you saying that black
people are stupider than white people?' That's not what I
fucking said."
Billy: "I think journalists take the easy way out a lot. That's the
only rough deal we ever got, though."
Bordin disagrees. "To me, the most rough deal was when they
put us at the head of this fucking well organised, highly
structured, fucking nationwide, grass-roots funk 'n' roll
movement. That was a raw deal to me. That was horseshit,
y'know."
Billy: "Or they do this fraternity boy thing, and make us
whacky and tell crazy stories about us."
"Yeah," says Patton, "photographers want us to do this Chili
Pepper goofy face..."
"Like the stink about how different this record is has already
come up before people can even buy it, and that's a bit of a
disservice to the record," says Billy, peeved. "Every interview
we've done is, 'How come your record is so different this
time?'"

Different? 'Angel Dust' is no radical departure for Faith No More. Sure,

anyone listening out for another 'From Out Of Nowhere' or Black
Sabbath cover version is going to think it's very different. 'Angel Dust'
builds on the bones of what went before, and does it rather finely as
well. Then again, as Bordin points out after the interview, if they'd done
an album that sounded similar they'd have got attacked as well. Some
you just can't win.
Swirling from the frustrated anger of 'Jizzlobber' through the cocktail
lounge schmaltz of 'RV' ( like listening to Tom Waits on some obscure
drugs), to the brooding, sweeping evocation of 'Kindergarten', the
album keeps hold of its intensity and refuses to let go.

"We kinda felt we had to take it up a notch," explains Patton.

Bordin: "If you convince yourself that you've done it, that
everything's great, it's no big deal, everything's over then
you're fucked, man."
Obviously FNM haven't got to that stage yet. Though their press
release describes them somewhat sarcastically as, "Sitting on their
silk chaise lounges in their $1100 silk warm-up suits sipping
frosty beverages brought to them by their servants in their
Bel-Air mansions",
FNM '92 haven't lost their grip on reality (well, whatever grip they had
in the first place, that is). 'Angel Dust' is as eclectic as any previous
release of theirs, but there's more coherence to it.
But, hang on... "Y'know, a lot of this thing about us being
eclectic and shit is coming from writers," says Billy, a little
tersely. "I hate to say it, but I don't think people would think of
us
like that unless they read about us like that."
Patton: "Just because all 12 songs on the record don't all sound
alike, ifs eclectic, right?"
OK, what about the album being far more focused?
Billy: "I kinda think that's true."
Bordin: "Yeah, hopefully we do it better We've had more time
to do it. Some change, y'know. Some steps along the fucking
path. We've Just got this guy., ." he says gesturing to Patton
again.
Billy: "We're the same band making another record, and if
people say it sounds a little different then obviously we're
doing something right. We're doing the same thing we always
do, but we're making it interesting enough that people realise
it."
Bordin: "People say if you don't sound the same as the last
record, you must have turned your back on that. That's not
the case. You just move along."

Obviously being a little different is okay. So's being a little famous. In

previous interviews, Patton's said how uneasy giving autographs make
him, and when besieged by a gaggle of groupies, the band all react
differently, ranging from mild interest, through frank curiosity, to plain
indifference. It's been a long struggle for FNM (ten years, to be exact).
At one point Billy pawned his bass to get some food, and only got a
measly $50. So how do the trappings of fame affect them? The
mention of the word 'groupie' is nearly fatal.
The mic on the tape gets overloaded and all that comes out is
distortion. There's a voice in the background that says, "We feel
much less guilty about it." When it all settles down again, Patton's
first in line. "That's you guys' job to describe it in those terms. I
don't think that any of us walking down the street would
think, 'Hey, I really wish some groupie would throw
themselves at me today.'"
"When you go to get some Alka Seltzer down at the liquor
store, you don't think about how great it is to be famous," says
Roddy.
Bordin: "We don't see it that much. We've been on the road:
it's not like people recognise us in our own city or something."
Roddy: "We're not famous where we live."
Patton: "Even if they don't recognise us, they'd just say, Why
haven't you guys got a record out?' or something. It's no big
deal."
"It's the environment we live in, too," says Billy. "San
Francisco, Los Angeles, California... People see movie stars all
the time so they take it for granted. When I see someone
famous, it just makes me sick. I look the other way for the
most part, and I think most people do that."
"More than that," says Jim, "famous people in California are
considered scum."
"Like, 'Who did you fuck to get where you are?'" says Roddy,
and there's a chorus of nasty laughter.
Did Faith No More fuck anybody to get where they are? Who knows.
To be honest, who cares? Even If they're all shagging the president of
their record company, they deserve their success.
PCP theoretically gives you the strength of five men. In this case, one
of them's got a beard and wears loud glasses. That is acceptable
force.

Reflex Magazine Issue 25, June 1992

Faith No More: Angel Dust in the wind

by Jem Aswad

For all its dubious wonders, the most amazing thing about the
mainstream American music industry is its cluelessness. To cite just
one telling example: Every year for the last five years, a band whose
album was at least a year old suddenly became a "next big thing."
Each album enjoyed a year of reasonable semi-underground success,
and then suddenly (for whatever reasons such things happen), a
video started to get heavy airplay on MTV. Sales figures went through
the roof, the enormodome-tour offers and Grammy nominations
started to roll in, and the previously uninterested minions of the
music biz launched a dog-eat-dog megabuck bum-rush to hitch their
wagons to the rapidly rising platinum coattails of a band who probably
thought their LP had lons since flopped. Granted, no one can predict
these things (last year Nirvana were a welcome and unpecedented
exception to the rule, altho' the long-smoldering Nine Inch Nails and
Alice in Chains weren't), but doesn't it seem that the powers that be
could've supported Guns N' Roses (1988), Living Colour (1989), and
especially 1990's least-likely-to, Faith No More, a little earlier?

"Better late than never," yo mama. Due to fatigue and overhype,

these belated "breakthroughs" (who are mere mortals, after all) are
usually courting has-been (if not Section 8) status before they've even
unloaded the tour bus. By the time The Real Thing began to catch
fire (doubling in one week what it had cumulatively sold in the 10
months since its release), Faith No More had been touring for almost
a year. In order to "capitalize" on the album's sudden sales spurt,
they committed to eight more grueling months of trying to make the
same 14 songs interesting every night.

"We didn't!" says vocalist Mike Patton with exasperation. "There's

really no way to. We just reveled in boredom! The only thing you can
do is humiliate yourself further, and then you realize that, and you
just keep milking it, and it's really sick, and... you just *wallow* in it. I
think we all felt the same way. Every once in a while, I'd throw in a
few lines from a cover song or something, but that was the only
glimmer of hope! I don't think any of us really got burned out from
touring itself--it's just that we didn't have any other material to play. I
mean, we were touring on one record, and when you come back to
the same place six times and you're playing the same set, it's like,
wait a minute! Who's gettin' ripped off here?! I'd be pissed if I came
back to see a band that I liked and they played the same thing. We
toured for... uh, *too long*!"

The pressure to record a new album before the 2,000,000 inhabitants

of the globe who bought The Real Thing moved on to a real *other*
thing was complicated by Patton's commitments to Mr. Bungle-- the
Eureka, CA-based band which he'd been a member of since high
school (he'd joined FNM on the condition that he'd still be free to tour
and record with Bungle)--which would keep him busy for several
months.

But Faith No More are no ordinary band, and it should come as no

surprise that --almost three years after The Real Thing's
release-- Angel Dust is by no means a "safe followup," nor is it Use
Your Protrusion, 7th Symphony, 12th Movement ("God, I hope
we never get that self-indulgent. That's the worst," groans Patton.)
Culled from some 20 potential candidates, its dozen songs find the
band working with the same basic formula, but with greater ambition
and a much greater willingness to get totally weird-- "Jizz Lover" and
"Caffeine" take "Surprise! You're Dead!" to an even scarier level,
while "Small Victory," "Mid-Life Crisis," and "Kindergarten" sound like
the band that recorded The Real Thing after being kidnapped by a
white slavery cartel.

"I think we've stretched what we are to an absurd level this time,
which is great," Patton says. "I think we would all be really happy if
people took this record home and went, 'What the hell is this?!' I think
that's gonna happen-- and I think that's a good thing. The record
company tried to turn the screws a little tighter this time around, I
have to admit. There are a lot of samples [including Simon and
Garfunkel, Diamanda Galas, Z'ev, and music from The Wizard of
Oz!], which was one of the things that kinda freaked them out." He
mimics a concerned exec: "'Gee, there's a lotta *sampling* on this!
Don't you think a ROCK audience would be CONFUSED by this
SAMPLING thing?'"

Although Angel Dust is certainly a progression, it's still the same

band. "I just think we've gotten better at playing what we hear in our
heads," Patton explains. "Before, we used to kinda cheat around, and
play around what it was. We could never translate it into the band,
and we're getting better at doing that. Like, we wanted to do a real
lazy, sappy kinda ballad, so we covered the theme from Midnight
Cowboy! And there's even a song that sounds like The Carpenters!"

In a laid-back, Southern California drawl, where every sentence seems

to end with a question mark, keyboardist Roddy Bottum says, " Over
most of the period between the albums, we were on tour, so we were
listening to stuff together. Mike listens to a lot of speed metal, so
some of his vocals are completely-over-the-top, full-on screaming with
almost indistinguishable lyrics. [Bassist] Billy [Gould] was listening to
a lot of really easy-listening stuff, like 1001 Strings! We're kinda
thinking that we might release an EP of covers like that --since
Metallica did Garage Days, we should do a Back to Our Roots EP
and play 1001 Strings covers!" (Their current favorites include
Godflesh, Ween, Young Gods, The Sugarcubes, and a collection of
Henry Mancini's film soundtracks.)

"There are a few songs on here that are like genre songs-- they're
cool because they're a certain thing," Patton continues. "'Crack Hitler'
is like a sleazy version of the Emergency theme, like a '70s TV action
show. It's got like a Shaft guitar line and siren samples. You picture
five cops with guns chasin' a guy through an alley! It's like bad, bad
disco--*bad*! Horrible!" He pauses a moment before continuing, "I
also wrote some songs when I was experimenting with myself."

Pondering Patton's piston-palpitating paeans to porn on the Mr.

Bungle LP, your humble interviewer can only summon a weak, "Oh?"

"Yeah," he laughs. "I was doing some sleep-deprivation experiments,

staying up with coffee for as long as I could. And one song I wrote
mostly from fortune cookies! I bought bags and bags of fortune
cookies and took phrases from them. Another song, 'Land of
Sunshine,' is just a grotesquely positive song, so I watched a lot of
late-night TV to get in that frame of mind. We also did a new version
of 'As The Worm Turns,' and a Commodores song that we always play
live, 'Easy.' I don't think they're gonna be on the album--they'll
probably end up being b-side-type things."

At any rate, Angel Dust is every bit as uncompromising at its title.

Gould recently told Melody Maker, "A lot of people who bought our
last record did so on the success of 'Epic,' you know, a lot of little
kids-- ha ha ha! And I don't think they're really going to like this new
stuff! Ha ha ha ha!"

Come back with me--will you?-- throught the mists of time, to 1982,
when the intriguingly monikered duo of Gould and Bottum, who knew
each other from the LA punk scene, moved to San Francisco to attend
school. The pair united with drummer Mike "Puffy" Bordin, and played
for a time as Faith No Man with an endless succession of vocalists and
guitarists. One vocalist was Courtney Love, now married to Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain and currently courting cultdom as countess of the
confrontaional, controversial, contentious, corrosive, and
cantankerous combo Hole. "She was around for six months or so--
quite a while, considering that we were switching around singers a
whole lot at that point," Bottum recalls. "[The music] was kinda along
the lines of what we did on the first record. We would just play riffs
over and over again-- we thought we were *so* inventive," he laughs,
"because we thought it was so driving and so heavy. But she was
really good. She did a lot of screaming stuff, and we had a lot of slow
melody stuff too. When she sang with us, she was punk rock; now she
says she's always been punk rock, which is not true at all. After she
left our band she was totally into--I mean, with a sense of humor, but
really hardcore pop sorta stuff. We all were at that point--we used to
do a cover of Van Halen's 'Jump.'"

Eventually, the band settled on guitarist Jim Martin (who had played
with late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton in a band called Vicious Hatred)
and singer Chuck Mosely, whose half-punk/half-rap, staccato delivery
combined with Martin's unbridled thrash riffage to ignite the fusion of
styles that became Faith No More's sound.

Unable to find any backers, the band pooled their money and
recorded five songs, including the bruisingly funky, tongue-in-cheek
world-unity anthem "We Care a Lot," which caught the ear of one
Ruth Schwartz, then forming an indie label called Mordam Records.
The gave the band enough money to finish an album, and 1985's We
Care a Lot became Mordam's first release.

"I still like it," Bottum says of the LP now. "There are parts of it that
are really amateuish, but I think it's great. It's pretty representative of
the time." Which is more than he says about Introduce Yourself,
FNM's 1987 major-label debut, which garnered a good buzz but
exposed the growing riff between Mosely and the rest of the band.

"I liked what we were doing, but I think we had almost run our course
at that time. I think a couple of people in the band were really
bothered by Chuck's inconsistency, plus, we were fighting a whole
lot--I think fighting is really good and really healthy in a band, but we
were *hitting* each other!"

The battered band completed a shambolic tour to support the LP, and
then returned home to regroup. "We knew we wanted to continue as
a band," Bottum says, "but it's a pretty audacious step to take: If I'm
really into a band and they change singers, I pretty much dismiss'em
right away. The worst slap in the face [were accusations that it was] a
racial thing, like we wanted to get a white singer, which was really
insulting. But it went pretty smoothly, considering..." (Mosely recently
left the Bad Brains after a year-long hitch.)

By January of '89, the four had written all of the music for The Real
Thing before auditioning singers, and asked 21-year-old Mike Patton--
the first person they auditioned--to join. After four years in the twisted
world of Bungle's quick-cut, jazz/rock/funk mutation, Patton had only
two weeks to write lyrics and melodies for the songs.

"It was *strange* for me," he says, "because I had spent every
musical moment with the Bungle guys, and we have our own thing--
we're Nintendo kids, so we get into a studio and there are all these
little *knobs*, and we've just gotta play with the dials and push the
buttons. [Mr.Bungle] basically doesn't know how to write songs--
they're like A-B-C-X! -- so it was weird for me to try and put something
over a song that was really linear, and very
verse/chorus/verse/chorus. So I think I did what was
really...*obvious*," he says, not a little dismissively. "That's fine, but
since then, I've definitely vowed to spend a lot more time and put a
lot more into anything I do."

And then came the tours. Inside of 18 months, the band toured
England and Europe *five times*, crossed the US first with Bay Area
homeboys Metallica, then with Voivod and Soundgarden (where you'd
sometimes find Patton singing with Soundgarden while vocalist Chris
Cornell body-surfed in the crowd, and vice-versa), and stadium tours
opening for Robert Plant and Billy Idol, as well as countless headlining
dates mixed in.

The war stories are long and many, but highlights include being in
Berlin when the Wall came down ("I think the closest parallel that I've
ever experienced would be San Francisco when the 49ers won the
Super Bowl," Patton laughs. "It wasn't like a real historical, spiritual
thing--just everyone yelling and getting drunk"); encountering
seriously mixed reactions from Metallica crowds ("At that point, no
one knew who we were," Roddy says, "and we were getting up in
front of these huge crowds in these weird little cities. Sometimes
people would totally spit on us and treated us like shit, but to get that
reaction out of anyone is pretty flattering!"); and, on the last date of
the tour with Billy Idol, "We went out onstage naked with bags on our
heads and did a go-go dance in front of him!"

After a long break, the band played the Rock in Rio II festival last
spring, then returned in the fall for a 10-date tour of Brazil before
tourning Japan and playing Frisco's legendary annual "Day on the
Green" with Soundgarden, Queensryche, and Metallica. They also
contributed a "lounge version" of the Dead Kennedys' "Let's Lynch the
Landlord" to the Virus 1000 compilation. Yet the individual members
have made their own messes, as well: Martin made his acting debut
(as "the greatest guitar player in the world") in the second Bill &
Ted film, Bottum and Bordin did sessions with various Bay Area
bands, and Gould produced demos for California's White Trash
Debutante and Hispanic grindcore band Brujeria, as well as traveling
to the South Pacific island of Samoa with FNM producer Matt Wallace
to record the island's indigenous music. Gould also compiled his
personal camcorder tour footage in an extremely controversial video
for "Surprise! You're Dead!" that may or may not ever see the light of
day. "I think we're gonna send the cut version out to MTV," Patton
says. "But the *good* one, I think we're just gonna make tapes of for
our friends. I think we should send it to MTV anonymously in a paper
bag, 'cause it's...man, it's...[laughing] um, *disturbing*! It's an axe
and a chicken's head! I won't say who did it or anything, but it's...
quite an image!"

Patton performed with John Zorn's Naked City (a "jazzcore" outfit that
fuses jazz and ethnic musics with the blistering, bilious approach of
grindcore) and recorded and toured with Mr. Bungle, whose brilliantly
mindfucking debut was released on Warner Bros. last year (Bungle
have also composed an as-yet-unreleased string quartet for the
Kronos Quartet). Working Faith No More's schedule around all this
might not have made Patton the most popular guy with the band or
the record company.

"Uh...no one would ever *say* that," he hedges. "But you can always
speculate! I took a block of time and just said, 'I'm gonna be doing
this.' It was something that we worked around. There was a lot of
hostility at the beginning, but I think now that it's happened and it's
worked, so to speak, everyone's a little more relaxed about it."

How did he find time to work with three bands at once?

"No sleep, living in filth, no laundry," he laughs. "I've just lived outta
boxes. That's okay with me. It kinda feels natural when you wanna
move on to the next thing. I don't have to sit down and designate
what's what; it kinda separates itself and I'm glad, because it would
be really sterile for me to sit downwith a ruler and draw the boxes and
try to fit each little idea into each box."

FAITH NO MORE | JUNE 1992 | HIT PARADER

Hit Parader | June 1992 | Rob Andrews
Breakin' The Rules
It seems almost write to say that the success Faith No More enjoyed in 1991 was
unexpected. The fact is that the platinum success of their album The Real Thing was
downright shocking!
Let's face it, who would have bet a plug nickel on the chances of this unusual quintet
who had just lost one vocalist, Chuck Mosley, and had added a new one, Mike Patton,
only weeks before going into the studio. But thanks to their ground breaking
single/video. Epic, that album proved to be one of the year's biggest sellers making
Patton and bandmates Jim Martin (guitar), Mike Bordin (drums), Billy Gould (bass) and
Roddy Bottum (keyboards), heroes of everyone who had grown tired of the predictable
side of rock and roll. Here was a platinum band without a pinup boy in sight; a band
that seemed to go out of their way to be as unconventional as possible as often as
possible. Now with the release of their latest LP, Angel Dust, it seems that Faith No
More are out to ruffle even more feathers, a fact verified by vocalist Mike Patton.

Hit Parader: Is there a special significance to the title Angel Dust?

Mike Patton: No. There isn't any significance to it at all. It just sounds cool, and to us
that's usually enough. It's a horrible drug, is that enough of a meaning? But there's no
hidden message or a song lyric behind the album title. That's just us being us.

HP: Does Faith No More try to be unconventional, or is it just the natural way you are?

MP: We'd never plan out anything because it was supposed to be conventional or
unconventional. That would be totally against the point. I know our record label wished
we were more conventional, but I don't think our fans would like that, and I know we
wouldn't. We know this record's gonna evoke some heated reactions from people.
That's cool, that's exactly what we want. If we can piss people off we're happy.

HP: What makes you happy about pissing people off?

MP: I shouldn't say that we're happy to piss people off. It's just that we want to do what
we want—and not necessarily what they expect. Anyone who expects this record to be
The Real Thing Part II had better wake up! I know some fans who are already pissed
off about it. And our record company's been going crazy since the first time they heard
it. All they keep saying is that we're jeopardizing our entire careers. I think their
problem is just that they just don't know how to market us this time. "Your album is too
industrial for the alternative crowd. Your album is too dance oriented for the rockers."
They keep telling us that. Maybe they're right. We don't care.

HP: It seems as if you're almost rebelling against success.

MP: Nah, that's not it. We're not against success at all. We're just doing what we want.
It's like all the people who tried to convince us how nervous we should be about
making this record. To hell with that. Pressure is one of those things that's just an
invention of the human mind. People will say everything to you to try and blow your
confidence. They want you do do what they want and to do it their way. We're not into
that at all. "You're gonna fall on your faces," they tell us. Well, maybe, we'll see.

HP: How has the band evolved on this record?

MP: Well, we're still fighting a lot. It's just that the scapegoats within the band are
changing.

HP: What kind of fights do you have? Does it ever come to actual blows?

MP: Nah, nothing like that. We act like a bunch of petty old ladies. We never remember
what the hell the fights were even about by the time they're over. They're just
minuscule fights designed to destroy each other's ego. It's just one wave of torment
after another.

HP: Did that confrontational attitude have an effect on the songs you wrote for the
record?

MP: Maybe a little. There are some very strange songs on this record. A lot of them
have a lot of despair in them, they're very disturbing. Everything's Ruined is a good
example of that. It's one of the more straight-forward rockers we have on this album.
Compare it to something like Surprise You're Dead from the last album. I think you'll
see how we've changed. You can't put your finger on it, but it's there. We're getting
better at playing what we're visualising.

HP: You were much more involved in the creative process this time. Is there one song
you're particularly proud of?

MP: Maybe Land Of Sunshine because it talks about some of my favourite late-night
TV heroes, guys like Anthony Robbins, the motivational speaker who does those half-
hour commercials where he wants you to buy his whole seminar package, and of
course, my real hero, Robert Tilton, the preacher. Nothing and no one can touch
Robert Tilton! 20/20 did an expose on him, and he just blew 'em off. That's a very
positive song.

HP: Despite the success you've enjoyed in Faith No More, you remain a member of
another band, Mr Bungle. How do the other members of FNM feel about that?

MP: Everyone in the band squirmed at first when they learned that I was going to stay
in Mr Bungle. But we talked about it a lot and everything began to become a little less
tense. When the Mr Bungle album came out, I think everyone realised it wasn't a
threat.

HP: What's the strangest thing that happened to you on the last Faith No More tour?

MP: Maybe that happened in Zurich, Switzerland. We went through the park in this
beautiful, incredibly dean city only to find this drug haven where people were lying on
the ground shooting up in their eye-lids or anywhere else they could find. They were all
over the place. The city just turns a blind eye on it. That whole scene blew our mind.
We thought we were a little unusual, but that made us sit up and take notice.

Faith No More | Wembley Arena,

London - June 13th, 1992
On June 13th 1992 Faith No More played Wembley Stadium in
London, sharing the bill with Soundgarden and Guns N' Roses.

Kerrang! | Issue 398 | Paul Henderson

WHILE THE stage-front security battalion worked their nuts off hauling
an endless stream of
limp, semi-conscious bodies to safety over the barrier, passing water to
a sea of desperate, outstretched hands and spraying it onto the
crushed and dehydrating casualties out of reach, Soundgarden's
intro tape kicked into action. No one, it appeared, recognised it. Four
figures walked onto the stage as unobtrusively as crewmen had dune
all afternoon, and with the audience still entertaining itself with
the Mexican wave, Soundgarden were half-way through their first song
before most people noticed there was a band on stage.
In a small club a couple of months ago, Soundgarden were stunning,
cracking skulls with pounding, well aimed sonic ice picks. But in the
vastness of Wembley Stadium, and with a sound that relied on a lot
of imagination in order to identify the songs, the audience was being bit
with nothing more effective than a plastic hammer. The more-familiar-
than-most 'Rusty Cage' was the predictable musical highlight; a
surprising cover of Budgie's 'Suicidal Homicidal", however, simply
painted a sizeable question mark.

With the temperature having peaked, but the size of the audience still
steadily increasing, the predominantly drums/vocals sound that had
also sapped the life out of Faith No More's opening salvo suddenly
stabilised into afar more potent mix - just as Mike Patton looked as
though he might leave London in a box. Cavorting on a flimsy-looking
corrugated iron canopy beneath one of the giant video screens, the
audience seemed to be engrossed in a will he-or-won't he debate as to
whether the daft git might fall through and break his neck, whilst 'The
Real Thing' provided the suitably tense soundtrack to his escapade.
FNM's song choice was astute, concentrating mostly on older material
rather than promoting the still largely unknown 'Angel Dust'
album, Following the gentle waltz of the new 'RV', 'From Out Of
Nowhere', 'We Care A Lot', 'Surprise! You're Dead!' and the statuesque
'Epic', all bearing that unmistakable FNM stamp of rhythmic stun-gun
and an extraordinary musical elegance, gushed into the air like an
invisible but powerful and irresistibly hypnotic; gas. A short, sharp,
piercing stab, it was both the best FNM performance I've witnessed,
and the strongest evidence yet that Mike Patton is off his head.
At 7.49pm on a hot, still beautifully sunny evening, 'The World's Most
Dangerous...', etc, etc, took to the stage. 'Live And Let Die', massively
powerful and atmospheric, makes an early entrance, busting down the
door with white pyro flashy and tongues of red flame, 'You Could Be
Mine' and 'Double Talkin' Jive' are ferocious rhythmic freight trains
hauling Carriages of screeching guitar solos and a paint-stripping vocal
delivery. 'Civil War' is sandwiched between snatches of the intro to
Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile' and stretched into a poignant epic, white Axl
goes through a wardrobe of jackets. Giant inflatable rape-monsters
from the 'Appetite...' LP cover rise into the air. 'November Rain' is
beautiful and moving, its soft, silky melody accompanied by multi-
images on the video screens and a sea of lighters flickering in the glow
of a full moon, whilst Axl's aggressive front is temporarily replaced by
one of charm and frailty. Guns N' Roses have long ago passed the
popularity point where it's easier - and almost more acceptable - to
criticise than to applaud them. There are few - if any -performers at this
level as oafish and obnoxious as Axl Rose can be, who invites slings
and arrows when he tells us he knows we all hate drum solos, but that
we're gonna get one anyway; or when he introduces Gilby Clarke as
being "...unlike others we've known". and then, when the pro-lzzy
audience responds with a loud "Ooooh!" (or was it "Booo"?),
grins wryly and gives an off-hand "F**k you!". There are equally
few people with such a commanding stage presence and
charisma. Maybe he is currently the most powerful major-league
live performer on the planet. Having suddenly darkened, the stage is
ablaze with deep, luxurious reds and blues as Axl introduces 'Sweet
Child O' Mine' with an almost impossible shriek, as if his throat is about
to burst open like John Hurt's stomach in 'Alien', and the Stadium is on
its feet. The lighters and matches dot the darkness again for 'Knockin'
on Heaven's Door', and then Guns N' Roses are gone.
"I didn't know the band had rehearsed this," says Axl returning to the
stage with Brian May to encore first with 'Tie Your Mother Down' and a
screaming 'We Will Rock You', with barely a pair of hands in the
Stadium resisting the latter's call to participate in its clap-clap-punch.
They return again, pyro blasting and the stage bathed in red and white
light, to fire a powerful parting shot with 'Paradise City', after which Axl
and Slash toss cellophane rapped red roses to the front rows of the
audience.
The world's most dangerous band? Certainly not - but definitely one of
the most enjoyable.

FAITH NO MORE | JUNE 1992 | METAL HAMMER

Three years after FAITH NO MORE slugged Britain with their mighty 'The Real
Thing' album, with it's chart-screwing 'Epic' single, the San Fran Metal funksters
are back with their third studio album. The appropriately titled 'Angel Dust' is us
snortingly naughty as its PCP derivative enough to blow your head off says
guitarist BIG JIM MARTIN.
Metal Hammer | June 1992 | Pippa Lang
Angelic Upstarts
Faith No More will never admit to being 'Funk Metal'. You could take them
through 'The Real Thing' track-by-track, funky beat by funky beat, and they'd
still deny it. Not that they could think of anything else to call themselves 'cos,
like most bands. "labels are shit," says Big Jim Martin. The new album, 'Angel
Dust', is no less Funk derived than the last but, like 'The Real Thing', has fingers
pointing in every conceivable direction. OK, 'Angel Dust' doesn't have the same
instant crunch as its predecessor, but that's only because 'The Real Thing' was
so ahead of its time. Even Jim himself admits that there could, never be another
'Epic'. The new album doesn't so much progress as lean on 'The Real Thing"s
strengths, playing on the best parts.

Whatever, Big Jim Martin is just glad it's all over - the recording process that is.
He is not a patient man, and has a notorious reputation for deliberately avoiding
the rest of the band during rehearsals:
"This album has taken so long to record... God, it's been almost eighteen
months - you can't believe the torment I've been through man. It's not supposed
to be like that, not supposed to be that hard. Took too damn long... I'm gonna
make sure that doesn't happen again. I'm gonna take some recording gear out
on the road with me soon as possible, and start working on new songs
straightaway. See if I can come up with some real sick single again. "Anyway;
it's so good to take a break. I'm just enjoying my own good company right now.
Not for long though of'course, 'cos we have to start rehearsing soon for the
upcoming European tour with Guns N'Roses. It's all very well recording new
songs, now we have to learn the bastards so we can play 'em live."
Jim sounds so thrilled at the prospect of touring again... What a bind this
rock'n'roll business is. All that goddammed money, all those cars, the Bel Air
mansion, oh the lifestyle my dear.
It's enough to drive a man insane.

The tortuous recording process for 'Angel Dust' took place at San Francisco's
Coast Recorders, with the help of producer Matt Wallace again. Jim hated it all.
At least
during rehearsals, he could shut himself away at home, get a courier to bike
over the rest of the band's ideas and, in his solitary self-inflicted hell, add his
own guitar contributions to the melee. But then came the recording schedule.
No, Jim, you can't stay at home, the rest of the band pointed out - much as we
hate each other so much, we gotta work on this thing together. Out of the
doghouse and into the studio, Jim obliged, and the legendary thunder and
lightning sessions began.
That's the way it is within Faith No More. If they got on with each other, there'd
be no friction, no chemistry, no creativity, anyway, who ever said you have to
like the people you work with? (Not me - Ed!)
Actually, Jim's healthy disgust isn't confined to the rest of the personnel within
Faith No More - he isn't too happy with the current state of the music business
in general:
"It's all going horrible, haven't you noticed? Everybody's doing the same
damn thing. The business is so desperate to find something new that, when
they can't, they just take an old idea and market it in a new way, so then
everyone can go 'wow, this is new, the music business is really refreshing isn't
it?'. But it's not, it's stale. The latest angle is eclecticism'. Wow, everybody's
mixing everything together - Funk, Rap, whatever - ain't- that clever? But people
have been doing that for fucking years man! There's nothing new about it!
"For some reason, all music has to be segregated and labelled, the only reason
can think of for that is to give the marketing departments in record companies,
and the press, a black-and white substance to work with. God, without labels,
there'd be no business, apparently. But it's the labels that confuse everything.
Faith No More are, evidently, a 'Funk Metal' band. Actually, we are, but we're a
lotta other things too. But maybe a category with, like, ten words in it is too long
for the press and record companies to handle..."

Just call Faith No More 'eclectic' and they'II be happy - well, not happy, God
forbid, but at least a little satisfied. The band, in all their ten years of hoisted,
disturbing inconsistency, have never had to depend on the press for -
well, anything. College radio was their champion in the early days, the power of
social tittle-tattle spreading the faith rapidly throughout the San Francisco area
in the early Eighties. Jim joined Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin and Billy Could in
1983, and Chuck Mosley came in on vocals the following year. The latter
relationship lasted, surprisingly, five years - by all accounts, it was a very rocky
liaison indeed. (Since then, Chuck has also managed to get himself booted from
Bad Brains, but at least he's consistent. How long will his new band, Cement,
last I wonder?) But then, since Mike 'Mr Bungle' Patton 's. involvement, which
immediately spawned the distorted funky of 'The Real Thing' in 1989, nothing's
changed. The friction, if anything, is worse. Maybe the auditions were run on a
'hate' basis, and Patton turned out to be the guy they all hated most.
Meanwhile, is there anything that actually makes Jim happy? Surely, as Matt
Wallace has produced anything and everything Faith No More have created, we
can all assume the band are happy with him - his job is secure, and all is hunky-
dory. Why else would they keep using him? But when I broached the subject of
self-production to Jim, he grabbed ahold of it like a veritable limpet.
Matt, obviously, is no safer than anybody else involved with the band. I wish I'd
never brought up the subject.
"I think it's a damn good idea. I dunno how the hell an outside producer can
come in and know how your stuff's supposed to sound. It's crazy. I think it's a
damn good idea for a band to produce themselves, 'cos they know better than
anybody how their music should be presented. When you write a song, you're
the only one who can hear it totally and clearly in your head. It's impossible
to get across to somebody else what's going on in there!"
Sounds like another bone of contention between Jim and rest of the band to
me!
Wonder how long that one's been stagnating...
Still, what's another grudge in a long chain of creative bouts? The day Faith No
More start getting on with each other will be the day they split up. That,
evidently, is not about to happen. Expect the usual fireworks when the band
undertake their own tour in Britain, after the package tour with Guns N'Roses
and Soundgarden. 'Angel Dust'? It's a loada PCP to me...

June 20, 1992

NME 20 June 1992

Dudes Corner
Everything and nothing a rock band should be, Faith No More are subverting the
GNR tour with their maniacal metal mutations and well-weird sexual hangups. Mary
Anne Hobbs dodges the slobbering roadies, staggering Gunners and dirty books to
get in with the infidel crowd in paris. Derek Ridgers keeps the Faith in focus.

Faith No More's French record

company officials are addled on the
booze. One reels at singer Mike Patton
and I. We are discussing the singer's
new rubber head mask -- the most
recent addition to his collection of
S&M; fetish wear. "Don't talk to this
boy, he needs to save his voice for
tomorrow," drools the exec, splashing
several unfortunate diners on his
shoulder with sticky, vintage
Chardonnay.

It's a bizarre and grotesque scene at

elite Parisian nitespot La Bandouche.
Patton stops dead in his tracks as we
round the corner into the 'club area',
where Vogue models are moshing to
'Teen Spirit': "Look!" He nods towards
what resembles a fire-damaged Sindy
doll, buttressed by male security bulk.
And it is LaToya Jackson!

LaToya, who has made a career out of

'exposing' herself and her family, is currently leading a can-can troupe at La Moulin
Rouge. Earlier, we had seen four men wrestling a live alligator trussed with thick
rope, out of said venue.

Appropriately, LaToya is accompanied by an employee of a US gutter tabloid named

The Star -- something like the Sunday Sport. The hack's eyes bulge, and the gash in
the bottom of her face elongates into some semblance of a smile, as Faith No More
approach: "So you guys are touring with Guns N' Roses?" Quickly, she presses a
card into the palms of the band members and offers to make a handsome cash
settlement in exchange for information about Axl Rose.

'Angel Dust', the new Faith No More LP, is simply the most inspired 'schizo-core'
album release of 1992. Crazy from anxiety, twisting tourniquets out of melody
about haemorrhaging muscle tissue, 'Angel Dust' is a compulsive and supremely
durable genetic mutant (Metal, rap, disco and country are among its basic
component parts), that will find house room with all manner of squabbling fan
factions -- the hardcore, the subversive, and the shambling clubs.

The band's record company, London, have deemed the album 'commercial suicide'
for Faith No More. Major labels are not, however, noted for their vision. Consider, for
example, that Geffen made an initial pressing of just 40,000 copies of 'Nevermind'.

Faith No More burst out of San Francisco when American hard rock was, at best,
rudimentary. Metallica and the cold Speed Metal exponents populated one extreme;
mewling, manufactured primp lepers such as Bon Jovi, the other.

FNM were a group who clearly enjoyed meddling, and had nicked off with the
rhythmic ethics of both funk and rap to shoot in the ass of their ruddy hard rock.
The deviant Faith No More sound crossed over to the alternative as well as the
metal audience in the UK as early as 1987, with 'We Care a Lot', taken from their
debut album 'Introduce Yourself', featuring original lawless vocalist Chuck Mosely.

FNM are still notorious for the mutual malice between one another on a personal
level. Chuck Mosely however, alleged hysterical drug abuser, left just one drawing
pin too many on the chairs of the remaining band members.

Mosely was replaced by Californian skate-punk dude, Mike Patton, in January 1989.
The band's second LP -- a gleaming machine-drilled stockade of potential singles,
'The Real Thing', was released 6 months later.

This album, which established the band in the UK, was finally recognised by the
slothful, transmission-frazzled US audience after MTV picked up on the 'Epic' single,
during the final weeks of a two-year spate on the tarmac.

"We were told to tour for another six months at that point. We couldn't do it. We
hated those songs so fucking much," reflects bass player Bill Gould. "But y'know, I
guess we're lucky. Nobody died."

The tour bus is a scabby and basic thing. You can't even really call it comfortable.
En route to the GNR gig at which FNM will support, drummer Mike Bordin is
discussing his affection for painter Francis Bacon: "You know what Baroness
Thatcher said about him? FUCKING BARONESS. You know she was made a Baroness
yesterday? Thatcher called him, 'That horrible man who paints those disgusting
pictures.' Bacon is a goddamn fucking stud as far as I'm concerned. A friend of
mine, an artist -- I really respect her opinions and taste -- she's in the process of
being covered in tattoos. She had this purple and greenish bruise-looking thing
tattooed on the back of her shoulder. I said 'What the hell is that?' She said, 'Oh,
that's a self-portrait of Francis Bacon.' I couldn't take my eyes off it. That's where
the Bacon thing started."

I finger a 22-date tour itinerary, titled 'GN'FN'R'S: STORMING THE MOTHERLAND'.

Among the Gunners' road crew listed are: Personal Assistant to Axl Rose, Assistant
to Axl Rose, Assistant to Axl Rose's Assistant, and get this, Witch Doctor.

Keyboard player Roddy Bottum (ex-boyfriend of Courtney Love, trivia fans) tells me
that a well-known female American artist employs a crew member specifically to
blow cocaine up her anus with a straw.
"It's gossip that keeps this band alive. We're like a bunch of old ladies," muses
Patton. "It's the only thing that's new when you're traveling in a time capsule. All
you can do is talk shit."

FNM have struggled with their reasons for supporting on the GNR tour. Patton will
admit openly that he's a "whore." Bill, meanwhile, enjoys an intimate view of the
ugly circus: "GNR and their management are like a small government. Axl's the
president, and his manager's a personal advisor. A couple of the other more visible
band members are vice-presidents. Then there's the little guys who come
underneath, to make sure only the right information is leaked out. They're
dependent on the band for their living, so they will police themselves. Support
bands are like other countries with whom they maintain a diplomatic front. Like,
keep your mouth shut, enjoy the ride and everything will be cool. Open your mouth,
and jeopardize your own position. It's an interesting thing to experience first hand."

In addition to the regular security, 500 CRS men have been deployed to the GNR
gig. The stench of paranoia hangs heavy in the atmosphere.

As guests of FNM, we are shunted into a small marquee, which is absolutely bare
save a couple of chairs and tables, and faces out toward the coach park at the back
of the site. Ridgers and I are ordered not to move from the spot. However, our clot-
ish guard does not prove too challenging to out-manoeuvre.

Duff McKagan lopes through the Gunners' terrain backstage. He looks punch-drunk,
swollen and decaying. "That's business, man," Patton will comment drily. "You have
to hold your hat off to the guy who's done that to him." Duff is hoisted up the back
of the stage to watch FNM by two sides of beef in uniform. This is as much as I will
see of GNR.

The FNM performance is fearsome -- even in the gentle light of the Paris afternoon --
the band bludgeoning their instruments obscenely. It is Patton, however, that really
embodies the transition that FNM have made between the clean and linear shape of
'The Real Thing' and the 'Angel Dust' mania. The singer is quite willfully self-
abusive; battering his body against stray monitor equipment, twisting mic leads
tightly around his throat, he buckles and crawls, and lashes at obtrusive
photographers, eyes sparkling like Hopper in Blue Velvet.

Fanatics stockpiled against the steel 'safety' barrier are suffocating directly behind
me. The weaker are plucked out like mushrooms from manure, and stretchered
away. Limp.

We are back on the bus, attempting to make a dash from the site, however the
French tell FNM's long suffering tour manager, "va motorway iz brooken."

Barry Adamson's "Moss Side Story" is playing. Roddy, Patton and I watch a little
fellow who is wobbling the monster gargoyles inflating on either side of GNR's
stage, so as to achieve some kind of 'scary' effect. Pyro cannons explode. Search
lights chase through the blackening skies.

Patton, who has the attention span of a gnat, suddenly springs to his feet, and
invites me to inspect a couple of new books he's acquired. The first, a pictorial
collection of embalmed bodies lying in their states of grace, is titled Sleeping
Beauty. An assassinated family, featured therein, is being considered for the sleeve
of the next single, 'A Small Victory'.

The second book, which the singer extracts from a carrier stowed in his
claustrophobic bunk, strikes fear and loathing into my breast. The attractive scarlet,
Jackson Pollock-esque jacket does not prepare me for the photographs inside,
cataloguing the work of a performance artist who decorates naked members of his
audience with the organs of ritually slaughtered animals. There are group shots of
people up to their elbows in bloody entrails, smearing goat guts over a living naked
form. Close-ups of male genitalia, dressed with fresh brains, still seeping mucus:
"Some people would feel guilty owning this book, unless
they have the correct reason," says Patton. "I don't know
why I own it. It's fucked up, but I like it.

"Discovering this kind of thing comes out of boredom. You

just start getting really curious. And the further away you
get, the more exciting it is. It's that way with sex, with art
and with music for me. After a while you just have to know
what the next step is."

There are no nubiles on the bus. There are no crack pipes

burning as we leave the site. Considering both their status
and current environment, FNM do not appear to indulge in
traditional gluttonous rock habits. The band members single
out guitarist Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin as the only
'womaniser': "Heck I love women. I still live with my mom," he confirms.

"People say that I'm macho because I'm big and hairy compared to the rest of the
guys in the band. I grew up with three brothers. It was pretty rough and tumble.
Couldn't get away with being a pussy. I like a bottle of beer. I like girls. But I don't
know if that has anything to do with rock. As I remember, I was like this before
rock."

Meanwhile, Roddy, Patton, and Bill are thrill-seeking on the roof of the bus, which is
subsequently rushed by freaking adolescents, whose fists pound like pneumatic
drills against the windows. Miliseconds before the vehicle will surely implode, we
lurch away. "Wasn't that fantastic," gasps Roddy. "I came...twice! That's more the
kind of 'perk' I enjoy."

A three-hour gridlock outside the venue is something we hadn't bargained for. A

sweep is organised to kill time in the jam. One of the road crew is, apparently,
willing to lick a cat's asshole for $100 on the condition that he chooses the cat, and
$150 if it's supplied.

"The one thing you learn on these tours is that the cliche about roadies is almost
entirely true," says Patton. "We have one guy, our slimiest roadie. This guy is
always with girls. One night me and Bill are in a bar, we're bored. And he's talking to
this girl. Both of them are sitting on bar stools. He's been scamming on her all night.
It's a little insulting -- you don't want to see it... God. But Bill goes, 'look, look!'. We
turned around and he's just leaning over to kiss her. They're both leaning towards
each other. And their stools went right from under them. And they fell, like BAM!
Slammed on the floor. It was totally violent. It looked like it hurt so bad. Bill and me
were just choking. Both of them were so embarrassed they just wanted to die. I
thought, 'good.' Poetic justice -- disgusting, slimy pigs. And I don't just mean roadies
and groupies. I mean kissers.

"Sometimes a shit-eating video is so much cooler than watching two people kissing.
Do you know what I mean?"

No.

"I can't explain a whole lot about sex life, except for the fact that it isn't bountiful,"
Patton says as we sit in the deserted hotel lobby, in interview, at 3 am. "I think
meeting people is great. But on a sexual level it's much easier to get bored I
guess ... I don't know ... I've had a lot of mechanical sex ... I wouldn't say that I'm
seriously into S&M.; I mean, come on, having somebody pee on you wearing a Darth
Vader suit. It's great and everything. But take a few steps back and you have to
laugh.

"I don't know what happened to me. Maybe I went through puberty or something.
I'd say touring as much as we did -- becoming a stimulation junkie, developing a
very high threshold for pain and a very low attention span -- would tie anyone in a
knot."

All the remaining members of FNM draw attention to the psychological and physical
scars that Patton bears as a result of two harrowing years on the road. Many of his
fascinations are repellant -- yet it's not difficult to see how they have manifested
themselves. Patton will confess to being publicly provocative in the interests of
short-term self-amusement -- watching people flinch. However, it is quite evident
that he does not wish to be fully 'understood'.

Collectively, the band have ploughed their frustrations and demons into a truly
devastating record, and are now set to become one of the most important and
infernal metallic forces of the 90s -- for the simple reason that FNM (like Nirvana)
are everything and nothing that a visceral rock band is meant to be.

July 1992

Rip Magazine Issue July 1992

The Slings and Arrows of Faith No More

By Steffan Chirazi

You wouldn't expect it to be any other way. Chaos is abundant, voices

are constantly being raised, people are destroying their apartments in
anger, and the music is wickedly diverse and loopy.
"There will be no middle ground for this album," states FNM bassist
Bill Gould. "It's either gonna be absolutely huge, or it'll bomb wildly,
be a total fucking flop."
Faith No More are mixing their fourth album, Angel Dust. The whole
lot of them are fretting over nothing, guitarist Jim Martin's been in the
doghouse since before Christmas, and the inner turmoil the band has
always been eager to dismiss as "media hype" in the past is a huge,
dirty fact, inescapable and intrinsic to FNM's work. They need to piss
each other off, and manage to in consistently fine fashion.

In a small dive bar around the corner from San Francisco's Coast
Recorders, Bill Gould, keyboardist Roddy Bottom, producer Matt
"Beanhead" Wallace and I sit at a table, drinking cheap beers and
engaging in cheap talk. I first ask them about the pressure involved in
following up a hugely successful album.
"Everyone's pretty much left us alone," sighs Roddy. "I think it was
from ourselves more than anybody else. The record company and
management were worried about what we were going to do, but they
kept their worries from us."
"In the past we've always stuck together because we were totally
broke and we needed to put out another album for the union scale
money," furthers Gould. "After this last tour we split and went our
separate ways, and we haven't been in any real rush to get back
together. Part of the pressure in the past was economic adversity,
being stuck with these people and knowing you had to stick with them
because it was your only way out."
Isn't there pressure to avoid doing the same record you did last time,
taking the easy option?
"No, no," Gould continues. "That was easy, because we were sick of
doing that stuff. We'd just toured it for the last two years, so we knew
we didn't want that."
So when it came to putting the material together for this album, you
tended to keep it as far as possible from what was expected?
"I don't know if you can think about it like that," says the fired-up little
Gould. "You just get sick of doing something for a year-and-a-half, and
reading--look, even if you don't pay attention to what they say, this
whole 'funk metal' thing is really disgusting. The last thing I ever want
to be in is a funk-metal band. So it's not like we're gonna try to do
exactly the opposite, just anything except that, y'know."
People will still want to hear the old songs live, though.
"But those are just songs," Gould emphasizes. "They're not funk
metal--fuck that! It's a disgusting label for a band, and I would say
that any band that plays funk metal, I hate. I would safely say that
most of the band feels the same way."
When it comes to Mike Patton's lyrics, do you get involved? Do you
want to know what he's writing about?
"We pretty much leave it to him," says Roddy. "I mean, that's his job
in the band. Everyone has their input, and words are his."
"He's really into his words," Gould adds, "and as long as he's into
them..."
You don't care?
"No, I do care," Roddy adds quickly. "I care what he sings about, sure.
He's probably gonna get a lot of flak this time around for what he's
singing about. He's gonna offend a lot of people, and I think it's great.
I think if singers wanna do something like that, then they should be
able to, in the same way that actors who take on really sleazy roles
don't get shit for it, don't get shit for portraying some sort of derelict,
bad person."
What songs could be considered offensive?
"Well, I wrote some good lyrics for him on one song, which he'll
probably get some flak for," Roddy says. "It's about swallowing." Time
to cough.
"It's more along the lines of a character thing," he continues. "It's not
even about offending anyone. It's just trying out different characters
and being challenging."
"Characters can be offensive to people, but entertainment as a
medium really can't be offensive, because it's aesthetics," Gould
explains. "It can't be wrong or right, only offensive or inoffensive."
How has the writing come together? Have you found that you've been
bitching at each other like you always do?
"Some things are easier than before," says Gould. "Actually, it was a
lot harder when I think about it."
"Jim's getting a lot more comfortable with the songs now," furthers
Roddy. "He's uncomfortable rehearsing the songs with us. He'd rather
have a tape of the finished product and work on it at home. He likes
separating and doing it by himself."
"It makes for a weird tension," Gould says. "You visualize everything,
including the guitar, when you write the song, and then it comes back
different from your perception. I guess if the person isn't there from
day one, they can't be expected to read your mind."
It seems like you lot always bicker like grannies at the bus stop.
"Yeah, it's just another manifestation of the same old story," Gould
sighs. "It'll all work out though."
Leaving the bar, I track down the aforementioned Mr. Martin, ace
guitarist and sometimes grouch. He's more than ready to offer up his
thoughts on the new album. First off, has it been a plesant
experience, recording and all?
"Absolutely not. It's been an unpleasant experience from the very
beginning," Jim says. "It's been very unpleasant, which is not really
much different from my experience in making records with FNM
before. It's always been an unpleasant experience--a lot of people
scrambling to get henchmen on their side, to play silly games, to blow
smoke on a situation, to diffuse situations, amplifying situations that
don't exist, manipulationg others..."
That's always been the way things are, huh?
"More than ever now."
Is it pressure showing itself?
"I'm not sure if it's that, or if it's more one's desire to be a teen idol.
Things really don't seem that much different. It's a little worse,
because certain members of the band seem worried."
You're not worried about things though, right?
"No, not at this point. I was at one point. There was a problem,
because everyone seemed so frightened, I wondered if we'd be able
to do anything. At this point there's no worry on my part at all
though."
How is it that you don't work with the rest of the band in person when
writing and rehearsing?
"Because usually I have to drive a long way. I get there, and we'll play
something, then all of a sudden someone decides they wanna leave,
or somebody decides they're not having a nice day, or whatever.
They decide they wanna blow it off, and I've driven all that way to get
there. I dunno. I'm not to agreeable to begin with, so that stokes the
flames a bit."
How do you view the band's musical direction?
"I'm just trying to play these songs the way I see 'em, the way it
should go. It's not like we're trying to do anything 'different'. We're
not reinventing ourselves, I'll tell you that. Anything we play will
pretty much sound like us, if y'know what I mean, so don't let any of
that 'doing something new' bullshit creep in, because that's a load of
fucking crap!"
Without this pushing and shoving, though, FNM would cease to exist,
right?
"I dunno, man, I guess so. It's the nature of the beast. As long as
these people are around, that's the way it is. Some people are
spoiled, filthy, little brats with rich parents. They've been handed
everything on a golden platter."
Be careful, Jim. They could just as easily sling mud back at you.
"That's bullshit! Anybody can say anything. Anybody can sling shit at
anybody they want! What's the point of doing the interview? Come
on, guy! But it's pretty much that guys sometimes act like spoiled
children, and this is an industry and a job that encourages and
permits that sort of behavior."

Thank goodness they hate each other right now, because that just
means things are clunking along like they always have. And if they
sometimes seem like monkeys trapped in a cage, tossing shit and
screeching at each other, well, you know the old saying, "If it ain't
broke..."

July 1992
Lime Lizard

N/A

FAITH NO MORE | RIFF RAFF | JULY 1992

RIFF RAFF | July 1992
SHEENING FOR GLORY

MARK LIDDELL TRACKS DOWN FAITH NO MORE DRUMMER

MIKE BORDIN AND FINDS OUT WHY ANGEL DUST IS EVEN
BETTER THAN THE REAL THING!

Sometimes life's a beach, more often than not it's a bitch.

Thing is, due to FAITH NO MORE's pussy-tight schedule and
their record company's masterful organisation, I've been
given two hours notice to get my butt down to Hilton Towers
and do a bloody interview.

I arrive at the towering monstrosity and it isn't even clear

who I am supposed to interview. Once in the coffee lounge of
the hotel, it transpires that I'll be speaking to drummer Mike
Bordin. But before the momentous summit meeting between
our illustrious selfs, I chinwag with bassist Billy Gould and
vocalist Mike Patton. Fatten, swigging blackcurrant and cider,
suggests I wind up their dreadlocked drummer by telling him I
was really freaked out by their new album 'Angel Dust' and
that I don't think it will sell.

Bordin arrives... I inform him, that I've only had two listens to
their record, at their album preview party in a Fulham
recording studio. Hardly the ideal preparation but... I could
have gotten hold of their four-track sampler but

I tell him that I find them, unusually, unrepresentative of the

music. Bordin agreed....

"Fuck you, that's bullshit!"

Unless he's a good actor, he seems to mean it.

Bordin, as far as media attention/expression goes, is not the

most vocal member of Faith No More but he does seem
approachable and willing to talk. And in a band like this, with
their emphasis on heavy, rhythmic instrumentation, he's a
very important part of their sound. With that in mind, was he
also heavily involved with the inception of their songs?

"It's hard for me to say," he says, frowning.

"The music works and grows from basic drums and keyboards.
I knew these songs when they were only just mainly
instrumental. So, I love 'em." Clearly, it's hard for someone in
his position to get a perspective on the finished masterwork.

Since the interview, I've acquired a copy of ‘Angel Dust'. It

lacks the commercial sparkle of The Real Thing'. But is it
better? Well, it's different. It certainly doesn't possess gems
like 'Epic' and 'From Out Of Nowhere', that broke the band
through to the mainstream while still retaining a vibrant,
idiosyncratic core. 'Angel Dust' is the sound of a band
pleasing themselves. Veering scatologically, through the
extremes, as in the country waltz of 'RV, where Patton adopts
a deep, gravelly vocal, akin to TOM WAITES, and the punchy,
streetwise 'Be Aggressive', which perversely climaxes in an
overblown, baroque flourish. On occasions they show their
knack, for widescreen swelling melodies as in

'Everything's Ruined'. But all too often their throw-in-

everything, including Hell's Kitchen style, produces an almost
infuriating mixture of thrashy, discordant melodies. Aural
constipation, no less. However, it's not totally unpalatable, if
only for the eccentric colour they lend to those particular
songs.

In an interview with Riff Raff, EXTREME made similar points

when reacting to being lumped in the same Funk/Metal
pigeonhole as Faith No More. They claimed that their
crossover style, unlike Faith No More, wasn't contrived it had
fluidity - Rock with a big groove. Something I put to Bordin.

"I can see that," he admits. "To me, what they're saying is
valid. But it's a microscopic approach. It's really looking at it
in very high detail."

Bordin explains that there is a point to what they do, and it's
all part of the journey that gets them to their destination.

"It's like you get into your car," he begins, using an analogy.
"You back it out of your drive way. You drive away. You drive
down the street...make a left turn... Those are unrelated
things, right? You know because that's the trip to the fucking
grocery. So, that's how it's related. It's not just the same
thing. If you go to the grocery, you wouldn't say 'you get in
your car, you get in your car..You wouldn't go anywhere.
That's why it's just as invalid to say that we are,
Funk/Thrash/Metal, whatever, band. Because that's like
saying..." His eyes focus on my purple sweater, "...you're a
guy that always wears purple shirts. Maybe you do! But if
you're famous for wearing that [Yes he is - Ed], are you gonna
want to wear that all the time? No."

"We're a well rounded deal." Bordin continues. "We've got

stuff to offer. I'm very proud of the fact that we go all over
the place because of many different things. We can write a
song that's like one thing. But the challenge is to write a
bunch of good songs."

It s like a friend of mine, who was in METALLICA (referring to

Cliff Burton-RIP). He told me, ten years ago, what you do is
great. But don't ever forget to push yourselves into growing
and evolving and challenging yourselves to do more. That's
what it's all about," he says emphatically, before issuing a
public health warning. "Because if you n don't, your guts stop
digesting."

What we can glean from Bordin's slightly unfocussed

comments is that as far as Faith No More are concerned, it's a
hit or miss affair. And if you do chance upon it, something
memorable and tangible can occur - a transient order
appears.
I make the observation that their home city of San Francisco
seems to breed or encourage this chancey, independent type
of approach, as opposed to say LA where the music business
is located.

"Yeah, Frisco's still on the West Coast. It's t very livable and
there's a nice standard of living, and whatever its problems,
it's very centred. Sometimes more interesting things grow in
the shade, whereas the sunlight can kick it things out. So, I
kinda think that San it Francisco's a little bit more shaded
(and he's not just referring to the cooler climate) where s, the
sunlight of the industry doesn't really hit it so much. So, more
interesting more individualistic things do happen."

As five individuals, Faith No More, are sharply contrasting

personalities, but none of them fits your average Rock N'Roll
hedonist stereotype.

That's a lifestyle that Bordin for one claims to keep his

distance from, when pressed on the difficulty of resisting the
temptations of fame and success. After all you're only human.
“That's a cop out, though. You're only human too, man.'

He says in the prickly tone of a man who's had his feathers

ruffled. "The guy that drives the fucking garbage truck is only
human. Does that mean something different to him than me?
No. It shouldn't. I've got a girlfriend at home. I don't fuck
around. I also don't drink alot - I don't drink! I have my own
shit that I do...stuff that makes me keep my mind good
enough, physically strong enough to fucking play good every
night. That's why I'm here. If I was not interested in doing
that, I would not be here. That's the fucking long and short of
it."

Renowned for not seeing eye to eye with each other, Faith No
More don't exactly exude the vibe of one big happy family, all
lads together. So, what of the others, well the extrovert
Patton and the more introverted guitarist Big Ugly Jim? Bordin
on Patton...

“When we needed him, he was there. He was there to work on

the music. He was enthusiastic. He likes what he's doing. I'm
not gonna tell him what he can do in his spare time, because
then, theoretically, he's away from Faith No More."

I mention Patton's madcap MR BUNGLE outing. Now that he's

got that out of his system, has he calmed down? His reply is,
er, to the point.
"Physically..he’s fine!"

Quite revealing if only for what he doesn't say.

Bordin on Big Jim...
“He can be a disagreeable guy. He doesn't get out much. He
doesn't like to be hanging around with people. That's the way
he is. He's not gonna bother about it."
I assume then, that Faith No More's differences are their
strengths. Snorting in the 'Angel Dust' record, I ask him if he's
worried about losing fans with their current MTV non-friendly
stance. Bordin views it as a you win some, loose some
situation, just as it was with The Real Thing'. And adds...

"That's one thing I am not really concerned about. My only

concern is, presenting it in an almost neutral light, so that
people decide for themselves. And journalists, especially
here, they do colour things because it's their job to state their
opinion. Most of the time rightly but sometimes it can get a
little bit nasty.”

I detect a minor note of diplomacy on his last point.

Although it does seem, translating the Rock, speak that he

finds the promoting of a new record as a bit of a chore. It's a
hard life, eh?

Not being a contrary sort of fellow, like Mike Patton, what he

does have to say about 'Angel Dust' is not too specific and up
beat.

"For this one it was great to erase the chartboard and start a
new one. In some ways maybe the motivations for those two
records were similar but coming from different places. After,
two years, you just wanna forget all you've done. just do
anything. You just have to see what works. And this is what
ended up on record 'cos these are the ones we thought turned
out best. I'm proud of it. It's better than the last record...it's
strange..."

In June, Faith No More are special guests at GUNS N' ROSES

Wembley stadium show. Apart from hoping Axl and Co. erase
memories of last year's lack lustre appearance at the same
stadium, it will be interesting to see how Faith No More cope
with a stadium gig, filled predominantly with mainstream
Rock fans. Bordin, looks forward to the challenge.

“To have a new record broadcast in front of that many people

is tremendous, a tremendous opportunity to be able to play
this brandof music. We spent a lot of time making the music,
writing it. This is what it is. Here it is. We're absolutely able
to play in front of anybody. But we're not going to change our
approach for anybody."

No point in compromising, you might fall between two stools.

And you'll probably be motivated by your underdog tag.

"It will make us kick a lot harder," he

promises. "We've done that. We toured with Metallica when
their album 'And Justice For All' was just the greatest thing at
the time. Our record had just come out, two months earlier,
and nobody knew...nobody cared. But you learn from that."

Right, said I. We care. We care a lot...

FAITH NO MORE 'Angel Dust' Slash

CHRIS COLLINGWOOD

Following up the ground breaking The Real Thing' was never

going to be easy, and in a sense FAITH NO MORE haven't
tried. 'Angel Dust' harks back to Introduce Yourself, bass
heavy songs laden with keyboards. In a way this makes The
Real Thing's soaring beauty seem a one off. There's nothing
here to match the sonic exhilaration of From Out Of Nowhere
or the rap assassination of Epic. This is a much more 'in yer
face' album musicatly and follows the direction they took with
The Perfect Crime, their contribution to Bill And Ted's Bogus
Journey. Mike Patton's vocals are used much more as an
instrument, and at times he sounds frighteningly like Simon
Le Bon. Small Victory is typical of this. Solid melody, bass on
low register, and a guitar line that wouldn't sound out of
place as the main theme to a cowboy movie. RV sounds like
the Faiths have been listening to TOM WAITS, or
maybe PRIMUS, as does Crack Hitler Be, Aggressive could be
THE FALL jamming with BABES IN TOYLAND, while Malpractice
is this album's Surprise, You're Dead.

Nowhere do they reach their previous heights of emotional

intensity. They still give an aggressive attitude, but they
don't leave you breathless at the end of each song, like
you've just free fallen from 10,000 feet.

'Angel Dust' is still an excellent album though. Maybe 'The

Real Thing' was almost too good, and they will be judged too
harshly because of it. They are still probably the best Hard
Rock band in the world, it's just that this could have been so
much better...

FAITH NO MORE | JULY 1992 | VOX MAGAZINE

"You wanna know a great way to get even with somebody?"

Vox Magazine | July 1992

Faith No More singer Mike Patton asks. It's a sunny afternoon in

San Francisco, and we're seated at La Cumbre, one of the
hippest Mexican restaurants in town. "My particular vengeance was
against a business that had f***ed me over really bad," the 24-year-
old continues. Today, his muscular six-foot frame is housed in
workboots, skater shorts and a service station attendant's shirt that
reads, 'Ron, Service Station Attendant'. He waves his arms for
emphasis and speaks in a booming bass voice that makes the other
cantina patrons a bit nervous.

"So one morning, see, I woke up, ate an entire burrito, drank a half-
pint of rum, downed some castor oil, then drank some Ipecac syrup,
which takes about half an hour to work. Then I walked down to this
business, and I'd timed it perfectly."

Suddenly the food in front of me doesn't look so hot. I swallow the last
bite and brace myself: 'Uh, barforama?'

"Yeah! This place had a nice, clear counter and no janitor either It
kinda backfired, though, because I took too much castor oil, which
coats the stomach, so not a lot of food came up. But a lot of blood did,
though!"

A few heads turn to look disgustedly at Patton, who's now cackling. If

they'd look closer, the lunchers might recognise him as the guy who
rolled around onstage In furry pants while Faith No More plumbed out
the power chords to their US Top 5 hit. Epic, on an MTV awards
show. In the UK, where the raucously eclectic Angel Dust has just
been released, the band's popularity has been on the up and up since
Patton joined them in '89 for their third album, The Real Thing.
First discovered in his tiny California hometown of Eureka, idling with
his Mr Bungle outfit, the singer has become a commanding showman
and a meteoric vocal presence for Faith No More, his outrageous
outlook melding perfectly with the grainy, funky raunchy rock the
group had patented since forming in 1982 as a 'hippie-hate' band.
Patton still records and performs with Mr Bungle. In fact, in a fit of
bacchanalian excess at a New Year's Eve show in San Francisco last
year he gave himself an onstage enema. Patton says, "I heard the
crowd got a nice little spray but I didn't see it because I was bent
over."

Why such extreme measures? "Hey, it was a nice, dirty show, a lot of
dirty people, everything was dirty. So why not have a little clean
segment - wash out myself, wash out the audience...?"
When Mike Patton drops the scatology and starts sounding logical,
there's bound to be a big, walloping, wrecking ball sailing your way.
And Angel Dust is its crushing crane. Given that the self confessed
caffeine junkie Patton "came in at a really strange point on the last
record, when all the music was written, so I just threw some lyrics on
top of it" the maturity he displays on this effort is downright
electrifying. Through 13 strikingly diverse numbers he snaps, snarls,
gargles, growls, wails and warbles, producing a schizo persona for
each track.
His small-town upbringing came in handy. "In Eureka you drink so
much coffee, you try and make believe there's something to do, he
says, remembering his hometown as being comprised of 'hippies and
loggers'.

"Faith No More played in Eureka, and I can't believe they came. No

bands came there. But here they were, in their shitty van, all rotten
and stoned, and I gave 'em a tape of Mr Bungle. They liked the tape
and called me up."

Now, with Angel Dust building on the success of The Real Thing,
Patton and his mates have entered the big league.They can call their
own shots at a major label, land slots on top-drawing tours and feel
free to develop their music. But at what price?

"When you enter the music business, you essentially become a

prostitute, and anyone who denies that is full of shit," Patton says.

When it comes to his craft, though, a nerve-shaking zeal comes into

his eyes.

"You've got to be defencive, even when it's uncalled for. And my

personal way of dealing with fame is simply not being satisfied.
Ever ."

CREEM magazine July 1992

Faith No More's Savage Democracy

By Erin Culley

Sequestered in Studio City's charming Scream Studios, Faith No More

are furiously racing the clock to finish mixing their new album, Angel
Dust. Bad enough that in four days vocalist Mike Patton heads out on
tour with his other band, Mr. Bungle. But the record label's also
clamoring for finished product. And so far they've only completed
three songs.

You could easily imagine the shoulders of Patton, guitarist Jim Martin,
bassist Billy Gould, keyboardist Roddy Bottum and drummer Mike
Bordin stooped by the task at hand. Especially considering the
challenge of having to follow up on their monumentally successful
album The Real Thing. But the lackadaisical air in the studio today
imparts no such notion. The pool table sees constant use, the TV
blares an endless stream of noise, and band members straggle in and
out of the control room to pick at the just-delivered Thai food.

FNM formed in 1982 as a "hippie hate band," according to their Jim

Martin-penned bio. But it took eight years, 3 albums and the
replacement of original singer Chuck Mosely with Mike Patton in early
89 to put them on the charts. Sparked by its hit MTV video for "Epic,"
The Real Thing bloomed late, went platinum, landed the band tours
with Billy Idol, Robert Plant and Metallica and won them "1990 Band
of the Year" awards from the likes of Rip and Music Express. And
before Angel Dust is even released, they'll be heading to Europe to
tour with Guns N' Roses.

Despite all the hoopla, though, the band has managed to remain as
annoying/charming/sick-in-the-head as ever. Patton, stretched out on
a well-worn couch, claims to be handling success by working at
Blockbuster Video (and he does sport their employee shirt today),
where he never fails to make suggestions to the customers. "And I
always," he claims, "no matter who comes in, recommend John
Waters."

The band has just finished watching Talk Soup -- their new favorite TV
program that runs all the spiciest snippets from the day's talk shows
-- and they blame this for any weird "mode" they might be in.

After deciding that any sort of interview would best be done in

separate groups, Patton and Gould settle in on the studio's garish
purple patio for the first round of questioning.

Haven't you guys felt any pressure making Angel Dust in light of the
success of the Real Thing?

BG: We didn't feel any pressure writing songs because we didn't have
any success before we wrote the last record, and we figured we'd just
do what we did the last time. After the songs were written we started
to record and then the pressure started coming from record company
people and stuff who were more worried than we were. We're totally
feeling pressure and we're getting pissed off 'cause people are trying
to light fires under our asses and get us freaked out like we should be
worried about something. They think we should be worried. [slips into
adult/authority voice] We should know how serious this is and how
many records we could be selling.

MP: Trying to get us worried, it's a real backwards thing.

BG: It's okay, the record's gonna be fine.

How does the new album compare to TRT?

MP: There's some really, really disturbing shit (laughs). I think what
got a lot of record company people worried when they heard Angel
Dust was that a lot of it wasn't linear. A lot of our last album was
verse/chorus, you could really see where things were going. This time
there's a lot of turns.

BG: A little more theatrical, like a Queen record. Tell me about the
disturbing shit.

MP: It's just a lot heavier. Like, I guess someone would say that the
most extreme thing on our last record was "Surprise You're Dead."
This stuff is disturbing but not like that at all. I think someone who
would listen to "Surprise" and think "Wow cool that's really heavy"
would hear, say, the song Jim wrote called "Jizzlobber" and just go
"No, man, NO!"

What about lyrically? Where are you coming from this time, Mike?

MP: Well, this time it's more like me writing. Before I'd hear like "From
Out of Nowhere" on the last album and I'd say "Oh, okay, this should
be a bitter lover song" and I'd invent a scenario that had nothing to
do with me at all. This time I didn't do that at all.

You always wait for the band to write the music before you compose
the lyrics?

MP: Oh yeah, yeah. Have to. I mean there's always ideas but I don't
know how to construct a song around words.

So you're not some closet poet?

MP: (laughing) Fuck no!

Well, your lyrics are pretty interesting.

MP: I guess. But if you notice, to me I can tell that those songs (off
TRT) were written in three weeks. Not in the fact that they're thrown
together, but they're all from the perspective, like "Oh, poor this, poor
that."

Oh, were you feeling very poor at the time?

MP: Well I was in my room all alone! I didn't know anybody, I'd just
moved to the city and it was just like "Oh fuck man! What am I doing
here?" This time I think it's a little more confrontational.

You guys toured forever for the last record.

BG: We could have kept touring 'cause the record didn't happen until
after like a year of touring. When it picked up, we could have pushed
it. The record company really wanted us to tour because they thought
we could have sold a whole lot more records and we'd always been an
opening band for people, so we could have actually made a lot of
money because the record was at its peak, but it'd been 18 months
on the road. If we'd have done that, we probably would have made
some money but we probably would have hated the music and this
record wouldn't be coming out now.

MP: We would have come back and been used car salesmen or
something.

It must have been kind of frustrating for you guys, the record taking
so long to hit.

BG: See the thing is, we knew we had a good album when we
recorded it last time. I don't think we see it like it was a record that
got huge because really it was a record that we worked our asses off
on. At the end it became huge but that was kind of after we'd put in
the bulk of our energy. It was like an epilogue. I think the real success
thing, if it happens, will be now. This would be the successful record,
if it's successful.

So, what do you think?

MP: I think it's gonna piss a lot of people off, and that's a success in
itself (laughs).

BG: We're kind of thought about (by the press) as having started this
thing: "Well you guys are really doing this new kind of music that's
kind of funk, kind of rap and kind of metal" and it really kind of
bothered us 'cause we never wanted to be in anything like that.
Probably, if we'd have kept doing that, it would have been a pretty
safe bet thing to do, and we're not really doing that. We're taking a
lot more extremes. If some kid goes to buy the new record and thinks
that they're gonna get "Epic" there are some songs that might be on
key, but if they put on the wrong song, they're gonna take the record
back, 'cause it's kind of ugly.

Angel Dust represents a conscious effort to get away from the

rap/funk/metal tag then?
MP: When people say you're responsible for a whole pack of really
shitty bands -- or not even shitty bands, but a shitty idea -- it doesn't
make you want to be it.

BG: And you're in the forefront of it. This is what some record
company people tell us: "You've created this thing, and you've
created this thing of fans that are counting on you to fulfill this need
in them. Don't change it because you're going to alienate them and
piss them off." A lot of interviews I've done for this record are like
"Aren't you worried about alienating your fans?" We didn't have any
fans when we wrote the last fucking record. We're doing what we do.

MP: You can't worry about that stuff.

BG: We're just fucking musicians.

So why the title Angel Dust?

BG: It's two beautiful words but a real ugly thing. It's kind of what the
record's like; it's got some real beauty in it and it's got some real
ugliness in it. It's like the balance thing.

"Ugly" and "disturbing" seem to be coming up a lot when you

describe the new record. Would you care to elaborate?

BG: Tell her about "Malpractice."

MP: Alright, there's this one song I wrote about a lady who goes to a
surgeon and she's getting operated on and she realizes she likes the
surgeon's hand inside of her. She doesn't even care about being
cured, she just wants someone's hands inside of her -- she gets
addicted to that.

You're right, that's pretty disturbing.

MP: I think there's one thing you can say about the disturbing songs
and that's that you can't put your finger on why we would write a
song like that. Like "Surprise You're Dead" -- wow, nightmare, scary!
Big fucking deal. A lot of these songs, its just like someone that's in
agony. I think a lot of people like to read lyrics and figure out, "Gee,
really, what's going on here?" And a lot of interviewers will read lyrics
and go, "So this happened to you when you were a child," like
psychoanalyze lyrics. With these, it's going to be totally impossible,
and I think that's great.

[Patton takes a phone call and then returns to tell Billy that they've
been invited, along with former Mentor/resident L.A. sicko Il Duce, to
Tom Araya's (vocalist/bassist for Slayer) this evening.]

BG: (laughing) Why don't you tell her what's going on!
MP: We're gonna swap video tapes, have a taping party.

BG: Sick fucked-up tapes.

MP: Great things.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but, what?

MP: A lot of shit-eating and stuff like that; dicks on meat hooks. Il
Duce has a lot of animal porn, which is fine by me.

That's disgusting!

BG: (laughs) Plus you get to hang out with cultural icons! Heroes!

There's a quote from your bio which states "Whatever physical

struggle they might have gone through is nothing compared to the
mental torture and anguish they inflict upon each other." What
exactly does that mean?

MP: I think that kind of says it all. We're kind of boring people and
when you're bored you have to find lower and lower and more petty
means of amusing yourselves. And that always means degrading
someone.

BG: Yeah, the scapegoat phenomenon has been going on since the
beginning of mankind. Having a scapegoat can be quite fun. Some of
us get picked on more than others. We might be a democracy but
we're not a welfare state.

MP: Savage democracy. We're basically cave men.

Any desire to go on a Robert Bly escapade to get in touch with that?

BG: It's funny you should mention that...

MP: 'Cause our guitar player, Jim, is thinking about going.

BG: He's been hanging out a lot with Ian Astbury from the Cult and
he's really trying to convince him to go along.

Why, has Astbury gone?

MP: Oh, didn't you know? He and the singer for the Chili Peppers.
Everyone who's even got a smidgen of Indian background, even if
they don't have it they can say they do.

BG: You get to hang out in a sweat lodge and talk about men things,
naked! As a matter of fact, we've got a song about something like
that, Robert Bly.
Which one?

MP: Well, it was called "I Swallow", but now it's called "Be
Aggressive."

[We now go into the studio to hear a mix of an as yet untitled song.
Its code name is "The Arabian Song" which certainly fits. The tune is
grand, sweeping, and darkly Middle Eastern in tone. A few minutes
later "Kindergarten," a slightly more upbeat tune, is played and then
followed by the even livelier, yet strangely Japanese-sounding "Small
Victory." The band's right. The Real Thing this ain't. Mike Bordin, Jim
Martin (who's sporting a pair of shades over his glasses even though
it's already dusk-- and a bandage on his hand where a metal plate has
been removed) and Roddy Bottum (who also wears a cast on his arm,
thanks to a recent trip over a cliff on his bike) now take up residence
on the purple patio.]

So Jim, I heard a rumor that you're going on one of Robert Bly's

Wildman outings with Ian Astbury.

JM: You've gotta be kidding me!

RB: What's that?

JM: Why would I do that?

RB: Who's Robert Bly? Is it like one of those outdoor things where you
have to find your own food and stuff?

It's kind of like bonding in a sweat lodge and crying.

JM: Oh, men hugging and crying and stuff? Jesus fucking Christ!

MB: They make those fucking guys eat dirt!

JM: It sounds freaky and I don't want to do any freaky stuff like that.

RB: I wouldn't do it either.

MB: She's not asking you, she's asking Jim.

RB: Oh.

MB: I don't want to bond with males.

I take that as a "no," then.

MB: No, it sounds a little sexist. Where are the women?

RB: I think that's the point -- there aren't any.

JM: Would you like to hug and cry with sweaty, greasy women?

Well, no. So tell me about touring: you've been all over the world --
South America, Europe, England, Japan, the States, Australia -- any
places in particular that stand out?

MB: They were cool in Japan.

RB: Yeah, to me that was fun in a different way. They weren't wild at
all, they were just sitting there but it was fascinating. They just sit
there and when you stop it's like clap, clap, clap and the minute you
walk up to the microphone everyone just stops -- they're so attentive.
I started to get into it the second night, just walk up to the
microphone and go (opens his mouth) and silence.

Did you end up actually meeting any of them?

JM: Oh yeah! They're totally friendly, polite.

MB: So nice that you felt weird.

JM: Yeah, it felt like they were clean; you weren't afraid of catching
anything from touching them.

Clean? That's a pretty warped observation. You're not a germ freak

are you?

MB: (loud laughter) Good question! Now you're getting right down to
the matter!

JM: Kind of. It's not that bad yet. Like I hate putting all my clothes in
with somebody else's clothes and that kind of shit.

You must love being on a tour bus!

JM: It's all right but I always feel like I'm gonna get the flu or
something. When I walk in and out of buildings I hate touching the
door knobs and shit.

MB: Now do you understand why he'd never sit in a he-man sweat
lodge?

I'm beginning to.

MB: I'm the kind of guy that walks around with open blisters with shit
on his hands on tour.

JM: See, I hate being around him on tour.

RB: He lets dogs lick his hands. He thinks it's good for thewounds.
MB: It's good, it heals them.

JM: I can't deal with that. But I wasn't afraid of the Japanese at all. I
just don't like touching anybody else's shit and I don't like them
touching mine.

What about you Roddy?

RB: I don't care. I've lived a very filthy life at times so it doesn't
bother me.

JM: I went to Roddy's, Bill's and Puffy's house one time when I first
joined the band and I wouldn't sit down.

MB: I slept on the floor amongst all the rubbish. Roddy had mice living
in his clothes at one point.

You've had an amazing amount of success, managed to travel around

the world (without killing each other). How has this affected the goals
or focus of FNM? Have they changed?

MB: They have to change. We're not gonna write the same song over
and over. We're not gonna make the same record over and over. We
won't do that. That would be stupid. The band's focus always
changes. Yeah, and the fact that we had a great success is gonna be
part of the new input that changes the focus -- but it's always
changing.

Are you happy with where it's going?

MB: I think it's gonna be a great record. It's gonna be a record I'm
proud of. And that to me is the pressure, to not put out something
that's shitty.

July 1992

Rip It Up (NZ Music Magazine) Issue

No.180, July 1992

By Tony Miller

Faith No More

This isn't how I imagined Mike Patton. The frantic maniac clad in a
McDonalds uniform who drove an Auckland crowd into a slam
dancing, stage diving frenzy now sniffles miserably down the line
from London, overcome by allergies, exhaustion and the "goddamm
shit English weather". But Mike Patton and Faith No More haven't got
much else to be unhappy about.

They were a band lucky enough to fall into the elusive "right place,
right time" situation. Just as record companies were looking for the
next sound to sell to middle America, FNM exchanged then lead
singer Chuck Mosely's punk snarls for Patton's more accessible funk
rap vocals. The "next big thing" turned out to be _The Real Thing_
released in 1989 and FNM's left-of-field style landed them in the
mainstream charts. A band previously motivated by the punk anti-
success ethic were hit solidly by the fast-moving success train. Many
old fans cried sell out, but the reality was that FNM and bands like
Metallica opened the world's ears to a harder, heavier sound
previously confined to the metal marker and pretty much on their
own terms. Yet this isn't praise Patton readily accepts.

"I'd hate to hold up the flag and say we lead the rock revolution of
whatever, because I don't want to lead any movement. Leaders are
always the first to get beheaded and even if that were right we aren't
leading it anymore. We don't even know if we've survived."

FNM bassist Bill Gould is quoted in _Melody Maker_ as saying "Ha ha

ha, lots of kids bought the last album on the strength of 'Epic' and
didn't like it. Ha ha ha, they're not going to like this one much either."
But Patton isn't worried that the diversity of _Angel Dust_ could
alienate the audience.

"After two and a half years playing the same songs we had to change,
we were tearing our hair out with boredom. A lot of _The Real Thing_
was written in linear fashion and so we wanted _Angel Dust_ to reflect
the musical extremes we come from. We got better at cutting corners
and saying 'fuck you', basically."

Saying 'Fuck you' to the world?

"Mostly, because people are too lazy when they listen to music. The
heavy metal culture, which really embraced our last record, is about
the most conservative crowd there is - way more so than a pop crowd.
It seems like they almost have a handbook of things to do, so we were
acting weird and saying 'hey look at us!' trying to provoke them. I
respect a band who challenges you to listen - too many bands don't
take risks, which is something we've got real good at. Now we're
saying 'fuck you' to ourselves just as much. Learning how to write
songs better means throwing out conceptions of what you can and
can't do, challenging yourself and what you've done before. The
record company wanted another version of _The Real Thing_ with a
new cover basically, so we gave them something totally different. If
they'd like it, it would have been wrong - it's better to have them
nervous and twitching."
So I guess you could say you're sacred of labels like Seattle and being
viewed as a product?

"Yeah, Seattle seems to have become a marketing tool, which is

bullshit, because only a few of those bands come from there. Bands
from Nebraska sound like Nirvana now. Seattle's a dismal place
anyway, I've only heard a few good bands from there. Record
companies put product labels on us because it's the easiest way to
pay their mortgages. The whole industry is based around what there's
going to be tomorrow, the new thing, because that's more desirable
than the old. So a band that makes the music of the moment - you
have to be skeptical as to whether they will last. Avoiding labels is
long term survival."

This Seattle sound, or whatever, seems to have pretty much killed off
the old leather pants style rocker - at least in New Zealand.

"Well you guys are lucky. They don't die in the States, they just
mutate. To me there's a big equals sign between them and bands like
Pearl Jam. They may look different, but they sound the same - scum
are survivalists. We've been on tour a while so I can speak from
experience - a cockroach is always a cockroach."

Talking of such, how's touring with Guns n'Roses?

"We never have any contact at all. They seem to live in a whole
different world so I can't relate to them. I can tell you funny stories
and that's all."

Such as?

"A juicy titbit I heard the other day was that Warren Beatty was
fucking Axel's girlfriend. I think he knows because we had a show
cancelled the other day and maybe - just maybe - that had something
to do with it."

Was the album's name (_Angel Dust_) inspired by narcotics?

"Not directly. The two words just sound nice together, but evoke the
image of a horrible drug. We got the picture for the cover (a soft blue
airbrushed swan) from the cover of the Mystic Mood Orchestra's
album _101 Strings_. Again it's a kind of provocative thing."

Have you acid tested the new songs on the album?

"They're the majority of our set now, but it's kind of hard to see how
they go down with the G n'R crowd. What matters is what we want to
sound like. People think that a mid-song switch from metal to country
is a very calculated thing, generally it's accidental. We listen to
fucked up shit and we can't make sense of it so our music doesn't
make sense either. I don't except any song to last, though it's nice if
they do - too many people try to be profound. People expect that of
singers, but that's bullshit. I live for momentary satisfaction and
temporary gratification. Sure, that's incredibly trivial. So?"

FAITH NO MORE | METAL MANIACS | JULY 1992

Metal Maniacs | July 1992
The Long and Dusty Road
By Marina Zogbi

"The way we tour, it's kind of like training for us," says FNM bassist
Bill Gould. "The more shows we do, the better and stronger we get.
We had a year off, and all this tour's really done is gotten us just
level; now it's time to improve." Bill's referring to the band's first live
shows since the recording of new LP Angel Dust: A recently completed
European tour with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden. They're
currently in the midst of a U.S. stadium tour with Guns and Metallica,
and plan to go out on their own later this month.

Once again FNM face the prospect of virtually non-stop touring, but
this time, unlike their previous experience, the band are mentally
prepared. "It was like a drowning swimmer in a pool trying to do
anything to stay afloat," Bill describes taking advantage of the touring
opportunities that kept popping up well after the release of '89's The
Real Thing. Drummer Mike Bordin continues the metaphor, "Then
when you finally felt like you were reaching the rim of the pool, it was
like 'Oh, Australia? OK. Another European tour? OK.'" Though grueling,
all that roadwork did introduce the band to a varity of audiences and
cultures. "It's really cool because we can look forward to going back
to a lot of different places, like Brazil, Australia and Japan," says Mike.

The recent Guns Eurotour brought Faith to Hungary and

Czechoslovakia for the first time, places most bands can't afford to
play on their own. "It was a really big crowd," Bill describes the
Prague show, "and they came from all over the area, Poland and
everything. The military was really nervous because they hadn't had
so many young people in one place since the revolution." For the
show in Hungary, fans came from neighboring countries of Bulgaria
and Macedonia. "It's unbelievable how well-appreciated it is," notes
Bill of touring such places. "It's like throwing a drop of water on a guy
dying of thirst in the desert...Bulgarians have this wild look in their
eye; they've driven 15 hours to come to the show, they don't want to
bother you, they just want a picture. To think what this meant for
these people..."

While in Berlin the bassist decided he would try to buy a Trabant, the
tiny now-outmoded East German car, "because they're really cheap,
nobody wants them." After mentioning in a radio interview that he'd
found one for 100 marks ($75), but was open to anything cheaper, a
fan called the station and offered his car as a gift. "I did the whole
tour in that car," Bill notes, adding that his vehicle was often the
object of ridicule on the part of West Germans.

For their hour-long slot on the European Guns tour, Faith played six or
seven songs off Angel Dust, a few off The Real Thing, plus "We're still
playing the old stuff that we like," says Mike, "'As the Worm Turns',
'Death March', 'We Care a Lot'." One song they hadn't yet played live
at press time was the catchy, extremely danceable "A Small Victory,"
a must-add for the U.S. shows, especially since it's the band's second
video release. The video, directed by Marcus Nispel (C&C Music
Factory) is an extreme departure for Faith. Says Bill, "It's totally
different than any video we've ever done; 'A Small Victory' is pretty
much of a dance song more than anything, it's the furthest we've
ever taken that, so we had to have a visual to complement it." Adds
Mike, "We also wanted something very slick, something that looked
really well-done, no tricks. The last video ('Midlife Crisis') was
beautiful looking but it had a weird photography style and a weird
kind of color." The new clip features no performance footage (a first
for FNM), several bizarrely outfitted extras, and the band themselves
looking very sharp in Italian suits. Bill sums up: "Think of a Madonna
video but see us in it instead. It doesn't make any sense, but at the
same time it's perfect." Look for FNM--minus the suits--on tour this fall
and beyond.

FAITH NO MORE | OOR MAGAZINE | 08.08.1992

Revealing interview with Mike Patton from 1992 with some insight into the lyrics
on 'Angel Dust'.

OOR 16 | 8 August 1992

Sperm and Cuddly Toys.

Recently, Faith No More's repulsive fourth album, Angel Dust, was released. To
the displeasure of the rock establishment, this revolting product of bombast,
symphonica, and hardrock went up the charts like a comet all over the world. An
interview with singer Mike Patton, a chameleon in a field of fritters.

If U2's Bono says pop music should become primitive and wild again and
parodies a rock star, something's going on. And something is going on! A much
too great predictability. Everything that was developed in the past, has been
divided in genre boxes. Once, surveyability was needed to direct the public to
the CD market, but now the same CD market suffers from it. The public is
getting saturated and there's no ready-to-go new adventure. Artists have
learned to adapt. Out of fear to loose their audiences they have unlearned to
seek musical adventure beyond "their" boxes, "their" genres, "their" market
segments. And because laziness and complacency go hand in hand, they have
developed the annoying quality to take themselves much too seriously. All those
rappers, singer/songwriters, housers, hardcore-grinders, and whatever, they
keep preaching for their own church. All of them so damn sure of themselves,
each his own bible under his arm, full of truth, like elders of obscure
communions. But, excessive seriousness, religious conviction, and seeking
financial security are the worst enemies of playfulness and creativity. It's not
easy to admit, but pop music is becoming a rigid medium, with no place for
freedom, eccentricity, and against-the-grainness. And if Bono recognizes this, it
is to be expected that soon the public will not want the fast food the record
industry is feeding them.

This is the problem that faces the pop music of the 90s: how to freshen things
up? Open things up? How to get rid of all those tangling conditions? Answer:
mock the old and look for new musical freedom. There's one group who have
taken the front stage on this: Faith No More. Their music provokes, banters,
puts you on the wrong foot, balances on the brim of tastelessness, and basically
does what has not been done before.

Hangover

There is little reason to remember the night Holland lost to Denmark through
penalty shots [this was the European soccer championship of '92, FL]. Except
that Faith No More played the Paradiso when Schmeigel stopped Van Basten's
fatal run. "Did you guys loose?," singer Mike Patton teased the audience. A kind
of national hangover hung across the room. People weren't happy, in the words
of Mike Patton the day after, "a bit fed up." An yes, he did fight a guy who came
on stage. It shouldn't have happened, but it's a fact that the guy shouldn't have
been there at that time (I know some people who know this guy. He was an avid
FNM fan, but sold his entire collection of FNM albums memorabilia after the
incident, FL). After that, while the band played an almost endless bombastic
instrumental salvo (Woodpecker From Mars, FL), he laid on the floor like dead
for minutes on end. "I couldn't go anywhere, so I decided to take a rest." And
when the room was boiling and bad vibes were in the air in the form of
countless heated stagedivers, the band played a neat soul ballad by The
Commodores, Easy. "Let's pretend we're visiting our grandmothers. Let's all be
very polite now," Patton spoke to the crowd [you can check the actual words in
the video from this gig that circulates, FL]. Noteworthy: Mike does know how to
sing ("If it ever gets to the point where I find it necessary to prove my singing
abilities...I would like someone to bash me in the face and stop me"). And when
Easy was finished: "Now let's pretend we're at a Slayer concert and fuckin'
break everything." After which the hardcore violence started again. "No man, I
wasn't angry," Mike evaluates the gig. "I had a great time."

Horrible

Why did you call your album Angel Dust? Is the band on drugs?

Not that I am aware of. No good drugs anyhow. No no. We were delighted by
the idea that angel dust is a horrible drug that makes you aggressive and
paranoid. And the title together with the picture of a beautiful, restful bird, that
you would normally see on an easy-listening sleeve. That contrast has a
disturbing effect on people. The average rock fan will put a sleeve like that
aside: bluh, I don't want to listen to this. That's what we like best.

There is a very divergent `country song' on the album: R.V. What is it about?

R.V. means recreational vehicle. A typical part of American culture: people live
in holiday caravans. We call them white trash. In America, everyone knows
someone who lives in an R.V. These people are looked down upon, while
everyone knows they're part of society. These people are usually fat, watch TV
all day, and eat TV dinners. The song R.V. is almost a mark of honour to those
pigs. My family's like that. The kind of people who stay inside these caravans all
day and complain: nobody speaks English anymore. No one listens to them,
they're only talking to themselves. The song is a profile of the average redneck
mentality.

It was immediately called your Tom Waits song. Any problems with that
comparison?

Not at all. Tom Waits is great.

And Jizzlobber, what is that about?

`Jizz' means sperm, and `to lob' means to throw (remember this was originally
for a Dutch audience, FL). The title is comic, but hasn't got anything to do with
the rest of the lyrics.

It is the song in which you speak about `dirty mattresses.' We thought about
sperm immediately.

Well, the song is more about being caged than anything else. It definitely is not
an orgasmic song. But the title is okay. Fine image: sperm flying through the air.
Triumphant.

A while ago your (hobby) band Mr. Bungle released an album (a giant flop). You
said in an interview: I want to go with Mr. Bungle. I don't want to be in a band
that is going downhill any longer. But now you're here again.

I might have said something like that, but it all seems a bit exaggerated. That
was in the period I gave a lot of interviews that I shouldn't have given. I was fed
up with Faith No More. Nobody bought our albums and we just kept touring. I
was disillusioned. When you're touring, sometimes as a band you get the
feeling you're living like rats. You're kept busy and stupid temporarily. You're
treated like a pimp treats a whore. And if you don't want to be a part of that, it
gets frustrating. We needed people to bang our heads against the wall. I wanted
to crawl away. That's why I was delighted to record an album with Mr. Bungle.
The interviews I did during that time were pretty negative. I said things like:
Faith No More is like a job to me. Because I felt like that. But I don't think I
portrayed myself correctly; It made me look like a teased son-of-a-bitch more
than anything else.

But you never thought: I quit Faith No More and go on with Mr. Bungle?
I had responsibilities towards the record company, because they were worried.
Worried that I would leave the sinking ship. To convince them that that was not
my intention I had to defend myself in what looked like a law suit. In the end I
got what I wanted. And that's good, because being in two bands at the same
time is great. It isn't a threat. It's more like a physical need: I found I had to do
more. You eat a little too much and then you have to shit some more.

Target

It seems to us that the bands of which it was said a few years ago that they
would determine the future of rock music, bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and
Metallica, have set out to sail a safe course. Therefore, we had expected the
new Faith No More album to feature at least one commercial rock ballad. But
no.

That's the most pathetic thing you see other bands do; to get entangled in their
own success formula. If you see bands do that...it's hopeless. It's no good for
anyone in any way. I mean: they fill their pockets for some two years and
then...The only way to keep Faith No More together is to motivate ourselves.
And you can only do that by experimenting. We stay happy that way. If you
don't do that you become a sun-burnt rich bastard, a target...Fuck that.

Is that the idea behind Faith No More? To stay elusive? Faith No More doesn't
seem to be so much as a crossover band, but more a collage of all kinds of
styles. As a listener you never know what you're up to.

It just happens like that, without us being aware of it. All five of us are rather
stubborn personalities. So we all know exactly what we're up to. Most of the
time, musicians get too fucked up when they listen to too much music at the
same time. They get over-stimulated and the end result is garbage. Curiously
enough, it turns out good for us mostly. I guess it's our merit.

Do you use the lyrics as a connecting element? Do you use them to make clear
what Faith No More is about?
I don't think we have an obligation to clarify ourselves through our lyrics. Or
even take a standpoint. All five of us simply couldn't agree on any standpoint. If
one of use gets a little too outspoken, he's probably lynched by the others.
About the lyrics: it's almost a pitty they're printed on the sleeve. Because the
public expects a revelation. That the lyrics will say something about our past,
our lives. And to make that kind of connection via some lyric is almost
dangerous.

That's what we want to get at: to us, Faith No More is a band that deliberately
doesn't provide any clarity, both musically and lyrically. You don't give the
audience the opportunity to identify with you. Isn't that the idea behind the
band?

The reason we appear like that is that we're bored easily. We have to entertain
ourselves. And give the audience a challenge. That's important to me. People
shouldn't feel at ease about what they hear. Therefore, it is almost our duty to
provoke.

Is that where the element of parody gets into the concept?

Absolutely.

The rock press often reproached Faith No More of `tastelessness'. You would
ridicule rock 'n' roll.

I think people who look at us as a joke band take an extremely superior point of
view. They look down on us and say: Oh my God, it's nothing. They're snobs.
Maybe critics ought to be snobbish, it's their job. But I don't have to agree with
them just because of that. I think it's easy to see it as an insult when a band
uses parodying elements. They get confused about it. They think: does this
band really mean this? Or not? They don't know, get frustrated, and the next
thing you know is they don't want to have anything to do with you. I know that
feeling: when bands leave me insecure...it's frustrating. And that's exactly what I
like. For me it's one of the few things that are fun: you should be confused. You
should think: what the hell is going on?

During your performance in London you advised the audience to smoke crack.

Yeah. It's one of those things...as a singer you are in a position of power. You're
a media figure. You have an obligation towards your audience. You have the
responsibility to be positive. That's trendy these days, it sells. When I advise
people to smoke crack it's only a reaction to that trend. I only want to make
clear that I never want to be the spokesman for whatever cause. Sometimes the
only way to get your point across is being negative. What's wrong with that? As
a matter of fact, it's only getting really interesting when everyone has a crack
pipe with them at our next show. But all joking apart, you just shouldn't go on
stage thinking you're a king. That would be really boring. The best shows we've
done were under the worst conditions. At places where no on wanted to see us.
We were supporting Metallica, somewhere in Utah. It's swarming with Mormons
there. They hated us. Threw bottles. Spat at us. Fourteen, fifteen thousand
people. Then I made a remark about Mormons and they hated us even more.
Then our bass player played a fifteen minute solo. One note, dang dang dang.
Bottles flew over our heads. War. But those circumstances, when you don't feel
at ease, are often the most inspiring.

And how inspiring is it to be a support act to Guns 'n Roses?

Better than I thought. I'd thought our presence there would be totally misplaced.
We said: we may not like GNR, we may not like playing in open air stadiums in
broad daylight, where we sound like shit and look like shit on a much too large
stage that wasn't built for us, and we may not like the fact that people are
paying too much money for a ticket...that's all true. But the fact is: it's a very
good opportunity to reach a large audience that otherwise wouldn't have come
to see us. And that's good. The other side of it is that we want to headline
again. It will happen in October. Playing with a roof over our heads. We're at our
best like that.

Cuddly toys
Faith No More's lyrics often seem to be written from a child's perspective. Is that
important to you? Does it keep you fresh, optimistic, etc.?

Well, I don't know what exactly is childish about this band...whether it's the
lyrics, or parody, it stems from the fact we enjoy childish things.

But we don't ask how childish the band is, we ask how important the child's
point of view is to your music?

Hard to say. I think most of us have had a lousy youth, and maybe we are still
stuck in it. [Long silence]. I think we are fascinated by little cuddly things. We're
like old ladies: we like cuddly toys. Strange thing is, the only things I can get
really upset about, are tiny trivialities, things I shouldn't get upset about at all.
But it happens, and that is childish. Whether you explain it positively or
negatively, it remains childish. To tell you the truth, I suspect I got stuck in the
anal phase. It's all about shit, assholes, etc. I think we all got stuck in peculiar
phases.

You keep changing the way you look, that's for sure.

It's because I am bored. You're touring. You have a lot of days off. So you get
bored. We found something to it: haircuts. Haircuts that kill! We give one
another new haircuts. To fool around with the way you look is great. To give
yourself a new face every once in a while.

Childish! Easily Bored! Another look each time!

Boredom stems from watching TV too much.

Children get bored easily too. Your music changes shape so often you can
listen to it as if you were a two-year old yourself.

Isn't that a bit over-romanticized? I don't think we give people that much! I think
we arouse primitive urges.

Two-year olds exist by the grave of their primitive urges.

Absolutely. But you have to be careful to say you feel like a two-year old
listening to our music. There are listeners who have been raped as a child.
They sure don't want to be two years old again.

What do you think of people having Mike Patton posters in their bedrooms?

I've been in a room like that once and it scared the hell out of me.

Translated and transcribed by Frankco Lamerikx.

Frankco:

"And interview from the Dutch Magazine OOR that provides some insight in the
apparent reasons behind Faith No More. Mike is very co-operative for a change.
If you find of his sayings awkward, it's probably due to my limited translating
capabilities."

Hot Metal Issue Mid 1992

Faith No More | Hot Metal - August 1992

Angel Dust may seriously damage your mental health, but Faith No
More's version is seriously good for your ears. Jeremy Sheaffe spoke
with Mike Patton and Billy Gould, but still couldn't find out what a
Jizzlobber really is!
Hot Metal | August 1992
ANGEL OF WEIRD
Words by Jeremy Sheaffe
Photos by Ross Halifn

Faith No More are not, repeat not, your everyday, world-touring,

chart-topping rock 'n' roll stars. If they were they'd be Guns 'N' Roses
and there is no way that you'd be reading an interview in Australia's
loudest mag! In fact, if they were rock stars this article would be
exactly the same as the one you could read in any magazine
collecting dust on any toilet floor.

And not only are Faith No More not rock stars but the five individuals
who make up the band are so unalike that when two of them are
asked the same question the difference in response can be anywhere
from predictable to completely astounding. For example, when I ask
what 'Jizzlobber', a song from their new opus 'Angel Dust' is about,
bass player Billy Gould replies:

"You know what jizz is?" Yep!

"And you know what the verb 'to lob' is about?" Yep again!
"Well put them both together!"

Is it written about any jizzlobbers that you know?

"It's written about some porno star, but I don't remember his name,
I'm not the porno expert in the group!"

Who is then?
After a pause for thought, the reply seems obvious. "Probably Patton."
So we ask the frontman the same question. Mike, what exactly is
'Jizzlobber' really about?

"Well, it's about this fear I have of going to gaol. I know it's gonna
happen someday... I've been there once, but I have a feeling I'm
gonna go some day for a very long time."

See! It really isn't easy trying to make sense of all this. And if you've
heard any of 'Angel Dust' you'll understand exactly why that is. Faith
No More (who, apart from the reprobates already mentioned, is made
up of Roddy Bottum on keyboards, Jim Martin on guitars, and Mike
Bordin on drums) are not out to do what you expect of them, but
merely to do what they expect of themselves. 'Angel Dust' is by no
means just a follow-up album to the hugely successful, chart-shaking
'The Real Thing'. No, this is the San Franciscan quintet's fourth album
and it will stand or fall on its own merits

"When we did 'The Real Thing'," exlpains Billy, "we had a tiny budget,
we were broke and on top of that nobody really gave a shit about us.
Nobody knew what kind of music we played and nobody could classify
us. We were at a real disadvantage in those days, but now we're at a
real advantage." Adding to the advantageous position the band find
themselves in is the fact that all through June and most of July this
year they joined Spundgarden as support to the metal circus that is
Guns 'N' Roses' European tour. And then, from July 17 to who knows
when, they'll be warming the stage for Metallica and the Gunners on
their co-headlining jaunt around America. Rock 'n' roll or wot?

"Oh God yes," agrees the now sjort-haired Patton. "Its a total
spectacle, a sick circus..."

And what part of this sideshow do Faith No More play? My guess is the
freak show, or perhaps the clwons. I'm wrong again.

"We're not even involved. We're just watching it. Guns 'N' Roses are
the circus... it's amazing... it's just a lot of money and way too much
time to spend it in."

Continuing the theory that Faith No More never really listen to each
other, or totally disregard what the others say, Billy Gould thinks "it's
fucking amazing that we even got on the tour, one of the biggest
tours in the world. I don't know... I mean, aesthectically we're
different!

"I think it's good though. I've gotta give Guns 'N" Roses credit, and
give Metallice credit, too. Right now it's really responsible of them to
pick bands that are different because they didn't have to do that.
They could pretty much tour with anybody."
Referring back to the tour's carnival atmosphere and blatant excess,
and hinting at Faith No More's unerring ability to be the fly in the
ointment, Patton adds, "It's more like you see so many thing that are
fucked up that you wanna say something - and we're already pushing
it. The amazing thing is that everybody knows something is going to
happen," he laughs. "By the time we get to the States, I'm sure
something will have happened!" Mike didn't have to wait very long for
something to happen. On the day of our interview, Guns 'N' Roses
decided, two hours before they were due on stage, that Axl was "too
exhausted" to play to 30, 000 eager fans in Manchester, England.

Billy says that kind of thing has happened every day, that the
Gunners go on stage late "all the time. We wouldn't do it, so I don't
know why it is. I'd like to know myself!"

A few months back in Hot Metal Billy was quoted as saying that 'Angel
Dust' would either be a huge flop or would sell by the truckload. The
verdict is still in the balance, a bit of a hung jury, as they say in 'LA
Law'. "I just think that way," says Billy, who's still not sure himself
which way the album will go but seems confident, that, like the band,
it will never occupy any sort of middle ground. "I think that what we
did was to take a chance here. I think we could've played it safe and
just redone the last record, and that would have done really well.

"But," he says, his voice strengthening, "we didn't opt for that, so I've
got no idea what'll happen with this. All I know is that we made the
best record we could. We did our best job, and what more could you
expect?"

What more could we expect? Well, given Faith NO More's past record
as full-on eccentrics, we could expect some startling press statement
saying that Mike's gonna join Mr. Bungle full time, or that Jim Martin
has killed the rest of the band. C'mon Bill, and start living up toy your
reputation - you're starting to make me look stupid with all this
normality. Read the first paragraph, Bill, I'm trying to make you guys
look wrird!
"That's an easy angle to take, it's easy to write that stuff because it's
right there. It's the most obvious angle, but it's not necessarily the
most interesting. I mean, how many times can people get interested
reading about the same thing, y'know?"

But, I moan, that's part of the challenge of interviewing a member of

Faith No More. Like I pointed out before, ask any two members the
same question and you'll get two very different answers. Bastards.
"There is really no one to answer these things," argues Bill. :If you
want an interesting interview with me ask me what Czechoslovakia
was like, talk about things that maybe we've seen, travel or
something. Things other people might find interesting.
"When it comes to writing songs, the material is something we do
unconciously. We're musicians and we're in a band and we write
songs - it's not something that we analyse. It's hard to ana;yse what
you do naturally, it's really kinda difficult. It's especially difficult to say
it in an interestin way because it's a little too close. It seems natural,
it's what we do naturally." Then, as a footnote, he asks, "Does that
make sense?" Maybe, but either way I'll follow Bill's lead and ask him
what it was like to play in these places. Did that blow some
misconceptions he'd had? "You just don't know until you go there. We
just played what used to be the Eastern Bloc. We played Hungary and
Czechoslovakia - Prague is one of the most beautiful places in the
world. When we played Hungary people were coming from Bulgaria,
Macedonia... These people were coming from places that were out
there, way out in the middle of fucking nowhere, and they were
driving this far and they knew about us and wanted to come to the
show."

Bill's on a bit of a roll now. He certainly can show a much more

mature side to himself on occasion, and this is one of those times. "It
made me realise that there is no money to be made by being in a
band and turing out there, but two-thirds of the world's population
lives in these place," he adds. "I think it's really total bullshit, that
when we do these interviews we're just doing it to get people to
spend money on the record, so we can charge the highest ticket price
and charge the highest T-shirt price. All the people who have the
money imagine anywhere else that's not like where they live as being
full of fucking primitives who live in caves or spend all their times in
death squads, shooting people. Of course it's not like that!"

So Bill thinks the best thing about being in FNM is travelling the world.
And what about Mr. Patton? Unsurprisingly, Mile's answer is totally
different to Bill's.

"I would have to sat kiddie pron," he says without hesitation. "
received a video tape of child pornography once from a Japanese fan
who was only a little girl herself, very nice and polite. She came up to
me and said 'I hear you like porno, here's a present for you!' because
in Japan that's the way they express themselves. So I was like, 'Wow,
thanks!'
"I took the tape home and put it in my VCR and it was like 'Oh my
God!' I didn't expect that at all, especially from a little girl. The fan
who gave it to me was like a teenager and the girl in the film, she was
probably 12, 11."

Are there really so many answers for the one simple question? Yep,
there certainly are. And why? Well, because this, my friends, is the
Faith No More way.
Mid 1992

Faith No More
The Long & Dusty Road

By Marina Zogbi

"The way we tour, it's kind of like training for us," says FNM bassist
Bill Gould. "The more shows we do, the better and stronger we get.
We had a year off, and all this tour's really done is gotten us just
level; now it's time to improve." Bill's referring to the band's first live
shows since the recording of new LP Angel Dust: A recently completed
European tour with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden. They're
currently in the midst of a U.S. stadium tour with Guns and Metallica,
and plan to go out on their own later this month.

Once again FNM face the prospect of virtually non-stop touring, but
this time, unlike their previous experience, the band are mentally
prepared. "It was like a drowning swimmer in a pool trying to do
anything to stay afloat," Bill describes taking advantage of the touring
opportunities that kept popping up well after the release of '89's The
Real Thing. Drummer Mike Bordin continues the metaphor, "Then
when you finally felt like you were reaching the rim of the pool, it was
like 'Oh, Australia? OK. Another European tour? OK.'" Though grueling,
all that roadwork did introduce the band to a varity of audiences and
cultures. "It's really cool because we can look forward to going back
to a lot of different places, like Brazil, Australia and Japan," says Mike.

The recent Guns Eurotour brought Faith to Hungary and

Czechoslovakia for the first time, places most bands can't afford to
play on their own. "It was a really big crowd," Bill describes the
Prague show, "and they came from all over the area, Poland and
everything. The military was really nervous because they hadn't had
so many young people in one place since the revolution." For the
show in Hungary, fans came from neighboring countries of Bulgaria
and Macedonia. "It's unbelievable how well-appreciated it is," notes
Bill of touring such places. "It's like throwing a drop of water on a guy
dying of thirst in the desert...Bulgarians have this wild look in their
eye; they've driven 15 hours to come to the show, they don't want to
bother you, they just want a picture. To think what this meant for
these people..."

While in Berlin the bassist decided he would try to buy a Trabant, the
tiny now-outmoded East German car, "because they're really cheap,
nobody wants them." After mentioning in a radio interview that he'd
found one for 100 marks ($75), but was open to anything cheaper, a
fan called the station and offered his car as a gift. "I did the whole
tour in that car," Bill notes, adding that his vehicle was often the
object of ridicule on the part of West Germans.

For their hour-long slot on the European Guns tour, Faith played six or
seven songs off Angel Dust, a few off The Real Thing, plus "We're still
playing the old stuff that we like," says Mike, "'As the Worm Turns',
'Death March', 'We Care a Lot'." One song they hadn't yet played live
at press time was the catchy, extremely danceable "A Small Victory,"
a must-add for the U.S. shows, especially since it's the band's second
video release. The video, directed by Marcus Nispel (C&C; Music
Factory) is an extreme departure for Faith. Says Bill, "It's totally
different than any video we've ever done; 'A Small Victory' is pretty
much of a dance song more than anything, it's the furthest we've
ever taken that, so we had to have a visual to complement it." Adds
Mike, "We also wanted something very slick, something that looked
really well-done, no tricks. The last video ('Midlife Crisis') was
beautiful looking but it had a weird photography style and a weird
kind of color." The new clip features no performance footage (a first
for FNM), several bizarrely outfitted extras, and the band themselves
looking very sharp in Italian suits. Bill sums up: "Think of a Madonna
video but see us in it instead. It doesn't make any sense, but at the
same time it's perfect." Look for FNM--minus the suits--on tour this fall
and beyond.

August 1992

Music Express Issue August 1992

"The Beauty and the Horror"

Tom Lanham
Music Express, August 1992

"You wanna know a great way to get even with somebody?" Mike
Patton asks. It's a sunny afternoon in San Francisco and we're seated
at La Cumbre, one of the hippest Mexican restaurants in town. But
watching this guy's steely eyes flash with mischievous malice, you
can't shake the feeling that there's one helluva storm blowing in.

"My particular vengeance was against a business that had fucked me

over really bad," the 24 year old continues. Today, his muscular six-
foot frame is housed in workboots, skater shorts and a service station
attendant's shirt that reads "Ron, Service Station Attendant." He
waves his arms for emphasis, and speaks in a booming bass voice
that makes the other cantina patrons a bit nervous. In short, this guy
looks like someone you *do not* want to piss off.

Patton continues his story, yapping with a mouthful of food. "So one
morning, see, I woke up, ate an entire burrito, drank a half-pint of
rum, downed some castor oil, then drank some Ipecac syrup, which
takes about a half hour to work. Then I walked down to this business,
and I'd timed it perfectly."

Suddenly the food in front of me doesn't look so hot. I swallow the last
bite and brace myself: "Uh, barforama?"

"Yeah!" Patton is aglow. "Nothing is more repulsive, and no one would

ever think you'd go to so much trouble! This place had a nice, clear
counter and no janitor, either." But his lantern-jawed pugilist's
features lose their intensity for a microsecond. "It kinda backfired,
though, because I took too much castor oil, which coats the stomach,
so not a lot of food came up. But a lot of blood did, though!"
A few heads turn to look disgustedly at Patton, who's now cackling. If
they'd look closer, the lunchers might recognize him as the guy who
rolled spastically around onstage in furry pants while his band, Faith
No More, plumbed out the power chords to their surprise Top 5 hit,
"Epic," on an MTV awards show. Or as the guy whose group nailed
five 1991 Bammies and Band Of the Year kudos in Rip, Spin, and
Music Express in 1990. But the frenetic vocalist is on one of his off-
days, relaxing in relative anonymity on the eve of a new FNM release,
Angel Dust, on Slash/Reprise, as well as a pending jaunt through
Europe with Soundgarden and Guns N' Roses.

The Matt Wallace-produced Angel Dust was recorded in San

Francisco, with not a note offered for label inspection until the
project's completion. This naturally had a few execs worried, but our
dauntless groin-grunge heroes cared not. "Everybody involved in
working your 'new' record really wants your last record," Patton
sneers. "And anything that deviates from that is a threat to their
personal well being. Consequently, you're having meetings with
bastards who are worried about their house payments telling you
you've gotta add a chorus here and there. And you're left scratching
your head, completely bent over..."

As you've probably figured, Patton hits below the belt, and if you dare
step into the ring with him, you either get TKO'ed or puked upon in a
vicious torrent. But few could deny that it's Patton's no-holds-barred
spirit that sent FNM to new platinum heights when he joined in 1989
for their third recording, The Real Thing. First discovered in his tiny
California hometown of Eureka, idling with his Mr. Bungle outfit, the
singer has become a commanding showman and a meteoric vocal
presence for FNM; his outrageous outlook melded perfectly with the
grainy, whiff o'reefer raunch rock the group had patented (now, of
course, dubbed the "San Francisco sound" by eager music mags).

Patton still records and performs with Mr. Bungle. In fact, in a fit of
bacchanalian excess at a New Year's Eve show in SF last year, he
gave himself an onstage enema. Patton says, "I heard the crowd got a
nice little spray, but I didn't see it because I was bent over." Why such
extreme measures? "Hey, it was a nice, dirty show, a lot of dirty
people, everything was dirty. So why not have a little clean segment
-- wash out myself, wash out the audience...?" Makes sense, doesn't
it?

But when Mike Patton starts sounding logical, there's bound to be a

big, walloping wrecking ball sailing your way. And Angel Dust is its
crushing crane. Given that the confessed caffeine junkie Patton "came
in at a really strange point on the last record, when all the music was
written so I just threw some lyrics on top of it," the maturity he
displays on this effort is downright electrifying. Through 13 strikingly
diverse numbers he snaps, snarls, gargles, growls, wails and warbles,
producing a Sybil-schizo persona for each track. It's a virtuoso
performance, and a surprise for any naysayers who thought "Epic"
was a fluke.

"Land of Sunshine" whips open on Billy Gould's Joy Division-ish bass

lead, then careers onto keyboardist Roddy Bottum's carnival-calliope
keyboards. Then there's Patton, the geek at the centre of the tumbled
tent, biting off the chicken's head in lyrics that ruthlessly indict mass
consumerism. He actually sings, crooning style, on "Caffeine,"
sounding a bit like Sly Stone trapped in a little one-man submarine.
On the initial single, "Midlife Crisis," marching to a processional beat
from neolithic drummer Mike Bordin, Patton reverts to a guttural
nihilism that would make Nivek Ogre blush.

Guitarist Jim Martin's soft rockabilly textures lend an almost David

Lynch aura to "RV," a Patton monologue on fat, beer-drinking middle
America. Martin's reckless riffing in "Smaller and Smaller" -- coupled
with Bottum's Phantom of the Opera washes -- falls before Patton's
feral onslaught. It's frightening how much visceral power this lad has,
and you get the feeling that his talent is still only half-tapped. Even on
"Everything's Ruined," as close to a pop ditty as you're allowed on
Angel Dust, he's got this knife-you-in-the-shower quality that keeps
the adrenalin pumping.

"Be Aggressive" seats Patton in the bleachers alongside a tape loop of

cheerleaders changing "Be ag-gres-sive," and on the violent
Wagnerian assult "Jizzlobber" (nice name, huh?), he ... well, you'll
have to hear it for yourself.

"One thing I've been doing is listening to a lot of mood music, easy
listening," Patton explains, carefully dotting his tortilla chips with hot
sauce. "And I've taken a lot from that. The chorus of 'Everything's
Ruined' reminds me of Sinatra, Jackie Gleason." And "Land of
Sunshine," he says, was culled from countless fortune cookie
predictions, then pieced together into a thematic whole. And the
Native American vocal sample on "Smaller and Smaller" he bluntly
terms "shameless culture rape. We decided to take an Indian chant
and fuck it up, sort of a Dances With Wolves aesthetic." He chuckles
at the idea of Kevin Costner representing anything wild or Western.
"White bread," he smirks. "White fuckin' bread!"

FNM's frontman was especially pleased with Bottum's newfound

wizardry -- it's his keyboards that provide much of Angel Dust's
moody underpinnings. The sounds are founded in E-Max emulators,
the manuals of which "got thrown away during the recording. But
Roddy's trying a lot of different stuff this time, which is great.
Actually, all he's really doing is using the samplers he's always had.
Before, he was just too lazy to try it."

Bottum, phoning a couple of weeks later from the midst of a UK arena

tour with Axl's miscreants, seconds the motion. "Yeah, there's not a
whole lot of guitar on it, is there?" he asks innocently. "In addition to
the E-Maxes, I also used piano, Hammond organ, even an accordian
on 'Midnight Cowboy.'

"There was a lot more room to do different things," he adds. "We

were on the road a long time with our last record, so we had a lot of
time to decide what we would do for our next one, and it only made
sense to expand technologically."

Bottum, an FNM founder, was working at an obscure San Francisco

movie house called the Cedar Centro back in 82 when the group first
began scratching around for its now-distinctive approach. One night's
film fare would be Tex Avery cartoon classics, the next Michael
Powell's grisly Peeping Tom. This may account for the musician's
wildly imaginative theatrical arrangements, which are honed to
cinematic perfection on Angel Dust. Bottum thinks big, and wasn't
afraid to lay it on thick.

The record label, he says, "really wanted to hear what we were doing,
but we refused from the start. We said they could listen to it when it
was done, and we made it that way to avoid all that 'followup'
pressure." Echoing Patton's edginess, he reflects, "The first time they
heard it, I think they were pretty shocked and scared. They didn't
trust us. So we had meetings with 'em, and we finally said, '*Listen*
to us. We *know* what we're doing, so just go with it.' And now at
least they pretend to like it."

The album art was also done in typical renegade style. The cover is a
decorous photograph of a beautiful snowy egret, while the backside is
a wide-angle shot of a meat-packing plant, complete with a severed
cow's head mounted on a hook. "We were going for the beauty and
the horror -- it kinda works with the theme of the record."

Beauty and horror. Yup, that pretty much sums up Angel Dust. As far
back as the sessions with former vocalist Chuck Mosely, FNM was
toying with such dualities. Remember "We Care a Lot"?

But hey! You're probably wondering, "How's that Patton dude doing
with his burrito?" Well, he's just about finished. With the food, that is,
not his titillating tales from the dark side.

"Did you hear the lyrics on 'Be Aggressive'?" he's asking, leaning
forward dangerously in his chair. He of course means the screaming
chorus of "I swallow, I swallow, I swallow," a catchy set of words by
any standard. "What'd you think? Pretty fuckin' extreme, isn't it? Did
you think it was a homoerotic song or something? That's what's
gonna be good about it. I think certain people are gonna be really
vocal about it, like 'What the hell is that?!' And others'll be so weirded
out by it they won't say anything.
"As long as we make a few people squirm," he grins, "our job is done."

That's the first time the singer's used the word "job" in reference to
his career with FNM. But, thanks to the Real Thing's staggering
success -- which hit a full year after the album's release -- Patton was
thrown into a whirlwind 18 month long juggernaut that reduced his
life to waiting to play. "You don't spend time on tour," he says, "you
waste time. You sleep, you wake up, it's time to play, everything else
becomes very hard to deal with."

Patton can still recall the moment he got the word, somewhere in
Europe, that "Epic" was rocketing up the charts back home. "We
didn't get it," he says. "We were playing shitty clubs, touring in a
shitty van, and somebody said, 'Oh, your single is #15 in America.'
Your first reaction isn't to get excited, it's to go 'Fuck you!' But then
we came back and all of a sudden we had some big tours lined up,
and it was like the record had just come out that day -- we had to
start over."

How did it feel to achieve such overnight success? In his trademark

doleful jargon, Patton makes it clear: "When a master comes in every
day and beats you at 3:00, and one day he comes in with a chocolate
eclair, you don't *want* that fuckin' chocolate eclair!" So much for
bribing FNM with baked goods.

"I need *caffeine*!" Patton blurts out. He races next door and orders a
big latte, served in a cup the size of King Kong's cereal bowl. "I did
this experiment," he explains, "depriving myself of sleep just to see
how long I could go." He swears he only used coffee as his stimulant.

Somewhere during day three Patton began to hallucinate while

watching late-night broadcasts of televangelist Robert Tilton, whose
mile-a-minute psychobabble is a hallucination in its own right. And
anyone who wonders where Patton gets his rants from will find solace
in the fact that God did figure in the picture.

"I made a vow of faith to [Tilton]," he says. "You promise to send him
$100 and he sends you all these neat things. He sent me anointing
oil, prayer cloths, posters, books -- and I never sent him any money.
And I *do* feel guilty about it, too!"

Patton's cup is empty -- he's drained it. "In Eureka you drink so much
coffee, you try and make believe there's something to do," he says,
remembering his hometown as being comprised of "hippies and
loggers." Patton's salvation, if you will, arrived in Trojan Horse garb.

"FNM played in Eureka, and I can't believe they came. No bands came
there. But here they were, in their shitty van, all rotten and stoned,
and I gave 'em a tape of Mr. Bungle. They liked the tape and called
me up.
"But at first I didn't want to do it. You know how insulating college life
is; I was very afraid of leaving that." By moving to San Francisco, he
says, "I learned more in a couple of weeks than I learned in two years
of school," including his most valuable lesson: "You just don't park
your car wherever you want to."

Now, thanks to "Epic," Patton and his poundmates have entered the
big leagues. They can call their own shots at a major label, land slots
on top-drawing tours and feel free to develop their music. But at what
price?

"When you enter the music business, you essentially become a

prostitute, and anyone who denies that is full of shit," Patton says.
"There's no stipulation that we have hits in our contract, but it's
understood. You've gotta have a single, and we took a lot of heat this
time because the record is a little more eclectic."

Both a brain-stimulating artistic enterprise and a creative leap

forward, Angel Dust nevertheless stands on its own sharp-taloned
feet. FNM is mutating, discovering both its limitations and its
possibilities. And when it comes to his craft, Patton says, that nerve-
shaking zeal coming back into his eyes, "You've got to be defensive,
even when it's uncalled for. And my personal way of dealing with
fame is simply not being satisfied. Ever."

And of course there's always the other solution, blowing chunks all
over the company floor until they finally get your drift.

August 1992

Spex Magazine Issue August 1992

MIKE PATTON

by Andy Uhrlau

The singer of Faith No More and the first worldstar of smart metal
entitles himself as an entertainment junkie. "i need input 24 hours a
day", says Patton. To do so, he works in projects like Mr.Bungle,
Naked City and Kronos Quartet. Go ahead!

Smart Metal - what is this? Only the different way of beeing a Rocker?
Or is it a new way of life? Do you need smart or normal drugs for this?
Mark Sikora examintes this new thing with the help of Faith No More
and their fans.
Mike Patton's friend, Andy Uhrlau, met him at several opportunities at
his home in San Francisco and backstage at Faith No More pre-shows
for guns'n roses.

A well-chosen collection of ludicrous leather masks are watching a

totally messed up of dirty underwear, videocassettes, magazines and
one way packages. Here lives Michael Allen Patton with his old friend
and Mr.Bungle guitarist Trey "Scummy" Spruance.

Outside there's the traffic of one of these endless Avenues of San

Francisco, which are headed toward the Pacific.

Summer '92

The TV's on silent mode, Caspar Brötzmann Massaker is played on the

Ghettoblaster. With an evil smile and pointed fingers he digs into the
daily rubbish. The thing he shows me is a golden vinyl. "Isn't that
ridiculous, I really haven't earned that!", he says while he looks at this
shining golden thing, before he throws it back. The Atari baseball
game with all the teams of the MLB is more important at the moment.
"I need entertainment, 24 hours a day. If i have nothing to do, i go
mad." laughs Patton, while he enters the first base with a skilled
pressed button. Now it is Treys turn. The rest of the night was saved.

Three years have gone, since Patton left his homebase Eureka, in the
north of california, and replaced Chuck Mosley as Faith No More's
frontman.

In the late summer of 1988 bassist Bill Gould asked Patton if he would
like to write some lyrics for the band. Three years of a band draft,
which haven't been Pattons, are following. Faith No More toured
within 1 and a half year 3 times through europe and easily filled big
halls in america. Patton rages, pukes and is doing fire-spitting vowel
acrobatics.

"Maybe I wanted to prove that I was the right choice. I came into a
band which existed for many years. Besides I cannot do the same
show again and again, like a circus clown I give everything."

It was Pattons fighting spirit which made a talented rock band a

success story. For all that Patton admits that Mr. Bungle is a grown up
band? Was Faith No More not a step back? "Of course, not", Patton
says convinced. "I learned how to make music with faith No More !
With Mr.Bungle we made noise till it sounds like something we wanted
to hear. We added that to a totally different passage to our
recordings. Like a puzzle the songs emerged. Faith No More are
working with a A, B and C part which are connected with each other."
And so waited Pattons original band in the sleeping Eureka for the
return of the lost child. In the end John Zorn, who owned the '89 demo
OU818 and who used Patton for his european shows and some
Torture Garden showcases in New York, was ready for the studio.
Patton returned to to the west coast with wounded nipples, caused by
the liquid wax of the 'Naked Torture' performances. David Byrson was
behind the controller, John Zorn did the finishing touches. After even
the In-Effect label (24-7 Spyz, Heads Up, Limbo Maniacs) refused to
sign Mr.Bungle, because the thought their lyrics are obscene, they
just signed at Warner. In the summer of '91 they released their debut
'Mr.Bungle', which included all the songs of the OU 818 demo, except
the unpublished 'Mr. Nice Guy', and the six years old Carousel and
Egg which are on the 'The Raging Wrath Of The Eastern Bunny' (1986)
and 'God Fuckin' Damn It, But I Love America' (1987) demos. Both
have been recorded on a 4-track machine in the garage of the
Mr.Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, who earned money for a better
equipment by playing Beatles hits in bars.

"Playing with Mr.Bungle" says Patton "has always been like having
really good sex, and that's what we coulnd't have enough of when we
were 15 years old and stayed in our village." MTV wanted to play the
'Quote Unquote' video (originally title: 'Travolta'), but after they saw it
they put it on the black list, because of violence. --[I'm not sure if
black list is the equivalent name of the list where cencored things are
on?]--. Dead bodies are in the video, which hang on the ceiling of a
factory. A lot of masked freaks are dancing around a beheaded barbie
doll, while Mike drilles a golden cross into his bleeding left cheek.
"Real art has never been shown on MTV" Patton takes comfort. He still
didn't like to put a sale promoting 'Mike Patton - the Voice of FNM'
sticker on the Mr.Bungle albums. "I didn't want to connect Mr.Bungle
with my person and so I created the Vlad Drac pseudonym. Mr.Bungle
is a band. It is not only *MY* project, besides a average FNM fan
wouldn't like our "Death-Circus-Cartoon-Disco-Rock" sound. Last but
not least this fall Mr.Bungle is releasing the EP "Thunderball" and a
homevideo, which shows the complex draft of the band. You will see
the banned MTV video and cuts of the US Mr.Bungle tour.

With a pilot overall from the gulf war and a leather mask of his private
collection, Patton blows for the attack. Charlie Parkers 'Yardbird Suite'
is fired as well as 'Drug me' from the Dead Kennedys.

Bad words and green elastic saliva torpedo in a super fast style
(approximate 70 words in 14 seconds) the unprotected ears of mainly
under aged people. Mike Pattons word pieces are flying over Trey
Spurance' Stratocoaster riffs and the speed grooves of Danny Heifetz
(who really is a descendant of the world famus violin player with the
same name.) A intended chaos discharge in many exploding melodic
volleys. In the endless up and down of obscure stories about the good
old in-out game you are about to see a free sightseeing tour in the
red light district. Relaxing jazz passages create a crawl, till vomit
voice Patton welcomes you to the collective ejaculation: "I was trained
to fuck you, baby, yeah, yeah, ouww".
After two hours a long night ends. The satisfied and confused listener
is released and can go home. "Maybe we're maniacs or just simply
prepubescent bastards. I fight for that; besides, people shouldn't feel
safe at our shows. That's why it is good when they never know what
will happen in our shows. They will be tortured and stroked. They
seem to enjoy it, the're coming back. We are just reacting to our sick
environment and we're learning how to make fun of our own picture
in the mirror."

Patton finds his topics in his owm environment. 'Dead Goon' is about
one of his former friends who was mentally handicapped and he cared
about up to that day he was found dead. "This little boy strangled
himself with the nylons of his unnatural mother, who gave him
lemonade instead of mothermilk. It was like a game, which ends
tragically.", Patton recalls while he stroke both hands over his face,
"Later the police found out that he was masturbating while he played
with the tights. To that time I've been really shocked, this boy was 11
years old. It is like a self therapy, if I use those events to write my
lyrics. Sometimes it makes "click" and things, who scared and
shocked me, are now interesting. You disgust yourself - click - you
love it. Things like that fascinates me. Homosexuality, sodomy and
human crisis are my topics.The look behind the front of so called
regular people ." Freedom of speech a la Patton enjoyed the audience
of the Hamburg Marquee Club, when Faith No More played a secret
gig doing their tour with Guns'n Roses. "I've seen Axls Rose every
day", Patton tells the people, attracting their attention, "I wanted to
tell you something, ever since I first saw him he has this little piece of
dried sperma right here on his lip", the people are laughing, "Wanna
know what?" Patton adds after a little break "It's mine!". Patton
enjoys the intimate atmosphere, walks through the club and
welcomes the visitors personally. A metal star to be touched, who
always says what he thinks. Even Motoerhead's Lemmy threatened
Patton once with beating him as Patton defamed respectles other
musicians. Did you bring up your kids like this?

In the beginning of the fifties Elvis Presley helped the popular

crossover between R'n'B, Country & Western, gospel and hillbilly to
be world famous. Today, in the early 90's Mr.Bungle emerges Jazz,
Funk and HipHop of the east coast with the white Rock/Pop/Metal of
the west coast. On the Virus 100 sampler Patton sounds like Elvis
when he's doing the Dead Kennedy song "Let's Lynch The Landlord"
and he confess his sympathy with the king. "A interesting man and
great performer. Nevertheless, he has been destroyed by the same
people who loved him like a god." Nice destiny - Patton works with his
Faith No More buddies on a, for the beginning of the next year
planned to be released, Muzak EP. You can hear immortal evergreen
from Sinatra to Manilow on this EP. "Isn't recording these things the
greatest thing? This stuff is many times harder than Napalm Death or
Godflesh or what we've ever done with Faith No More. When you have
to hear this, the only thing I can do is to freak out."
Together with Scummy and Patton lies the next John Zorn LP, work
from the french poetess Jean Genet, to music. For his friends Kronos
Quartet Patton writes in the fall some songs. The violinbow is a new
challenge and with a painful face you try to produce something useful
for Kronos Quartet, whose "Quartet No.8" is used as a sample in the
Faith No More song "Malpractice". "Kronos Quartet wanted to write
something for that album too, but they didn't like my lyrics. To thank
them now I write something for them."

For Patton is work the middle of his life. Like a hunted animal he
neither save his spare power nor his private moments. He hurries
from project to project, from gig to gig. Studio recordings followed by
video shots and world tours, meanwhile he refuses interesting offers
until he writes new lyrics for Y, while he is on tour with X. "If you want
to know what's behind the show", says the Mr.Bungle song 'Carousel',
"Ride my carousel, enter life's jail-cell" compassion not wanted!

August 1992

FAITH NO MORE | AUGUST 1992 | SELECT

That's what you get for the moronic circus that is the Guns N' Roses tour. Ask Faith No
More. And they've hardly even met Dizzy. Or Izzy. Or Iggy. Or Lizzy. Or Gilbey. Or
Tizzy....

Select Magazine | Issue August 1992

A Real Ugly Experience.
STORY BY MARK PUTTERFORD
PHOTOS BY IAN LAWTON

IF THERE WAS ANY SUBSTANCE IN THE THEORY OF BEAUTY SLEEP, THEN

FAITH No More would surely require a fix of Rip Van Winkle proportions.
You'd have to call them 'sartorially challenged', or perhaps 'aesthetically
underprivileged', but in the liberated vocabulary of a distant society they might well be
referred to as 'scruffy bastards'. Singer Mike Patton is the least beautiful of all. Inside
the billowing cocoon of a huge catering marquee planted behind the stage area of
Gateshead Stadium he shuffles from table to table in the most stomach-wrenching pair
of leather knickerbockers imaginable, bought, he boasts, at an Iranian flea market in
Paris and hewn from such crusty hide that "it feels like I've got half a dead cow
wrapped around my balls". On his feet are boots a brickie wouldn't be seen dead in, on
his back a tea towel masquerading as a T-shirt, on his head enough grease to fry a Full
English Breakfast. As he approaches, a sixth sense urges you to train your eyes on
your shoes, in case he thrusts a slimy palm under your nose and grunts something
about "the price of a cuppa, guv?". "Guuuu-UUUU-OOOO-ooood!" is in fact his
opening gambit when he eventually arrives, the celestial refrain stretching through a
jaw-breaking yawn.
"I'm so tired, man. I mean, doing nuthin' kinda knocks me out, and we've had so much
time off on this tour it's disgusting. There's, like, a week off between each show and
when we do get to play it's only for 45 minutes. And it takes us five songs to warm up,
then we've only got three songs left! It sucks..."
His drawl tails off into the dingy basement of boredom, but sympathy doesn't come
easy. Within 15 minutes Patton and his band will be onstage before 20,000 raving
Geordies promoting their current album ('Angel Dust') which is fully expected to
transcend the multi-platinum triumph of 1989's 'The Real Thing' and propel these
San Francisco drop-outs into the stadium-hopping slipstream of hosts Guns N'Roses
themselves. It is, after all, just three years since he joined the band (their 1987 debut
album 'Introduce Yourself' featured original singer Chuck Mosley) yet, in the aftermath
of 'The Real Thing' and the MTV-cracking success of the 'Epic' single, the boy's set to
become a millionaire. Who knows, he might soon be able to afford a regular supply of
Wash & Go...

ON THE CHROME-GRATED CATWALK MOMENTS later, Patton tries to banish his

boredom with a few BUPA-taunting somersaults. As Faith No More lurch with slapdash
abandon into the thundering strains of 'Caffeine' and the Tyneside throng - fresh from
the exertions of openers Soundgarden - surge and froth like a sea of Newcastle Brown,
Patton throws himself head over heels to the floor like he's engaged in Judo combat
with the Invisible Man, staggering to his feet to spit and belch at the front row before
slamming his back on the deck once more with a sickening thud. He looks like he's
enjoying himself at last.
Like Patton, who often looks as though his arms have had an argument with his legs
and are determined to do their own thing, each member of the band could well be
performing in a completely separate sphere. Guitarist Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin, a king-
of-hillbilly Guy Fawkes who actually does wear his spectacles over the top of his
sunglasses, chugs away with neo-Sabbath inclinations on an inevitably black Flying V.
Keyboard player Roddy Bottum, proudly wearing a T-shirt embossed with the legend
'MARKY MARK', bobs and weaves like a Kriss Kross brat. And the rhythm section of
bassist Bill Gould and drummer Mike Bordin twists and tugs its way from thrash to
country and western, barely acknowledging each other along the way.
But this is cultured chaos, clockwork disarray, a schizophrenic symphony where
seductive melodies court hideous guitar riffs, where the bass sound tightens slowly
around your neck and chilling keyboard atmospherics suggest you keep one eye over
your shoulder. This isn't metal, this is Faith No More. This is also only 5.45pm... The
10pm curfew at Gateshead Stadium (where you keep expecting Brendan Foster to
come hurtling around the comer) has meant that Faith No More have to go on in
blazing sunshine, and it's clear conditions are hardly conducive for a classic.
But as the band chum through 'The Real Thing', recent hit single 'Midlife Crisis' and
'We Care A Lot' towards the guts of the set, they fall into a measured stride which once
again seems at odds with their apparently disjointed delivery. This, after all, is the only
place you'll encounter the deadpan theme from the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy rubbing
shoulders with a vicious spurt of hyperblur like 'Introduce Yourself'. And thus,
what better as an encore than an alarmingly authentic version of 'The Commodores'
super-smoochy smash, 'Easy'?
It's 6.30pm by the time Mike Patton slams himself into the stage floor one final time,
and within a minute Faith No More are slumped across the leather sofas of a dressing
room tastefully equipped with a sumptuous spread of food and several crates of ice-
cold lager. They hardly need a dressing room as none of them wear anything onstage
other than what they've had on all week, but if they needed a quiet place to pluck out
their ear plugs (essential FNM stagewear), this specially adapted locker room,
complete with potted plants and moody lighting effects, might as well be it.
The conversation, like almost everything with this band, leaps from one extreme to
another Princess Diana, birth abnormalities, Spain, tunafish sandwiches, the Beastie
Boys, com circles, radiation, ketamine, bestiality - it's difficult to keep up. Yet diarrhoea
remains the recurring theme, the result of a bout of mass food poisoning caused,
everyone suspects, by a cook who was spotted returning to duty from the lav without
washing her hands. "I've just lost half my intestines!" wails Mark the tour manager from
a nearby cubicle, strides visibly bunched around his ankles.
"C'mon Mark. Let's hear you hit that pan real hard," yells an excited Patton, "I want to
hear that mutha echo." "Squirt for me baby, squirt." squeals the dreadlocked Mike
Bordin, snatching lan Lawton's camera and holding it over the top of the cubicle
door for a few paparazzi-style snaps. "I almost squirted tonight onstage," confesses Bill
Gould. "It was real buttock-clenching time for a while there. Shit, I hope Axl doesn't
have the same problem tonight, what with him wearing those tight, white pants an'
all..."
"Hey," Mike Bordin exclaims, "didn't Axl speak to Jim yesterday?"
"Naw, I think it was Patton," says Bill, "I think he said, Huhrrrmmmnn as he flashed past
with his minders."
"Oh, I heard it was more like, Rrrraaahhggg actually," adds Roddy. "Naw, I'm pretty
sure it was, Huhrrrmmmnn," protests Bill. "Some guy said to Patton, Hey, Mike, Axl just
spoke to you, and Patton was like, He did?"

BY AND LARGE, FNM FEEL THEY'VE BEEN TREATED well on this European trek
with Guns N'Roses, although there's hardly been plenty of opportunities to hang out
with their illustrious compatriots. As Bill says: "Touring with Axl has been like touring
with Michael Jackson - although I think I've seen Michael Jackson more times on this
tour than I have Axl."
You get the feeling that the FNM chaps haven't exactly had the time of their lives on
the trip. Roddy was so bored after the Wembley Stadium show that he went to a Spiral
Tribe rave in Blubberhouses, West Yorkshire, to help Select with its 'research'.
"We're not the kind of band that's made for this kind of stadium show," explains Bill.
"It's just not what Faith No More is about. It may be good from a business point of view
because our record has just come out, and what better way to promote it than to get on
a big tour like this? But if we had our way we wouldn't be doing this; I'd rather do ten
nights at the Newcastle Mayfair than one at Gateshead Stadium.
"I mean, it's cool to be out there in front of a lot of people, but man, the sound is shit,
the place is too big, the crowd is a fuckin' mile away... It just lends itself to more of a
cabaret act, the kind of band who want to indulge in all that theatrical bullshit, with
costume changes every other song. I mean, we do change our clothes too, but usually
only once a month."
The whole sickly circus that surrounds any GN'R activity has made life pretty difficult to
bear for Faith No More as well. Ask any of the band how they feel being at the eye of
the hurricane and chances are the enquiry will be met with an expression which
suggests someone nearby has passed wind.
"When is this interview going to be printed?" asks Bill with a nervous laugh. "You see, I
have to watch what I say...but hey, fuck that, just print this: I hate the whole circus
thing, we all hate it. But at the moment we don't have the power to do what we want to
do, so we still have to eat a little bit of shit. (Seems were back to the catering lady
again) We almost have the power to control what we do, but not quite, so we're just
gritting our teeth and getting through it best we can.
"Every band in the world might think they want to open for Guns N'Roses, but lemme
tell you, it's been a real ugly personal experience, having to deal with all the shit that
surrounds this fuckin circus. I've always hated that aspect of rock music and I've never
wanted to be part of it, so to find myself being associated with a tour this big kinda
sucks."
"Besides," Roddy pipes up, "I'm getting more and more confused about who's who in
Guns N'Roses, and it's blowing my mind. There's Dizzy and Iggy and Lizzy and Tizzy
and Gilby and Giddy... Shit man, onstage now there's a horn section, two chick back-
up singers, two keyboard players, an airline pilot, a basketball coach, a coupla car
mechanics..."
This list is interrupted by tour manager Mark, bowels now under control, poking his
head around the door to announce that 'Angel Dust' has hit the number two spot in the
UK album charts, only being kept off the summit by Lionel Richie's greatest hits album.
"Slag the bastard off onstage," suggests Mark, an Australian. "Nah, we'll probably
dedicate 'Easy' to him,"
grins Bill, upholding the band's tradition for contrariness.
That tendency even goes as far as the artwork for 'Angel Dust', the front cover
highlighting the beauty of an exotic bird, the back a grisly photograph of a butcher's
shop window, depicting the head of a cow hanging among plucked and decapitated
chickens on meat hooks. "'Angel Dust' leaves itself open to both angelic and demonic
connotations," says Bill, "so we wanted to balance the beautiful with the sick. It's not a
statement for vegetarianism or anything, its really just a reflection of the music, a visual
representation of what our music is all about; some of it's nice, some of it's fuckin ugly.
IN THE BACKGROUND, GUNS N'ROSES CAN BE HEARD launching into 'Live And
Let Die', and those still hanging in the FNM dressing room exchange silent smirks.
They're gonna have to put up with all of this until October, as, shortly after
the European tour ends, an all-conquering bill of Guns, Metallica and FNM is set to
mop up the States throughout the rest of the summer and autumn. But then they're free
to do what the hell they want to do, which will probably mean headlining a European
tour of their own before Christmas, with someone like The Young Gods supporting.
"This is really just the beginning for us," sighs Bill. "Last time we toured with 'The Real
Thing' I left home at the age of 26 and got back when I was 28. I found some of my
friends had moved away, some had got married, some had had kids... I had a hard
time dealing with that. This time I'm 29, and I know I'm gonna be on the road until I'm
31. Fuck, I don't even wanna think about it..."
Mike Patton shuffles back into the room with a pint of coffee in a transparent plastic
container and welcome news that it's almost time to get on the bus for the long haul to
London, where they'll crash the night before heading on to some Godforsaken German
hell-hole.
Guns N'Roses will be flying down in their private jet, Axl probably on a magic carpet.
But that doesn't bother Faith No More, least of all the explosion-in-an-Oxfam-shop
figure of young Patton who, after all, is just as happy playing with and promoting his
other part-time band, the mysterious Mr Bungle.
"I can't see this band going that way," he grins, "we'd probably go the other way and
end up hitchin' rides to each town with truck drivers or something."
Patton paws his little goatee beard and smiles, as if someone has just tossed ten
pence into his cup. Somehow, you cant imagine him flashing by, surrounded by
bodyguards with only a "Huhrrnnmmnn" (or perhaps a "Rrrraaahhggg") for his fellow
tourists, in a few years time. But then, such is the sick, schizo world of Faith No More,
that maybe he will...
FAITH NO MORE | METAL CONNECTION | AUGUST
1992

Metal Connection | August 1992 | Pat Lewis

It's a balmy midsummer's afternoon in Newcastle, and the members of Faith No
More are holed up on the outskirts of this British borough for the next several
days in a modestly accommodating holiday Inn, The San Francisco based
quintet is currently on a bonafide head banger bonanza world tour opening for
Metallica and Guns n' Roses, which allows them as many as four days 'off' from
performing per week. And today, well, it just happens to be one of those 'off'
days.

While Mike Patton's band mates—drummer Mike Bordin, keyboardist Roddy

Bottum, bassist Billy Gould and guitarist Jim Martin—are scattered around town
doing a variety of touristy things, the singer is confined to his hotel room, the
designated caretaker of band business. On this particular day, that business
primarily consists of interviews with music journalists, which occasionally get
interrupted by the telephone.

"We're trying to choose our next video director, and we have five of them
calling," laughs Patton as he puts down the receiver. "The one who says fuck
the most is in."
Stranded in far too sedate a city that reminds him far too much of American
cities like Lancaster,Pennsylvania, Mike Patton is undeniably bored.
"Guns n' Roses takes too many days off," he gripes. Nevertheless, he is in a
relatively good spirits. And well he should be, considering FMM's latest album.
Angel Dust, debated at number Ten on Billboard's album chart. And much like
the band's surprise 1990 Top five hit single, 'Epic', which catapulted this hard-
core/metal/thrash/funk band from the drudges of life as just another
underground band to MTV darlings, its new single, 'Midlife Crisis', has been
added to everything from alternative to metal to AOR radio station playlists.
Much of the credit for FNM's entrance into the big leagues has been bestowed
upon its flamboyant singer, whose penchant for creating twisted characters
juxtaposed against surreal Images in his lyrics Is only surpassed by his
uncanny ability to become those characters during live performances.
Interestingly, the Mike Patton who presently stares out the hotel window Is a far
cry from the characters that he extracts from his maniacal imagination. He's
witty, soft-spoken, occasionally underhandedly sarcastic and far more
intelligent than he would probably like you to believe.

"Nothing is going on here," continues Patton. "The most exciting thing is we met
the Beastie Boys in the lobby and we're going to go out and eat Indian food with
them."
Of course, If the Indian food doesn't cure Patton's doldrums, there's always his
favourite boredom-alleviating pastime.
"I like to shit in different places," he explains. "I've really gotten into the
placement of human shit. If you're in a new city, there's always a new place!"

During the early 80s, while bassist Gould was still a philosophy student at
Berkeley, Bordln was In the midst of a course in African drumming and
keyboardist Bottum was attending the University of San Francisco, the
student/friend trio got this crazy notion in their collective noggin that they
wanted to form a band.
And so, abandoning their scholastic endeavours, they began jamming together.
Soon thereafter, they hooked up with guitarist Martin and his vocalist buddy,
Chuck Mosley, both from Haywood, California.
By 1985, FNM had solidified as a unit and built a substantial following In the
San Francisco Bay Area. They entered a home eight-track studio in Oakland
owned by producer Matt Wallace and recorded 'We Care A Lot'. After a
nationwide tour, FNM caught the attention of Slash Records, who subsequently
released 'Introduce Yourself' in 1987. But even with an opening slot on a Red
Hot Chill Peppers tour and later. a successful European tour on their own, the
album went nowhere.
After taking a long, sobering look at the band's weaknesses, members Bordin,
Martin, Gould and Bottum decided that vocalist Mosley just wasn't cutting it.
But it wasn't until January of 1989 that the old proverbial pendulum began to
swing the other way for the FNM clan when they happened upon singer Mike
Patton, who, at the time, fronted a circus-inspired, art-rock band from Eureka,
California known as Mr. Bungle.

"We didn't have a whole hell of a lot going," says Patton regarding Mr. Bungle.
"We were from a small town where everything just kind of stands still,
everybody drinks coffee and nobody does anything. We were in college, and
being in a band was kind of something that we could do to stay active and not
turn Into fucking tree fungus."
After chasing a recording contract for four years, Patton seriously entertained
FNM's offer to join the band as its new singer.
"At that point," recalls Patton, "I hadn't done anything outside of working, going
to school and pretending, and I thought, well, I might as well try and do
something. And more than anything else, I wanted to go on the road because I
had this idea in my head that it would be a pretty surreal thing."
But before Patton could get on the road, he had to write the lyrics for FNM's
pending album, 'The Real Thing'. And he had a whopping two weeks to do it!
"I came in when they were mostly finished," says Patton. "I rehearsed with them
a lot and just got a feel for the songs. For me, coming into a situation like that—
where the songs were very linear and had a pattern—was new to me. I didn't
know how to write songs. none of my friends knew how to write songs. But
these guys did! Consequently, it was a challenge for me to write lyrics that could
follow a pattern like that—verse/chorus. It was new and exciting and it was like,
wow, I've got to try this!"

After the release of 'The Real Thing', it took FNM another gruelling year to attain
any significant commercial success. The album was eventually certified
platinum, reaching number Eleven on the Billboard pop album chart. It also
produced a gold single (Epic), which received a Grammy nomination for Best
Metal Performance.
Even though Patton had now become comfortable as FNM's eccentric
mouthpiece, he had never given up the Idea that his 'other band', Mr.Bungle,
could also achieve some sort of stardom. So early In 1991, he took Mr. Bungle
out on an industry showcase tour, which resulted In the band attaining a record
contract with (you guessed It) FNM's label, Warner Bros. Mr. Bungle's self-titled
album was released late in 1991 and was followed by a nationwide tour.
Interestingly, with the signing of Mr. Bungle came plenty of industry speculation
as to the 'real' reason why Warner Bros signed the band in the first place. Was
it simply to appease Patton or did they genuinely feel the band was
commercially viable?
While the reason behind the signing was never divulged, it was pretty obvious
that more than a few WB execs contemplated the negative effects that this one-
singer-two-bands situation would have on FNM's longevity. Over-
exposure, over-extension, jealous band members wanting more commitment
and conflicting schedules being only the tip of the Iceberg!

Patton comments,
"I think that the music industry makes people think that a band's got to be—
especially with men—like a very male bonding type of locker room thing, and
anything outside of that Is adulterous. And maybe from a business point of view,
it isn't the smartest thing. I mean, my record company hated me for doing it;
everybody was very nervous. I think they thought that I was putting everything
that I worked for and stood for in Jeopardy. To me, that's kind of a twisted view.
It's very dollars and cents logic. But I guess they had a right to be protective."
But over the course of the next several months, everything seemed to work
Itself out.
"The Mr. Bungle tour went great," says Patton. "People came. They may have
hated it, but they came."

As has become tradition with FNM, when the guys entered the studio to record
Angel Dust, early in 1992, they faithfully chose San Francisco as the creative
site, and once again, they placed Matt Wallace at the production helm. Of
course, there were plenty of differences between the recording of this and their
last LPs. One significant difference being Patton's involvement in the entire
recording process from the get-go, and more importantly, his contributions to
the new material, especially in the initial writing stages.

"We kind of all lived with the ideas—the genesis of the songs," explains Patton.
"So it was a lot easier for us to see where each song was going.
For example, sometimes we'd think of a visual image for a song beforehand.
Like we'd see, say, a crack dealer with a Hitler moustache wearing a Superman
cap, running through an alley shooting policemen. (The results of this exercise
became the song 'Crack Hitler') You'd kind of come up with a musical
Interpretation of the visual Image. That's kind of the way the band writes songs
sometimes."
Although they set aside a two-month recording period, FNM spent less than two
weeks in the studio laying down the tracks for 'Angel Dust'. The rest of that time
was wasted, according to Patton, "fighting and breaking things." Apparently,
most of this fighting resulted from lack of communication between guitarist
Martin and the other members.
"The only real struggle that we had was with the guitar parts," comments
Patton. "We sort of panicked because Jim wasn't really understanding some of
the things that we were doing, so we did them ourselves. Some of the guitar
parts, our bass player Bill played."
But once the three A's (anxiety, apprehension and anticipation) that usually
accompany the recording process were lifted, things seemed to return to some
sort of normalcy between the band mates. Presently, there doesn't appear to be
any immediate danger of FNM self-destructing.
"Nothing is too bad," admits Patton. "We're the kind of the people who could
commit a crime against another member's mother, and we'd still be able to go
onstage five minutes later and play a good show."
Of course, this must be because the music is so important, right?
"No," answers Patton, dryly. "It’s because we've become really good at it."

Reportedly, FNM spent more than twice as much money recording 'Angel Dust'
than they did on 'The Real Thing'. Yet, Patton stresses that things like generous
advances or larger recording budgets didn't put pressure on the band to come
up with a more commercially viable disc. "Figures can't really put pressure on
you the way a person can," states Patton, "and that didn't come until later. We
Just wanted to make a good record. And more than anything, we knew we
didn't want to make It anything like the last one. Of course, It's still going to
sound like us. But there's nothing worse than seeing someone hit themselves in
the same place, and just keep repeating themselves over and over. We were all
really afraid of that. Once we finished the recording, we finally let our record
company hear it. We denied them access to the studio the whole time that we
were recording, and we finally let them in at the end. And naturally, they
panicked."
Warner Bros—the largest record company on the universe— panicked?
"Yeah," laughs Patton. "They realized they may have to find a new angle to
exploit. They realized they'd have to work again. You see, once you make it to a
certain level in the music business, it’s all about making it to the next plateau.
And I think, of course, people want to make their Jobs easier, and If they can
use the same tactic to get it to the next level, they would probably sleep a lot
easier at night. It was our duty to not let them sleep at night! And when I saw
them panicking, I knew we'd made a good record."

The Face Issue August 1992

Ten Minutes in the Mind of MIKE PATTON

interviewed by Amy Raphael

Are Faith No More gigs a religious experience for you?

'No, but I wouldn't know one. I was raised very godless, we never
went to church. I've only ever been as a tourist, in order to look at the
stained-glass windows.'

Why do you go so mad on stage?

'I always feel a need to provoke, especially if we're supporting some
band like Guns N' Roses and people aren't really listening. By
insulting them, you make them at least look: it's the lowest common
denominator. When I do flips, I always land correctly, I only bruise
myself. But I do have an ongoing fight with glass which I keep losing.
Once my arms were flailing and I cut four tendons and the main nerve
in my right hand. It's practically numb now.'

Do you work out?

'Right now I'm eating broccoli soup with a big piece of greasy bacon
and loads of coffee. I used to work out 'cause my father's a coach, but
it takes so much effort on the road to do something constructive and
not abusive. I'm not a big drug taker, but I'm hooked on coffee and I
never get enough sleep. The whole thing with being in a band is the
sheltering of the artist, creating a dependency on the people hired --
like a whore and a pimp. I always want to meet people -- that's what
traveling is about. I could stay locked up in a hotel room at home.'

What's the most rock n' roll thing you've ever done?
'Jesus Christ! That's a bad question! Um ... When I was staying in a
hotel room once, I took a shit, rolled it into a ball and put it in the hair
dryer so that the next guest to dry their hair would get hot shit in
their face. Ain't that rock n' roll? I do hope rock stars are a dying
breed. People love to lap them up -- you know how something always
tastes better if you swallow it quickly.'

Do you prefer jerking off to having sex?

'It's not really like that. I talk so much about masturbation in
interviews because I go on the defensive as soon as journalists start
asking about groupies. It's much easier relating to yourself on tour
than it is to someone you've just met. Maybe I should say I've grown
beyond it and now I'm into farm animals. Too many journalists still
believe the rock n'roll myth. From my side it's definitely not like that.
A lot of bands are doing it, but they must have had insecure
childhoods -- maybe their parents dropped them on their heads.'

What are you reading at the moment?

'Homeboy by Seth Morgan, which is fucking brilliant. I read slowly
'cause I have to dog-ear a page every five or six pages 'cause I want
to steal bits. I'm also reading The Diary of a Rapist by Evan O'Connell.
It's a day-to-day notebook, mostly of his thoughts so far.'

How do you feel about the presidential elections?

'I didn't file an absentee ballot; I guess I should have. Everyone's been
laughing at presidents for the last ten years -- with two actor-clown
figureheads. Perot is a businessman, his approach is brilliant. It's
refreshing: he seems to be pretty much on the ball. Have you heard
of Jerry Brown? His angle was to appeal to and for the arts, he did an
advert with Chuck D. He's very pro equal rights. But someone like
that is way too cool for the U.S. Bill Clinton is very slick, very scary.
He could be a televangelist; he could sell you your mom's underwear.'

Where were you during the LA riots?

'In San Francisco, but we had to go to LA a few days after to mix a
record. We rented a car and went down to South Central, where all
the trashing seemed random. In Frisco people were marching in the
streets, and the police shut off whole blocks and arrested everyone --
even 75-year-old men and their dogs. The whole event wasn't
inspirational, but it's still good to see a crack in the surface of the
country -- you can only hope that everything bad will fall into it.'

Can you imagine living in another country?

'Yeah, South America, even though it's a strange police state. In
Brazil, the police are bored out of their minds, they can do pretty
much anything. Who's to say what you or I would do if we were given
a gun? At one gig, our drummer was wearing a police vest which they
made him take off. I said something in Portuguese about "shove it up
the police's ass" and they came looking for me later, so I was sort of
in hiding.'

You speak Portuguese?

'I speak gutter street bullshit slang Portuguese which I learnt off
friends, but I'm learning Spanish. California is so close to Mexico,
English is almost becoming a second language. Plus I live in a
predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. I'm teaching myself using flash
cards and a dictionary. Some of the band speak a bit of Spanish too,
so we insult each other in it.'

What's your worst nightmare?

'I don't dream at all. But I used to have this nightmare about going to
jail and having to tell everyone -- teachers, people from the past. I've
never been in big trouble with the law, so God knows where it comes
from. On a literal level, I worry about hurting myself really bad or
going to the doctor and finding out I couldn't drink coffee anymore.
I'm a coffee fiend.'

What makes you laugh?

'What a nebulous fucking question. Ha ha! I saw two people in a bar

recently, really drunk and flirting with each other. My first instinct was
"Oh my God!" 'cause I knew one of them. They were sitting on high
bar stools and they were learning forwards, just about to kiss, when
they fell off and crashed to the ground. Justice!'

Who were they?

'Axl Rose and Warren Beatty.'

Can we print that? Axl probably won't see it anyway.

'Oh yes he will. He has Axl policemen checking things like that for
him.'

August 8, 1992
Faith No More | Melody Maker - August
8th 1992
Any other band in the world would cream their jeans over
being asked to support Metallica and Guns n' Roses on a
mega-tour across the USA. Not Faith No More. They fuckin'
hate it, maaaaan! Come to that, they fuckin' hate just about
everything. Matt 'Tex' Smith gets in the firing line.

Melody Maker | August 8th 1992

VIOLENCE IS GOLDEN
Words by Matt Smith
Photos by Andrew Catlin

'LAY YOUR WEAPON DOWN NOW!' The electronically distorted

voice, barking out orders from somewhere behind the flare of
a police searchlight, is in no mood to disobeyed. I swear, even
from here, I can hear fingers tightening on triggers, "It's
down, man, it's down!" shouts back Faith No More's guitarist.
Big Jim Martin.
"Both of you down on your stomachs and keep your hands
above your head," the voice commands, "Now slowly cross
your legs behind you." "Fuckin' hell." I whisper. "Is he
shooting us for a Jane Fonda workout video?" Jim laughs. "Let
me do the talking, Tex."

IT seemed such a good idea at the time. Nearly two in the

morning, pissed out of our heads in some hotel car park. The
perfect time to do a bit of shooting. Y'know, shooting at
something (anything as far as Jim was concerned) to relieve
the tedium of touring America as support group to Metallica
and Guns N' Poseurs.
Welcome to the real jungle. A world where chicken porn
videos, celebrity crank calls, blocking hotel hairdryers with
shit, pissing on willing groupies, sticking up fake hotel rules -
"No colostomy bags in the swimming pool" - and shooting up
your hotel room is the norm. Where Tuesday night is pill night
and, when, according to Roddy, "Anything white is
swallowed."
"The object of the game is to collect as many pills as you can
through the week, then take them all on a Tuesday night, but
only if we're travelling. Then you get off at gas stations and
stagger around buying shit you don't want.
"It Gives us a sense of superiority, and something to talk
about the next day."
When you've had enough of that, punch the words into Bill's
lap top computer and play Psychotic. The object of this game
is to escape a high security mental
hospital in California raping and killing as many people along
the way as you can. IF you're lucky, you won't flag down a car
driven by Charles Manson. The game comes with a health
warning.
"Welcome to Psychotic. The game that destroys decency,
massacres morals and ruins righteousness, if you find it in
any way sexist, racist, anti-social or offensive, good!
Psychotic lets you do the undoable. Go ahead, make your
day. Release your inhibitions on an unsuspecting world."
Why, to do any less would be a breach of Faith No More's tour
etiquette. And the tour manager tells me he's a born again
Christian!

JIM'S NIGHT IN
WHAT did you do last night Jim? "Nothing. I stayed up all night
doing fuck all, really, I had the TV on but I wasn't watching it, I
had my scanner going. It's great. The scanner enables you to
listen in on all the cellular phone calls in the area. I was
listening to this guy, talking to these two girls he wanted to
fuck."
When Jim speaks, imagine a gruff monosyllabic grunt with
every other word beginning with F.
"The guy was in the hotel on the next block and I got the
whole thing on tape. One of the girls he knew and the other
he didn't. And he's going to the one he knows, 'what is she
like? Is she fat? Has she got a Big ass? How tail is she?' After a
few more questions he said, I'm gonna have a few more
drinks, get a little more fucked up and then we're gonna have
fuck fest', she goes, 'Get the hell outta here. I ain't never
done that!'
"I bought a pistol yesterday and I shot up my hotel room. I
started off going for the little peep holes they put on the door.
That's my favourite. Shoot that thing. And I got the extra bars
of soap and set them up on a garbage can by the door. It's
not real obvious what I've been doing in there but, if they
found the soap they'd guess. So I couldn't figure out what to
do with it. I couldn't get out on the balcony cos it's a pissy
little window. So I stuffed it up on the smoke detector. It'll
take them a few days to find it and, by then, it'll be too late.
"I used to get Kung Fu stars in Texas and throw them all over
the hotel room, right? There'd be big fuckin' holes
everywhere. I'd get a fuckin' tube of toothpaste. Man, fill up
all the fuckin' holes and it looked fuckin' great. Nobody
knows."

THE ROAD TO NOWHERESVILLE

"HAS anyone seen a compilation tape I made called 'Six Hours

Of Hell'?"
Billy is rummaging through the video box as the sleek grey
Faith No More tour bus pulls away from the grounds of the
devastated hotel. He neither expects, nor gets an answer.
Instead, Brian De Palma's brutally explicit "Scarface" flickers
onto the monitor above our heads. Billy sits in the armchair of
the Front of the bus, holding a curtain across the window
behind him lo ensure that the sunlight doesn't mar everyone's
enjoyment of the most violent scenes. It's 10 in the morning
and Jim is drinking his breakfast - a can of Coors beer. He's
happily engrossed in a dermatological text book. Pausing over
an all-too-graphically illustration section headed, "Diseases Of
The Genitals", he cackles to himself. Cheers ring out up and
down the bus as the TV monitor suffers another bloodbath.
Roddy's reading Jan Savage's version of punk, "England's
Dreaming". "Toilet philosophy", as drummer Mike "Puffy"
Bordin calls it.
"Billy has the most beautiful book on suicide victims,"
Christine, the bassist's gorgeous girlfriend tells me. "There's a
photograph of someone who landed head first on some
pavement grating. The grooves are cut perfectly into the top
of his head!"
I resist the desire to pull out my dog-eared copy of "Wuthering
Heights", and talk to Patton about Guns N' Roses instead.

AXL'S GOING BALD

"He is, he really is! They were playing one night and Duff
walks up to Axl and pats him on the head like a loving
comrade-type thing and Axl Rose immediately brings the
show to a halt, this is in front of 80,000 people, and be
screams, 'Don't you ever touch my head again,
motherfucker!' Duff just walked away, wounded. We found
out later that it was cos he's going bald and he's worried that,
if you touch his hair, it will fall out. Every follicle counts.
"He came up to me the other night and said, 'Hey, man, your
song really helped me through some really heavy shit in my
life'. I said, 'Really? What song is that?' He said, 'Midlife
Crisis'. 'What kind of shit?' l asked, He looked at the ground
for about an hour then shook his head and said, 'Mmm, just a
lot of shit, man'. I tell you, I was biting my lip so hard trying
not to loose it. 'We've given up trying to be quiet about their
stupid games. It's gotta come out somewhere. For a while we
were a little cautious of saying anything, but we were
uncomfortable with that. Did you know about the Warren
Beatty thing?"

!!!CENSORED!!!
"Then, for the last show of the European tour, Axl's psychic
(who has her own bodyguard) went out and blessed his
microphone and blessed the stage."
I ask Jim, who seems to have taken on Puffy's role as group
loner since the recording of the "Angel Dust" album, whether
he'd join the headliners given half a chance. "I sure would!"
What? No loyalty to the rest of the band? "Absolutely not."
"And more than that," Roddy interrupts. "We'd be happy to
get rid of him. Tie him up in a bow and put a stamp on his
ass."
What do you think you could bring to them, Jim?
"Nothing," he replies. "I'd just take from them. All these guys
are implying that they hate Guns N'Roses, but they actually
admire Slash as a guitar player."
"That's probably true," Billy acknowledges. "if we hated them
a little more we'd probably be more forthright.
"I'd fuck Slash in a minute," says Roddy. "Trouble is, I think
he'd nod off and be a bit dozy I think he'd be very romantic,
take me out for a nice dinner and pay for my cab back to my
hotel and say, 'See ya tomorrow'. Actually, I'm being
sarcastic. He's not my type at all. Who is? Actually, I kinda like
the look of Kriss Kross."
Patton warms to the idea in a most unprintable way.
"I'd like to mastermind a group of retarded rappers. Who
would give a bad review to a retarded rap band? You'd be a
villain! People would buy it for that reason: Morbid curiosity,
guilt, sympathy. You could play on every emotion."

AXE MURDERERS Of THE WORLD UNITE

AS we enter the environs of the stadium, the bus glides past

32 Mac trucks, their silver bodies glinting in the Pittsburgh
sunshine.
"Guns N' Roses use 'em to stash all the money," Roddy
sneers. The stadium car park itself is a mass of sweaty,
human flesh. As they walk passed its occupants hidden
behind tinted windows, pieces of meat in an attempt to be a
part of whatever rock n roll dream they think is being enacted
inside.
"Look at those fuckers," Roddy snarls. "I hate you, and
you,and I'd like to shoot you in the mouth," he adds, as one
particularly bloated example wobbles past.
"I don't wanna go backstage," Patton screams. "I'm not
getting out of this bus 'til one minute before we are due on"
"GOOD EVENING FORT LAUDERDALE" Billy screams to a
confused Pittsburgh crowd as "Caffeine" crushes them
mercilessly, courtesy of the biggest PA ever yet assembled for
a rock tour. "Death March" continues the assault, Patton
throwing himself around the stage and cradling the mic like
it's a Judo opponent he's trying to throw over his shoulder.
"This is for all you future axe murderers of America." Billy
shouts, as they crunch into the redneck midwest cocktail bar
sleaze of "RV", On the side of the stage, the blond one from
Metallica whistles his approval.
We're standing in the wings next to the steering wheel that
drives Lars Ulrich's drum riser around the stage during his
solo.
"It's manually controlled, man," Puffy had told me earlier in
the day. "Before this tour's over, I'm gonna grab it and drive
him off the stage full speed into the audience!
"Just what is it that's so fantastic about you people?" asks
Billy. "I just can't put my finger on it." Eighty thousand people
go ape shit, unaware of just how much urine they are being
relieved of. "Land Of Sunshine" pounds in, threatening to blow
out your eye sockets, Puffy smashing the fuck out of his
drums before the tribal stomp of "We Care A Lot" finally gives
the crowd what they want. As the dying embers of "Epic" fall
around the stadium, the band are already off the stage, into
the dressing-room and beginning the slow winding up, not
down, process, "James Hetfield was rooting for you, man."
Patton says to Jim. "I saw him whistling every time you bent
over."
"I heard him cheering every time you were slamming yourself
on the ground," flashes back the reply.

PUFFY'S BALLS

"YOUR drummer's asked for a Pirates baseball, fellas." A

stadium employee exclaims. Patton takes the ball, pulls out
his penknife and systematically rips it to shreds, dumping it
into the rapidly melting ice tray with the knife still poking out.
"By the time Puff's back it'll have swollen like a corpse
dragged from a river," he laughs.
Meanwhile, Jim picks up the jumbo-sized bottle of Jack Daniels
and slyly bundles it into his flight case when he thinks
nobody's looking. In the corner, friends of Roddy's are talking
about a girl they know who can't get off during sex unless she
pretends she's a retard and that her boyfriend is a doctor.
Puffy comes back, inspects the cheese board, notices the ball
and doesn't flinch. He pulls out one that he bagged earlier,
making sure that everyone notices, In the cab to the
restaurant that evening, the driver asks: "Did you come in on
those buses?" "Yup." Says Bill. "Are you a group?"
"Nope," says Jim. "We're a sub-aqua team. We recover people
who've drowned."
"Noway!" says the cabbie. "Yup," says Jim. "When they've
been down there a while and you grab 'em, they sometimes
disintegrate on you. The meat comes off."
The cabbie flinches. "Jeeez!" He crumples his face in disgust.
"Nasty work." "Pays well," says Jim.

WRECKS ON THE HIGHWAY

KERSMEAAASH!! A load of margarita glasses are lobbed over

the bridge and hit the highway below with a sickening noise.
As cars swerve and brake, Billy pulls out his doodah and
pisses over them. Welcome to the photo shoot. As he adjusts
himself, a cop car crawls by. Shit. Jim gives the occupants a
rather optimistic thumbs up sign, and the blue suits return the
compliment and drive off. Another near miss.
"Actually, I think we've got more mellow," Billy lies. "Cos,
when I pissed off that bridge today, I was thinking, 'It's been a
long time since I've done this.' Along time ago I used to do all
that stuff all the time."
"I've gotten angrier, I think," Roddy counters. "Sometimes the
only thing that gets me off onstage is the thought of jumping
on people and hitting them.
The other night we were playing, and I got to hit someone. It's
the greatest thing just to be able to jump on somebody and
hurt them. It was a security guard - he grabbed some kid, and
me and Mike just leapt on him and pummelled him."
"The kid was just an excuse," says Billy. "It didn't really
matter. It could have been anyone. It was just fortunate that it
wasn't a fan."
"I'm really glad that the kid was getting punched," says Patton
"Serves him fucking right. It gives us something to watch
when we're playing.
TECHNO PRISONERS

"I HATE that rap stuff- 'Jungle communication' I call it."

Another cab driver is holding forth, uninvitedly. "The trouble
with modern music," he continues, "is that there ain't enough
guitar solos anymore."
"I hate guitar solos," Patton hisses. "Every time our guitarist
tries to do one, we stand in front of him."
Patton wants to print a t-shirt featuring Jim in familiar thumbs
up pose, bearing the legend, "Jim Martin says Techno's OK".
There's nothing much the guitarist hates more than Techno.
The band have just heard the Youth mixes of their new single,
"A Small Victory", and they're happy as pigs in shite. Roddy is
even planning to record a Techno track with Anne Mognusson
and the Freds' Richard Fairbrass.
"Now that we've found Youth, he can make us what we've
always wanted to be. I know everyone, repeat everyone, will
be really into it." He fixes Jim with a beaming smile. The
guitarist ignores him.

FATSO'S NIGHT OUT

"If you got anything in your hotel room you want to destroy
bring it down," chuckles Jim. Five minutes later, we're perched
on a low wall blasting away all the cans of Coors that the
guitarist has sunk that day. "When you shoot, hold perfectly
still, take a breath, relax, line up your sights, and squeeze the
trigger real slow so that you don't know when the gun's going
to go off. Don't jerk it, cos you'll miss."
After a few goes, I send a can flying into the air. "Good
shooting, Tex," Jim exclaims, proud of another convert. And
then it happened. Seems that, whenever you try and have a
little bit of fun in America, the cops aim a gun at your head.
"Where you from, hairy?" the fat one says, once he's
convinced that we're just about incapable of harming
ourselves, let alone anyone else. "Haywood, California," says
Jim, with a mixture of pride and arrogance. "California, huh,"
the cop says, swilling the word around his mouth like it's an
all encompassing explanation for this kind of behaviour. His
colleague is frantically going through the citation book while
he lectures us about gun safety.
"You know, if you had pointed that thing, I'd have shot you
both dead," he says. "I wouldn't have done that, sir," says Jim,
"The first rule of gun safety is that you don't point your gun at
anything you don't intend to shoot. I didn't intend to shoot
you, we were just having fun."
The other cop is now on the radio. Someone up (or down)
there likes Faith No More and The Maker cos there doesn't
seem to be a punishment to fit the crime.
In the bar, an entire vat of Glenlivet is drunk in celebration of
our small victory. An air stewardess from Atlanta sidles up to
Jim. "What do they call you?" she drools.
"Fatso," he replies. "Gonna be in Pittsburgh long?" She asks.
"Maybe, maybe not. Wanna talk about it in my room? After all
, it's not as if I have a gun anymore."

August 8, 1992

OOR 16, 8 August 1992

Sperm and Cuddly Toys

by ??

Recently, Faith No More's repulsive fourth album, Angel Dust,

was released. To the displeasure of the rock establishment,
this revolting product of bombast, symphonica, and hardrock
went up the charts like a comet all over the world. An
interview with singer Mike Patton, a chameleon in a field of
fritters.

If U2's Bono says pop music should become primitive and wild again
and parodies a rock star, something's going on. And
something is going on! A much too great predictability. Everything
that was developed in the past, has been divided in genre boxes.
Once, surveyability was needed to direct the public to the CD market,
but now the same CD market suffers from it. The public is getting
saturated and there's no ready-to-go new adventure. Artists have
learned to adapt. Out of fear to loose their audiences they have
unlearned to seek musical adventure beyond "their" boxes, "their"
genres, "their" market segments. And because laziness and
complacency go hand in hand, they have developed the annoying
quality to take themselves much too seriously. All those rappers,
singer/songwriters, housers, hardcore-grinders, and whatever, they
keep preaching for their own church. All of them so damn sure of
themselves, each his own bible under his arm, full of truth, like elders
of obscure communions. But, excessive seriousness, religious
conviction, and seeking financial security are the worst enemies of
playfulness and creativity. It's not easy to admit, but pop music is
becoming a rigid medium, with no place for freedom, eccentricity, and
against-the-grainness. And if Bono recognizes this, it is to be
expected that soon the public will not want the fast food the record
industry is feeding them.

This is the problem that faces the pop music of the 90s: how to
freshen things up? Open things up? How to get rid of all those
tangling conditions? Answer: mock the old and look for new musical
freedom. There's one group who have taken the front stage on this:
Faith No More. Their music provokes, banters, puts you on the wrong
foot, balances on the brim of tastelessness, and basically does what
has not been done before.

Hangover

There is little reason to remember the night Holland lost to Denmark

through penalty shots [this was the European soccer championship of
'92, FL]. Except that Faith No More played the Paradiso when
Schmeigel stopped Van Basten's fatal run. "Did you guys loose?"
singer Mike Patton teased the audience. A kind of national hangover
hung across the room. People weren't happy, in the words of Mike
Patton the day after, "a bit fed up." An yes, he did fight a guy who
came on stage. It shouldn't have happened, but it's a fact that the
guy shouldn't have been there at that time [I know some people who
know this guy. He was an avid FNM fan, but sold his entire collection
of FNM albums memorabilia after the incident, FL]. After that, while
the band played an almost endless bombastic instrumental salvo
[Woodpeckers From Mars, FL], he laid on the floor like dead for
minutes on end. "I couldn't go anywhere, so I decided to take a rest."
And when the room was boiling and bad vibes were in the air in the
form of countless heated stagedivers, the band played a neat soul
ballad by The Commodores, Easy. "Let's pretend we're visiting our
grandmothers. Let's all be very polite now," Patton spoke to the crowd
[you can check the actual words in the video from this gig that
circulates, FL]. Noteworthy: Mike does know how to sing ("If it ever
gets to the point where I find it necessary to prove my singing
abilities...I would like someone to bash me in the face and stop me").
And when Easy was finished: "Now let's pretend we're at a Slayer
concert and fuckin' break everything." After which the hardcore
violence started again. "No man, I wasn't angry," Mike evaluates the
gig. "I had a great time."

Horrible
Why did you call your album Angel Dust? Is the band on drugs?

Not that I am aware of. No good drugs anyhow. No no. We were

delighted by the idea that angel dust is a horrible drug that makes
you aggressive and paranoid. And the title together with the picture
of a beautiful, restful bird, that you would normally see on an easy-
listening sleeve. That contrast has a disturbing effect on people. The
average rock fan will put a sleeve like that aside: bluh, I don't want to
listen to this. That's what we like best.

There is a very divergent `country song' on the album: R.V. What is it

about?

R.V. means recreational vehicle. A typical part of American culture:

people live in holiday caravans. We call them white trash. In America,
everyone knows someone who lives in an R.V. These people are
looked down upon, while everyone knows they're part of society.
These people are usually fat, watch TV all day, and eat TV dinners.
The song R.V. is almost a mark of honour to those pigs. My family's
like that. The kind of people who stay inside these caravans all day
and complain: nobody speaks English anymore. No one listens to
them, they're only talking to themselves. The song is a profile of the
average redneck mentality.

It was immediately called your Tom Waits song. Any problems with
that comparison?

Not at all. Tom Waits is great.

And Jizzlobber, what is that about?

`Jizz' means sperm, and `to lob' means to throw [remember this was
originally for a Dutch audience, FL]. The title is comic, but hasn't got
anything to do with the rest of the lyrics.

It is the song in which you speak about `dirty mattresses.' We

thought about sperm immediately.

Well, the song is more about being caged than anything else. It
definitely is not an orgiastic song. But the title is okay. Fine image:
sperm flying through the air. Triumphant.

A while ago your [hobby] band Mr. Bungle released an album [a giant
flop]. You said in an interview: I want to go with Mr. Bungle. I don't
want to be in a band that is going downhill any longer. But now you're
here again.

I might have said something like that, but it all seems a bit
exaggerated. That was in the period I gave a lot of interviews that I
shouldn't have given. I was fed up with Faith No More. Nobody bought
our albums and we just kept touring. I was disillusioned. When you're
touring, sometimes as a band you get the feeling you're living like
rats. You're kept busy and stupid temporarily. You're treated like a
pimp treats a whore. And if you don't want to be a part of that, it gets
frustrating. We needed people to bang our heads against the wall. I
wanted to crawl away. That's why I was delighted to record an album
with Mr. Bungle. The interviews I did during that time were pretty
negative. I said things like: Faith No More is like a job to me. Because
I felt like that. But I don't think I portrayed myself correctly; It made
me look like a teased son-of-a-bitch more than anything else.

But you never thought: I quit Faith No More and go on with Mr.
Bungle?

I had responsibilities towards the record company, because they were

worried. Worried that I would leave the sinking ship. To convince
them that that was not my intention I had to defend myself in what
looked like a law suit. In the end I got what I wanted. And that's good,
because being in two bands at the same time is great. It isn't a threat.
It's more like a physical need: I found I had to do more. You eat a little
too much and then you have to shit some more.

Target

It seems to us that the bands of which it was said a few years ago
that they would determine the future of rock music, bands like Red
Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica, have set out to sail a safe course.
Therefore, we had expected the new Faith No More album to feature
at least one commercial rock ballad. But no.

That's the most pathetic thing you see other bands do; tog et
entangled in their own success formula. If you see bands do that...it's
hopeless. It's no good for anyone in any way. I mean: they fill their
pockets for some two years and then...The only way to keep Faith No
More together is to motivate ourselves. And you can only do that by
experimenting. We stay happy that way. If you don't do that you
become a sun-burnt rich bastard, a target...Fuck that.

Is that the idea behind Faith No More? To stay elusive? Faith No More
doesn't seem to be so much as a crossover band, but more a collage
of all kinds of styles. As a listener you never know what you're up to.

It just happens like that, without us being aware of it. All five of us are
rather stubborn personalities. So we all know exactly what we're up
to. Most of the time, musicians get too fucked up when they listen to
too much music at the same time. They get over-stimulated and the
end result is garbage. Curiously enough, it turns out good for us
mostly. I guess it's our merit.
Do you use the lyrics as a connecting element? Do you use them to
make clear what Faith No More is about?

I don't think we have an obligation to clarify ourselves through our

lyrics. Or even take a standpoint. All five of us simply couldn't agree
on any standpoint. If one of use gets a little too outspoken, he's
probably lynched by the others. About the lyrics: it's almost a pitty
they're printed on the sleeve. Because the public expects a
revelation. That the lyrics will say something about our past, our lives.
And to make that kind of connection via some lyric is almost
dangerous.

That's what we want to get at: to us, Faith No More is a band that
deliberately doesn't provide any clarity, both musically and lyrically.
You don't give the audience the opportunity to identify with you. Isn't
that the idea behind the band?

The reason we appear like that is that we're bored easily. We have to
entertain ourselves. And give the audience a challenge. That's
important to me. People shouldn't feel at ease about what they hear.
Therefore, it is almost our duty to provoke.

Is that where the element of parody gets into the concept?

Absolutely.

The rock press often reproached Faith No More of `tastelessness'. You

would ridicule rock 'n' roll.

I think people who look at us as a joke band take an extremely

superior point of view. They look down on us and say: Oh my God, it's
nothing. They're snobs. Maybe critics ought to be snobbish, it's their
job. But I don't have to agree with them just because of that. I think
it's easy to see it as an insult when a band uses parodying elements.
They get confused about it. They think: does this band really mean
this? Or not? They don't know, get frustrated, and the next thing you
know is they don't want to have anything to do with you. I know that
feeling: when bands leave me insecure...it's frustrating. And that's
exactly what I like. For me it's one of the few things that are fun:
you should be confused. You should think: what the hell is going on?

During your performance in London you advised the audience to

smoke crack.

Yeah. It's one of those things...as a singer you are in a position of

power. You're a media figure. You have an obligation towards your
audience. You have the responsibility to be positive. That's trendy
these days, it sells. When I advise people to smoke crack it's only a
reaction to that trend. I only want to make clear that I never want to
be the spokesman for whatever cause. Sometimes the only way to
get your point across is being negative. What's wrong with that? As a
matter of fact, it's only getting really interesting when everyone has a
crack pipe with them at our next show. But all joking apart, you just
shouldn't go on stage thinking you're a king. That would be really
boring. The best shows we've done were under the worst conditions.
At places where no on wanted to see us. We were supporting
Metallica, somewhere in Utah. It's swarming with Mormons there.
They hated us. Threw bottles. Spat at us. Fourteen, fifteen thousand
people. Then I made a remark about Mormons and they hated us
even more. Then our bass player played a fifteen minute solo. One
note, dang dang dang. Bottles flew over our heads. War. But those
circumstances, when you don't feel at ease, are often the most
inspiring.

And how inspiring is it to be a support act to Guns 'n Roses?

Better than I thought. I'd thought our presence there would be totally
misplaced. We said: we may not like GNR, we may not like playing in
open air stadiums in broad daylight, where we sound like shit and
look like shit on a much too large stage that wasn't built for us, and
we may not like the fact that people are paying too much money for a
ticket...that's all true. But the fact is: it's a very good opportunity to
reach a large audience that otherwise wouldn't have come to see us.
And that's good. The other side of it is that we want to headline again.
It will happen in October. Playing with a roof over our heads. We're at
our best like that.

Cuddly toys

Faith No More's lyrics often seem to be written from a child's

perspective. Is that important to you? Does it keep you fresh,
optimistic, etc.?

Well, I don't know what exactly is childish about this band...whether

it's the lyrics, or parody, it stems from the fact we enjoy childish
things.

But we don't ask how childish the band is, we ask how important the
child's point of view is to your music?

Hard to say. I think most of us have had a lousy youth, and maybe we
are still stuck in it. [Long silence]. I think we are fascinated by little
cuddly things. We're like old ladies: we like cuddly toys. Strange thing
is, the only things I can get really upset about, are tiny trivialities,
things I shouldn't get upset about at all. But it happens, and that is
childish. Whether you explain it positively or negatively, it remains
childish. To tell you the truth, I suspect I got stuck in the anal phase.
It's all about shit, assholes, etc. I think we all got stuck in peculiar
phases.
You keep changing the way you look, that's for sure.

It's because I am bored. You're touring. You have a lot of days off. So
you get bored. We found something to it: haircuts. Haircuts that kill!
We give one another new haircuts. To fool around with the way you
look is great. To give yourself a new face every once in a while.

Childish! Easily Bored! Another look each time!

Boredom stems from watching TV too much.

Children get bored easily too. Your music changes shape so often you
can listen to it as if you were a two-year old yourself.

Isn't that a bit over-romanticized? I don't think we give people that

much! I think we arouse primitive urges.

Two-year olds exist by the grave of their primitive urges.

Absolutely. But you have to be careful to say you feel like a two-year
old listening to our music. There are listeners who have been raped as
a child. They sure don't want to be two years old again.

What do you think of people having Mike Patton posters in their

bedrooms?

I've been in a room like that once and it scared the hell out of me.

Translated and transcribed by Frankco Lamerikx.

Frankco:
"And interview from the Dutch Magazine OOR that provides some
insight in the apparent reasons behind Faith No More. Mike is very co-
operative for a change. If you find of his sayings awkward, it's
probably due to my limited translating capabilities."

September 1992

Details September 1992

Twist of Faith
Faith No More wreak anarchy in the UK. William
Shaw reports from London and Manchester.

No one put a pistol to their heads and told them

they had to tour with Guns N' Roses. Faith No
More thought it would be good for their bank balance. Now, after three weeks of
shows, they're bored silly.

Monday they arrive in London from Paris. Tuesday morning, singer Mike Patton gets
a phone call in his Kensington hotel room telling him tonight's show in Manchester
has been canceled. Axl Rose is suffering from exhaustion. Patton, looking a bit like
an auto mechanic no one would trust, howls like it's the funniest thing he's ever
heard. Downstairs an unshaven, dispirited bass player sits in the lobby. Unlike
Patton, Billy Gould says he was looking forward to tonight's concert, if only because
it would give him something to do. "But I can understand how Axl would be kind of
exhausted, with this rigorous schedule of ours," he deadpans.

So far, the Guns N' Roses European tour is averaging two concerts per week. FNM
are used to gigging six nights out of seven.

There's something else about the tour that makes them itchy. In the last three
years, FNM have transformed themselves from down-at-the-heel Bay Area misfits to
unlikely platinum rock stars. As such, FNM should be appropriate road companions
for GNR. But FNM don't share a common musical goal so much as a collective
loathing for good taste. The whole stadium-tour circus bugs them.

"I wouldn't go to the show," Patton tells me about their upcoming date at Wembley.
"It's a spectator sport. If we can be annoying, then we've accomplished something. I
think."

From their first cult hit, "We Care a Lot," 1985's sarcastic riposte to the Live Aid
generation, to "Midlife Crisis," this year's scathing assault on the thirtysomething
set, FNM have always traded on their snot-nosed anti-establishmentarianism. The
band started out ten years ago when a quiet, dreadlocked drummer named Mike
"Puffy" Bordin hooked up with keyboard player Roddy Bottum, who looked like the
villain from a Jim Jarmusch film, and Billy Gould, a genial, bass-playing slob. In need
of a guitarist they hooked up with the Muppet-like figure of "Big" Jim Martin, an old-
fashioned guitar regressive. Martin wears two pairs of glasses, drinks a lot, and
loves FNM groupies. He announces rather proudly that he hasn't yet received one
Father's Day card. In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Martin cameos as "The World's
Greatest Guitarist."

Finding a singer to suit the band's outlook took longer. Hole's Courtney Love sang a
few dates with them, but the group say they were too macho for her ("I spoke to her
last night," says Roddy. "She's my best friend..."). For their first two LPs they were
fronted by Chuck Moseley. "We Care a Lot" won them an adoring college audience,
but by 1989 the big break hadn't come yet. The band were ready to split. "Our
singer was fucked up, and we hated him," remembers Billy, matter-of-factly. So
they sacked Chuck and replaced him with Mike Patton, from a little-known California
cult outfit, Mr. Bungle. Suddenly it all made sense. Sort of.

The year Patton enrolled; they recorded The Real Thing. It was a maverick album, a
fractious and improbable amalgam of West Coast punk nihilism, baroque
progressive rock, and funk thrash that lurched unexpectedly from style to style. It
sat around on the shelves for six months before anyone noticed. Then it started to
take off. By early 1990, MTV had latched onto the sneery rock/rap of their single
"Epic," which climbed to number five on the charts. Before they knew it, FNM were
in the big pool, swimming through a promotional tour that was to last two years and
end with them supporting Billy Idol and Robert Plant.

Now, this year's Angel Dust manages to repeat the trick that The Real Thing pulled
off so well, somehow containing the group's explicitly separate visions of what they
really should be doing on the one album. Angel Dust is easily just as misanthropic
as previous FNM records, but this time Mike Patton has given full rein to all of his
voyeuristic obsessions. Each song is a piece of cruel theater, a chunk of twentieth-
century Gothic melodrama. From the sexual sado-masochism of "Be Aggressive," to
the sicko drug violence of "Crack Hitler," the LP is the most brutal music the band
has ever produced. Typically, FNM set the rough stuff against ironic, sweet
moments, such as their easy-listening cover version of the theme from the film
Midnight Cowboy.

The sleeve of Angel Dust features a picture of a beautiful white bird on the front
cover and a slaughterhouse on the back. These sorts of inversions are central to the
FNM world view, whatever that is. Billy studied Nietzsche at college and still invokes
him bizarrely. "Nietzsche says, 'I make the rainbow of urine over the world, but the
world is never slow to reciprocate,'" Gould laughs.

"These are the most boring shows I've been to," complains Patton. "The crowd is so
safe. Backstage is so boring. All we do is eat..." Patton is intensity incarnate. He's
from the backwoods of Eureka, California, a place he describes as "a sick redwood
cocoon, hippies on one side, loggers on the other." Having escaped from a place like
that, Mike doesn't want to miss out on anything.

With tonight canceled, it will be a week between shows. The band have nothing to
do until Saturday. The time off leaves them exhausted. They're starting to feel
flabby, out of shape.

I take Gould and Patton for a meal in Portobello Road. They start talking
unguardedly about touring with GNR. Out it all pours. Patton claims one crew
member got sacked just for bumping into Axl when the singer was changing
costumes one night. Warming to the theme, Gould says that he heard Axl hired an
exorcist because he believed he was possessed by the spirit of the dead AC/DC
singer Bon Scott. (GNR's publicist later denies both of these tales, adding that "it's
physically impossible for anyone to bump into Axl.") They paint Axl as a cranky
headmaster that everyone's afraid of. But their stories are backstage hearsay. The
fact is, they never get to see Axl much at all.

One of Axl's minders has told Patton that Axl really likes Mr. Bungle. The minder
says Axl wants to get into something heavier, more industrial. "Industrial," laughs
Patton maniacally, banging the table. "That's sick!"

They have sampled Axl's voice and used it a few times in their stage act, but no one
seems to notice. GNR don't watch their shows. Patton thinks they may sometimes
watch them over the monitors from their backstage area, but he's not sure.

In the restaurant, Patton shares a secret. Axl has TV screens on stage that display
the song words in case he forgets them. On the last night of the tour, Mike Patton
tells me he wants "to take a shit right on top of those TV screens, in front of tens of
thousands of people."

After lunch we visit Honest Jon's Records, then Vinyl Solution, where we bump into
Puffy, who's making the same devoted trawl. It's a West Indian area, and Patton and
Billy want to buy some grass on nearby St. Paul's road. Puffy isn't interested.

Mike "Puffy" Bordin confides to me he's worried FNM will get thrown off this tour
because of the way the band is behaving. They're too unguarded about slagging
GNR.

When I tell Patton this, he wheezes with laughter. "See?" he says. "That's what he's
frightened of, but that's what excites me the most." Mike's eyes shine. "Three
weeks into the tour and we're already pushing it. We're going to spend the summer
with these guys. To me there's nothing... no real reason why we're doing this tour. I
mean, it makes real business sense, but on a personal level we have to provoke. To
me, that's our duty."

Later, we gravitate to a pub. Rain clouds gather outside. Patton orders a pint of
snakebite -- a mixture of cider and lager beloved by English soccer hooligans -- but
the barman refuses to serve it. "We don't do them anymore. We had too much
trouble." So Patton orders a pint of cider. Billy drinks lager. When we've finished
those we have another. "What time is it?" sighs Patton. "Five o'clock? Is that all?"
They would be onstage right now.

A Canadian fan shows up, and Patton discusses pornography with him. Mike is an
avid consumer, an almost evangelical advocate of autoerotism. Unlike Martin, real
sexual interaction leaves Patton cold. He calls phone-sex lines, but not live ones.
"You don't call a 970 number because you want to talk," he explains. "That's not
why I try it. I don't know why. I've always had a problem with interaction. I'm just
not that good at it."

Mike Patton says his adventures in self-stimulation began at an early age. He

remembers humping the couch in prepubescent days while watching Gilligan's
Island. "I did it in front of everyone," he smirks, "even my parents. I mean, I think it
was very healthy in one respect, and very twisted in another..." As he goes on, Mike
looks at me for signs of embarrassment.

His other group, Mr. Bungle, sometimes perform in bondage masks. Patton collects
them. "Those kinds of masks are the most unfathomable, completely space-age
thing, but I think they appeal to an instinct that's completely primitive. I have ones
with horse bits and blinders, I have ones with tubes and pumps, one with zippers,
regular gags. Do I wear them? Yeah, yeah. They have applications in real life.
Though I can't say I'm into S&M.; I experiment with it. You kind of owe it to
yourself."

Perhaps it's because of his demonic onstage charisma, or because his lyrics delve
into themes of dominance and powerlessness, but Patton sometimes gets weird
letters from fans. He's only written back once. "She started sending gifts and
somehow twisted around the idea that I wanted to dominate her, you know? She
called me her master... She said, 'I'll do anything for you. I'm your devoted slave.'"
Soon she began inventing wild stories about Patton and his friends beating her and
sexually abusing her. Now Patton doesn't answer letters anymore.

Back at the hotel, it seems Jim Martin has bailed. He's gone to visit an old Scottish
drinking buddy who lives in Birmingham. That night, I take Roddy, Billy, and Patton
to the cinema to see Delicatessan. I pay, because their per diem allowances are
running low. Afterward, Roddy Bottum splits and ends up at the Limelight, talking to
a conductor "called Michael Thomas something." It turns out he's Michael Tilson
Thomas, the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. He wants to
come and see them at the Wembley show.

Thursday, Mike Patton gets drunk on cider. On the way back from the pub to his
hotel he stops outside Kensington Palace -- just by the hotel -- where Prince Charles
and Lady Di live. Patton drops his trousers and takes a dump on a park bench by
the palace.

That night Billy and Roddy are in Amsterdam to see L7 and the Rollins Band. Billy
buys a priest's robes in a flea market there. He's already picked up an East German
Trabant car that someone gave him at an earlier date in Stuttgart: "It's so cool. It
pollutes so bad."
"Did you HEAR what Patton did?" giggles Billy, just off the plane from Amsterdam.
"The turd is still there." He disappears to unpack his priest's robes and put them on
in the hotel bar.

"I have kind of a problem," explains Patton. I don't like to use toilets -- ever." Mike
says it stems from a childhood fear of invasive insects in the bathroom. But the
singer has turned his aversion to the W.C. into a form of scatological terrorism.
Without batting an eyelid, he recounts a story about a meanie club owner who
locked Patton and the rest of Mr. Bungle up in his club because he claimed they
owed him money. He left the man a special gift in the club's microwave oven. "It
started out being a problem, but now it's more of a weapon than anything," Patton
says.

That night-- the night before Wembley -- the group go out. Roddy visits Madame Jo-
Jo's, London's most famous transvestite club. Patton goes to a kitsch strip joint,
where he watches the performers do fire-eating tricks.

Saturday is the day when the group finally get to play a concert, one week after
their last performance in Paris. Gathering in the hotel lobby to catch the tour bus,
the overwhelming feeling is one of resignation. In May, FNM played a well-
advertised "secret" date at London's Marquee Club under the name Haircuts that
Kill. "We're playing Wembley in June," Patton announced from the stage. "Don't
come."

Billy opts to catch the Tube to Wembley, because he has heard that there is a
drugstore along the way that stocks Somatomax, which he says is a slimming drug
with side effects. "What does it do? It fucks you up," he grins. "The first time, I took
it at a nightclub. I woke up on the toilet with my trousers round my ankles."

By the tour-bus stereo, there's a David Sylvian CD. In four pieces. Patton puts on a
tape a friend has sent him of songs recorded by educationally disadvantaged
children. It features songs with titles like "I Got a New Car," and "Throw Away the
Trash," sung in eager, bright-eyed voices. "I love this album," declares Patton. He
jumps up and down in the narrow bus corridor. Everybody laughs.

At the stadium, a fan is waiting. Kerry is ex-British army. He spent some time in
Northern Ireland. This will be his fifty-ninth FNM concert. His nose is pierced with
little horns that protrude from his nostrils and he wears a t-shirt that he designed
himself. It features a picture of a man masturbating on a toilet and the caption:
GIRLS ARE OK, BUT THEY'RE NOT THE REAL THING. FNM love it.

T-shirts are an integral part of the FNM look. In the bland backstage area, they
change into their stage wear. Patton changes into a shirt that features the Route
666 logo of a Texas noise band. Jim martin puts on one that sports the moniker of
his favorite defunct metal band, the Mentors.

Slash, Duff, and Matt from GNR appear in a rehearsal room down the corridor and
start jamming. Slash is wearing a t-shirt that says "Fuck." A cigarette pokes out
through a mass of hair.

Queen's Brian May appears, looking sheepish in white clogs and a loud shirt. He
plugs in a guitar and joins in the jam, rehearsing a GNR encore he's going to play
on.

Jim watches them rehearse. "What's up, Satan?" he calls to Slash.

Slash looks up. "Hey," he waves at Jim, "where'd you get that shirt?"
FNM don't get a soundcheck. They haven't had one all tour. Behind the stacks of
gear, they wait to go on. One GNR flight case lays open, drawers marked with
roadie jokes like "Lesbian Awareness Literature" or "Spare Panties." Billy lolls his
head around, looking depressed. "People ask, 'Don't you get excited when you get
onstage?'" he tells me. "For these gigs, it's more like I finally get to the head of the
line in the department of motor vehicles."

Roddy, chain-smoking, explains that at concerts like this, even the audience knows
how to perform. "They cheer the first group a little, the next band more, and so on."

Afterward, the group sit backstage in painful silence. After cooling their heels for a
week, and pulling a hundred stupid stunts to pass the time before their show, they
come away hating the set. They thought they performed abysmally.

Kerry, the pierced fan, disagrees, swearing it was a great show. The band's reaction
to the show has more to do with their own depressed state of mind than anything
else. In reality it was a riveting performance, dominated by Patton's frantic
charisma. He'll crouch down on his haunches like a medieval gargoyle, then spring
up and fling himself forward until his feet sail over his head and he'll slap back down
on the stage, barking out dementedly the whole time. Before launching into a song,
he'll boom out at the crowd of 70,000, "I bet you feel pretty stupid out there."

"Actually," Roddy says, in the dressing room post-match analysis, "I've got to say,
Sometimes, Mike, you come off a little arrogant."

Mike Patton looks destroyed. Billy's face is a mask of depression. They all need to
talk. They no longer have any perspective on how good a show FNM put on.

That night I will drive Roddy three hundred miles to a rave on the Yorkshire moors
near Manchester. He's looking for something to do. We won't mention Wembley.
The Manchester show has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Patton wants to come to
the rave too, but he's put his back out with the onstage flips.

But now, I follow Jim Martin out of the room. He's the only one who doesn't look
bummed. "it was a sluggish, ponderous, sloppy show... but I had fun," he says. Then
he sees a pretty woman wandering about backstage in a fishnet top and bra. Jim
makes a beeline straight for her. "Hi," he says, "Tell me something new."

"I don't know anything new," the woman answers, flustered.

Jim persists. "Tell me something old then..."

September
Spin Interview 3
1992

N/A

FAITH NO MORE AT TEXAS STADIUM

SEPTEMBER 5TH 1992.
In September 1992 Faith No More were on the U.S stadium tour
with Metallica and Guns N Roses. On the 5th they opened up at Texas
Stadium.

Kerrang! September 1992 | Chris Watts

FROM THE side of the stage you can smell Faith No More. You can
smell the heat and sweat, and it's only 4pm. When the sunshine hits
this enormous stage the temperature peaks at around 115 degrees.
As an alternative venue with similar conditions on every level, Faith
No More could just as well be playing in Hell.

It is not the ideal environment. In fact, it is positively ridiculous.

50,000 redneck juveniles are here to worship Axl, and Faith No More
are a mere irritation at best. The stadium is still filling up as Patton
leaves the stage in chaos amidst the dying blast of 'Epic' Some of the
assholes are jeering. Almost all are sitting down. Faith No More can
claim it as a success.

Mike Patton remembers the girl down the front. She's right there,
squashed against the security railings, giving Patton the personal
thumbs-down. She laughs sarcastically when he crashes to the floor
just inches from her enormous tits during 'Caffeine' Patton has seen
her and plays the screeching spaz delinquent exclusively for the
dumb bimbo.

"Wasn't she great?" he later comments. "Those are the people this
band wants to piss Off!"

Middle America doesn't hate Faith No More so much as simply not

understand them. These days, the Metallica and Guns N' Roses
audiences are virtually identical, and despite the fact that Kirk
Hammett stands just out of sight behind Mike Bordin's drum kit during
'Midlife Crisis' and the hideous 'R.V.', this crowd will never
comprehend the connection. They look at Jim Martin and see a
geeky, cartoon hero in a Stetson and shorts. They don't understand
that this is Jim's sole reason for being here.

Faith No More are a blot on the landscape for this crowd. 'We Care A
Lot' hits the first eight rows hard, but the momentum of this great
song doesn't reach much further. It is only really the MTV-rotated
'Epic' which gets a reaction, and only then because it's familiar.
Typically, Patton drags the song into farce. He sings most of it whilst
lying on his back under a vocal monitor, capping the performance by
tumbling Bill Gould's bass amps. It's rubbish, absolute shit, but Faith
No More make their point.

The whole tour is a farce. Faith No More have boon hero to lend at
least a vestige of credibility to both Metallica and Guns N' Roses. Faith
No More have enjoyed and manipulated the farce at the expense of
the assholes. That in itself has been worth 30 bucks.
Photos by Mark Leialoha

Faith No More | Kerrang! - September

19th 1992
It was never gonna be easy playing bottom of the bill with
Guns N Roses and Metallica on a cross-states trek - but for
Faith No More it's turned out to be something of a nightmare.
Thousand mile bus rides and inter band wranglings
are just the tip of the iceberg: but, as CHRIS WATTS asked
when he stowed away in their luggage rack, could Jim Martin's
rock n' roll excesses be the straw that brakes the camel's
back?
Kerrang! | Issue 410 | 19.09.1992
Testing The Faith by Chris Watts

It is a fucking massive tour. It is reputedly the hottest North

American rock for years. It looks like it. The luxury trek has
crossed Europe and most of America. It will grind to a halt this
week, and Faith No More will breathe a sigh of relief. It's not
easy touring with Guns N' Roses and Metallica.
"It's not a rock n roll tour really," muses bassist Bill Gould,
surveying the Texas Stadium in Dallas. "It's a mini empire."
Some redneck asshole strolls past. His T-shirt says 'Shut Up
Stupid Bitch'. Two micro-skirted starf**kers emerge from one
of the 40 equipment trucks on the tour, closely followed by
two grinning riggers. The girls are clutching passes for
Metallica's backstage complex. It's funny.
It's not bad going for a bunch of five upstart Californian
pranksters. It's okay that Faith No More go on stage at four
o'clock in the afternoon and only get to play for 45 minutes.
It's okay that they have to drive 1,000 miles to the next gig in
a bus when Metallica and Guns N' Roses fly in a privately
chartered 747 and DC10 respectively. It's okay that the band
are afforded just one paragraph in the local papers. It's okay
that the girl in the ticket office of the Houston Astradome has
never heard of them, and it's okay that no one seems to be
wearing a Faith No More T-shirt. As Jim Martin comments:
"People who buy Faith No More T-shirts just don't like to wear
them in public!"
It might just be okay that Faith No More are the Support Band
That AxI forgot.

AXL ROSE is invisible but his presence is overwhelming.

The backstage outer circle is a heaving paranoia of publicists,
lackeys and diplomats. Everybody claims to know the little
singer. Well, they've never actually met him, but... GN'R arrive
at the stadium mere minutes before they are due on stage. As
usual they are late. Slash is the only member of the band to
walk to the sprawling arena stage. The rest are driven in a
transit van to the stage ramp, emerging with minders in tow,
then disappearing into their limos almost before the dying
chords of 'Paradise City' have been struck. Axl has only ever
spoken to Faith No More once, via tour managers. The surly
missive relayed a message that if Mike Patton ever asked the
crowd to throw beer at Jim Martin again then the band would
be off the tour. The crowd take this as a sign of approval and
spend the concert hurting projectiles at anything onstage. Axl
doesn't like getting his feet wet.
"We've had a few close calls," Patton admits. "We're lucky to
still be here."
"This tour is like a crowning glory for both headline bands,"
says Mike 'Puffy' Bordin. "There hasn't been a tour like this for
years. We're not used to the atmosphere. To me, the
atmosphere is not really conducive to this band playing well.
It's like the Village People syndrome. Show Business. Mass
entertainment."
Bill Gould: "It's difficult playing every night to people who
aren't interested in us. Maybe some of them do hate us, but
that's cool. If they didn't hate us a little bit we'd feel like we
were kissing ass."
"I feel like a zoo animal up there," Patton comments.
"It's like when you fart in the presence of someone you
shouldn't. You laugh. It's like a nervous reaction to the whole
scale of things out there. It's embarrassing.
"You have to take a certain amount of reality out there with
you. We just walk out without an intro tape, in the middle of
the afternoon, and play stuff. It's like, 'Here we are, people'
Time to start!'.
"Basically, we are a small band. We are a pubic hair in Guns
N' Roses' shower!"

FROM THE stage of the Texas Stadium the crowd looks

terrifying. The sound is haphazard, but Faith No More cope.
Combating indifference is something that Patton enjoys. This
afternoon he rounds on Jim Martin. The singer catches the
guitarist throwing a plectrum into the front rows. "Is he
throwing shit at you?" Patton asks. The crowd cheer. "I think
you have the right to throw shit back at him! This is an
open invitation to f**k Jim"
"F**k me!" growls Jim, standing alone in the middle of a
shower of plastic glasses. Behind the scenes, Faith No More's
reputation for personal animosity towards each other is
starting to get ugly. The enormous scale of this tour is
affecting the band. Their reaction to the "Village People
syndrome" differs drastically.
Patton, Gould and Roddy Bottum return from a backstage
walkabout to discover Jim Martin in heaven. The guitarist is
standing on a table, trying to persuade a vacant blonde to
remove her top for the camera. The band stride past the
couple and slam into their dressing room. Patton's furious.
"That is f**king vile!" he shouts. "F**k that! God, what an
asshole! I don't want anything to do with that. That sucks!
Goddamn it, man! F*'k him. That's Bullshit."
"It's kind of a hard thing to say," sighs Roddy, "but that's kind
of anti what we're all about. All the bad things about this tour
are outside the window right now. It's disgusting. It's
ridiculous."
"Hey, Jim," Patton sneers, "who are you pandering to? Shit.
Next question."

WHAT'S WRONG with Jim having his photograph taken with a

large breasted female?
Bill Gould: "Nothing's wrong with it. It's just such a cheesy
way out. It's the easy way out. It's the cliche."
But the girl volunteered. She wasn't press-ganged.
"But that doesn't mean that we have to go along with it," says
Patton. "I cannot take that seriously."
Bill Gould tries to rescue the situation.
"I think you're right," he says. "That is the real world. To
50,000 people in the audience that is the real world of rock 'n'
roll."
Roddy doesn't care. "But we've never catered for that in the
past, so there's no reason why we should pander to it now."
Bill: "And you just know that you're gonna pick that shot for
the cover! It's not a true picture of what this band is all about.
It is of Jim, sure."
This from a band who reputedly tied a groupie to a hotel bed
and let their road crew piss on her.
"Where did you hear that?" Patton exclaims. From someone
she now works with in London.
Patton: "WHAT? NO WAY!" "We didn't tie her up," admits Bill.
"It wasn't the road crew either. Maybe we just look like the
road crew! Anyway, she was in the shower. Jim couldn't piss,
which is surprising for the amount of beer he drinks! I never
thought we'd hear about that again."
Patton: "How did you hear about that stuff?!"
Bill: "She didn't mind. I think there's a difference between
doing that - for whatever reasons - and doing what Jim is
doing outside for the benefit of a photographer. It means
different things to Jim than to us. That is exactly what Jim is.
Jim is the token rocker in Faith No More!"
FOR HIS part. Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin is having a ball. In
Houston, the guitarist is reunited with his cousins. Bob, Marie,
Robert and Wanda are backstage at the Astradome, obviously
thrilled with Jim's performance. They take snapshots and swap
stories of the band's first appearance in Houston at the
infinitely smaller Warehouse club. Robert has never seen the
band perform until tonight, but is nonetheless full of praise.
"You can tell Jim is an innovator," he says proudly. I do believe
Jim blushes.
"We're all copying something." "Bullshit!" retorts Robert
affectionately.
Over a meal of steak and jacket potatoes, the family are full of
good old Texan bonhomie. Jim gets his steak doggy-bagged.
Marie worries about the crime rate and Wanda tells this joke
about back-masked messages in Country And Western music.
"They say if you play Tammy Wynette records backwards, you
get your girl
back, your car back, your dead mother back, your beer
back...!"
The table groans. Jim looks happy.
JIM IS always happiest when he's got a beer and someone to
talk to. He genuinely doesn't give a shit about much. He's
playing guitar on the biggest rock tour of his career, and sees
nothing wrong with embracing the lifestyle with open arms.
"It feels like there's the four of them against the one of me.
Whatever opinion I take, I end up as the minority. Sometimes
I hate those f**kers."

He's not kind in his assessment of FNM. Bill is "Patton's

personal thug!".
Patton blows with the wind and Puffy, he says, could do with a
cold bath. "Look at him now," he says, pointing at the
drummer talking to fans at the backstage entrance across a
wooden barrier.
"Puffy's People! Notice he never crosses that barrier. There's
always that barrier to remind us that he is a star."
When Puffy and Jim are in the same room together, the
atmosphere is icy. "Want a beer, Puffy?" Jim asks. The
drummer shakes his dreadlocks. "Why not? You always used
to drink. What happened to you, Puffy?" "Nothing, man. I just
don't want a beer, okay? I used to drink beer, but I was 14!"
He leaves. Jim shrugs and cracks open another can for
himself. "See what I mean?"

SOMETIMES IT'S difficult to figure out why Jim Martin is still

with Faith No More. He recently told Guitarist magazine: "I
don't think the difference between the parts they wanted me
to play on 'Angel Dust' and the parts I actually played was
enough of a difference to affect our careers."
Without Jim, Faith No More would be half the band they
currently are. Jim Martin is a foil for Patton as well as
supplying the killer grunge which has always been at the root
of the quintet's sound. Jim Martin is a top geezer. I tell the
band that Jim thinks they don't know how to enjoy
themselves.
"Fine," Puffy snipes, "but we're not alcoholics!" The others
cheer.
Bill: "We're just from different backgrounds. When Jim first
Joined the band, it was kind of an art statement."
Patton: "I think Jim should get a medal. Jim works really hard
at being the official party animal for Faith No More! He does
enough work for all of us. What a guy!"

SO THE tour is coming to a close. After each of the most

recent concerts, GN'R's crew have been throwing parties for
themselves. Last night in Houston they organised 20
strippers. Tonight in Dallas there are rumours of a strip-fest
involving 50 girls! Jim tries to manipulate a vote to stay in
Dallas. He is unanimously out-voted.
"I hope you will go in my place and be my official party
delegates!" he grunts. We never did make it. The local
reviews praise FNM's performance. The Dallas Fort Worth Star
reported that 'there was no great outcry for an encore, which
seemed to suit Faith No More just fine'. The same paper is less
kind to GN'R. Adjectives like 'self-indulgent' are bandied
about.
The final verdict? 'The Gunners' show has too many stadium
rock touches. Faith No More don't care. Ahead of them are
1 ,000 miles of road before another brief appearance and
more audience humiliation.
"Our job is just to be ourselves and not to suck corporate
dick," says Patton. "But I'm looking forward to playing the
smaller venues on our own tour after this. I just can't imagine
this band becoming as big as Metallica. I don't think I'd enjoy
it.
"This tour is not a real thing. The best thing about it is that at
the end we can all just pack up and walk away. from it. The
other bands on the bill have to live with it."
FAITH NO MORE | ZTV INTERVIEWS | 22.09.1992
On this day 23 years ago Faith No More played a show at the Col Ballroom in
Davenport, U.S.A.

Before the show a 15 year old school boy got the opportunity of a lifetime and
interviewed his favourite band for a cable TV show before the gig.

James Zahn for ZTV......Now commonly known as The Rock Father!

As they say, "everyone has to start somewhere..."

For me it was the summer of 1992. I'd moved to Davenport, Iowa from my
longtime home in the South Suburbs of Chicago the prior February, somehow
managing to find myself elected Vice-President of my class for my upcoming
junior year of high school at Davenport North. I was 15, bored, and obsessed
with film, television, and music.

Sans a few things I'd filmed with my parent's old Super 8mm camera, I had no
experience with shooting or editing video. My prior on-camera exploits were
limited (a Superbowl Shuffle parody vid, etc) as well, yet somehow I felt the
urge to start playing around in the world of Cable Access.

Armed with a borrowed Panasonic "Omnimovie" Video Camera and free editing
equipment courtesy of the local Cox Cable facility, my world was about to
become captured on the murky format of VHS.

At the start, the show had no real format. I'd pulled together a few friends and
we'd sit around the apartment living room, re-dressed as a sort of no-budget
late-night talk show, talking about movies, music, high school sports, and other
random - mostly boring - bullshit. Mixed within would be the occasional music
video or poorly produced comedy sketch starring yours truly and whoever
happened to be available that day. The show also had no name, so it became
"The Jim Zahn Show" until a few people started calling it ZTV - a name that
stuck.

Like much of Cable Access, ZTV was pretty horrible. Painful to watch (it still is),
hard to produce, and existing solely for the purpose of "something to do," we'd
made seven or eight 30-minute episodes and for some reason - people were
watching.

The show scored a full-color spread in the Quad City Times, got mentioned on
97X (the big "rock" station in the Quad Cities), and people were actually taking
the time to send "fan mail" into a P.O. Box we'd established. Since the internet
wasn't really here yet, the show also got it's fair share of "hate mail" as well. The
people that bitch have always had the biggest mouths... At one point a show
produced by a handful of jocks from Assumption High School (the local Catholic
bunch) even went to psuedo "war" with me (I never fired back), going as far as
to have a character called "The Zahnanator" on their show. Their beef? ZTV
was in the QC Times and their show wasn't.

On a trip to the local Co-Op Tapes and Records, I'd seen a flyer promoting the
fact that my favorite band, FAITH NO MORE, would soon be appearing at the
Col Ballroom in Davenport. They were "Touring on ANGEL DUST," and I was
damn sure that I'd be there. I was a fan from the moment I'd heard them, and to
this day can remember my Mom taking me to K-Mart to buy THE REAL THING
on cassette, and my Dad taking me to Musicland to buy ANGEL DUST on CD
(longbox!). On the way home from the record store I wondered if I could get the
band to appear on my show.

The following day was an interesting one spent cold-calling record labels to
somehow make this happen. Thanks to directory assistance, the calls began.
Unlike most tales of the "big, scary, music industry" - surprisingly my calls were
taken. Slash Records pointed me to Warner/Reprise, who in turn put me in
touch with Shore Fire Media in New York, and a publicist named Mark Satlof.

Satlolf was exceptionally accommodating. After conversing for quite awhile he

asked me to fax a written proposal to be shown to, and approved by the band's
management.

ZTV was FNM approved.

On September 22, 1992 - I met with the band at the Col Ballroom in Davenport.
With no interviewing experience of any kind, I sat down one-on-one with all five
members of the ANGEL DUST lineup: Mike Patton, Billy Gould, Roddy Bottum,
Mike Bordin, and Jim Martin to answer questions thrown out by friends at
Davenport North, and written down on green index cards. I may not have known
it at the time, but what you're about to see is my "trial by fire" - an awkward set
of interviews that set my entire life in motion. If Biff Tannen were to steal the
DeLorean, go back in time to 1992 and stop the interviews from happening, my
life would have taken a very different path.
I hope you all enjoy watching these clips, and for the members of FAITH NO
MORE and Mark Satlof... a belated "thank you" for giving a kid a chance, and
igniting my musical fire.

Looking back after all this time, it’s kind of like Mike Bordin is the serious, “elder
statesman” of the bunch. His responses display passion, and he was even
trying to guide me in learning how to interview. Roddy seemed tired; Patton had
a lot of youthful excitement and was really laid back – interesting to see given
the expansive discography he’s built since then; Billy was the closest to Bordin
in terms of passion for what they were doing, and also being very attentive to
the business of the band; Jim Martin… well, I think a few commenters on
YouTube and sites like FNM 2.0 have pretty well pegged it. There were
definitely some "telling" moments in these clips.
On a side note, that fanmail/hatemail that would arrive after each episode would
air? Suffice to say the mailbox was pretty damn full after the FNM episode, and
thanks to the internet - I was actually able to track down a few of the people that
sent in letters eighteen years ago.

I never thought that hanging onto so many of those letters would prove fruitful,
but in this case it did. On the night of the FNM concert, a group of cheerleaders
from Davenport Central High School joined FNM on-stage for "Be Aggressive."
Heather Jones was one of those cheerleaders, and had sent in a couple of
letters after the show. Below is a recently acquired photo of the girls along with
Roddy post-concert, courtesy of Miss Jones...

TOURING ON ANGEL DUST | 05.09.1992 | TEXAS

STADIUM
Kerrang! | Issue 411 | 26.09.1992 | Chris Watts
FROM THE side of the stage you can smell Faith No More. You can smell the
heat and sweat, and it's only 4pm. When the sunshine hits this enormous stage
the temperature
peaks at around 115 degrees. As an alternative venue with similar conditions on
every level, Faith No More could just as well be playing in Hell.

It is not the ideal environment. In fact, it is positively ridiculous. 50,000 redneck

juveniles are here to worship Axl, and Faith No More are a mere irritation at
best. The stadium is still filling up as Patton leaves the stage in chaos amidst
the dying blast of 'Epic' Some of the assholes are jeering. Almost all are sitting
down. Faith No More can claim it as a success.

Mike Patton remembers the girl down the front. She's right there, squashed
against the security railings, giving Patton the personal thumbs-down. She
laughs sarcastically when he crashes to the floor just inches from her enormous
tits during 'Caffeine' Patton has seen her and plays the screeching spaz
delinquent exclusively for the dumb bimbo. "Wasn't she great?" he later
comments. "Those are the people this band wants to piss off!"
Middle America doesn't hate Faith No More so much as simply not understand
them. These days, the Metallica and Guns N' Roses audiences are virtually
identical, and despite the fact that Kirk Hammett stands just out of sight behind
Mike Bordin's drum kit during 'Midlife Crisis' and the hideous 'R.V.', this crowd
will never comprehend the connection. They look at Jim Martin and see a
geeky, cartoon hero in a Stetson and shorts. They don't understand that this is
Jim's sole reason tor being here.

Faith No More are a blot on the landscape for this crowd. 'We Care A Lot' hits
the first eight rows hard, but the momentum of this great song doesn't reach
much further. It is only really the MTV-rotated 'Epic' which gets a reaction, and
only then because it's familiar.
Typically, Patton drags the song into farce. He sings most of it whilst lying on
his back under a vocal monitor, capping the performance by tumbling Bill
Gould's bass amps. It's rubbish, absolute shit, but Faith No More make their
point.

The whole tour is a farce. Faith No More have been here to lend at least a
vestige of credibility to both Metallica and Guns N' Roses. Faith No More have
enjoyed and manipulated the farce at the expense of the assholes. That in itself
has been worth 30 bucks.
Guitar Magazine Issue September 1992

FAITH NO MORE
Get the Funk Out

by Lee Sherman

Three years ago, when _The Real Thing_ began its ascent to the top of
the album charts, bands like Faith No More were the exception; today
they are the rule. So what does the band that brought heavy metal
kicking and screaming into a new decade do for an encore?
Sacrilegious as usual, they break their own rules. You won't find any
funk-metal on _Angel Dust_, the San Francisco band's latest -- at least
you won't be able to label it as such. Labels are something that this
band has consistently tried to avoid, but without them, FNM's music
has always been pretty difficult to describe to the uninitiated. That
should change with _Angel Dust_. Though not all that radical a
departure from the band's previous work, Faith No More has finally
managed to fuse their catholic influences -- from retrograde metal,
contemporary funk, world music and punk -- into a cohesive whole.
The result is an album that, ironically enough, has a damn good
chance of spawning more than one hit single. However, Faith No More
knows from experience that it takes more than a great record to have
success, and with that in mind, they've headed out on a series of
summer concert dates with Metallica and Guns N'Roses.

It isn't only the band's influences that are coming together. While the
majority of the songs are still written by the group's core of Mike
"Puffy" Bordin on drums, Roddy Bottum on keyboards and Billy Gould
on bass (the original threesome that formed Faith No More back in
1982), guitarist Jim Martin and singer Mike Patton are starting to play
greater roles: One is the band's devil, the other the band's angel. But,
like most things with Faith No More, it isn't always clear which is
which.

Jim is Faith No More's necessary evil, an unreconstructed heavy metal

guitar freak in a band of musical experimenters. His guitar playing in
Faith No More, while not technically spectacular, is a textbook
example of playing the right thing at the right time. If you already
think of him as a throwback to the '70s, his work on _Angel Dust_ will
both amuse and surprise you. Martin's trademark power riffs are still
present in spades but he also gets the opportunity to tread on new
ground.

With his lyrics, his many vocal styles and his onstage antics, Mike
Patton makes an already weird band even weirder. He's been given a
wide berth on this record, but he still manages to save his more
scatalogical references for his other band, Mr. Bungle. Patton is now
an integral part of Faith No More. (Suffice it to say that no one ever
asks about Chuck Mosely any more.)

It's been worth the wait, though fans could easily have lost faith
waiting for _Angel Dust_ to appear. After nearly two years on the
road, the band took some much needed time to recuperate and write
songs for the new record. Time off was short-lived. FNM began to feel
a lot of pressure from their management and record company to
complete the follow-up to _The Real Thing_ -- pressure that eventually
resulted in in-fighting. Of course, this was nothing new for FNM, and
as usual, it had a positive effect on the music. Jim's work on _Angel
Dust_ started with an argument and ended with some of his most
unique guitar parts yet. (To understand how this could occur, one
needs to know something about the way this band writes songs.
Other bands may jam, but FNM exchanges demo tapes. Former
frontman Chuck Mosely lived in Los Angeles while the rest of the
group was in the Bay Area, and used to write his lyrics to the music
that would arrive in his mailbox. When Mike Patton first came aboard,
he did something similar, even though he was living with Puffy at the
time.) Jim has always prepared his guitar parts on his own and sent
them back to the band for approval. "They weren't really satisfied
with some of the things that I was coming up with for their songs,"
says Jim of these recent effort. "I think that was the pressure showing,
because I thought the parts were fine."

It won't be surprising to anyone who's followed this band to hear that

Patton's view is almost 180 degrees away from Jim's. "It sounded like
Guitar Center," the singer recalls, "somebody playing just to get
themselves off. It came together after some primitive intimidation
tactics. It's kind of the way we coexist with each other. We give each
other lots and lots of trouble. We all believe that everyone deserves
equal torment, _except_ for Jim."

By his own admission, this time Jim was going beyond his established
role in the band -- his requisite heavy guitar riffs -- but just as there's
more to Mike than funk, Jim's talents stretch beyond power chords, "I
was trying to enhance the songs," he explains. "I was trying to add
another dimension. Sometimes it was more melodic, sometimes it
was other things." He maintains that the parts that ended up on the
record were nearly identical to those original parts after all. "It really
pissed me off," he says. "I don't think the difference between the
parts they wanted me to play and the parts I played was enough of a
difference to affect our careers. It seems like they wind up the bass
player and the drummer. For example, after we did the demo tape,
management said 'I hope nobody's buying any houses!' And they
knew they were," he laughs. "People get worried about what other
people think. I think it makes the band more conservative. They start
worrying about writing radio songs and that kind of shit. We're in a
position where we ought to do the wildest shit we can." The Sabbathy
"Jizzlobber," a song Jim wrote almost entirely by himself, is both the
heaviest thing on _Angel Dust_ and one of the strangest.

Part of the pressure was due to rumours that the band was way
behind schedule in recording the new album. According to Jim, FNM
has never operated on any kind of a schedule, and never will. "I think
the problem was our last publicist leaking things out to the press that
we were going to be in the studio at a certain time regardless of when
we were going in, so it seemed like we were backed up. They wanted
us to start writing songs right after we got off tour last time. They
were putting a lot of pressure on our bass player. They were telling
him that if we got a song out by summer, which was _last_ summer,
that it would be the biggest record ever. He's kind of gullible that
way."

Jim grew up in Hayward, California, a quiet little town occasionally

livened up by the sound of roaring motorcycles. It isn't any wonder
that the guitarist was attracted early on to heavy metal. Th first
record he ever bought was Black Sabbath's debut, and the first thing
he learned to play was the riff in "Iron Man." His first guitar was a
Japanese-made Epiphone, which he played through a Yamaha 50-watt
amplifier. Later, he graduated to a Fender Stratocaster and Marshall
amp, the definitive metal set-up ever since Hendrix reached for the
skies. A child of the '70s, Jim has fond memories of 8-track tapes by
Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and UFO. Newer guitar players like
Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen have had next to
no affect on Jim. He admits that the last album he bought was _Bridge
of Sighs_ by Robin Trower.

Martin's influences aren't always apparent in the diverse sound of

Faith No More, but traces of Jimmy Page can be heard on the new
track, "Be Aggressive." Jim's own more aggressive use of his wah-wah
pedal on both "Be Aggressive" and "Crack Hitler" provides even more
of a throw-back to the '70s. "You can hear it on _The Real Thing_ as
well, but it's not as blatant," he says. "I'm using it as a filter. It lends a
certain effect to the harmonics."

Indeed, the wah-wah pedal has become Jim's secret weapon. "On
some of the other songs I'm using it too, but not in such a '70s
fashion. I just have it wide open and it gives it a whole different
sound." His current favorite guitar is a 1979 Flying V that's been
broken three times. He's also got another Flying V that he uses as a
backup and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. A longtime Marshall man, Jim
switched to a Mesa/Boogie amplifier last year when the tubes went
out and he couldn't get the sound he wanted out of the replacements.
"It's good, because you can dial it in any way you want," he says. "It's
got a graphic EQ with a hundred knobs on it. I usually like to keep
things simple. With my old Marshall, I'd just run up all the knobs and
it'd sound great."
Martin takes a similarly old-fashioned view toward effects, relying
primarily on his Morley Power Wah Fuzz. His guitar sound was
established years ago, almost by accident, and it isn't likely to change
that much. Occasionally, he'll experiment with compressor, delay or
vibrato units. He also relies on his whammy bar, especially in live
performance where he gets more of an opportunity to solo. "After I
got my Strat, I got really used to the whammy bar," says Jim. "Every
guitar I got after that had to have a whammy bar on it. I don't use it
all that much, but I Like to have it there." Due to the versatility of
Faith No More's music, Jim requires different guitars for different
songs. He uses a Les Paul on "Be Aggressive," and a Strat on "RV" to
get a country twang. Those who think of Jim as the ultimate heavy
metal guitarist may be surprised to learn that he also plays banjo and
mandolin. In fact, one song which prominently features his mandolin
playing nearly found its way onto _Angel Dust_. Close, but no cigar.

Jim's role as lead guitarist has expanded on the new album, oddly
enough because it was the only way he could fit into the songs his
compatriots were coming up with. "A lot of the songs had nothing to
do with me," he says. "I thought they sounded better without me
playing."

Martin's lead playing was a key ingredient in the band's hit, "Epic,"
but he gets very little room to stretch out in Faith No More. "That
happened in the studio as well. I was just noodling around on the
demo and there was one little part at the beginning of the solo that
grabbed me. Sometimes that's all it takes." On "Be Aggressive," Jim
takes a rare extended break. "I was surprised that I was allowed to go
on as long as I did," he says. "The band doesn't really like guitar solos
that much. It was a part of the song where it really belonged, but that
hasn't stopped the band from chopping a guitar solo apart in the
past." Normally, Jim prefers to work out his parts well in advance, as
on the first album's "Introduce Yourself," where he contructed a dual
guitar solo in the manner of Thin Lizzy, playing both parts himself.
This time out, the opportunity to play a solo came as a surprise, so he
came up with three different impromptu takes that were edited
together.

Jim's relationship with the rest of the guys in Faith No More is best
described as adversarial. His parts for the new record, as on all the
others, were written separately and grafted onto the songs. "My
songwriting procedure is: I get together with my friends, party for a
while, drink a bunch of beers, jam and have fun, and I record it," he
explains. "I then go back and listen to the tape, and pick riffs out that
would be good for songs. Very little of what I write is actually
appropriate for Faith No More. When I write a song for the band, I
write most, if not all, the parts, Mike Patton writes the lyrics--he's
pretty good at doing what he does. I have to tell everyone else what
to play. They're very open to what I have to tell them. I like it when
they write stuff to my songs. When it works out, it's great, but they
don't really know how to write songs from a guitar point of view;
they're used to writing songs from a bass, drums and keyboard point
of view."

Established groups like Van Halen are known for never setting foot in
the studio at the same time, but they at least put up a facade of
brotherhood; after all, two of them are brothers. Jim, a loner by
nature, probably would do things this way even if it weren't for
arguments. "I rehearsed very little with the band," he says. "I feel like
I can do a lot better on my own with the tape. When I'm here with the
band, I'm pretty much there for their sake. I don't feel like I should
ask the band to play songs over and over again so that I can figure
out what the hell I'm going to play. That's where some of the
problems came in, because I was figuring out stuff on my own and
they weren't hearing it, so when I came in and played it, they weren't
used to it."

Dissatisfied with the guitar sound on Faith No More's first two albums,
Jim did his research for _The Real Thing_. "I sat in Rick Rubin's studio
while he was recording Wolfsbane. There's certain aspects of the
sound he gets that I like. I talked to James Hetfield to see how he got
his guitar sounds. Most of what they do is mike placement. What I
learned from these folks is that you keep experimenting with things
until you get what you like. Matt Wallace never paid much attention
to getting a good guitar sound--he stuck the mikes on there and that
was it."

Jim credits the improved sound on the new album to continued

movement down this path: "Matt likes to record drums in a big room
with a lot of ambient mikes. This time we recorded them in a drier,
more controllable way, with a lot of close-miking. I think that had a lot
to do with it. You can hear the drums a lot better without having to
really crank them up. If you think about it, a lot of records you listen
to today, the kick drum sounds like a snap. On this one, you can hear
the bass drum more."

For a totally different take on why it took so long to deliver the new
Faith No More album, you only have to talk to another member of
Faith No More. Contrary to what Jim says, Mike Patton says the band
was too insulated to feel any pressure. "We didn't feel any pressure at
all about following up the last record," Patton claims. "We were really
confident. The record company was leaving us alone and it was kind
of quiet. Little did we know that there was a lot of panic bubbling
under the surface. They'd be happier if we delivered a record just like
our last record." While Jim expresses concern that the songs on
_Angel Dust_ sound too much alike and too much like what is
expected of the band, Mike thinks they've done exactly what they
wanted to do. Part of the reason for the disagreement may be the
lack of straightforward rock songs on this album. "They said there's
too much _gratuitous sampling_, and they thought that would affect
those poor little rockers' ears," says Mike. "They were concerned that
it wasn't commercial enough."

Faith No More has never been easy to categorize, now even less so
when their various influences have coalesced into a more distinctive
sound, as they have on _Angel Dust_. "They said we can't go to
alternative radio because 'you guys are a _failed alternative band_,'"
recounts Mike, relishing the thought of making life difficult for his
record company. "I think the element of danger is a beautiful thing. I
think it's great that these record company assholes are worried about
making the next house payment. I think it was something they were
afraid to deal with."

And then there was the rumor that Patton was leaving the band to
rejoin his buddies in Mr. Bungle. Jim claims they never took that
possibility seriously, but given Mike's public statements indicating his
disillusionment with the way FNM operates, it definitely put pressure
on the band. "The people that were the most worried about it were
the record company and the managment," according to Jim. "I don't
even try to figure out their end of things."

In some ways, the band has gotten even further far out on _Angel
Dust_, as evidenced on the hilarious ong, "RV," a song that is clearly a
vehicle for Patton's twisted world-view. Then there's their decision to
cover the theme from _Midnight Cowboy_ because bassist Billy Gould
had some sort of perverse attraction to the movie's storyline!

"We didn't want to make the same record and we all knew that," says
Mike. "We've explored more extremes and we've gotten a lot better
at executing those extremes." The approach this time was to
eliminate as many hyphens from descriptions of the band as was
humanly possible. "There was one that really pissed us off: funk-
metal. That's one thing that really ate a hole in our stomachs," Mike
says. Except for Jim, of course. "I think it was accurate, because I was
playing a metal guitar style and Bill was playing funky bass," Martin
states. "We played exactly what we wanted to play, but because we
all feel the same way about that," insists Mike, "this album sounds the
way it does. There are still funk-based grooves, but I think it would be
harder for someone to [tag it funk-metal]."

Whether you side with Jim or Mike, the real story is that Faith No More
have made a record that both of them can be proud of. In any case,
the band is sick and tired of the songs on _The Real Thing_ after
playing them on the road for the better part of two years. Jim says it
didn't really hit him until the band made it to South America. For
Mike, "It's very hard to be objective about _The Real Thing_. How can
you not end up despising it? It's very mechanical to play those songs.
There was a period of time when I was really happy with it, but I think
we lived a little too long with those things." Mike, like Jim, is also
somewhat of an outsider. He's been criticized by some people for his
decision to stay active with Mr. Bungle, the band he was in before
Faith No More. Those folks needn't worry though -- he's got enough
nervous energy for 10 groups. "I think it would be easy for people to
have a problem with me, because to them, I'm scum for doing what
I'm doing," says Mike. "I'm an adulterous slut. It's real simple to me.
It's not a concept, it's not a way of living; it's like taking a shit."

Patton, the baby of the band (and that's meant in a good way!), was a
fresh-faced kid from a small town when he first joined Faith No More,
moving into Puffy's flat in San Francisco. For _The Real Thing_, his first
album with FNM, he wrote his lyrics while listening to tapes of the
songs composed by the other members. These days, he's a much
more essential part of the group, and he was there writing songs from
the beginning. "When you're there with it from the beginning, there's
more of a connection," he says. "When you're just writing words to a
tape, you end up pressing rewind a lot." Being thrust into an existing
situation where the other players have been playing with each other
for nearly a decade wasn't easy for the singer at first, and despite his
experience as the leader of his own group, it took some time before
he was ready to properly express himself. "I've had no choice but to
become comfortable," says Mike. "It was either that or choke on your
own vomit."

Patton has learned that if you want to get very far in Faith No More,
you've got to fight for what you believe in. "I'm making myself more
vocal," he says. "I've spent more time and there's certain things I
hear the band doing and it's great if they can do it. I wrote a song for
this record entirely by myself, 'Malpractice.' When I first joined the
band, things were a little foreign to me because I was coming from a
background that wasn't very song-oriented. I don't know how to write
a pop song. The way I write is very skippy and very irritating."

Those who think of Patton as the group's funk specialist will be

surprised to learn that "Malpractice" is one of the most heavy metal
tunes on _Angel Dust_, a perfect showcase, in fact, for Jim's crunching
riffs. Unlike Jim, Mike didn't grow up obsessed with music. And unlike
the others, he never submitted to any music lessons. He doesn't even
play any instruments, though he uses a rack with a guitar effect
processor onstage with Mr. Bungle. "It's just for freaking out," he says.
So then what is he doing in _Guitar_? Pattons' songwriting is unusual
but effective in bringing in different influences from rap, pop, metal
and avant-garde music. He takes a literary approach to the lyrics, and
has been scrawling out words as long as he can remember, but he
says he doesn't have any intentions to write anything other than
songs. "I can't stick with one idea or concept for longer than five
minutes, so songs are perfect."

Many of Faith No More's songs are character sketches, where Mike

acts out the part of some tortured soul. He changes roles as easily as
Jim changes guitars. The way he writes lyrics is, to say the least,
unconventional. "I got one entire song from fortune cookes ("Land of
Sunshine"). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra
songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving
around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it."
Whether he's rapping or singing, Patton uses his voice as a musical
instrument. For him, the sounds he is making are as important as the
words, maybe even more so. His favorite singers are Elton John,
Diamanda Galas, Chet Baker and John Tardy from Obituary ("up until
this last record he didn't even say words, he just made gutteral
sounds"). He also cites Nomeansno and the Residents as influences.
"You gotta steal from all the people you listen to," explains Mike. "I
wouldn't even learn words to songs, just phonetics. That to me is way
more important." But Patton's no purist when it comes to tone. "I used
a bullhorn, I used distortion. It just helps bring out an extreme. I don't
care what it takes. If I can't do it with my voice, I'll use something
else." On "Crack Hitler," he used a compressor which makes him
sound as if his head is being squeezed in a vise. If his singing on _The
Real Thing_ was innovative, what he's done on _Angel Dust_ is mind-
blowing. >From the rap dementia of "Land of Sunshine," his
muttering on "RV," and the drone of "Jizzlobber" to the melodic pop of
"Everything's Ruined" and "A Small Victory," Mike is the man of a
thousand voices. As the group's singer, he's also the most visible guy
in the band, and his boyish looks have turned him into something of a
reluctant pin-up boy. "Puffy's the only guy who's jealous," says Patton.
"All drummers want to be singers. I think it's a myth that the singer
needs to be the focus. Bands perpetuate that myth. With somebody
like Sebastian Bach it makes sense. Look at him. He could be in an
Avon ad."

For all his attempts to be taken seriously as a musician, Patton does

get his share of rampaging teenage girls trying to rip his clothes off.
"It all comes down to what your mother taught you," he says. "It's not
a comfortable thing to deal with. I try to avoid it as much as I can. Put
down the tape recorder and let's go have a burrito."

Patton uses pop culture as a weapon. In his eyes, just about the worst
thing you can be is politically correct. "If you were asking my opinion
on the Rodney King case and I pulled out a Twinkie and started
talking about _Days of Our Lives_, it would really freak you out," he
says. This is the man whose idea it was to bring in cheerleaders for
the chorus of "Be Aggressive," drawing the line between the in-your-
face urban angst of rap and the bottled up anxiety of the average
suburban town, like Eureka, CA, where he grew up. Nowhere is this
more apparent than on "RV," a Tom Waits-like tribute to white trash
middle America. "It's about a slob sitting around who doesn't do
anthing," says Mike. "I kind of identify with it."
FAITH NO MORE | SEPTEMBER 1992 | GUITAR
WORLD
Guitar World | September 1992
PAUL AND STEVE BLUSH

Big Jim Martin wants you to know that the life of a multi platinum guitarist isn't all milk
and honey. Sure, Faith No More's decade of indie releases and club gigs paid off with
the huge success of 1989's The Real Thing. Sure, the band just released a stunning
follow up. Angel Dust (Slash/ Reprise). And yes, he's excited to be part of the opening
act on the biggest metal tour in years, Guns N'Roses/Metallica. But Martin's got other
things on his mind.
"I have to check my guitar-player's ego at the door to play in this band," he says. "That
gets unpleasant sometimes."
Before you shed any tears for Martin, understand that he isn't exactly looking for
sympathy.
"Hey, that's life," says the manic, myopic guitarist. "And that's what it takes sometimes
to be in a good band. Remember that, kids."
And remember this: just because Martin's role in Faith No More is different from that of
your average power-chord master, it doesn't mean he's not important to the band's
sound. Though he rarely solos at length, his Hetfield/Iommi-styled riffs are a critical part
of the band's musical mix, toughening up Roddy Bottum's prominent, textured
keyboards and preventing Faith No More from spinning into over-intellectual, prog-rock
land.
Like The Real Thing, Angel Dust is a dense, extremely challenging album, full of wild
time changes, discordant notes, Mike Patton's animalistic gmnts and caustic white-boy
raps—and Martin's strange, eerie guitar fills. On "Malpractice," which veers toward
death metal, Martin rips off an extremely discordant 12-bar solo. His sweet, melodic
solo flutters through layers of samples on "Smaller And Smaller," and he drives "RV"
with crisp, twangy blues fills. Then there's "JizzLobber," Martin's gnarly personal
composition and one of the album's finest moments.
Martin's personal behavior is no closer to what one would expect from a guitar hero
than his playing. Which other rock star would be found bowling in his regular Sunday
league the morning after appearing at Oakland Coliseum's prestigious Day On The
Green-festival with Metallica, Queensryche and Soundgarden? Lucid, approachable
and refreshingly real. he is the Faith No More member least affected by the band's
sudden success. He still lives at home with mom and still hangs out at the cheap East
Bay dives he's always frequented.
We spoke to Martin as he prepared his mint 1988 Harley Police Special for a grueling
12-hour cycle ride to the Grand Canyon. It was a final chance to unwind and have
some time to himself, he explained, "before the band hit the road and all the craziness
starts again.

Guitar World: Angel Dust is a very ambitious album, in terms of time changes and
mood swings. Did you set out to create such a richly textured album?

JIM MARTIN: I could say yes, because I know exactly what you mean. But Id have to
say no, because when we were recording, I was only thinking about the particular song
we were working on. Some of the other guys may have been thinking conceptually or
trying to set a consistent mood, but I was just trying to play the right part for the right
song.

GW: Your guitar's primary role is to toughen up the keyboard lines. Were your parts on
Angel Dust actually written to double or complement the keyboard lines?
MARTIN: Sometimes, but when I'm involved in the writing of a song, I write for the
guitar. I wish we always did it that way, but on this album a lot of keyboard parts were
written first, so I "was actually trying to write my guitar lines to match—to "toughen"
them, as you said. It's definitely challenging—and, after much noodling around, I
usually end up using the simplest possible thing.

GW: But some of your fills, though brief, are pretty bizarre.

MARTIN: That's right. The fills are where I do my warped little thing; I throw in
whatever I can get away with without the other guys shooting me. It can be frustrating,
but I really can't complain.

GW: Your fills on "RV" have a great, twangy sound. Did you use the bar there?

MARTIN: No. Acmally, it's done with an Eventide H3 000 S Utra-Harmonizer. I also
used a Strat there, because I wanted it to be real clean and twangy. In some other
spots on the album I used a Fender Tele Deluxe and a Les Paul Deluxe. The rest of it
was recorded with my old favorite—my customized '79 Gibson Flying V.

GW: Was it custom-made for you?

MARTIN: Hell no I bought it new in 1979 and have slowly changed it over the years. It's
got a Kahler tremolo bar, a Seymour Duncan Live Wire in the bridge position— which
is a great, crunchy pickup—an EMG 60 in the nut position, a chrome-plated brass
pickguard and some other various modifications. It resonates well, sounds great
acoustically, and feels like home. I've got another V, and it's okay, but not nearly the
same.

GW: Considering how attached you are to that guitar, do you ever get paranoid about
having it on the road all the time?

MARTIN: Nah. I just figure that if anything happens to it, I'll get used to a new guitar,
and eventually it will feel like home, too. Sort of like moving, [laughs]

GW: Your solo on "Smaller And Smaller" is very melodic, and has a distinctly Eastern
flavor. Did you use an altered tuning on that?

MARTIN: No, it was standard tuning. I didn't really know what I was doing. The whole
song sounded Middle Eastern to me, so I just noodled up and down the fretboard until I
found the sound which I heard in my head. That's what I always do. I'm not a very
schooled player.

GW: "Malpractice" is a very heavy song. In fact, it's almost like death metal.

MARTIN: Yeah, that's pretty out there. I feel like I'm basically an actor in a play on that
song, because Mike wrote it and I essentially had no input; I'm just playing his part. I
usually write my own guitar parts, and I don't think I would have come up with anything
quite like that. Death metal's not really my cup of tea. But then I don't know what I
could call my "cup of tea." I hear new music that I like, but nothing's really inspired me
like the first guys—Zep, Skynyrd, Floyd and Sabbath.

GW: Speaking of inspired, "Jizz Lobber" is a real showcase for you. Did you see it as
an opportunity to stretch out?
MARTIN: Not really. I just wanted to have a song of mine on the album, and I wanted
to write something really horrible and ugly. The title is my idea of a joke, because I'm
not really a fan of true guitar-jizz music. Of course, I can't play like Satriani or Vai any
how. I feel like those guys are playing another instrument altogether.

GW: What kind of rig did you use on the album?

MARTIN: It was basically the same as my live setup. I run my V through a Morley
Power Wah fuzz—the old-style 110-volt one—an Eventide H3000S Ultra-Harmonizer
and a little delay into a Mesa/Boogie Mark IV to four Marshall cabinets. It's good
enough for now, but I'm always changing it in some little way. I think that the whole
thing is over if you're ever completely satisfied with your guitar sound. My only major
change since the last tour is that I-used Marshalls instead of the Mesa, but I blew an
amp and it just hasn't been the same since the repair.

GW: What was your first experience with a guitar?

MARTIN: Well, my mom actually has a picture of me playing guitar when I was just a
wee child, maybe five years old. I'm standing there in my cowboy hat, playing this
toy guitar my old man got me.

GW: What type of music did you play at five?

MARTIN: Nothing; I couldn't play. I didn't actually start playing seriously until seventh
grade, when I started jamming on my cousin's old Rickenbacker through a little Fender
Champ amp. Before that, I played on my Mom's Harmony Patrician, a great old guitar.
Eventually, my folks got me a Japanese Epiphone and a piece-of-shit Yamaha amp for
Christmas, and I started playing Black Sabbath tunes. The first song I learned was
"Iron Man," then "War Pigs"—which we still cover.

GW: You played with [original Metallica bassist] Cliff Burton in a couple of bands. How
did you hook up with him?

MARTIN: I was playing Zep and Skynyrd covers in a neighborhood band called Easy
Street, which was named after a strip club that we started going to when we were 15.
Our bass player quit, and he told us about Cliff. We started playing with him and he
was already really good, way better than any of the rest of us. And he also looked
pretty much the same as he did when he was in Metallica: bellbottoms and huge hair.
He knew Puffy [FNM drummer Mike Bordin] and got him to join the band. By that time
we were writing original stuff, which I still have some tapes of. We had a song called
"Retarded Guys" that sounds similar to Nirvana's "Come As You Are." That band was
together for over five years, but Puffy didn't last too long, because he talked too much
shit. He joined some pop-punk band.

GW: You're probably the least punk-influenced member of Faith No More.

MARTIN: Yeah, I didn't get into punk until Cliff turned me on in the early Eighties. I was
still listening to Sabbath, Zeppelin and Floyd, and Cliff introduced me to bands like
Fear, GBH, Black Flag and the Exploited. That stuff was pretty wild; it was exciting and
new for me. Cliff turned me on to a lot of cool stuff when he was in Trauma, though I
can't say I was a big fan of theirs.

GW: What were they like?

MARTIN: They were kind of like—what's that band with the drummer with one arm?
GW: Def Leppard.

MARTIN: Yeah, those guys. I didn't really pay much attention to them, but they played
around a lot and I used to go see them just because of Cliff.

GW: What were your impressions of preCliff Metallica?

MARTIN: I told him not to join. I said, "Fuck those guys, they suck." I just thought they
were stupid. When Hetfield called up Cliff and said that they wanted him to join, I went
with him to see Metallica play with Bitch at the Stone in San Francisco. Cliff was
saying, "Geez, this is kind of weird. These guys want to talk to me about joining their
band, and their bass player's still here." Then we were standing outside and Metallica's
roadies got busted for stealing beer from the club. Cliff was like, "I don't know about
these guys." It was pretty funny—especially in retrospect.

GW: How did that period lead to yourjoining Faith No More?

MARTIN: Well, around 1982-1983, I was playing in a whole bunch of bands. A lot of
guys get the ridiculous, pointless idea that they can only play in one band. I would play
with anybody, as long as I was playing gigs. All I wanted to do at that point was to go
out and torture people. I was gigging a few nights a week, and practicing every day.
One day I visited Cliff, and Puffy and Bill [Gould, FNM bassist] were there. They said
we should get together to jam. I said, "Screw the jam. Why don't we play a gig?" So,
Bill said, "We have a gig in two days. Come play with us." We went out and played as
the Chicken Fuckers, and Bill drew a picture on the front of Puffy's bass drum of a
chicken with a human dick shoved in its mouth. That was the start of the whole ugly
thing. I started playing with Roddy and Chuck [Mosley, original FNM vocalist], along
with those other two guys, and it all went downhill from there.

GW: Soon after that came the indie Faith No More album, We Care A Lot, which wasn't
exactly a big-budget recording.

MARTIN: Yeah, that's yet another reason that record sounded like shit. We'd just
started playing together, and that record sounded like it. Then we toured America in a
four-door pickup truck. We definitely got a pretty sketchy response.

GW: The tour for The Real Thing lasted over a year and a half. How did you survive?

MARTIN: We almost didn't, my man. I mean, by the end of the tour I seriously
wondered if I could ever play the guitar again. It just wasn't fun anymore. I was so tired
of my rig that I just hated the sound and found it incredibly grating. But I don't think the
problem was really my rig, which, as I said, is almost the same now and sounds fine.
We only had one album of material with Mike, so we were playing the same dozen
songs for a year and a half, and it got stale. I think we were all losing it by the end.
That kind of tour is not the type of thing you try to repeat. It was probably necessary for
us to be out there, because it took the album a long, long time to build and become
successful, but being on the road that long becomes dangerous to your mental
stability. When we finally got home, I took a good long rest, because I felt like I had
nothing left to give. I'm never going to mess myself up like that again.

GW: Has playing become fun again?

MARTIN: Yeah, but it's a slow and ugly process. We had to deal with a lot of bullshit
making this album, which definitely didn't help me get psyched to play again.
Some people thought we weren't together enough to go into the studio, but we told
them to get lost and went about our business. But I' m not gonna let all that prevent me
from digging on the most important thing in my life—playing my guitar. I've been writing
a lot recently, and I think just sitting at home and doing that really helped my frame of
mind. So I am finally enjoying playing again, and I think I'm coming up with some of my
best stuff ever.

GW: Are you content with the current sound and direction of the band?

MARTIN: I don't really like how we sound, to tell you the truth. We've got this big dmm
sound, and everything else is lacking. As far as I can tell, they want me to play along
with the bass, but I fit in my own stuff. When I first started working with them, I figured
that they needed my help, they needed that huge heavy guitar, because they were
some pretty weird guys. But things are getting better; we've come a long, long way
since our very first album. Basically, I just try to fit in some guitar ugliness.

GW: From a guitar standpoint, how has Mike Patton's input influenced the band?

MARTIN: Well, he helped improve everything about the band a lot, which gives me
more confidence and freedom to do my thing. His input has really helped open things
up; there isn't as much tight control over who's writing the songs. There's still those
people who make most of the songwriting decisions, but on this album there's a song
by Mike and a song by me. And they're both really ugly. But it didn't come easy. Mike
had a hard time fitting in at first, and he" s definitely got a bad temper. But everything
settled down, and we're very happy that he's become an ugly man; at a certain point
he became afilthy pig instead of a pretty boy.
October ? 1992

Boston Globe Issue October ? 1992

Faith No More and Helmet:

A bizarre sonic bash

By Paul Robicheau
SPECIAL TO THE (BOSTON) GLOBE

WORCESTER, MA (OCT. 3, 1992) - "Scary" is the word used by one

usher in the aftermath of Saturday's metal-punk concert by Faith No
More and Helmet, which drew a capacity pack of 3,500 to the New
Aud (Worcester Memorial Auditorium) and left piles of trashed chairs
on the fringe of the mosh pit."

Indeed, to the uninitiated, the lines must have been blurred between
social banging and destructive aggression by the would-be dancers -
or the music-cum-noise of the bands onstage. And if it wasn't scary, it
was at least bizarre when members of Faith No More romped onstage
like a rag-tag aerobics team, engaging in push-ups and jumping jacks
while a mirror ball sprayed blips of mellow light, before the group
blasted into the real thing.
Such is the humor of the line blurring Faith No More, which abstained
from such a goofy entrance when opening for Metallica and Guns N'
Roses before most fans had even arrived at Foxboro last month. Faith
No More is the only popular thrash band that not only incorporates
funk rhythms and orchestral keyboards, but still slips a tongue-in
cheek yet faithful cover of the Commodores' ballad "Easy" into its
show to confuse both ushers and fans.

This was still largely a tamer crowd than the one at Guns N' Roses -
well-contained by a general-admission policy that split a set number
of ticket-holders between the up-front moshing area, the remainder of
the floor and the balcony (though it separated some friends who
thought general admission would keep them together).

Chairs were soon tossed aside and mosh frenzy ensued when Helmet
locked into its taut alternative metal. But the band suffered from a
one-dimensional attack that blurred the lines between songs - the
same problem with its major-league debut, "Meantime" (it's hard to
believe Helmet got a million-dollar contract).

Faith No More's impact suffered sonically as well, especially in

openers "Caffeine" and the older "Death March," blending the
quintet's artful bludgeoning into a mostly indiscernible din. The only
elements that stood out were the primal clubbing of MVP drummer
Mike Bordin and the often screamed vocals of Mike Patton, who
lurched around like a mad ape, holding his mike like it was a snake
that he was going to strangle - or bite off its head.

But more intriguing variations evolved as Faith No More's 85-minute

set roared along. Patton (last seen by this writer at Nightstage,
busting vocal cords with John Zorn's avant-hardcore outfit Naked City)
slowed the pace to rasp through the paranoid couch-potato blues of
the Tom Waits-ish "RV" - before mosh mad follow-ups "Surprise!
You're Dead!" and "Be Aggressive." And the caustic oldie "We Care a
Lot" was still a highlight, led by the chorus, "It's a danger, but
someone's got to do it."

But the weirdest turn came at the encore. Patton hopped into the
security pit and bargained to allow barrier-crossing fans onstage.
Once there, they were subject to Patton's hot-and-cold games: He
offered them the mike, got no takers on his request for them to sing a
Dead Kennedys song, and mostly watched them make fools of
themselves. "I don't like you anymore," Patton would scoff to each
one, further blurring lines on this flighty night.

Thanks to Warren Van Deventer.

I have a note to add on to the 1992 Worcester Memorial Auditorium
FNM show...when they came back out for the first encore, Patton
came out from behind a monitor and hurled what appeared to be a
mop head covered in chunky soup out into the second section of the
pit (where I was)..some guy just in front and off to the left of me tried
to catch it, only to have the mystery item splatter to the floor.
Following this, the most horrendous stench filled the general area, it's
really kind of hard to describe..kind of a cross between dung and
burning beef stew (aren't you hungry?)..needless to say at this point
most of us were glad we hadn't caught Mr. Patton's "gift"....

Warren

October 5, 1992

Buffalo (NY) News, October 5, 1992

PATTON OFFERS NO APOLOGIES FOR LEWD ACTS AT

PARTY

Mike Patton has caused a national furor with his apparent sexually
suggestive performance at a 97 Rock appreciation party in Buffalo,
but the lead singer of Faith No More offers no apologies.

In fact, Patton enjoyed the show -- during which, witnesses claim, he

took off his clothes, exposed himself and then performed lewd acts
with a microphone -- and would like to come back and repeat those
antics.

"I loved it and would do it all over again if I could," Patton and FNM
said in a statement to The Buffalo News released Sunday by the metal
band's record label, Slash/Reprise.

Barbara Balchick, a representative of the Cleveland record label and

Faith No More, told The News: "Mike said he had a great time in
Buffalo and the band did, too. They view the performance as a total
rock n' roll assault. No malice was intended. They'd love to do it again
if 97 Rock would let them."

That's doubtful because WGRF-FM, owned by Rich Communications,

has refused to comment and is red-faced over the incident that
occurred at around 1:30 a.m. Friday in the Impaxx Night Club &
Theater. The party was heavily promoted to listeners, who had to
contact the station to get special invitation tickets. It featured a
number of national acts, including Buffalo native Billy Sheehan.
A spokesman for the Southside Station said that two complaints were
filed after the show, and four witnesses have spoken to the police.
Witnesses have said that Patton removed his clothes, exposed
himself, turned his back to the crowd, bent down, and then performed
lewd acts with the microphone. Also, witnesses said, another member
of the band used his guitar neck to perform lewd acts with the singer.

"I've been to many rock shows, but I've never seen anthing as sick
and disgusting as this," John Ganter said. "Everybody there was
appalled at what Patton did. They just wanted him to get off the stage
and get out." Ms. Balchick said that Patton was injured when several
patrons threw beer containers at him. "Mike got hit and cut in the
head, and had to have several stitches," she said.

Mary Baker, who also attended the event and filed a complaint with
the police, said that Patton grew angry with the crowd and hit her
friend, who was standing near the stage, with the microphone. She
said Patton also vomited and spit at the crowd. "That guy is just plain
sick, and his whole act was a disgrace," she said.

Jay Desiderio, part owner of the Impaxx, has said that after the
incident, the club's security people threw Faith No More out of the
club as soon as possible.

Update: I asked Bill Gould what the outcome of the situation was and
this is his reply....

'We got the hell out of there before the cops came, it was great,
except that Mike P was bleeding pretty badly from two bottles that
were thrown at him from close range. Still he got his revenge by
throwing the mic like a speedball right into one of the guys faces. I'll
never forget that.'

FAITH NO MORE | OCTOBER 1992 | SCREAMER

There is really nothing average, predictable or typical about Faith No More. Mastering
diverse variations of sounds that fluctuate from record to record, FNM has set
themselves apart by simply refusing to be pigeonholed into one distinct musical
classification.
Screamer | October 1992
Life Among Angels
Ivette Ruiz

The band's latest release, Angel Dust, contains more of what this Bay
Area group is known for: music that disassociates them from the
expected norm yet with enough substance to establish credibility in
the music world.
"I think this record takes us a step further." begins drummer Mike
Bordin. "It shows us as a more confident unit and [that] we're still
learning and growing. This is a definite progression. This time we just
wanted to make an even better record and not necessarily follow the
guidelines that the press and others tried to lay on. We really tried
to dig inside ourselves and bring something out that was challenging,
confrontational and extremely unique. I'm very pleased with it.
"If you allow yourself to be stereo-typed, then in a way you insult
yourself and your audience", he continues, ''Some bands - after they
achieve success - think if they do anything else they'll get kicked off
the goddammed gravy train, and that's not music, that's fill in the
blanks."

After selling millions of records in 1989 with The Real Thing, Faith No
More became one of MTV's hottest commodities, and they were
propelled into the public eye. In most circumstances, a band in such a
position usually succumbs to record company pressure in order to
secure equal or greater success on their next release. Bordin says
that's not what FNM is about and they certainly don't feel comfortable
with the concept.
"I think our fans will say we this is a new record because it's not like
the old one, actually it's [another] step," he elaborates. "I think this
record is heavier, with a better sound - a better band. To be quite
honest, if someone buys our record to hear one type of sound that
they heard two years ago, they should look somewhere else. We don't
play that. The quickest way to get anybody angry is to say, 'Hey, this
is all you can do.' That's not where we're at.
"The only way you can really approach something is from the heart if
you have something to say. I hope that people will listen to our record
with an open mind. It's like getting into a cab and the driver's going to
take you on a trip, but we're the driver. If you take them (the listener)
to a place they've already been, well, that's stupid."

Living with success as well as adjusting to it is something that doesn't

come easily to most. Faith No More is no exception. Although the
band experienced fame and fortune for the first time recently, there
were no mind struggles because of it. They just dealt with everything
on a down-to-earth level, and continued doing things their own way,
regardless of how everyone expected them to react to their newfound
notoriety. "Nobody could have told us two years ago that the record
we thought was so great and were so proud of was going to do what it
did. It told us we were reaching a lot of people and that we were on
the right-track," Bordin says. "It made us realise that a lot of people,
for convenience sake or whatever else. will put you in a little glass
box and have you be just like everybody else - interchangeable. It's
really untrue and some people believe that, which is unfortunate
because it really limits your brain power. It means you're a band
that's expected to do only this and that's it. That's bullsh*t because
you grow, and if you don't grow you lose. We're not interested in
dying. We're not interested in hanging onto anything, we want to take
it further because we feel we have something to contribute."

Diversity and originality are just small aspects of what FNM has to
offer. As they flawlessly blend various styles to create their own
distinct flavour, each recording marks the be-ginning of a new
adventure for the band and their listeners.
"All l want is for people to listen to our record with an open mind and
make their own decision," affirms Bordin, "It doesn't bother me what
people say or think. It would bug me if people saw us as a strict metal
band. I personally don't like certain things about heavy metal, and
that would definitely bug me because that's a limitation. I think that
being considered trend-setters is a compliment, because that means
we're doing our job. We're not living in the future, we're making
records for now, and that's the point. Things have to change. It's
normal."

Faith No More remain driven to retain their individual qualities

while increasing their longevity and notoriety. Bordin expresses that
they just want to continue being themselves.
"I honestly hope that I remain a human being and don't think of
myself as the most important person in the world and forget
everybody else," Bordin states, "One thing I hope doesn't happen is
that we become too cynical and end up not giving a sh*t. You see
these guys in other bands traveling around in private planes with
their security people and it's all so IMPORTANT. It's just about fun. If
you don't have fun and present that to people, it's not gonna work for
anybody.
"I hope that we get super successful and reach as many people as we
can through our music," he continues. "I hope everything happens to
us because of the strength of our records and that we told the truth
while doing it. We want to teach people that it's cool to listen to many
different things and be very open-minded. It's okay to do that. There's
room enough for everybody."

Faith No More | Helsinki Ice Hall, Finland

- 28th October 1992
On this day Faith No More were touring Europe on Angel Dust. The first night stop
was in Jäähalli (Icehall) Helsinki, Finland.

NME | November 1992

Gina Morris THE NORDIC winter has frozen The Gulf Of Finland.
There's a blizzard raging, two feet of snow on the ground, it's minus
four degrees and tonight's mammoth gig is to be held inside Helsinki
Ice Stadium. Hell, It's too cold to live let alone rock. "Ladies and
gentlemen," screams guitarist Suzie Gardener, "The soft white beer
belly of rock'n'roll - L Fucking 7!" Well if anyone's gonna break the ice
it's the band. L7 give better than they get, but the kids don't get it at all.
There's 9,000 shivering punters in here, 7,500 of which have blank
faces. Look, forget there's four 'chicks' up there. Close your eyes if you
have to. Just stop gawping and dance. L7 aren't half arsed rockers,
they trample over most of their rivals, they don't want to be blokes.
They aren't playing a man's game, L7 are playing music, music that
says so much more than merely suck this. LA's L7 are natural
performers and nothing about them is fake, so when Donita rocks out
and grapples with her 'axe' during 'Wargasm' it doesn't look misplaced
or ludicrous - it looks real, because L7 have convincing songs to
support their actions. Real, dynamic, secretly sensitive, life affirming
songs, which fall somewhere between the Beastie Boys and the
Ramones. Brilliant. Faith No More are a phenomenon: a stadium rock
band who really don't fit in with the whole rock grandeur, FNM are also
a sensitive lot, although their sensitivity is as twisted and tormented as
vocalist Mike Patton's melodies. 'Be Aggressive' (all about swallowing
semen!) could be all trousers and no brain but instead the lyrics reek of
understanding; "Tall and reckless / Ugly seed / Reach Down my
throat / You filthy bird that's all I need." Then there's tonight's classic
cover versions; The Commodore's 'Easy' and The Dead Kennedy 'Let's
lynch The Landlord', which infiltrate their own headstrong panic
attacks. FNM stretch their own limitations and the starched boundaries
of their ill fitting genre. Take the rap-like 'We Care A Lot' or 'Epic', the
all-out thrash of 'RV' or 'Midlife Crisis' then try and fit in 'Easy'.
Confused? You will be. Hanging behind the hairy guitarist is a banner
which reads, 'Jim Martin is the techno king'. Jim Martin looks like he
should be in Thin Lizzy. In fact they all look like they should be in
different bands - which is how they manage to slip from soul to jazz,
from funk to thrash, so easily. Time to wade through the shite and
allow Mike Patton to take us to his demented world - a warming
thought indeed

FAITH NO MORE | 11.11.1992 | RAW MAGAZINE

RAW MAGAZINE | Issue 110 | 11.11.1992
They're considered weirder than most. They don't have the slightest bit of interest in
the Rock culture, they attract psychos, they cause confusion, they chew roses on stage
- all this from a bunch who had trauma-free childhoods, believe in family values, ride
mountain bikes and collect antique dolls!

LIZ EVANS (words) and TONY MOTTRAM (pix) hop on a plane to Florida to meet
the indefinable enigma that is FAITH NO MORE and some members of their
obsessive freaky fans.

"IT'S NOT something that is pleasant to talk about, but yeah I do attract weirdos. Well I
don't know if it's me, but this band does..."
Over a bowl full of salad in a plush Orlando hotel restaurant, Mike Patton, singer with
Faith No More, and thought to be weirder than most, is contemplating his freak appeal.
After six weeks travelling around America freaks are bound to sneak into the
conversation, and it seems that here in Florida they prevail more than just about
anywhere else. Much has been made of FNM's peculiarities, their music has
confounded Rock fans, their strong, highly individual characters have intrigued public
and press alike, they have become something of an indefinable enigma, and all
because they don't adhere to the usual rule of unified identity commonly found
amongst Rock bands. The truth is, the people following FNM are way more peculiar
than any of the band could ever hope to be.
"They're not really typical," says keyboard player Roddy Bottum of the more extreme
fan base. "I think there's three people who are like that. I was writing to one of them for
a while, but I don't think they're typical of obsessive fans. But I want more obsessive
fans , I want more psychos at the shows, I'm really attracted to them!" Being an
obsessive type himself (he once had an obsessive relationship with Courtney Love
of Hole who's now married to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana), Roddy knows what he's talking
about.
He's not bothered about regular groupie types, he wants insanity!
"The whole groupie thing, you can never get around that. It's more sad than sleazy
because there's nothing they can achieve by doing it. It's not real power, it's always
going to be in Their minds how they got there and they have to live with that which isn't
good. because your roots are really important. What you grow into has got to be a
product of that and it's wrong."
ON THE regular side of FNM's following, for this tour, there's Adrienne and Kelli from
New York, and a couple of the more parasitical faction from Ohio who've been driving
guitarist Jim Martin around. Adrienne and Kelli have known various members of the
band for several years, they think of them as 'friends' but Jim's chauffeurs are
decidedly vampiristic and desperate. One of them chased an alarmed Patton down a
hotel corridor and both are unashamedly, constantly self impressed, trying to foist their
'strange' tales on anyone who'll listen. Aside from Jim, everyone wishes they'd just go
away.
"It's a little different in England,"says drummer Mike Bordin later in his hotel room, "It's
friendly there and people respect our privacy. Here they tend to take over a little more,
like those girls with Jim. They're just boring, they've got nothing to offer, When I see
people like that on the bus or hanging around I get depressed."

Somewhat irregular, and far from boring is Karen from Clearwater, affectionately
nicknamed 'the Sunshine Lady' by the band. Always smiling the Sunshine Lady has a
400 page scrapbook of FNM and Mr Bungle, which she will pull out at the slightest
excuse, claims to have met Patton in past lives which she reaches through
regressions, wants to heal him with strange Tibetan methods and crystals, and
believes his karma will culminate with hers in a spiritual blast al the dawning of the age
of Aquarius. Or something like that. She's obsessed all right. Patton calls her Satan,
and she thinks she scares him. Once he told her he had nightmares about her, so
she learnt how to make a dream catcher. Dream catchers are used by
American Indians (Sioux and Cherokee in particular) to trap bad dreams, only allowing
the good ones to reach you,
"I even gave him a little thread to hang it up with," says the Sunshine Lady, "But he
thinks I'm crazy because I'm always hyped when I'm around Him. He needs me, he just
doesn't realise it," "She keeps telling me that I'm going to have dinner with her parents
someday, and that we're communicating spiritually," says Patton bemusedly,
"She's so happy. I mean no one should be that happy all The fine'"
After the Fort Lauderdale show, the penultimate US gig, the Sunshine Lady turns up at
the hotel with a pile of beautifully wrapped and be-ribboned gifts. It's a little how you
would imagine one of the Three Wise Men, except Mike Patton is no baby Jesus and
thankfully there's only one Sunshine lady. Her messiah is nowhere to be found,
however. He's undergoing acupuncture for lethargy and his throat and numerous other
reasons. Sunshine Lady looks as if she might cry when she realises he won't be
around, "Tell him I'm sleeping in the parking lot,"
And then there's Phyllis who had to be slung out of a FNM show at Patton's request the
last time they played her town. Phyllis is downright scary. She made tapes of her taking
a submissive role to his Mr Dominant, and she wrote him detailed letters of all manner
of perverted fantasies.
"She wanted us to make her one of us, she wanted some kind of weird camaraderie."
Patton copied the tapes for his friends. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't believe until
you heard it.
ATTRACTING PSYCHOS is bound to be an occupational hazard for a band with five,
rather than one or two, powerful presences. Watching them on stage in Fort
Lauderdale, it's easy to work out why FNM Induce such confusion and nutty
fixations. Especially in a town such as this. If the missing link is anywhere, it's here.
Thick necked jocks lunge around like sulky bulldozers, sweating like pigs and smashing
their way through human obstacles. On the way out one girl tells her friend how
something sharp had been jabbed into her back, she swears it was a knife. A fight
breaks out during the gig, kids hurl past each others ears, using any old shoulder as a
springboard.
On stage the activity is feverish. Patton chews up a rose thrown at Jim, Roddy behaves
like a demented windmill , Bordin climbs inside his rhythms, entranced. Billy stomps
and head bangs and Jim is deadpan, the ultimate cartoon guitarist. Causing confusion
is fun. The problems start when fans want to dehumanise and idolise because bass
player Billy Gould points out, all FNM are is a bunch of bums who don't really relate to
Rock culture at all.
"Touring with Guns n Roses made me realise I'm not in a Rock band." says Billy on a
sunny afternoon in Florida clutching a Strawberry daiquiri, "When the indulgence thing
first happened, with people driving around in limos, no one knew how far the money
could go. But now most people are realistic, so to perpetuate that myth now is, I think,
unconscious behaviour. The thing that bothers me most about the music industry is
how people are programmed. We had such a hard time getting our record
accepted because no one could categorise our music. If we played in Czechoslovakia,
people would accept us at face value, because they haven't been fed a lot of hype, and
they're not into thinking in a prescribed fashion. People in the West are really
sophisticated because they think in regimented thought patterns. The worst thing is that
record companies and radio stations like people to think in those Ways because then
they can target their audience all sell their product. The worst thing is when bands
themselves think like that and perpetuate it.
"I think bands like Nirvana are guilty of that kind of behaviour to an extent, because
they smash their guitars up. but at least they're not coming from a background where
people worship themselves. We've found that even with the way we are and the way
we look, which is like bums, people treat us like royalty; if we don't play with their game
they feel insulted. It's a very twisted thing. We're just normal guys making music and
the fact that it's made into such a big deal shows how out of touch people are."

A society which is so huge and relies so heavily on the media for its information is
bound to be out of touch to a degree. Depending on cinematic images and TV for just
about everything helps to fabricate reality rather than complement it and the
Americans have developed such a highly intrusive and sophisticated media culture,
that their perceptions cannot remain untouched. The solution? Ban TV!
"People's thresholds are so low, I just can't believe it," remarks Roddy Bottum of the
easily offended American sensibility. "It's this over saturation of television, people
who've been watching it all their lives, they just can't get over anything. How you raise
your kids is of upmost importance. It's really easy to sit them down in front of the
television all day, they're babysat for six hours. If I had kids I don't think I'd let them
watch TV, I'd take them out and play games, read them books, do something to make
their minds work. I think it's really important."
Coming from a strict Catholic background, Roddy is surprisingly very close to his
parents. He went to Catholic school with Billy who also believes in the family unit very
strongly, although his own was much more relaxed, ("I think we all were I think that's
why we have the fucking nerve to do what we're doing!") Mike Bordin went through
some 'very testing' times at the age of ten with his family, and Patton spent more time
with his mum and dad than he did out! As for Jim, well he still lives with his mother. "He
never moved out!" exclaims Billy, "Fucking twisted bastard! He's just a dickhead. Ask
him when he plans on going to the Betty Ford clinic. Tell him Puffy wants to Know
work, trust me!"
Considering the album is lyrically a collection of fairly negative observations on
American culture, with family values being addressed in particular, it comes as a
surprise to discover that all of FNM had relatively trauma-free childhoods,
"The family value it's a really fascinating thing," muses Patton, who claims his lyrics
don't work unless they possess a cinematic quality, "You could raise a kid and teach it
anything, you could teach it everything wrong and it wouldn't know. Peer groups are a
whole different way of learning.You can paint a kid any colour you want and he or she
has to go out in the world and be this way. It's not something I've suffered from at all,
but I think it's fun to think you could do that to he able to control another mind to that
extent."

BEING A front man Patton knows all about control. It's his job to work the crowd for the
hour or so that FNM are on stage. In Orlando, on the last night of the tour, Patton and
Roddy discover an Ecstasy tab on one of the crew. Announcing that They're going to
sell it, Patton grabs the tab and waggles it at the front row, like a fisherman with a juicy
bait. Arms reach out as the roadie shakes his head. Eventually Patton returns the drug
to its worried owner, and the set continues. But not without an extra kick of rage from
the rhythm section,
"I was really mad about what happened tonight," explains Mike Bordin back at the
hotel, "This was a great tour and things have been going really well, but there are
certain things I don't like to hear. I don't like to hear Ecstasy mentioned on stage 'cos
Florida is so fucking redneck. One of the band got arrested for a roach here about six
or seven years ago, so I was really down on that. But I told him, I said 'Mike, that made
me feel like we should just go on stage and do comedy and tell jokes and fuck the
music!' Bill was furious. I felt it interfered with my playing and you've got to give your
level best."
Drugs aren't something FNM do an awful lot of. At least not serious drugs. Bordin is
something of a hemp connoisseur, Roddy enjoys a smoke and the occasional trip when
he's raving, Patton doesn't appear to indulge at all, Jim drowns himself in beer (and has
wonderful wise old cures such as whiskey for jet lag) and Billy gets his highs from
health food shops.
"Guaraná, that's good, if has plenty of caffeine in it," offers Bill, "And I've got some
black stuff which is like tar and gets you really wired. I also have this stuff called
Somadamax that's just Been made illegal because kids have been Od-ing on it. It's like
a quaalude, it makes you really stupid and very slow and you laugh a lot. Yes, I
advocate healthy drugs, because they're healthy!"
Billy also gets his kicks from his computer games. His current fav is Might and Magic,
a Dungeons and Dragons type affair which takes three days to play, A perfect pastime
for touring, his portable computer is ideal for whiling away lengthy plane rides and
looking for new games gives him an excuse to hit the nearest mall. According to Mike
Bordin there are kids in the States who've become so embedded in the fantasy worlds
of their computer games that they've actually gone out and murdered people. No doubt
FNM would blame the families!
RODDY's RECENTLY acquired a new mountain bike and is travelling to Europe with it.
He's a little worried about where he can cycle when he reaches Britain, although the
main worry at the end of the American tour is what to send home and what to take
across the Atlantic, Mike Patton has packed a huge square wooden box, Jim
has bought three new plastic guitars for $80 each, so he doesn't know what to do with
them, and Roddy's just getting paranoid.
For a band who practically live on the road, such disorganisation is a little surprising,
but then again most people don't get carted around in a huge luxury tour bus. And most
people don't hoard monkey skulls and withered dolls.
"Have you net Toodles?" asks Patton, holding up an ancient baby doll with diseased
limbs and peeling eyes. Apparently he picked her up in a thrift store about three weeks
ago, although her place in his heart is already being threatened by a monkey skull he
found in Pennslyvania, "It's supposed to win me arguments and protect my home,"
Patton smiles, "I don't believe in it, but it's a great theory, Bill bought Alister Crowley's
original cocaine spoon. It's got a little document with it like a little family tree, saying
whose hands it's passed through."
People like the Sunshine Lady perhaps.
Touring isn't just playing and shopping, though, it's about living too, and it can get
tough. "This whole thing can be a drag," confesses Billy, "When we get bored we pick
on each other. The thing about our group is that everybody's encouraged to take.
You have to feel that there's a base of security and then you can do anything you want
to, so you can put yourself out and there'll be four other people backing you up, That's
When you do your best stuff, if everybody's doing that, you're all going to come up with
something good. If you're worried about what everybody else is doing, you'll
feel inhibited and you're not going to do that. On the last record Patton was inhibited,
he didn't know us very well so his singing was really conventional, He was a little kid,
but he's not like that so much now. He's doing what he likes to do and he knows he
won't get shot down ,"
THE ONE, very noticeable rift within FNM at the moment is that between Jim Martin
and everybody else. The remarkably non-verbal guitarist is obviously enjoying himself
as long as there is bar open and girl to take there, but not communicating with the rest
of the band. He hasn't been travelling with them since they played Ohio (where the
two parasites picked him up). Bordin is the only member who doesn't dismiss him
completely. But then the two go back a long way.
"Jim's withdrawing a bit now. I've known him since I was 14. Me and Cliff (Burton,
Metallica's bass player who was tragically killed when the band's bus trashed). Joined
Jim's band. I don't know why he is withdrawing , and sometimes it makes me sad. He
won't talk and that's wrong, but in some ways I don't think we've ever got along better.
Everybody has a certain respect for everybody else in this band. It's like a family. And
that comes from having a job and owning a company because that's what we do, we
own this band.
"I've actually seen Cliff many times, I'm talked with him a lot. This probably isn't for
a Rock magazine, but I have dreams, and my whole world is dreams. My entire fucking
everything is dreams. There's day residue dreams, and there's the part of you, your life,
your unconscious, and it's something which is really important to me, it's another part of
me. I think the radio's playing for everybody, but you have to know where to tune in.
And fear inhibits people, too. It all depends on what you intake of what people teach
you. It's real simple and it's real difficult."
FROM HERE FNM go to Helsinki, then around Europe, where they feel their audience
is more accepting than it is in America. Plans For the future vary. Roddy wants to
experiment with elevator music, because he's impressed by its power and drama,
Bordin wants to work at perfecting the balance and delivering the message, Patton
seems happy now he's found his space within the band and can really spread out, Jim
jokingly says he's hoping to make a video for a tune he's come up with ("It'll start out
with me in my bedsit. All my possessions will fit onto one table and I'll go busking in the
tube stations. Then I'll go home and it'll be raining; it'll make you want to cry.") and Bill
wants to get some easy listening out of his system.
"I've been to a lot of early 40s and 50s stuff," he says, "and I'd like to do a couple of
standard-type songs. Coming from punk bands and stuff, I've never had the chance to
do that, but easy listening's always staring us in the face.
"Youth has a lot to it. People always think that between the ages 15 and 25 are the
best years, and after that all you can do is have kids. But they really limit themselves
like that, and with music it's the same. Most Composers wrote their best stuff when
they were 50 or 60. It's not that I'm comparing Rock music with Classical, but people
can do a lot at a late age. Then there are bands who try to stay young well that's their
problem. Or they're good at it, I don't know.
"I always like learning things, and improving things, so I think band'll keep changing
because I like to do things differently. We're a little bit curious, I'm not saying that's
better than the other way, 'cos! don't know about the other way and i couldn't do it."
By 'the other way' Billy means 'safe' And no, FNM couldn't do anything that way.
Provocative bastards.
FAITH NO MORE | 18.11.1992 | ROCK POWER
Rock Power | Issue 13 | 18.11.1992
They may manage a superficial grin during photo shoots, but Faith No More are
down.
Divisions within personnel, tour boredom, snipes at Axl Rose purely to relieve
the boredom... JIM STEVENS asks: Are Faith No More...

On the side?
The Aragon Theatre a beautiful old ballroom on Chicago's North Side. With its
high, majestic ceiling, turreted balconies and sweeping staircases, it looks like a
cross between an Arthurian castle and a Las Vegas casino. Faith No More
would make an equally interesting sideshow in either Camelot or Vegas.
They greet the Aragon crowd with a bizarre limbering up routine - only
the guitarist fails to join in the mass workout, but then you can't really imagine
Big Jim Martin indulging in anything as downright "pussy" as press-ups.
This strange ritual appears to be a hangover from Faith No More's slothful
months of playing
less than two shows a week with Guns N'Roses. Still, it's not as if Mike Patton
needs the exercise. Every night, the mesmerising frontman puts himself through
a punishing routine: hurling his body around the stage, battering his head
against anything that comes in his path, strangling himself with his mic lead and
still screaming out schizoid lines like, "Forget the glamour and mumble
a jackhammer, under your breath" during the psychotic 'Caffeine'
But although the crowd are getting into the songs, the Aragon's seating only
policy means that no one dares doing anything more than stand up and
shuffle politely beside their chairs.
After a few songs, Patton - who is a self-confessed "stimulation junkie" -
decides to inject some insanity into the proceedings.
"We're collecting chairs up here," he says, calmly. "Why don't you pass them on
up."
A couple of dozen chairs quickly rain down on the stage, but Patton doesn't
even look impressed, In terms of self-amusement, catching chairs isn't nearly
provocative enough. Because, when it comes to provocation, nobody does it
with more style or any more frequently than Faith No More. And the three
months they spent supporting Guns N'Roses during the summer gave them
ample opportunity to be offensive.
Prior to the GN'R tour, Faith No More had played a secret gig at the London
Marquee as Hairkuts That Kill.
"We're playing Wembley in June," bassist Bill Gould told the crowd, "don't
come."
"Yeah, stay home," suggested Mike Patton, "and phone some bomb
threats through instead."
Inevitably, it was Axl who came in for their heaviest flak from the band. Besides
publicly insulting him and spreading vicious rumours, they even sampled his
voice for their stage show. Still, it's not as if Axl Rose is the only one who has
ever been wounded by Faith No More's barbed wit.
During 1989/90, they ended up touring their third 'The Real Thing' LP for two
arduous years, and the only way to amuse themselves was to insult their
touring partners, including Poison, Aerosmith, Whitesnake and Billy Idol. At the
end of that tour, Bill Gould complained that,
"The whole thing seems like a dream or a lie that just keeps going - a movie
that's being made at our expense."
Given that Faith No More have been touring 'Angel Dust' virtually non-stop
since its release last May, does it feel like another movie's being made at their
expense?
"No," smiles Bill, "Now, it's a movie being made at Guns N'Roses' expense."
"And it's a much better movie," enthuses Mike Patton, "with a much
higher budget. It was shot on 35mm, whereas before we were being shot on
Super-8."
Now that Faith No More are touring the States in their own right, they've been
reduced to 16mm. They have, however, acquired an extra tour bus and some
new, more expensive, toys. Bill, for example, has just bought himself a Kurzweil
2000 keyboard, which has an impressive array of pre-set sounds like
Doomsday, Alien Factory and Rainforest Crunch. The bassist is only sorry that
he didn't have the keyboard during the tedious GN'R tour
"When we first heard that we might be able to get on tour with Guns N'Roses
and Metallica," says Bill, "we thought, That's incredible - the biggest tour in the
world! Getting in front of all those people is exactly what you need as a band.
But when you get out on tour, you realise that there are a lot of shortcomings.
"I mean, I don't know how much we actually benefited from it because we
played to pretty much their crowds, and not many of our fans went. So if
somebody said to us now that we could go out and open for Elton John
and play in stadiums, we might well turn it down, cos there aren't as many
benefits as you'd imagine there are."
"That whole touring environment was so safe and so sterile, it was like a public
swimming pool," continues Patton. "When we were playing, we were just the
soundtrack to people having barbecues or shuffling around in their seats."
Even Jim Martin was bored to distraction by the tedium of the tour.
"Guns N'Roses treated us really well," he says, "but my idea of touring is not
five days off, two days on. "On this tour, we're playing five nights a week,
maybe six, and for me it's a lot easier I'd like to think that if we ever get to the
point where we have to tour on that scale then we'll have two stages and
leapfrog between them, doing at least five days a week."
Bored to distraction, it's not surprising that Faith No More eventually turned their
attention to Axl. Although it wasn't until the end of the tour and the publication of
one particular article where certain members of FNM ridiculed Axl's bald patch
that they were reprimanded by the Roses' manager.
"Guns N'Roses have policemen who fish through the media and find things that
are written about them," claims Patton. "But slagging Guns N' Roses off
was like mouthing off against the President or saying fuck cops it's something
that everyone does. It's like the seat-belt law: they never call you on that, but
we're like the one per cent that actually got caught."
"We were just kind of having fun," smiles Bill.
"Yeah," adds Patton, "we can't really apologise. We're just fucked - and this is
the way we relate to each other"
The that Faith No More do (or don't) relate to each other has always been
central to their overall sound. Someone once described them as "the furious
sound of five worlds colliding"; and during the writing of 'Angel Dust' four of
those worlds seriously collided with Jim Martin's.
"The four of us got on really well," says Bill, "so it was actually kind of fun. But
getting the fifth part to work was kind of a drag."
Jim - who wrote 'Jizzlobber' seems oblivious to their snipes. But it's true that the
rift between him and the others, which opened up during the writing of 'Angel
Dust became increasingly wider during the Guns N'Roses tour, and now Jim is
the definite outsider of the band - a role that has traditionally belonged to
drummer Mike 'Puffy' Bordin.
"What you have to realise," says Jim, "is that we've had a little bit of a problem
recently with the band talking shit about other people in bands (ie Axl & Co)and
I suppose I've sort of withdrawn myself from that, cos it's a waste of my time. I
can be up in my room playing Tiddlywinks or at the bar drinking, having more
fun, so perhaps that's how I became Puffy."
Jim's idea of "having more fun" has been an increasing point of contention
between him and the rest of the band - particularly since this is the side of Faith
No More that is inevitably picked up on in the press.
"Well, what other side would they go for," demands Jim. The other side is pretty
boring."
But isn't there a slightly more cerebral level?
"Yeah, but that's all boring shit," he says. "Everyone has their own cerebrum or
whatever the hell you call it to deal with. It's always more fun to read about the
wild things."
"Things worked out better than we had planned...working
overtime, completed what was assigned. Now everything's ruined," sings Mike
Patton on the band's new single, 'Everything's
Ruined' It could be taken as a good indication of where Faith No More are at
right now, but it's probably just another example of the fear, guilt and general
neurosis that make Faith No More so brilliant.
"I get really ashamed of us," says Mike Patton, over lunch, on the way to the
next sound check, "because I think we're all control freaks, and the more time
we spend playing in this band, the less control we have. It's seriously harder
and harder to maintain control over what we do." "Everyone in this band has
their own way of doing things, and you have hardly any control over the whole
picture," continues Bill. "If one guy does one thing.- for example, Puffy will walk
out after the show and hand out his drum sticks to everybody, which
embarrasses the shit out of me, cos it's like, Who are you to hand out your
drumsticks, you cheapskate son of a bitch? I'm ashamed for myself cos its like
I'm doing it, if he does it."
Earlier in the day, the band had told their record company that they were going
to record the promo for 'Everything's Ruined' in a $15 video booth, so maybe
their fears about losing control are a little premature. However, you only have to
look at the cover of 'Angel Dust', which has a beautiful white bird on the front
and a slaughterhouse on the back, to get some idea of the position that Faith
No More are in.
On the one hand, they could be about to take Nirvana-style flight; on the other,
they could end up as just another piece of meat, strung up on the rock n' roll
rack that they experienced first hand on the Guns N' Roses tour, and felt
nothing but disgust for. It's a dilemma that they are acutely aware of.
"Every band I've ever liked has turned shitty," says Bill. "Frank Sinatra,
Elvis...every single band that ever became successful. Even Psyche TV went
shitty, and we will too,I guess."

Whatever happens to Faith No More, it's obvious that they've come too far
to suddenly start pleasing anyone but themselves,
"You don't really know what people expect of you and you can't waste time
thinking about it," states Mike Patton. "You need a frame of reference, but if you
look at it like, 'What is someone expecting of me?', that will definitely alter your
reaction. I mean, We were very aware of what people expected of us on the
Guns N'Roses tour, and that's why we fell down and hurt ourselves, cos
we didn't have bombs and explosions we looked like the road crew. They
couldn't even tell when the band had come on stage!"
"Rock n roll is just conditioning," says Bill. "It's people conditioned into the
lifestyle and imagining what the lifestyle is.Y'know, thinking that there's strippers
everywhere and that the band drive around in limos,"
"But when you're touring on Guns N'Roses level, you realise that it's real,"
continues Patton. "It really is a part of peoples' lives."
"People bought the myths themselves," adds Billy. "So it gets like a car that's
out of control, going downhill really fast."
The Guns N' Roses tour gave Faith No More an insight into a level of stardom
that comes uncomfortably close to The Devil's Dictionary's definition of fame:
"conspicuously miserable" "Hmm, that's a pretty accurate definition," muses
Patton. "It's like Madonna: she's so miserable she's got to make an S&M
video." "But she's happy, too," counters Bill. "Because fame also gives you the
key to getting more and more free stuff."
"But even if you can get everything reimbursed or paid for, you're still
miserable," insists Patton. "If you can't even pay for your own fuckin' meal,
you're not just miserable, you're pathetic."
With an almost comic sense of timing, the waitress comes over to collect our
empty plates and give Patton and Bill a couple of free T-shirts and the
manager's compliments. She does, however also present them with their bill.
Faith No More obviously haven't reached the point where they're considered too
"pathetic" to pay for their own meals. Let's hope they never do.

FAITH NO MORE | 28.11.1992 | MELODY MAKER

Melody Maker | 28.11.1992 | David Bennun

Riot Squad
GOTHENBURG

"F"* YOU!" The Swedish punter is ill pleased. He would like to get up but Mike Patton,
sitting astride his chest and thrusting a microphone in his mouth, is hindering his
progress. Mike wants the punter to sing, but the punter isn't so eager. "F you!" is as for
as his repertoire goes, so Mike lets him up, and he scrambles back across the stage
into the crowd. "I rescued him from the pit," Mike explains later. "Security were gonna
pummel him, so I pulled him out, and he looked at me like I was gonna pummel him. I
don't know why he was shouting maybe it was the only English he knew. Or maybe he
was mad at me." Could be.

Cut to a few hours earlier. Mike and the rest of Faith No More are out on the chilly
streets of Gothenburg, shopping and taking in some fresh-frozen culture. Matt Bright
and I slouch around the uniformly pink venue, within the uniformly pink Gothenburg
fairground watching guitarist Donita Sparks and drummer Dee Plakas of L7 contend
with the local TV interviewer, a tubby, inane English expatriate. As you join us, they're
telling him that the band met up 25 years ago on a speed binge.
"Why," they are asked for the nth time in their career, "do you call yourself L7?"
Donita sighs. "Because we're all lesbians. It stands for Lesbian 7. There used to be
three more of us."
"If you're lesbians, do you fancy me then?" "No," snaps an indignant Dee, "you've got a
penis." "lovely girls!" enthuses the dolt, and puts an arm round each. Donita gazes
skyward, but the heavens fail to strike him down. Dee looks strongly tempted to do it
herself. "Yeah, fun for the family," says Donita. A demented gleam comes into her
eyes. "The Manson family."
The TV crew pack up, seemingly oblivious to the snorts of laughter on all sides.

PARTY GIRLS AND BOYS

This is only the second night of their mutual European trek, and already the two bands
have taken to each other like ducks to ducks. Backstage is like one big party - an
eighth birthday party; apart from the bottle of Bushmills that Dee has just sunk.
"I did not bring you up to be a party-girl badass!" she yells, Greek-accented, in imitation
of her father, before slapping a brisk tattoo on my nearby thigh. Juliet from London
Records remonstrates with her.
"He loves it when I beat him like a drum!" cries Dee, and tells me how her engagement
toFaith No More's keyboardist, Roddy Bottum, has left guitarist Jim Martin the jealous
party in a bitter love triangle. Dee is recently married. Her two major talents are
percussion and chaos.
''This total white trash redneck construction worker threatened to kick my ass. He said,
'I don't care about anything and I have a bad attitude.' We were touring Florida. It was
in this bar around five in the morning, crackers coming out of the woodwork, and he
started spouting all these racist stupidities. So I had to respond to them. Right after I
left the bar, this big brawl started - like in the movies-chairs being broken over people's
heads."
L7 bassist Jennifer Finch heard the shouting, and figured that Dee was involved. But
she was having problems of her own in the hall, where a mad janitor had accosted her.
"I walked across his wet floor and this guy grabbed my arm and started babbling at me
in Spanish. I yelled back at him in the only Spanish I know, which is 'Your eyelashes
look like my butt hair!' In the end, they had to call the police to take him away, even
though he worked there." "It's like the tee-shirt says," observes Donita, 'Friends don't
let friends go to Florida'."

The water pipes honk and yowl incessantly. Somebody suggests sampling them I
remark that Public Enemy got there first. "F***ing racist bastards, hisses Jennifer.
Jim Martin looks up. "Did someone say 'bassists'?" he enquires. "Yeah!" says Jennifer.
"F*"ing bassist bastards! Actually, I don't think Public Enemy are racist bastards. It's
Ice-T I hate, because he's so cool on lots of issues, but he's a sexist pig, so he makes
being a sexist pig look cool."
Across the room, affable FNM bass player Billy Gould looks puzzled and vaguely
affronted by the sudden anti-bassist mood. Drummer Mike "Puffy" Bordin sits and
glowers at nothing in particular. He does this a lot.

LONG WINDING ROAD

Both bands have been on tour for months. L7 hit the road before guitarist Suzi Gardner
had fully recovered from the head injuries caused by falling equipment at the video
shoot, aha, apart from a few days' rest here and there, they haven't left it since. Faith
No More are fresh, if that's the word, from supporting Guns N'Roses across the US.
"It was entertaining and enlightening, totally educational, says Mike Patton. 'I didn't
want to into it with some kind of superior F'**in' attitude. It was like going into the CIA.
You see - you have to -things you're maybe not supposed to see and, after a while, you
make a judgement. We were out of our place, and that's a good thing, totally healthy."
Somewhere along the line, Mike has acquired an ancient baby doll, name of Toodles,
which he carries around tenderly, wrapped in a tee-shirt. His fellow band members
make a big fuss of the doll, cooing at it and kissing its forehead. Toodles has a large,
pink head, potholed and cracked, a filthy, partially burned, crocheted body, and filmy,
opaque green eyes. There is something distinctly eerie about Toodles. I flippantly ask
Mike if he breast-feeds Toodles, and he looks at me like I just grew and extra head.
"She doesn't eat," he explains, as one would to a simpleton.
Yet when FNM head for the stage, he props Toodles face-down over a bowl of
mayonnaise. Maybe he should have offered the mayo to L7 instead. L7, in the great
tradition of support bands, don't get the full benefit of catering. Once a day, a
nourishing meal of bread and water or a little thin gruel peremptorily thrust in their
direction. These women are hungry, and have resorted to daring raids on FNM's rider.
"Jennifer ripped the breast out of the roast chicken in their dressing-room," Donita
snitches. "We're only allowed to have dinner," protests Jennifer. "On this tour, it's like
who's in control of who's in control of who ... we heard from a roadie that the tour
manager was asking, 'What are L7 doing in our catering?' - so we had to tell him that
we were getting coffee, and he went off and reported it to the tour manager. "It's really
comical and disgusting," reckons Donita. "Actually," confesses Suzi, "we were slipping
pieces of pizza into our pockets."
When L7 take the stage, they play like they won't get fed until they finish the set. Hello,
everybody!" calls Donita. Her guitar falls off. Nobody cares.
The Swedish kids welcome L7 as rock'n roll deities. Behind me, two girls scream
through "Scrap" and "Pretend We're Dead" fit to shame the most passionate Beatle
maniac. I haven't seen this level of teen frenzy since-ever, really. "We didn't have to
pay them much, either."
In the corridor, we find Faith No More earnestly debating the merits of seven graphic
variations on the theme of rutting rhinos. Seems they're choosing the cover for the next
single. A few nervous Hinkleys are in evidence. "Hinckleys," explains Suzi, "are fans or
groupies.
You know, after the guy who shot Reagan, the guy who was obsessive about Jodie
Foster. L7 have acquired some Hinckley's of their own: a Swedish metal band called
Sator, with whom they have struck up a mutual admiration society. Billy Gould,
meantime, has promised a place on the guest list to a girl who will, in exchange, bring
him a list of the filthiest phrases and most offensive insults known to her language.

"I got a great one in Germany but, when I said it aloud on stage, the whole place went
deadly silent. I think! made a boo-boo," he tells me.
The line in question is too vile to be reprinted, even here. The curiously asexual
atmosphere backstage doesn't make for thriving Hinckleydom. Most hang around for
polite conversation, then move on.
STOCKHOLM

Stockholm is a city of icy grace and elegance. It is also closed on Saturdays. Or maybe
that's just because it's Halloween. Halloween is a big deal here, apparently, almost as
big as in the States.
"Last Halloween," recalls Jennifer, "we dressed up in identical waitress uniforms, with
brown floral print and puffy white sleeves, and put our hair in braids. We played the
China Club, which is the place where the highbrow, over-40 rock set go, the 'beautiful
people' with leathery faces.The bouncers were out of control , real testosterone
monsters -and there we were, these braided waitresses in puffy sleeves, screaming at
them to stop roughing up the audience."
We're sitting around a hotel room, L7 and a few stray FNM-ers, conversation bouncing
from topic to topic - the quartet's recent highs going to Australia and meeting up with
The Cosmic Psychos, playing with Joan Jett at a Rock For Choice benefit and lows
Florida; journalists who class female rock bands as a genre, getting compared to
Girlschool.
"Girlschool?" Roddy joins in. "Hey, we thought we were touring with Extreme. Then
these guys turned up."
Scabies, or a rumour of same, is doing the rounds. Some of the crew are said to suffer
from it. "It's nasty," says Jennifer. "You get a rash on your chest that looks like this."
"Aahh cooties! She's got cooties!" Shriek all assembled, recoiling.
Whatever Jennifer has on her chest can't be as spectacular as what she's got on her
back. Its a tattoo, about half a foot in diameter. At first, I mistake the design for the
cover of Queen's "A Night At The Opera", some kind of irrevocable glam trash
aesthetic statement.
On closer inspection, it proves to be an intricate and finely executed, albeit unfinished,
representation of four angels who touch wings in a circle as the universe explodes
within. It beats the shit put of butterflies and pierced hearts.
Self-decoration abounds, Roddy, in addition to his debonair Errol Flynn moustache
which he darkens with borrowed eyeliner for photo shoots has acquired an eyebrow
ring, and relishes the squeamishness this causes me.
Mike Patton wears one as well, although the skin looks bruised and infected around
his-probably a result of his "interactive" relationship with audiences. A leather strap
around his waist reads Sissy.
"I've had a whole series of them," he proudly announces. "'Submissive slave','Sissy
Boy', and now just 'Sissy'. They're good for starting conversations."
If you really want to break the ice, how about one that just says pervert?
"Yeah, that's a good one. That'll do it."
For all their reputed in band friction. Faith No More seem to get along fine. Mike, Roddy
and Billy are the charmers, a kind of boys club, gurning and joshing and riling the girls
with finger-poppin' doowop renditions of 'Pretend We're Dead'. Puffy is friendly enough
but more hard-bitten, and Jim is, uh, difficult to figure out. Tucked away behind his
massed hair and bizarre glasses, he answers any questions briskly, and volunteers
nothing.
L7 are more like a gang, close-knit, suspicious of the press -or of this particular
representative, anyway. Suzi, the band diplomat, is never less than polite. Dee is never
less than wild. Donita, and especially Jennifer, tend to be wary.
"Doll it up for the press!" Jennifer repeats, when she's not joining in the current band
catchphrase, courtesy of those Florida red necks; "Gaw dam gay gits!" "Last tour I got
so sick, I passed out on stage, on a bunch of beer cans. I went to see the doctor and
guess what he told me..."

Um.. .Girl you better try to have fun no matter what you do?
"Uh-uh. He said, 'You need a rest.'"
Jennifer has a sense of humour. I have a sense of humour. But never, it seems, the
twain shall meet.
VOODOO CHILE
It's Halloween night. Faith No More are playing the Stockholm ice rink, and Mike Patton
has just executed a perfect somersault of the monitors and into the crowd.
"It's like a bodily function," he tells me afterwards, when we finally sit and talk at leisure-
something that hasn't happened before because, to quote Jennifer, organising around
Faith No More is "like trying to house train a box of maggots."
We talk about bodily functions and disease and decay, the recurring themes of mikes
lyrics
"Well I wouldn't say I'm fixated, but there is a kind of fascination about it, decay for
sure... No, I don't plan my stage dives, there wouldn't be a lot of mileage in planning
something like that. It's more like a bodily function. Okay, okay, I'm fixated!" - and he
explains why he's taken to crooning 'The Commodores' "Easy Like Sunday Morning"
part way through the set: "People yell at us to play our Black Sabbath cover. So
whenever they shout 'War Pigs', we play 'Easy..,' Lionel's the man, really underrated."
When I ask if playing in a band is a way of prolonging your adolescence, Mike is
aghast. "No way. You can't base your youth on something like this. What do you do
when it's over? This is a fucking movie, man. This isn't gonna last."
Can you see yourself getting old and fat and lazy, sitting on the sofa with your beer and
remote, like the characters in your songs?
"Yeah, it's only too easy to imagine that, man. It comes to all of us. It's a horrible
thought, horrible - and it's definitely going to happen."
But it isn't until I mention Toodles that Mike truly comes to life.
"TOODLES is what I've been wanting to talk about! Toodles comes from Atlanta. I dug
her up. It was on the Guns N'Roses tour. We went to a graveyard, a really old
graveyard all prisoners. No names on the gravestones, only numbers. There was this
really small grave, and I figured, how could there be an infant prisoner? So I dug it up,
and there was Toodles. I could hear 'Sweet Child o' Mine' playing across the night from
the open air arena, and I knew we were meant to be together"
The ice rink suddenly starts to feel a whole lot colder.
Everyone's packing up for the night. The band members are all tucked upon their
respective tour buses- almost all. As we pass Faith No More's dressing room, the door
opens to release a spurned stream of strapping blonde Hinkleys, Followed by a
boggling Jim Martin. Any male equivalent will probably be stowed away on L7's coach
by now. Soon, Mike will be curling up with his macabre companion. Happy Halloween.
FAITH NO MORE | 28.11.1992 | KERRANG!
Kerrang | Issue 420 | 28.11.92 | Mike Gitter

That's how FAITH NO MORE bassist BILL COULD describes the experience of touring
with Guns N' Roses. But despite the band's attempts to "diss" him in the press, Axl
Rose was "pretty cool"! Now liberated from the stadium millstone and back in the UK
playing theatres, FNM are feelin' much more at home - and actually like each other for
the first time in years! MIKE GITTER is the man sprinkling a little 'Angel Dust'...

Making Friends With The Devil

"HERE, TRY this. Just be careful..." Twisted. Hateful. Mischievous. Flat-out f**ked. It's
a weird scene outside the Roseland Ballroom in New York. Billy Gould has been
passing around drinks of a strange, yellow liquid he's quick to give warning about. It's
not piss. That's the first
thing you might expect from Faith No More's bassist. No, both Bill and keysman Roddy
Bottum are quaffing the stuff. They both have ecstatic grins on their faces, bigger than
the ones they had an hour earlier when their hour and a half of operatic hippy-hate core
came grinding to a close.
"Beware of strange men from San Francisco bearing drinks!" someone chuckles.
The twisted twins smile impishly. Some people make noises about heading down town
to the Lower East Side. Mike Patton is surrounded by a gang of friends, fans and
friends of friends and fans, hurriedly making his way to grab a cab on the corner. Then,
the casualties start.
Staggering. Stammering. Glaring up into space. I spend the next couple of hours
making sure Helmet's publicist, one-time Agnostic Front guitarist Steve Martin, and his
assistant Adam don't choke on their own vomit. For this service, I have apparently
earned the nomde-plume, Dr Giggles. Thanks, guys.
2:30am. Mike Patton is clutching a beer, laughing. "Oh, that stuff!" he grins that mean-
bastard grin. "It's okay. They took it off the market about a year ago. I dunno, it just
usually scares the hell out of me!"

IT'S TWO weeks later. Faith No More's first fully fledged US headlining tour since the
beginning of this 'Angel Dust' business is grinding to a halt in hotter-than-hell Tampa,
where they're already on the prowl for 'inbred alligator wrestling Deicide types'.
"We're gonna do a special request for Glen Benton!" Gould chuckles from
Hell's Waiting Room. "We're gonna dedicate 'Easy' to him. Maybe we can get him
onstage with us! What a stud!"
As for that nasty little cocktail... "Oh, that stuff! The Somatamax!" the bassist grins like
a naughty child caught. "It's this health food stuff, this fat-burner thing. It releases your
growth hormones and stimulates the endorphins in your brain, and you get really high.
It's actually pretty harmless. "What happened was, you used to get it in health food
stores up until about a year ago.) still have a bit left from then. Kids were going in and
buying a lot of it, and no one knew why. Then some kid ended up in hospital OD'd on
the stuff. "It's heavy duty stuff, like taking two quaaludes, but unless you choke on your
own vomit, I can't see anything really bad happening with it!"
It has been a season of the absurd. Faith No More have only become more brilliantly
twisted, fervently contrary and capable of plunging to even deeper depths of dementia
and depravity.

BOREDOM CAN have that effect. Being on tour with Guns N' Roses, and then Guns N'
Roses and Metallica, since what seems like the dawn of time will almost certainly drive
you to it. Faith No More have endured both.
"It was really good for the band," Billy admits, tactfully. "But it wasn't really good for our
heads."
That's an understatement. As the bassist intones: "Things happen when our minds are
given the space to degenerate".
Let's talk pros and cons of living in a situation known as 'The Circus', with its staff
numbering into the hundreds of crew, chiropractors, publicists, diplomats, witch
doctors...
"The good thing was playing in front of 80,000 people a night, when on our own we'd
bring maybe 3,000 people to a show," Gould calculates. "So we'd have to play 200
shows to make up for one Guns N' Roses' show's worth of people."
"Unfortunately," he says, "we're used to much more relaxed situations, just being able
to hang out after the show and not having to worry about our fans shooting us or
anything. Getting thrown into that atmosphere was really uncomfortable. Plus, with the
security so intense, what can you do backstage? Get drunk and look at strippers? Oh
yeah, that's real exciting." So what were some of the more 'creative' ways to amuse
yourself? "Being able to talk shit in the press and have a lot of people read it! That was
really fun. That was how we got our amusement. We like to create dissension. It was
this gigantic body of people that travel just like some big circus, where no one ever
really communicates with each other. We thought that if we could stir it up just enough
to where we wouldn't get in trouble, it might make it more interesting! After all, it's kind
of uncool when a band invites you on tour and you diss 'em a little bit just to have some
fun."

APPARENTLY, INVISIBLE ringmaster Rose caught wind of the shenanigans. Faith No

More's hi-jinks in the press, and decided to arrange a little meet-and-greet for their own
benefit.
"He read all the bad press we said about him and asked us about it!" Bill Gould
chuckles. "We actually talked to him for a while, and y'know what? He was pretty cool!
"One day we came to the concert, and Axl was there waiting for us. Like, 'What's the
deal?'. And we just said we tried to stir up as much trouble as we could. We told him
we felt like that was our job, and he just laughed. He just sat and explained his position
to us a little bit. He's an easy guy to take pot-shots at, and we definitely went for the
easy thing. "He was cool about it. He likes to see the system shook up as much as
anyone, but he's in an awkward position. We left the tour friendly. It was like making
friends with the Devil. I thought all hell was gonna come down, and he let us off with,
'Aw, right, you f"kin' idiots'. "That was a cool response. Most people in his position
would have been real uptight dicks. I can think of 100 other bands we've done a lot less
to that have freaked out 10 times as bad!"

BILL GOULD is a magnet for eccentricities, quirks, strange vibes and perverse
fascinations. A walking encyclopaedia of mass murders and dabbler with computers,
he has no trouble recounting the most perverse of Faith No More's strangest quirks.
Clearly, this is a man too smart and too unbalanced for rock 'n' roll. Most of Faith No
More suffer that problem. "The most perverse thing I can think of right now is that Jim
still lives with his mom," he sniggers. "He never moved out! Mike Patton's been pretty
cool. He had a thing for a while with human
shit - it's a cheap medium to work with. It's free!"
As for your own new obsessions? "I'm taking a ton of health food drugs," GouId admits.
"All kinds of different stuff. Legal highs. Every once in a while they work, like the
Somatamax. I found a stimulant called Competition Leather that f**ks you up, too. I
take it every show now. It's like tar with a bunch of Chinese herbs and shit in it. It's 99
cents a hit, and it's awesome. I recommend it. One bite and you're on top of the world
for three hours!"

CONSENSUS IS, being out on their own is where Faith No More belong. They come
out doing callisthenics to a techno-ed version of Europe's 'The Final Countdown', and
pump straight into The Land Of Sunshine'. The difference this time is that their set isn't
about combatting indifference the way it was in the arenas. They aren't a distraction to
the crowd as much as they are a vortex of full throttle eclecticism and insanity. Mike
Patton isn't so much leading the crowd in chants of "EVERYBODY SAY BUDWEISER!"
as he is prostrating himself about the boards, crooning, shouting, shrieking, hunched
over and scowling like he actually means it. Not like he's having a laugh at the expense
of 80,000 people. Invisible in arena-land, Rowdy Roddy is more animated and
flamboyant than anyone's notion of what a keysman should be. Dressed from head to
toe in white, he's exuding a raw, flamboyant energy like Liberace on crack, while Billy,
drummer Mike 'Puffy' Bordin and the Big Sick Ugly One with the Big Sick Ugly guitar
just pummel. The perfect combination of angel and demons. The night ends with the
cocktail sleaze of 'Edge Of The World', Mike Patton and Jim Martin gone from the
stage, Roddy twinkling the ivories while Mike 'Puffy' Bordin cracks out a jazzy beat. An
enthusiastic college girl from the audience saunters out the lyrics while riding donkey-
style on Bill's back. It's the ultimate karaoke scenario, and more perfectly Faith No
More than they've been in a while. Just like the Faith No More that made 'Angel Dust',
a band not coming apart at their differences, but ending up making great
music because of them.
"The five of us are a little more definite now," Mike Bordin feels. "I don't think there's as
much that goes unspoken. We get along better and are able to smile at each other. Not
at each other's expense, but actually smile at each other. It's nice, for a change."

THEN AGAIN, what would Faith No More be without at least a bit of internal animosity?
At one point it was singer Chuck Mosley was the one who won the scorn of the band. It
was Mike Bordin during 'The Real Thing' era. The odd-man-out mantle has since fallen
to Big Sick Ugly Jim. He seems like a stranger off in his own universe. "It's kind of
puzzling to me," Puffy admits. "He's isolated himself. I don't know why. I first noticed
when we did the South American trip, but the weird part was that was when the rest of
us started having fun together! "Jim came from a different place," the drummer
postulates. "I'm familiar with where Jim came from cos I grew up there, but I left
there to find Bill and Roddy. If you wanted to talk writer talk, you could say I left Robin
Trower and the Blue Oyster Cult to find The Stranglers and the Sex Pistols. That's
where I met Bill. I knew Jim back in the Robin Trower era."
And most improved player, Mike Patton? After a few months off with Mr Bungle, and
then a stint providing the sickly shriek for John Zorn's jazz-noise savages Naked City,
he's gone from being visibly uncomfortable and acerbic with his situation to the world's
most twisted pop star, Wacko Jacko aside.
"On the last record I can tell you exactly where Mike's frustration was coming
from," Bordin says. "Being exploited as a pretty boy; y'know, 'Hunk Of The Month'.
"Look, we are a rock band. We are not a funk band, we are not a Death band, we are
not a grunge band. We play our music. It's what we do. When people try to make him
into a figurehead or something else that he isn't, that's hard. The guy doesn't want to
lie. It's both good and bad, but he doesn't lie. He tells the f**king truth. "The last record
was a strange experience for Mike," Puffy thinks. "We toured a lot, a year-and-a-half
pretty much straight, which does get taxing, and it was the guy's first real stretch of
time away from home. I also think, 'The Real Thing' being the first record he ever
made, he feels he could have done better on it. He outgrew it.
"People like that record, and that's fine. I'm proud of that record, but that doesn't mean I
want to make the same record again. There are some bands that can do that, like
AC/DC. They deserve to mine their groove because it's their groove. I don't think we've
hit our stride yet."
BILLY IS ecstatic to be out on the road in Faith No More's own twisted merits once
again. "Y'know what's funny about being on the Guns N' Roses/Metallica thing?" he
points out. "It was the biggest tour in the world, and the most happening tour any band
could ever want to be part of. We did it. And we realised it wasn't that big a deal. "It's
like getting a Platinum record - just a thing to do, and once you do it and realise that
you're not any happier, you learn what it is that makes you happy. That's why we did
'Angel Dust'. I dunno, after being out on our own for the past four weeks it seems like
we're just at the beginning of things. Everything else was like one long, strange dream."

Faith No More are back on UK soil. "Forget the glamour and mumble a jack hammer."
It's bound to get stranger.

FAITH NO MORE | 25.11.1992 | BRIXTON ACADEMY

Kerrang | December 1992

Brixton Academy November 25th

L7 ARE chucked on stage unnecessarily early, thus ensuring that a large
number of people who've looked forward to seeing them miss a lot of the set.
Once inside, you find there's rather a lot of tampon-throwing going on. It seems
that ever since Donita Sparks hurled one at the audience, they've been lobbing
them back. And, of course, L7 are still playing their bollocks off, pumping out
those rough-edged, bottom-kicking tunes. But L7, despite saying they don't
want to be known as just a girlie rock band, pumping into the excellent
'Pretend We're Dead' and Donita suggests, in reference to her fanny-
showing antics on 'The Word', that we all lower our trousers. Then the next
song is dedicated to "all tampon-throwing sisters in the audience!".
It is quite amusing, but L7 have enough good songs to do without all that.

There is a glitterball above the stage and the hideous sounds of Europe's 'The
Final Countdown' come parping from the PA. Faith No More are in jolly jape
mode, but after that there is very little of the usual sodding about we've come to
expect over the past few years.
Last time, their set didn't really work because no one knew any of the songs
from 'Angel Dust', but this time those tunes are greeted with almost as much
enthusiasm as the old stuff. Almost - but not quite. This is not the usual FNM
crowd; there are a lot of new fans, and many of them would be equally happy
with a regular pop band. Thankfully, Faith No More seem more than aware of
this, and at times it's difficult to tell if the big production, horrible lighting and a
very serious rendition of, 'Easy Like Sunday Morning', yes know they've done it
before isn't just a piss-take, Faith No More sounded damn near perfect, but
because of their new-found fame and the audience that goes with it, there
wasn't the same crazy spark of energy that there used to be. The fact that they
open the encore with 'Everything's Ruined' is appropriate in same ways, but
they have one last ace up their sleeves with the Dead Kennedys' 'Let's Lynch
The Landlord', before leaving us with a very abrupt Death Metal racket. Faith
No More are not, after all, some stupid pop band. You don't find lunatics like
Mike Patton in Bros!

December 1992
SKY magazine December 1992

Mike's pierced eyebrow epitomizes

Faith No More's finger to the world.
With a trail of trashed hotels and
hospitalized fans behind them and a
singer who, ahem, doesn't use the
toilet, FNM make most grunge bands
look like The Osmonds. Simon Witter
joined them on the American leg of a
tour which has now hit Britain.
Photographs by Julian Broad.

Mike Patton is running wild-eyed

through the foyer of Grand Rapids' Club
Eastbrook, dragging a chunky skinhead
by the collar. "Get on stage and fucking
stay there!" he shouts as they head
back to the auditorium. Tonight Patton
is not the bouncers' friend, but then
security has been winding him up
something rotten. Not that it takes a lot
to wind Patton up. On stage he seems
born to be intense.

"On our last tour I jumped into the

crowd and broke this kid's nose," he
reminisces. "I tried to get him medical aid but he said he'd rather have a t-shirt. It's
bad. What do you tell his parents? The other day I met a guy who had a scar over
his eye, just like mine. I asked him how he got it and he said: 'You did it to me, but
it's cool'."

It's better than an autographed forearm, I reassure him; at least it won't wash off.
But Patton is inconsolable. Off stage he becomes the kind of caring, thoughtful guy
who helps old ladies across the road. And it is this contrasting nature -- like the
angelic swan and the slaughterhouse carcasses that adorn the respective sides of
their album sleeve -- that characterizes everything FNM do. The day anybody
understands what this band is really about, they'll probably hang up their guitars for
jobs at Taco Bell.

I knew something was wrong on our first meeting in Marquette, Michigan, a

picturesque, Twin Peaksy one-street town on the shores of Lake Superior. Sheltering
from the rain in a doorway, the band who trash hotel room and shove shit in hair
dryers probe relentlessly about the state of the pound, the ERM and the future for
Maastricht. It's like one of those Wayne's World sketches where Wayne speaks
fluent Cantonese or Alice Cooper discourses knowledgeably about the state of world
socialism -- only FNM aren't joking: they know their stuff. I'm devastated. A real
American rock band would hardly be able to name the capital of France, let alone
understand or care about the intricacies of the ERM.

The next day in Grand Rapids I catch Patton speaking perfect Spanish and accuse
him of betraying the fundamental yank-rock tradition of imperialist arrogance.
"Hey," he counters, in a pathetic and not entirely serious attempt to save face,
"we're only learning Spanish so that we'll be able to talk about drugs and groupies
in Spain."
Repeated warnings that I would under no circumstances be allowed on to FNM's
tour bus have left me suspicious. Its interior must either resemble Dante's inferno
or, more likely, hide a secret that could ruin the group's bad-boy reputation. Hell,
once aboard, FNM probably form a knitting circle that would make the Whitby WI
look like a Led Zep orgy.

FNM were born 10 years ago, when Bill Gould (bass) and Roddy Bottum (keyboards)
moved from LA to San Francisco to go to college, where they met drummer Mike
"Puffy" Bordin. The trio planned to use different guitarists and singers for every
show, but a year later had solidified their lineup with guitarist "Big" Jim Martin and
former front man Chuck Mosely. At the time there was a thriving underground
scene, but little record company interest.

After their 1985 debut LP We Care a Lot, FNM began crisscrossing America
supporting everyone from Metallica to Red Hot Chili Peppers, but by 89 the big
break still eluded them, and Mosely's behavior -- including once, apparently, falling
asleep on stage -- had alienated the rest of the group. Mosely was given the heave,
Mike Patton discovered in his hometown "void" of Eureka, California, and a deal
signed with Slash Records. MTV took the new-look FNM and their new album The
Real Thing to heart, pushing the single Epic into the US Top Five. The big time had
finally arrived, and FNM boarded the grunge train they had helped launch and rode
it for all it was worth.

From We Care a Lot (a sarcastic take on the Live Aid generation) to Midlife Crisis (a
rip-shredding look at the thirtysomething generation), FNM's attitude has been
consistently irreverent and in-your-face, but the music never stands still. Just when
people thought they had a handle on them, this summer the group released its third
album, Angel Dust, a baroque pomp-punk brew closer to Rush on acid than the
acerbic funk-thrash fans had come to expect.

From the all-out sickness of Be Aggressive to the syrupy sincerity of their Midnight
Cowboy cover, Angel Dust pig-headedly refuses to deliver a follow-up hit, just as the
band refused to be grateful or well-behaved when Guns N' Roses took them on a
three-month US and European tour. FNM are currently touring America as
headliners; this month they bring their relentless, slamming show to Britain.

Pictures and performances may suggest unity, but the band has an odd makeup.
While Mike, Puffy, and Billy are in conference at the back of the bus, the group's
furry-freak-brother guitarist, Jim Martin, lies in a parallel universe of his own,
smirking at the puerile obscenity of an Andrew Dice Clay video. It's not that Jim
(who played The World's Greatest Guitarist in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey) is any
less nice than the rest of the band -- all shockingly pleasant and unpretentious -- he
just appears to have joined the wrong group. In appearance and attitude Jim seems
to have zoned in on a tardis from 1975. At the Marquette sound check he jams Led
Zep riffs, while the rest of the band are playing something completely different, and
at his side of the stage three teenage groupies dance with inappropriate abandon
(rock sound check are slightly less exciting than watching Newsnight). None of the
others would even consider entertaining groupies.

"Our manager sent us a fax the other day," jokes

Patton, "saying that since our record isn't doing so
well, we better start hanging out with groupies to
boost sales."

"No, we don't do anything like that. That to me is a

rotting corpse. It's just something that is stinking and
it's there. It's a whole decomposing art form."
People know the rest of the band don't do it -- all Roddy gets is boys saying, "Can I
buy your hat?" But Jim is obviously so into it. "He does what he does, and is
constantly the butt of every joke, the scapegoat of the band. But the weird thing is
that he really IS that way."

On-road entertainment is clearly important to a band that spends as much time

touring as FNM do, but for the other members fun, music, and workaholism suffice.
In the brief periods they have off, Patton plays with his performance art group Mr.
Bungle, while bassist Billy moonlights as the only white member of LA's "Mexican
answer to NWA." Having just finished three months touring Europe and the States
with GNR, FNM are now on a headlining tour of their own, on which (for
entertainment) they had hoped to bring along Right Said Fred. "We wanted them to
tour America with us," says Patton, "but when we shopped the idea around the
promoters -- which is what you do when you set up a tour, throw some bait in the
water -- the reaction wasn't too good. It's too bad, cos I would go to a tour like that,
out of morbid curiosity." FNM's Marquette fans are heavily clothed in Ministry, Chili
Peppers and Rollins Band t-shirts. It's hard to see any of them wanting to spend an
evening with Right Said Fred.

"It would be great!" gleams Patton. "Oh mean, there'd be brawls. But that's the
beautiful thing. People like that should be fucked with, they should have one arm
behind their backs. They would be perfect for that. I don't know why we like Right
Said Fred so much. Maybe it's the baldness -- they're so slick. They're crass,
commercial and goofy at the same time. They're amazing. Also the fact that they
worked in a gym is great. I love that."

But FNM do have their fun. They always come on stage to the tacky strains of
Europe's The Final Countdown, and play a version of the Commodores' Easy so
sincere it almost hurts. Another similar band might do it as a joke, but there's not a
hint of irony or camp about FNM's version. From Mike's soulful croon to Jim's searing
guitar solo, this is as true to The Commodores as FNM can humanly play it. That it
gets not a barrage of missiles, but the night's biggest cheer, is all the more strange
in the context of FNM's crazed teen crowd, most of whom spend the whole show
stage-diving with the frantic futility of hamsters on an exercise wheel.

"Usually we just do songs we like," says Patton, explaining the group's cover policy,
"so we have to do them sincerely. If we did a Commodores cover and chuckled at
the end of it, it would make everyone else feel a lot more comfortable with it, but
that's not the point of it at all. It's stuff we like and we deliberately put it between
two noisy songs to make people take a step back."

A step back is just what FNM's record company took when they heard the group's
new album, calling it (rumor has it) "commercial suicide." "I think everyone sees
Angel Dust as this big sword in our neck. A lot of people think we're saying 'Fuck
you!' to what we've always been. In a way that's great, because I think bands
should challenge people and redefine themselves, but I don't think this is that huge
a departure. We can't go where we've been before. It's fucked, it's boring and it's
insulting. But maybe I'm overestimating people."

Wonderful though it is, the baroque pomp-punk brew of Angel Dust contains neither
a formula follow-up nor anything closely resembling a hit single. "If I like a record by
a band," argues Patton, "I'll buy their next one just to see how they've become
warped, that's the most fascinating thing. Because certain things in life just fuck
you. You'll see someone two years after they changed jobs and they're completely
different people. Bands are like that in microcosm, because there are five or six
people living in close quarters like rats, and the changes that come out of that are
immense."
The changes in FNM have mainly occurred in the vocalist department. Patton is the
last, and most successful, of a string of people to fill the position. The day FNM play
Marquette, one of their former vocalists, Courtney Love, is on TV with alternative
superbeau Kurt Cobain, denying rumors of drug dependence during pregnancy.
"She was only with us for about six months," says Roddy, "but she's still one of my
best friends. Being in a rock band can be a real boyish thing, and I think Courtney
quit because she found us way too macho. She needed a group who would let her
write all the songs and do everything she says, and it wasn't gonna be this group.
She's not in any way bitter about the success we've enjoyed since she left, but then
it's not like Hole are doing so badly."

The next day, in Grand Rapids, Patton discovers a Mexican restaurant where no
local white folk go and dinner costs $4.50 a head. A wall-mounted dispenser
ominously labeled "Pain Relief Center" serves four kinds of medicinal potions, and
anyone who wants booze has to do so out back in the car park. Mike has been here
all day. "After food like this, how can you not feel like a king?" he asks, as he leads
me and Billy in after the sound check.

Two days into this odyssey, and I've yet to see any sign that any of FNM (bar Jim)
are anything other than the kind of guys you'd want your sister to marry. So open,
trusting, kindly and hospitable. Where did they get their reputation?

"A lot of pieces written about us," explains Patton, "selectively edit together all the
vile and disgusting stuff, which is fine, cos nobody wants to read about us making
coffee."

"But I don't think we buy into a lot of the myths of what we're doing. We just lived
with that for three months [GNR], and saw so much of it... The whole idea that there
has to be something outrageous and abnormal is washed up and gone. I mean we
do our own thing, like I don't use toilets -- I just don't. It's not a wild rock n' roll
thing; it's a hobby -- shit terrorism. I did a shit on the bench outside Charles and
Diana's palace, but that didn't cause any rumpus. It could have been anyone's shit
really. The consistency wasn't so good. It wasn't a prizewinning trophy."

They've caused offense in other ways too. Although GNR gave them their big break
by specifically inviting them to support them on tour, FNM hardly seemed grateful
at the time. All the press generated while FnM were touring with GNR was bursting
with vitriolic attacks on Rose & Co. They simply aren't able to put a sock in it. "Oh, it
was real ugly!" says Billy.

"We said a lot of shit, and didn't realize how bad it was until we got caught. Axl was
real straight with us, but it was an ugly scene. He said: 'It's like I went away and
came back home to find you guys fucked my wife.' We were thrown off the tour for
five hours, but we apologized. It was like being in the principal's office. He said, 'I
only like you guys, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, and two other bands, and all of you
hate me. Why do you hate me?'" "We're still hoping he hasn't read some of it,"
Patton chips in. "We were just being honest, and that felt great, but it can also get
you killed. As far as the press was concerned, we were like caged animals. They'd
throw us a little bit of meat and we'd attack. And we realized that we were the ones
who were getting screwed. The interviews that we did belonged in the National
Enquirer. We were like a gossip column rather than a band."

Their latest diversion is a herbal health-food drug. Patton explains: "You mix it with
water to make you go to sleep, but if you have too much, this other thing kicks in.
It's like drinking a six-pack of orange soda and sitting in the back of a hot car. It's a
nauseating, piece of shit high, and most people end up vomiting. But it's fun cos
you never know what's gonna happen. Three of us took it one day, and we ended up
sleeping with our bodies in positions they should not have been in."
On stage in Grand Rapids he performs like someone who is no friend of sleep, or
indeed of standing up straight, lurching around the stage like a latterday
Quasimodo on speed. Afterwards it takes him ages to come down off his natural
energy high.

On the FNM coach Puffy is nodding to the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head as he
flicks through his priceless collection of jazz and blues CDs. Roddy Bottum is
chatting with his parents, the only members of the entourage that night not wearing
Noise Husher earplugs. On the other side of the coach windows, a girl's lapel badge
reads: "I need a good laugh. Show me your penis!"

As the bus heads off into the night, a sweaty, musclebound 18 year old who has
been hanging around the stage door asks me how I liked the show. "They were
great," I mutter.

"They were way better than that, man," he says, aghast. He's looking at me like I
just suggested his mother eats rats for a living. "They ripped!"

December
Indiecator Interview 2
1992

N/A

FAITH NO MORE | DECEMBER 1992 | VOX

MAGAZINE

Vox Magazine | December 1992 | Ann Scanlon

Making A Leap Of Faith

It's only rock'n'roll—but is it? Faith No More set out to subvert the myths of metal by
singing about homosexual fellatio and imposing band democracy on the wild
Midwest.....

When said that the electorate of Iowa will deter the next President of the United States.
Pro-politician, anti-change and super-conservative, will almost certainly choose another
four years of George Bush. It's a scary thought, but then right in the heart of America's
Midwest, is a scary place.
Faith No More have their first day off on their six tour month in Davenport, Iowa. As
with most things concerning FNM, the situation is a little incongruous ; weird even.
Faith No More are loud, aggressive, irreverent and without pigeonhole. Reviews for
their latest album 'Angel Dust' were almost universally glowing, and because of that,
people who saw them only as a heavy rock (hair, torsos and manic stance) have been
confused about what the band actually are. There's a great deal of aggression in their
music, and most of that derives from guitarist Jim Martin's guitar lines providing a
deadly metallic edge. Yet the other band members have branded him their 'token
rocker' and it obviously annoys them when he behaves like some sort of rock cliché.
"It's funny," shrugs Jim, "because they like the same old things that I do—however,
they're not willing to admit it. As far as I'm concerned, I like to have my little fun and I
like girls' tits, too, If that makes me a walking cliché, what can I do? Should I deny
myself?"
Lydon once said that he "saw the Sex Pistols thing completely guilt-ridden," a view that
almost all of FNM agree with about themselves.
"A couple of people in the band are especially guilty of being afraid to embrace any sort
of rock sensibility," says drummer Mike 'Puffy' Bordin, "and I think that's really a shame.
I can understand it 'cos I think that rock has got some really shitty things attached to it,
but it's unfortunate 'cos there's so many different things you can do with it, too, So,
yeah, there's guilt in this band and I think that was a big thing on this last tour that we
did."
Bordin is referring to FNM's support slot on the recent Guns N'Roses tour. Certain
members of the band had a hard time justifying their reasons for being part of such a
package and went out of their way to slag off GN'R in the press and even on stage
before the headliners' show. At London's Marquee club in June, when FNM played a
secret gig, singer Mike Patton urged the crowd not to come to Wembley but to phone
through with bomb scares instead.
The 'Roses were unaware of (or tactfully chose to ignore) FNM's insults until the tail
end of the tour, when they confronted them.
"It was kind of an experiment to see how much we could get away with," shrugs
bassist Bill Gould. "Lots of people, including our managers (Warren Enter and John
Vassiliou), think that if we shut up and did our Job everything would be really easy, so
why do we make it difficult for ourselves? But there's kind of a guilt trip in doing the
regular thing. I mean, we're a rock band. We never really wanted to be one, we just
kinda of became one. We're not alternative, we're a rock band, we're mainstream, and
there's a little bit of shame in that."

On the streets of Davenport the local kids—or those considered weird enough to dye
their hair and dress in black—complain that there is nothing to do and no where to go,
apart from a couple of bars that play "alternative music" on Wednesdays and
Saturdays.
This isn't strictly true, as the band discover. Davenport, which stands on the
Mississippi; recently reinstated riverboat gambling. Iowa law, however, limits wagers to
a maximum of five dollars and total losses to $200 per person, so FNM head off across
the bridge and board the Rock Island Casino (an authentic replica of a paddle wheeled
Mississippi riverboat) which is officially moored in the neighbouring state of Illinois and
therefore allows unlimited gambling. Three hours tater Gould and Patton have emerged
as the clear winners and losers of the FNM troupe, the former having won $300 at
craps and the latter down on his luck by $80. But no one has lost out too badly since
the casino provided an endless supply of cream cods (a potent mixture of Vodka and
cranberry juice) it a dollar a throw. The band move on to the Paradise Island Lounge,
where Jim Martin attempts to double his casino winnings by betting $100 on one game
of pool.
"A hundred dollars!" exclaims Mike Patton, "Jesus Christ, this is turning into a retard
fest."

As if on cue, a lippy kid, who had already blagged Bill Gould's baseball cap, demands
an autograph plus several places on the following night's guest list. When Patton tells
him to hang on until he's finished his conversation, the kid starts imitating him,
gesticulating wildly and shouting, "Wow, that's really intense."
Patton turns away exasperated. "What can you do with people like that?" he asks. "You
can either put yourself out by humiliating them or humiliate yourself by hitting them.
You can't win, so I usually ignore them."

Faith No More are one of those bands who are always on the road and when touring
America they seem to spend most of the time in the Midwest.
"The people out here come to see you once," says Bill, "and then they buy your records
for the next ten years."
He's probably right. Although Davenport's Col Ballroom has played host to some
legendary names— Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, Jimi
Hendrix—the locals are restricted to a couple of bands per month these days.

Consequently, dozens of kids turn up for FNM's soundcheck, including four teenage
schoolgirls who break into a spontaneous chorus of one of the songs on their latest
LP, Angel Dust. "Be aggressive, be aggressive, be aggressive," they sing, instead of
the words that they use to cheer on the football players at their school: "go,fight, go,
fight, go,fight, go, win."
Keyboard player Roddy Bottum, who wrote the song ('Be Aggressive') , is impressed
and invites the girls to get up and sing those lines during the show. It's a weird concept:
four 15-to-17-year-old cheerleaders singing "Be Aggressive" while Mike Patton hollers
"You're my master/ and I take it on my knees/ ejaculation / tribulation /I swallow / I
swallow / I swallow." over the top.
"What I like about 'Be Aggressive'," says Roddy, "is that even though it's macho in a
homosexual way, lots of FNM listeners probably imagine that it is a woman who is
getting down on her knees and swallowing rather than a man. I guess it's easier for
people to understand and deal with it that way."
Later, when the band (and the four girls in full cheerleader regalia) perform 'Be
Aggressive' during the show, a boy in an FNM T-shirt is going wild down the front. He
owns the most recent of the band's four studio LPs (1989's The Real Thing and this
year's Angel Dust), but has never seen them live before. He doesn't know what 'Be
Aggressive' is about and his jaw drops when he learns that it details a homosexual
man giving another man a blow job. "No shit!" he exclaims. He whispers this revelation
to his friend. "No shit!" comes the reply; it's half a question, half a statement. They both
look stunned. But does knowing what the song is actually about make a difference?
The first boy wrinkles his nose and twists his cap around his head in embarrassment,
before mumbling, "Er, I guess not, but I just can't believe it's about that."
This seems to be a standard reaction from the young men of Davenport—apart from a
six-foot-six superjock type who had been happily singing along, but reacts to the news
that it's a homosexual song by glancing shiftily at his two shorter (male) friends and
glaring. "What exactly are you getting at?"
Fortunately, the cheerleaders have a slightly better grasp on the song. "Well, it's kinda
sexual," giggles Katie, 17. "Y'know, I swallow..."
When they learn it's a man singing "I swallow rather than a woman, they are surprised
but unshocked. "Really?" asks Heather, also
17. "I didn't know that. But I did know Mike Patton wrote the lyrics to The Real Thing
just two weeks," 'Be Aggressive' is an important song in FNM's set. Not Just musically
(it's a current favourite of both Jim Martin and drummer Mike Bordin) but because it
highlights the wide spectrum of sexuality within the band.
FNM are often portrayed as a macho rock band, with all that entails. Despite their
music cutting across metal, rap, Techno-dance, Country and offbeat Tom Waits
territory, rock'n'roll stories about them are already enshrined in legend. A recent
magazine article portrays them as gun-toting crazies (though Jim was firing a pellet
gun); there's photographic evidence of Jim groping the breasts of scantily-clad women
and rumours of an ex-tour manager pissing on a girl as she slept in a band hotel room.
"The two extremes of the band are Jim and me," says Roddy. "Jim used to say to me.
'You, raised by women, raised as woman'. He had three brothers and was raised in a
macho environment, I had three sisters and am the exact opposite. But heavy, loud
music will always be perceived as macho because of its sound and aggression "
FNM's abhorrence of being thought of as Just another rock band not only explains why
they swapped their cover of Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs' for The Commodores' 'Easy' or
why they are so intolerant of Jim's behaviour but also why Roddy wrote a song as
ambiguous as 'Be Aggressive'. "To me there's nothing more disgusting than the whole
male/female interaction between bands who are on a pedestal, and the weird groupie
thing." he says.
Mike Patton seems similarly disgusted by that part of being in a band. Shortly after
joining FNM, he said he would rather have a wank than go to bed with a groupie.
"It's got nothing to do with sex," he explained, "It's like vampirism. I'm their transfusion."
Two years later, he has yet to get used to unwanted attention. "It's still humiliating," he
says, but adds "Shame is a definite motivating factor in the way I behave. Because
when band politics are working At their best, somebody is always being crushed and
humiliated. Humiliation is ever-present."
Band politics are obviously at their worst in Davenport because nobody is humiliated.
Patton is spared from drooling fans—largely because he and Bill spend most of the
afternoon in an antique shop, with Bill spending his winnings on vintage microphones,
while Patton picked up several paintings of mutant babies and an ugly doll with a burnt
arm. Back on the cum-dressing room, Patton is hopeful that band politics will improve
during the show. They do.
"Three against two and we won," grins Patton, as Jim and Roddy defeated by the
rhythm section during the encore. "That's the power of democracy and it's beautiful."
After the show, the cheerleaders clamber onto the bus to enthuse about the gig, chat
about their favourite bands (like Skid Row) and tell an envious girl that no, they don't
need a lift home, "We're with the band."
Shortly, the girls say their goodbyes and the bus drives east to Ohio. It doesn't matter
that Davenport hadn't understood FNM or their songs. "It's not gonna make us sleep
any better if people say, 'I understand what you're doing'," says Patton.
"But if they do," adds Bill, "maybe they'll buy us a drink sometime."
December 1992

Rip Magazine issue December 1992

Faith No More
Dusted

By Mark Putterford

If there was any substance to the theory of beauty sleep,

Faith No More would surely require a fix of Rip Van Winkle
proportions. In these ultra-sensitive, politically correct times I
suppose you'd have to refer to them as "sartorially
challenged" or perhaps "aesthetically underprivilaged," but in
the liberated vocabulary of the good old days "scruffy
bastards" would have been perfectly acceptable and
appropriate.

Singer Mike Patton is the least beautiful of all. He shuffles

from table to table in the huge catering tent erected behind
the stage at Gateshead Stadium, the outdoor arena near
Newcastle in the northeast of England where the Guns N'
Roses/FNM/Soundgarden carnival has alighted this day, clad
in the most stomach-wrenching pair of leather knickers
imaginable--bought, he boasts, at an Iranian flea market in
Paris and made from such crusty hide "it feels like I've got half
a dead cow wrapped around my balls." On his feet are boots a
gravedigger wouldn't be caught dead in; on his back an old
rag masquerading as a T-shirt; on his head enough grease to
fry a full English breakfast. As he approaches, a sixth sense
urges you to look quickly away lest he thrusts a slimy palm
under your nose and grunts something about needing a
quarter for a cup of coffee.

In fact, "Gaaaawwwwd!" is his opening gambit when he

eventually arrives, the Lord's name trailing out of a jaw-
breaking yawn. "I'm so tired, man. Doing nothing kinda
knocks me out, and we've had so much time off on this tour,
it's disgusting. There's, like, a week between shows, and when
we do get to play, it's only for 45 minutes. It takes us five
songs to warm up, then we've only got three songs left! It
sucks."
Sympathy for the boy doesn't come easy. In 15 minutes
Patton and his band will be onstage before 20,000 British
fans, promoting an album, Angel Dust, which is fully expected
to transcend the multiplatinum triumph of 1989's The Real
Thing and which has already propelled these San Francisco
dropouts into the stadium-hopping slipstream of Guns N'
Roses and Metallica. It has been, after all, just three years
since Patton joined the band, and in the aftermath of The Real
Thing and the MTV-cracking success of the "Epic" single, the
guy's set to become a millionaire. Who knows, he might soon
be able to afford a regular supply of Head & Shoulders.

Up on the stage's chrome-plated catwalk moments later,

Patton tries to banish his boredom with a few heart-stopping
somersaults. As FNM lurch with slapdash abandon into the
thundering strains of "Caffeine" from their excellent new
album, and the Gateshead throng--pumped by the exertions
of openers Soungarden--surge and froth like a sea of local
beer, Patton throws himself head over heels to the floor as if
he's engaged in judo combat with the Invisible Man, then
staggers to his feet to spit and belch at the front row. He
seems to be enjoying himself at last.

Like Patton, whose arms often look like they're having an

argument with his legs and are determined to do their own
thing, each member of the band could well be performing in
his own little world. Guitarist big, sick, ugly Jim Martin, a kind
of Guy Fawkes who actually does wear his spectacles over the
top of his sunglasses, chugs away with neo-Sabbath
inclinations on an inevitably black Flying V. Keyboard player
Roddy Bottum, proudly sporting a T-shirt embossed with the
legend "Marky Mark," bobs and weaves like one of those Kriss
Kross brats. And the rhythm section, bassist Bill Gould and
drummer Mike Bordin, twists and tugs its way from thrash to
country-and-western, barely acknowledging each other in the
process.

But this is cultured chaos and clockwork disarray; a

schizophrenic symphony where seductive melodies court
hideous guitar riffs, where the bass sound tightens slowly
around your neck and chilling keyboard atmospherics suggest
you keep one eye over your shoulder. This isn't metal, this is
Faith No More.
The 10 p.m. curfew at Gateshead means that FNM have to go
on in blazing sunshine, and it's clear that conditions are
hardly conducive for a classic perfomance. But as the band
churns through "The Real Thing," "Midlife Crisis" and "We Care
A Lot" into the guts of the set, they fall into a measured stride
that once again seems at odds with their apparently disjointed
delivery. This, after all, is the only place you'll encounter a
deadpan rendition of the theme from the 1969 film Midnight
Cowboy rubbing shoulders with a vicious spurt of hyperblur
like "Introduce Yourself." And thus, what better as an encore
than an alarmingly authentic cover of the Commodores'
super-smoochy smash "Easy"?

It's 6:30 p.m. when Mike Patton slams himself the stage for
the last time, and within a minute FNM are slumped across
the leather sofas of a dressing room equipped with a
sumptuous spread of food and several crates of ice-cold beer.
They hardly need a dressing room, as none of them wear
anything onstage other than what they've had on all week,
but maybe they like to have a quiet place to pluck out their
earplugs (essential FNM stagewear, I kid you not!). This
specially adapted locker room, complete with potted plants
and moody lighting effects, may as well be it.

The conversation that follows, like almost everything with this

band, leaps from one extreme to another--Princess Diana,
birth abnormalties, Spain, tuna sandwiches, the Beastie Boys
(who like FNM, stayed at the Holiday Inn in Newcastle the
previous night), corn circles, radiation, ketamine, animal sex.
It's difficult to keep up. Diarrhea seems to be a recurring
theme, the result of a bout of mass food poisoning caused,
everyone suspects, by a cook on the catering staff who was
spotted returning to duty from the lavatory without washing
her hands.

"I've just lost half my intestines!" wails Mark, the tour

manager, from a nearby cubicle, pants visibly bunched
around his ankles.
"C'mon, Mark, let's hear you hit that pan real hard!" yells an
excited Patton. "I wanna hear that mutha echo!"
"Squirt for me, baby, squirt!" squeals dreadlocked Mike
Bordin, snatching up a camera and holding it over the top of
the cubicle door for a few souvenir snaps.
"I almost squirted tonight onstage," confesses Bill Gould. "It
was a real buttock-clenching time for a while. Shit, I hope Axl
doesn't have the same problem tonight, what with him
wearing those tight white pants and all."

"Hey," Bordin exclaims, "didn't Axl speak to Jim yesterday?"

"Naw, I think it was Patton," says Bill. "I think he said,
'Huhrrrmmmmmnnn,' as he flashed past with his
bodyguards."
"I heard it was more like, 'Rrrraaaahhhggg,' actually," adds
Roddy.
"Naw, I'm pretty sure it was, 'Huhrrrmmmmmnnn,'" protests
Bill.
"Some guy sad to Patton, 'Hey Mike, Axl just spoke to you!'
and Patton was like, 'He did?'"

By and large FNM feel they've been treated well on this

European tour with Guns N' Roses, although there've hardly
been many opportunities to hang out with their illustrious
compatriots. As Bill says: "Touring with Axl has been like
touring with Michael Jackson--although I think I've seen
Michael Jackson more times on this tour that I have Axl!"
Axl aside, contact with the GN'R inner sanctum has been
casual and cool. And walking around backstage at Gateshead,
you get the impression that, incessant interference from the
media and other unwelcome distractions aside, the
atmosphere is a little lighter and more comfortable than when
Guns visited Europe on the Get in the Ring tour in the summer
of 1991. Last time it seemed you needed a laminated VIP pass
to even be allowed to breathe in the vicinity of the band. Now
everyone seems more relaxed, with smiling faces and friendly
nods being the order of the day. Why, even a journalist
stumbling into the Guns' dressing room looking for the toilet is
forgiven with a shrug of the shoulders when once he'd
probably have been mashed into pulp by a hit squad of
hulking musclemen.

Yet despite the friendliness surrounding this tour, you get the
feeling that the FNM chaps haven't exactly had the time of
their lives on the trip; that somehow the whole concept of
playing huge outdoor shows is at odds with the essence of the
band's attitude and approach.

"Yeah, we're not the kind of band that's make for this kind of
stadium show," explains Bill. "It's just not what FNM is about.
It may be good from a business point of view because our
record has just come out--what better way to promote it than
to get on a big tour like this?--but if we had our way, we
wouldn't be doing this. I mean, it's cool to be out there in front
of a lot of people, but, man, the sound is shit, the place is too
big, the crowd is a fucking mile away...it lends itself to more
of a cabaret act--the kind of band that wants to indulge in all
that theatrical bullshit, with costume changes every other
song. I mean, we do change our clothes, but usually only once
a month."

The whole sickly circus (just as intense and absurd in the U.K.
as it is in the U.S.) that surrounds any GN'R activaty has made
life pretty difficult to bear for FNM as well. Ask any of the band
how they feel being at the eye of the hurricane, and chances
are the inquiry will be met with an expression that suggests
someone nearby has passed wind.

"When is this interview going to be printed?" asks Bill with a

nervous laugh. "You see, I have to watch what I say. But, hey,
fuck that, just print this: I hate the whole circus thing. We all
hate it. But at the moment we don't have the power to do
what we want to do, so we still have to eat a little bit of shit.
We almost have the power to control what we do, but not
quite; so we're just gritting our teeth and getting through it
the best we can. Every band in the world might think they
want to open for GN'R but, lemme tell you, it's been a real
ugly personal experience having to deal with all the shit that
surrounds this fucking circus. I've always hated that aspect of
rock music, and I've never wanted to be part of it; so to find
myself being associated with a tour this big kinda sucks."

"Besides," Roddy pipes up, "I'm getting more and more

confused about who's who in Guns N' Roses, and it's blowing
my mind. There's Dizzy and Iggy and Lizzy and Tizzy and
Gilby and Giddy. Shit, man, onstage now there's a horn
section, two chick backup singers, two keyboard players, an
airline pilot, a basketball coach, a coupla car mechanics..."

The list is interrupted by tour manager Mark, bowels now

under control, poking his head around the door to announce
that Angel Dust has entered the U.K. album charts at Number
2, only being kept off the summit by Lionel Richie's Back to
Front album.
"Slag the bastard off onstage," suggests Mark, an Australian.
"Naw, we'll probably dedicate 'Easy' to him," grins Bill,
upholding the band's tradition for contrariness.
That tendency extends to the artwork for Angel Dust, with its
front cover highlighting the beauty of an exotic bird, and the
back fearuring a grisly photograph of a butcher-shop window
with the head of a cow hanging among plucked and
decapitated chickens on meat hooks.

"Angel Dust leaves itself open to both angelic and demonic

connotations," says Bill, "so we wanted to balance the
beautiful with the sick. It's not a statement for vegetarianism
or anything; it's really just a reflection of the music, a visual
representation of what our music is all about--some of it's
nice, some of it is fucking ugly."

In the background Guns N' Roses can be heard lauching into

"Live and Let Die," and those still hanging in the FNM dressing
room exchange silent smirks. They seem resigned to the fact
that they're gonna have to put up with all this until October,
when the awesome U.S. arena bill of Guns, Metallica and FNM
winds down.

"This is really just the beginning for us," sighs Bill. "Last time
we toured, with The Real Thing, I left home at the age of 26
and got back when I was 28. Some of my friends had moved
away, some had gotten married, some had had kids--I had a
hard time dealing with that. This time I'm 29, and I know I'm
gonna be on the road until I'm 31. Fuck, I don't even wanna
think about it."

Mike Patton shuffles back into the room with a pint of coffee in
a transparent plastic container and the welcome news that it's
almost time to get on the bus for the long overnight drive to
London, where they'll snatch a few hours rest before heading
on to some godforsaken German hellhole. GN'R will be flying
down in their private jet. That doesn't bother FNM though--
least of all the explosion-in-a-junk-shop figure of young
Patton, who is, after all, just as happy playing with and
promoting his side project, the mysterious Mr. Bungle.

"I can't see this band going that way," he grins. "We'd
probably end up hitchin' rides to each town with truck drivers
or something."
He paws his little goatee and smiles like someone just tossed
a buck into his hat. Somehow you can't imagine him ever
flashing past surrounded by bodyguards with only a
"Huhrrrmmmmmnnn" (or perhaps a "Rrrraaahhhggg") for his
fellow travelers. But then again, this is the sick, schizo world
of Faith No More. And there, anything goes.

December 1992

Metal Maniacs Issue December 1992

Interview with Mike Bordin

By Peter Moses

I was not much of a FNM enthusiast, but I'd met Mike Bordin once
after a Ritz show of theirs here in NYC and got along with him quite
well, and Angel Dust had impressed me with its many interesting
songs. So it was, off to the ritzy Roger Smith Hotel to meet in their
plush suite for a talk with dreadlocked drummer Bordin. I told him I
perceived distinct ties between Angel Dust and The Real Thing,
contrary to the popular belief that the two are worlds apart. "I think
the press says that. To me it's not a radically different record. To me
it's a better record. To me the song are kind of written a little bit
better; more interesting development of them. You say one thing, and
then you say another thing, and hopefully it's a logical progression of
ideas." There is a continuity to the whole record, with songs
connecting in a way similar to, say, a Zappa record, though there is
silence between each track. Also, the beginning of "Land of Sunshine"
sounds tome like a faux "From out of Nowhere" for the first few beats.
"That's interesting, that's something I never would have thought of.
Both of them I think are really good opening tracks on a record,
because they do come kind of brash and 'whaa!!' and try to get your
attention, and that to me is like the sequencing, and how you lay out
the record, like you said about Zappa and how they're connected.
That's so important, because you can have ten or thirteen really great
songs, but you can sequence them in a way that would be very
difficult to listen to, or you can sequence them in a way that it really
flows together, and before you know it you've listened to the whole
record and it's satisfying. I think each record has a flow. I think once
you listen to the records as records, they can also be put as a
connective steps on a path."

Speaking of paths, it seems that FNM is following two simultaneously:

the heavy eclectic and the more stream-lined "popistic." "I think that
you could say that about the last record, though, too. I think to
compare the last record to the one before it, the heavy parts were
heavier, more aggressive, but the melodic parts were also more
melodic, and to me that's the balance; that's what makes this band a
little bit interesting, it's not just the five guys that {taps leg
rhythmically} do that at the right time, it's kind of balanced; there's a
couple of different elements that'll hold each other in check, and on
some songs on this record it's more leaning towards here, the heavier
maybe, and on some songs it's more leaning towards here, the
cleaner, but overall it's definitely still us trying to push it, trying to
develop it, trying to prod it along in certain ways."

Has one of those five guys, er, "bungled" things for the others? "I
think it affected us in a really good way, because when we came off
touring for a year and a half or so, it was like the magic slate was
completely covered in writing; there was not any more room for any
more writing on that slate, so we all went and said allright, and
erased everything, and started writing new stuff. Mike Patton, in his
way--I think he's blessed with, to me, tremendous creativity--I really
think it was necessary for him to do that, because that was his way of
going Pshewt! and erasing all this. It's something he needs to do; it's
an outlet. They don't do anything that we do, we don't do anything
that they do, to me it is very different. It's his high school chums, he's
hung with them for a long time. And what I mean is, I think allowing
him to do what he felt he needed to do and express what he needed
to express that he wasn't expressing with us helped him to refresh
everything, relieve some pressure, clear his head, and come back to
this record feeling good about us for not really fucking with him for
doing that, for giving him the respect and trust to go and do it, and
coming back and being enthusiastic about this. That's all you can say.
My only contention about him doing that always was as long as it
doesn't interfere or cut into what he's doing with us, as long as it
doesn't make him compromise what he does with us, his time is his
own and more power to him. To me he came to this record refreshed,
enthusiastic, ready to work, and the work that he did, I'm really proud
of that work, I'm proud to be involved with it, because I think he did a
damn good job.

FNM wrote the new record "in San Francisco at home, when we were
finally finished touring. The last record kind of cleared our minds out,
and then we just started playing again, just started jamming new
stuff, with bass lines and melodies and rhythms, and that's how it
started." Hmm, sounds like bass, keyboards and drums, the three
original members..."Keyboards, bass and drums, definitely. Most of
the stuff started there, but there's also stuff that started with Mike
Patton, there's also stuff that stared with Jim, but most of the
permutations are keyboard-bass, keyboards-drums, drums-keyboard,
you know, it happens a lot that way, because we were the ones that
were here, we were the ones that came to practice a lot and were
really interested and really pushing forward and really kind of
challenging ourselves." I asked if this is the type of music they
expected to be playing when looking ahead in 1982, the band's year
of inception. "When we started it was much more simplistic, me and
Roddy and Bill. There's a song on the last record that's descriptive of
what we were then, the song 'Zombie Eaters', where the bass line
starts: 'Bam, Bam, Chk, Chk, Chk', that was one of the original things
we did, we did it for about twenty minutes at a time. That was what
we did. Bauhaus used to do it in their day; it was like a skip, it was
like a piece of music cycling itself over and over, very simple, just like
a small chunk. And that's what we were after, I think, to try and get at
something that wasn't really being got at then, with all the...there was
Husker Du there, and there was early R.E.M., a lot of that jangly kind
of psychedelic Replacements sort of...not really getting at what we
felt could be gotten at. And so, to answer the question, 'no' because
it's developed now more to a point of not just an interesting part that
was being repeated, but hopefully a bunch of interesting parts that
are stacked next to each other that then take you on an interesting
trip, so hopefully we're getting better at writing good songs."

With many bands, a producer can be "instrumental" in the editing and

restructuring of songs, often to the dismay of the bands. What about
ol' Matt Wallace there? "He doesn't do it any more, he used to try and
we resisted it, and now he doesn't try, now he tries to get a good
sound, and I think that's what he ought to do. We hopefully have it
reasonably together by the time we go into the studio, you know we
have a reasonable idea of what we want to do, so I think it's harder
for him to monkey with it. With five guys in the band that's enough
monkeying. We worked on everything with him, and it's gotten better
every time, it's much closer than it ever has been to sounding the
way we feel we sound, it's not easy with the keyboards and guitar and
a lot of bass and a lot of drums, it's not easy balancing them. We try
to get a realistic sound, we don't want a super human sound by any
means, we don't want it to sound like...that kick drum that sounds like
that {clicks fingers}. Everything on that album drum-wise is real,
there's no samples, there's no digital effects. We made our own
reverb, we ran all of our tracks through an extremely live room and
miked the ambiance; we made our own ambiance. It was really
important. It's extremely organic; it's an extremely real sound, what
you hear is what we did, and I'm very proud of that also. What I was
going to say about Matt and getting better at sounding like us, it also
has to do with the way you write songs. The parts that you construct
have got to leave enough room for everybody to breathe, and that's
also the progression of hopefully writing better songs, getting better
at what we do. It's all kind of interconnected."

You might be wondering how FNM got on the big GN'R/Metallica

ticket. "We were invited. I grew up with Cliff and we used to play
instruments together before either of us were in bands. We actually
knew each other before either of us played instruments. He was my
weed dealer, and we'd just talk about music and go to concerts and
party--nothing major, just kids, this was in seventh grade. He said one
day 'I'm gonna play bass' and I said 'allright, well I'll play drums.'
That's literally how it was. We then joined a band Jim Martin had,
because he was from the same area, and Jim and Cliff became
inseparable, and this was again about fifteen years old, sixteen years
old, and here we are. That's where our connection really truly started,
and then he obviously joined the band, and left us. Too bad, we miss
him. We toured with GN'R in Europe. One of the very first tours we did
off the last record, when nobody knew about it--it came out in June I
think, or May--was with Metallica in July, to pretty much apathetic
responses everywhere, which is to be expected, because Metallica
has some of the most loyal fans, especially at that time. It was a good
test, you know, it kind of gave us some thick skin. They invited us. It
really had nothing to do with us wanting it, it had to do with them
wanting us. For me, usually, a tour consists of playing gigs and
depending on how your record's doing you're either playing in smaller
places or bigger places, but then trying to sneak off and go the a
baseball game and seeing all the stadiums, you know? And now we're
playing in the Astro Dome. It's absolutely hilarious, it's unreal. We'll
see all the places first hand, we'll shit on the toilets of all the better
stadiums." Indeed, as they are shit upon with bad sound and a half
hour set.

In case you didn't know, FNM is in close competition with Boston for
the Least Frequently Released Albums Award. "It may not seem
obvious, but the reason why we do that is we're on tour the rest of
the time. We put out a record, it didn't hit, it didn't get American or
even world-wide acceptance by many people until almost eight
months after it came out. It's simple, we don't sit at home on our ass.
We jumped the gun on this record by a month with this Guns tour.
That's why we took it, because we wanted to play. This German
reviewer wrote 'These guys are assholes, they put out a record every
three years and sit on their ass and don't do anything.' And we went
to Germany seven different times on the last record, no shit seven
times, where was he? We wrote enough material for a double album,
we wrote twenty songs. It was a great luxury; we've never had that
luxury before."

Of course I couldn't help but ask Mike if the back cover, the "meat"
photo, indicates a vegetarian statement. "It has nothing to do with
that. It has more to do with: the band itself, the sound of the band,
the sound of the record, the songs on the record, the title, and the
cover, going from wide to narrow. The band I think has many
elements, some heavy, some beautiful. The record is balanced I think
between some things that are really aggressive and disturbing and
then really soothing. The title of the record is something that if you
didn't know what it was--if you didn't know about any drugs--it would
sound beautiful. It's just something that seems beautiful but is
horrible. The front cover is something beautiful, put it with the back
cover and you've got something disturbing. That's what we wanted.
The record cover and layout was designed by us and put together by
us. {In the lyrics} the big letters, those are his {Mike Patton's}, he
had to fight for that. All the songs I think really confront you in certain
ways and provoke you to think." One peculiar feature of the new
record is the picture of Russian soldiers with FNM's faced dropped in.
"It was just pure 'we don't want to sit for busts', you know? It's
bullshit, man. That was a thing the record company really tried to
foist on us. They really tried to fuck with our layout, and sent us these
fucking pictures of us, just our heads. It was like this, they wanted us
to have a poster inside the record consisted of our five heads on a
black background, everything was black, the whole inside, and it's
like, 'Fuck you.' We're going to make our cover, we made our record,
we produced it our way, we wrote our songs, we played them our
way, it sounds like us. We got our cover FINALLY, we got our artwork
FINALLY, fuck you. If you let them do it, they'll do it. That's why they
pay people in the art department, that's why they pay graphics
people. And in some ways it can be really helpful, in some ways it can
be really good. Ultimately, what I see I really like. We told them what
we wanted, we actually got to the point where we had to sketch it
out, but they made it real for us and I really appreciate that. We have
five people, that's enough opinions, I said it about the producer, I'll
say it about he record company, that's enough. We co-produced it,
more so tone-wise than balance-wise, proportion-wise. We were all
really concerned about the actual sound of the record., and that's
really where you can make a difference. To me that Russian picture's
like a Monty Python where you see a guy's head, a monster comes by
and picks it up and Ptock! puts it somewhere. It's not 'We're the most
important people in the world.'"

How does one's enthusiasm hold up for 10 years? "I feel like we've
got a long way to go, to be quite honest with you, but I'm ecstatic
because I feel like we've got something to say, and if we ever are
lucky enough to get there I think when we look back we will say it's
been a really cool trip that we've taken people on, it hasn't been
just...Statue of Liberty, whatever, you know, the main stupid things,
it's been interesting, and I really feel that we actually do have
something to say, it's up to everyone else to listen or not."

Rock 4 (and
Dec 1, 1992 Interview
Power cover)
Gig
Dec 5, 1992 Kerrang 2
review
Dec 23, Gig
N/A
Raw
1992 review
FAITH NO MORE |
12.12.1992 | KERRANG!
Black Sabbath's eight studio albums, cut by the classic Ozzy-led line up, have
influenced countless musicians, includin one particularly big and sick individual,
Faith No More's JIM MARTIN. Here Jim highlights to Steffan Chirazi the effect
Sabbath had on his young life.

Kerrang Issue 422 | 12.12.1992

Ozzy : Black Days Revisted
Steffan Chirazi

ONE LOOK at James Blanco Martin will reveal the beautiful, ugly truth of a man
possessed by Black Sabbath since his early childhood.
That wild catweasel hair, the perverse glasses and the prongs of death an his
chin are all testimony to a man moved towards a lifestyle by the crunching,
immortal Sabbath sound.
Big Sick Ugly James Blanco Martin recounts how it all happened and
remembers the albums that made him the jackhammer crazy, mad bastard he
is.
"The first album, 'Black Sabbath' was a bit of a later delving for me, as I didn't
know about it for many years. "My first album was, of course, 'Paranoid' and this
was the one that really got me going.
"It was in the old 'shack' days. We built a shack in the back af Paddy McCaul's
house, and we were all too young to drive so we'd go there to drink beers,
plenty of liquor, smoke plenty of weed and fuck girls."
"The music was great, especially whilst drinking large quantities of booze - 'Iron
Man' was a big stand-out song, as I'd spent a while hating the radio and having
to listen to The Beatles. This vicious music was just what I'd been waiting for.
"My next record was 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', and it took me a while to like
it because I was so into the 'Paranoid' album - I guess my mind was too small to
like more than one album from one band.
"Of course, as time went on I learnt to love it and the big stand-out was, of
course, 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath'.
"I was somewhat shocked by the album sleeve because of the Satanic sex
party that was going on there; it was frightening and diabolical."

"I THEN grew to love 'Black Sabbath', 'Master Of Reality' and 'Vol 4' by going to
my friends' houses and hearing them on their stereos.
"There was no doubt that there were Sabbath albums l had not heard, and
eventually I acquired all the records.
"I very seldom listened to 'Technical Ecstasy', and 'Sabotage' was really just a
conglomeration of Sabbath songs already recorded, right? Never listened to
'Never Say Die' much, either. It became different music then, in my opinion."

"THE STAND-OUT elements of Black Sabbath are that they seem to

make people who are greasy, sweaty and have stubble on their chins drink
large quantities of liquor".

"Of course, Black Sabbath were not the same without Ozzy as far as l am
concerned. When he went, it was the end of Black Sabbath for me. He meant
everything to me. There was this wild chemistry between Ozzy and the band,
which made things what they were.
"My adolescence was moulded by Sabbath. My playing was too. I am moulded
by them right now - as you can see by my scruffy appearance, grouchy
demeanour and gluttonous alcohol consumption!
"There has never been a band who has done it like them. For me. Black
Sabbath have always It...."

1992

Unknown

I've got 5 days to recover from this week before the Faith No More
tour begins. It does not work; I end up busier than ever. By the
weekend, I feel worse than ever. On Saturday, I decide to travel to
London early, meet Alison, maybe check out some gig in the evening
and then not have so far to travel to the first FNM show, in Cardiff the
next day. I arrive early afternoon, and decide to hang out in Camden.
It's a fortunate decision, cos when I head up towards Dingwalls, I get
accosted by a grinning familiar face. None other than Roddy Bottum
himself, out shopping with Mike Patton. So we hang out for the rest of
the afternoon, checking out as much of Camden as is possible despite
the constant interruption of numerous autograph hunters. Roddy
seems more interested in making continuous phone calls at every
opportunity, whilst Mike shops like a fanatic, pausing only
occasionally to grin over various FNM bootlegs ...

By early evening, Mike and Roddy have things to do, so I meet up

with friends John and Brett Manley for a swift Guinness, before
heading across to the Underworld for the evening's entertainment:
Scissormen and Headcleaner playing another bill together, both
bands who I've steadily warmed to ....

Night over, I'm home, I'm asleep, I'm awake, it's the next day. ...By
the time we reach Cardiff, [the weather's] really shitty, everything's
grey and dirty. I wander along to the venue, crowds are already
gathering, and I try to avoid them, not wanting to be seen hanging
out with that kinda clientele, you understand, but whilst doing so,
bump into FNM tour veterans Lawrence and Linda, so at least now I've
got some company. As we stand and chat, the FNM tour bus arrives,
and as various band members walk into the venue, an unbelievable
display of screaming adoration takes place. It's pretty much
embarrassing ... having known FNM so long, to see them suddenly
treated in such an over-the-top fashion was very strange indeed.
Anyway, we get to speak to Billy, Roddy, and Mike Bordin for a while,
before they head into the gig, and we find something to eat.

I was actually quite on edge about how the new FNM set would fare --
this would be their first proper UK show since the Angel Dust LP, and
despite the fact that the venue was sold out up to some 8000
capacity, it would still be very interesting to see how things were
gonna go. The lights went down, and a new intro tape blared out.
Nothing less than a techno warm-up, followed promptly by FNM
themselves jogging out onstage for a brief aerobics session before
crashing headfirst into a storming version of 'Caffeine.' From there on,
any doubts that may have niggled me are straight outta the window.
The set is magnificent, a smart blend of old and new, bravely steering
firmly away from 'Real Thing' material, a gamble that certainly pays
off with the responsive audience. The dynamics of the set are great,
building up into frenzies only to slow right down into songs like 'RV' or
'Easy.' When the set ends with 'Epic,' the audience are ecstatic, and
the encore, including the Dead Kennedys 'Let's Lynch the Landlord'
(coctail version?) and 'As the Worm Turns', is nothing short of
excellent. That's the end of the first gig, and a clear indication that
FNM are at present better than ever!

Afterwards, we wait for the crowds to disperse a bit, and then make
our way backstage. It's a great atmosphere, everyone seems so
comfortable, so relaxed, unlike the end of the last UK tour, by which
point FNM had been touring for nearly 2 yers and the toll was
showing. Christ, even Jim is smiling and chatting to people! (He's
normally very quiet and reclusive....) Anyway, a couple beers later,
we're on our way out... Lawrence and Linda have offerred me a lift
back to Lincoln with them, a four hour drive, but at least that means
only a short trip down to Cambridge the next day....

Usual problems in Cambridge: can't find the venue, and then can't
find anywhere to park. ... The venue is big, but not huge. It's also very
crowded, which means it's difficult to get a good view, but I wander
towards the back and eventually find a decent place. FNM are great
once again, it's a smart show from start to finish ....

Afterwards, there's another kinda after show room to go and have a

drink in, where we meet Bill and Roddy, the latter even offering me a
lift back to North London in the tour coach, which will be fun ... so we
hang out for a while, and then head out. But the fun isn't over.
There's a big crowd waiting for FNM outside, with security doing their
best to hold them back. Everyone does their best to accommodate
autographs and stuff, and it takes ages to get on the coach before
departing. Like I said before, it's just weird to see such a reaction...

There's a whole pile of fan letters waiting inside the bus, and most of
the journey is taken up reading them. Some are cool, some downright
funny ... FNM deserve all the success they get as far as I'm
concerned, but this kinda adulation is so strange ...

Next day I already have a task allocated. Mike Patton, for his Mr.
Bungling activities, wants to go leather mask shopping. He's asked
me to show him around to suitable establishments. Alison decides
upon another mysterious cold, and accompanies us. Short phone call,
train-ride, and bomb scare, then we're down in Kensington to meet
Mike. From there, with travel cards at the ready, we're up to Harrow
Road to visit Skin Two. It takes a while to find the place, and when we
get there it's kinda disappointing. Lotsa merchandise, but very
fashion oriented. Nothing is bought, and we head down to
Westbourne Park, stopping only for lunch along the way. From there,
then, tube along to Old Street, and the infamous 'Expectations.' This
shop is much more what we were looking for. A large selection of,
errr, many things, shall we say? Mike finds an incredible full-head
mask, inclusive of zips and collar, as well as several Tom of Finland
art books and a neat handkerchief chart ... he spends a lot of money,
but he looks very happy with it. Finally we visit 'Regulation' in
Islington. Another fine selection, and Mike finds another hood, which
he really has difficulty leaving behind. From there, we visit a nearby
pub for refreshment, whilst Mike ponders going back for the hood,
and we all discuss what to do for the rest of the evening. Mike finally
decides to go back for the hood, but we arrive just after the shop has
been locked. We walk back to the tube station, and from there travel
up to Camden, deciding to check out the Unsane/Surgery gig at the
Underworld. About halfway through, we're all hungry, so we ask the
doorman if we can go out and come back for the main band, so we
can get something to eat in between times. As we've got passes, he
says yes, so we trundle across to a neat Italian restaurant in
Inverness Street ... one great meal later, it's pretty late, so Mike bids
farewell and heads back to his hotel whilst we try to get back into the
club to see Surgery.

Next day, and I'm a-lazing all morning and afternoon ... so I visit a few
friends, wander around, and finally make my way down to Brixton to
meet everyone. ... FNM are great again; they're changing the set from
night to night, which makes thing far more interesting. But however
good FNM are, the audience are just as entertaining. One particular
lad sitting close by is incredible. He's obviously been studying his
videos well, cos he's got all the Patton arm movements down by
heart! It's amazing! I mean, I've seen metallers playing air-guitar
plenty of times, even air-drums on occasion. But here for the first
time, here was ... air-microphone! And it didn't stop there. When
'Woodpecker from Mars' turns up, e.g. no vocals, he switches his
performance to ... air keyboards! Is there no end to this lad's talent?

Next day, much the same. Hang out lazily around London, then meet
Alison and friend Jo down in Brixton before heading into the gig.
There's more problems at the door, but Roddy is at hand to sort
things out. What a fine chap.... There's another aftershow, again, it's
pretty uneventful, there's some talking to be done, maybe a quick
beer, and then return home. Life can be great if you can distract
yourself long enough.

Afternoon spent lurking generally, plenty of teas and coffees, and

then down to Brixton to meet Alison and that bastard Pittis. The idea
is to get in early for L7 again, but as ever, I really don't know why I
even tried planning... There's problems with the guest list again, but
this time good ol' boy Patton is at hand, and sorts us through, and
then invites the 3 of us upstairs for a drink, so while I go for a
predictable Guinness, Mike makes Alison and Joanie some damn fine
coffee, and everything is very nice and pleasant. Oh, and it's also
Mike Bordin's 30th birthday, but he's bottled out of his long time
pledge of shearing his dreadlocks to celebrate. He tries feebly to
explain his decision/wimp-out whilst Bill pulls faces sneering that he
should 'DO IT!' But Puffy remains unimpressed and wanders off with
locks intact...

Again, up to the balcony, and decent seats for a decent view. The gig
goes very well; Patton is even wearing one of the new, neat
Dominator t-shirts, what a fine dresser! And at the end of
'Woodpecker' he re-emerges on stage to drink a birthday toast to
Puffy... I won't say what he drank, but there was a shoe full of it!!! The
show ended with a great encore -- both 'As the Worm Turns' and 'Why
do you Bother' are played with the pure rush of venom they demand.
Nothing can ever better that kinda standard.

[Next day,] we start out from London in reasonably good weather. By

the time we reach Birmingham NEC, it's so cold it's unbelievable!
Freezing, lung-collapsing temperatures. I hate it, and jump at the first
cafe for warmth and comfort. The NEC is a huge complex, many
different halls and arenas, plus trains, shops, bars.... We have to wait
for a couple of hours, but, rushing around to keep warm, it seems to
go by pretty quickly. Then there's problems getting in. The guest list
is just late; our names are there ... oh well. Next problem is the size of
this particular venue -- 12,500 capacity, apparently all sold out. This
one's gonna be interesting...

The eventuality is a big success. FNM take to the event magnificently,

performing as raw or brutal or accomplished or intricate as ever, but
almost Bart Simpson-like, continuously flipping the bird at the very
audience that sustains them. They play their version of 'Easy,' at first
encouraging everyone to get their lighters out, and then taking the
piss outta those who fell for the ploy. Patton jumps around wildly,
imitating Nirvana's infamous amp-toppling antics. And 'Epic' is
introduced as 'The biggest stadium trick of all .. ' as they close the set
... But it is in the encore, during 'Lets Lynch the Landlord,' that
someone somwhere discovers that the nylon seat covers are only
held in place by velcro. They're easily removed from the seats, and
then frisbee beautifully across the auditorium. First only a few appear,
but a song later, everyone seems to be joining in, and the air upfront
of stage is a melee of whirling covers. Patton encourages the chaos,
tempting pot-shots as he dives across the stage, and then collecting
the strays and assembling them into huge crashmats centerstage for
more of his somersaulting antics. By the end of the encore, the stage
is like a garbage dump, and FNM leave victorious, having taken their
glorious chaos to a new realm, the stale surroundings of the stadium
atmosphere, and having installed their righteous anarchy, whether
the masses had wanted it or not.

It took a while to sort out getting backstage afterwards, even with a

pass, but eventually we make it, just in time to catch the second half
of the Chris Eubank fight on TV. Neat! There's a lot of lurking around
before I bump into Patton, talking to Justin from Godflesh, who
surprisingly recognizes me even though it's been 2 or 3 years since I
last saw him. Patton was busy being apologetic; he'd forgotten to put
Godflesh on the guest list, remembering several songs into the set ...
'Do any of you know Godflesh? If you do, tell the doorman to let 'em
in!' he'd pleaded ... beyond belief, someone had actually followed up
his request, and the lads had made it in at last! All's well that ends
well ...

Anyway, bonus time. Having heard of my forthcoming transport

difficulties, Patton had offered me a lift in the coach across to Dublin,
but the journey was gonna be overnight starting ...now! So we all load
up, into the coach and off we go. Once we're on the way, Patton is on
top form beginning with an introduction to 'Cedric.' Explanation: that
very morning, before the departure from London, he'd heard about a
small shop in the Portobello area that specialized in interesting items
of taxidermy. Mostly mutant animals, apparently, but it sounded
pretty cool, so he grabbed a taxi and rushed down for a quick visit.
What he found was a very peculiar establishment indeed, and the
item that particularly caught his attention was an ex-medical school
exhibit, namely a preserved, 75 year old human foetus! Faced with
such a unique purchase opportunity, bargaining immediately
commenced, and 30 minutes later, Patton was on his way back to the
hotel with 'Cedric' ...

Now, on the bus, in the dimmed lights, Patton was introducing his new
friend. Holding the jar up to the light, I peered in, and slowly
recognized the shape ... 'It looks just like a ... oh shiiiit!' Similar
reactions were taking place all over the coach, though one of the
roadies completely freaked -- 'Oh no! That's too much. 75 years old ..
he could've been Hitler, he could've been Elvis, he could've been a
mass murderer ... ' 'Yup, and now he'll be on my mantelpiece,'
quipped Patton ... The roadie though really didn't like the deal, and
quietly changed coaches at the next petrol stop ...

Meantime, as most people decide on retiring upstairs for sleep, Patton

decides it's time for a video show, and this time it's a tape he'd been
handed by a friend, namely a copy of the Japanese 'Guineapig' film,
basically a very high-tech simulated snuff movie. It's gross, but as
with a lot of the Japanese gore material, it gets too gross, too high-
tech to really shock or disgust. It's interesting to see, just for the fact
that you'd never get to see it otherwise, but by the end of its brief 30
minute run it's either mildly amusing or maybe even dull. But it's
something you should see once.
It's pitch-black and freezing cold by the time we reach Holyhead for
the ferry across Ireland, sometime around 3:00 am. Weirdness
prevails, whatever, as Roddy, in a ridiculously hyperactive mode,
insists a whole bunch of us spend as much time on deck, despite the
very sub-zero conditions, as possible. Following thru from the coach,
we find our way up onto deck -- myself, Roddy, Dee and Donita from
L7, and briefly roadies Dean and Jimmy and drivers Dave and Marie.
The latter 4 soon have sense enough to head back to the warmth, but
we remain in the cold for a ridiculous time, dancing around in circles,
contemplating suicides over the guardrail, whilst Roddy continually
makes up bizarre little raps...

'Here we are upon the sea

I am Roddy and this is Dee
Here's Donita and Andy P
He's here to get the inside story
Of all of us upon the sea
Going over to Dublin-eee....'

Roddy was also showing off his latest sartorial acquisition. Sometime
at the NEC show, someone had thrown a t-shirt up onstage which
Roddy had picked up at the end of the set. The witty legend 'FUCK ME
MIKE P' was crudely scrawled on it in black ink, with a girl's name and
phone number on the back ... Roddy found the item extremely cool,
and insisted on using it as stagewear for the next couple of shows,
eventually losing it in Glasgow, having it torn off when he dived into
the audience once too often...

Finally, we give up on the freezathon and head sensibly indoors, but

Roddy is still acting strange and insists on us attempting Tarzan
swings thru the corridors which ends up with me slicing one of my
fingers open and bleeding everywhere ... we head to the bar, chat for
a while, and try to stay awake as long as possible, until we finally
reach the other side and then panic when we can't find the coach
again, but eventually somehow succeed and we're there, just another
couple of miles down the road, it's coming up to 9:00 am, but we're at
the hotel, Roddy generously donates some sofa space, I sit down to
rest for a minute or two and the next thing I know it's 4:00 in the
afternoon...

I find Roddy still hanging around awake and hungry, so we head out
for some food. The hotel is right in the centre of Dublin, and the main
streets are packed with people, everywhere seems to be
open ...there's a bunch of girls waiting outside the hotel for
autographs, Roddy obliges, and it's cool cos the girls seem so polite,
so genuine, not hassling at all like the crowds back in England a week
earlier. So we hang out and talk for a while and then search for
somewhere to eat, finding Patton along the way, and eventually
settling on a neat fish and chip restaurant. Food over, we head back
to the hotel; this time it's Patton's turn to meet the autograph
hunters. It's early evening by this point, so whilst FNM have to go off
to some sorta band-meeting, I watch MTV, and catch a program all
about Rolling Stone magazine which includes neat footage of both
Charlie Manson and Hunter S. Thompson, so that puts me in a great
frame of mind and eventually I head out into the night, bumping into
Billy at the first pub I get to ...

Anyway, once inside, we bump into another crowd, this time Roddy,
Dee, Donita, roadie Jimmy and a few others ... Sometime heading
around 2:30, mass migration seems to be the order of the moment
and everyone heads out to new locations. I accompany Roddy and
Donita along to another club, try some more beers, and then
eventually head back into the hotel, pausing only briefly to stand
guard whilst certain shameless individuals relieve themselves in
respective darkened alleyways. Hmm. Being yet another ridiculously
late night I sleep well into the afternoon yet again.

Monday, day of the gig, but there's things to be done first. FNM have
an 'in-store' appearance lined up at the local Virgin Megastore, and
that's for 3:00 pm or something... me, nobody wants my autograph
(the fools!) so I take the offer of a lift and travel downtown in a real-
live limo, only to get caught up in the crowds outside the shop.
Security guards clear the way in, and we all have to jump in through
the back door ... it then takes me some twenty minutes just to get out
again cos everyone is blocked by crowds of people, and all I want to
do is get outside and find somewhere to eat, but everyone else is
coming the other way and it's Hell in there!

Eventually, I reach daylight and slowly calm down and find something
to feed upon and sort out some postcards and generally wander
about before heading back to the hotel just in time to meet FNM
returning from their duties ... there's more feeding, then everybody
and everything is gathered together for the trip out to the venue. It's
another big venue, and it looks like there's gonna be another big turn-
out.

I get a special deal for the FNM set when Dean gives me some space
on side of stage to watch the show. It's strange, I've never watched
FNM play from such close quarters before, and it certainly adds a new
angle. Musically, the gig isn't the best, but both the audience and the
atmosphere are great. Only sour point are particular bouncers front of
stage who are acting like assholes. Even Patton has to have a word
with them at one point.

There's a kinda party afterwards, but again there's little time cos
there's another ferry to catch and a long drive u to Glasgow. None the
less (or maybe because...), Puffy is lurking around acting very odd. As
we wander out to the coach, he suddenly announces that, as there's
no females around, and since it's dark anyway, it wouldn't even
matter if he was walking around with his dick out ... which roughly
translated was Puffy announcing that he was walking around with his
dick out!! We try not to notice, whilst Puffy deviantly startles tour
manager Bob, and then startles himself when he bumps into Marie (a
very definitely female person despite the darkness...) Eventually
everyone gets on the coach and we head out.

Finally, reaching the ferry, I can't face another cold spell on deck, and
so fall asleep. Next thing I know, we're arriving in Glasgow. It's a big
hotel, somewhere next door to the SEC, and up from the foyer there's
even a 'scenic elevator', one of those glass-sided lifts. It wasn't worth
the effort, the view, especially this early in the rainy morning, is quite
possibly one of Glasgow's worst. To recover, Patton offers me some
floor space in his room, and I snooze out yet again.

Afternoon once again, and I accompany Patton down for breakfast,

which is a fine deal in this place. Vegetarian omelettes, neat fresh
vegetables, damn fine coffee, fresh bread rolls ... I stuff myself silly!

Not long before there's a lift to the Barrowlands for the gig... the first
of four nights. To be honest, I wasn't relishing the idea of so long in
Glasgow, but eventually it worked out pretty good. ... Back at the gig,
it's a lot warmer. L7 get onstage early, and play another great set.
Hot and sweaty and rocking. Dean and Jimmy have arranged more
space side-of-the-stage for me again, the idea being I want to get
some decent photos, but as soon as FNM hit stage, the steam and
condensation goes wild and my results eventually turn out a lot hazier
than I'd have liked. Oh well. The set, though, is a stormer, with even
"Mark Bowen" rearing its gloriously ugly head for the first time in the
tour. It really is a magnificent set.

Afterwards, I'm still trying to get some sleeping space sorted out with
Martin, when fate steps promptly in. Friend Nicki, veteran of many
FNM tours, but not sighted by these eyes for many months, suddenly
accosts me at the side of the show. Turns out she's now managing a
shop just outside of Glasgow, and lives a mere 5 minute walk from the
venue!

So, a decent sleep, and then the next day Nicki's got a day off, so she
takes me into the City Centre to check it out. ...In the evening, we
meet up with everyone in the bar next door to the venue. Initially it's
full of football supporters, mostly drunk but after a while it empties
out. So, a brief Guinness or two, and then in for the gig. L7 have
played very early, so we catch only half their show, which sounds
good nonetheless. FNM is good again.. Nothing unusual but a lot of
fun.

Afterwards, there's another brief aftershow so we hang out briefly and

then back for some sleep ...Next day, hanging out with Lawrence and
Linda wandering the shop-filled streets of Glasgow. Not very exciting,
but at least there's occasion for some damn fine chips on the way
back to meet Nicki again... Everyone meets in the pub once more, but
despite attempts to the contrary, we still miss half of L7 yet again.
Hmmm. But I have better luck with positioning this evening, get a
great view and no interruptions. Great set again, "Zombie Eaters" is
cut in early on in place of "Crab song," and both "Death March" and
"From out of Nowhere" surface in the encores. It's one of the best
performances.

Afterwards, another brief aftershow, this time we get to meet a young

Japanese girl, Ayumi, who's been attending most of the FNM gigs.
She's a friend of Puffy, it turns out, and visiting the UK for a few
months. FNM seemed the idea way to spend at least part of her
time...

Friday, last day in Glasgow. The time had gone by pretty quickly in
the end, though I guess there had been a lot of sleeping involved, on
my part at least. Anyway, big arrangements today. Everybody is
meetingup and going ice skating, but typically I lame-out and sleep
too late, and have to meet everyone else half way thru the session.
But that's no real problem. And at least by this point in the
proceedings everyone else is too concerned keeping themselves
upright to hassle me into putting on skates (nooo chance!). Most
people seem to be doing fine. Martin got the cocky bastid award for
his speedy twirly trix, Roddy gets the 'Oh yeah....' award for his 'I'm
not really too sure about this' followed by ultra-competent skating
routine, and Lawrence gets the 'Best o' British' award for his sterling
newcomers performance (...a braver man than I, to be sure...)

Interesting point: I find out a few days later that whilst we're all
skating, Radio One are broadcasting a supposedly 'live' FNM session.
In actual fact, the 'session' had been recorded over a week before ... I
mean, I know Roddy was skating pretty fast, but not *that* fast!
Sneaky radio tricks, eh...

A cold, lurking journey back to Nicki's at the end of the session, more
chips, then back to meet everyone in the bar again. Roddy joins us
again, quietly but steadily drinking quite a few beers until suddenly
someone notices that it's 8:50, L7 are already offstage, and FNM are
due up in 10 minutes. So, panicked rush back inside and we're all on
time for showtime...

It's an odd show. I get a good view, but there's a lot of losers in the
audience, total pains in the butt the lot of 'em. Onstage, FNM juggle
the set again, 'The Real Thing' makes its only appearance of the tour
in the usual 'Crab Song' slot, thus confusing poor Roddy who due to
his late arrival hadn't been told of the set change... Roddy suffers
again later on, when the notes on his keyboard seem to start jamming
(as in, sticking, not git-down and git-funkin'). His alibi is that one of
the bouncers at the front of stage had been hurling cold water over
the crowd, but had also managed to hurl a sizable amount over the
keyboards (this is kinda true; Patton made certain gestures of
displeasure on the subject himself...) However, when Dean had
checked the unit out at the end of the set, he'd found nothing
wrong ... Patton hit on with his clear reasoning... "there I was, middle
of the set having to cover up for our drunken keyboard player... " I
just didn't know who to believe. As a particular treat, the encore also
sees a neat rendition of the 'Nestles song' and a final awesome 'As
the Worm Turns.' What a way to go...

Yet another brief aftershow and then out. For various reasons, I've got
a few transport difficulties again, so Patton's offer of another lift is
much appreciated. But it's cold on the coach, even with the heating
on and there's actually snow falling as we leave Glasgow. I occupy a
brief time with Jim, going thru his gripes and generally chatting... He's
been acting pretty strange this tour. Normally it's difficult to get more
than a few words from the man, but this time he's being positively
sociable. Not that he's ever been unfriendly, of course, just that he's
usually pretty quiet and well... Jimmish.... Anyhow, soon enough,
things start getting too cold and too late, so I unpack my sleeping bag
yet again, claim a reasonably comfy chair and zzzed out for the rest
of the journey...

Reaching the hotel -- it's the one previously visited in January 90,
when we'd been snowed-on as well -- it's still very cold and very early
in the morning, so everyone's keen to catch some more sleep, and I
blag some floor space for the purpose...

Next day, everyone seems to be laying low. Early afternoon Roddy's

awake and we decide to catch a taxi down into the City centre to see
what's up. There's an old Canterbury friend of mine, Steve, who lives
in Sheffield now, so I phone him up, get some pretty vague directions,
and give him a visit, which is nice. But there doesn't seem to be much
else to see in Sheffield, it's cold, damp, crowded -- a taxi back to the
hotel is soon resorted to.

There's an early ride out to the venue, Sheffields' Arena complex. It's
actually at the end of this ride that FNM discover that arrangements
have been made for the BBC to record this entire show. Apparently it
had been arranged some time in advance but no one had bothered
mentioning it to them, the fact being obviously so unimportant...

The venue is huge; again I've arranged to meet some people, and I
soon realize it's gonna be difficult, but somehow prevail against the
circumstances and meet everyone I'm looking for ...

Between bands, everything is carefully timed and meticulously

arranged, which seems in stark contrast to the grand cacophony FNM
are about to produce, but overall, it's a contrast that makes FNM even
more effective. The set is one of their finest. There's a surprise early
on when 'A Small Victory' turns up in place of 'Falling to Pieces', but
otherwise it's not until the encore, when 'Nestles Song' and 'Mark
Bowen' both show up that the real treats appear. And finally, even
after the lights have gone up, the band return for their neat 'Let's
Lynch the Landlord' playing out the end of the tour.

Afterwards, the atmosphere is great. Apart from playing an obviously

enjoyable show, there is also the news that FNM had even out-sold
Metallica's recent show at the same venue, so everyone is in very
high spirits. There's a big aftershow arranged, but there's also
another long coachride planned, and that means an early departure.
So Roddy and Puffy arrange for their friends, rather than 'business
associates' to be sneaked back to the dressing room to share some
champagne that had been provided by the management, rather than
having to spend their brief remaining time shaking hands with people
they didn't even know. So there's a neat little reunion to celebrate a
great and successful tour. Everyone's smiling and chatting and taking
photos and drinking... Patton takes up my challenge of
Champagne/Pils snakebite, but then forces a mug into my hands as
well. In such circumstances... it goes down well. And it works...

Finally, we have to depart, farewells are said, and we're on our way.
Friends Wendy and Karen are driving back to Kent, so they offer me a
lift this time. But it's a long drive. Eventually, just north of London, we
break for a rest, and catch 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Then, early morning,
we finish up our drive, and another couple hours later I'm home, tired,
cold, sick and totally content.

1992

STARTING ON THIS PAGE IS 3000+ WORDS ON FAITH NO MORE. READ

THEM ALL.
(c) A. Keane Sterne
Teach Me Violence fanzine
late 1992

I was intent on getting a FNM interview as soon as I first found out

they were shceduled to play 2 nights in NYC at the Roseland Ballroom
in mid October. I didn't really foresee a problem. I work for the
publicist of the band Helmet (wonder how they made the cover of the
last Teach Me Violence?), who were the opening band for the entire
tour. This publicist I work for was friendly with some of the FNM
members. I had personally struck up a minor relationship with Mike
Patton, based solely on the fact that I had conducted an interview
with Mr. Bungle a year earlier and exchanged greetings with Michael
four months later when Mr. Bungle returned to Manhattan. I even
called up FNM's publicist to let him know that TMV was interested in
talking to FNM. He said no problem. So here I was, all excited to talk
to FNM about its best-ever album, Angel Dust. I prepared 20 or so
questions and printed them out on my laser writer. I just couldn't wait
to interview someone from the band and show them that I was
different from all those mainstream rock critics, that I was somehow
smarter than everyone else, that I *got it*. I desperately wanted to
show FNM that I wasn't some funk-metal fool and that I dug its art.

However, once the events that you're now going to read about took
place, I realized that I didn't *get it* after all. I wasn't such a smart
guy. I was really no better than the guy who writes for a supermarket
metal rag and asks FNM about the dreaded 'funk metal.' Though I
made contact with all five members of FNM (meaning I was within a
five-foot radius for at least a few seconds), I didn't get to interview
any of them. And as I now know, it's a good thing I didn't interview
any of them. FNM isn't just another rock band you can have a Q&A;
session with so you can get some quotes for your fawning article. FNM
is a band you have to experience. But that I don't mean "Dude, the
album is ok, but live the band rocks!". You've got to look at the people
behind the music. The main influence on this band isn't Led Zeppelin
or REM, it's this country we live in. It's about the America most folks
don't like to talk about. Make yourself some popcorn and read the
lyrics to Angel Dust. Al Goldstein. Ed Gein. Robert Tilton. Andy Warhol.
Superfly. This is what FNM are about. The America even David Lynch
is afraid of. Americana.

Before first show: My trek started a few hours before the first night's
show. I was sitting in Helmet's dingy dressing room with the band
members, the aforementioned publicist and their accountants. In the
hallway, I couldn't help but overhear one of FNM's big-wigs explain to
the venue security that when dealing with stage-divers and crazy girls
running on stage, FNM liked to have a 'family atmosphere'. Several
people in the Helmet dressing room had difficulty restraining their
laughter. I wandered out of the room and watched FNM's tour
managers go over the special access cloth passes. There were orange
passes and purple passes and red passes and passes in what looked
like about nine other colors. And depending on what night it was,
each color carried different privileges. So if it was the 14th day of the
month, and you were on the east coast, and a full moon was out, and
the NFC East had a 3 way tie for first place, having a light blue cloth
FNM pass in your possession might get you a free Coke. This was
really the first time I had ever been "behind the scenes" at a really
major concert. So what did I learn? That, in rock and roll, what goes
on "behind the scenes is: A) boring. B) stupid. C) boring and stupid.

After first show: The after-show "VIP Party" is reffered to in the

industry as a "meet and greet". Various industry folk crowd around
the VIP bar, start drinking, and commence talking shit about everyone
more than 10 feet away. Eventually, the band of the evening shows
up and starts mingling with the assorted press, radio, sales, and retail
guys, letting them know what a great frickin' job they're doing for the
band. It's here where I met Billy Gould, FNM's bass player. We trade
hellos and then I stand around, trying to look like I'm part of the
conversation he's engaged in with someone else. I later learn that
Billy is the band's "doctor." He actually seems to be somewhat
knowledgeable on the subject of "smart drugs." A large number of
diet pills (with "fun" side effects) that the FDA had just taken off the
market were in his possession and you can bet that Billy Gould made
sure all his friends were properly dosed up. Several members of FNM
band and crew reportedly live on Dr. Gould's concoctions. Supposedly
one young hanger-on almost had to be taken to the emergency room
after accidentally ingesting just 1/4 of Billy's regular dosage. At the
time, however, I wasn't aware of this, so I turned my attention to Jim
Martin and watched him talk to just about every woman in sight. The
one female he didn't approach was a rather full-figured, unsightly
woman of poor breeding, who, as I later unearth, recently made the
sign of the humpbacked whale with Jim. This got boring pretty quick
though, and you can only observe fat, drunk, and stupid people for so
long before you call it a night and head home.

Outside the back door of Roseland are various FNM crew members
standing around with a few of the band members and their friends.
More importantly, there are a number of people waiting for a
particular person: Mike Patton. Yes, Michael is the attractive singer of
a world famous rock band, and while that may get him his share of
sleazy groupie come-ons (to my knowledge, he's never indulged
himself), it isn't the reason why 30 or so male and female fans have
waited for an hour and a half to possibly get a chance to talk to him.
Maybe a few of those are attracted to his former long-haired, Anthony
Kiedis-style persona, but it's apparent that most want to meet the
current Mike Patton, with his goatee, short hair, and positively
unattractive baseball caps. I'd even say that my biggest
disappointment of the weekend was that I never got to talk to him. I
think his appeal lies in the fact that he's an authentic screw-up, he's
the real thing (yuk, yuk). He's not a homely nature-type of a flannel
wearin' dude like Eddie Vedder. He's not an exotic artist/drug abuser
like Perry Farrell. He's not a small-town punk rock bastard like Kurt
Cobain. Basically, Patton *wasn't* the guy who dyed his hair red in
high school and ruined the football team's homecoming parade by
streaking across the field naked. Instead, he would just write an essay
on murdering the entire team and hand it in for English class. He was,
like many of us, the guy who made every effort to avoid human
contact during the school day. Even now, I think he likes to keep his
person-to-person conversations brief and, if possible, nonexistent.
During the two nights at Roseland, everyone I was sitting with got a
big laugh out of how he handles the girls who run on stage. When
some perky young co-ed hustles her way on to the stage, Patton does
*not* trade sweaty tongue kisses with her before letting a roadie take
her backstage for an after-show blowjob. "What'd I ever do to you?" is
what he asked, in a hurt tone, to the first girl who tackled him. After
the second girl was dragged away, Patton skipped over the lyrics he
was supposed to sing and simply screamed "WHY?" into the
microphone. The third girl never got close, as he ran away to the
safety of the back of MIke Bordin's drum riser and proceeded to finish
the song from there. And just when you're starting to think that the
reason he tries to avoid these crazy girls is because of a fear for his
well-being, he does a back flip off the 30 foot high PA stack. In
Patton's world, doing a back flip off a 30 foot high PA stack *is* safer
than making contact with someone of the female persuasion.

A lot of performers say that if it wasn't for their music, they'd be dead
or in prison. I don't even think Mike Patton really cares about music all
that much. If you were to witness the way he defends the virtues of
Manowar or how he spontaneously injects actual lyrics from groups
like En Vogue, Funkadelic and Helmet into FNM songs, you'd think
that as far as Mike Patton is concerned, no music can be taken
seriously. Without FNM, he wouldn't be dead, he'd just be another
loser lost in the shuffle of America. He'd be sitting on his mom's couch
reading Soap Opera Digest, getting ready to head out to his next shift
at the 24-hour convenience store. After exchanging some greetings
with a number of his fans (who didn't seem at all star struck), he
rambled off into a cab, ready to hit some bars and watch *other
people* make fools of themselves. Even watching him operate in
'normal mode' there's no question that inside, he's by far the most
imbalanced member of FNM. I'm only a few years younger than
Patton and I don't know how to deal with anything, and I don't know a
damn thing about anything. Imagine the predicament he's in?
Unfortunately for him, his fellow band members do nothing but
encourage his deranged anti-social tendencies, which of course we all
seem to enjoy watching manifest themselves....

After second show: After the show, several individuals scampered

across the Roseland floor to the VIP party. Lying I would not be if I
were to tell you that most of these individuals were those under the
delusion that their profession of "rock journalist" was the global
equivalent of being a US Ambassador. Do they really think FNM cares
about the 4 1/2 jackhammer review they got in Metal Overlord
Weekly? Or that snide 8 line preview in some decrepit metropolitan
tabloid? Where were these guys when FNM were opening for Youth of
Today? But it doesn't matter because I was more interested in all the
sad faces searching the cluttered floor for lost shoes, keys, wallets,
etc. I saw one girl find a shoe and then promptly have a roadie come
up to her with the other shoe. As he handed her the article of
footwear necessary to complete the pair, I smiled at this girl and she
smiled back. Not so fortunate was the guy whose head bobbed
unnaturally up and down as he tromped around on one high top
sneaker. I don't think he came up lucky. The true heartbreaker,
however, was the poor lass who flooded the floor with tears as she
desperately searched for watch I surmised was a missing watch. Had
her boyfriend given her this watch? Or was it some $8000 Rolex she
got as a graduation present? She was obviously in great pain. For a
few seconds a smile would cross her face as perhaps she
remembered what a great rock show she had witnessed, but the grief
would then return and the weeping carried on. As I walked out of the
Roseland Ballroom, I passed what looked like a group of 8 people, all
explaining their individual losses to the venue staff. ... Don't fret too
much, dear reader, because I had my shoes and I was going to an
after show "get together".

We were in a Brazilian restaurant with a name I don't remember on a

street I couldn't pronounce. Present with your fearless narrator were
Peter and Henry from Helmet, Mike Bordin from FNM, some people I
didn't know, some people I knew but who didn't really say much, and
some people I knew who probably don't want to read about
themselves in this scandalous publication. So what do all these highly
educated music industry professionals talk about when they
converge? Music, of course! Mike Bordin led a discourse on prog-rock
drummers, with Carl Palmer being singled out for the highest praise.
Now if you were to ask me who my 3 favorite current drummers are,
I'd say Tim Alexander from Primus, Sim Cain from the Rollins Band,
and Mike Bordin. Still, despite Mike's considerable talent as a
performer, his oral skills were only vibrant enough to capture the
attention of one young woman at our party, a some-time drummer
and full-time booker of such cutting-edge artists as Jethro Tull, Bad
Company and ELP. When Jethro Tull came up, one prominent writer at
the table mentioned that he had calculated that the combined ages of
all 5 current Tull members exceeded the cumulative age of the United
States of America. Said writer launched some chit-chat on rock shows
he had seen as a teenager like Led Zeppelin, and Neil Young on the
Rust Never Sleeps Tour. ... Then Jim Martin showed up.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Jim takes a lot of crap from
the other four members of FNM. (Check out the recent Kerrang
feature where he's quoted as saying "it's four against one. I hate
those fuckers!") During the first night's show, Jim announced to the
3000+ crowd, "I'm from outer space and I'm here to kill you all." Mike
Patton immediately broke out in laughter. Not as if to say, "Hee hee,
boy Jim, you really crack us up sometimes," but rather, "Y'know Jim,
we know you're a stupid hick, is it necessary for you to open your
mouth and prove it?" At the second show, Patton started a game of
"fake cool/real cool" with the crowd. The way it worked was Patton
would shout out the name of a band and everyone would shout back
"fake cool" (for bad bands) and "real cool" (for good bands). After
rattling off four names, Patton utters, "Jim Martin." Before anyone can
respond, Patton immediately follows up with his (and presumably the
entire band's) verdict on poor Jim: fake cool. But while Jim Martin may
not be the most popular member of FNM, he's certainly the most
recognizable. The hair, the glasses, the t-shirts (probably borrowed
from Slash), Jim Martin is Jim Martin and there's no way anyone can
mistake Jim Martin for anyone other than Jim fucking Martin. He sat
down at our table. Right next to me. So I had Jim Martin on my right
and Henry Bogdan from Helmet on my left, grinding a spoon into the
table the way Henry Lee Lucas might puncture his mom's head with a
steak knife. I felt very afraid. Interestingly as Jim sat down, his band
mate Mike Bordin, who had been totally dominating the table
conversation, suddenly fell silent and looked away, refusing to
acknowledge Jim's presence. Jim muttered something about shrimp as
a hush fell over the table. No one wanted to stare but we couldn't
help it. Suddenly Jim got up to leave, stating that he thought the band
everyone had just been laughing at, an Australian band called Flash in
the Pan, had actually made some good records that we shouldn't be
laughing at. He had left as soon as he came. Jim Martin, the lonesome
guitar cowboy. Peter of Helmet mercifully called for the check and the
evening was complete. It was later hypothesized that the reason Jim
didn't stay was because another member of FNM was sitting at the
table.

At about 2:30 am no Sunday morning I returned home, my weekend

encounter with FNM complete. Two hours later, I suddenly awoke and
found myself laying askew on the floor with my college roommate
screaming that I, now being quite bewildered, had attacked him in my
sleep. Was this just another incident of quarreling college students?
Perhaps, but our little scuffle represented a lot more. No matter what
FNM do, there's always going to be some metal jerk from Long Island
with a guido haircut who is getting mighty pissed off because the
band hasn't played "Epic" yet. So what can FNM do? (And what should
I have done about my roommate situation?) Do they roll down their
sleeves, let out a rebel yell, and start kicking some royal ass like
Sebastian Bach? No, they don't. I think the appropriate response is
what Mike Patton sings from "Land of Sunshine": "Ha ha haha
hahahah ahaha." Simply put, FNM are either laughing with you or
laughing at you, and that's what makes them the best rock band on
the planet right now.

FAITH NO MORE | METAL HAMMER | DECEMBER

1992
Metal hammer
December 1992

Understanding FAITH NO MORE can be a weeny bit difficult. The band

haven't figured themselves out yet, but STOKO reckoned a trip to see
them in America might just help! Of course, he lied; DENIS O'REGAN
snaps to it!

In a world of crippling injustices where criminals become politicians,

where politicians become criminals and where everyday people are
born with ginger hair, bands: with more than a modicum of originality:
are often unjustly overlooked. After five years of being in the public
eye, but not necessarily successful, it seems the time is nearly right
for the world to accept Faith No More, and vice versa.
They once claimed they cared a lot. So did Sting and..Bono, and
you're telling me they don't deserve a good kicking. Today is
Columbus day in mid-presidential election frolics in small-town
America. An ideal place to find out how in tune Faith No More are
with the people.
"Well as far as the election thing goes at the moment this is a pretty
good position to be in. Travelling around America, seeing all the
aspects. Unfortunately only forty per cent of people over here actually
vote and that's the result of absolute apathy."
The speaker in the house is Roddy Bottum, Keyboard player with
those caring bundles of love and understanding, Faith No More.
Yes, he cares a lot. Hey! Great guy! He cares about the kids! What do
you mean, you thought this was a music magazine and you care not a
tattle for someone's political perceptions? I am, you cloth-eared
baboons, attempting to make a point: Faith No More are no normal
band. There's a definite vibe in their music that screams 'not right'
and it's pretty obvious that this comes from a bunch of people with
something different to offers, and they know it. They're blitherers with
attitude. Disagree with Faith No More and they won't argue, they'll
just state their viewpoint - then shut up, regardless of compromise or
your own opinion. That is the vibe that makes their latest album
'Angel Dust' so damned uncomfortable.
"When we started years ago we never really fitted in." Bill Gould is as
friendly and forthcoming as the rest of the band. "We got our sound
through everyone hating us. We were too slow to be a punk band and
a bit too weird for all the Metalheads. The more people disliked us ,
the more we carried on that way," he laughs.

"I like it more and more," claims Roddy Bottum of their new album
'Angel Dust'. "It's always flattering that less and less people are into
it. It's gonna happen that way."
Are you deliberately a bunch of bastards or simply artistic
antagonists?
"I like to challenge people. I don't want to threaten anyone... just
challenge them musically and mentally."
Faith No More strike me as the sort of band which demands a result
and after five minutes of play, they're two-nil up.
Are you patriotic?
"No. I'm not ashamed of being American, but personal viewpoint has
to come from the politics that surround you."
At present we're surrounded by a set from 'The Waltons' framed by an
ugly hotel window.
"Look out there," says Billy, opening the curtains. "This is a typical
American town. You've got the big cities with the drugs and the
violence, but most of America's really laid-back. Completely stoned is
closer to the truth. In towns like this, fewer people carry guns. You
just get all the inbreeds getting drunk fighting with each other.
Pennsylvania is the world capital of Satanism. Honestly, I went to the
satanic souvenir shop this morning and bought Alesteir Crowley's
actual cocaine knife, made out of human bone. I beat Jimmy Page is
pissed-off man..."
And this is how Faith No More work. They absorb their surroundings,
have o bit of a giggle at the most ridiculous aspect of what they
experience, then spew out a musical conglomeration. That is (maybe)
how 'Angel Dust' got its rather unique sound, it is aurally challenging
in its uncommercialism.

"I don't necessarily want to challenge people, I just want to fuck their
heads up," , claims that bearded clam, Jim Martin, over a beer or two.
"I want to make our music more brutal, the album's too soft, I'm not
that happy with it. It ends up turning out the way it does because
everybody's so stubborn that it all gets thrown together. It's OK. I
quite like, what's that one we call 'F Sharp'?"
"Kindergarten," adds Mike Patton.

"Yeah, I like that one. But the next album's gonna have bigger balls.'"
Puffy Bordin is more objective and a little less tongue-in-cheek. "Billy,
Roddy and myself wrote most of the songs which are more melodic.
There's better separation in there, the parts are written so naturally
that they hang together and don't step on each other's toes. A lot of
times in the past our music has sounded really muddy, especially
'Introduce Yourself', because we hadn't really figured out how to write
all the structures together so that the keyboards wouldn't cancel out
the guitar and the drums wouldn't overpower the vocals. For a band
like us, that's not as easy as it might-seem, but we're definitely
learning!"
The main progression has been by made by Mike Patton.
"Yeah, that's basically the most different thing. The last record had a
guy singing a bit nasally and wasn't all that uniquely identifiable, and
now, that someone has totally grown up and become a force.'
I thought he was just doing his best to be in the Chili Peppers.
"Ha! Tell him that, please do!" laughs Billy.
I tell him. He laughs sheepishly like a schoolboy caught copying his
homework. (Latest score 2-1).
"When I joined the band there was no big deal, I'd been in bands
before," he says changing the subject with the stealth of a
drunken three-toed sloth. "I never wanted to do this when I was a kid.
I always thought Rock Stars were losers because they drank and took
drugs." (I spied no use of drugs unfortunately).
"I wanted to be an athlete, a basketball player or whatever because
my dad's a coach and I grew up with all that."

The man, is certainly an unconventional frontman.

"What I do on stage is like having a big shit, getting it all out of your
system, all the shit that's built up inside you all day long. It's like
this place, look at it, there's fucking nothing to do except sit on this
tour bus and wait for the next show. All that boredom builds up
inside and when I get on-stage tonight, it'll all come out. I suppose the
whole band's performance depends on the situation we're
in at the time."
But here you are, a blimey big Pop Star; on stage, on telly and on the
Rock'n'Roll charabang. The interview was peppered with interruptions
as fans (most notably female) pester Mike, often ignoring the other
band members. He is 'MTV-friendly' as Billy
puts it and '...a fucking gorgeous bottle of sauce with a crap beard' as
my housemate puts it.
"All that's just an embarrassment, it's only because I'm the singer."
Mike is genuinely humble and friendly. (A fan approaches and
introduces herself. Mike shakes her hand and introduces himself as if
she didn't know him from Adam).
"I think that sort of adulation is better left to bands like Guns N'
Roses."
Do you see yourself as similar to Axl? You both do the same job.
"Well, we're both going bald....oops! Sorry Axl! I don't know. I don't
see myself as being the same as that guy really."
"I love it when kids come up to you. Not as an ego thing, I Just love
talking to kids," adds Billy.
"I don't think it's blind adulation," drones Jim in his 'am-I-taking-the-
piss-or-not' accent.
"It's because we're here in this town, they meet us and get an
autograph. Big deal, in two weeks time it'll be someone else playing
here and someone else's autograph they're getting. It's not as if
they're going round thinking 'Jim Martin is God'.
Unfortunately."

Jim finds solace in another beer and my ear. I accuse Faith No More of
indirectly setting my balls rolling. Back in 1988 Rock music was only
just getting used to Guns N'Roses, let alone crossing over styles and
images.
The release of 'We Care A lot' saw the band thrust firmly into the
public eye. Even if if didn't open any doors, if at least made
people realise that those doors existed.

"I don't know," says Billy swaying to avoid my clumsy arse-kissing.

"Like I said, we got our sound in the face of adversity. There's
been a lot of progression with bands like us, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana
and all that Seattle shit, but it doesn't mean that much.
Look at Seattle now. There are all these bands being signed up that
are so false, so there's no difference really."
"What people tend to forget," adds Puffy, " is that bands sound like
this, bands sound like that, bands come from Seattle, there are
industrial bands and that's great man. Diversity is beautiful but it's
not for us to be like something else or cut out bits of ourselves."
Puffy Bordin has just scored a hat-trick in the dying minutes by
putting the Faith No More 'attitude' in a nutshell. The band is a
musical
presentation of their exceptionally likeable personalities, and that's
why all the bands at present mimicking 'The Real Thing' will have
trouble scraping together an 'Angel Dust'.
The Faith No More attitude strikes me as being less 'fuck you, I'm a
rebel', more 'fuck you!'... full stop.
Buy the album and you'll see what I mean.
Final score? About 16-2 to the home team. .. a great result

FAITH NO MORE | 19.12.1992 | KERRANG!

Record collections - we've all got one, and be it big or small, cool or
embarrassing, the damn thing can tell you a whole lot about its owner. TALKIN'
'BOUT REVOLUTIONS features 15 questions that fearlessly probe Metal stars
on the records that run their lives! To lead us into the unknown, FAITH NO
MORE's very big, very sick and very ugly JIM MARTIN reveals his... inner
psyche to STEFFAN CHIRAZI!

Kerrang! | Issue 423 | 19.12.1992 | Steffan

Chirazi
Talkin' 'Bout Revolutions
Which record sleeve in your collection would you be ashamed of showing
your mum?

"I'm not ashamed of showing my Mum any of my record sleeves. As a matter of

fact, she goes and looks at them on her own, anyway!
"There's not a thing I can do about it; I'm far beyond the point of
embarrassment. She's seen it all a long time ago: she leaves my porno mags
pretty much where they are and just looks around."

You wake up stinking hangover. What record do you put on to revive

yourself?

"I put on the sound-effects record of the coffee machine and the flushing toilet.
That way, it makes me think, as I'm lying in bed, that I'm up and about already
and have had my morning Juice.
"I'm still waiting for the people who make these records to send along cans of
smells to go with 'em, so as I can spray the coffee and toilet smells around my
room and really think I'm doin' it for REAL!"

Have you ever shoplifted a record? If so, which one?

"I've never shop-lifted a record. However, l've stolen records from my friends
under the pretence of borrowing them, and just never returned them.
"One of the many was Lou Reed's 'Rock'N'Roll Animal' from my friend Lance,
and his name was written on it in thick black pen, so I had to keep it hidden so
as he'd never find it. I've had his record for 15 years."

What record would you like played at your funeral?

"I'd like a recording of the sounds of nature played at my funeral, so as even if
it's not such nice weather outside, everybody can figure that they're outside
having a good time, which is better than a dreary funeral parlour."

What record is the most embarrassing in your collection?

"I can't say I'm embarrassed by any of my records. However, the one that's
played the least not for fear of shame, but for fear of violent consequences - is
Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music'. There's no music on it and it's pretty much
just a double-album of static. You can start it anywhere and it sounds the same.
"A few times, at gatherings in my home, I've put it on in the background as an
experiment, and things got ugly and went horribly wrong.
Arguments, bickering..."

Which record from your childhood always seemed to be on the radio - a

record you couldn't stand?

"I have to say it was The Beatles' 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'. Those weirdo
long-haired guys! Ugh! I couldn't stand it and it was always on the radio.
They're partially responsible for me hating the radio."

What record would you out on the seduce someone to?

"There's two. One would be (US comedian) Andrew Dice Clay. The other would
be 'Bedtime Stories Volume Three', which consists of women talking about
having sex. Supposedly, they're talking about it while they're having it. I know
it's a lie, though. I know it's a lie because nobody actually says these things
whole when they're doing it - 'Oh yeah, man, let me put my fattie in my... tickle
my tonsils with your lovelog.."

Which lyric do you wish you'd written?

"Is there a lyric 'I Hate You'?"

Which record's thanks list would be most honoured to appear on?

"I'd like to be on the nature sounds compilation, or the coffee and toilet sounds
record!"

What are the first and last records you bought?

"The first was Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid', and the last, Robin Trower's 'Bridge
Of Sighs'."

What the first record you played air guitar to?

"F**k you! A great band who don't even need any songs, yet everybody's
talking about 'em!..."
What's the most heavy metal album you've ever heard?

"Yippee! Heavy Meddle! Well, it has to be 'Iron Man' for real, but these days
there's so many 'Heavy Meddle' albums, it f**kin hurts!
"Of course, if one can count Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' as 'a song',
which I believe you can as it never officially starts or ends, as I earlier pointed
out, then that is true Heavy Metal indeed!"

Which song would mend your broken heart?

"I guess it would have to be a Hank Williams song, 'Your Cold Cold Heart'."

Which person would you lost like to possess an albums of yours?

"I'd like the next door neighbour's wife to have my record in her collection, as
then I would stand a much better chance of getting into her knickers."

It's late at night, rain is pouring down and your roof has a leak. Which of
these album sleeves would you use to plug the hole till morning.
i) 'Physical Graffiti'
ii) 'Paranoid'
iii) 'Appetite For Destruction'
iv) 'Number Of The Beast'

"Well, I couldn't stuff the hole with numbers three or four, because I don't have
'em, so I suppose I'd have no choice but to stuff it with the 'Physical Graffiti'
album sleeve. "However, if there was a pan available in the pantry, I would get
it and put it under the leak instead of destroying a record that I have a lot of
respect for... not that I really give a f**k about the album sleeve, though!"
1993

Faith No More | NME - January 3rd 1993

Should MIKE PATTON cut the crap? Does RODDY BOTTUM need to
come out of the closet? Does BIG JIM MARTIN treat women like dirt?
And are FAITH NO MORE a mess of insecurities, attitudes and
extravagant contrasts congealing into a thrilling whole... or just
another rock band? Not an 'Easy' question to answer, reckons GINA
MORRIS, as she spends a week in France with America's premier
scatological strew-ups and wonders why such a nice boy like Mike
Patton feels the need to swig his own piss and shit in a hair dryer.
NME | 03.01.1993 | Gina Morris
Faecal Attraction

Mike Patton is urinating. Not into a urinal, not on the street and not
in private. Mike Patton is pissing onstage - in front of thousands
of people - into his shoe. Then, with a coy smile, he lifts the brimming
vessel to his lips, opens his mouth and drinks the boot dry.
Less than two weeks later, in the small village of Besancon, France.
Patton is casually making coffee on stage. Freshly percolated cups of
coffee for his sweat-sodden, dehydrated crowd. Faith No More are all
about extremes. Severe extremes. Faith No More - an archetypal rock
band? - release an opulent new single and it's a straight-faced,
straight-up cover of The Commodores' 'Easy', so beautifully
unscathed that it stupefies the majority of the audience every time they
play it.
FNM are a twisted fairy tale with no real plot and no conclusion, just a
dense subtext of symbolism and a multitude of characters. No-one has
ever managed to disentangle them, to go beyond their reputations, to
de-mystify them. It's a daunting task. FNM thrive on tortuous perplexity,
to the degree that it has become both their drug and the only unifying
factor in the band. It's a bind so tight, it hurts - hurts itself.
And it's ugly. The rock pigs, the perpetrators of myths, the groupie-
shaggers, the dumb fuckers, the lads. It's all there if you want to see it.
The band themselves have surpassed all hope of ever being truthfully
represented. Now they're just enjoying the ride. They've perfected the
art of confusion.

So Patton will continue to be the jerk who grew up into a wanker, Jim
Martin will continue 'abusing' women, and nobody will ever even think
about asking keyboardist Roddy Bottum what it's like to be a gay man
in a rock band. Right?
"To me," he says calmly, "throughout our career, the
representation of the band and the way I've been portrayed
everything has been so homosexual every we've ever done.
I've portrayed some absolute blatant, stereotyped
homosexual. I've been the boy in bondage, the sado-
masochistic cop, the homo-cowboy. I mean. I've been so
blatant about it - it just blows me away that people don't pick
up on something like that. Y'know. what am I supposed to do?
Hit people over the head with this? That hurts, right? It hurts
your head and it's an insult to people's intelligence."

Roddy and I are having lunch in a hotel restaurant in Paris. The idea is
to interview each member of the band separately, because, as Patton
later confirms: "We wouldn't communicate. It would be a lot of
misfiring, uncomfortable jokes and a lot of sarcasm." He's dead
right When they're all Together, they whine on in nonsensical gibberish
which makes it impossible to glimpse anything like a stereotype.
So I've stolen Roddy and he's stealing a forkful of my creamed potato
and, in his soft, laid-back, winsome American drawl, continues to talk
about his sexuality for the first time into a tape recorder.

"If I'd ever been asked about this before, l'm sure I would
have been completely open about it. I mean, I cannot be
embarrassed about this. I told the others I was gonna talk
about this as soon as I knew you were gonna ask me about it.
I told them I was going to be upfront and they said, 'OK. do
what you gotta do'."

So do you think the reason it's been ignored is because homosexuality

isn't supposed to have a place in 'rock' music? "Maybe. The thing is.
rock stereotypes are so ugly. Pop stereotypes are not so bad
but rock ones are hideous. It's like the Queen thing - I don't
know how old I was when I started listening to Queen, but
even back then it was so apparent to me. There's these four
guys playing in a band calling themselves Queen and singing
opera music, pretty much, and then people have the
audacity, years later, to say Freddie Mercury never came out
of the closet.
"Y'know, it's like, get with it. I think it's a symbolic thing,
people are not picking up on those symbols, I don't think
that's so wrong either. I think people can get away with
seeing a movie that's chock full of intense symbolism and
deal with it on a strict pleasure level. It's just a different level.
"I mean, if people don't pick up on the band's subtleties or the
band's jokes or whatever we put across and they're enjoying
it for other reasons, then I'm not sure if that's wrong. In an
ideal world I'd love to think people understood what we're
doing, but it's not going to be like that. I'm flattered that
people like it on a gut level."

Are you aware of the power you have being a gay person in a rock
band, particularly when you consider the genre's ignorant and archaic
values?
"I guess so, but there's a certain disgust in me about wearing
my heart on my sleeve and being as blatant as that. I think
it's an insult to peoples intelligence. I absolutely understand
and sympathise with the gay community against backwards
views on homosexuality in this day and age, but in Los
Angeles, where I come from, it's so liberal, open-minded and
experimental. I forget what an island it is and how spoilt we
are. I guess I just take it for granted. "

You were pretty blatant when you wrote the lyrics to 'Be Aggressive'.
"Ejaculation. Tribulation. I SWALLOW. I SWALLOW."
"Yeah! I mean, HELLO, WAKE UP! When we wrote that song
we were all very aware of the lyrics, we had it all in check and
then the issue has never come up. It's so funny, no-one ever
even asked us about it. It's the same thing, we just expect a
lot more from people."

Roddy Bottum is charming and sincere but, like the rest of the band,
he'll occasionally seize the opportunity to wind up a susceptible victim -
and this causes problems. Maybe some people don't get the message,
because FNM tend to respond to people like a mirror image, reflecting
dubious personality traits and firing them back. It's a way of dealing
with the adulation bestowed upon them.
"I just have to be as down-to-earth as possible," admits Roddy,
"I sometimes catch myself being so absolutely stupid to these
people, just to get the point across that I am nothing you are
everything. OK? Realise that."
Is it tricky keeping your feet on the ground? "Well, that's one of the
good things about the band, we all have strong sensibilities,
probably because we re all so fucking sarcastic. We're pretty
hard on ourselves and I guess everyone has that in check."

Faith No More are not the egomaniacs they've often been made out to
be. There's a reason behind, for instance, much of Patton's
extreme behaviour. When he joined the band almost four years ago
he'd never been away from home. He was a geeky. non-smoking,
virgin teetotaller with appalling dress sense. A kid who did what he was
told, played basketball for his college team and looked forward to his
summer vacations.
Going straight from home comforts to road traumas, he's had to grow
up fast. This may not excuse puerile antics like shitting in a hotel hair
dryer but, then again, he hasn't turned into a pompous asshole like Axl
Rose. Patton means no harm really - unless it's to himself.
"We're a band that encourages extremes." laughs Roddy, "so
when anyone is doing things like that. I think: Well whatever
you wanna do, whatever you wanna try - no matter how
outlandish - just make yourself happy. Which is a healthy
environment. I'm very proud of the extremes that go on in our
band, I'm proud of the fact that Mike is like that. I'm proud
that he carries a doll around a voodoo doll called Toodles and
I'm proud that Mike Bordin would have us believe for two
years that one of his best friends was killed (it was a lie!).
That's such a bizarre thing, but extremes are what we're
about."
FNM also provoke a massive amount of misunderstanding. Earlier this
morning, the band were handed the letters page of a rock magazine
full of outraged letters in relation to a FNM feature, in which the
journalist had translated Mike's comments on a child porn video (that
he'd been given by a fan) as an endorsement of paedophilia.
"It's kinda our own fault," shrugs Roddy wearily. "We assume too
much. I mean, it's 1993 - don't you understand this? And the
bottom line is a lot of people don't, and that bugs me. It's like,
who do you cater your ideals to? Do you cater your ideals to a
lower mentality or a mentality like your own, y'know? The
worst thing is to have to simplify your values and act in a
different way just so simpler people can relate to you. You
can't do that, right? It's not optimistic, it's a backwards way of
thinking."

Mike Patton is slumped in a fake leather armchair backstage at the gig

in Lyon. In one hand he holds a Martin Amis book, in the other he
clutches a control console. Every few seconds a green light flickers
across it and he flinches slightly. He's wired up to electric shock pads...
switched to full power. This is Mike Patton's pre-gig relaxation period.
Bassist Billy Gould is in the dressing room, alone, playing a guitar. He
hears the door open, turns his head and smiles, "You wanna talk
now? OK."
Roddy and Billy have known each other for almost 20 years it was the
two of them that decided to form the band. As kids Bill and Roddy
would ride their bikes around the roughest, sleaziest parts of
Hollywood Boulevard, trying to look cool. Two nice middle-class kids
trying to live on the edge. Nothing much has changed now they just
have further to fall. Do you miss Chuck Mosley at all?
"No."
Chuck was FNM's old singer. In his days, the band were closely linked
to rap/thrash music. Then, he lost control, was replaced by Patton and
the band released the more mainstream 'The Real Thing' LP. Hell
immediately beckoned in the form of a Guns N' Roses support slot and
- hey! - suddenly they were Rock. They did, however, escape hell with
their souls intact.
"I hate rock music." Bill spits. "I've always hated it. Like Led
Zeppelin and stuff like that. I mean, my dad used to listen to
that shit. It's the least interesting thing in the world, the
excess and all that stuff, it's so boring. The world has gone
through its period of exploration in that area. A stadium gig is
fun to do once in a while, but that Guns N' Roses thing really
got me down because it's as rock as it gets. It's the mentality
I don't understand. I think it's disgusting. It's not natural, it's
all role-playing. complete bullshit and I hate it when our band
reflects things like that.
"I mean, we do whatever we want to do and 'The Real Thing'
was like an exercise in that. But we're still figuring ourselves
out. We don't really know who we are yet, we're still learning.
Hopefully, we're not burning too many bridges in the
process."

So how do you view the band? Is it like four of you against Jim Martin,
the real rock element?
"It gets more and more like that. I can see it more and more
every month. I don't know how long you can keep going on
like this, really. It's kinda ridiculous, it's like, what's the point,
y'know? Actually, for all the shit I give Jim - and he deserves it
- he's only doing his job."

As if on cue, Jim enters the room. Billy smiles at him. It's a healthy
animosity he has towards him, like when a friend tells you that you've
got bad breath. Jim exits. Is Bill happy with Mike fronting the band?
"Yeah. I think he's doing great. When he joined, he was living
with his parents, he was 21 and had never been in a bar
before. He didn't even like the taste of alcohol so, in three
years or so, he's come a hell of a long way. I remember we
were about to go on tour and he said: 'Look guys. I'd better
get my summer vacation this year or I'm going to be real
pissed off.' We were like. sorry but we're adults now, we work
all year round, this isn't high school. He's kinda eccentric, y
'know?"

Oedipus was the mythical Greek king who slayed his father and
screwed his mother. It's also Jim Martin's nickname. And he's sat
opposite me, chain-smoking, on the bottom deck of FNM's luxury
coach heading towards Besancon and another show. Patton calls him
a timepiece, a representation of an era, a broken record. Big Jim
Martin, visually at least, is rock personified. He's the one the rock mags
turn to. He's the living proof... and he's living at home - with his mother.
"We have a whole house to ourselves," he explains. "She lives
at one end and I live at the other. We pretty much do as we
please, we eat dinner together, she comes home and fixes it."
Don't you ever cook for her? "No, she cooks better than I do."
Jim has the worst rock'n'roll reputation of them all. Does he
consciously perpetuate it?
"To a degree. If someone wants to exaggerate it, I don't tell
them not to... Anyway, what is my reputation?"
Y'know, chicks and pool. "Well. I do like those things."
Big Jim Martin, the band feel, is more naive than malicious. He
became close friends with L7 during their tour together and there's no
way they would let him get away with any sexist bullshit Patton
reckons:
"He has a sharpened point to his personality that nobody else
agrees with, but sometimes y'gotta eat shit and like it."

So has Jim really ever taken advantage of women? "Certainly not.

To take advantage would be a discredit to the girls, it would
be like saying they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Y'know, we're all intellectual people and I would have to
assume the women knew what they were doing."
Have you ever felt that maybe they didn't? "Well. I always explain
carefully: I'm here this evening to play a concert and I'm
leaving tomorrow morning."
Does it bother you that these women may only be sleeping with you
because you're famous? "No, it's pretty much the case... though
of course it's not always the case. It's difficult to tell."
Would you prefer it if people wanted to sleep with you because you're
you? "Absolutely not. If I wanna sleep with them. I'll do my
best to get them in the sack. I mean, I haven't always been
famous. You better your chances, sure, but it isn't always
easy."

I found a present for Mike Bordin in a post office in Lyon. It's a stamp.
A stamp with one of Francis Bacon's self Portraits on it. He's ecstatic -
we're friends for life. But Puffy isn't a get-together kinda bloke. He's
amiable and affable just like the rest of them - he just goes to bed
earlier, that's all.
The band are about to go on stage. Bill is throwing up in the toilet. Jim
is completely engrossed in his Game Boy. Roddy is sprawled full out
on the floor with his eyes closed, Mike's strolling in and out of
the dressing room pointlessly and Puffy is thrashing his sticks against
a lump of silly putty stuck on to the edge of a table. How do five such
different people work together?
"Well, if you have people that are very different and very
strong, then it's definitely a strength and it can make it a
more interesting or more challenging brew," Puffy remarks
without dropping a single beat. "That's not to say it can't work
when everybody is the same, but we don't have that, so why
pretend?"

So how come people still assume you're a 'rock' band?

"Well, forget about the inverts. We play rock music, in our
way, that's the way it is. A lot of the others are uncomfortable
with the position of being a rock band. Like a night like
tonight will make some of them feel uncomfortable and guilty
in a way."
But you're happy with it? "l'm happy that we're playing our music
to a lot of people and we didn't have to suck a dick. If that's
all you wanted you could put together a band tomorrow - if
you were conniving enough — but to get there in the car that
you designed and built and
laboured over, that's the satisfaction."
Are you different when you're not with the rest of the band? "Oh sure,
definitely, by definition, I don't spit as much."

"OK, WHO SHAT IN THE ORANGE JUICE?"

It is hard to find the art in Mike Patton's antics. To appreciate the
beauty when the beast is shitting in your beverage.
"Oh god, oh Jesus, I'm sorry," he wails. "It wasn't meant for
you." Mike had been accused of "not fucking shit up" on the tour
by L7. So he, erm, did. Mike and I are slouching on the sofa in the
'techno section' of the tour bus, on our way back to the hotel for the
last time. It's 1 am, post-gig, and Patton's eating raw meat out of a
plastic container and indulging in his favourite drug - coffee. The
Cardiacs are blasting out of the speakers and Patton is highly amused
how similar they sound to his other band, Mr Bungle.

Mike has been avoiding my tape recorder for four days now. He
doesn't believe there's much point discussing anything other than his
various obsessions. He's become accustomed to being misunderstood
by the press.
"Writers paint pictures and they leave colours out, and what
can I do about that? I can get upset and smash the painting,
but that doesn't achieve anything. You gotta take it and you
can't take it too personally because it's impersonal. It's very
easy to get upset, but no-one feels better for it. Maybe if we
beat up all journalists, we'd be good guys. How'd we ever
become bad guys?"
He chuckles, with a mouthful of beef.
"There's just too many channels. I mean, we're doing an
interview here. how are we really supposed to communicate
any information to anyone? We re not talking to anyone,
we're not looking anyone in the eye, this is almost cowardly
really.
"I don't think any of us have any desire to explain ourselves
or be understood, it's no comfort, it doesn't make you sleep
better at night, it's not what we're in this for.
"The child pom thing? Well someone probably asked me
what's the weirdest thing you've seen or what's the
strangest thing a fan has given you, and that's indeed what it
was. It was such a shock that something like that was handed
to me by a little petite Japanese girl. But it's not about
understanding, there's too many avenues, y'know. the story
never gets told the same way twice."

At least when you do disgusting stuff, like drinking your own piss, you
generally only do it to yourself. "Yeah. Oh, I dunno. there's no
logic behind it. I don't know who I am or what I'm doing here,
that's what that is, it's the absence of logic. It's not something
that's too easy to rationalise."
.....Even if you wanted to.
"Sure. I don't know how I can make anyone feel any better.
We don't even know what the hell we're doing, we haven't
even figured out what it is we do. We don't even know how
we even relate to each other really, and maybe we'll learn,
maybe we'll become great salesmen someday, but now it just
doesn't compute. You should have to answer for what you do
- you may not be able to articulate it - it's not a playpen
where you get to do whatever you want and never take
responsibility."

Was it hard growing up in a band like this? "Yeah. I was a real

terrified kinda student, so I always did what I was told. I still
do." He smiles wryly, like we're supposed to believe him.
Mike loves winding people up. He's into shocking people with his
various obsessions his voodoo doll, his S&M fetish wear and his weird
books. If there's a target - he'll hit the bullseye.
"Some people are easy targets and some people ask for it, so
if you have a particular interest and you want to use it against
someone then... here's a funny example. Jesus, God. See now,
I'll talk about this and it's similar to the child porn story,
basically it's like bad shit and I have it... oh f— it! I'm not
gonna talk about it, it's too stupid. There's no morality in
anything, y'know? What matters? That*s what I want to know
- what matters? Does our personal life have anything to do
with our music, however much seeps in? I mean, I don't even
know, so how can I tell you?"
Mike looks slightly flustered, even nervous. I've spent nine days in total
with Faith No More, both in Britain and Europe, and he still doesn't
trust me? "I do trust you. that's why I'm telling you this much.
Okay, basically I think defensiveness or humiliation is a
motivating factor in the way we behave, in the way we make
music, in the way we relate to each other.
Sometimes I think the way we manoeuvre is in a defensive
way, rather than an offensive way. So all these people are
saying, 'You're so offensive and you're trying to shock people
to make a point and use it as a weapon, and it's not. It's not a
step forwards, it's a diversion. We
have no harmful intent."
Mike looks down into his dinner. "It's really not even worth talking
about.
"It's just. when I'm on stage sometimes the mouth opens and,
y'know. diarrhoea flows out. Anything I can do not to think on
stage, I will do. Why? Because I don't think it belongs there.
I've said some really bad things and gotten us into some
really awkward situations and there are responsibilities."
So you do care about Faith No More? "Yeah, I'm learning to. I
didn't for a long time. I thought, what a horrible situation, it's
candy coated, take it with a smile - for what it is - you can't
take your time card and punch it out at the end of the day.
You can't. I tried it and you can't."
The bus pulls up outside the hotel and the rest of the band file into
reception. Patton doesn't move. "No matter what you do." he says
sternly. "You can't win." You can go now. "Arrh!" he cries. "The
sense of finality!"

Early 1993

Heavy Metal Magazine Early 1993

Here follows an excerpt of an interview with Dino Cazares of Fear
Factory in a Swedish magazine called "Heavy Mental". The interview
is made spring '93. Dino is asked to comment on different songs
presented to him by the interviewer.

Faith No More, "I'm Easy"

Mike (Patton) has a really great voice, but he's a pussy! In many ways
he's a wimp. The first time I met him he was 20 years old. Me, Mike
and Jim (Martin) went to the trendy rock-club The Cathouse in LA. It
was late at night and we were about to drive home when a couple of
girls came up to us and asked for a certain street. "Okay, follow us",
we said and they followed us in their car. Jim thought "let's drive into
an alley and scare them".

The girls got suspicious and turned towards the highway. We followed
them and scared them by driving into their car from behind. Suddenly
they jumped out of the car and ran away. Or so we thought, but they
ran straight to the police, claiming that we were going to rape them! I
told Jim to drive into this big garage, but he turned right into a dead
end street. The cops came and arrested us.

When they asked what had happened both me and Jim said "nothing".
When Mike got the same question he started "we met a couple of
girls..we did this and that...we were going to do so and so with them",
Jim and I went right behind bars. I was released a few hours later
while Jim had to stay a little longer for drinking and driving. After this
event I refused to talk to Mike, I asked Mike Pussy to go to hell. He's
okay now, though.

Mike has become a weird dude after seeing a lot of bizarre porno-
movies. When they were touring - in Paris I think - he took off his boot
on stage, pissed in it and drank the piss! Another time he did a similar
stunt on stage - poured urine all over himself, and another time Mike
shat in a bag and threw it to the audience!

FAITH NO MORE | 23.01.1993 | NME

FAECAL ATTRACTION | NME | 03.01.1993 | Gina
Morris

Should MIKE PATTON cut the crap? Does RODDY BOTTUM need to come out of the
closet? Does BIG JIM MARTIN treat women like dirt? And are FAITH NO MORE a
mess of insecurities, attitudes and extravagant contrasts congealing into a thrilling
whole... or just another rock band? Not an 'Easy' question to answer, reckons GINA
MORRIS, as she spends a week in France with America's premier scatological strew-
ups and wonders why such a nice boy like Mike Patton feels the need to swig his own
piss and shit in a hair dryer.

Mike Patton is urinating. Not into a urinal, not on the street and not in private. Mike
Patton is pissing onstage - in front of thousands of people - into his shoe. Then, with a
coy smile, he lifts the brimming vessel to his lips, opens his mouth and drinks the boot
dry.

Less than two weeks later, in the small village of Besancon, France. Patton is casually
making coffee on stage. Freshly percolated cups of coffee for his sweat-sodden,
dehydrated crowd. Faith No More are all about extremes. Severe extremes. Faith No
More - an archetypal rock band? - release an opulent new single and it s a straight-
faced, straight-up cover of The Commodores' 'Easy', so beautifully unscathed that it
stupefies the majority of the audience every time they play it.
FNM are a twisted fairy tale with no real plot and no conclusion, just a dense subtext of
symbolism and a multitude of characters. No-one has ever managed to disentangle
them, to go beyond their reputations, to de-mystify them. It's a daunting task. FNM
thrive on tortuous perplexity, to the degree that it has become both their drug and the
only unifying factor in the band. It's a bind so tight, it hurts -hurts itself.
And it's ugly. The rock pigs, the perpetrators of myths, the groupie- shaggers, the dumb
f—ers, the lads. It's all there if you want to see it. The band themselves have
surpassed all hope of ever being truthfully represented. Now they're just enjoying the
ride. They've perfected the art of confusion.

So Patton will continue to be the jerk who grew up into a wanker, Jim Martin will
continue 'abusing' women, and nobody will ever even think about asking keyboardist
Roddy Bottum what it's like to be a gay man in a rock band. Right?
"To me," he says calmly, "throughout our career, the representation of the band and
the way I've been portrayed everything has been so homosexual every we've ever
done. I've portrayed some absolute blatant, stereotyped homosexual. I've been the boy
in bondage, the sado masochistic cop, the homo-cowboy. I mean. I've been so blatant
about it - it just blows me away that people don't pick up on something like that.
Y'know. what am I supposed to
do? Hit people over the head with this? That hurts, right? It hurts your head and it's an
insult to people's intelligence."
Roddy and I are having lunch in a hotel restaurant in Paris. The idea is to interview
each member of the band separately, because, as Patton later confirms: "We wouldn't
communicate. It would be a lot of misfiring, uncomfortable jokes and a lot of sarcasm."
He's dead right When they're all Together, they whine on in nonsensical gibberish
which makes it impossible to glimpse anything like a stereotype.
So I've stolen Roddy and he's stealing a forkful of my creamed potato and, in his soft,
laid-back, winsome American drawl, continues to talk about his sexuality for the first
time into a tape recorder.
"If I'd ever been asked about this before, lm sure I would have been completely open
about it. I mean, I cannot be embarrassed about this. I told the others I was gonna talk
about this as soon as I knew you were gonna ask me about it. I told them I was going
to be upfront and they said, 'OK. do what you gotta do'."
So do you think the reason it's been ignored is because homosexuality isn't supposed
to have a place in 'rock' music? "Maybe. The thing is. rock stereotypes are so ugly. Pop
stereotypes are not so bad but rock ones are hideous. It's like the Queen thing - I don t
know how old I was when I started listening to Queen, but even back then it was so
apparent to me. There's these four guys playing in a band calling themselves Queen
and singing opera music, pretty much, and then people have the audacity, years later,
to say Freddie Mercury never came out of the closet.
"Y'know, it's like, get with it. I think it's a symbolic thing, people are not picking up on
those symbols, I don't think that's so wrong either. I think people can get away with
seeing a movie that's chock full of intense symbolism and deal with it on a strict
pleasure level. It's just a different level.
"I mean, if people don't pick up on the band's subtleties or the band's jokes or whatever
we put across and they're enjoying it for other reasons, then I'm not sure if-that's
wrong. In an ideal world I'd love to think people understood what we're doing, but it's
not going to be like that. I'm flattered that people tike it on a gut level."
Are you aware of the power you have being a gay person in a rock band, particularly
when you consider the genre's ignorant and archaic values?
"I guess so, but there's a certain disgust in me about wearing my heart on my sleeve
and being as blatant as that. I think it's an insult to peoples intelligence. I absolutely
understand and sympathise with the gay community against backwards views on
homosexuality in this day and age, but in Los Angeles, where I come from, it's so
liberal, openminded and experimental I forget what an island it is and how spoilt we
are. I guess I just take it for granted. "
You were pretty blatant when you wrote the lyrics to 'Be Aggressive. Ejaculation.
Tribulation. I SWALLOW. I SWALLOW."
"Yeah! I mean, HELLO, WAKE UP! When we wrote that song we were all very aware
of the lyrics, we had it all in check and then the issue has never come up. It's so funny,
no-one ever even asked us about it. It's the same thing, we just expect a lot more from
people."
Roddy Bottum is charming and sincere but, like the rest of the band, he'll occasionally
seize the opportunity to wind up a susceptible victim - and this causes problems.
Maybe some people don't get the message, because FNM tend to respond to people
like a mirror image, reflecting dubious personality traits and firing them back. It's a way
of dealing with the adulation bestowed upon them.
"I just have to be as down-to-earth as possible, admits Roddy, "I sometimes catch
myself being so absolutely stupid to these people, just to get the point across that I am
nothing you are everything. OK? Realise that."
Is it tricky keeping your feet on the ground? "Well, that's one of the good things about
the band, we all have strong sensibilities, probably because we re all so f—king
sarcastic. We're pretty hard on ourselves and I guess everyone has that in check."

FAITH NO More are not the egomaniacs they've often been made out to be. There's a
reason behind, for instance. much of Patton's extreme behaviour .When he joined the
band almost four years ago he'd never been away from home. He was a geeky. non-
smoking, Virgin teetotaller with appalling dress sense. A kid who did what he was told,
played basketball for his college team and looked forward to his summer vacations.
Going straight from home comforts to road traumas, he's had to grow up fast. This may
not excuse puerile antics like shitting in a hotel hair dryer but, then again, he hasn't
turned into a pompous asshole like Axl Rose. Patton means no harm really - unless it's
to himself.
"We're a band that encourages extremes." laughs Roddy, "so when anyone is doing
things like that. I think: Well whatever you wanna do, whatever you wanna try - no
matter how outlandish - just make yourself happy. Which is a healthy environment. I'm
very proud of the extremes that go on in our band, I'm proud of the fact that Mike is like
that. I'm proud that he carries a doll around a voodoo doll called Toodles and I'm proud
that Mike Bordin would have us believe for two years that one of his best friends was
killed (it was a lie!). That's such a bizarre thing, but extremes are what we're about."
FNM also provoke a massive amount of misunderstanding. Earlier this morning, the
band were handed the letters page of a rock magazine full of outraged letters in
relation to a FNM feature, in which the journalist had translated Mike's comments on a
child porn video (that he'd been given by a fan) as an endorsement of paedophilia.
"It's kinda our own fault," shrugs Roddy wearily. "We assume too much. I mean, it's
1993 - don't you understand this? And the bottom line is a lot of people don't, and that
bugs me. It's like, who do you cater your ideals to? Do you cater your ideals to a lower
mentality or a mentality like your own, y'know? The worst thing is to have to simplify
your values and act in a different way just so simpler people can relate to you. You
can't do that, right? It's not optimistic, it's a backwards way of thinking."

MIKE PATTON is slumped in a fake leather armchair backstage at the gig in Lyon. In
one hand he holds a Martin Amis book, in the other he clutches a control console.
Every few seconds a green light flickers across it and he flinches slightly. He's wired up
to electric shock
pads... switched to full power. This is Mike Patton's pre-gig relaxation period.
Bassist Billy Gould is in the dressing room, alone, playing a guitar. He hears the door
open, turns his head and smiles, "You wanna talk now? OK."
Roddy and Billy have known each other for almost 20 years it was the two of them that
decided to form the band. As kids Bill and Roddy would ride their bikes around the
roughest, sleaziest parts of Hollywood Boulevard, trying to look cool. Two nice middle-
class kids
trying to live on the edge. Nothing much has changed now they just have further to fall.
Do you miss Chuck Mosley at all?
"No."
Chuck was FNM's old singer. In his days, the band were closely linked to rap/thrash
music. Then, he lost control, was replaced by Patton and the band released the more
mainstream 'The Real Thing' LP. Hell immediately beckoned in the form of a Guns N'
Roses support slot and - hey! - suddenly they were Rock. They did, however, escape
hell with their souls intact.
"I hate rock music. Bill spits. "I've always hated it. Like Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. I
mean, my dad used to listen to that shit. It's the least interesting thing in the world, the
excess and all that stuff, it's so boring. The world has gone through its period of
exploration in that area. A stadium gig is fun to do once in a while, but that Guns N'
Roses thing really got me down because it's as rock as it gets. It's the mentality I don't
understand. I think it's disgusting. It's not natural, it's all role-playing. complete bullshit
and I hate it when our band reflects things like that.
"I mean. we do whatever we want to do and 'The Real Thing' was like an exercise in
that. But we're still figuring ourselves out. We don't really know who we are yet, we're
still learning. Hopefully, we're not burning too many bridges in the process."
So how do you view the band? Is it like four of you against Jim Martin, the real rock
element?
"It gets more and more like that. I can see it more and more every month. I don't know
how long you can keep going on like this, really. It's kinda ridiculous, it's like, what's the
point, y'know? Actually, for all the shit I give Jim - and he deserves it he's only doing his
job. As if on cue, Jim enters the room. Billy smiles at him. It's a Healthy animosity he
has towards him, like when a friend tells you that you've got bad
breath. Jim exits. Is Bill happy with Mike fronting the band?
"Yeah. I think he's doing great. When he joined, he was living with his parents, he was
21 and had never been in a bar before. He didn't even like the taste of alcohol so, in
three years or so, he's come a hell of a long way. I remember we were about to go on
tour and he said: 'Look guys. I'd better get my summer vacation this year or I'm going
to be real pissed off.' We were like. sorry but we're adults now, we work all year round,
this isn't high school. He's kinda eccentric, y 'know?"

OEDIPUS WAS the mythical Greek king who slayed his father and screwed his mother.
It's also Jim Martin's nickname. And he's sat opposite me, chain-smoking, on the
bottom deck of FNM's luxury coach heading towards Besancon and another show.
Patton calls him a timepiece, a representation of an era, a broken record. Big Jim
Martin, visually at least, is rock personified. He's the one the rock mags turn to. He's
the living proof... and he's living at home - with his mother.
"We have a whole house to ourselves," he explains. "She lives at one end and I live at
the other. We pretty much do as we please, we eat dinner together, she comes home
and fixes it."
Don't you ever cook for her? "No, she cooks better than I do."
Jim has the worst rock'n'roll reputation of them all. Does he consciously perpetuate it?
"To a degree. If someone wants to exaggerate it, I don't tell them not to... Anyway,
what is my reputation?"
Y'know, chicks and pool. "Well. I do like those things."
Big Jim Martin, the band feel, is more naive than malicious. He
became close friends with L7 during their tour together and there's no way they would
let him get away with any sexist bullshit Patton reckons:
"He has a sharpened point to his personality that nobody else agrees with, but
sometimes y'gotta eat shit and like it."
So has Jim really ever taken advantage of women? "Certainly not. To take advantage
would be a discredit to the girls, it would be like saying they don't know what the f—
they're doing. Y'know, we're all intellectual people and I would have to assume the
women knew what they were doing."
Have you ever felt that maybe they didn't? "Well. I always explain carefully: I'm here
this evening to play a concert and I'm leaving tomorrow morning."
Does it bother you that these women may only be sleeping with you because you're
famous? "No, it's pretty much the case... though of course it's not always the case. It's
difficult to tell."
Would you prefer it if people wanted to sleep with you because you're you? "Absolutely
not. If I wanna sleep with them. I'll do my best to get them in the sack. I mean, I haven't
always been famous. You better your chances, sure, but it isn't always easy."

I FOUND a present for Mike Bordin in a post office in Lyon. It's a stamp. A stamp with
one of Francis Bacon's self Portraits on it. He's ecstatic - we're friends for life. But Puffy
isn't a get-together kinda bloke. He's amiable and affable just like the rest of them - he
just goes
to bed earlier, that's all.
The band are about to go on stage. Bill is throwing up in the toilet. Jim is completely
engrossed in his Game Boy. Roddy is sprawled full out on the floor with his eyes
closed, Mike's strolling in and out of the dressing room pointlessly and Puffy is
thrashing his sticks against a lump of silly putty stuck on to the edge of a table. How do
five such different people work together?
"Well, if you have people that are very different and very strong, then it's definitely a
strength and it can make it a more interesting or more challenging brew," Puffy remarks
without dropping a single beat. "That's not to say it can't work when everybody is the
same, but we don't have that, so why pretend?"
So how come people still assume you're a 'rock' band?
"Well, forget about the inverts. We play rock music, in our way, that's the way it is. A lot
of the others are uncomfortable with the position of being a rock band. Like a night like
tonight will make some of them feel uncomfortable and guilty in a way."
But you're happy with it? "lm happy that we're playing our music to a lot of people and
we didn't have to suck a dick. If that's all you wanted you could put together a band
tomorrow - if you were conniving enough— but to get there in the car that you designed
and built and
laboured over, that's the satisfaction."
Are you different when you're not with the rest of the band? "Oh sure, definitely, by
definition, I don't spit as much."

"OK, WHO SHAT IN THE ORANGE JUICE?"

It is hard to find the art in Mike Patton's antics. To appreciate the beauty when the
beast is shitting in your beverage.
"Oh god, oh Jesus, I'm sorry,"he wails. "It wasn't meant for you." Mike had been
accused of "not f—ing shit up" on the tour by L7. So he, erm, did. Mike and I are
slouching on the sofa in the 'techno section' of the tour bus, on our way back to the
hotel for the last time. It's 1 am, post-gig, and Patton's eating raw meat out of a plastic
container and indulging in his favourite drug - coffee. The Cardiacs are blasting out of
the speakers and Patton is highly amused how similar they sound to his other band, Mr
Bungle.
Mike has been avoiding my tape recorder for four days now. He doesn't believe there's
much point discussing anything other than his various obsessions. He's become
accustomed to being misunderstood by the press.
"Writers paint pictures and they leave colours out, and what can I do about that? I can
get upset and smash the painting, but that doesn't achieve anything. You gotta take it
and you can't take it too personally because it's impersonal. It's very easy to get upset,
but no-one feels better for it. Maybe if we beat up all journalists, we'd be good guys.
How'd we ever become bad guys?" He chuckles, with a mouthful of beef. "There's just
too many channels. I mean, we're doing an interview here. how are we really supposed
to communicate any information to anyone? We re not talking to anyone, we're not
looking anyone in the eye, this is almost cowardly really. "I don't think any of us have
any desire to explain ourselves or be understood, it's no comfort, it doesn't make you
sleep better at night, it's not what we're in this for. "The child pom thing? Well someone
probably asked me what's the weirdest thing you've seen or what's the strangest thing
a fan has given you, and that's indeed what it was. It was such a shock that something
like that was handed to me by a little petite Japanese girl. But it's not about
understanding, there's too many avenues, y'know. the story never gets told the same
way twice."
At least when you do disgusting stuff, like drinking your own piss, you generally only do
it to yourself. "Yeah. Oh, I dunno. there's no logic behind it. I don't know who I am or
what I'm doing here, that's what that is, it's the absence of logic. It's not something
that's too easy to rationalise."
.....Even if you wanted to.
"Sure. I don't know how I can make anyone feel any better. We don't even know what
the hell we're doing, we haven't even figured out what it is we do. We don't even know
how we even relate to each other really, and maybe we'll learn, maybe we'll become
great salesmen someday, but now it just doesn't compute. You should have to answer
for what you do - you may not be able to articulate it - it's not a playpen where you get
to do whatever you want and never take responsibility."
Was it hard growing up in a band like this? "Yeah. I was a real terrified kinda student,
so I always did what I was told. I still do." He smiles wryly, like we're supposed to
believe him.
Mike loves winding people up. He's into shocking people with his various obsessions
his voodoo doll, his S&M fetish wear and his weird books. If there's a target - he'll hit
the bullseye. "Some people are easy targets and some people ask for it, so if you have
a particular interest and you want to use it against someone then... here's a funny
example. Jesus, God. See now, I'll talk about this and it's similar to the child porn story,
basically it's like bad shit and I have it... oh f— it! I'm not gonna talk about it, it's too
stupid. There's no morality in anything, y'know? What matters? That*s what I want to
know - what matters? Does our personal life have anything to do with our
music, however much seeps in? I mean, I don't even know, so how can I tell you?"
Mike looks slightly flustered, even nervous. I've spent nine days in total with Faith No
More, both in Britain and Europe, and he still doesn't trust me? "I do trust you. that's
why I'm telling you this much. Okay, basically I think defensiveness or humiliation is a
motivating factor in the way we behave, in the way we make music, in the way we
relate to each other.
Sometimes I think the way we manoeuvre is in a defensive way, rather than an
offensive way. So all these people are saying, 'You're so offensive and you're trying to
shock people to make a point and use it as a weapon, and it's not. It's not a step
forwards, it's a diversion. We
have no harmful intent."
Mike looks down into his dinner. "It's really not even worth talking about. "It's just. when
I'm on stage sometimes the mouth opens and, y'know. diarrhoea flows out. Anything I
can do not to think on stage, I will do. Why? Because I don't think it belongs there. I've
said some really bad things and gotten us into some really awkward situations and
there are responsibilities."
So you do care about Faith No More? "Yeah, I'm learning to. I didn't for a long time. I
thought, what a horrible situation, it's candy coated, take it with a smile - for what it is -
you can't take your time card and punch it out at the end of the day. You can't. I tried it
and you can't."

The bus pulls up outside the hotel and the rest of the band file into reception. Patton
doesn't move. "No matter what you do." he says sternly. "You can't win. " You can go
now. "Arrh!" he cries. "The sense of finality!"
January 27, 1993

Public News, Houston, Texas, January 27,

1993

Talking music and zoning with Roddy Bottom of Faith

No More

By Nathan Ammons and Tim Newman

Most bands today who have reached the level of recognition of Faith
No More usually have the tendency to let the mainstream influence
their releases. However, this Bay Area quintet refuses to conform to
any standards of any kind. With the release of Angel Dust. Faith No
More has shattered the modern music world's conception of these
Warner Bros./Slash records artists.

During a break between the GNR/Metallica tour and the band's own
self-supporting tour of Angel Dust, Public News had the chance to talk
with Roddy Bottorn, keyboardist and co-founding member of FNM,
from his home in San Francisco.

PN: How did you come up with the title Angel Dust?
RB: I think that the title summed up what we did perfectly.

PN: How so?

RB: Well, it's a really beautiful name for a really hideous drug and that
should make people think.

PN:Your last release, The Real Thing, seemed to be a lot more

accessible to top40 radio while Angel Dust is much less radio friendly.
Would FNM ever consider conforming to typical FM radio standards?
RB: Oh God, I hope not. Not the way I see it. It would have been real
easy for us on this last album to do something that would have been
completely compatible with typical FM standards. but we've always
tried to shy away from doing anything like that. It's not just sticking to
one format or jumping from one to another or even trying to please
anyone. We try to please ourselves first and foremost. I mean if we
did all sell out and become cheesy radio rock people, we'd be doing it
for ourselves and not for anyone else.

PN: Did you consider yourselves an underground band then?

RB: I guess so. You know that they say this is the year of the
underground, but the only underground getting airplay is stuff from
Seattle which is now pretty much main stream rock and that's not
what we're all about.

PN: The new album is much more intricate and elaborately

constructed compared to The Real Thing. In what ways was the
writing process different or similar?
RB: We wrote it pretty much the same way. The drummer, the bassist
and myself started writing first, then the singer came in a lot earlier
and really helped move things along. The guitar player though, had
less of a role on this one than on The Real Thing.

PN: One song that kind of separates itself from the others is "Small
Victory." It has a lot of radio-friendly samples and sounds a little
poppy. Were those samples premeditated or did they just fit?
RB: Yeah, they just fit the song. It's the most radio-friendly song we've
ever done. So we looked for samples along that vein. I think that it
went really well although it doesn't get much friendly airplay.

PN.- Were those real cheerleaders in the studio on "Be Aggressive" or

another friendly sample?
RB: They weren't really cheerleaders, they were friend of ours, loud,
obnoxious girls.

PN: There is a definite Mr. Bungle sound on the disc. Was that strictly
Mike Patton or has influenced the rest of the band?
RB: Sure, that was strictly Patton. He brings to the band his own
influences, the kind of stuff he's into. He does listen to some strange
music like polka. But I don't think that his weird music is the source of
his influence, it's just where he's coming from.

PN: Does he ever get hurt with all of the thrashing around he does?
RB: Oh, yeah. we all get injured But I would say that Mike gets it the
worst.

PN: He was hospitalized here in Houston when a mike stand hit him in
the head while, on tour with Mr. Bungle, wasn't he?
RB: Yeah, I heard about that, it was pretty nasty. Even worse, on New
Year's Eve he was playing with Bungle here in San Francisco and
ended up with eight stitches in his head and a black eve that lasted
two weeks.

PN.How exactly did you meet up with Patton?

RB: Bill, the bass player and I, grew up together in L.A. and moved to
San Francisco at the same time. We met Mike Bordin, who plays
drums, and then the three of us went through several guitarists and
singers before we settled on Patton a few years later.

PN: Wasn't FNM originally billed as an anti-hippie band?

RB: We were established as an anti-hippie band because of where we
live, in San Francisco. I mean it's the hippie capital of the world, and
in the past what this city has stood for has been this sort of hippie-
love environment. So. when we started out, we wanted to move as far
away from that as possible. It's what we were working against to get
where we wanted to go.

PN: Something that we're working against here in Houston is zoning.

Many clubs and bars that cater to local music are being shut down
and will be shut down if something isn't done. Has San Francisco ever
experienced this kind of atrocity?
RB: No, nothing like that has ever happened here. I think if it ever did.
there would be enough people who would rise up to fight it. Sounds
that's what you need to do.

PN: You got that right., Maybe this will help. So, Roddy, what's to
come in the near future for FNM?
RB: We're going to release an easy-listening EP "I'm Easy," the
Commodores song, win be on it along with a studio version of
"Midnight Cowboy," from Angel Dust and "Let's Lynch the Landlord"
from the Dead Kennedys tribute album. It's going to be called Songs
to Make Love To.

PN: Does this mean that you've chucked "War Pigs" for "I'm Easy" ?
RB: Well, we've played "War Pigs" for so long at the end of our set
that people got to expect it. They would scream "War Pigs, War Pigs"
endlessly until we j ust got tired of it. Tired of the expectations of us.
So, now we do "I'm Easy."

PN: Will there be any videos released for Songs to Make Love To?
RB: Actually, we'll be releasing an entire video tape called Video
Croissant. It'll be a collection of all the videos we've done along with
some stuff from Brazil and footage from the making of some of the
videos. Plus some real old stuff that's really pretty funny.

PN: When will the video and EP be released?

RB:The EP should come out towards the end of February and the
video probably will too. After that we'll start working on a new album.

PN: Great. Is there anything that you'd like to say to Houston in

preparation for the show that's coming up?
RB: All I can tell you people is that you need get together and fight
your zoning plan.
FNM will spatter Houston with their wave of non-conforming rakehell
sounds on January 29, with Babes In Toyland and Kyuss at The
Unicorn, 3301 Tidwell. Tickets at Sound Exchange, Dream Merchant,
Vinal Edge and Ticketron outlets.

Feb 13, Kerran Gig

2
1993 g review

N/A

FAITH NO MORE | 20.02.1993 | KERRANG!

Kerrang! | Issue 431 | 20.02.1993 | Steffan Chirazi

Dust storm

During the recording of their most recent and critically acclaimed album 'Angel Dust', it
became obvious that a rift was growing in the FAITH NO MORE camp. While vocalist
MIKE PATTON was taking an increasingly strong grip on the band's lyrical and musical
direction, guitarist and Metal icon BIG JIM MARTIN was becoming increasingly isolated
from his band mates. 'Angel Dust' survived, but will the rigours of long-term touring and
the pressures of preparing for their next LP be the straws that break the camel's back?
No one will admit to having the hump, but STEFFAN CHIRAZI is determined to probe
the problems anyway.

FAITH NO More's classic cover of the cheesy 70s Commodores hit 'Easy' sat prettily at
Number Three in the UK charts. Faith No More, on the other hand, did not. The goofy
fights and mud flinging that we've revelled in with the band have ceased. What's up in
the FNM camp?
The problem goes back to the-making of 'Angel Dust', when 'creative differences' led to
guitarist Big Jim Martin not being involved as much as usual in the LP. An
unwillingness to deal with the issue has left the rift creeping wider ever since... now it's
Jim Martin, and the other four.
No one is willing to confront anyone else. When drummer Puffy Bordin heard about this
interview, 45 minutes before the band took the stage at San Francisco's Warfield
Theatre, he blew a gasket.
"Not now. We cannot discuss it now; we have six months left to tour, so WE WILL NOT
F**K IT UP. We'll take care of things at the tour's end."
So get this straight: FNM's latest dispute is long-term, low-key, uneventful, but as
powerful as hell.

Have you noticed how much more a part of FNM Mike Patton has
now become? Patton's development seems to have escaped press probings. The piss-
drinking, the tampon-munching, the lurches, the screams, the insults, the jokes, the
lyrics, the dark side of 1989s pin-up. He has become the definition for mischievous,
curious and warped youths worldwide, a man who will try anything just for, the hell of
it. But the biggest strides Patton made were in actually becoming a happy member of
Faith No More. When did this penny drop?
"At first, the fruit wasn't ripe," trills Patton obliquely, "but it got riper and riper, and now
it tastes really good. But the actual point at which everything finally clicked is hard to
pin down. One thing about this band is that there's many things we've either not had
the courage or the means to do before; but we're beginning to care less how
we're perceived and to just get on with things."

It's probably easier for him now, looking back, to work out why he was so antagonistic
when he first joined FNM.
"The truth is, there were certain things I wanted to know about the band, and I also saw
a lot of things I didn't wanna know, so I ignored them. Rather than confronting issues, I
found it much easier to ignore them."
Was becoming the Metal pin-up kid of 1989 the sort of thing we're talking about?
"Definitely!"
So your belligerence and antagonism were just to get you through? "That stuff was just
instinct. When you enter a volatile situation, with the whole thing spiralling towards the
toilet, you just stir it a little more. With this LP, we were all spiralling in the same
direction at last."

WERE YOU encouraged to express your weirder, more f**ked-up ideas on the record,
such as on 'Malpractice' and RV?
"It's not really aggression, it's just feeling comfortable, being able to unload everything.
There was just a better forum for extremes."
Did you re-invent yourself, with the new haircut, the uglier tones, the darker personae
than in the smooth, white pretty boy of yore?
"We'd better talk to the psychiatrist!"
So there was no conscious effort to say, f**k this, I'll never be a magazine pretty boy
again'?
"Nothing conscious. Certain things just happen naturally. When you've toured for two
years and you're trapped in a time capsule, you come back f**ked up."
Was there this bitterness of 'missing your youth'?
"No, it's just that you get to feel like a rat sometimes, because all you can do is run
along with it, chasing the trail of cheese. In the end, you lose dignity - you really do.
You end up convincing yourself that you have control when you just don't."
So why is it so much easier now than before?
"Explaining that would be like sitting down with your Mom and explaining why you
farted at the dinner table three years ago!"
Is it therapeutic dealing with characters in songs, getting your anger out?
"No, because sometimes it isn't good to have that shit out in the open." He sighs deeply
before smirking, "There's this myth about lyricists and singers, that they're always
'projecting their inner-most secrets', which is horse-shit. Singers are the WORST! They
can't hide behind instruments..."

ALONG WITH Puffy Bordin, Bill Gould carries the weight of FNM on his shoulders (by
choice, and at no extra cost). He's the guy to ask about any problems in the band.
Those with Jim Martin - can the faulty engine be repaired?
Bordin considers. "Sure, anything's possible..."
Gould agrees. "Stranger things have happened..."
"I don't really think that ANYTHING right now is faulty," Bordin continues. "We're
playing as well as ever, and that's what matters.
All I would say is that we are concerned with getting better; we'd be f**ked if we didn't
try to improve, and the next record wi!l also be an improvement."
The making of 'Angel Dust' seemed fraught with tension and pressure. "We were
running parts of the running race with a bum leg!" exclaims Gould. "Basically, it's like a
puzzle. You've got a square peg and a round hole, and it isn't working, and you get
frustrated. We would not
have put the record out if that didn't work, but we managed to pull it off."

SURELY, IN the old small days, artistic freedom was easier because you weren't a
'major' band? Didn't someone from your label say, "I hope you lot haven't bought
houses!", after hearing 'Angel Dust' for the first time? "There's always pressure,"
Gould admits. "With 'The Real Thing', we had the pressure of making the record as
soon as possible just so as we could pay rent and eat! There's ALWAYS pressure..."
It seems as if there's not as much humour or wackiness evident these days. Gould:
"For the first few years of a band, you put humour first. Everything's a big joke. But then
you look back and see that the humour is overshadowing other things, and you realise
it can't be that way."
Bordin elaborates. "We are very focused on making our hour-and-a-half onstage the
best we can, getting the job done properly. In that sense, maybe we're the ones who
are worse off, because we have a standard that we now hold ourselves to - and if we
don't make that standard we get really pissed off. "We've all grown into this sense of
responsibility that there ARE people who buy tickets a month in advance, who plan to
see our show, who pay to see us."

ONE THING FNM haven't outgrown is a good moan. Whilst 'Epic' was breaking them
last tour, they were whining about being successful but not having money yet. This
time, there was the infamous Axl bashing. If y'hate it that much, then surely you leave?
"It wasn't that bad on the road for the first couple of months," says Gould, "but after four
months, there were lots of little things..."
Was there any discomfort at being associated with that 'Rock circus'?
Gould: "It's like this. For the past 10 years, we've been playing in this band as
professionals. We get offered this huge stadium tour, and we figure that this is where it
all leads to, the highest point. "But to be on that level, you have to WANT to be on that
level. Touring at the highest
level is a disappointment, because you see a tot of unreal things, a lot of bullshit. And
whether it's conscious or subconscious, you wonder to yourself, 'Is this where I'm
headed? Is this where it all leads to? To this bullshit?"
"The conditioning of this industry is that that's where you go - you head for that level, as
opposed to doing something that you're happy with. If you headline stadiums, you've
gotta WANT to do that. It's great if you're into it, but we learnt that we aren't people who
could do something like that..."

AS HE sips his cuppa in more serene surroundings than a tour bus, Roddy Bottum
considers his expanding role in FNM, both musically and visually.
"On this last album, it was everybody's job to stretch, to take a step forward. And I had
to come forward more."
It's Roddy who puts the pop into FNM, and Jim Martin is the Metal. The two extremes
have cohabited with superb results, until now. What's Roddy's view of the Martin affair?
"Jim and I are absolute extremes. To enable the scales to keep balanced, the further I
go in my direction, the further he has to go in his. If he stays where he is and 1
continue to go further, then things will go off-kilter.
"On the last album, he kinda stayed where he was: it wasn't only that he didn't produce
a whole lot of material. So as things stand now, we're a little off-kilter but we'll work it
out."
Roddy has a quite different view of the current live shows to Jim Martin's.
"I'm extremely happy with the shows - there's more aggression than ever before. Mike
Patton's performance has improved so much, and the intensity level has upped to a
point where we take it much more seriously."
Have Faith No More grown from boys to men?
"I suppose so. Our initial success with The Real Thing' was so unexpected that you just
have to laugh - it's your only protection. You can only do that for so long before you
start looking like an idiot.
"We did it for a long time, laughed at our success, but then we realised that by laughing
at that, we were laughing at all the people who'd bought our records."
Was there a feeling of embarrassment that, to some guy in Iowa, for example, selling
two million albums puts you in the same basket as bands like Great White?
"Yeah. Suddenly, you're not underground - you're this exposed band. More than
embarrassment and discomfort, I think it just took some personal adjustments."

ADJUSTMENTS WHICH still haven't quite kicked in. Moaning on 'The Real Thing' tour,
putting up with the rigours of fame (sob) now whingeing about playing to 40,000 people
a night...
"We weren't into that whole scene, it wasn't what we were about - but you're right, we
were stupid to moan, We should've just split. It would've been the gentlemanly thing to
do."
Are the doors closing on Goofyville?
"Pretty much. It's stupid to complain about who we hate all the time to the press, plus
I'm pretty bored with it. But when you're asked that 10 millionth time about Axl Rose,
you just think, 'Who cares?' "
Then for him to slap your wrists personally...
"That was humiliating, that whole thing. I don't know the guy that well, but he seemed
genuinely hurt, just this honest guy, saying, 'Hey, there's only two bands I really like,
and I took one of them out with me - and then you bad-mouth me in the press'. They
did us a huge favour, and then for us to turn around and say that stuff in press was
pretty shitty..."
JIM MARTIN sits, as ever, like an old man. He has become an aural voyeur with his
precious mobile phone-scanner Martin doesn't like 'Easy' "Never really did like that
song. I didn't even wanna record it..."
After all these months on tour, he can still get his jollies off onstage? "Infrequently, it
has to be said," replies the behemoth, "Maybe once a week."
Are we back to the 'it' factor that needs fixing? "Yes, we're back to the 'it' factor.
Hopefully, when we do the next record, we can work 'it' out and get back on track."
Martin's just as reluctant to get involved in in-fighting as the other four about the
obvious point: that he is currently an unpopular FNMster who doesn't want to confront
the issues head-on any more than anyone else. He SEEMS disconnected from the rest
of the band. No camaraderie in the workplace. Those have to be hard working
conditions.
"The best thing to do is to look at things with your own two eyes. I look at things with
mine, and make the best sense of what I see."
But onstage, the band are doing their best shows ever "To me, onstage, it doesn't
always seem that way - I felt there was more raw energy comin' off the stage in the
past.
"But for Mike Patton, there's probably a lot more energy than ever before..."
Isn't there this delicate 'chemistry'? "Probably - but it's nothing we know anything about.
Maybe it's the combination of people.
"As a unit, you may have chemistry, but individually, you may have f**k all. Maybe a
band who loses a member would be doomed."
You'll have to watch this space to see if Faith No More can survive...
February 26, 1993

BAM Issue February 26, 1993

THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING

by Steve Stolder

FAITH NO MORE ISN'T OUT TO PROVE THAT EVERYTHING'S A SHAM ...

THAT'S A GIVEN

It's mid-August and Billy Gould and Roddy Bottum are lazing away the
afternoon at a cafe in San Francisco's mission district, an area
teeming with taquerias, used book stores, secondhand shops, and
cafes packed with boho coffee underachievers. It's August 18th and
Gould and Bottum are killing some unexpected downtime.
FNM should be tagging along with Guns N' Roses and Metallica
somewhere in Middle America about now, except that James Hetfield
somehow started himself on fire in mid-performance in Montreal, after
which GN'R took an early leave. Montreal was a riot ... literally.

Suffice to say, they haven't been enjoying this tour very much and are
looking forward to getting out on their own. Gould and Bottum seem
alternately fascinated and repulsed by Axl's antics. FNM -- led by
brazen lead vocalist Mike Patton -- has earned few friends in the GN'R
axis by openly disparaging their benefactors in the press. While in
England, Patton even threatened to drop a stool (a nasty habit he's
become infamous for) on top of Axl's TelePrompTer. Still, Billy Gould
finds Axl's over-the-top garishness absurdly appealing. "You have to
appreciate that", he gushes. It's like appreciating Ronald Reagan."

Angel Dust, the follow-up to FNM's breakthrough The Real Thing

album, has just been released. Many in the press admire its
challenging twists and turns, which take listeners on a roller coaster
ride through metal, art-rock, industrial, and even easy listening
excursions. The five members of the band, however, have already
heard an earful about Angel Dust's capriciousness. "We got a little
flack when our record company first heard it", Bottum volunteers. "I
mean, initially, they were a little shocked."

More specifically, they say they were accused of indulging in "too

many mood changes," "too many personality changes," and, most
heinous of all, "gratuitous sampling." Gould picks up on the theme,
paraphrasing the insider criticism they've endured: "'Alternative
never liked you anyway. So I don't know why you're playing this shit.'
All this kind of bullshit. But it's a good record. We're not like, 'I don't
give a fuck what the record company says.' Because we work
together, in a way. You work with a record company. They make
suggestions and you listen to them, because you don't want to hate
them. And they tell you these things, and you take it kind of
seriously."

Gould, normally a mirthful sort, seems a bit bothered by the negative

feedback. Conversely, the self-possessed Bottum responds with the
verbal equivalent of a shrug.

"I think it's a great thing, in this day and age, to be able to do what
you want to do," he remarks mildly. "As much money as is involved in
Warner Bros. Records, to be able to set out to do something on your
own and make it the way you want it to sound and know that people
-- like the president of Warner Bros. -- might not like it, and be able to
make it anyway, with their money, is a great thing."

Gould nods in agreement, but then ventures, "There's maybe a 50

percent chance it won't even fly."

"It's already done," Bottum responds. "It's already more than gold.
And we made the record we wanted to make. I think it's a great
thing."

In the interests of finding out how they view themselves in the

context of rock n'roll, circa 1992, I read the two some of their recent
press clippings.
From the New York Times: "Faith No More has been weaned on the
smiling, hard-self fraudulence of television, modern politics, and
modern rock. Its response is to suspect everything, to grab at
fragments and to stay so vulgar and unpredictable that it sticks in the
craw. With a self-mockery that undercuts even the band's own
cynicism, FNM takes nothing seriously -- and means it."

Bottum pauses for a moment, then asks to hear the last part of the
quote one more time. That done, Gould cuts in, "We're not out to
prove that everything you read is lies and all that. We kind of take
that for granted," he laughs. "It's not anything you have to prove; it's
obvious."

"It's a stupid example," volunteers Bottum, "but look at The Simpsons

and what a success that is. Or Ren & Stimpy. I'm sure that big
network executives are shocked that America is that smart and in-
tune to the sarcasm."

"Or that disaffected," Gould interjects.

"It's just a thing to always keep in mind," Bottum suggests. "You don't
have to spell everything out, because people understand sarcasm.
They understand where we're coming from without us hitting them
over the head."

I try another quote, this one from Musician: "As their success has
mushroomed, it's become fashionable to talk about FNM as leaders of
a new musical movement. But no one can quite figure out who else is
part of it."

Gould likes that one; he laughs hysterically. Bottum just smiles.

Mike Patton enters the La Cumbre Taqueria on a brisk January

evening. The taco shop, coincidentally, is a just a few blocks away
from the cafe Gould and Bottum had selected six months earlier.
Angel Dust has now been out about the same time The Real Thing
had before "Epic" started turning up on MTV and radio, kicking the
album in a high orbit that peaked at 1.5 million copies sold. Angel
Dust has moved some 800,000 copies, which, a few years ago, would
have been perceived as something of an amazing achievement. The
recording business being what it is, however, Angel Dust is seen in
some circles as a bit of a bust.

Since the earlier Gould/Bottum interview, FNM has toured extensively,

though Angel Dust dropped off Billboard's top 200. The press has
reported extensively on infighting between guitarist Jim Martin and
the rest of the band (spurring recurrent rumors of numbered days for
the band); Bottum has begun to address his homosexuality in
interviews with characteristic 'Nobody-asked-before' nonchalance; a
state of the art techno remix by Youth of the single, "A Small Victory,"
has been released; and a poker-faced remake of Lionel Ritchie's
'Easy' has climbed to No. 3 on the British pop charts. FNM is in
something of a state of disarray, which, of course, means everything's
pretty much status quo.

Patton has radically altered the teen-dream look that millions of

"Epic" video fans are familiar with. His once-trademark long locks
have been shorn; he's grown a Vandyke; onstage, Lycra bike shorts
have been replaced by bowling garb. There are stitches running up
from his right eye onto his forehead. He takes a seat and explains
that the wound was incurred New Year's Eve at a San Francisco show
with his other band, Mr. Bungle. That particular gig has already taken
on a certain legendary status, for, during the course of his
performance, Patton spied a shoe that had been thrown onstage,
urinated in it, and drank the contents. The obvious question: Why?

"There's no why, really," he responds. "Well, maybe there's a why,

but there's no because."

He explains that he's recently pinched a nerve and separated some

ribs. "Occupational hazard," he shrugs. (Currently, he's spending
some additional down time trying to recover from shin problems that
are the result of his masochistic performances.)

Another obvious question: Is it worth it?

"No, it isn't worth it even if your back doesn't ache. You may as well
get something out of it," he chuckles. "If it has to be pain, well, OK."

All things considered, it's none too easy to make a convincing

argument that not only isn't Mike Patton maladjusted ... he's
actually well adjusted. Considering the circumstances of his fame
(pulled, reluctantly and just out of his teens, from the far-northern
California community of Eureka, thrust in a spotlight that proved to be
far more intense than anyone expected; put in the constant company
of four hardened and unmerciful veterans), Patton seems to have
handled it all quite sensibly ... in a weird sort of way. While many
others caught up in a similar maelstrom have responded by
contorting themselves out of shape to fit their suddenly mutated
reality, Patton seems to leave his contortions onstage. Offstage, he's
self-deprecating, free of bravado, consistently forthcoming, and
seems to find most everything ridiculously amusing. One certainly
hopes that impressible youngsters don't follow his lead and take to
swilling pee, but there seems to be little likelihood of that. And his
habit of depositing dung in unlikely places is far from charming (after
all, some overworked, underpaid soul has to clean that stuff up), but
there are more heinous crimes.

Granted, Patton's prudence does take on some skewed qualities. Like

Gould, Bottum, and drummer Mike Bordin, he's invested his earnings
in a house in San Francisco (Jim Martin still lives in his family home in
the Bay Area suburban community of Hayward). He explains the
move by phrasing a question: "Do I ever want to have something to
show for what I've been doing? I don't want a fucking gold record. I
want somewhere to hide, at least."

But then he describes his dream home: "There've been many legends
to it," he explains. "The one that I've heard most commonly, from
building inspectors and the like, is that it was a bomb assembly plant.
It's all concrete. There are three separate compounds to it. The other
[legend] is that it was a meat locker. That's a little more believable.
After that, it was a Laundromat and a toxic waste dump."

"Where I am, it's like a construction block. They're putting up all these
new houses that were destroyed in the earthquake," he laughs. "Nice
place to move, huh?"

"I, of course, had to check that out and sign this huge waiver and all
that. But I talked to the lady who was there when the quake hit, and I
said, 'What happened? There's no cracks. There's no nothing.' She
said, 'This place was like being in a boat made of rock.' She said the
ground was like liquid; it was floating back and forth. Nothing fell,
nothing budged."

Patton readily concedes that he's consciously sabotaged his previous

poster-boy pose, but he does so in a moderate manner. "Yeah," he
laughs, "but you don't have to be a mercenary to be yourself, really.
It comes pretty easily. You think about it as an education and you
learn how to be defensive. That's the process of being in a band and
becoming acquainted with the music business. All that it's been for
me is putting my arms across my chest and deflecting things. People
really do anything you let them do."

"The motives behind what goes on in making a record and selling a

record are not hard to figure out. But you really waste time if you're
bothered by it. It doesn't do any good to realize what a gigolo you
are, or whatever. It doesn't change anything!"

Patton's appearance has changed so radically from what it was on the

"Epic" video that it's not hard to imagine that he doesn't have to deal
with being recognized a whole lot. But the band has definite pockets
of devotion. In their hometown, they're revered enough to have
received seven Bammie nominations, the UK seems to have always
understood their brand of outlandishness, and in Brazil they're huge.
The kind of worship he'd encountered in South America truly left
Patton dazed. How did he respond to it?

"I don't know. I really don't know," he replies with genuine

bafflement. "There's so many things coming in at once that you really
don't know how you're reacting. You feel violent -- you want to be
violent. You feel sympathetic. You feel ... kind of like, 'Goddammit!'
You feel pity. You feel ... there's too many things. And you feel like,
'We're two human beings here. Let's just [laughs] work this out!
What's the problem?' But none of it really ever works out, so you just
kill yourself entertaining any of those possibilities."

"Once Roddy and me were walking to the beach," he recalls, "and a

couple of Brazilian kids ran up to our faces and were like
hyperventilating with tears streaming down their faces. I was really
disarmed. I had no idea! It was like someone cutting off my arms and
legs and taking out my vocal chords. I didn't know what to do. I just
stood there and looked at her like she was an alien. And then you're
thinking about it the whole next day, like, 'How did I react? Was that
an exchange of any kind? What happened?' It's kind of like getting in
a fight, in a weird way. It's this huge burst of ... something. And then
it's over with, and you have no idea what just happened."

The Real Thing was partially assembled before Patton even signed on
with the band. Angel Dust is a far more collaborative effort, and
Patton's contributions are far more apparent in 1993 than they were
four years ago.

"In a relationship, in the beginning, there's inhibitions," he

explains. "After a while, all of those things fall apart, and that's how
you get comfortable with somebody. I think that's probably how it
happened. You learn how to fart and cuss in front of them. That's
healthy. The way the band operates, politically, is, whoever steps out
of line, everyone pounces on him. So if you're constantly afraid of
doing something, nothing gets done. When everybody gets a little
more comfortable, you can pull out any idea, and it can be
manipulated, raped, made fun of, whatever. But still ... that's OK.
Because that's how shit gets created; I'm convinced of that."

While Patton, like Gould and Bottum, chaffs at being lumped in with
metal bands, he tends to be far more contemptuous of what he refers
to as "cool indie bands." After a shaky beginning, he's clearly found a
fit with the FNM mindset that embraces all of the more extravagant
elements of pop music. In Patton's mind, gangsta rap and adult
contemporary are pieces of the same puzzle because they're both
shamelessly overwrought. As he inquires on Angel Dust's "Land of
Sunshine": "Does emotional music have quite an effect on you?" It
does? Then you may understand.

Hence, there's the next attempt to reawaken the album in the States:
the new four-song maxi single 'Songs to Make Love To' and its key
track, "Easy."

"That's the cutting edge: Muzak!" he insists. "For drama's sake, it's
the most powerful."
Patton's clearly given some thought to this ... to the point of
developing a strategy for breaking into a new radio market. "If we
could get on Magic 61," he muses, referring to a Frank Sinatra/Tony
Bennett-dominated San Francisco radio station. "Bill and I have been
trying to contact them -- or have our management try to contact
them -- to try to convince them that there's a younger generation out
there that appreciates classic music. They need a new audience. Give
us a t-shirt, do anything. We'll do anything!"

Inexplicably, the lights have gone out in the taqueria, but employees
still man the grill by lamplight. Mike Patton steps out into the evening
air and stands in front of a neighboring clothes store, chatting about
some of his artier tastes in music. The night-light from the store kicks
on, and, simultaneously, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is piped into the
street via the shop's sound system. Mike Patton smirks and
remarks, "Oh, listen. They're playing my song," then strolls back down
the street toward his very own concrete bunker.

N/A

FAITH NO MORE | UNKNOWN PUBLICATION |

FEBRUARY 1993
February 1993
You Gotta Have Faith

Faith No More's singer Mike Patton isn't your standard rock idol. He may claim
that his fave pleasure is a cup of Ovaltine, but his notorious 'pooping outside
Princess Di's house' incident hints at his 'unusual' personality.

Mike Patton recalls Faith No More's most recent visit to London with amazing
clarity. Not because he really gave out attitude on stage, or because he has a
soft spot for the place. No, the real reason why Mike recalls the trip so vividly is
because during a late night walk through the city, he found himself outside
Kensington Palace, the plush residence of Princess Diana. Suddenly feeling the
call of nature, the temptation was too much and he left a little calling card.
"Yeah I pooped on a bench right outside the Palace," smirks the man himself,
propped up on a chair in a
plush Las Vegas hotel, where the band are in the middle of a sell-out US
tour.
"I couldn't believe it was so easy to get in there. It's the equivalent of the US
President's White House, right? If you were caught inside there,
they'd torture and shoot you! I mean, the Princess could have passed by at any
minute, which would've been quite handy, 'cause I could've asked
for some toilet paper, hur hur."
This little tale has become as famous , the band's recent chart hit I'm
Easy. But, it's not until you know little bit about them that such
behaviour seems rather inappropriate.
Faith No More aren't your average bunch of loud-mouthed rockers. They might
have the hair and do a nice line in guitar licks, but that's where the stuff that
rock legends are made of ends. They hate all that nonsense.
Take this on board: the video for I'm Easy, features the front man
parading around a hotel room with a group of men dolled-up in drag.
The band's keyboards player, Roddy Bottum, is openly gay, and the rest are
very much against taking advantage of their female groupies.
it's all so unrock 'n' roll.
Well, at least Mike still looks like a rock star, with his tour T-shirt, shorts,
eyebrow. Strangely, he's clutching a voodoo doll, which he calls Toodles,
and a snoot novel.
"It's really stupid, I know" he says, almost apologising for the loutish pooing
incident. "Exploits like that aren't exactly something I plan or analyse before I
got to sleep at night. I don't have a roadie following me with a pooper-scooper
or anything as ridiculous, hur hur!"
Still Mike insists that, unlike contemporaries like Axl Rose or Kurt
Cobain from Nirvana, he doesn't want to be seen as a rock animal.
"I think the rock 'n' roll lifestyle's a myth," he claims. "It's got nothing to
do with what we're doing. I don't even listen to that rock 'n' roll rubbish."
Well, indeed. Anything else you'd like to get off your chest, Michael?
"I don't want to be buried, and I don't want a tombstone either. When
I die, I'd like to be melted down into liquid form, hardened, and rolled into a ball-
like dough. Then I'd be dipped into a crystallising substance, baked and eaten
like a cake." Oh, yum yum.
Although Faith No More have been around for the best part of 10 years,
Mike himself didn't join the others until 1989. Back then, he was a badly
dressed 22-year-old train spotter who still lived at home with his folks in
California. Apparently the first thing he did when joining up was ask when his
holidays were.
Whether or not he fitted in though, wasn't quite the issue, because Mike
brought a bit of the all-important hunk factor to Faith No More, and with the new
female following he attracted, they enjoyed their first sniff of chart success. But
it wasn't until a much publicised tour as the support slot to
Guns N' Roses last year, that the band really found stardom.
Although they went down a storm, they didn't exactly see eye-to-eye with
their hosts. In almost every interview during the tour, Faith No More took
the mickey out of G N' R for living up to the corny rawk 'n' roll image.
"For a while, we kept our mouths shut," admits Mike, "but then we gave up
being quiet about their stupid games and made fun of them instead. We toured
with them for months, but we never once met Axl.
"Their whole lifestyle was contrived. It was almost like watching a Bugs
Bunny cartoon. We'd see all this amazing stuff, like Axl's psychic healer
blessing his microphone every day! Faith No More could never be like that
because we aren't cool enough to be seen as that crazy, Guns N' Roses are a
hamburger in the way that they're so mainstream. We're more like tongue, or
haggis. Or even black pudding! Those meats aren't cool."
It sounds like Mr Patton doesn't feel exactly at one with being famous, and
he's the first to admit it. Being a pop star is like being an alien. You get into your
time capsule and you can do whatever you want. You can create your own little
reality which is safe. It's sick really."
'Safe' isn't necessarily an appropriate word to describe his antics during live
shows. He's been known to throw himself off the stage into the audience, often
injuring fans in the first two rows. But then, he claims
that's because he doesn't quite know what else to do.
"It's like, I wish singing was like being in a boxing ring, so that every
three minutes, I could get advice about what to do next.
"I actually have a sense of guilt when I'm up there and it's something I don't feel
comfortable with. Most of my friends are working their butts off for eight hours a
day and Faith No More don't do a damn thing like hard work. We work about an
hour a day, travel the world and are pretty spoiled."
This lot get curiouser and curiouser. If they don't want to be rockers and don't
particularly enjoy being pop stars either, then how come they want their fans to
see them?
"We're just a band really," sighs Mike. "It's like people now call me a
pin-up and I really don't enjoy the responsibility that goes with it. I don't really
care about all that. I don't do groupies. At the end of the night, I'd
prefer a cup of Ovaltine, although I'm having difficulty even finding that at
the moment. I guess when it comes down to it, we're just a bunch of geeks
really."
A bunch of jessies, by any chance?
"Jessie? I don't understand," he says.
Y'know, sensitive weaklings? "If you mean sensitive, then yeah, I'm pretty
wimpy really. Well I like wimpy hamburgers, so that's got to make me
wimpy..."
Faith No More. Understand them at your peril.

June 15, 1993

The Advocate Issue June 15, 1993

HEAVY METAL HOMO

Faith No More's Roddy Bottum goes public about being gay in the
homophobic world of metal music

By Lance Loud

To those who have remained blissfully ignorant of the ear-crunching

brand of rock and roll know as heavy metal, Roddy Bottum probably
sounds like the nom de plume of a graphic-sex novelist with a
spanking fetish. In actuality he is the keyboardist of Faith No More,
the MTV-generation group that Spin magazine named Band of the
Year in 1990. Other high points in the band's career: The Real Thing,
released in 1989, went platinum, and its single, "Epic", went to
number 5 on the Billboard charts.
"One of the keys to what makes Faith No More unique is the way
Roddy Bottum's keyboard works in the music," says Roy Trakin, editor
of Hits, a national pop-rock magazine. "Most metal bands use the
keyboard as a rythm instrument, but Bottum uses it to build a
melody. He's all over the place: He'll play the theme from Nestle's
chocolate in the middle of something, or the theme from Midnight
Cowboy will pop up, or there will be cocktail-lounge-type tinkling
segueing into funk techo in the space of a single song. There's a
definite camp sensibility to what he's doing."

Adds Tom Sinclair, rock writer for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and
Entertainment Weekly: "The band isn't really like the other metal
bands. They have elements of the thrash metal sound, but they are
hardly limited to that. They're sort of like the thinking metal fan's
band."

Last winter many of those fnas were forced to do some deep thinking
about stereotypes and innate prejudices when the 28-year-old Bottum
made the decision to go public about his homosexuality. "I'd like to
say that I'm totally together about it," he says, "but it does kinda
freak me out. From now on anytime my name will be brought up, my
sexual preference will be one of the first things discussed. It's a way
of categorizing people that seems kind of creepy to me. I mean, it
shouldn't be like that, right? How many aspects of a personality are
there? So many."

A name like Roddy Bottum would be pretty hard to bring off if you
weren't gay.
[Laughs] It's a good name, isn't it? It's actually Roswell Christopher
Bottum III.

And are you?

The third?

No, a bottom?
[Laughs] Oh, well. I think role playing is very important in
relationships.

Does role playing strenghen a relationship?

_Switching_ roles strengthens a relationship. Back and forth, taking
turns.

Let's talk about how it got to be known that you're gay.

A woman from NME [New Musical Express, an English rock
newspaper] was doing a big story on the band. She was also friends
with the band we were touring with, L7, who I've known for years, and
she asked them to ask me if I would be willing to discuss my sexuality
in the press. I had no problem with that whatsoever and told the
reporter to ask whatever she liked.
Were you happy with the story?
Not really. I thought my coming out was an important angle, and I
don't mean that in an egocentric way. Kids who are into hard rock and
who may be dealing with the possibility of being gay themselves don't
see a lot of positive role models. But as it turned out, that was only a
small part of the final article. The writer had a thing for our singer
[Mike Patton], and that's who she ultimately focused on.

Do you think the writer felt that your coming out made you less of a
relevant subject for the audience she was writing to?
Maybe. But if that's the case, I'd certainly love to shatter that illusion.
There's just as much homosexual infatuation in rock music as
heterosexual, and it's about time that it's recognized.

Why didn't you bring up your homosexuality before?

I never thought it was that important. Since I went public I tend to see
the prejudice that's being leveled against homosexuals. Before, I
tended to think of it as a gossipy sort of a thing. Now I think of being
openly gay as a political statement, something that in some small
way furthers the gay rights movement.

How did your band handle the news?

My singer and I talk about our sexual exploits. When he joined the
band, I said, "Listen, you know I'm gay, right?" And he said, "Yeah, I
kinda figured." From there on out we would tell each other what we
were up to.

What about the other band members?

We don't have that kind of rapport. And it never came up as an issue
until the NME thing. Their attitude was "Do what you gotta do," but I
think they felt it might have been better to talk about it with someone
who would treat the subject a little more seriously.

When you came out to your parents, were they supportive?

They were really good about it. I thought it would depress them to no
end, and I felt really protective of their feelings. My parents are very
Catholic, and it had always been a very touchy subject. In the end,
though, when I did finally tell them the news, they were realy good
about it. [Pauses] Well, my mom took it a little hard. She cried. But
my dad was very good, and he helped Mom get through it.

As a gay man in the predominantly heterosexual - and often

homophobic - world of heavy-metal rock, do you ever find it hard to
take?
It's pretty difficult. I mean, if there is any crass, disgusting machoism
in the music business, it comes from the heavy-metal side of things.
As a band on the road, we're subjected to a lot of really ugly things.
The whole groupie aspect is such a sexist throwback to a bygone era.
It's pretty disgusting to have to be considered that type of band.
How was touring with Guns N' Roses?
Knowing their beliefs and the sexist, racist, homophobic things
they've said in the press, I was kind of tickled by the fact that they
were touring with us - a band with someone gay in it.
But talk about crass sexism - the actual experience was disgusting.
We left every night after we played. The only time I ever talked to Axl
[Rose, lead singer of Guns N' Roses] was the night our band had to
stay after the Guns N' Roses set to get a tongue-lashing. We'd been
talking shit in the press about Axl, and he got wind of it. He was really
upset and talked to us for an hour. At the end of it, one of his people
came in and wanted to show him something. We'd just been raked
over the coals and felt obliged to go along.
We went into this trailer, which was filled with guys. It was dead
silent. Everyone was looking at something going on in the back: Lying
on a bench were these two really out-of-it women, stark naked. One
was eating the other out, but it was anything but sexy. The girl who
was being eaten out looked like she was dead. It was so creepy. All
you could hear was the whir of the video camera. My lead singer
started yelling, "Oh, my God! I cannot believe you people would do
this!" Everyone just shushed us, and we all left immediately.

Being gay in rock has always been one strike against you. Do you
think that's changed?
As far as the kids in the audience go, I honestly don't think it really
affects them the way it used to. The majority of kids these days are
out to prove they really are open-minded and willing to accept people
for what they are. They want to prove they're not shocked by
anything. Of course, there are homophobic hatemongers, fag bashers,
and all that, but those are the minority, not the majority.

Do you think there's any connection between one's creativity and

one's sexual persuasion?
In a real subtle way, yeah. Our guitar player is the most macho,
heterosexual figure in our band, and it reflects in his playing. To
combat that, to reach the balence that gets the sound we strive for, a
feminine side has to come into what we're doing. Can that be
constured as homosexual? Probably. But it's really important as far as
the yin and the yang goes to combat the male bombast with the
feminine and humorous side.

When you first realized you were gay, who did you fantasize about?
Superman. He was a big ideal to me as a boy - strong, handsome,
bullet-proof - all good qualities to look for in a mate. When I was a
teenager, I really looked up to Freddie Mercury. He was pretty cool.

Did you listen to any Pete Townshend records during that time,
maybe "Rough Boys" over and over again?
He's bisexual. It would have only mixed me up. [Laughs]
If you could out anyone, who would it be and why?
George Michael. He's pretty creepy. I respect and admire his work,
but I wish that he would either say he wasn't gay or just come out and
make a big show of it. His coy act is getting a little tired.

Who are the gay role models in rock and roll?

Boy George. I respect him. If King Missile gets more sucessful, Chris
Xefos would be a really powerful role model. Bob Mould of Sugar is
good. And Gary Floyd, the singer of Sister Double Happiness, is really
a good person for kids just coming out to look up to.

And how do you think you rate in the role-model department?

I hope that if I'm considered a gay role model, it will be to show kids
that sexuality is only one part of their lives, not everything. And I
hope they will learn not to be tormented by what other people think.

Did you talk to your friends Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love about
going public with your sexuality?
I talked to Courtney about it back when the NME thing first came up.

What advice did she give you?

None. She only talks about herself, her life, you know. When I told her
that NME was going to put me being gay in their article on the band,
her basic response was "Well that's nice, but Kurt's gonna be on the
cover of The Advocate."
Kurt is one of my very best friends. But as for his Advocate interview,
he can talk about his homosexuality or bisexuality or whatever as
much as he wants 'cause he's so publicly married. It doesn't make
much difference. But he's a good inspiration. Just the fact that he was
on the cover of the magazine was a very powerful statement.

Which rock stars have you slept with?

Well, I slept with Courtney. Courtney and I used to go out.

How was it?

I didn't marry her.

Which rock stars would you like to sleep with?

Kurt Cobain, of course.

Do you believe in monogamy?

Oh, yeah, pretty much. I've been going with the same guy for ten
years. He works in video production, making videos for software
companies - demonstrational videos. We're really different from each
other, different enough so that it makes the relationship constantly
interesting. He's a really challenging person - and very difficult to get
along with. But I think the more difficult a person is to get along with,
the easier the relationship's gonna be.
How involved in the gay community are you?
Well, I'll go to bars and hang out, but I'm not involved with the whole
Queer Nation sort of thing. But I want to say this on the record: As far
as my band goes, we'd be more than open to participate in
fundraising efforts for gay rights or for something that benefits
[people trying to end] the AIDS crisis.

The video for your cover of "Easy," the Commodores song, features
some very raunchy drag queens. Was that your idea?
It was kind of everyone's. When we first started talking about doing
the video, we were toying around with doing a low-budget realistic
perspective of the band. Someone - not in the band - thought it might
be nice to get shots of us hanging around in the hotel room with girls.
My mom saw the video and told me she couldn't believe that we had
used real girls. When I told her that they were really drag queens, she
was shocked.

Have you ever worn women's clothes?

Yeah, sure. I have no qualms about that whatsoever. Growing up, me
and my neighbors used to put on little fashion shows by rummaging
through my mother's wardrobe and getting dressed up. And then
even in the band, we used to get dressed up in drag once in a while,
just for kicks.

And what about today?

Well, sometimes if women's clothing is lying around, I won't hesitate
to try it on. I mean, I live in San Francisco. We have a pretty open-
minded city here. And in the world of heavy-metal rock, what guy isn't
in drag? It might not be classic drag, but it's drag all the same.

Do you think your gayness will affect your band's audience - either
positively or negatively?
Faith No More has made a career out of confusing people. I think it's
going to test people in a real positive way. It's a challenge to our
listeners: This band you've been into that has never been associated
with anything remotely gay or androgynous now has a connection to
homosexuality. I think it will be a real test for kids.

On your records the entire band is credited for each song. Have you
done any of the words for the music yourself?
In the past I've done lyrics for a song or two on each record. On our
last record I did the lyrics for the homoerotic song, "Be Aggressive."

What's it about?
Swallowing. [Laughs] It was a pretty fun thing to write, knowing that
Mike was going to have to put himself on the line and go up onstage
and sing these vocals.

"We Care A Lot" was one of your biggest hits so far. What do you care
about?
I care a lot about justice. I care a lot about equality. I care a lot about
annihilating prejudices, and I care a lot about confusing people, about
making sure people don't feel safe or complacent.

Why are you doing this interview with The Advocate?

I'm hoping The Advocate's readership includes young aspiring gay
kids who will see me in the magazine and think, Look, he's a part of
this so-called macho rock band and he's a fag - but it's OK! That
would be great.

Will your fans be shocked by your appearing in the largest gay and
lesbian magazine in America?
Some of the greatest rock was considered shocking when it first came
out. And if people are shocked by the news that there are gay people
in rock and roll - that's it's not just this straight man's game - good.
That type of shock would make me very happy.

July 1993

Details magazie Issue July 1993

SCREENING BLOODY MURDER

by Mike Patton

Faith No More's Mike Patton confesses a fondness for video violence.

Let the games begin ...

For some reason, there's a certain shame ascribed to adults who play
video games. Society discourages this sort of behavior, viewing it as
counterproductive and childish. As one of those who both craves the
games' immediate satisfaction and accepts the guilt that goes along
with it, I must admit this one sad fact: *Most video games are a
complete waste of time.* This is because they're designed to be just
that. While the manufacturers target young children as their sole
consumers, they're neglecting a huge market: grown-ups who play
childish games to vent adult frustrations. Adults love these games!
And many more would if the things had more sex and violence and
more complex themes. There are plenty of bored, ambitious adults
out there who need stimulation -- and software manufacturers should
supply the stuff while making us fools feel comfortable enough to buy
it without shame. Paint a violent picture; lure us in. Give us losers a
choice. We all deserve it.

So, for those fellow lifeless fiends who need more blood than Pac-Man
can give, let the following serve as a guide through the killing fields of
modern video games.
In Smash TV -- one of the more complex and creatively brutal games
-- the protagonist blasts his way through a maze as a contestant in a
futuristic game show. The object? To kill everything. Graphics are
stimulating and thoroughly satisfying: Heads fly, blood spurts, and
limbs are severed. But the game's true genius lies in its ominous
depiction of violence as a spectator sport. Each time you're injured or
killed, the audience goes wild. The more you kill, the more money and
prizes you collect, the more weapons you acquire, and the more
surreal monsters you face. (The sequel, Total Carnage, is every bit as
satisfying.)

Another game with a great premise, although dated, is the classic

Narc. As a Bush-era trooper in the war on drugs, you battle mafioso
slezeballs who run a network of drug manufacturing plants. And these
bastards have the creepiest, scummiest thugs working for them. You
must fight them in the streets, in the subways, and in the
laboratories. You must face junkies who fling HIV-infected needles
that pierce your skin and gradually weaken your immune system. If
you don't collapse from that, you'll encounter a gang of rotten little
clowns who'll climb onto you and stab you before you even have a
chance to react. And they'll laugh while they're doing it. My favorite
villain is a fat, bald, crippled goon who has customized his wheel chair
by mounting machine guns on each armrest. All told, the bad guys in
Narc are far superior to any in modern horror films, and the game on
the whole is truly brilliant.

Desert Strike is a politically incorrect gem patterned after the Gulf

War, so it's no surprise that its most memorable bit is an air attack. As
a helicopter pilot ordered to destroy a village, you swoop down
toward homes and farmland, seeing before you thousands of tiny
human bodies fleeing in terror! With graphics like this, why send the
goddamned troops to war? Simply hook up an interlink with Kuwait
and confront the issues with a joystick!

Sports games mostly bite, but the few noteworthy exceptions all
share a common option: the capability to incite violence and weave it
into the fabric of the game.

The classic NHL Hockey is one hell of a psychologically soothing tool.

At first it seems like just another sports game with better-than-
average graphics. But once you learn to fully appreciate the "C"
button -- which enables you to assault the player nearest you -- your
reasons for playing change completely. If you clock the guy good, the
computer allows you to continue the brawl at the expense of the
players, referees, and fans. It's so great you actually forget you're
playing a game.

Another contender that transforms chaos into rule is Arch Rivals. This
one is best described as prehistoric basketball: no rules, guards,
forwards, centers, or coaches -- only desperate hooligans who punch
for possession. Similar games for frustrated sports addicts are Pigskin
Playoff and Mutant League Football.

Two of the most painful sporting games on the market are Road Rash
and its sequel Road Rash II. As you gun your motorcycle toward the
finish line, you can increase your advantage by bludgeoning your
fellow racers! Belt 'em with a club! Whip 'em with a bike chain! Sure,
you can kick your opponents off their bikes -- but they can do the
same to you. And they do. When one of them runs you off the road
and you can almost feel your face skidding along the pavement, how
can you help but love this game? Things to look out for: Oncoming
cars are a problem. If one hits you, it will send you flying head over
heels a hundred feet in the air. When you land, you may be hit by
another car or cycle as you run to retrieve your machine. Also beware
of bloodthirsty policemen who'll attempt to blindside you to a halt and
then hit you with an arrest/fine for speeding. This game moves so fast
that its gravity can be felt even as a spectator. I've spent hours just
watching friends play, and it's still amusing and highly entertaining.

The vitality of these games lies in their *capacity* for chaos, knowing
that *you* can make something insane happen. I'm a frustrated
basketball player, so you *know* that cracking skulls on the video
court appeals to me! Of *course* I'd buy one of these games! We're
talking about revenge here, something most humans want. Right?

July 10, 1993

OOR 14/15, 10 July 1993

An hour and a Half

by ??

A band that we have seen perform optimally live until now

makes its way through an uninspired standard set in Ahoy'.
The fans are disappointed. `An hour and a half,' they complain
on the way back home. An hour an a half! 35 guilders for ninety
minutes of Faith No More, that's almost 40 cents per minute.
Next time toPantera,a fan growls.

And what about Faith No More now? A new album is not in sight. And
they have to be recuperated for Torhout/Werchter [a twin festival in
Belgium, held in front of 60,000 people, three days after the Ahoy'
concert, FL]. Practically as a support to Metallice [they played T/W too
that year, FL]. If they fail there, they can shake it. It's a hard world,
the metal business.
The singer's name is Mike Patton, and last year he had piercing
through nose and eyebrow. He looks like a fresh young man now. An
interview that puts the dark side of metal-existence and the bullshit
going around there into perspective.

Isn't it time to record a new Faith No More album?

I wish it was. We still have a couple of months of touring to do and

then we take a rest. We work more like people and less like ants
these days.

Aren't you waiting a little too long?

It's the same cycle each time. Kinda depressing actually. The day you
finish the album, you must start thinking about the next one. Forget
the songs, those songs are dead. As soon as they're on the album
they're dead. Little corpses. Point is: you have to live with these
corpses every day. Then you're going to dissect and cut into them a
little differently each day. That's fun: to see how the songs develop.
For the rest it's boring.

Doesn't touring constantly drive you crazy?

It can drive you crazy. When you're on the road all the time, your
emotions tend to break through. We shouldn't see each other for a
while, that seems more healthy to me.

Things change fast in metal. Bands just can't relax. Something new
has to be done: concert, album, single, video. If you don't conform to
that, you can forget it.

That's right, there's panic in everything we do. Sometimes because of

business considerations, sometimes because of personal
considerations. It's very right. It's very easy to become a shadow.

Shouldn't there be a Dow Jones for metal bands? Guns 'n Roses at the
top, Metallica right below, you beneath them, etc.

It's almost like that now. It's like gambling at a stock exchange. There
can be a crash any moment. The stock market is based on panic.
When everyone panics too much all stocks are worthless from one
moment to another.

Does that bother you? Like, in comparison to two weeks ago our
stocks are a lot lower now.

If it was as easy as that...no, it's much more cloudy.

Yet it seems that the only thing metal bands are engaged in is
spectacular career moves. Touring with GNR, everything bigger and
bigger...and you reach the top because you can't get any bigger.

That's the factor of illusion in the music business. You loose contact
with reality. We saw that when we toured with GNR. We thought
that'd be the top for us. Every band would probably think: touring
with GNR is the top. Whether you like it or not, it's the top. Of course
we found that thought exciting. But once you're at it, you realize it's
total and utter bullshit. That it's just your profession. and that you can
derange just as easily in your confusion.

You're doing a Heino cover these days [`Das Schutzenfest', FL].

It's not a cover, it's very much inspired by Heino. Sounds like a
German tune to a childrens' TV series. I sing it in terribly bad German.

What is it about?

About the October festivities in Munich [Die Oktoberfeste, ask Stefan!,

FL]. It's a love song: an old man and his friends are hunting for game
and he sees a big fat woman and falls in love with her.

Didn't the rest of the band find it a bit vulgar to record a Heino-like
song?

What's vulgar about that?

Well, tasteless then?

Tasteless? Are you kidding? There was no discussion about it.

What do you think of Heino?

I love Heino. If you don't know Heino, you know nothing about music.

Is Heino in the USA the same archetypical German he is in Europe?

Of course. But I don't think anyone in the States cares about Faith No
More doing a Heino song. They just think: strange band does strange
song. Flush! And that's probably what they'll actually do when they
hear the CD. It sounds like shopping mall muzak. Very good. Neil
Diamond-ish.

Are these kinds of jokes meant to confuse the metal fan?

We hardly think about metal fans. They don't mean quite so much to
us. No, we do it to keep ourselves happy. Being the dictators we are,
we find we should do things like this. Bands should fool their
audiences, at least: the bands that I like all do that. Besides: that
Heino song is not a joke. You see, almost everything starts out as a
joke. That's how you guys became pop journalists. My profession
started out like that. But after a while...it's your life. How long can you
keep up the smiling?

Don't you have the idea sixteen-year olds take things much more
seriously than you will ever be able to?

I never think about sixteen-year olds. I never think about listeners. If

you do that it influences your writing. Afterwards, it's fun to realize
some kid in a Slayer T-shirt is stagediving to it. But it's not more than
an interesting side-effect.

Wouldn't you be the perfect band to play Lollapalooza?

No idea, we've never been asked. If we were approached, we'd

probably do it. But there's no obligation. I don't think it's that special
anyway.

Lollapalooza started out as kind of an anti-business tour.

Ah, come on...

Well, that's what Perry Farrell says.

And Perry is God. Come on...

Do you think he's a jerk?

He does his marketing well. I give him a firm handshake on that point.
He has a good idea. But what makes him better than...Donald Trump?
Okay, Farrell is a good businessman. He can pay his rent. But I would
never want to be the guru of my generation. That's why I admire him
at the same time. If you can't juggle and you see someone who can...

Translated and transcribed by Frankco Lamerikx.

Frankco:
"This interview appeared after a concert that was laden with the
tension between Jim Martin and the rest of the band. Note that the
interview is done by the same authors who produced the fine
interview in OOR 16, 1992. As opposed to that one, the above
interview goes absolutely nowhere as far as I am concerned. Their
constant referring to Faith No More as a metal band shows a
tremendous lack of insight."

July 17, 1993

Kerrang! Issue 452, July 17, 1993
Jim Martin's on the cover and there are another two Martin pictures
where you can see him *smiling* (one with Metallica's James
Hetfield). Also there are three pics of 93 Patton/Bottum and Bordin
and one 1992 band photo. (Bill holding his naked stomach and in
pants and Jim again smiling with the old FNM eye-inside-the-two-
squares tshirt)

Midlife Crisis?

by Steffan Chirazi

FNM have grown up (or so it sez 'ere)! According to bassist Bill Gould
they're "children running out of talk". But are they sick 'n' tired of
juvenile guitar-slinging' Metal mutha Jim Martin? Is he just
misunderstood? Could they survive without Jim? And who cares
anyway? Sugar-loafin' Steffan Chirazi gets to the point!

"Yuuuur menstruating heart, it ain't bleeding enough for two..."

Almost half of the 60,000 Europeans packed into the Werchter
Festival in Belgium have blasted back the chorus of 'Midlife Crisis',
leving even the normally unflappable Patton dumbstruck. He shuffels
a few steps and takes in the rising screams of the crowd.

"Hang on, hang on, I've just gotta do something so as I can tell my
kids I did it..."

"I was convinced he was going to shit onstage", laughs Bill Gould
afterwards. "We'd just been talking about it the night before, how no
one's taken a shit on a big stage - G.G. Allin in the clubs, but not
places like that"

"I'm glad he didn't," sighs Puffy Bordin. "It wouldn't have suited the
day at all; It wouldn't have been a nice thing to do"

In the end of it, Patton dropped his pants and took off on an gleeful
bound around the Metallica 'snake-pit' (Metallica being the headliners
of the festival), balls flapping in the wind, face twisted into a gleeful
grin of freedom. You've gotta love it.

The 'Angel Dust' tour is winding it's way to a close, and the FNM
rubberband of tension is wound to breaking point, beyond which they
cannot go without entering into a shitload of trouble, grief and strife.
The much documented disagreement between band and Jim Martin
continues dancing the knife's edge.
There is an obvious polarisation onstage between
Patton/Gould/Bottum and Jim Martin. The tension is deliciously painful;
visible from all points of the show, impossible to ignore. At one point
Patton, with his back to the crowd, picks up a bottle of water and
hurls it over his head in the direction of Martin. It misses by only a
couple of feet.

Yet, surprisingly, this tension does nothing to detract from their

performance. Driven maybe by anger, perhaps by professionalism
and most certainly by a superbly balanced set. FNM will be finishing
their current stint of road-work on a high.

Bill Gould and I sit down to a civilised cup of coffee in our Brussels
hotel. As jolly as Gould is, he seems happy at the thought of getting
home soon. I wondered what the psychological wear and tear had
been like, touring the evenly successful 'Angel Dust', compared to the
explosive nature of 'The Real Thing'.

"This tour's been better, because we knew what we were in for. We

knew 'TRT' could break right around the corner, and then in the
eighth inning it did, so we were exhausted when it finally happened."

"This time, we worked at our own pace, and we saw that what we put
in, we got out. We felt we had a little more control or our destiny than
before, when we were just in the right place at the right time, with a
new kind of music that people were more than happy to categorise
instantly."

"This record saw us get over the category thing and we liked this
record better than the last one, because it was more interesting for
us, so it was nicer to tour. It's still been hard."

Describe the hard parts.

"It's physically hard; I'm four years older when I was when I did 'The
Real Thing', and it's harder to wake up with a neckache and backache
and all that. Patton's got really bad shin-splints where he pumps
himself full of aspirin before every gig, and takes antiinflammatories
for his legs."

"They say if he keeps playing he'll have to be in leg braces for six
months, so fortunately we've only got another eight shows. It's
physically wearing; that's the hard part."

Gould explains that enthusiasm for writing the next album is already
high.

"On the last tour, we needed to take a six month break from each
other before we started writing songs, but we'll probably start writing
three weeks after this tour's finished, because we're looking forward
to it."

"I think we're all starting to see the same thing, which is really good. I
don't know what that'll do for diversity, but we had a hell of a lot of
diversity on 'AD', which is good *and* bad."

"But I think this next record is going to happen very quickly and very
easily - I don't think we need that much time off, We're in a really
good mood."

It's been a tour during which the band have learnt to de-bunk myths
and cut out the bad chatting of other situations.

"The myths are more powerful that the reality," he sighs. "We don't
talk as much shit as we used to, and it's a concious effort - we're
children running out of talk. There's nothing the matter with talking
shit about anybody, but you've got to be smart about it."

Is the band more confident in it's ability to wildly go anywhere,

musically?

"Whenever really had a design - it was run on a 'chaos theory', and

we've taken things as they've come. We're kinda like a blind guy
running through a pit of snakes and not getting bitten. We're still as
vulnerable as we always have been."

You think so?

"Completely. Otherwise, where would the challenge be in what we're

doing? There's absolutely no security at all - and if there is, maybe
we're deluding ourselves. Maybe we don't want to see it. Most of the
behaviour in this band has always been more on intuition - it's done
us well, yet I really don't think we've completely understood why it
has. Which is fine!"

The Martin/FNM situation is obviously bda, but curiously in limbo. That

neither party is particularly interested in using this magazine's pages
to blast one another with damning insult is one sign that perhaps the
summer could see a truce. That no one actually knows what will
happen yet is a further sign. Puffy's having none of it.

"How can you know when we don't know?", he asks, accurately

enough. "We're still on tour, we're still playing good shows as I said
last time (K! ish 431), we'll all see what's going on when we've
finished touring."

The level of communication between Gould, Patton, Bordin and

Bottum is strong right now. Will you and Martin have to have some
summer discussions?
Gould: "Yes, without a doubt."

Is it fair to say that you're in a stalemate situation now?

"Well," he continues, "you like to give people's credit that they can
see what's going on. You have to approach a situation like this as one
individual, with the respect that they have enough of a brain to see if
something is or isn't working.

"As far as our history's concerned, up to 'AD' it's gone pretty well, but,
y'know chemistry's always changing, Musicians live together more
than married couples!"

Do you think that musically, you guys and Jim are in the same place?

"I don't think he has any idea what we're doing; I don't think he
understands our music at all."

Well, can people expect to read about a 'D-Day' this summer between
you lot?

"Who cares? This is something that's already an over-ripe piece of

fruit; it doesn't really matter. We've all got gripes with each other."

"But in the end, who really gives a fuck? Life goes on. Sometimes
writers really get upset. When we got rid of Chuck they got upset,
because we were breaking up some kind of consistency that people
depend upon for their everyday lives. People want consistency in
things that they look at, and we feel the effects of that."

What can Bill Gould say he's learnt from touring on 'AD'?

"I dunno... I think that the learning experience for me will be dealing
with conflicts in a non-atagonistic manner. When we've had problems,
we've attacked and fought."

"Like, with Chuck it was a shit fight, because I hated him. I'll admit it -
I hate him now. But it got ugly unnecessarily; things could've been on
an acceptable level. i would like to think that maybe we can learn now
how to deal with our problems a little more maturely, and not have to
many hard feelings."

So what you're saying that any discussion wih Jim this summer will be
gentlemanly?

"As far as I'm concerned with Jim, we've had a lot great times with
him. If Jim did leave the band, it would *never* be the same without
him - it would be something else. and to all of a sudden write that off
and say, 'Fuck him, blah, blah, blah', is not realistic; it couldn't ever
be that simple. We just want to get something that works."
Jim Martin sits quietly. He's been a bit mellower these past few weeks,
and some fear that Big Sick Ugly Jim may have gone off vacation and
left 'old' Jim Martin in a charge. What the hell's going on? Tell the K!
that ol' BSU's still around.

"Nothin' much is happenin'; I'm just sittin' around drinkin' beers. I

have my scrambler, so I can listen in on private conversations -
mostly these old bastards calling young girls. And I have my
binoculars. I was watching hookers in Portugal with them right ouside
my window.!"

Ol' Big Sick Ugly Jim doesn't seem so excited about the playing.

"Well, it's so easy, the songs we're playing. I thought we could've

done a better job on this record by not thinking about it and not trying
so hard."

"Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I dunno what to attribute it to. I felt
that way before it was recorded, so what could've changed changed
about it since then?"

Well you could've talked about this. Then again, you're notoriously
bad communications.

"It's all the way down to messages being passed on, and so on."

You would acknowledge that a meeting will be necessary this

summer?

"Even after a meeting it may not get sorted out - we'll have to see; it's
all a matter of opinions and beliefs, I suppose."

Hypothetically, how far would you be prepared to compromise in

order to keep the band stable, even if it meant personally taking
some blame for a lot of the stress?

"I personally wouldn't feel right saying it was such-and-such's fault.

Who the fuck is anyone to say it's somebody else's fault?"

Bill said he feels you don't understand the music on 'AD'. Is that
accurate?

"It would be if they'd had something in mind, all ready fo me to play.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say they don't much understand the
songs *I've* brought in, because I pretty much tell everybody what to
play."

Do you think about what will happen after this tour? Will change be
forced?
"No I haven't thought about it yet, because I don't really know what's
going to happen. But I'm willing to see how it goes."

Thoughts on the 'AD' tour? What have you learnt?

"Glad we're almost done. It seems like it's been a long haul. Not as
long as last time but it seems really long. It's very different to what it
was with the last record. Last record, it seemed like there were more
feelings on honour somehow, through the whole thing."

"The thing that really got me down this time around, is that we seem
deliberately to have tried to make it more of an atrandom,
playground, circus affair. It's hard to say what I might have learnt
from it all. I'd have to think about that for a while."

What about music ideas - have you been working on stuff whilst
touring?

"Oh sure, I'm always foolin' around with something, but probably very
little of it is suitable for FNM, so I'll have to write songs suitable for
FNM. It requires writing in a very particular way."

But it can be *your* band as much as theirs; you can vault as many
ideas as they can.

"Sure but they're *mine*!"

It seems that you're unhappy with the 'AD' material.

"Don't get me wrong I'm happy to be doing this. I can't think of

anything else I'd rather be doing - digging ditches or going to the
office everyday."

"But in my opinion it's definitely time to do something new, because

this last record didn't work out all that great and didn't measure up to
what it could have."

"People were so insistent on doing certain things that I sat back and
said, 'Okay do the fuck whatever you want'. I didn't want to argue
about little things that aren't that much of a big deal but collectively
add-up. I think everybody's feeling the same kind of shit; a certain
confusion at times."

There's no big secret that FNM are stomping around with in their back
pocket?

"If there is, I don't know abut it..."

And he doesn't know about it, because it doesn't exist. WE want it to,
WE want an easy answer, but that just never happens with this band.
For all the tensions and all the strain, FNM's furious five are simply
focussing on their job of being the best live band around. They will
blow the Phoenix Festival to pieces. Kill all who stand in your way to
get there!

July 17, 1993

Kerrang! Issue 452, July 17, 1993

One live picture from Roddy Bottum (background: Billy).

Cover: RODDY BOTTUM - sod synthesisers, I'll sample pots and pans!

Roddy Bottum - FNM's unique keyboard player works hard to come

with new sounds to prevent the band ever fitting into any pigeonhole.
Here he tells Steffan Chirazi how his efforts have got the band into
legal trouble (!) and might one day, er, drive them into the kitchen...

ROD AGAINST THE MACHINE

by Steffan Chirazi

Like the band's music, FNM keyboard player Roddy Bottum's style has
never been what you might call orthodox. Although classically trained
at an early age, he has ever since strived to make his intrument do
something *different*. Here, he tells Steffan Chirazi that can mean
anything from employing Techno-style sound loops, to sampling
saucepans and Brazilian airline announcers...

FNM are one of this era's most important success stories. Their sound
- and unconscious carefree fusion of rock, metal, pop and rap - broke
through the nation via MTV's endless rotation of the track 'Epic' from
the band's third LP 'TRT'. That platter's success (two-and-a-half million
sales in the USA alone) proved that you don't need a uniform
'pigeonholed' sound to be a massive commercial hit.

Their latest album 'AD' (another platinumcertified success story), has

seen FNM further prove it's musical versatility with a range of genre-
busting cuts, from the thick metal-esque rage of 'Jizzlobber' to the
poppy strains of 'A Small Victory'.

A premier reason of FNM's unique blended sound, is keyboardist

Roddy Bottum. From his childhood days in Los Angeles, Roddy was
always interested in music.

"My mom got me into piano lessons when I was young. She herself
played a lot at home. I only ever played classical piano for years, until
I moved up to the Bay Area when I was 18 and started hanging out
with Billy Gould."

Early days of experimentation with what he refers to as 'a cheap Juno

keyboard' kept Bottum's creativity wandering ever-further. Indeed, for
the era he grew up in, it's amazing that Bottum emerged scar-free
from the times when keyboards equally stodgy Rick Wakeman-style
progressive '70s pomp. A combination of his early classical piano
training, and an astute interest in the use of samples and modern
technology, saved him from the Hammon organ et al.

"I never ever liked any of the 'cheesy' stiff like Moog synthesisers, it
always sounded stupid to me." remembers Bottum. "I liked Kraftwerk
a whole lot, they were one of the first real influences. And when I first
heard The Young Gods, they were just amazing. Also, early on,I was
able to relate to Elton John when I got into rock stuff because he used
a lot of piano in his music."

"I get really turned on by current influences," he continues, "what I'm

listening to. Recently that meant a lot of the Techno stuff that's going
on, that whole basis of taking a sound and looping it, using that as a
sound source and getting the accidents that occur, those strange
arbitrary noises. Those are very important to what I do, as often the
best stuff comes from messing around like that."

"These days I've been using computers a lot, in particular this

program called 'Studiovision' which allows me to use 99 tracks with
sequencing. I have my EMAX 2 keyboard with a hard disc and then I
have this CD-ROM player with a sound source that just collects sounds
and I put these down over a drum beat."

The 'AD' album saw Bottum throw in a bunch of everyday forgettable

noises, and turn them into beautifully textured pieces.

"The break in 'A Small Victory' is very typical of using sound sources
and being a more rhythmic keyboard player. In that particular song,
the sound sources were things as opposed to programs, strings or
pianos. Most of that stuff was recorded with a DAT player, just whilst
wandering out and about, and then I put them into the keyboard
itself."

As Bottum goes to explain, sampling may very well have to become a

more sinister and clandestine affair as lawyers and cheap-shots come
out shooting in increasing numbers.

"It's certainly reaching that point. In another song of the album called
'Crack Hitler', we sampled the voice of this woman who's pretty
famous in Brazil. She announced flights for Varig Airlines, we all really
liked the voice and she pretty much summed up our whole Brazilian
experiences. So we taped her, used the voice and now she's suing us
us for using her voice without permission."

Does this mean a whole new approach when it comes to writing new
material?

"You just have to be really careful when it comes to copyrights and

sound. The other alternative is to become sneakier so far as
disguising what sounds you use. But ultimately, if I'm forced to bang a
few pots and pans and record those for a sound source, that'd be fine,
because with continous looping anything can happen..."

As for the FNM sound, Bottum describes it as being "all about five
people coming in with their own very strong ideas and blending them
together."

For example, if I got the 'pop' extremes with my stuff and Jim goes to
the 'Metal' extremes with his stuff then you're going to have some
challenging music. But it's all about keeping up your extreme stance,
making sure you never dilute your ideas for anything."

July 17, 1993

Melody Maker, Issue July 17, 1993

 Faith No More Set Phoenix Alight
IN FAITH WE TRUST by STEVE GULLICK

Faith No More, who headline the Phoenix festival this weekend, have
been slashing and burning their way across the globe for a year and a
half. Which is why they're in such a foul mood right now, insulting
their (German) fans and generally behaving like all abominably
behaved rock bands should. THE STUD BROTHERS catch up with them
in Denmark and discover how not even 16 months of constant touring
has affected Mike Patton and co's "bionic pride" in FNM. Dane that
peculiar You want it all(but you can't have it)

"Oh my God!" Says Mike Patton, weary, but not yey angry. He's
staring, with slight disgust, out of the front window of the band's tour
bus. "Oh my God!" he repeats.

All we can see are rows of pricey-looking orange and white tents
streching into the distance. That, and the usual gaggle of scruffy
teenagers who spend their festivals encamped outside the backstage
area in the faint but near-religious hope of seeing one of their heroes
as he hurtles past, splattering them with mud.
The arse-end of the bus is still stuck in the HOLY OF HOLIES and
Patton's looking more and more pissed off. His eyes have settled on
three nondescript-looking kids in Metallica T-shirts. As far as Mike's
concerned, they're on the wrong side of the fence. "Fuck you!" he
shouts. "These bastards, fucking Germans!"

Except that these fucking Germans have the necessary red passes. So
they are entitled, at least theoretically, to go wherever the fuck they
like.

How about it Mike?

"These fucking Germans, they don't do anything. They came to
probably three weeks of consecutive shows in Germany. Which is ok
right? But they were like, "Oh, we don't have any money, can you put
us on the list?" Hey, I understand, I'll do that for a while. Then it was
like, "Can we come backstage?" Sure, come back. You won't like it for
long, it's not entertaining..."

The kids come closer to the bus. From this position, looking down at
them from above, Patton's animated irritation (not quite anger) gives
way to lofty contempt.

"There they are!" he says haughtily. "Are ya happy to see me, you
piece of shit? Ha, ha, ha! You made it! Hi guys, hi!"

He gives them the finger. Americans can swear, almost as well with
their hands as they can with their mouths, almost as well as Italians.
The Big Finger. It's bloody rude. The kids are undeterred, perhaps
even encouraged. They give Patton the Little Twiddly Finger and play
a complicated solo on air guitar. "Wah, wah, waaah!" they mouth.

"How did they get those passes?" asks Patton. "How do these people
do it? What are you?" He turns to us. "Anyway, these losers here," he
points at the gormless goons still doing the Hendrix, "just keep
coming, doing nothing, saying nothing. It was like we had to perform
for them in our own dressing-room. I mean fuck you! I don't
understand what they want. I can't imagine we'd be interesting, one
night after another, for 30 nights. No band would be interesting that
many times. I'm sorry, nobody's that good."

For Patton, unstinting loyalty is no more than a euphemism for

sycophancy. And he reacts with appropriate disgust. The thing is, it
has no effect on his fans.-or, at any rate, not the desired effect. Meet
Cher and you'd expect her to be brief but polite, Phil Collins would be
chirpy and chatty. Meet Faith No More and you'd expect, want, to be
pissed on from a great height, a golden shower from rock'n'roll
heaven. Faith No More it seems, may well be hamstrung by their
reputation as total bastards.

NO DAIN, NO PAIN
We're in Odense, Denmark for the Mistfyns festival. We wouldn't
normally describe festivals since most of them smell the same
(pathouli and stale veggie burger), look the same (a dreadlock away
from being illegally chaotic) and, given the fact that the same people
always play all of them, sound the same. But this is Denmark and
they do things a little differently here. To begin with, it's clean, or at
least as clean as a field could be with 60,000 people in it. And where
we might have, say, another bar, they have backgammon tents, big
50-table ones, and outdoor chess. And they have amateur martial arts
displays where beefy-looking Vikings, dressed like American
footballers, whack the crap out of one another with floppy rubber
truncheons-indisputably a refreshing change from fire-eaters and
clowns on stilts.

Best of all, though, they have child labor. Kids as young as six are
paid a pittance to collect the beer bottles left behind by adults-Danish
adults still sadly lack the courage to throw their empties at Lenny
Kravitz.

All of this impresses FNM who are students, even connoisseurs, of the
bizzare. We go to a Danish blues bar in a Danish mall. Proof that it's a
blues bar is supplied by a huge papier mache' black man. Weird shit.
Next door, chubby, ungainly youngsters dance the night away to "Eye
Of The Tiger". Next door again, the Danish equivalent of Serge
Gainsbourg is doing his thing. It's all either daftly explicit or
indiscriminate in the way only Continentals can be about music,
clothes, etc.

"Weird shit," says Roddy.

BABES IN BOYLAND

The following day, Puffy, FNM's drummer, alias Tim Gauguin, real
name Mike Bordin, tells us about weird things and bad things. Puffy,
quiet and laid back, has probably not done as many bad things as the
rest of the band. Then again, it's fair to assume that, having spent the
greater part of 10 years on the road with four other guys, you'll have
done your fair share. "They're a million bad things you can do," says
Puffy. "Just go to the Book Of Bad Things and pick five." Let's pick just
one.

At the moment FNM are doing the Bad Thing, The Bad Thing they're
most famous for, most notorious for-relishing the misfortune of
others, taking a holiday in other people's misery. In this particular
case, a long, bubbly, jacuzzi-style wallow.

They've been doing this ever since they started. Remember "We Care
Alot", that vicious monument to sniggering indifference, rapped with
such unsettling cynics, aimed posthumously at the moral vagaries
and fakery of Live Aid. Or last years slick, sick dig at pinkoes and
peaceniks in "MidLife Crisis". "You menstruating heart," sneered
Patton uniquely sadistic disdain.

The Bad Thing they're doing at the moment is, even by their own
liberal standards, Pretty Damn Bad. They're passing round a
magazine as ragged, well-thumbed and prized as an adolescents first
porn mag. It's Time Magazine and in it there's the piece, the prize.

The prize piece concerns the former Soviet Union's new capitalist
economy. Contrary to popular opinion, Billy Gould, FNM's bassist tells
us, the ex-commies haven't just been hanging around, holding their
dongs, waiting for Walkmans to drop from the sky. No, sirree. They've
been hard at it, holding other people's dongs. Children's, to be
precise. Billy, who can normally out-sick the sickest, could recite the
piece parrot-fashion, but he won't. He wants, by subtle vocal
inflections and well-timed looks of astonishment, to afford it it's full
horror and jet-black humour.

Two children, Billy explains, male, aged between seven and eight, are
being sold outside the Bolshoi Theatre. Sold by their own father. Plus
(and this is a nice touch) he dresses them up like little girls. Canny
Daddy's going for the small but profitable double-deviant market. A
picture shows the boys/pretty little girls in cutesy floral dresses and a
little au naturel make-up. Daddy's smiling at the camers. There's
another man present. The caption is short, but sweet: "Haggling with
a regular customer."

Roddy listens with casual interest as Billy goes into the upsetting
minutiae. Then he leans back nodding.

"And the thing is," he says bay way of an epilogue, or maybe a show
stealer, "The kids aren't fully developed, so they bleed every time.
Every customer thinks he's getting a virgin."
Fucking hell.

We're reminded of a T-shirt we once saw. The slogan ran,"Give us

your children. What we can't fuck, we eat".
Incisive. Well-timed too.
Billy looks sick. Out-sicked.
"That's so fucked up," he says, with undisguised admiration.

THE REAL THING

Faith No more have a million horror stories like this. Particularly

Roddy, Billy and Patton. In part, we're sure, this is the consequence of
desparately trying to fill the idle hours between one venue and
another (this tour has already lasted 16 months). Most bands settle
for silence and a Sega Megadrive.
For FNM it's more. As their name so explicitly suggests, they're driven
by disgust. "Driven" is the word. If they were mere cynics, they'd be
no more or less than a better-than-average bar-room raconteur.

We've seen FNM a dozen times and never once have we seen them
on auto-pilot, just going throught he motions. Never once have they
been lazy or slipshod. Never once have they appeared less than a
band. There's no real ego here (and at Midtfyns they're sharing a
stage with Kravitz and Hutchence, the real cynics, the truly ruthless
pragmatists). Just a collective power. They may be disgusted, or
horrifically amused, but they are moved. And moving. Puffy tells it like
it is.

"I think we're consistent and extremely strong and aggresive live. I
don't think we have arrogance, I think we have pride, pride maybe
that's gotten out of control, bionic pride. It's the only thing that makes
you bust your balls every night for 16 months. Anything else, the
chicks, the cocaine, even the money, is not enough. We'd really have
to slip a few gears to think like that. If we have two bad gigs in a row,
we're like,"Oh man, we suck, we're wasting our time and everyone
else's".

"You have to have that laser-guided fire, you have to be proud of

what you do, do something that's challenging, because you can't go
back and do it again. You have to do your own thing and really, really
compete with yourself. Because that's the only fucking yardstick that
can help push you forward."

LIVE AND LET DIE

Each of FNM, being very different people, have their own yardsticks.
Mike Patton claims that, for him, quality isn't measured by the
quantity of bile he spews out and has spewed out for the last sixteen
months. Rather, it has to do with feeling and movement. You
should've seen him at Midtfyns.

He was a flaming dervish, mad with something, a cute and crazy kid
reducing the stage in a route-march of ever-decreasing circles. He
buckled involuntarily at the waist, pucking his and other's sickness.
And what's more, when he got off stage he was worried.. He had the
terrible feeling he didn't lose it enough. Like, completely.

"I don't think about anything onstage," Patton says. "Definitely for me
it's usually about an absence of thought. And usually I don't
remember anything afterwards, I just get told what I've done.
Sometimes it's just like passing out for and hour or so.

"I always thought that if you're able to have a coherent thought or

complete sentence onstage then you're in the wrong job. For me, it's
always been the opposite. It's kind of like waking up in the middle of
the night and running through a storm, naked. You come back. What
happened? I don't know. You don't think, you just open your ears-
thoughts enter and process themselves."

And that's the way we saw it at Midtfyns. Roddy chopping, stabbing

the keyboards then wandering off, meditatively, and then back and
WHAM! Jim, the furious, fabulous furry freak brother, very metal with
a hairy heart (and he still lives with him mom). Bill, the genuine
shoegazer, the guy that makes staring at the tip of your fat foot seem
lost, intense and cool, not shy and unassuming like you have no right
to be there (fakers!).

"I wanna be myself, not say what I am," says Patton. "A singer laying
his heart out on the table is a played-out thing. Just cutting out a
piece of your heart, to me, isn't that exciting. There are other things
to give, it doesn't always have to be your innermost fucking secret,
you know? The idea that singers and lyricists always have to be
giving, pouring out some deep emotion, is just another fucking fairy-
tale. Sometimes one of the most exciting things is a cold, calculated
nothing. That's another side, you know?"

"Some people would say that's not so honest, but what's so fucking
honest about singing? And, anyway, who said I have to be an honest
guy like everyone else?"

"I guess the idea is that, as a singer, you're supposed to inherit a lot
of responsibilities, but I never thought of myself as that important.
None of us are that type of artist. When I see a picture of myself I
cringe, I don't get a hard-on."

"We just do it, the rest I hate."

A CREDIT TO THE NATION

This week FNM play Britain's newest festival, Phoenix. FNM like
Britain, they reckon it's been good to them. But they're just too damn
ornery to say so.

However, the judicious, thoughtful, graceful and gracious Puffy would

like to give it a go.

"Maybe you could do me a favor," he says. "I was trying to figure out
a way to, like, say thanks to the UK for being really good to us. I'm not
a microphone-talker so I was thinking of maybe holding up a sign at
Phoenix saying,'Hey! Thanks a lot' But if I did that I think I'd have to
join in with the others and stone myself. I don't know. I don't deal in
better or best, comparing things in that way, but I think the UK has
been good to us consistently and longer than anywhere else. I fucking
appreciate it, I really do. We all do."
They said something nice about you!

Treasure it.

FAITH IN FLAMES

FNM fly into the UK this week for their Phoenix appearance amid
controversy following a poster campaign in Australia claiming singer
Mike Patton is a woman basher and with news that bassist Billy Gould
has been left with permanent burn scars after he set his head on fire
celebrating his birthday.

Patton has been the subject of a poster campaign after a backstage

incident following a FNM show in Wollngong, just outside Sydney.

As the band were relaxing backstage, a girl came up to Patton, and,

before he could move away, handcuffed herself to his wrist!

Patton spent the next two hours chained to the girl while roadies and
members of the band tried to free them. After two hours, the cuffs
came off. When the girl then refused to leave Patton alone, he pushed
her away. She tripped and fell on the floor. The following day,
feminists organized a poster campaign throughout the city, with
pictures of the singer headed by the words, "Patton is a woman
basher".

The band's problems continued in Melbourne when bassist Billy

Gould, celebrating his 30th birthday, inadvertently set fire to his head
with some birthday candles. Roadies smothered his head with wet
towels and Gould was taken to the hospital. He was released after
medical attention.

July 31, 1993 Kerrang Phoenix Review

Kerrang!, Issue 454

Paul Rees

FAITH NO MORE have always inhabited a strange world.

Tonight, it became a nightmare. Everyone is tired of hearing their back-biting,
self-loathing, antihero tales of personal conflict and post-fame sickness. It could
have been a big, bad joke, except Jim Martin is standing miles away from the
others, playing his ugly Heavy Metal guitar to himself. Mike Patton takes the
piss out of Jim whenever there's a lull. Then again, Mike Patton takes the piss
out of everyone who's paid to see his don't-give-a-shit performance. Yeah, it's
too big, too sick and too ugly.
Sure, the aerobics stunt at the start still raises a smile, Roddy Bottum's baroque
keyboards are still wonderful, and so many of their songs still stand out like
beacons,but the urgency, energy and desire has gone.
Blame Patton. At Phoenix, the brat-turned-frontman is an arsehole.
"Oh, you silly people," he gasps as people pick up the refrain to 'Mid-Life Crisis'
and sing. Oh, you silly, stupid, arrogant little oik - they've forked out fifty quid,
stood for eight hours, ate crap food and used toilets like sewers just to see you
give 'em a little bit of entertainment, a little bit of attention. And you don't wanna
sing 'Falling To Pieces', you ain't got the time to put anything into "Zombie
Eaters', you only bark and groan and whine and act out some white trash
fantasy. F**k you, and f**k your played-out games.
Patton and the miserable, isolated Martin aside, Faith No More occasionally
blow a storm in a teacup. 'R.V.' is wickedly accurate, 'Small Victory' pulls
glistening melodies out of the hat, 'Be Aggressive' is hilariously off-centre, 'We
Care A Lot' pumps and bruises. Only some of them don't care a lot. Some of
them don't care at all.
Split up, get a new guitarist or a new singer, cut the shit. Now, it's insincere,
worn out, stupid, fake, dull, worthless. Now, it's not funny.

August 1993

Select Magazine August 1993

Last in, First Out?

Mary Anne Hobbs
Photos by Steve Pyke

Say the words out loud ... Faith. No More. Last

year's emergent US supergroup have pushed
'Angel Dust' around the globe for 12 months,
and it's almost over. Tired, emotional and
frayed at the edges, Faith No More are
nearing the end of an important cycle.
Difficult frontman and self-styled 'shit
terrorist' Mike Patton smoulders silently while
the rest of them talk behind his back ... When
does the shit hit the fan?

Mike Patton is quitting Faith No More. That's

it.

Perhaps.

There is a hushed conversation between

drummer Puffy and the band's manager
Warren Entner. Apparently FNM are drawing
up a legal charter, protecting the actual band unit, in case of serious internal
conflict between members.
Well, you have pre-nuptial agreements -- why not something similar for bands? It's
just the timing that seems unusual. After all, the last man in Mike Patton replaced
original singer Chuck Mosely in January '89. Why not draw up such a contract then?
And if it was unnecessary then, why should there be a need for it now?

A couple of hours later, Mike Patton is feeding me shit from a spoon: "Two things.
First, I want to go see Iggy Pop. Right now. (Iggy is playing at the same festival FNM
are to headline, just outside the former East Berlin.) Second, I don't want to do an
interview. I'm in a really bad mood ... I don't feel I have anything to contribute."

Might it be possible to talk after Iggy's set?

Patton's response is low and cold. "I have made my decision. I am trying to be
polite."

The role of Shit Terrorist that Patton has maximised since the release of the 'Angel
Dust' album 12 months ago, is perhaps beginning to feel uncomfortable. The
singer's inglorious antics during this period have been well documented: urinating in
his own boot onstage and drinking it down before a capacity crowd; crapping in
hotel hairdryers; polluting beverages backstage with his own excrement; acquiring
all manner of contraband pornography. In fact the singer -- who said "a shit-eating
video is so much cooler than watching two people kissing" last time I interviewed
him -- is now travelling with what might comfortably be deemed an affectionate
female friend.

It's difficult to ascertain whether the Shit Terrorist is a strap-on character, like
Bono's MacPhisto, how much Patton could peel away, even if he wanted to, and
whether he is actually proud of this image. Most critics, when faced with his litany of
repellant hobbies, have tried to understand rather than chastise him. Patton might
indeed have inspired the press intrigue that he wanted over the last 12 months, but
at what price? There has been a fundamental change in the singer's appearance.
His hair, which is usually fashioned after something you might fish out of a plughole,
is freshly trimmed. His clothing is neat; conservative even. And the steel sleeper
once hooked through his pierced eyebrow is gone. Has Patton already begun to
scrub away the Shit Terrorist's stains? And if so, how much of FNM, by association,
will go with it?

He doesn't want to talk about it. The singer has, according to his press officer, never
refused to give an interview before. There is no question that Patton will be fatigued
and virtually desperate to get home after a solid 12 months touring. But is he
actually ready to walk out on the band? It's a thought. Surely after such a gruelling
period on the road, all members of any group must find very good reasons for
staying together. FNM established themselves initially with Chuck Mosely, and they
could feasibly be successfully without Patton again.

For his part, the singer has always said he loathed being singled out as a
spokesman. But four interviews with each of the remaining band members are
complete. And now it is Patton who doesn't want any part of it.

Of course 2 plus 2 doesn't necessarily equal 5. There is always the fact that FNM
now have nothing left to sell. It's all well and good to spend time talking with
journalists who will use leverage to get front covers when there's 'product' to shift.
But this is the very end of a campaign, there's not even a crummy EP to flog.
Nothing.

"Perhaps you could play up the sensitive artist angle," suggests one of the band's
entourage. Oh yes, sensitive artist, craps in your Fanta while your back's turned...
And there's always the chance that I'm playing into Patton's hands. Perhaps this is
precisely what he wants; a last chance to generate controversy and confusion
before FNM's final European date on the 'Angel Dust' tour (they are scheduled to
headline the Phoenix Festival on July 17). These are, after all, two of FNM's favorite
commodities.

Journalists are frequently accused of conjuring conspiracy theories from thin air, but
under these circumstances it would take a blind person not to notice that something
is wrong in FNM.

Several hours before the Patton incident, and after the conversation with Entner
takes place, Puffy is evasive on the simple question of whether the band will stay
together.

"Who knows what's gonna happen? I don't know what's gonna happen. I expect a
journalist to wanna try to fucking peek under the curtain. But I'm honestly not going
to help you do that, because I know nothing. I know nothing."

Despite all this, I'm a fan of Faith No More. And for people like me, watching the
media watching music over the last 12 months has been depressing.

U2 and Suede are now embracing the role of full-time media darlings. Brett, like
Coronation Street's Audrey Roberts, has an ability to find energy in melodrama.
Bono, meanwhile, has become a veritable male supermodel, largely a canvas for
the oils of his collaborators. Both are skilled diplomats. But their music is shit.

A strong character in a band is appealing to journalists and fans alike. But there is
something grotesque about Bono and Brett's preoccupation with super stardom and
their intense vanity. It's increasingly difficult to relate to these absurd little men
atop telescopic pedestals.

All around, people are discussing the death of music, and it's being reflected in real
terms in plummeting sales of records, concert tickets and weekly music papers...
because miniature icons have been made of these self-infatuated dandies whose
actual music is at best aimless and hammy.

In the last 12 months, I have frequently needed reasons to re-discover my passion

for music. And it has been FNM's 'Angel Dust' (an album for which the band have
received comparatively scant recognition) that I have turned to again and again. It
has not failed me yet.

Legend would have it that the visceral 'Angel Dust' was deemed "commercial
suicide" by the band's record label Slash/London prior to release. It actually entered
the UK album chart last June at number two, and has now sold over 2 million copies
worldwide.

"A lot of that was like Bill, Roddy, and Patton writing 'shite' on the wall, running
away and then looking to see who saw it," admits Puffy. "I honestly never thought it
was commercial suicide. Lou Reed puts out 'Rock N' Roll Animal'. It was a nice hit
record. Got him on the radio I'm sure. Then he puts out 'Metal Machine Music' and
expects the same result. That I think is commercial suicide. The definition of
insanity, even.

"When we released 'Angel Dust', we didn't want the same result we'd had with 'The
Real Thing'. I don't think any of us could stand to go through another photo session
with Mike Patton expected to play the role of Hunk of the Month for 12-year-olds."
'The Real Thing', Patton's first album with Faith No More, was released in June 89.
This gleaming machine-drilled stockade of potential singles sold consistently
throughout Europe, and was finally recognised in the US after MTV dropped the
'Epic' video into heavy rotation. The band were well into their second year on the
road at this point. 'Angel Dust' is altogether deviant by comparison, a generic
mutant with metal, funk, disco and country among its basic component parts; crack,
cock sucking and all manner of crisis on Patton's lyrical agenda.

It was Patton who actually embodied the shift between the buoyant 'Real Thing'
album and the freakish, infernal 'Angel Dust'. All other members of FNM confirmed
the stress Patton had endured as a result of two years touring 'The Real Thing',
which had left him both psychologically and physically scarred. When he joined the
band, Patton was a sunny-natured, sober kid, who might confess to masturbating at
a push but had never actually been away from home. He was ill-prepared for even
the little things, like the type of psychotic fan mail he was to receive as FNM's first
pin-up.

"If somebody takes the time to write to you, put a stamp on the envelope and mail
it, there has to be a reason. You have to know it," he told me when we last met.

"I've had someone write to me -- I hate my parents. I'm in an institution. I'm

thinking about killing myself and I probably will. What are you going to do about
it? Things like -- I've got to take care of an invalid for the rest of my life and I've got
a trust fund to blow, so I'm going to buy presents for you. Or -- My beloved master,
I'll do anything you say. Read this story I wrote about you beating me. It's amazing
how people can take a little bit of your music -- which has nothing to do with
anything -- and twist it into their lives ... Jesus fucking Christ."

Little things add up.

At the point of 'Angel Dust's release, Patton had entirely re-invented himself,
become willfully self-abusive, both onstage and off -- developing a genuine interest
in S&M.; He spoke about anal fixation, he said that a shit-eating video could bring
tears to his eyes, he began developing the Shit Terrorist character in earnest.

"I don't know what happened to me," he said at the time. "I'd say touring as much
as we did, becoming a stimulation junkie, developing a very high threshold for pain
and a very low attention span, would tie anyone in a knot."

There is no doubt that Patton is now nearing the end of an (un)natural cycle again.

Backstage at the Bielefelde Stadthalle, there are cheerful discussions about the
previous evening's excesses: "Wie geht deine nase?" (How's your nose?) That type
of thing.

Meanwhile, Warren Entner, a most gracious fellow and a keen golfer, who also
manages Rage Against the Machine and L7, is divulging a little personal history.

Entner spent the 60s playing guitar in an obscure combo named The Grass Roots
and, allegedly, taught FNM's Jim Martin everything he knows.

Jim is the type of character who might have been offered a starring role in Penelope
Spheeris' study of the Californian metal scene, Decline of the Western Civilization.
The guitarist actually bought Journey's back catalogue on CD to take on tour. His
heroes include Superman, John Wayne, and several gunfighter balladeers. Jim would
go to war for his country, and opposes gun control in the US: "Why should I want
another one of my rights taken away from me? Hell, I'm not even allowed to smoke
anywhere these days!"

Even though the guitarist is now balding along his centre parting, and will
occasionally wear three pairs of glasses at one time ("Jim Martin is so old it takes
him three hours to shit," observes one of the road crew) he has a notorious appetite
for groupies.

"Yup. The main thing in life is to eat food, occupy your time and have somewhere to
bury your bone," he confirms.

Not worried about AIDS at all?

"Of course. That would be a heck of a thing to take home and spread around your
family."

Jim still lives with his mother.

All five of FNM are radically different in character. However, Jim and keyboard player
Roddy Bottum are the absolute antithesis of one another. Macho and homo
respectively. So how does Jim feel about Roddy's recent decision to talk to the press
about his sexuality?

"I didn't feel anything. It's a personal thing. None of us ever gave him a hard time
about it. Whatssisname, from that fucking heavy metal band ... Rob... "

Halford? (Judas Priest singer)

"Well, he's supposed to be gay, isn't he? People still go to see Judas Priest concerts.
If Roddy wants to announce something in the press then it's up to him. I don't feel
anything about it."

Last month the heavy metal parish magazine Kerrang printed an article that dealt
candidly with Roddy's sexuality. The piece was first published by San Francisco
based gay magazine The Advocate. For Kerrang -- an organ best known for its naive
but blinding sexism (with columns like 'Gaggin' for a Shaggin') and basic
reinforcement of rock stereotypes and cliches -- the piece was revolutionary.

Jon Hotten, then editor, who decided to publish this article, says: "I wanted to
challenge readers, to make them think about the fact that there might be gay
people in metal. I don't believe sexuality should be an issue at all, but the fact is,
nobody in metal has ever come out and spoken about being gay before. It was a
really brave thing for Roddy to do, because you could always get the odd idiot
going, Oh right, that's it, I'm not having anything to do with poofs. But I was
genuinely surprised by the amount of letters we got about that piece, all of which
were really, really positive."

Roddy appears both glad and mildly apprehensive about Kerrang's decision to run
the article.

"It's probably a really good thing," he says.

What reaction have you had from people since you decided to go public about your
sexuality?

"I don't think I've really talked to anyone about it. I think people tend to ignore it. It
embarrasses people, makes them feel uncomfortable. But that's fine because my
original position was that it was no big deal anyway. Why should anybody want to
talk about what I do with my dick in my spare time?"

Had you told your parents before you spoke to the press?

"Sure, yeah. They're open-minded people. Good people. They dealt with it OK. I
mean, in the way you'd expect your parents to deal with it. We come from different
generations. It is difficult for older people to come to terms with homosexuality
because it was so chastised when they were growing up."

Were you confident that your fans would respond with the same understanding that
you'd expect from your friends?

"Yeah. People that identify with our music, I think that they deserve a lot of
credibility. I don't really think they'd give a shit. And I can only compare the people I
think are seeing my band with the kind of people I would feel comfortable talking
with. That's the only way I can deal with it. On those terms."

Do you think that by coming out you will also help those kids in similar hetero-
dominated environments who are struggling with their sexuality?

"Yeah. Definitely. That was in my mind. If you're gay and that's an issue, it probably
does make it easier to know that someone you respect and admire is too. I don't
know if I'm fit to be any kind of a role model though!"

There is another small point. Pre-Roddy, keyboard players in hard rock groups were
often hidden behind a curtain onstage. Some bands have even been known to
install monitors in the dressing room and insisted that their keyboard player
perform backstage!

Roddy smiles the smile of a bashful pioneer: "That whole keyboard player thing, it
just adds to the charm, doesn't it?"

Day two at the festival just outside the former East Berlin, where the most popular
local radio station plays yodelling around the clock. The (deep breath)
Freilichtbuhne Whlheide Ampitheatre is not dissimilar to the type of arena that was
constructed for Hitler's rallies. Primitive terracing built into a man-made valley
extends in a 180 degree arc around the stage. The crowd on the level ground
directly in front of the stage lip have enormous energy and mosh as if they are
springing from trampolines in one of those yogurt commercials.

Backstage, a member of the Anthrax crew is acquainting three teenage girls with
ancient Western protocol observed when wishing to obtain a backstage pass. And
Suicidal Tendencies are practicing aerobics (or possibly ritual foreplay) in front of
attentive female onlookers. Probably standard behavior at a metal-fest.

Bass player Billy Gould is sat on the grass. Let's ask him why FNM should stay
together ...

"Did you ask the rest of them this question?"

Yes.

"What was their response?"

Puffy said: "There's only one reason to stay together. To make better music than
the last time. As long as the band are interested in being creative, as long as we
can reach up under our shirts, grab a squeeze and feel that something is still
beating, then we have every reason to continue to play music together."

Roddy claims he's now more interested in FNM than ever before. "I think everyone
felt pretty confident on this tour. And now I'd like to see us really stretch. I'd like to
see FNM do something real experimental, like writing a classic Top 40 pop single."

Jim appears to calculate with his cock: "Take into consideration the prestige of the
band. The power to attract women and a reasonably pleaurable lifestyle. You've
gotta be out of your nut to throw something like that away. You can be sure Jim
Martin will see this thing through. No matter how long it takes."

Billy grins and considers his response. "I think it was more a question of why do we
stay together after The Real Thing. I don't think any of us were prepared for that
two year period on the road. The Real Thing tour I look back on as a lotta hell. The
record wasn't successful right up until the end. When the success came we were too
tired, too shellshocked to be able to appreciate it and, God we hated those songs so
fucking much.

"I really didn't want to go through it again. 'Angel Dust' was hard to write. And it
was even harder for us to get ourselves together to go and tour again. But we knew
the record had the potential to really do something, and this time I think we've all
played well, and really enjoyed the songs.

"Now I think we're all feeling a need to reinvent FNM. But it's a natural thing, like
equilibrium I guess. The boat rolls to one side and you have to counteract to the
other. I think we all feel a need to shift again."

Then the Patton incident happens. In the final moments of a two-day period with the
band, the singer refuses to talk. Patton's timing, if deliberate, is impeccable.
Suddenly there's no opportunity to ask the rest of the band what the hell is going
on. Time only to accept terse apologies before the bus lurches off the site.

Which forces me to speculate about the significance of the contract that Puffy and
Entner were discussing. About Patton's mind-set, and the motives for his behavior.

There is one other thing.

Patton and Roddy were asked if they'd like to dress in drag to illustrate this feature.
Roddy seemed to relish the idea. Patton said he'd think about it. The shoot didn't
happen.

There is a chance that Patton was sorely offended by the suggestion. But it's
unthinkable that you couldn't broach such an idea with the singer who talked
candidly in our last interview about dressing up in a Darth Vader suit and having
people piss on him.

No future? It's impossible to be absolutely final about such a durable group. FNM
bounced back from the brink when they lost Chuck Mosely in 88, and again after the
crippling Real Thing tour in 91. Warren Entner has found a surrogate FNM in Rage
Against the Machine who are poised and ready to foster the FNM audience while the
band decide whether their sores will in fact, scab over again.

But it looks like not even Mike Patton knows where Mike Patton is going now.

September 1993 Select Magazine

N/A

October Metal
Interview 4
1993 Maniacs

N/A

FAITH NO MORE | METAL CD MAGAZINE |

AUGUST 1993

Metal Cd | August 1993

With FAITH NO MORE just back in the UK for their recent headline at the Phoenix
Festival. Jesse Hash meets with Bill Gould, who admits: "I have a lot in common with
the Elephant Man". All will be revealed.

Leap Of Faith

Eleven years on and still people can't figure out Faith No More. Of course, that's just
the way the band like it. Despite kicking out their original singer (Chuck Mosley) and
recruiting a new one that nobody initially seemed to like (Mike Patton) and who already
had his own part-time musical project (Mr Bungle), Faith No More have finally become
one of the most vibrant, eclectic rock outfits on the planet.

Drenched in sweat after just stepping off stage after yet another gig in the band's
interminable tour itinerary, with strands of lank hair plastered to his forehead, FNM
bassist Bill Gould flops into an armchair in the band's cramped dressing room, slams
the door shut and politely fends off any hangers-on or inquisitive crew members.

Does he want to shower before we do the interview? Gould shrugs, smiles and decides
to wait. I light the first of several cigarettes and watch as the burly bassist starts to
steam, the vapour rising off his shoulders as he gradually cools down. One lone drop of
perspiration trickles off the end of his chin and lands on the floor... Shall we begin?

"Never in my right mind did I expect the band to sell as many records as we have - and
to sustain it!" he announces with a combination of pride and perplexity, and exhales
heavily.

FNM came into being in San Fransisco in 1982 as a "hippie hate band". They had a
turbulent early career, discarding several would-be guitar heroes on the way before
settling on the basic nucleus of Mike 'Puffy' Bordin (drums), Bill Gould (bass), Jim
Martin (guitar) and Roddy Bottum (keyboards). As soon as vocalist Mike Patton Joined
at the tail end of the '80s, the band's career seemed to go into overdrive.

The hit single 'Epic' (1990) was their real commercial breakthrough and their third
album, 'The Real Thing', cemented the wisdom of staying with LA label Slash
(distributed through London Records in the UK). But just as fans and critics alike had
FNM pinned down as a vaguely wacky hard rock group, a series of events made it
clear that here was a unique band.

They released an uncompromising and uncomfortable fourth album, 'Angel Dust', in

1992. They toured briefly with Guns N' Roses but couldn't stomach the rampant sexism

of Axl and co. Roddy Bottum shocked the music scene by 'coming out' as the first
wellknown hard rocker to talk openly about his homosexuality. Then they destroyed the
Commodores' supper club ballad 'Easy' for a UK Top 5 hit.

"We try not to be an innocuous band, and doing an innocuous song like 'Easy' was an
exercise in having fun," states Gould. "So when you make a record that was so much
fun to do, it's really funny when everybody ends up liking it."

How have Faith No More adjusted to the business side of the industry - surely
something they would have had to cope with even more after achieving commercial
success?

"I think the only analogy I can probably make is the analogy of the alcoholic: how can
you be drinking for 30 years and then stop for the rest of your life and never go back?
How about we take this one day at a time? We Just do things in our own way.

"I don't know how we do it or why we do it. We just keep doing it because every day we
wake up and we do it again," declares Gould. "When everything's going really
well...why think about it?"

Did he ever think the band would be this successful?

"It's taken a long time for the band to reach this point. It's interesting to note that when
you write songs you hear the potential in a song as soon as you've written it. It's an
interesting feeling, because somehow you always know there's a lot of potential in what
it is that you're doing but you really don't know what's going to happen next.

"'Epic' was interesting because we knew that it was a good song and we knew that
'The Real Thing' was a good album. But we had already been touring for six years, and
we really didn't know if we were Just under some kind of delusion or whether that song
and that album had the potential to go somewhere. So when it does happen it's really
interesting, and it makes you think that your instincts were correct."

Prior to any success. Faith No More, like any other band, were forced to tough it out
through a period of little or no acclaim and even fewer financial rewards.

"There were definitely more negatives than positives," recalls Gould. "And there's still
more negatives than positives in being in a band now, even after having a Platinum
and Gold record. It's very much a situation where if you didn't like the music you simply
wouldn't be doing this. The negatives can come from so many different angles it's
ridiculous."

Such as?

"Well for one thing, no matter how hard you try, anything you say and anything you do
will somehow be put into a package to be sold. Everything you do is being sold and
becoming contrived, even if you're not personally contriving it.

"We've been together as a band now for 11 years, and it's only in the last two years
that we haven't lost money on a tour. So that's a good nine years of that, which is a
long time. I started this band when I was 18 - myself, Roddy and 'Puffy'. I can't believe
it, I'm fucking 30 now!"

Mid-life crisis?

"I don't know. It's just a strange business being a musician," ponders Gould. "In a lot of
ways the lack of respect is one of the negative aspects. Perhaps not a lack of respect;
but a musician's place in the whole scheme of the music industry is interesting. I think
there's a tendency in this business to keep musicians producing records but keep them
stupid and ignorant, even though the musicians are the ones making the product that
everybody else is making money off of. Musicians are definitely the lowest rung of the
ladder as far as the industry scale goes. But if you like music and that's what you want
to do, then you don't really have a choice."

The record company must surely have an idea in their minds of the image the band
should have, and the band probably had their own idea. So how involved do they get to
make sure the packaging of Faith No More is acceptable to them?

"We're strange compared to other bands, in the sense that we're a little bit different,"
laughs Gould. "And so the good thing about it is the record company pretty much lets
us do whatever we want. They give us full rights to the packaging and full rights with
the recording, and then we give them everything finished.
"The only tough thing about us and packaging is that there's five of us in this group and
all of us have an equal vote. Sometimes, coming to a decision can be a real pain. But
once we make a decision we get what we want. We started that from day one. So
we've built a healthy trend towards doing what we want and I think that's just the way
we operate."

So there's a good communication between band members?

"There has to be to operate. If the record company has a suggestion we always listen
to it, but pretty much all of the product that we put out we put out ourselves. London
Records didn't even hear the last record until after it was finished."

Considering some of the horror stories that have circulated about record companies
dictating musical direction to bands, what does he think has prompted the label to give
FNM so much creative control?

Gould hesitates for a moment. "I think..." he begins, searching, "it's because we started
out doing it ourselves and we've achieved a certain degree of success doing it our way,
so why mess with it? What they're really doing is giving us the opportunity to go further.
But if we mess up really badly then we'll probably end up losing that privilege - then
they might want to step in. But we've done well on our own and so there's no point in
changing it.

"I'm not sure they really understand us enough to know what would be good for us
either if we did fail and they wanted to step in," he continues. "I think our record
company's attitude has always been: 'I'm not sure what you guys are doing, but keep
doing it because it's working'."

So what happens if, God forbid, something doesn't sell, and suddenly they need to
examine everything and the record company doesn't understand them?. That could be
very damaging to the future of the group.

"You do have to deal with a lot of prejudices," concedes Gould. "We really picked up
steam in the hard rock/heavy metal field and we are, to a degree hard rock/heavy metal
band. But I think there's a lot more to us than that.

"We can be a pop band; we can be play a lot of different kinds of music,

And with 'Angel Dust' we had a hard time just breaking the prejudice that we are not
just a metal band. We don't have all the stuff that goes with being a metal band at our
shows; we don't want a wet T-shirt contest going on between, acts. We're just not that
kind of band and I'm not that kind of guy.

"But," he adds, with a sigh. "I guess we were on the 'The Real Thing', and all the
people liked it. And all those people were like: 'Why don't you just do again?' We don't
repeat ourselves...we don't repeat ourselves...we don't do that."

Then again, night after night on tour, surely it's unavoidable that a band end up
repeating themselves as well as improving as a band.

"We toured The Real Thing' album for almost two years, so technically I think we got
better as a band. Touring makes you a better group just because you're playing every
night. I think we grew and I think it was in a positive direction. But you really don't know
that when you're doing it. The clichés that we heard! When you play the same song for
two years you really start looking at it through a microscope. And we knew that after a
year straight of playing on the road there are things that you're going to start hating.
And one of the things that we started to hate was playing those same parts all the time.
So when you make the next record you go with the understanding that you don't want
to do something that you're going to hate it in a year. So you challenge yourself to
make it interesting for yourself, and you learn a lot in the process."

Does the repetitiveness of the whole process really allow them to have a sustained
interest?

"That's true, it does get very repetitive. And when that happens that's when you hear
the things you really don't like. Sometimes you put out a record and there are some
parts and you don't like them that much, but they'll do because they simply work. But
after two months of playing them live on stage every night you start to hate them. 'Epic'
I could play forever. 'Epic' I could play for the next 20 years and never get bored.

"The interesting thing is when you start improving or you start changing, you always run
the risk of learning so much more that you're almost becoming too technical for the
people that want to listen to you."

So simplicity is a virtue?

"Yeah. There's a very fine line there."

How involved in the production process do the band get? Will just one member of Faith
No More get more involved than the others?

"I like being there every day when we record. I like being around a lot. But the bottom
line is that it's a vote. The majority gets what they want in the studio or anywhere else."

And who's the person at the record company you have to answer to?

"I haven't seen them yet," he laughs.

So it's a voice on the phone. And a signature on the cheque... Have they received a lot
of royalties from the record sales yet?

"Well, The Real Thing' was a Platinum record, so we recouped all our advances,"
laughs Gould. "I really wanted to get a ranch, and so I bought a little area of land. And
it's really not quite like a ranch, but it's half an acre in the hills. I've got three llamas
now. And I went to a thrift store and I bought a little ride - you know, one of those rocket
rides that you put a quarter in. So I'm working on it. I'm on my way to setting up my own
little amusement park, and I've got a couple of exotic animals and a little farm to round
it all out. It's only a half an acre, but after a few albums I might get up to Michael
Jackson':
level!"

And have 3,000 species of fish?

"And a skin problem. Look - the signs of success are starting to hit me already! I'm
getting darker!"

Did you watch the Oprah Winfrey interview with Michael Jackson?

"Oh yeah. I don't think it was Michael Jackson though, I think that was Bette Davis."

You're an entertainer, a musical person Just like Jackson. How did that interview strike
you?

"I think Michael Jackson is just as weird as he was before he went on the air with that
interview. Frankly, I don't think he has the chance of ever getting rid of that label. Not a
chance in hell that he could make it walking down a normal street. That was a sad
show. It was pretty morbid."

What were the things that made you feel that way?

"Well one thing he said was: 'What's this about the Elephant Man's bones? I don't want
to buy these bones. What am I going to do with a bunch of bones?' I admit that movie
really affected me. I cried when I saw it, because I have a lot in common with the
Elephant Man. But I couldn't help but crack up at a comment like that!

"He also said his father beat him before every performance. And then Oprah says: 'He
beat you?' Like it was some real surprise. And then she asks: 'Did he beat you, or hit
you?' 'Oh no, he beat me'... A lot of really painful admissions. A lot of near tears. I
mean, if this stuff is really on the level then it's pretty horrible. Real sad."

When you see that and you take a close look at yourselves, how does that make you
feel about the extreme demands of success in the music business?

"I think that we've been unsuccessful long enough to know the benefits of that. I think
that everybody in this group is happy just being able to live comfortably while making
music. I mean, we'd be doing this anyway. We didn't stop when we weren't successful
for years. I've been in bands since I was 13. I think the success part of it is easy to take
or leave.

"We appreciate things a lot more because success didn't happen for us that quickly.
That's made us appreciate where we're at a lot more. And you know how important that
is."
Break Out Issue 7/1992

Pictures: Billy with red Brujeria - !Demoniaco! t-shirt, Jim as usual,

Puffy drinking some water and Mike with brown trousers, orange
teeshirt and a white woolen cap.

 Chris: The show yesterday in Dublin (Ireland) (ticket prize:

$100 !!!), was that the first one for you?
 Billy: Well, no - we played two secret gigs one in Nottingham,
Rock City and the other at the Marquee Club in London. [may 13
and may 14, 1992]
 Chris: How are the lyrics this time? [speaking of Angel Dust]
 Billy: I say only one thing. A absolutely *sick* individual wrote
the lyrics, ha ha ha ha! Mike Patton wrote the lyrics for TRT in
 about three weeks, but his time he was also included for the
songwriting and it took him *very* long to write the lyrics, six
months to be precise, so that he himself was satified with them.
Also he says, that the lyrics are very personal.
 Chris: You told me yesterday the meaning of the lyrics to
'Jizzlobber'. Sounds like a sick story?
 Billy: Yes indeed, but in a different way - really sick, because it's
about someone who's in jail.
 Chris: Next up: 'Kindergarten' and 'Crack Hitler'.
 Billy: Honestly I really don't know what 'Kindergarten' is about,
but 'Crack Hitler' is about this drug baron who takes Crack and
compares himself with Hitler, because he commands enough
dependend people. So he thinks he's the biggest one... You
know what's funny about all this? His skin is not even white!
He's colored and he thinks he's Hitler? We all laughed a lot
about him, so we had to dedicate him a song.

Break Out Issue 9/1992

 Chris: Let's talk about the Poison-story!

 Billy: Oh my god... I did *NOT* tell you that the last time?
 Chris: You just told me one month before that Monsters of Rock
festival in Bologna (August 13, 1990), that you're telling the
audience one day that the Poison drummer can suck his own
dick. What you really did at that festival and due to this that
was the only Mosters Of Rock Festival you played.
 Billy: Okay, from the beginning. A long time ago we met some
guys from a record company and those told us that the Poison
guys are really cool, and the drummer is so 'skilled' that he can
suck his own dick. We didn't believed them , but they sweared
they saw this at a party. After that we read in an interview with
the drummer where he was asked what the craziest thing he
ever did was and he answered: Well, at a party I was really
drunk and I showed the people how skilled I am. That convinced
us and we knew it was the truth. Well, then in Bologna Mike
woke up in the morning and said: Today is the day! Today I tell
the kids onstage that the drummer from Poison can suck his
own dick. Right before our show, we met the Poison guys and
they were really cool, so we thougth that we can say that
without offending any of them. What can I tell? After the sixth
song Mike did it and we thought "Shit! He really did it!" First,
every one was happy, everyone laughed about it, but then...
after our show Poison plus bodyguards were waiting for us and
insulted us! Especially the bass player! He screamed only and
was about to cry, while the drummer the one we offended, sat
there quietly. Later that day they told us that we were fired and
we couldn't do the rest of the Monsters Of Rock tour. Mike
 Patton phoned the bass player at 3 am and wanted to say sorry
about all that - he wanted to play at Paris the next day - but the
phone call with this fucker was like this:
o Bass player: *We* don't like it if someone says that we
can suck our dicks.
o Mike: Hey, wait a minute I didn't say that! I said that I
heard from someone that your drummer is so skilled that
he can do this!
o Bass player: What's so funny about that?
o Mike: Can you also do that?
o Bass player: Of course I can do that!
o Mike: You kiddin' me, right?
o Bass player: No, I can do it. Can *you*?
o Mike: No!
o Bass player: Well, then you have a very small one.
 Billy: Then it was obvious that Mike is not going to apologize for
what he said at that festival. "What a dickhead, Jesus Christ!"
It's still unbelievable what we heard there. Even Mike was
shocked and that means a lot.
 Chris: Do you had further problems after that?
 Billy: Our record company was shocked, also was our manager,
because the Poison management in America is really powerful.
So powerful that they could harm us. But after all the
management was really cool, and so it was just a funny story...
and you know what really strange was? They asked us if we
want support Poison on their next tour? We still can't
understand this after all that happened.
 Chris: Can something like this happen at the current Guns 'n
Roses tour?
 Billy: NO WAY! We all promised that we'll be like angels this
time. I would more say that we sweared it.

That's it. If some sentences sound wrong, that's because I had to

translate all that stuff. The interviews in those magazines are much
longer, but I thought that I just translated the important (funny) part. I
hope you enjoyed it.

Translated by Stefan.

Miscelanea
FAITH NO MORE | 14.05.1992 | THE FIRST SHOWS
ON ANGEL DUST
On May 13th 1992 FAITH NO MORE performed songs from their smash album 'Angel
Dust' live on stage for the very first time.

Rock City in Nottingham was the venue and we have from our archive a review
featured in Kerrang! magazine.

Much as I'd been looking forward to seeing Faith No

More again, it has to be said that the way they
opened the set - by ambling into a track from the
new album - was not encouraging. Apart from the
fact that it sounded like a dodgy Country & Western
piss-take, the band seemed vaguely disinterested in
the proceedings right from the start. A few songs in,
and things still haven't realty got any better. We get a
couple of tunes from 'Introduce Yourself' and then
the band plod back off into unfamiliar territory, all of
which seems politely received
but doesn't really get anyone worked up. It's not until
'The Real Thing' comes around that any of the
usually very enthusiastic Nottingham crowd actually
get it together to go apeshit - and even then it's only
a very small poo.
For some reason Faith No More seem all disjointed
and out of synch tonight, and it comes across in their
music in a big way. Mike Patton plays his usual half-
psycho, half-twat act as well as ever, and thankfully
refrains from putting on silly voices, but Roddy
Bottom and Jim Martin seem to spend most of their
time glaring across the stage at each other, it's only
the first date of the tour and already they hate each
other; God only knows what they'll be like by the end
of it all.
Although the single 'Midlife Crisis' sounds pretty
good and is well received, much of the new material
from 'Angel Dust' (and there's a lot of it) comes
across, on first impressions, like rehashed old stuff.
It's either a fast-ish Faith No More song or a slow
one, and nothing particularly stands out apart from a
song that was introduced as 'Piss Flaps'. The few old
favourites that get an airing this evening are sloppy
beyond belief. 'Surprise! You're Dead' all but falls
apart midway through, and they round the set off
with an awful rendition of 'Woodpecker From Mars',
which is held together only by Bordin's drumming.
Having only ever seen Faith No More play absolutely
perfect gigs before, it comes as rather a shock to
witness them on such bad form. I know it's the first
night of the tour and everyone does the occasional
duff gig, but this felt like they were charging people a
tenner to watch them rehearse. An encore of the
magnificent 'Zombie Eaters' and 'Epic' just about
salvaged the show, but with overzealous bouncers
and T-shirts at £13 to contend with, it wasn't exactly
a great night out.
Faith No More are much, much more impressive
than this, and if it was your first time tonight then it's
well worth giving them another chance. Show a little
Faith - they can do better.

Not a glowing review but it was the first show of many that would feature the glorious
songs from ' Angel Dust'. The very next night FNM were back on stage this time at The
Marquee Club in London. Unlike the previous show the audience was largely made up
of the UK's media circle come to hear the follow up to 'The Real Thing'.
We have three more favourable reviews of this show.

RAW Magazine | Issue, June 1992

WHAT'S GOT ten legs, a stupid name, was in

Europe to support Guns n' Roses and decided to
play a secret show in front of around 1,000
hyperventilating lunatics? The answer, of course, is
Faith No More. Word had spread like wildfire, and
outside the venue tickets were changing hands for
up to £48. A sea of disappointed faces formed a
barricade outside the doors, forcing the lucky few
with the right credentials to gain admission to fight
their way through. In typical low-key manner,
guitarist Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin appeared in the
boozer next door for a pint and to size up the
talent. Once inside the heat was unbearable, and if
you were less than seven feet tall, you probably only
saw the top of vocalist Mike Patton's head, but the
music was well worth the suffering. Inevitably, the
quintet spent time promoting the crazy new 'Angel
Dust' platter, opening with 'Smaller And Smaller' and
also playing 'Land Of sunshine' and 'Everything's
Ruined'. If new 45 'Midlife Crisis' borrows heavily
horn the big hit 'Epic' then it's no great surprise;
indeed, as the show transpires it becomes evident
that Faith No More have found a comfortable niche.
Based around eccentric rhythms, the throbbing bass
of Bill Gould and stunning washes of colour from
keyboardist Roddy Bottum, FNM strike an easy
groove and don't look, like stopping 'til well after the
last underground train has departed. It's a long walk
home but it's worth it. Just ask RAW snapper
Tony Wooliscroft who, trapped up against the stage
among hoardes of other lensmen, doesn't know
whether to head bang to the staccato strains of 'We
Care A Lot', to do the job he's paid for, or simply to
gaze in loving admiration. With 'Angel Dust' still a
while away from release, it was songs like 'Surprise!
You're Dead!','Edge Of The World' and the
instrumental 'Woodpecker From Mars' from 'The
Real Thing' that got the best reactions.It was fitting
that Gould, Patton and Bottum should all represent
in Carcass T-shirts ("We like Carcass, if you don't
then fuck you!"), as they whipped up a surprisingly
intense wall of noise. By the time we arrived at the
barnstorming 'From Out Of Nowhere' and 'Epic', both
delivered as encores, Patton had the crowd eating
out of his hands. A baffling character with his
greased back hair, he tells the crowd he'll see 'em
again atWembley Stadium with Gn'R, before telling
'em to "Blow the place up," and adding a subtle dig
at the headliners into the bargain. As a colleague
remarked afterwards, it'll be a miracle if FNM last
more than a few days on the tour when Axl hears
about it.

NME | Issue May 30, 1992

"You guys should be round the corner watching

Sepultura. C'mon, what's your excuse?"
Goateed singer Mike Patton, skatepunk bum turned
beatnik geek, is having an on/off Yugoslavian type
war with the stage-divers. They come in droves,
thrusting themselves past him and into the sweat box
moshpit in elegant tumbles and feet-first stumbles.
Adopting a wishful moniker for a pre-Guns N'Roses
stadium tour support warm-up, Faith No More are
back in their natural habitat and the divers' bastard
choreography adds the right touch. This is a group
whose wayward spirit hasn't been settled by success
and who are still capable of turning tables and
remoulding the basest of Metal component parts.
The Faith That Kills goad and taunt their audience,
telling them: one, to pull a fire alarm or call a bomb-
scare if they go to see their shows with Axl and Co;
(Alex says: any of you who have the bootleg of the
band at Wembley that month, maybe this might
explain why Patton asks 'How many of you phoned in
bomb threats today' at the beginning of The Real
Thing?) two, the address of their hotel for an after-
show party; and three, that among special guests
waiting backstage is a very pissed off Rodney King.
In between they unleashed a lacerating, pounding
musical blitzkrieg that showed they ascribed to no
rules and were headed for the outer limits with
renewed fervour.
Their set starts with a sampled heartbeat turned to
ear-bleeding volume, steadily increasing, until, by the
time this eccentric bunch take the stage, you feel
there's some defiantly martial rite being enacted.
Haircuts No More take this keynote, run it into their
songs and pummel, scour and batter it to death
throughout their set. Central to their modus operandi
is drummer Mike Bordin, king hell Teutonic tribal
beatmaster, whose exploding heartbeat polyrhythmic
thrashing defines the path taken by his cohorts.
Bordin's beat is the detonating force that blows the
songs apart, the recurring calamity that holds them
together. By turns hysterically funny, queasily
obscene, inflamed, schizoid and shocking, Faith No
More are the most futuristic, bowdlerising Metal force
for the '90s. Fuelled by testosterone madness and
showing versatility as a kind of Tom Waits from MTV
high school hell, Patton's characterizations get
caught in doom and bile-filled terror trips. The guy
mightn't be much of a singer (?-Alex), but his vocals
capture a well of feeling in a furious stream of high-
pitched yells, screams, moan and larynx shrapnel.
They ended with the house lights on, inviting their
good friends (FACT) Right Said Fred up onstage.
But the Freddies weren't 'In the house' so they lived
dangerously by using the none-too-amused skinhead
bouncers as stand-in props. The guy they singled out
as Michael Bolton wouldn't join them either, despite
the memorable protestation ("C'mon Michael, we
*know* you got soul").
Then it was time to go home. Patton smiled, waved
goodbye; "Goodnight, and remember - smoke
crack," he said. And they were gone.
MELODY MAKER | June 1992 | Neil Perry

"A LOT of people who bought our last record did so

on the strength at 'Epic'," said Faith No More bassist
and head manipulator Bill Gould recently. "A lot of
little kids, ha ha ha! And i don't think they're going to
like this new shit, ha ha!" They laugh a lot, do Faith
No More. What at? Well, just look at the inherent
cynicism in the name; there isn't much you can do
but laugh nowadays, and Faith No More aren't the
crying types. It's easy to forget that they've have
been doing this for the best part of a decade, which
is enough time to encounter a lot of anger and
bitterness and suspicion, to work yourself into a real
mind-set, and then to really get your shit together.
Theory. Sick to the hind teeth of worldwide
Blockbuster "The Real Thing", FNM go away to write
some proper music, get a little ugly, fuck with each
other's minds and make a record that they won't be
embarrassed to play to their drug dealers. They want
to call it "Crack Hitler" but, after some more fights,
settle for 'Angel dust' (a drug, by the way, for people
who really want a one-way ticket) because that's
bound to still annoy someone. And the practice? All
that and so much more.
Billed tonight as 'Haircuts That Kill', an excuse to
kick out some Jams and wind themselves up before
the real funny business with Guns N'Roses starts
next month, FNM played lots of old shit, some
stunning motten-steel-coated-in-sugar-'n'-honey new
stuff, and showed how they undoubtedly have their
shit together. The new songs are bigger, better,
nastier and shinier. They open with a righteous,
impulsive rigid-middle-finger called "Caffeine", and
it's at this point that the main transformation within
the Faith camp shines out, that of singer Mike
Patton. Joining such a band, and at such a formative
stage of his life, has clearly twisted him all up , as if
there's any it wouldn't have. The snotty, confused
lamb of two years ago is cooler, darker, stronger,
with a fresh hard glint in his eyes that he uses to
laser the front rows while the cerebral carpet
bombing of "The Real Thing" throbs all around him.
Mike Patton has grown into one hell of a front man,
which in a band of frontmen is no mean
feat. Midway, after the red lightning flashes of
"Introduce Yourself" and "Surprise! You're Dead!",
another new song called "Land Of Sunshine" rises
from the ashes, and it is shockingly beautiful. Still
inimitably weighty and groovy, of course, but with a
deftness of delivery and power of soul that makes
much of the back catalogue sound like kids' stuff.
Which doesn't prepare you at all for the soon-to-be-
infamous pairing of the gay anthem "I Swallow",
about sucking cock-oh yes, really-and the seedy
brilliance of "Crack Hitler", which comes over like a
wannabe "Miami Vice" theme tune performed by a
bunch of Death Row convicts. Faith No More are a
telepathically tight live act-old chestnut "We Care A
Lot" still sounds incredible after the 6,000th listen-
and whatever games they play off stage are
forgotten when drummer Mike Bordin starts hitting
things like LAPD's finest, when freak bro guitarist Jim
Martin starts laying down the law, when keyboard
guru Roddy Bottum begins throwing psycho-shapes
like a mad dictator. The joy of Faith No More is that
they belong nowhere, to no movement, scene, label
or geographical youth club. They owe nothing to no
one. "We're playing Wembley in June," Bill informs
the crowd. "Don't come". "Yeah," nods Patton in
agreement, "stay at home and phone in some bomb
threats". They encore with "Epic", laughing, and
"From Out Of Nowhere", snarling, and then with a
drawled "Now piss off" from Jim they're gone.
Imagine it, five million MTV kiddies running around
like little piggies, mainlining on aural PCP and
whistling songs about sucking dick on their way to
school. It's going to be a great summer. Faith No
More are untouchable.
TOURING ON ANGEL DUST IN SHEFFIELD

1992 was one the most important years in the 38 that I've seen so far. I
managed to pass all my GCSE's at school. I sneaked into my first certificate 18
(Reservoir Dogs). And it was without a doubt one of the most exciting years for
music ever, with an abundance of innovative and life changing albums released.
This list included what would become my favourite of all time Faith No
More Angel Dust.

On June 13th I got to see the mighty FNM for the very first time at Wembley
Stadium supporting Guns n' Roses. Six months later I attended the Sheffield
Arena show as they toured 'on Angel Dust' as headliners. Even though I was at
shows in 1995 and 1997 this night was unequalled for many years, in fact until
2009 when I was lucky enough to attend FNM's first show after their hiatus at
Brixton Academy. Twenty three later I thought I'd share the experience of the
night in Sheffield as best my memory can recall.
So on December 5th myself and my comrades arrived extremely early, being
only 15 it was doubtful we would get a pint from the nearest pub which was fit to
burst with long haired, bearded rockers. However we managed to hide amongst
the crowd with our rolled up army pants, doc martins and FNM shirts. My
brother being almost 20 got the drinks in.

After sinking a beer (slowly but manly) we got to the venue and joined a
moderately sized queue of hardcore fans who had braved the cold weather to
ensure they got the best view. Not long after we noticed a mini bus on it's
second circle of the arena and recognised the faces squashed up against the
glass as did many more standing along side us. Someone probably
screamed 'It's Faith No More' which indeed it seemed to be. The frenzied crowd
forgot the time they had spent assuring their place in the queue and sprinted
after the now accelerating van, we however kicked a path through the
abandoned bags to stand triumphant hands planted firmly on the venue doors.

When the doors opened we ran immediately into the open arena and celebrated
our cunning plan with high fives and shouts of something of 'first in' (remember
we were only 15) then made a bee line for the merch stall to buy one of each T-
shirt available.

Wearing our three new AD tour shirts over our Own we made our way
uncomfortably down into the cavernous hall. This was only the second time I
had been to a stadium gig but I straight away realised leaving the seats in was
going to be a big mistake! It actually turned out to be a blessing for us as when
we found our allocated three chairs, which were two rows from the stage, the
usher kindly ejected those sat there (seating politics). Also myself being on the
short side, the chair made an excellent step to improve my view.

L7 were off the scale, I didn't know much of their set except the obvious
'Pretend We're Dead' but they were a really pleasurable kick in the balls ( if that
is possible), spitting out aggressive 'grunge' noise and changing preconceptions
of females in the metal music scene single handed. The tampon that bounced
off my friends head added to our mounting excitement for the main act I'm sure.

Shortly after L7 exited the stage a rumble of noise began in the stands, the
'Final Countdown' rolled out from the huge speakers and Four fifths of FNM (Big
Jim far too cool for this) ran out performing some bizarre exercise routine much
to the pleasure of the now buzzing crowd.

My memory is a blur of euphoria sound and colour from here on in. They
blasted out the classics and most of AD. 'Crack Hitler' comes to mind as being
particularly awesome as does 'Jizzlobber', and 'Midlife Crisis' which had
become my favourite song in the month since its release. A gigantic 'FNM star
of chaos' comprising of hundreds of flashing bulbs raised in the heavens above.
Amazing and mind blowing as the set was, the most memorable part of the
night came after the band left the stage for the second time having played their
encore. Myself and my pal were right at the front looking for a souvenir plectrum
or broken drumstick.......suddenly 10,000 people turned around rushed back
towards the stage crushing us against the railing. Then from above us a hand
grabbed our shoulders and we looked up to see none other than Mike Patton
mic in hand clambering into the crowd! We screamed at him and outstretched
our arms to touch, help, push whatever we could as he surfed over the heads of
the delighted throng. Jim Martin appeared inches from where we were stood
and pointed at our disbelieving faces with a grin! The band played 'Let's Lynch
The Landlord' and disappeared this time not to return.

I didn't get the keepsake guitar pick but I still have the fingerless glove that
touch Patton's beard to this day......which as I write this does seem a little
creepy.

As I´ve said I have been to quite a few gigs since and had equally awesome
experiences, but this was the first time I really felt like a music fan and felt part
of Faith No More's following.

I know many of you readers would've attended this momentous show, if so

maybe you can help me fill in the gaps. Share your memories of this or any
show that sits in your memory as fondly as this night does for me.

Cheers for reading..... Jim

 4 (and
May, 1993 Hot Metal Various
cover)
May 22, Interview from 'The
Kerrang
1993 Advocate'

Missing
Feb. 1992 Metal CD Magazine
June 1992 Noise of the 90s
July 1992 Lime Lizard
September 1992 Spin Interview
December 1992 Indiecator Interview
Dec 1, 1992 Rock Power Interview
Dec 5, 1992 Kerrang Gig review
Dec 23, 1992 Raw Gig review
Feb 13, 1993 Kerrang Gig review
May, 1993 Hot Metal Various
May 22, 1993 Kerrang Interview from 'The Advocate'
September 1993 Select Magazine
October 1993 Metal Maniacs Interview

http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/02/faith-no-more-lost-interview.html
Metal Maniacs | December 1992

What You Eat

Peter Moses

I was not much of a FNM enthusiast, but I'd met Mike Bordin once after a Ritz show of theirs
here in NYC and got along with him quite well, and Angel Dust had impressed me with its many
interesting songs. So it was, off to the ritzy Roger Smith Hotel to meet in their plush suite for a
talk with dreadlocked drummer Bordin.

I told him I perceived distinct ties between Angel Dust and The Real Thing, contrary to the
popular belief that the two are worlds apart. "I think the press says that. To me it's not a
radically different record. To me it's a better record. To me the song are kind of written a little
bit better; more interesting development of them. You say one thing, and then you say
another thing, and hopefully it's a logical progression of ideas." There is a continuity to the
whole record, with songs connecting in a way similar to, say, a Zappa record, though there is
silence between each track. Also, the beginning of "Land of Sunshine" sounds tome like a faux
"From out of Nowhere" for the first few beats. "That's interesting, that's something I never
would have thought of. Both of them I think are really good opening tracks on a record,
because they do come kind of brash and 'whaa!!' and try to get your attention, and that to me
is like the sequencing, and how you lay out the record, like you said about Zappa and how
they're connected. That's so important, because you can have ten or thirteen really great
songs, but you can sequence them in a way that would be very difficult to listen to, or you can
sequence them in a way that it really flows together, and before you know it you've listened to
the whole record and it's satisfying. I think each record has a flow. I think once you listen to the
records as records, they can also be put as a connective steps on a path."

Speaking of paths, it seems that FNM is following two simultaneously: the heavy eclectic and
the more stream-lined "popistic." "I think that you could say that about the last record,
though, too. I think to compare the last record to the one before it, the heavy parts were
heavier, more aggressive, but the melodic parts were also more melodic, and to me that's the
balance; that's what makes this band a little bit interesting, it's not just the five guys that {taps
leg rhythmically} do that at the right time, it's kind of balanced; there's a couple of different
elements that'll hold each other in check, and on some songs on this record it's more leaning
towards here, the heavier maybe, and on some songs it's more leaning towards here, the
cleaner, but overall it's definitely still us trying to push it, trying to develop it, trying to prod it
along in certain ways."

Has one of those five guys, er, "bungled" things for the others? "I think it affected us in a really
good way, because when we came off touring for a year and a half or so, it was like the magic
slate was completely covered in writing; there was not any more room for any more writing on
that slate, so we all went and said all right, and erased everything, and started writing new
stuff. Mike Patton, in his way--I think he's blessed with, to me, tremendous creativity--I really
think it was necessary for him to do that, because that was his way of going Pshewt! and
erasing all this. It's something he needs to do; it's an outlet. They don't do anything that we do,
we don't do anything that they do, to me it is very different. It's his high school chums, he's
hung with them for a long time. And what I mean is, I think allowing him to do what he felt he
needed to do and express what he needed to express that he wasn't expressing with us helped
him to refresh everything, relieve some pressure, clear his head, and come back to this record
feeling good about us for not really fucking with him for doing that, for giving him the respect
and trust to go and do it, and coming back and being enthusiastic about this. That's all you can
say. My only contention about him doing that always was as long as it doesn't interfere or cut
into what he's doing with us, as long as it doesn't make him compromise what he does with us,
his time is his own and more power to him. To me he came to this record refreshed,
enthusiastic, ready to work, and the work that he did, I'm really proud of that work, I'm proud
to be involved with it, because I think he did a damn good job.

FNM wrote the new record "in San Francisco at home, when we were finally finished touring.
The last record kind of cleared our minds out, and then we just started playing again, just
started jamming new stuff, with bass lines and melodies and rhythms, and that's how it
started." Hmm, sounds like bass, keyboards and drums, the three original
members..."Keyboards, bass and drums, definitely. Most of the stuff started there, but there's
also stuff that started with Mike Patton, there's also stuff that stared with Jim, but most of the
permutations are keyboard-bass, keyboards-drums, drums-keyboard, you know, it happens a
lot that way, because we were the ones that were here, we were the ones that came to
practice a lot and were really interested and really pushing forward and really kind of
challenging ourselves." I asked if this is the type of music they expected to be playing when
looking ahead in 1982, the band's year of inception. "When we started it was much more
simplistic, me and Roddy and Bill. There's a song on the last record that's descriptive of what
we were then, the song 'Zombie Eaters', where the bass line starts: 'Bam, Bam, Chk, Chk, Chk',
that was one of the original things we did, we did it for about twenty minutes at a time. That
was what we did. Bauhaus used to do it in their day; it was like a skip, it was like a piece of
music cycling itself over and over, very simple, just like a small chunk. And that's what we were
after, I think, to try and get at something that wasn't really being got at then, with all
the...there was Husker Du there, and there was early R.E.M., a lot of that jangly kind of
psychedelic Replacements sort of...not really getting at what we felt could be gotten at. And
so, to answer the question, 'no' because it's developed now more to a point of not just an
interesting part that was being repeated, but hopefully a bunch of interesting parts that are
stacked next to each other that then take you on an interesting trip, so hopefully we're getting
better at writing good songs."

With many bands, a producer can be "instrumental" in the editing and restructuring of songs,
often to the dismay of the bands. What about ol' Matt Wallace there? "He doesn't do it any
more, he used to try and we resisted it, and now he doesn't try, now he tries to get a good
sound, and I think that's what he ought to do. We hopefully have it reasonably together by the
time we go into the studio, you know we have a reasonable idea of what we want to do, so I
think it's harder for him to monkey with it. With five guys in the band that's enough
monkeying. We worked on everything with him, and it's gotten better every time, it's much
closer than it ever has been to sounding the way we feel we sound, it's not easy with the
keyboards and guitar and a lot of bass and a lot of drums, it's not easy balancing them. We try
to get a realistic sound, we don't want a super human sound by any means, we don't want it to
sound like...that kick drum that sounds like that {clicks fingers}. Everything on that album
drum-wise is real, there's no samples, there's no digital effects. We made our own reverb, we
ran all of our tracks through an extremely live room and miced the ambience; we made our
own ambience. It was really important. It's extremely organic; it's an extremely real sound,
what you hear is what we did, and I'm very proud of that also. What I was going to say about
Matt and getting better at sounding like us, it also has to do with the way you write songs. The
parts that you construct have got to leave enough room for everybody to breathe, and that's
also the progression of hopefully writing better songs, getting better at what we do. It's all kind
of interconnected."

You might be wondering how FNM got on the big GN'R/Metallica ticket. "We were invited. I
grew up with Cliff and we used to play instruments together before either of us were in bands.
We actually knew each other before either of us played instruments. He was my weed dealer,
and we'd just talk about music and go to concerts and party--nothing major, just kids, this was
in seventh grade. He said one day 'I'm gonna play bass' and I said 'alright, well I'll play drums.'
That's literally how it was. We then joined a band Jim Martin had, because he was from the
same area, and Jim and Cliff became inseparable, and this was again about fifteen years old,
sixteen years old, and here we are. That's where our connection really truly started, and then
he obviously joined the band, and left us. Too bad, we miss him. We toured with GN'R in
Europe. One of the very first tours we did off the last record, when nobody knew about it--it
came out in June I think, or May--was with Metallica in July, to pretty much apathetic
responses everywhere, which is to be expected, because Metallica has some of the most loyal
fans, especially at that time. It was a good test, you know, it kind of gave us some thick skin.
They invited us. It really had nothing to do with us wanting it, it had to do with them wanting
us. For me, usually, a tour consists of playing gigs and depending on how your record's doing
you're either playing in smaller places or bigger places, but then trying to sneak off and go the
a baseball game and seeing all the stadiums, you know? And now we're playing in the Astro
Dome. It's absolutely hilarious, it's unreal. We'll see all the places first hand, we'll shit on the
toilets of all the better stadiums." Indeed, as they are shit upon with bad sound and a half hour
set.
In case you didn't know, FNM is in close competition with Boston for the Least Frequently
Released Albums Award. "It may not seem obvious, but the reason why we do that is we're on
tour the rest of the time. We put out a record, it didn't hit, it didn't get American or even
world-wide acceptance by many people until almost eight months after it came out. It's simple,
we don't sit at home on our ass. We jumped the gun on this record by a month with this Guns
tour. That's why we took it, because we wanted to play. This German reviewer wrote 'These
guys are assholes, they put out a record every three years and sit on their ass and don't do
anything.' And we went to Germany seven different times on the last record, no shit seven
times, where was he? We wrote enough material for a double album, we wrote twenty songs.
It was a great luxury; we've never had that luxury before."

Of course I couldn't help but ask Mike if the back cover, the "meat" photo, indicates a
vegetarian statement. "It has nothing to do with that. It has more to do with: the band itself,
the sound of the band, the sound of the record, the songs on the record, the title, and the
cover, going from wide to narrow. The band I think has many elements, some heavy, some
beautiful. The record is balanced I think between some things that are really aggressive and
disturbing and then really soothing. The title of the record is something that if you didn't know
what it was--if you didn't know about any drugs--it would sound beautiful. It's just something
that seems beautiful but is horrible. The front cover is something beautiful, put it with the back
cover and you've got something disturbing. That's what we wanted. The record cover and
layout was designed by us and put together by us. {In the lyrics} the big letters, those are his
{Mike Patton's}, he had to fight for that. All the songs I think really confront you in certain ways
and provoke you to think." One peculiar feature of the new record is the picture of Russian
soldiers with FNM's faced dropped in. "It was just pure 'we don't want to sit for busts', you
know? It's bullshit, man. That was a thing the record company really tried to foist on us. They
really tried to fuck with our layout, and sent us these fucking pictures of us, just our heads. It
was like this, they wanted us to have a poster inside the record consisted of our five heads on
a black background, everything was black, the whole inside, and it's like, 'Fuck you.' We're
going to make our cover, we made our record, we produced it our way, we wrote our songs,
we played them our way, it sounds like us. We got our cover FINALLY, we got our artwork
FINALLY, fuck you. If you let them do it, they'll do it. That's why they pay people in the art
department, that's why they pay graphics people. And in some ways it can be really helpful, in
some ways it can be really good. Ultimately, what I see I really like. We told them what we
wanted, we actually got to the point where we had to sketch it out, but they made it real for us
and I really appreciate that. We have five people, that's enough opinions, I said it about the
producer, I'll say it about he record company, that's enough. We co-produced it, more so tone-
wise than balance-wise, proportion-wise. We were all really concerned about the actual sound
of the record., and that's really where you can make a difference. To me that Russian picture's
like a Monty Python where you see a guy's head, a monster comes by and picks it up and
Ptock! puts it somewhere. It's not 'We're the most important people in the world.'"

How does one's enthusiasm hold up for 10 years? "I feel like we've got a long way to go, to be
quite honest with you, but I'm ecstatic because I feel like we've got something to say, and if we
ever are lucky enough to get there I think when we look back we will say it's been a really cool
trip that we've taken people on, it hasn't been just...Statue of Liberty, whatever, you know, the
main stupid things, it's been interesting, and I really feel that we actually do have something to
say, it's up to everyone else to listen or not."

RIP | December 1992

DUSTED IN A ZONE OF THEIR OWN

Christine Natanael

Christine "The Writer From Hell" Natanael talks to FAITH NO MORE'S

BILLY GOULD.

One evening, as I sat in a friend's living room eating Chinese food,

watching cable comedy shows and feeling my deadline time
approach, I began pondering-pondering the big things in life, that is,
like, why is it that any fortune cookie fortune is inherently more funny
when you add the words "in bed" to the end of it, and whether or not
there were any philosophical and true prophetic meanings underlying
the fact that Faith No More's guitarist, Jim Martin, was chosen as one
of the major music figures to time-travel into the future to address
music students in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. The latter weighed on
my mind as I listened to the new album Angel Dust.

Faith No More has become, over the last three years, one of the most
respected and popular "underground" bands. Although the group has
attained vast acceptance since the release of their 1990 album The
Real Thing, it was in 1983 that the group was actually conceived
within the marginally sick minds of Roddy Bottum and Billy Gould.

In the beginning they were just a couple of L.A. punks who had moved
to San Francisco. There they met up with Mike Bordin to form Faith No
Man, and even had vocalist Courtney Love (of Hole fame) on vocals
for 6 months or so before hooking up with thrash riff-meister Jim
Martin and psycho frontman Chuck Mosely, and then changing their
name to Faith No More.

It was with this lineup, armed with a 5-song demo, that they
convinced Mordam Records A&R rep Ruth Schwartz to put up the
money to record 1985's We Care A Lot. The year of 1987 brought
their first major-label release, Introduce Your- self, but the subsequent
touring also brought on in-fighting and the throwing of punches,
which finally ended when Mosely left the group. In January '89, the
band asked a 21 year old fan from Eureka, California named Mike
Patton (who had been the first to audition) to join the group.
Nineteen-ninety saw the release of The Real Thing, and the band
embarked on a 10- month tour with groups like Metallica,
Soundgarden and VoiVod. After months of playing to medium-sized
crowds and even getting abused by Metallica fans, all of a sudden,
album sales doubled within one week. This prompted the group to
continue touring for an additional 8 months with people like Robert
Plant and Billy Idol, as well as doing Rock in Rio 2, and the San
Francisco Day On The Green with Soundgarden, Queensryche and
Metallica.

During their hiatus between touring and recording, the band members
were involved in many different projects. They contributed a lounge
version of the Dead Kennedy's song "Let's Lynch the Landlord."
Guitarist Jim Martin made his acting debut in the aforementioned Bill
and Ted's Bogus Journey. Bassist Billy Gould produced demos from-
Brujeria and The White Trash Debutantes featuring Ginger Coyote on
vocals (a band Gould was once a member of)as well as traveling with
producer Matt Wallace to record music of the native peoples of
Samoa. Mike Patton kept quite occupied between his Mr. Bungle
project and performing with John Zorn's jazzcore outfit Naked City. In
between all of that, the band also found time to record Angel Dust.

"It took about three months," says Gould via telephone from his hotel
room in Newcastle, England where they've got a day off on the new
tour with Soundgarden and Guns 'N Roses. "We recorded it a month
before we left on the road. We hit the road right away. We didn't
waste any time because the Guns tour happened in Europe. It was
already booked, and they asked us if we wanted to do it or not. So, we
had to say yes. Obviously."

“People think it took three years to come up with another record, but
two of those three years were touring," he continues. "When we got
off tour we spent, like, six weeks just doing nothing. Then it took
about two months just to f*ck around in the studio before we even felt
like writing anything. Actually, the whole thing came together in
about a year, and that's written, recorded, and mixed."

Angel Dust is a collective mix of boundary-pushing material, eclectic

and steeped in extended hyper-surrealism. It is not the logical pop
follow-up to their hugely successful cd of '90.
"All of the songs serve a certain purpose or another," says Billy. "By
themselves, they don't work without everything else. Like, 'R.V.' is
such a slow song, but you have to have a song like 'Caffeine' to
balance it out, you know? One really isn't good without the other. I
don't think we could have [done the pop thing]. I mean, it probably
wouldn't have been much fun. We try to make a record that is as
challenging and fun for ourselves-everything has to sound good,
obviously, but we try to make it fun for ourselves."

The most notable change, besides the obvious com- plexity of the
new material is the style of vocalist Mike Patton's singing. His timbre
is deeper, richer. The phrasing, while still unusual, has taken on more
of a free-formed approach. Had his time spent with Mr. Bungle and
Naked City had a huge effect on his thinking and his style? "It
probably had a pretty big influence in that maybe he felt like he had a
little more freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted," admits Gould.
"Maybe his imagination expanded a bit. I mean, the last record he
was kind of repressed because he had just joined the group and he
didn't know us very well.He didn't know what he could get away with
and what he could do. We've always said, 'you can do whatever you
want as long as it works.' I think he got a little more wise to what the
game is all about, too. I mean, he toured with Zorn and got into some
really wild shit and got to understand it. But I think he also got to
understand that there's even a consistency to that stuff when you
play it everyday. And really, you know, if you tour in a band, there's
these certain things that are, these inanities that affects everybody,
no matter what kind of band you're in. It's the same fucking thing. If
you tour, there's a certain point where, you could be Poison or you
could be Einsturzende Neubauten, but you still have to deal with the
same shit. When you play everything day after day, no matter what
your music sounds like, it's gonna feel the same."

Still, Gould admits that had FNM not toured so incessantly with the
last album and exposed their music to so many people at so many
levels, they wouldn't be where they are today.

"A lot of bands like Ministry, like us, record companies three years
ago didn't know how to market these kinds of bands. They've been
learning how to now, but they didn't know how to then because there
was no market. The bands had to create it themselves by touring, by
getting in people's faces and people going, 'what the hell is this?'
People always assume the general public is stupid. If you do assume
that, then what you do is you breed stupid people because you give
them stupid shit."
In the interest of not giving the fans any more stupid shit, FNM has
put together a record that is a biting commentary as well as a cynical
indulgence. The songs themselves simply drip with irony and sardonic
humor. A fine example is the track "R.V." with all its grumbling and
mumbling.

"He's just talking about how he is a beaten soul," states Billy, "and he
doesn't care anymore because he gets beaten down so hard that he
doesn't even feel it anymore. The last thing he says is he has to have
a talk with his kids, and he'll just tell them what his parents told him-
that they'll never amount to anything."

Also included is the band's own commentary on those who are caught
in the midst of the war on drugs.

"The whole idea for 'Crack Hitler' came from this quote in the
newspaper," claims Gould. There was this guy who was an ex-drug
dealer who was going around the Tender- loin district in San Francisco
and he was lecturing on the evils of drugs. And I read this in the
newspaper. I cut it out. I just laughed so hard. It was just this quote
where this guy said, 'in regards to my usage of the drug, it modified
my personality to the extent that I was highly irritable. I was like a
crack Hitler.' And it was such a-you know how people talk when they
get in front of a judge this kind of verbosity that is completely
inappropriate. And then he calls himself a crack Hitler, but it's such an
ignorant thing to say, because crack and Hitler are the two most
abstract things you could ever put together. It was just such an
extreme abuse of the language that we laughed really hard. It's such
a sick concept. We could never come up with it on our own."

Yet, much of the concepts on Angel Dust they did come up with on
their own. And the levels of sickness will be wholly interpreted by the
listener. This is not a safe album, by any means. It is going to stir up
some emotions and maybe even make you feel nauseated, yet it'll
make you feel as if you've also just seen God. I guess that's why they
called the thing Angel Dust after all.

Sky | December 1992

Simon Witter
It's the tail-end of 1992 and rock's new bad boys have upset Axl and
committed "commercial suicide". Simon Witter watches as they torch
the rock rule book...

MIKE PATTON IS running wild-eyed through the foyer of Grand Rapids'

Club Eastbrook, dragging a chunky skinhead by the collar. "Get on
stage and fucking stay there!" he shouts as they head back to the
auditorium. Tonight Patton is not the bouncers' friend, but then
security has been winding him up something rotten. Not that it takes
a lot to wind Patton up. On stage he seems born to be intense.

"On our last tour I jumped into the crowd and broke this kid's nose,"
he reminisces. "I tried to get him medical aid but he said he'd rather
have a T-shirt. It's bad. What do you tell his parents? The other day I
met a guy who had a scar over his eye, just like mine. I asked him
how he got it and he said: 'You did it to me. But it's cool'."

It's better than an autographed forearm, I reassure him; at least it

won't wash off. But Patton is inconsolable. Off stage he becomes the
kind of caring, thoughtful guy who helps old ladies across the road.
And it is this contrasting nature - like the angelic swan and the
slaughterhouse carcasses that adorn the respective sides of their
Angel Dust album sleeve - that characterises everything Faith No
More do. The day anybody understands what this band is really about,
they'll probably hang up their guitars and get jobs at Taco Bell.

I knew something was wrong on our first meeting, in Marquette,

Michigan, a picturesque, Twin Peaks-y one-street town on the shores
of Lake Superior. Sheltering from the rain in a doorway, the band who
trash hotel rooms and shove shit in hair dryers probe relentlessly
about the state of the pound, the ERM and the future for Maastricht.
It's like one of those Wayne's World sketches where Wayne speaks
fluent Cantonese or Alice Cooper discourses knowledgeably about the
state of world socialism. Except Faith No More aren't joking; they
know their stuff. I'm devastated. A real American rock band would
hardly be able to name the capital of France, let alone understand or
care about the intricacies of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. The next
day in Grand Rapids I catch Patton speaking perfect Spanish and
accuse him of betraying the fundamental yank- rock tradition of
imperialist arrogance. "Hey," he counters, in a pathetic and not
entirely serious attempt to save face, "we're only learning Spanish so
that we'll be able to talk about drugs and groupies in Spain."

Repeated warnings that under no circumstances would I be allowed

on to FNM's tour bus have left me suspicious. Its interior must either
resemble Dante's inferno or, more likely, hide a secret that could ruin
the group's bad-boy reputation. Hell, once aboard, Faith No More
probably form a knitting circle that would make the Whitby WI look
like a Led Zep orgy.

FNM were born 10 years ago, when Billy Gould (bass) and Roddy
Bottum (keyboards) moved from LA to San Francisco to go to college,
where they met drummer Mike 'Puffy' Bordin. The trio planned to use
different guitarists and singers for every show, but a year later had
solidified their line-up with guitarist 'Big' Jim Martin and (former)
frontman Chuck Mosely. At the time, there was a thriving
underground scene but little record company interest.

After their 1985 debut LP We Care A Lot, FNM began criss-crossing

America supporting everyone from Metallica to the Red Hot Chili
Peppers, but by '89 the big break still eluded them, and Mosely's
behaviour - including once, apparently, falling asleep on stage - had
alienated the rest of the group. Mosely was given the heave, Mike
Patton was discovered in his home town "void" of Eureka, California,
and a deal was signed with Slash Records. MTV took the new-look
FNM and their new album The Real Thing to heart, helping push the
single Epic into the US Top 5. The big time had finally arrived, and
Faith No More boarded the grunge train they had helped launch and
rode it for all it was worth.

From We Care A Lot (a sarcastic take on the Live Aid generation) to

Midlife Crisis (a rip-shredding look at the 30-something generation),
FNM's attitude has been consistently irreverent and in-your-face, but
the music never stands still. Just when people thought they had a
handle on them, this summer the group released their third album,
Angel Dust, a baroque pomp-punk brew closer to Rush on acid than
the acerbic funk-thrash that fans had come to expect.

From the all-out sickness of Be Aggressive to the syrupy sincerity of

their Midnight Cowboy cover, Angel Dust pig- headedly refuses to
deliver a follow-up hit, just as the band refused to be grateful or well-
behaved when Guns N' Roses took them on a three-month US and
European tour.

Pictures and performances may suggest unity, but the band has an
odd make-up. While Mike, Puffy and Billy are in conference at the
back of the bus, the group's furry-freak- brother guitarist, Jim Martin,
lies in a parallel universe of his own, smirking at the puerile obscenity
of an Andrew Dice Clay video. It's not that Jim (who played The
World's Greatest Guitarist in Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey) is any less
nice than the rest of the band - all shockingly pleasant and
unpretentious -just that he appears to have joined the wrong group.
In appearance and attitude, Jim seems to have zoned in via a Tardis
from 1975. At the Marquette sound check he jams Led Zep riffs, while
the rest of the band are playing something completely different, and
at his side of the stage three teenage groupies dance with
inappropriate abandon (rock sound checks are slightly less exciting
than watching Newsnight). None of the others would even consider
entertaining groupies.

"No, we don't do anything like that. That to me is a rotting corpse. It's

just something that is stinking and it's there. It's a whole
decomposing art form."

People know the rest of the band don't do it - all Roddy gets is boys
saying: "Can I buy your hat?" But Jim is obviously so into it. "He does
what he does, and is constantly the butt of every joke, the scapegoat
of the band. But the weird thing is that he really is that way."

On-the-road entertainment is clearly important to a band that spends

as much time touring as FNM do, but for the other members fun,
music and workaholism suffice. In the brief periods they have off,
Patton plays with his performance art group Mr. Bungle, while bassist
Billy moonlights as the only white member of LA's "Mexican answer to
NWA".

Having just finished three months touring Europe and the States with
Guns N' Roses, FNM are now on a headlining tour of their own, on
which (for entertainment) they had hoped to bring along Right Said
Fred.

"We wanted them to tour America with us," says Patton, "but when
we shopped the idea around the promoters - which is what you do
when you set up a tour, throw some bait in the water - the reaction
wasn't too good. It's too bad, cos I would go to a tour like that, out of
morbid curiosity."

FNM's Marquette fans are heavily clothed in Ministry, Chili Peppers

and Rollins Band T-shirts. It's hard to see any of them wanting to
spend an evening with Right Said Fred.

"It would be great!" gleams Patton. "Oh man, there'd be brawls. But
that's the beautiful thing. People like that should be fucked with, they
should have one arm behind their backs. They would be perfect for
that. They're amazing. Also the fact that they [Right Said Fred]
worked in a gym is great. I love that." But FNM do have their fun.
They always come on stage to the tacky strains of Europe's The Final
Countdown, and play a version of the Commodores' Easy so sincere it
almost hurts. Another band might do it as a joke, but there's not a
hint of irony or camp about FNM's version. From Mike's soulful croon
to Jim's searing guitar solo, this is as true to the Commodores as FNM
can humanly play it. That it gets not a barrage of missiles, and
instead the night's biggest cheer, is all the more strange in the
context of FNM's crazed teen crowd, most of whom spend the whole
show stage-diving with the frantic futility of hamsters on an exercise
wheel.

"Usually we just do songs we like," says Patton, explaining the group's

cover policy, "so we have to do them sincerely. If we did a
Commodores cover and chuckled at the end of it, it would make
everyone else feel a lot more comfortable with it, but that's not the
point of it at all. It's stuff we like and we deliberately put it in between
two noisy songs to make people take a step back."

A step back is just what FNM's record company took when they heard
the group's new album, calling it (rumour has it) "commercial
suicide".

"I think everyone sees Angel Dust as this big sword in our neck. A lot
of people think we're saying 'Fuck you!' to what we've always been. In
a way that's great, because I think bands should challenge people and
redefine themselves. But I don't think this is that huge a departure.
We can't go where we've been before. It's fucked, it's boring and it's
insulting. But maybe I'm overestimating people."

Wonderful though it is, the baroque pomp-punk brew of Angel Dust

contains neither a formula follow-up nor anything closely resembling
a hit single. "If I like a record by a band," argues Patton, "I'll buy their
next one just to see how they've become warped. That's the most
fascinating thing. Because certain things in life just fuck you. You'll
see someone two years after they changed jobs and they're
completely different people. Bands are like that in microcosm,
because there are five or six people living in close quarters like rats,
and the changes that come out of that are immense."

The changes that Faith No More have undergone have mainly

occurred in the vocalist department. Patton is the last, and most
successful, of a string of people to fill that position in the band. The
day FNM play Marquette, one of their former vocalists, Courtney Love,
is on TV with alternative superbeau Kurt Cobain, denying rumours of
drug dependence during pregnancy. "She was only with us for about
six months," says Roddy, "but she's still one of my best friends. Being
in a rock band can be a real boyish thing, and I think Courtney quit
cos she found us way too macho. She needed a group who would let
her write all the songs and do everything she says, and it wasn't
gonna be this group. She's not in any way bitter about the success
we've enjoyed since she left, but then it's not like Hole are doing so
badly."

The next day, in Grand Rapids, Patton discovers a Mexican restaurant

where no local white folk go and dinner costs $4.50 a head. A wall-
mounted dispenser ominously labelled Pain Relief Center serves four
kinds of medicinal potions, and anyone who wants to booze has to do
so out back in the car park. Mike has been here all day. "After food
like this, how can you not feel like a king?" he asks, as he leads me
and Billy in after the sound check.

Two days into this odyssey, and I've yet to see any sign that any of
FNM (bar Jim) are anything other than the kind of guys you'd want
your sister to marry: so open, trusting, kindly and hospitable. Where
did they get their reputation?

"But I don't think we buy into a lot of the myths of what we're doing.
We just lived with that for three months [GN'R] and saw so much of it.
The whole idea that there has to be something outrageous and
abnormal is washed up and gone. I mean, we do our own thing; like I
don't use toilets - I just don't. It's not a wild rock'n'roll thing, it's a
hobby - shit terrorism. I did a shit on the bench outside Charles and
Diana's palace, but that didn't cause any rumpus. It could have been
anyone's shit, really. The consistency wasn't so good. It wasn't a
prize-winning trophy." Faith No More have caused offence in other
ways too. Although Guns N' Roses gave them their big break by
specifically inviting them to support them on tour, FNM hardly
seemed grateful at the time. All the press generated while FNM were
touring with Guns N' Roses was bursting with vitriolic attacks on Axl
Rose and co. They simply aren't able to put a sock in it.

"Oh, it was real ugly!" says Billy. "We said a lot of shit, and didn't how
bad it was until we got caught. Axl was real straight with us, but it
was an ugly scene. He said: 'It's like I went away and came back
home to find you guys fucked my wife.' We were thrown off the tour
for five hours, but we apologised. It was like being in the principal's
office. He said: 'I only like you guys, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction and two
other bands, and all of you hate me. Why do you hate me?"" "We're
still hoping he hasn't read some of it," Patton chips in. "We were just
being honest. And that felt great, but it can also get you killed. As far
as the press was concerned, we were like caged animals - they'd
throw us a little bit of meat and we'd attack. And we realised that we
were the ones who were getting screwed. The interviews that we did
belonged in the National Enquirer. We were like a gossip column
rather than a band."

FNM's latest diversion is a herbal health-food drug. Patton explains:

"You mix it with water to make you go to sleep. But if you have too
much, this other thing kicks in: it's like drinking a six-pack of orange
soda and sitting in the back of a hot car. It's a nauseating, piece-of-
shit high, and most people end up vomiting. But it's fun cos you never
know what's going to happen. Three of us took it one day and we
ended up sleeping with our bodies in positions they should not have
been in."

On stage in Grand Rapids Patton performs like someone who is no

friend of sleep, or indeed of standing up straight, lurching around the
stage like a latter-day Quasimodo on speed. Afterwards it takes him
ages to come down from his natural- energy high.

On the coach, Puffy is nodding to the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head
as he flicks through his collection of jazz and blues CDs. As the bus
heads off into the night, a sweaty, muscle-bound 18-year-old who has
been hanging around the stage door asks me how I liked the show.
"They were great," I mutter.

"They were way better than that, man," he says, aghast. He's looking
at me like I've just suggested his mother eats rats for a living. "They
ripped!"

Hit Parader | June 1992

Breakin' The Rules

Rob Andrews

It seems almost write to say that the success Faith No More enjoyed
in 1991 was unexpected. The fact is that the platinum success of their
album The Real Thing was downright shocking!
Let's face it, who would have bet a plug nickel on the chances of this
unusual quintet who had just lost one vocalist, Chuck Mosley, and had
added a new one, Mike Patton, only weeks before going into the
studio. But thanks to their ground breaking single/video. Epic, that
album proved to be one of the year's biggest sellers making Patton
and bandmates Jim Martin (guitar), Mike Bordin (drums), Billy Gould
(bass) and Roddy Bottum (keyboards), heroes of everyone who had
grown tired of the predictable side of rock and roll. Here was a
platinum band without a pinup boy in sight; a band that seemed to go
out of their way to be as unconventional as possible as often as
possible. Now with the release of their latest LP, Angel Dust, it seems
that Faith No More are out to ruffle even more feathers, a fact verified
by vocalist Mike Patton.

Hit Parader: Is there a special significance to the title Angel Dust?

Mike Patton: No. There isn't any significance to it at all. It just sounds
cool, and to us that's usually enough. It's a horrible drug, is that
enough of a meaning? But there's no hidden message or a song lyric
behind the album title. That's just us being us.

HP: Does Faith No More try to be unconventional, or is it just the

natural way you are?

MP: We'd never plan out anything because it was supposed to be

conventional or unconventional. That would be totally against
the point. I know our record label wished we were more conventional,
but I don't think our fans would like that, and I know we wouldn't. We
know this record's gonna evoke some heated reactions from people.
That's cool, that's exactly what we want. If we can piss people off
we're happy.

HP: What makes you happy about pissing people off?

MP: I shouldn't say that we're happy to piss people off. It's just that
we want to do what we want—and not necessarily what they expect.
Anyone who expects this record to be The Real Thing Part II had
better wake up! I know some fans who are already pissed off about it.
And our record company's been going crazy since the first time they
heard it. All they keep saying is that we're jeopardizing our entire
careers. I think their problem is just that they just don't know how to
market us this time. "Your album is too industrial for the alternative
crowd. Your album is too dance oriented for the rockers." They keep
telling us that. Maybe they're right. We don't care.

HP: It seems as if you're almost rebelling against success.

MP: Nah, that's not it. We're not against success at all. We're just
doing what we want. It's like all the people who tried to convince us
how nervous we should be about making this record. To hell with that.
Pressure is one of those things that's just an invention of the human
mind. People will say everything to you to try and blow your
confidence. They want you do do what they want and to do it their
way. We're not into that at all. "You're gonna fall on your faces," they
tell us. Well, maybe, we'll see.

HP: How has the band evolved on this record?

MP: Well, we're still fighting a lot. It's just that the scapegoats within
the band are changing.

HP: What kind of fights do you have? Does it ever come to actual
blows?

MP: Nah, nothing like that. We act like a bunch of petty old ladies. We
never remember what the hell the fights were even about by the
time they're over. They're just minuscule fights designed to destroy
each other's ego. It's just one wave of torment after another.

HP: Did that confrontational attitude have an effect on the songs you
wrote for the record?

MP: Maybe a little. There are some very strange songs on this record.
A lot of them have a lot of despair in them, they're very disturbing.
Everything's Ruined is a good example of that. It's one of the more
straight-forward rockers we have on this album. Compare it to
something like Surprise You're Dead from the last album. I think you'll
see how we've changed. You can't put your finger on it, but it's there.
We're getting better at playing what we're visualising.

HP: You were much more involved in the creative process this time. Is
there one song you're particularly proud of?
MP: Maybe Land Of Sunshine because it talks about some of my
favourite late-night TV heroes, guys like Anthony Robbins, the
motivational speaker who does those half-hour commercials where he
wants you to buy his whole seminar package, and of course, my real
hero, Robert Tilton, the preacher. Nothing and no one can touch
Robert Tilton! 20/20 did an expose on him, and he just blew 'em off.
That's a very positive song.

HP: Despite the success you've enjoyed in Faith No More, you remain
a member of another band, Mr Bungle. How do the other members of
FNM feel about that?

MP: Everyone in the band squirmed at first when they learned that I
was going to stay in Mr Bungle. But we talked about it a lot and
everything began to become a little less tense. When the Mr Bungle
album came out, I think everyone realised it wasn't a threat.

HP: What's the strangest thing that happened to you on the last Faith
No More tour?

MP: Maybe that happened in Zurich, Switzerland. We went through

the park in this beautiful, incredibly dean city only to find this drug
haven where people were lying on the ground shooting up in their
eye-lids or anywhere else they could find. They were all over the
place. The city just turns a blind eye on it. That whole scene blew our
mind. We thought we were a little unusual, but that made us sit up
and take notice.

Circus | June 1992

A Hellish Helping of Angel Dust

Marina Zogbi

No one can ever accuse Faith No More of playing it safe. During the
quintet's ten-year existence, music styles have come and gone, but
Faith's sound remains uncategorizable. Angel Dust, their fourth LP
(second with vocalist Mike Patton), pushes rock's—and Faith's own—
boundaries even further than '89's The Real Thing, with splashes of
hard rock, dance pop, industrial death metal, and even country. And
that's justice judging by the five songs ("Kindergarten," "Caffeine.
"RV," "Malpractice" and "Small Victory") completed at press time!
According to keyboardist Roddy Bottum. the rest of the album is just
as diverse:

"There's a couple of songs that almost have a pop sort of feel. then
there are a couple that are really ultra heavy and loud and kind of
abrasive. in your face."

Or as Mike P. puts it, "It's rated G. There's something for each family
member on the record."

Although all of the songs on Angel Dust (except the theme to

Midnight Cowboy, a cover) were written recently.

"Before it's a song. it goes through many, many life cycles and some
of the ideas were generated a long time ago," says Mike.

Generally, the new stuff was written in the traditional FNM way:
Roddy, bassist Bill Gould and drummer Mike "Puffy" Bordin came up
with musical ideas that were later expanded upon.

"Mike P. was in on it a lot earlier this time, " notes Roddy. New to
the band when The Real Thing was recorded, the singer's
contributions to that LP were limited.

"I'd never written songs with these guys before," says Mike. "It's
alright! You feel each other out and you always reach some kind of
understanding." He also composed one song completely on his own
("Malpractice'") as well as all lyrics except those on "Be Aggressive."
Cracks Roddy of the latter, "I think we both kind of hated the song to
the point where lyrics were needed and he didn't want to write them.
so I gave it a go." Then there's the charmingly-titled "JizzLobber."
guitarist Jim Martin's main musical donation to the album. 'It's a great
song," describes Mike. "A tortured-soul type of thing."

Faith's "country'' tune. "RV." is a definite album stand-out with its

boozy keyboards and deep. Southern-fried vocals. "I like that one a
lot, agrees Roddy. "It started out as a piano thing I was doing, then
Billy and I just started playing around with it and we finished it when
we were on tour in Brazil and started playing it live."
 "The words are really messed up," says Mike. explaining its theme.
"It's the white trash saga: You wake up. you do nothing and you talk a
lot of shit .. . and that's what the song does."

One can imagine a middle-aged heavy-set guy singing it. "Oh yeah."
agrees Mike. "A lot of the tunes are like character sketches. I don't
see anything wrong with that. A lot of people maybe will want to give
me shit for that."

A lot of people will assume that these characters are him, as he sings
in the first person. "You have to do it." he believes, "even though it
has nothing to do with me. pretty much always. I think it's horrible to
write about yourself; I mean. who cares?"

On the more cheerful end of the spectrum, song-wise. are the catchy
"Small Victory" and "Land of Sunshine." Mike wrote the latter's lyrics
"after staying up for three days and watching self-help programs and
reading fortune cookies . . . "it's a totally disgusting,
grotesque positive song!"

"I love it, it's real uplifting." says Roddy. "Almost angelic."

Although nothing in particular inspired Mike's lyrics this time. he cites

a definite new hero. "When I was up a really long time. I kind of
discovered this late night TV evangelist who I really admire now called
Robert Tilton. He's quite a guy. You may have seen the

Dallas-based preacher: "He asks you to put your hand on the

television set and he'll heal you through the power of TV. using the
demon spirit of television to cut off the devil's head . . . We're going to
visit his church when we go to Dallas.!" enthuses Mike.

Even though most FNM fans know by now to expect the unexpected,
does Mike think that anything on Angel Dust will really surprise
people? "Yeah, I think so." he says. ' I would say 'Surprise! You're
Dead' was one of the more extreme things on the last record. There
are things on this that are so extreme in the opposite direction that I
think they'll freak people out: also stuff in the same direction, but
pushed way further. I mean. you can't really put your finger on what's
disturbing about it and I think that is what's disturbing about it. so it's
a good thing.'"
Angel Dust, like all of Faith's albums. was recorded in the band's
hometown of San Francisco and co-produced by Matt Wallace.

"He's been in there since the start.' says Roddy.

"He has a hands-off sort of thing with us and just lets us do what we
want. which is really important." Says Mike of Matt. "Since he's
worked with us before he's just as much a candidate for torture as the
rest of us and that's a comforting thing."

He describes this recent recording process as "a little more trying"

than the last album "just because of the mental torment we inflict
upon each other: we like to split up into little fractions and try and
destroy the other fractions. Like four fifths versus one fifth. but the
good thing is we can all be five fifths when we're fighting the record
company."

Record company battles aren't something Faith No More are used to,
as they've always done their own thing relatively hassle-free. This
time however, no doubt due to the success of The Real Thing, it was a
little different. Mike explains. "They left us alone for the whole
recording and then when we were just about to come to mix, there
was suddenly this concern that they didn't know how to market it.
They didn't really understand it and who did we think we were making
a record like this!" Continues Mike, obviously still bothered by the
experience. "Basically, it's a cheap tactic to try and get you worried
and feeling insecure about your own work, to have to justify your
work to them. You shouldn't have to do that but by the same token,
you have to work with these people because they sell your records, so
they have to understand at least a smidgeon of what you're doing."

Recalls Roddy. "They flipped and got a little paranoid. I think they
wanted it to sound a lot more like our last record."

Eventually, fears were allayed and problems got worked out. Roddy:
"Judging from the way the last record went. I think they realized back
then that we were best left alone and we kind of proved that. It just
goes to show that if we just do what we think is right on this one, the
same sort of thing will happen. hopefully."

The band is currently in the midst of a seven-week European tour with

Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden that includes Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and Spain, countries Faith have never played before. In July.
they begin touring the States, but no dates had yet been set at press
time. They're prepared to be on the road a long time, maybe even as
long as they toured in support of The Real Thing. Because Faith had
already been on the road a solid year before that album started
climbing the charts, they wound up touring for almost two years.

"If we have to do it again, we will." laughs Mike. "We kind of set a

precedent for ourselves."

Faith No More have always set precedents, not only for themselves,
but for rock music in general (though they'd modestly be the first to
deny it). By remaining true to their selves and refusing to play it safe
with Angel Dust, they're keeping the world safe for other adventurous
outfits. Not that it's something the band plotted, they just don't know
how to do it any other way.

Getting into writing mode for this album was a little tough,
according to Roddy. '"We hadn't been at it for a long time, we'd been
on tour for so long that writing seemed like a farfetched thing, almost.
It was hard to pin ourselves down and start, but once we did it gut
pretty easy." He's definitely pleased with Mike's lyrics: "They're really
clever this time around, just because he did have a lot more time. The
lyrics are good, I'm really happy with them."

Mike says the Angel Dust LP title "goes really good with the
cover because the cover's really serene and sappy, 101 Strings: It's a
big swan or heron with this blue background, contemplative and
sentimental and with those two words below it, it makes sense."

Things got a bit hectic for the band when it got down to the wire
during mixing, as Mike Patton had to leave for his tour with Mr.
Bungle. "He was here for the first week and a half, and then he went
on tour, so we Federal Expressed him stuff to listen to," Roddy
explained. "We were able to cover a lot of it before he left; We kind of
chose songs he was really concerned about and paid attention to
those first and foremost."

FNM recorded 18 songs in the studio, which took longer than

anticipated. Roddy: "When we were going in we thought we had
maybe 12; but then a lot happened, we remembered a lot of other
stuff."
This included the "Midnight Cowboy" and "I'm Easy" covers, and a re-
recording of an old song, "As the Worm Turns." The latter two will be
b-sides.

Metal CD | Vol 1 No 2 1992

The Whip Comes Down

Mark Blake

UNEASY - described in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as

'disturbed or uncomfortable in body or mind' Or in this case that
strange sensation you experience when you realise that all is not as it
should be.
America's premier aggro-rockers Faith No More are halfway through
their European headlining tour, creating a musical disturbance across
the continent with fellow London Records signings L7 in tow. And yet
despite an overnight stay included in their tour schedule, the
Intercontinental Hotel in Hannover Germany is devoid of their
presence.

Uneasy - in this instance, that feeling experienced when standing in a

deserted hotel on an overcast Saturday afternoon with a
photographer and press officer waiting to interview a band that
haven't showed up.
In true Faith No More style, the mystery intensifies and the plot
thickens. By dusk the band's road crew have began to arrive; droves
of hair and leather appearing in the plush lobby and drawing curious
stares from a party of ballroom dancers booked in for the evening.
The band's whereabouts, however, remain unknown. The smart
money is that they've met up with friends in Hamburg - the scene of
the previous night's show - and decided to stay.
Nobody expects them to make an appearance before tomorrow, so
we settle in for a long night.

As darkness settles, the hotel barman who sports a remarkable black

eye ("from my girlfriend, she voz very angry"), warms to the
task of serving us. Drink flows and the halfway decent records are
located and played on the bar's jukebox. It is then, and only then, that
a crew member reveals the suspected whereabouts of Faith No More's
keyboard player Roddy Bottum: "Roddy went to an S&M party on a
boat in Hamburg."
Uneasy - the sensation experienced when you fear that your
interviewee is getting his ass whipped somewhere, and perhaps
enjoying it...
Three quarters of L7 appear on Sunday afternoon, and bring with
them the news that Faith No More stayed the night in Hamburg and
will be driving straight to the evening's venue.

Our tip-off was also correct for flame-haired bass player Jennifer Finch
reveals that, yes, Roddy did go to an S&M party last night and L7's
drummer Dee Plakas went with him. The rest of L7 accompany us to
the Music Hall, a large arena-sized venue located on what looks like
an industrial estate in Hannover L7 are enjoying this tour, but are
willing to admit that the tag 'support' band doesn't sit comfortably
with them. Imposed exile on a bus for months on end has also left its
mark. They're homesick and Jennifer reveals details of last night's
strange dream: "I dreamt I was cuddling some puppies and crying.
What does that mean?" Inside the Music Hall we discover that the
venue is as bizarre in shape and design as the music touted by the
missing headliners. A gigantic circus-style tent has been erected
inside the building. The big top's ceiling is hung with a net full of
helium-filled balloons and a wooden VIP enclosure has been built to
the left of the stage. At the back of the hall are pool tables, a disco-
style dancefloor and, stranger still, a fountain. The Hannover music
hall appears to be both a spit-and-sawdust mosh pit and a nightclub.

Backstage, Faith No More are still nowhere to be found. Pearl Jam's

'Ten' warbles away in the background and Jennifer continues with L7's
catalogue of road-tales, including her theories on our absent friends.
"You know, Faith No More are nice people.
Jim (Martin - FNM's guitarist) craves attention
and I don't think he gets a lot of it. We like to take care of him.
Sometimes I stroke his beard.
He likes that."
Somebody asks to see Jennifer's tattoo and she obligingly pulls off her
shirt to reveal an elaborate Indian ink design stretching across both
shoulder blades and covering most of her back. Later, they laugh at
London Records' act of sending a limousine to pick them up from the
airport at the start of their recent UK tour, worried that it wasn't in
keeping with their
"punk roots" While Jennifer tells of the band's original (male) drummer
currently languishing in a US prison after "flipping out" and emptying
round after round of ammunition from an automatic rifle in his house.
"He just shot the place up," shrugs the bass player "And it bugged us
because he had the whole front page in the local newspaper and the
band only got a tiny mention."

Almost on cue, current drummer Dee Plakas

breezes into view with the ever-smiling figure of Faith No More's
Roddy Bottum shuffling along behind. Roddy has clearly succumbed
to tour madness. He now sports meticulously sculptured sideburns, a
pencil-thin gigolo's moustache and the tiniest tuft of a beard. He looks
like Salvador Dali or a First World War German pilot.
"Hi, I'm Roddy. Hey, where is everybody?"

In Faith No More's otherwise deserted dressing room, Roddy picks at

a plate of food and leans across the table to speak. The white T-shirt
beneath his open jacket carries a picture of an over-muscled and
decidedly teutonic looking male above the stark slogan, 'International
Leather Scene' The flesh at the side of his left eyebrow has been
pierced and hung with a small silver ring.
"Do you like it? I've had this for about a month. I went to this guy's
house in Detroit to have it done. It was just the seediest little place.
His family were all sat in this tiny room eating TV dinners, and he led
me downstairs to this basement which looked like some kind of
torture chamber "

Roddy, like the rest of Faith No More, finds anything out of the
ordinary completely fascinating. "This party I went to last night was
fun, but very twisted," he whispers. "It was the biggest S&M party in
Germany. They had this very strict dress code so I went along in just
my underwear and a leather jacket. But there were people there that
were completely naked and others wearing leather chaps with
nothing underneath. People were getting pierced on stage and
somebody told me they had fist-fucking going on up there, but I never
saw it." He recounts the details enthusiastically, all the time smiling
and giggling. "Some of these people are unbelievable. I found it very
interesting."

Roddy is a former film production student from Los Angeles who has
known Faith No
More's bass guitarist Bill Gould since they were both ten years old.
"We grew up together We both came from similar families. But I'm a
lot more intelligent than he is. Billy actually hasn't changed at all
since then. When we were kids we were into mindless, dangerous
pranks. We used to throw shit at cars from tall buildings. Once we
even called up the Safeway near my house and told them there was a
bomb there . Sure enough, when we walked round to the shop, the
bomb squad was there and the police were clearing the building.

Billy felt guilty and was too scared to get close, but I walked right up
to the manager and asked him what was going on. I don't do that
stuff anymore, but Billy's still into making crank phone calls and stuff
like that."
According to Roddy, this latest tour has been their best yet. "The
shows with Guns N' Roses were strange, because it really wasn't our
gig and there were so many days in-between concerts. We had
nothing to do with them and as far as I know they never watched our
show, although we did hear that they used to watch us on the TV
monitors in the dressing room.
"As a band I think we're getting on better these days. Rumours went
around about how we all hated each other because we weren't afraid
to have a fight when there happened to be a journalist around, and
for a while there were journalists around every time we had a fight
and they exploited that."

Faith No More seem to wallow in the perverse and the confusing. They
remain an enigma, an image-maker's nightmare, and perhaps one of
the few rock bands in existence willing to take a few risks and piss
people off by failing to live up to their expectations. Roddy proffers his
own theory as to the band's greatest strength: "Our sense of
weirdness is of paramount importance to this band and that comes
across in our music. I think the thing that Faith No More do best is
fuck with people's
minds. Confusion is the central theme of this band. Every band has a
persona.
Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers have this macho, dick-rock image.
They're like a little fraternity, all hanging out together and celebrating
their dicks. That's their persona and being completely weird is ours.
That's what this band is all about."

Although, at this moment in time,

Faith No More are a band that's still missing. L7 finally take to the
stage having delayed their performance by fifteen minutes to allow
the headliner's extra time to show up. They kick up a storm like the
Ramones with a shot of ostrogen.
Singer Donita Sparks dedicates the night's
performance to all those "standing up against fascism", in recognition
of the anti-nazi rally in Berlin earlier that day. Yet it's a twenty-five
minute set that seems to be over almost as soon as it's began.
You can almost smell the relief backstage when the remaining
members of Faith No More finally materialise. Only bass guitarist Bill
Gould looks phased by the gruelling journey from Hamburg which has
taken them four hours longer than it should have. With only fifteen
minutes to go before show-time, the band make some last-minute
preparations. Drummer Mike Bordin enlists a roadie to help him tether
the matted dreadlocks that now reach his waist. Singer Mike Patton,
sporting an identical eyebrow piercing to Roddy, skulks into the
kitchen looking for refreshment while Jim Martin ambles backwards
and forwards, greeting people in a softly spoken voice while crew
members extend their relief at his arrival: "That was some delay, Jim.
What a pain in the ass."
Jim shrugs. "What's the difference between hanging around in a car
and hanging around here?"
Anything and everything the world throws at
Jim Martin appears to pass him by. "Jim is an old man," explains
Roddy. "He looks older, acts older and thinks older He's a real
individual. He likes to hang about by himself and he still lives with his
mom." The only member of the band to indulge in the stereotypical
activities of a rock band on tour, Martin is Faith No More's supposed
rock'n'roll animal. According to Roddy, "It's in his culture."

Today, however, Jim is subdued, polite and more interested in a bowl

of soup than a beer The former graduate with a degree in electrical
engineering is also intrigued by the Music Hall's unusual structure.
"This is an interesting facility. Apparently they used to build
submarines here during the war This is a very unusual place," he tells
me later.
Ten minutes later, and Mike Patton is crouched down low at the lip of
the stage as if in pain. He is howling, screaming and cajoling himself
through the set's opening song,
'Caffeine' Like most of the band's set it's drawn from the recent 'Angel
Dust' album, a record that's shaping up nicely as one of the best rock
releases this year According to

Roddy, "Mike is now a changed man. He joined this band in his

formative years and he took in a whole lot in a very short space of
time. He's come out the other side as a much better person."
Bouncing through the almost lightweight
'Falling To Pieces', the band slide into 'Land Of Sunshine' and the
warped hit single 'Midlife
Crisis' There has been no communication with the audience as yet
and it hardly seems necessary. The late arrival and delays seems to
have charged Faith No More with a new found sense of urgency.
During the shuddering, slightly disturbed strains of
'As The Worm Turns', Roddy dances away from his keyboards.
He has removed his trousers before going on stage and Hannover is
treated to the sight of a pair of baggy, off-white Y-fronts, rapidly
soaking with sweat.

With a battering ram of 'Surprise You're Dead', 'Be Aggressive' and

Introduce Yourself', it seems as if Faith No More are reluctant to loiter
too long with 'The Real Thing' album; the band's ground-breaking
third record.
"For the most part that element of being selfish is what we are all
about," admits Roddy. "We won't play something if we don't want to
and we are now sick of playing some of the songs on that album."
They relent, however, by dusting down the hit single 'Epic', Gould and
Bordin's rhythm section tightening the crunching funk anthem and
giving it a massive shot of extra vitriol and added power. Even 'From
Out Of Nowhere', added as a last-minute encore, sounds charged and
mildly unpleasant, like the best of Faith No More's music.
"We're considering making an album of muzak," says Roddy,
mysteriously. "The effect and the power of it is highly appealing. It
can be a very hypnotic medium and it will be a challenge to do
something powerful without a loud guitar and that obvious crunch."
As a final touch, the band tear into an almost unrecognisable Dead
Kennedys cover, full of loud guitar and a very obvious crunch.
Roddy is unphased by any thought that the band might have a
reputation to live up to or a style to adhere to. Right now Faith No
More are almost untouchable but quite prepared to screw up their
chances and risk everything for something new and different.
"Will we still be together in ten years time?
No. In five years? Yes, I think so. But I do hope that if we reached that
stage that some old bands are now at that somebody would have the
humanity to kill us."

After the show, above the murmur of conversation Roddy's voice can
still be heard across the room. He is surrounded by friends,
crew members and half of L7, while slapping his hand slowly and
repeatedly across his bare arm by way of demonstration. "That's all
you could hear all night. These kind of weird slapping noises coming
from the darkness and the sounds of people sighing after each slap.
All these people being spanked. It was amazing..."

Metal CD | Vol 1 No 10 1993

Leap Of Faith

With FAITH NO MORE just back in the UK for their recent headline at
the Phoenix Festival. Jesse Hash meets with Bill Gould, who admits: "I
have a lot in common with the Elephant Man". All will be revealed.

Eleven years on and still people can't figure out Faith No More. Of
course, that's just the way the band like it. Despite kicking out their
original singer (Chuck Mosley) and recruiting a new one that nobody
initially seemed to like (Mike Patton) and who already had his own
part-time musical project (Mr Bungle), Faith No More have finally
become one of the most vibrant, eclectic rock outfits on the planet.
Drenched in sweat after just stepping off stage after yet another gig
in the band's interminable tour itinerary, with strands of lank hair
plastered to his forehead, FNM bassist Bill Gould flops into an
armchair in the band's cramped dressing room, slams the door shut
and politely fends off any hangers-on or inquisitive crew members.

Does he want to shower before we do the interview? Gould shrugs,

smiles and decides to wait. I light the first of several cigarettes and
watch as the burly bassist starts to steam, the vapour rising off his
shoulders as he gradually cools down. One lone drop of perspiration
trickles off the end of his chin and lands on the floor... Shall we begin?

"Never in my right mind did I expect the band to sell as many records
as we have - and to sustain it!" he announces with a combination of
pride and perplexity, and exhales heavily.

FNM came into being in San Fransisco in 1982 as a "hippie hate

band". They had a turbulent early career, discarding several would-be
guitar heroes on the way before settling on the basic nucleus of Mike
'Puffy' Bordin (drums), Bill Gould (bass), Jim Martin (guitar) and Roddy
Bottum (keyboards). As soon as vocalist Mike Patton Joined at the tail
end of the '80s, the band's career seemed to go into overdrive.

The hit single 'Epic' (1990) was their real commercial breakthrough
and their third album, 'The Real Thing', cemented the wisdom of
staying with LA label Slash (distributed through London Records in the
UK). But just as fans and critics alike had FNM pinned down as a
vaguely wacky hard rock group, a series of events made it clear that
here was a unique band.

They released an uncompromising and uncomfortable fourth album,

'Angel Dust', in 1992. They toured briefly with Guns N' Roses but
couldn't stomach the rampant sexism of Axl and co. Roddy Bottum
shocked the music scene by 'coming out' as the first wellknown hard
rocker to talk openly about his homosexuality. Then they destroyed
the Commodores' supper club ballad 'Easy' for a UK Top 5 hit.
"We try not to be an innocuous band, and doing an innocuous song
like 'Easy' was an exercise in having fun," states Gould. "So when you
make a record that was so much fun to do, it's really funny when
everybody ends up liking it."

How have Faith No More adjusted to the business side of the industry
- surely something they would have had to cope with even more after
achieving commercial success?
 "I think the only analogy I can probably make is the analogy of the
alcoholic: how can you be drinking for 30 years and then stop for the
rest of your life and never go back? How about we take this one day
at a time? We Just do things in our own way.

"I don't know how we do it or why we do it. We just keep doing it

because every day we wake up and we do it again," declares Gould.
"When everything's going really well...why think about it?"

Did he ever think the band would be this successful?

"It's taken a long time for the band to reach this point. It's interesting
to note that when you write songs you hear the potential in a song as
soon as you've written it. It's an interesting feeling, because somehow
you always know there's a lot of potential in what it is that you're
doing but you really don't know what's going to happen next.

"'Epic' was interesting because we knew that it was a good song and
we knew that 'The Real Thing' was a good album. But we had already
been touring for six years, and we really didn't know if we were Just
under some kind of delusion or whether that song and that album had
the potential to go somewhere. So when it does happen it's really
interesting, and it makes you think that your instincts were correct."

Prior to any success. Faith No More, like any other band, were forced
to tough it out through a period of little or no acclaim and even fewer
financial rewards.

"There were definitely more negatives than positives," recalls Gould.

"And there's still more negatives than positives in being in a band
now, even after having a Platinum and Gold record. It's very much a
situation where if you didn't like the music you simply wouldn't be
doing this. The negatives can come from so many different angles it's
ridiculous."

Such as?

"Well for one thing, no matter how hard you try, anything you say and
anything you do will somehow be put into a package to be sold.
Everything you do is being sold and becoming contrived, even if
you're not personally contriving it.

"We've been together as a band now for 11 years, and it's only in the
last two years that we haven't lost money on a tour. So that's a good
nine years of that, which is a long time. I started this band when I was
18 - myself, Roddy and 'Puffy'. I can't believe it, I'm fucking 30 now!"

Mid-life crisis?

"I don't know. It's just a strange business being a musician," ponders
Gould. "In a lot of ways the lack of respect is one of the negative
aspects. Perhaps not a lack of respect; but a musician's place in the
whole scheme of the music industry is interesting. I think there's a
tendency in this business to keep musicians producing records but
keep them stupid and ignorant, even though the musicians are the
ones making the product that everybody else is making money off of.
Musicians are definitely the lowest rung of the ladder as far as the
industry scale goes. But if you like music and that's what you want to
do, then you don't really have a choice."

The record company must surely have an idea in their minds of the
image the band should have, and the band probably had their own
idea. So how involved do they get to make sure the packaging of
Faith No More is acceptable to them?

"We're strange compared to other bands, in the sense that we're a

little bit different," laughs Gould. "And so the good thing about it is
the record company pretty much lets us do whatever we want. They
give us full rights to the packaging and full rights with the recording,
and then we give them everything finished.

"The only tough thing about us and packaging is that there's five of us
in this group and all of us have an equal vote. Sometimes, coming to
a decision can be a real pain. But once we make a decision we get
what we want. We started that from day one. So we've built a healthy
trend towards doing what we want and I think that's just the way we
operate."

So there's a good communication between band members?

"There has to be to operate. If the record company has a suggestion
we always listen to it, but pretty much all of the product that we put
out we put out ourselves. London Records didn't even hear the last
record until after it was finished."

Considering some of the horror stories that have circulated about

record companies dictating musical direction to bands, what does he
think has prompted the label to give FNM so much creative control?

Gould hesitates for a moment. "I think..." he begins, searching, "it's

because we started out doing it ourselves and we've achieved a
certain degree of success doing it our way, so why mess with it? What
they're really doing is giving us the opportunity to go further. But if
we mess up really badly then we'll probably end up losing that
privilege - then they might want to step in. But we've done well on
our own and so there's no point in changing it.

"I'm not sure they really understand us enough to know what would
be good for us either if we did fail and they wanted to step in," he
continues. "I think our record company's attitude has always been:
'I'm not sure what you guys are doing, but keep doing it because it's
working'."

So what happens if, God forbid, something doesn't sell, and suddenly
they need to examine everything and the record company doesn't
understand them?. That could be very damaging to the future of the
group.

"You do have to deal with a lot of prejudices," concedes Gould. "We

really picked up steam in the hard rock/heavy metal field and we are,
to a degree hard rock/heavy metal band. But I think there's a lot more
to us than that.

"We can be a pop band; we can be play a lot of different kinds of

music,

And with 'Angel Dust' we had a hard time just breaking the prejudice
that we are not just a metal band. We don't have all the stuff that
goes with being a metal band at our shows; we don't want a wet T-
shirt contest going on between, acts. We're just not that kind of band
and I'm not that kind of guy.
"But," he adds, with a sigh. "I guess we were on the 'The Real Thing',
and all the people liked it. And all those people were like: 'Why don't
you just do again?' We don't repeat ourselves...we don't repeat
ourselves...we don't do that.

Then again, night after night on tour, surely it's unavoidable that a
band end up repeating themselves as well as improving as a band.

"We toured The Real Thing' album for almost two years, so technically
I think we got better as a band. Touring makes you a better group just
because you're playing every night. I think we grew and I think it was
in a positive direction. But you really don't know that when you're
doing it. The clichés that we heard! When you play the same song for
two years you really start looking at it through a microscope. And we
knew that after a year straight of playing on the road there are things
that you're going to start hating. And one of the things that we
started to hate was playing those same parts all the time. So when
you make the next record you go with the understanding that you
don't want to do something that you're going to hate it in a year. So
you challenge yourself to make it interesting for yourself, and you
learn a lot in the process."

Does the repetitiveness of the whole process really allow them to

have a sustained interest?

"That's true, it does get very repetitive. And when that happens that's
when you hear the things you really don't like. Sometimes you put out
a record and there are some parts and you don't like them that much,
but they'll do because they simply work. But after two months of
playing them live on stage every night you start to hate them. 'Epic' I
could play forever. 'Epic' I could play for the next 20 years and never
get bored.

"The interesting thing is when you start improving or you start

changing, you always run the risk of learning so much more that
you're almost becoming too technical for the people that want to
listen to you."

So simplicity is a virtue?

"Yeah. There's a very fine line there."

How involved in the production process do the band get? Will just one
member of Faith No More get more involved than the others?

"I like being there every day when we record. I like being around a
lot. But the bottom line is that it's a vote. The majority gets what they
want in the studio or anywhere else."

And who's the person at the record company you have to answer to?

"I haven't seen them yet," he laughs.

So it's a voice on the phone. And a signature on the cheque... Have

they received a lot of royalties from the record sales yet?

"Well, The Real Thing' was a Platinum record, so we recouped all our
advances," laughs Gould. "I really wanted to get a ranch, and so I
bought a little area of land. And it's really not quite like a ranch, but
it's half an acre in the hills. I've got three llamas now. And I went to a
thrift store and I bought a little ride - you know, one of those rocket
rides that you put a quarter in. So I'm working on it. I'm on my way to
setting up my own little amusement park, and I've got a couple of
exotic animals and a little farm to round it all out. It's only a half an
acre, but after a few albums I might get up to Michael Jackson' level!"

And have 3,000 species of fish?

"And a skin problem. Look - the signs of success are starting to hit me
already! I'm getting darker!"

Did you watch the Oprah Winfrey interview with Michael Jackson?

"Oh yeah. I don't think it was Michael Jackson though, I think that was
Bette Davis."

You're an entertainer, a musical person Just like Jackson. How did that
interview strike you?

"I think Michael Jackson is just as weird as he was before he went on

the air with that interview. Frankly, I don't think he has the chance of
ever getting rid of that label. Not a chance in hell that he could make
it walking down a normal street. That was a sad show. It was pretty
morbid."

What were the things that made you feel that way?

"Well one thing he said was: 'What's this about the Elephant Man's
bones? I don't want to buy these bones. What am I going to do with a
bunch of bones?' I admit that movie really affected me. I cried when I
saw it, because I have a lot in common with the Elephant Man. But I
couldn't help but crack up at a comment like that!

"He also said his father beat him before every performance. And then
Oprah says: 'He beat you?' Like it was some real surprise. And then
she asks: 'Did he beat you, or hit you?' 'Oh no, he beat me'... A lot of
really painful admissions. A lot of near tears. I mean, if this stuff is
really on the level then it's pretty horrible. Real sad."

When you see that and you take a close look at yourselves, how does
that make you feel about the extreme demands of success in the
music business?

"I think that we've been unsuccessful long enough to know the
benefits of that. I think that everybody in this group is happy just
being able to live comfortably while making music. I mean, we'd be
doing this anyway. We didn't stop when we weren't successful for
years. I've been in bands since I was 13. I think the success part of it
is easy to take or leave.

"We appreciate things a lot more because success didn't happen for
us that quickly. That's made us appreciate where we're at a lot more.
And you know how important that is."

Kerrang! | July 1992

GUNS N' ROSES, METALLICA, FAITH NO MORE RFK Stadium,

Washington, DC
Chris Smith
Friday, July 17
IT'S DAY number one of the 'greatest show on earth', with the court
jesters on hand to make sure the speakers work. Actually, Faith No
More - for it is they - seem fairly serious today, stomping stern-
facedly through the likes of 'Midlife Crisis', 'Woodpecker From Mars'
and 'Surprise! You're Dead' There is, however, the irrepressible 'We
Care A Lot', perhaps the greatest dance song ever written for those
odd occasions when 50,000 of your best friends come by and are
looking to shake their booty. The overall effect, especially with Jim
Martin's guitar completely inaudible, is of Dr Frankenstein's drum
machine (aka Mike 'Puffy' Bordin) come charging out of Transylvania
to lay waste to us all.

Old Dr F, however, hadn't counted on the giant, cloven-hoofed beast

waiting just around the next bend - 'Creeping Death' is here, with
Metallica riding high in the saddle From the outset, this band could
not be any more 'on'; loose in all the right places and absolutely fire-
breathing. By the time 'Sad But True' reaches us - just four songs in -
it is clear that there is no venue Metallica could not dwarf with their
presence. Hell, let's just throw the f**kers in the bottom of the Grand
Canyon and have the biggest concert ever! Lars goes nuts on
'Shortest Straw', attacking it with such ferocity that it's transformed
on the spot into perhaps the longest punk song ever. As 'Whiplash'
gets introduced to close the main set, pandemonium ensues, with
King James stepping back to reign o'er his chaos while Mr Newsted
handles vocals. 'One' is the end of it all, its presentation truly epic as
Kirk Hammett leads the way in what is perhaps his crowning moment
to date.

The half-time show of floor lights and big screen titty-flashing sets in
as we await the main event. Guns N' Roses have turned into a
love/hate affair of late. If you're lucky, you either love them or you
hate them. There are some, however, who have been cursed with
doing both at once; I am among this latter group. Right now, I pretty
much love them not because it's the season of the olive branch and
all that, but because they've actually shown up to PLAY! Gone is the
lumbering arena-beast from last Summer, replaced by a real rock 'n'
roll band.

You still can't look too closely at all the parts. Individually, they all
have their moments when they look a little too comfortable on a
stadium stage, the rot having begun to set in. If you focus on the
songs, however, damn near everything seems to be gold. The nitro-
stomp of 'Nightrain' and the Latin styling of 'Double Talkin' Jive' could
fuel a party anywhere. 'Civil War', still the most lucid and compelling
song they've done (especially when Washington, DC is the setting),
and 'Patience' are as consecutively captivating as they are different.
'Sweet Child O' Mine', 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' and 'Paradise City',
meanwhile, prove the world to be a heroically okay place after all.

There are some duds inexplicably flat readings of both 'Welcome To

The Jungle' and 'You Could Be Mine' foremost among them - but when
'November Rain' manages to overcome all its crap '70s radio
flashback trappings to emerge as a bit of a corker, you know things
are going well.

I just can't understand why it is that Metallica looked so much bigger

up there...

Metal Maniacs | July 1992

The Long and Dusty Road

Marina Zogbi

"The way we tour, it's kind of like training for us," says FNM bassist
Bill Gould. "The more shows we do, the better and stronger we get.
We had a year off, and all this tour's really done is gotten us just
level; now it's time to improve." Bill's referring to the band's first live
shows since the recording of new LP Angel Dust: A recently completed
European tour with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden. They're
currently in the midst of a U.S. stadium tour with Guns and Metallica,
and plan to go out on their own later this month.

Once again FNM face the prospect of virtually non-stop touring, but
this time, unlike their previous experience, the band are mentally
prepared. "It was like a drowning swimmer in a pool trying to do
anything to stay afloat," Bill describes taking advantage of the touring
opportunities that kept popping up well after the release of '89's The
Real Thing. Drummer Mike Bordin continues the metaphor, "Then
when you finally felt like you were reaching the rim of the pool, it was
like 'Oh, Australia? OK. Another European tour? OK.'" Though grueling,
all that roadwork did introduce the band to a variety of audiences and
cultures. "It's really cool because we can look forward to going back
to a lot of different places, like Brazil, Australia and Japan," says Mike.
The recent Guns Eurotour brought Faith to Hungary and
Czechoslovakia for the first time, places most bands can't afford to
play on their own. "It was a really big crowd," Bill describes the
Prague show, "and they came from all over the area, Poland and
everything. The military was really nervous because they hadn't had
so many young people in one place since the revolution." For the
show in Hungary, fans came from neighboring countries of Bulgaria
and Macedonia. "It's unbelievable how well-appreciated it is," notes
Bill of touring such places. "It's like throwing a drop of water on a guy
dying of thirst in the desert...Bulgarians have this wild look in their
eye; they've driven 15 hours to come to the show, they don't want to
bother you, they just want a picture. To think what this meant for
these people..."

While in Berlin the bassist decided he would try to buy a Trabant, the
tiny now-outmoded East German car, "because they're really cheap,
nobody wants them." After mentioning in a radio interview that he'd
found one for 100 marks ($75), but was open to anything cheaper, a
fan called the station and offered his car as a gift. "I did the whole
tour in that car," Bill notes, adding that his vehicle was often the
object of ridicule on the part of West Germans.

For their hour-long slot on the European Guns tour, Faith played six or
seven songs off Angel Dust, a few off The Real Thing, plus "We're still
playing the old stuff that we like," says Mike, "'As the Worm Turns',
'Death March', 'We Care a Lot'." One song they hadn't yet played live
at press time was the catchy, extremely danceable "A Small Victory,"
a must-add for the U.S. shows, especially since it's the band's second
video release. The video, directed by Marcus Nispel (C&C Music
Factory) is an extreme departure for Faith. Says Bill, "It's totally
different than any video we've ever done; 'A Small Victory' is pretty
much of a dance song more than anything, it's the furthest we've
ever taken that, so we had to have a visual to complement it." Adds
Mike, "We also wanted something very slick, something that looked
really well-done, no tricks. The last video ('Midlife Crisis') was
beautiful looking but it had a weird photography style and a weird
kind of color." The new clip features no performance footage (a first
for FNM), several bizarrely outfitted extras, and the band themselves
looking very sharp in Italian suits. Bill sums up: "Think of a Madonna
video but see us in it instead. It doesn't make any sense, but at the
same time it's perfect." Look for FNM--minus the suits--on tour this fall
and beyond.

Sonics | December 1992

BEFORE YOU INTERVIEW FAITH NO MORE, EVERYONE IN THE KNOW
will tell you how different the members are from one another.
Keyboardist Roddy Bottum has 10 years of classical training, bassist
Billy Gould cites the Sex Pistols as a formative influence, drummer
Mike Bordin has studied African rhythms and, in his spare time,
vocalist Mike Patton fronts Mr Bungle, a combo whose style is an
insane mixture of Zappa and Funkadelic.
So, when Jim Martin, the outfit's metal-edged guitar man tells you he
prefers writing 'Scottish drinking songs' to rock riffs and wants to
record a folk album you have to conclude that the group are either a
bunch of real weirdos or a walking advertisement for 'strength
through diversity'. But Scottish drinking songs?

"Well, I'm beginning to feel that acoustic music is a lot more

interesting than rock," says Martin. "Frankly, my favourite band right
now is the Pogues. I've got a copy of Rum, Sodomy And The Lash and
I listen to it more than anything else in my collection.
"Funnily enough, it was that film about Ned Kelly with Mick Jagger in it
which switched me onto folk/Irish music in a big way. I saw it years
ago and a couple of the old tunes just stuck in my mind — I even
picked put Blame It On The Kellys. Since then, I've learned to play the
mandolin and written a whole heap of tunes — can't say I can ever
imagine anyone wanting to hear them though. Still, I'm gonna record
them some time soon even if it's just for my own pleasure. I'll
probably throw in a few American country songs as well; a lot of the
old ones have real style and a certain integrity all of their own."
And this is the man who's described in the Faith No More Biography
as a guitarist "...weaned on Black Sabbath and similarly corrosive
outfits"?
"Well, it's true to some extent — but I like and play a whole range of
music. Back in 1985. I was looking to be in a new band (Jim's former
band Vicious Hatred had just viciously hated itself out of existence)
and Mike Bordin (FNMs drummer) contacted me. They'd been trying
out guitarists with little or no luck, I'd played with Mike a few years
before and it seemed kinda cool to work with him again — so I went
along and got the gig."
So was the new job a whole lot different from your previous band?

"Hell yes — Faith No More were heaps louder! Also, I was used to
playing my own songs, so I had to learn to fit into an outfit — and it
was very different. Everyone came from different musical
backgrounds and, as we were all fairly strong individuals, we had to
learn to combine our styles. I learned to co-operate a lot more than I'd
had to in previous bands."

In those days, how did you go about integrating such diverse

elements as rap, reggae, funk and metal? Was it a case of jamming
and seeing what fitted or did you have pre-formed ideas about song
structure?
"I don't think we set out to do anything other than be in a band. There
was no plan — our sound evolved 'cos that was the only way we could
all play in the same room and feel good about it. We knew we liked
the energy and the fusion sound so we just kept playing."
Following the band's initial success with the 1986 release of We Care
A Lot and a subsequent US tour, Faith No More re-recorded We Care A
Lot with updated lyrics for their debut on Slash records in 1987. The
band went on the road again, playing an average of six nights a week
with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in support. Singer Chuck Mosley quit
during the European leg of the tour and after a short reprise, the band
'found' a vocalist in 21 year old Mike Patton.
They then recorded The Real Thing and hit the road once again with a
world tour. Then it was more touring and, finally, the group got
around to writing for the recently released album Angel Dust.
The last few years have been pretty hectic for the group. Where do
you get the time for songwriting?
"No-one ever tries to write on the road — everyone you talk to says
it's impossible. Well, I figured they were talking a lot of bull and I get
piss bored on the road — so I made me up a special writer's flight
case; I figured I'd have more than enough time to come up with some
music. In the case I put my old TEAC 4-track, a DAT recorder, one of
those Zoom 9002 effect units, a mic, a couple of special Audio
Research speakers (which have built-in amplifiers) and a few other
bits and pieces. I had the whole lot hooked up together and I figured I
was being pretty smart. Well, the case has been with me on the road
since May and I've only managed to do four sessions! In Europe I had
a problem with plugs and then when we got back to the States for the
last part of the Guns N'Roses tour there's no room on the bus for the
case — it has to travel in the truck with all the other gear and it was
usually hidden under a three ton lighting rig. Now we have a bigger
bus so its back with me. At least there's a chance I'll get some writing
done — my motivation's there — it's the gear that's usually not."

Over the years, you seem to have mostly stuck with the Flying V.
What's the attraction? Is it the look or the feel?
"I bought the black V in 1979. The neck is my personal favourite and
that's the main reason why I play one. The original guts weren't so
hot and I spent a long time getting them right. The V seems to
naturally have a fatter sound than any other Gibson or Fender and
while I could put the same pick-ups in any guitar I doubt that I still get
the same tone.
I've broken the head stock off my V three times — each time in a
different place. Thankfully I've got a good guitar maker on my side!
The first modification I made was to get a Bigsby bar for it and fit a
DiMarzio Super Distortion pick-up. Then I got rid of the stock pick
guard and nut cover and got Stars Guitars in San Fransisco to make
me up some brass ones — which I eventually had chrome plated.
Then I got rid of the Bigsby and had a Taylor pro-series trem fitted — I
thought about a Floyd Rose but I didn't want to cut a hole right
through the guitar. Drilling holes between the neck and the head
stock felt like a bad idea too. Next I got rid of the DiMarzio and the
stock humbucker I had left in the neck position and put a Seymour
Duncan Live Wire in the bridge position and an EMG 60 at the neck.
This last round of modification finally got the guitar sounding right.
The Seymour is the hottest dirtiest pick-up you can get and EMG 60 is
really clean."

Other guitars owned by Jim Martin include: a white 'copy' of his black
V (basically another V with the same guts as the black one); a Les
Paul Deluxe (which he likes to use with a wah pedal); a 70's Strat
(used mostly for slide); a Gibson ES175 F-hole dreadnought; an El
Hambra Spanish acoustic; an Epiphone Zenith acoustic, a 1920 Dobro
of unknown manufacture and his mother's old Harmony F-hole. Martin
strings them all with GHS Boomers (10-48s).

Jim also owns three banjos, a couple of mandolins and a hurdy-gurdy

— a medieval stringed instmment that's played by turning a handle.
He likes to play traditional bagpipe music on this in his spare time...
seriously.
Many of these instruments (the guitars at least) are featured on Angel
Dust.
Do you use the same set-up for recording as you do for live work?
"In the studio, I use a Mesa Boogie Mark 3 but I prefer the Mark 4 for
live; it seems to be a bit more versatile. I run the Boogie head through
an Eventide H3000 Ultra Harmoniser into a Boogie power amp and on
into a couple of cabs. In the studio, I set up two cabinets — which are
running in stereo from the amp but are separated by a partition
between them — this gives the stereo real definition. Then we close
mic 'em and put in a couple of room mics."

You seem to use a lot of effects. How do you create that definitive
Faith No More sound?
"My amp I tend to run with lots of highs, lots of bottoms and very few
mids. Then I have the master volume real low and crank up the other
volume stage to give it a lot of crunch.
"Hendrix turned me onto effects and Floyd's guitar sounds inspired
me — I've never looked back since. The only effect I don't really go for
is reverb, I'd rather use echo or chorus. I've got this great old 120 Volt
Morley Power Wah Fuzz which you plug straight into the wall socket. I
used to use three of them in a row. Now I use just one — but I also
have a Morley Volume Compressor and an Echo chorus Vibrato in line.
Unfortunately, it's really hard to get parts for them now and not that
many people really know how to work on them. Personally, I think
they're the best pedals anyone has ever come up with. I tend to buy
any good ones I come across.
"At home I've got another three Power Wah Fuzzes, a Power Wah
Boost, a Volume Compressor, a Pro Phasor, an Echo Chorus Vibrato
and this other huge one that's an echo something — sounds like it's
got a spinning oil can in it. Morleys are really special, nothing beats
them. Putting the Morleys in combination with the chorus, echo and
flanging capabilities of the Eventide just gives me the wildest
combination of sounds."
So, how did you approach the recording of the new album?

"Although we pretty well knew what were gonna do when we went

into the studio, I tried very hard not to over rehearse myself; I still
wanted to catch that off-the-cuff feeling on the record; I love
spontaneity. Everyone else was really concerned with precision —
me? I'm a bit of a terrorist. Sure, the rhythm section's gotta be right
there but the guitars are meant to breathe a bit and add some of that
real human feeling over the top."

Kerrang! killawatt | June 1992

ROD AGAINST THE MACHINE

Steffan Chirazi

Roddy Bottum - FNM's unique keyboard player works hard to come with new sounds to
prevent the band ever fitting into any pigeonhole. Here he tells Steffan Chirazi how his
efforts have got the band into legal trouble (!) and might one day, er, drive them into the
kitchen...
Like the band's music, FNM keyboard player Roddy Bottum's style has never been what
you might call orthodox. Although classically trained at an early age, he has ever since
strived to make his instrument do something different. Here, he tells Steffan Chirazi
that can mean anything from employing Techno-style sound loops, to sampling
saucepans and Brazilian airline announcers...

FNM are one of this era's most important success stories. Their sound - and unconscious
carefree fusion of rock, metal, pop and rap - broke through the nation via MTV's endless
rotation of the track 'Epic' from the band's third LP 'TRT'. That platter's success (two-
and-a-half million sales in the USA alone) proved that you don't need a uniform
'pigeonholed' sound to be a massive commercial hit.
Their latest album 'AD' (another platinum certified success story), has seen FNM further
prove it's musical versatility with a range of genre- busting cuts, from the thick metal-
esque rage of 'Jizzlobber' to the poppy strains of 'A Small Victory'.
A premier reason of FNM's unique blended sound, is keyboardist Roddy Bottum. From
his childhood days in Los Angeles, Roddy was always interested in music.
"My mom got me into piano lessons when I was young. She herself played a lot at
home. I only ever played classical piano for years, until I moved up to the Bay Area
when I was 18 and started hanging out with Billy Gould."
Early days of experimentation with what he refers to as 'a cheap Juno keyboard' kept
Bottum's creativity wandering ever-further. Indeed, for the era he grew up in, it's
amazing that Bottum emerged scar-free from the times when keyboards equally stodgy
Rick Wakeman-style progressive '70s pomp. A combination of his early classical piano
training, and an astute interest in the use of samples and modern technology, saved him
from the Hammon organ et al.
"I never ever liked any of the 'cheesy' stiff like Moog synthesisers, it always sounded
stupid to me." remembers Bottum. "I liked Kraftwerk a whole lot, they were one of the
first real influences. And when I first heard The Young Gods, they were just amazing.
Also, early on,I was able to relate to Elton John when I got into rock stuff because he
used a lot of piano in his music."
"I get really turned on by current influences," he continues, "what I'm listening to.
Recently that meant a lot of the Techno stuff that's going on, that whole basis of taking
a sound and looping it, using that as a sound source and getting the accidents that occur,
those strange arbitrary noises. Those are very important to what I do, as often the best
stuff comes from messing around like that."

"These days I've been using computers a lot, in particular this program called
'Studiovision' which allows me to use 99 tracks with sequencing. I have my EMAX 2
keyboard with a hard disc and then I have this CD-ROM player with a sound source that
just collects sounds and I put these down over a drum beat."
The 'AD' album saw Bottum throw in a bunch of everyday forgettable noises, and turn
them into beautifully textured pieces.
"The break in 'A Small Victory' is very typical of using sound sources and being a more
rhythmic keyboard player. In that particular song, the sound sources were things as
opposed to programs, strings or pianos. Most of that stuff was recorded with a DAT
player, just whilst wandering out and about, and then I put them into the keyboard
itself."
As Bottum goes to explain, sampling may very well have to become a more sinister and
clandestine affair as lawyers and cheap-shots come out shooting in increasing numbers.
"It's certainly reaching that point. In another song of the album called 'Crack Hitler', we
sampled the voice of this woman who's pretty famous in Brazil. She announced flights
for Varig Airlines, we all really liked the voice and she pretty much summed up our
whole Brazilian experiences. So we taped her, used the voice and now she's suing us us
for using her voice without permission."

Does this mean a whole new approach when it comes to writing new material?
"You just have to be really careful when it comes to copyrights and sound. The other
alternative is to become sneakier so far as disguising what sounds you use. But
ultimately, if I'm forced to bang a few pots and pans and record those for a sound
source, that'd be fine, because with continuous looping anything can happen..."
As for the FNM sound, Bottum describes it as being "all about five people coming in
with their own very strong ideas and blending them together."
For example, if I got the 'pop' extremes with my stuff and Jim goes to the 'Metal'
extremes with his stuff then you're going to have some challenging music. But it's all
about keeping up your extreme stance, making sure you never dilute your ideas for
anything."
RIP | April 1993

Dust In The Wind

Don Kaye

Faith No More are on the road perpetually, it seems, and that's

perfectly fine with them. It's their natural habitat, where they're at
their best, and Billy Gould says he's having a good time. The buoyant
bassist is sitting in a London hotel, discoursing on the pleasures of his
band's recent jaunt through Germany.

"It was excellent," he says. "We were in Berlin the day the big
demonstration happened [when 300,000 people marched to protest
the recent uprising of Nazism in the country]. I haven't seen any
skinheads myself, but everyone's been talkin' about them, and I think
the whole country's pretty concerned about it. It's heavier than I
thought it was."
Billy stops, seemingly reluctant to get into a political discussion, but
it's also clear that he's a keen student of world affairs. Despite the
tensions in Europe in recent months, he loves touring there—unlike a
number of American musicians.

"I would much rather tour Europe than anywhere else," he says,
firmly. "Well, I love South America, but Europe's fantastic. I think
pretty much everybody in the band feels that way. I like the
atmosphere. I think people like the finer things in life a little more
here. I can't really describe it, but I like being here. I like the people I
meet. Sometimes when we tour the States, I have a hard time me find
something to do."

While in Europe, Billy says, "I love learning different languages. You
can be in one country one day, and there's a whole different history
and a whole different culture, and then there's a completely flip-side
point of view the next day in another country, with a completely
different angle, a completely different attitude. It's really interesting
to see that."

Billy's on a roll now, and while cautious to avoid hurting the feelings
of the people back home, he nevertheless has a few thoughts on
America.
"America has a really large population, and it's basically a fairly
wealthy population by world standards. It's the market everybody in
the world tries to sell to. In the record business, 88% of the record-
buying public lives in the States. everywhere. Nowhere else really
matters. Americans being consumers, they're used to being
advertised to. Even the political elections were really more like
advertisements than anything else. I think it goes the same with
music. From childhood Americans are pitched to; they take in
advertisements. For instance, we've had a problem with people trying
to categorize our music. I think music categorization has its basis in
marketing and how you can sell things to people. If you sell things to
people in certain channels, they start thinking in those channels. In
Europe they're not as hype-conscious, because there's not as much
money. It's a definite different attitude toward the things you do and
what you do with yourself."

The selling of Faith No More (which includes singer Mike Patton,

guitarist Jim Martin, keyboardist Roddy Bottum, and drummer Mike
"Puffy" Bordin) has been a complex and somewhat bizarre story in
America over the past several years. When their cult status
blossomed into mainstream glory with the success of "Epic" and The
Real Thing, Faith's iconoclastic musical style and eccentric cast of
characters was suddenly a commercial commodity. There was a time
a while back when it seemed that they were performing "Epic" on
some generic TV awards show every other week. I ask Billy if that kind
of mega-exposure can be detrimental to a ; band in some ways.

"Probably, at some point," he says, thoughtfully. "I guess if you're

selling records, you don't really think about that so much. We were
really lucky to get 'Epic' ' as far as it got. For a band as strange as us,
every little bit of exposure...I mean, the reason we toured for
two years is that we needed every little bit of help we could get. It's
obvious, with the way Angel Dust is going, that we're not a slick,
commercial band, but we'll take it wherever we can get it. There's
such a thing as media overkill, but we're unique enough to where it's
still a good thing for us to get out as much as possible."

Billy's probably right. Angel Dust, their fourth album, has not, as this
is being written, sold even half of what The Real Thing did. One theory
is that many of the fans who propelled the latter record past the two-
millionsales mark were simply riding on the wave of "Epic's" status as
the most unusual hit single of its time. Angel Dust, which is a denser,
more deliberately offbeat work than The Real Thing, may have scared
off those K-Mart shoppers looking for the next "Epic."

"I don't think that's so," says Billy. "This record has the potential to do
well, because in Europe it's been incredible. We've played for crowds
of seven or eight thousand some nights. The potential is there, and I
think there's gotta be a human sympathy for this music, you know?"
He laughs. "But who knows why it's not happening the same. Maybe
'Epic' was just a thing of its time. It came at the right time, and it was
what it was."

While Billy admits he has no clear perspeclive on the band's success,

he does have a strong view of the current album.

"It's more eclectic," he says, "but we learned how to play a little

better, and we learned how to think about what we're doing a little
better. We have a lot of friends coming to our shows that came five
years ago—I still see my same friends— and I know that if we were
doing something really shitty, they wouldn't be coming. Selling
records is kind of an abstract thing that you read about in Billboard
magazine. The shows are my reality, and the shows, for me, are
getting bigger and bigger. We're playing really strong, and that's
really the only way I can look at it."

Billy enjoys playing every day because "it's like an athletic thing. I can
feel myself getting stronger and stronger. It's like working out. I also
like touring in general, because I have free time to do things I like,
like read, play guitar and write. It's disposable time that I don't have
at home. At home I'm always fixing things, running errands, doing shit
like that. It takes most of the day just to keep my head above water.
On the road pretty much the only thing I have to do is play the show,
and I can put all my energies into that. But in the meantime I'm trying
to learn Spanish, for instance. It's cool to have the time to do
something like that."

And, of course, to do important things like interviews. "Yeah, right!"

Billy laughs. "That's my favorite part!"

He grows thoughtful again as the conversation winds down. "This

interview thing is kinda weird. I don't know how people perceive us,
but we're at a level now where people think we've made it and that
they can pick us apart. It happens to everybody, and it's really
strange. People really like to try to find the weak link in the chain and
expose it for everybody."

It's the inevitable press backlash. "Yeah," he agrees, "but it's not a
real direct backlash, like, 'This band sucks.' It's more like, 'Let's look
at their weaknesses.'"
One weakness the press has exploited to a certain degree is the
band's reported animosity for each other. Billy shrugs it off. "We fight,
and we have real problems—probably just like any other band," he
says. "The first time we came to England, about six years ago, our
first interview, we got in a big fight. The interviewer just sat there
with his tape recorder on. The next day we saw the paper, and it was
a really interesting article, because we just fought! But it Kinda
worked, and I think it's been an angle people have been eager to use.I
haven't seen a lot of articles about our music, but I have seen a lot
about our attitude and about how we fight. For some journalists,
that's the easy way out."

The price of success? Maybe. But Faith No More will deal with it. This
is a band that never takes the easy way out.
Kerrang! | February 20th 1993 | Issue 431

Dust storm
Steffan Chirazi

During the recording of their most recent and critically acclaimed

album 'Angel Dust', it became obvious that a rift was growing in the
FAITH NO MORE camp. While vocalist MIKE PATTON was taking an
increasingly strong grip on the band's lyrical and musical direction,
guitarist and Metal icon BIG JIM MARTIN was becoming increasingly
isolated from his band mates. 'Angel Dust' survived, but will the
rigours of long-term touring and the pressures of preparing for their
next LP be the straws that break the camel's back? No one will admit
to having the hump, but STEFFAN CHIRAZI is determined to probe the
problems anyway.

FAITH NO More's classic cover of the cheesy 70s Commodores hit

'Easy' sat prettily at Number Three in the UK charts. Faith No More,
on the other hand, did not. The goofy fights and mud flinging that
we've reveled in with the band have ceased. What's up in the FNM
camp?
The problem goes back to the-making of 'Angel Dust', when
'creative differences' led to guitarist Big Jim Martin not being involved
as much as usual in the LP. An unwillingness to deal with the issue
has left the rift creeping wider ever since... now it's Jim Martin, and
the other four.
No one is willing to confront anyone else. When drummer Puffy Bordin
heard about this interview, 45 minutes before the band took the stage
at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre, he blew a gasket.
"Not now. We cannot discuss it now; we have six months left to tour,
so WE WILL NOT F**K IT UP. We'll take care of things at the tour's
end."
So get this straight: FNM's latest dispute is long-term, low-key,
uneventful, but as powerful as hell.
Have you noticed how much more a part of FNM Mike Patton has
now become? Patton's development seems to have escaped press
probings. The piss-drinking, the tampon-munching, the lurches, the
screams, the insults, the jokes, the lyrics, the dark side of 1989s pin-
up. He has become the definition for mischievous, curious and warped
youths worldwide, a man who will try anything just for, the hell of
it. But the biggest strides Patton made were in actually becoming a
happy member of Faith No More. When did this penny drop?
"At first, the fruit wasn't ripe," trills Patton obliquely, "but it got riper
and riper, and now it tastes really good. But the actual point at which
everything finally clicked is hard to pin down. One thing about this
band is that there's many things we've either not had the courage or
the means to do before; but we're beginning to care less how
we're perceived and to just get on with things."

It's probably easier for him now, looking back, to work out why he was
so antagonistic when he first joined FNM.
"The truth is, there were certain things I wanted to know about the
band, and I also saw a lot of things I didn't wanna know, so I ignored
them. Rather than confronting issues, I found it much easier to ignore
them."
Was becoming the Metal pin-up kid of 1989 the sort of thing we're
talking about?
"Definitely!"
So your belligerence and antagonism were just to get you through?
"That stuff was just instinct. When you enter a volatile situation, with
the whole thing spiraling towards the toilet, you just stir it a little
more. With this LP, we were all spiraling in the same direction at last."

WERE YOU encouraged to express your weirder, more f**ked-up ideas

on the record, such as on 'Malpractice' and RV?
"It's not really aggression, it's just feeling comfortable, being able to
unload everything. There was just a better forum for extremes."
Did you re-invent yourself, with the new haircut, the uglier tones, the
darker personae than in the smooth, white pretty boy of yore?
"We'd better talk to the psychiatrist!"
So there was no conscious effort to say, f**k this, I'll never be a
magazine pretty boy again'?
"Nothing conscious. Certain things just happen naturally. When
you've toured for two years and you're trapped in a time capsule, you
come back f**ked up."
Was there this bitterness of 'missing your youth'?
"No, it's just that you get to feel like a rat sometimes, because all you
can do is run along with it, chasing the trail of cheese. In the end,
you lose dignity - you really do. You end up convincing yourself that
you have control when you just don't."
So why is it so much easier now than before?
"Explaining that would be like sitting down with your Mom and
explaining why you farted at the dinner table three years ago!"
Is it therapeutic dealing with characters in songs, getting your anger
out?
"No, because sometimes it isn't good to have that shit out in the
open." He sighs deeply before smirking, "There's this myth
about lyricists and singers, that they're always 'projecting their inner-
most secrets', which is horse-shit. Singers are the WORST! They can't
hide behind instruments..."

ALONG WITH Puffy Bordin, Bill Gould carries the weight of FNM on his
shoulders (by choice, and at no extra cost). He's the guy to ask about
any problems in the band. Those with Jim Martin - can the faulty
engine be repaired?
Bordin considers. "Sure, anything's possible..."
Gould agrees. "Stranger things have happened..."
"I don't really think that ANYTHING right now is faulty," Bordin
continues. "We're playing as well as ever, and that's what matters.
All I would say is that we are concerned with getting better; we'd be
f**ked if we didn't try to improve, and the next record wi!l also be
an improvement."
The making of 'Angel Dust' seemed fraught with tension and
pressure. "We were running parts of the running race with a bum
leg!" exclaims Gould. "Basically, it's like a puzzle. You've got a square
peg and a round hole, and it isn't working, and you get frustrated. We
would not have put the record out if that didn't work, but we
managed to pull it off."

SURELY, IN the old small days, artistic freedom was easier because
you weren't a 'major' band? Didn't someone from your label say, "I
hope you lot haven't bought houses!", after hearing 'Angel Dust' for
the first time? "There's always pressure,"
Gould admits. "With 'The Real Thing', we had the pressure of making
the record as soon as possible just so as we could pay rent and eat!
There's ALWAYS pressure..."
It seems as if there's not as much humour or wackiness evident these
days. Gould: "For the first few years of a band, you put humour first.
Everything's a big joke. But then you look back and see that
the humour is overshadowing other things, and you realise it can't be
that way."
Bordin elaborates. "We are very focused on making our hour-and-a-
half onstage the best we can, getting the job done properly. In that
sense, maybe we're the ones who are worse off, because we have a
standard that we now hold ourselves to - and if we don't make that
standard we get really pissed off. "We've all grown into this sense of
responsibility that there ARE people who buy tickets a month in
advance, who plan to see our show, who pay to see us."

ONE THING FNM haven't outgrown is a good moan. Whilst 'Epic'

was breaking them last tour, they were whining about being
successful but not having money yet. This time, there was the
infamous Axl bashing. If y'hate it that much, then surely you leave?
"It wasn't that bad on the road for the first couple of months," says
Gould, "but after four months, there were lots of little things..."
Was there any discomfort at being associated with that 'Rock circus'?
Gould: "It's like this. For the past 10 years, we've been playing in this
band as professionals. We get offered this huge stadium tour, and we
figure that this is where it all leads to, the highest point. "But to be on
that level, you have to WANT to be on that level. Touring at the
highest
level is a disappointment, because you see a tot of unreal things, a lot
of bullshit. And whether it's conscious or subconscious, you wonder to
yourself, 'Is this where I'm headed? Is this where it all leads to? To this
bullshit?"
"The conditioning of this industry is that that's where you go - you
head for that level, as opposed to doing something that you're happy
with. If you headline stadiums, you've gotta WANT to do that. It's
great if you're into it, but we learnt that we aren't people who could
do something like that..."
AS HE sips his cuppa in more serene surroundings than a tour bus,
Roddy Bottum considers his expanding role in FNM, both musically
and visually.
"On this last album, it was everybody's job to stretch, to take a step
forward. And I had to come forward more."
It's Roddy who puts the pop into FNM, and Jim Martin is the Metal. The
two extremes have cohabited with superb results, until now. What's
Roddy's view of the Martin affair?
"Jim and I are absolute extremes. To enable the scales to keep
balanced, the further I go in my direction, the further he has to go in
his. If he stays where he is and 1 continue to go further, then things
will go off-kilter.
"On the last album, he kinda stayed where he was: it wasn't only that
he didn't produce a whole lot of material. So as things stand now,
we're a little off-kilter but we'll work it out."
Roddy has a quite different view of the current live shows to Jim
Martin's.
"I'm extremely happy with the shows - there's more aggression than
ever before. Mike Patton's performance has improved so much,
and the intensity level has upped to a point where we take it much
more seriously."
Have Faith No More grown from boys to men?
"I suppose so. Our initial success with The Real Thing' was so
unexpected that you just have to laugh - it's your only protection. You
can only do that for so long before you start looking like an idiot.
"We did it for a long time, laughed at our success, but then we
realised that by laughing at that, we were laughing at all the people
who'd bought our records."
Was there a feeling of embarrassment that, to some guy in Iowa, for
example, selling two million albums puts you in the same basket as
bands like Great White?
"Yeah. Suddenly, you're not underground - you're this exposed band.
More than embarrassment and discomfort, I think it just took some
personal adjustments."

ADJUSTMENTS WHICH still haven't quite kicked in. Moaning on 'The

Real Thing' tour, putting up with the rigours of fame (sob) now
whinging about playing to 40,000 people a night...
"We weren't into that whole scene, it wasn't what we were about - but
you're right, we were stupid to moan, We should've just split. It
would've been the gentlemanly thing to do."
Are the doors closing on Goofyville?
"Pretty much. It's stupid to complain about who we hate all the time
to the press, plus I'm pretty bored with it. But when you're asked that
10 millionth time about Axl Rose, you just think, 'Who cares?' "
Then for him to slap your wrists personally...
"That was humiliating, that whole thing. I don't know the guy that
well, but he seemed genuinely hurt, just this honest guy, saying,
'Hey, there's only two bands I really like, and I took one of them out
with me - and then you bad-mouth me in the press'. They did us a
huge favour, and then for us to turn around and say that stuff in press
was pretty shitty..."

JIM MARTIN sits, as ever, like an old man. He has become an aural
voyeur with his precious mobile phone-scanner Martin doesn't like
'Easy' "Never really did like that song. I didn't even wanna record it..."
After all these months on tour, he can still get his jollies off onstage?
"Infrequently, it has to be said," replies the behemoth, "Maybe once a
week."
Are we back to the 'it' factor that needs fixing? "Yes, we're back to the
'it' factor. Hopefully, when we do the next record, we can work 'it' out
and get back on track."
Martin's just as reluctant to get involved in in-fighting as the other
four about the obvious point: that he is currently an unpopular
FNMster who doesn't want to confront the issues head-on any more
than anyone else. He SEEMS disconnected from the rest of the band.
No camaraderie in the workplace. Those have to be hard working
conditions.
"The best thing to do is to look at things with your own two eyes. I
look at things with mine, and make the best sense of what I see."
But onstage, the band are doing their best shows ever "To me,
onstage, it doesn't always seem that way - I felt there was more raw
energy comin' off the stage in the past.
"But for Mike Patton, there's probably a lot more energy than ever
before..."
Isn't there this delicate 'chemistry'? "Probably - but it's nothing we
know anything about. Maybe it's the combination of people.
"As a unit, you may have chemistry, but individually, you may have
f**k all. Maybe a band who loses a member would be doomed."
You'll have to watch this space to see if Faith No More can survive...

Hot Metal | January/February 1993

It Ain't Easy
Steffan Chirazi

Faith No More's faithfully classic cover of the Commodores' cheesy

'70s hit Easy sat pretty at 3 in the UK charts and is about to take the
roof off the US Top 100. Faith No More, on the other hand, do not. The
wonderfully goofy little piss fights and mud flinging that we've always
reveled in with Faith No More have ceased - this problem is more.

Put simply, the current trouble goes back to the making of Angel
Dust, when there were creative differences that led to guitarist Jim
Martin not involving himself (or being involved, depending on where
you hear your facts) as much as usual in the album. An unwillingness
to confront the issue has left the rift creeping wider ever since... and
here we are. Jim Martin and the other four.

My initial plan for this piece was to put them in the back lounges and
have them piss fight their way through everything; blood, guts and
all. When drummer 'Puffy' Bordin heard this, about 45 minutes before
they took the stage at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre, he blew a
gasket. "Not the right time, not now! Not now we cannot do it now.
We have six months left to tour and we're doing okay now so we will
not fuck it up. We'll take care of things at the tour's end," he roared. It
was a violent, passionate stream of worry from one of the most
intense human beings I have ever met. So get this straight; Faith No
More's latest dispute is tong-term and low-key. Uneventful but as
powerful as hell.

Rriinng! Wakey wakey, rise and shine! Have you ail noticed how much
more a part of FNM Mike Patton has become during this album and
tour? Mike's development from frontman to semi-genius seems to
have escaped pens and papers internationally.

The piss drinking, the tampon munching, the lurches, the screams,
the insults, the jokes, the lyrics, the dark side of 1989 pin-up hot pop-
poop. He has become the definitive mischievous, curious and warped
youth. A man who will try anything just to try it, who will do
anything just to do it. But maybe the biggest 'do it' for Mike was
actually becoming a happy member of Faith No More.

When during; the album's recording did the penny finale drop? "It's
pretty simple," he replies. "At first the fruit wasn't ripe but it's got
riper and riper and now it tastes really good. Of course the direction
of the songs had something do with it, but the actual point at which it
clicked is hard to pin down. One thing about this band is that there's
many things we've either not had the courage or the means to do, but
I think we're beginning to care less how it's perceived and just get on
with things, Just do 'em!"
It's probably easier for Mike now, looking back, to surmise why he was
so antagonistic when he first joined FNM. "Well, I could have adapted
real easily - but the truth is I didn't really wanna join, I wanted to
know about the band in my own way. There were certain things I
wanted to know and I saw a lot of things I didn't wanna know so I
ignored them. Rather than dealing with them and confronting issues, I
found it much easier to ignore them."

Was becoming the pin-up kid for '89 the sort of thing we're talking
about? "Yeah, definitely, everything. I mean, when you're green, hell!
I didn't care, I didn't give a shit, and if somebody wanted to yank me
down the street by my balls then great, because I'd never been
yanked before."

So the general belligerence and antagonism was just to get through

things? "No, definitely not to get through it. That stuff wasn't for a
specific end or reaction, it was just instinct. Even with 'inter-band
relationships', it was pure instinct. I mean, when you enter a volatile
situation anyway, with the thing spiraling towards the toilet, you just
stir it a little more. I guess with this album we were all spiraling in the
same direction," Mike adds; with a shrug of his shoulders.

Did you find encouragement to express some of your weirder and

more fucked up ideas, such as the aggressive 'Malpractice' and the
twisted 'RV' ?
"It's not really aggression more than it's just feeling comfortable
being able to unload everything, shit everything rather than filtering
It. There was just a better forum for extremes."

Did you feel that, to a degree, you reinvented yourself with the
haircut, the uglier tones, the darker personas than the smooth white
pretty boy of yore? I mean who the hell is the RV pig?

"Ha ha, whadya mean, that's autobiographical... I dunno, we'd better

talk to the psychiatrist," he replies.

So there was no conscious effort of 'fuck this, I'll never be a Sassy

magazine pretty boy again'?

"No, nothing conscious, and anyway, I love Sassy magazine.Certain

things just happen naturally When you've toured for two years and
you're trapped in a time capsule like that you come back fucked up.
It's just you really get to feel like a rat sometimes, because all you
can do is run along with it, chasing the trail of cheese. That's all you
end up feeling like. In the end you lose dignity, you really do. So you
end up convincing yourself, 'Goddamnit, I have control here', when
you obviously don't."

Why is it so much easier now than before? "I dunno, that's a

relationship question. Explaining it would be like sitting down with
Mom and explaining why you farted at the dinner table three years
ago."

Is it therapeutic dealing with character's like the RV pig in song form,

getting the anger out? "No, because sometimes it isn't a plague,
sometimes it isn't a disease, and it isn't good to have that shit out in
the open off your chest. Why should you show anyone any of that
shit?"

He sighs deeply before smirking. "There's this deep myth about

lyricists and singers, that they're always 'projecting their inner-most
secrets', which is horseshit, totally romantic bullshit! Singers are the
worst. They can't hide behind instruments."

A funny thing happened when I was at the LA Palladium watching FNM

fuck with the 'hippest a coolest' Beverly Hills flannel decked twerpies;
I saw Chuck Mosely. the band's ex-singer. He bigger now.
more brutish, and sporting a shabby beard, He was sweating a tot.
We Care A Lot (one of the songs Chuck co-wrote souley with
keyboardist Roddy Bottum) was playing.

I asked him how he was, and he told me okay ~ except that no-one
ever gave him enough fucking respect and fuck this and fuck that and
fuck the other lot that matter, and did he sound bitter? Fuck yeah!
He's a father now, and also has what is said to be a great band called
Cement. Yet still he was there, at The Palladium. investing time and
energy on torturing himself to a state of malevolent anger. Some
people need that pleasure of pain to get on by in life.

Along with Puffy, bassist Billy Gould carries the weight of Faith No
More on his shoulders (by choice, at no extra cost). Do they think the
problems with Big Jim Martin, like a faulty engine, can be repaired?

"Sure, anything's possible..." Puffy says.

"Stranger things have happened..." Billy ventures. "In another way I

don't really know that anything right now is faulty, because we're
playing as well and consistently as ever and that's what matters right
now." Puffy offers.

Why is the consistency so much greater?

"Because we still have the potential to put on great live shows and
make great records," Billy replies.

"That's why I think it's a bit of a misnomer to say 'faulty engine',

which is why you have to choose how you frame this whole situation
very carefully. Yes it does matter, yes it is concerning a lot of things,
and there's a lot of people who said these things that will really get
upset by what you say. So you have to frame it carefully. All I would
say is that we are concerned with getting better, we would be fucked
if we didn't try to improve ourselves, and the next record will also be
an improvement. And that love my car, of course I do. I wanna fix it
up and make it great. There's no question about it." Puffy says.

The making of Angel Dust seemed fraught with tension and pressure
to follow up.
"No no, we were running parts of the running race with a bum leg!"
Billy exclaims unsubtly. ''Basically, it s like a puzzle, you've got a
square peg and a round hole and it isn't fitting, and you gel
frustrated. We would not have put the record out if it didn't work, but
we managed to put it off, I mean we ended up scrapping lots of songs
to make sure."
Surely in the old small days artistic freedom was easier because you
weren't a major band .

"Listen, listen, listen. As far as the 'artistic freedom' goes and all that
bullshit, nobody heard our album until it was finished." Billy says.

But isn't there this subconscious pressure telling all concerned, '2
million last time. 2 million...'. Didn't someone from your label make
the statement. 'I hope you lot haven't bought houses' after hearing
this album for the first time?

"Yeah, that's true, but it was after the album was done and anyway,
there's always pressure, With The Real Thing we had the pressure of
making the record as soon as possible. Just so we could get our
fucking union scale and pay rent and eat food, y'know. There's always
something, if you have no money it's the money you can get from
making an album, if you go on tour there's a per diem everyday - it all
becomes the same thing," he finishes.

It seems like there's not as much humour or general wackiness

evident these days "For the first few years you put humour first,
everything's a big joke and so on. But then you look back and see that
the humour is overshadowing other things, and you realise it can't be
that way all the time. There's so many things about this band that
have never made it to print or photos, people haven't seen there's a
lot of dimensions here. It's easy to talk about what a bunch of smart
arses we are, how our 'funky grooves' or 'metal' clashes - there's so
many single angles that it can get a little tiring." Billy says.

"We are very focused on making our hour and a half the best we can,
or getting the job done properly, and in that sense maybe we're the
ones who are worse off." Puffy adds. "Because we have a standard
that we now hold ourselves to, and if we don't make that standard we
got really pissed off. We're headlining and we've all grown into this
sense of responsibility that there are people who buy tickets a month
in advance, who plan 'to see our show."
One thing Faith No More haven't outgrown is a good moan. While Epic
was breaking them last tour they were whining about 'being
successful but not having money yet', seemingly skeptical of their
success. This time there was the infamous 'Axl bashing'. I mean, if
you hate it that much. Then surely you leave?

"It wasn't that bad for the first couple of months, but after four
months and being contracted to it... there were lots of little things. I
mean we were treated really well throughout, we can't complain
about that at all." Billy says of their Guns N Roses supports. "It's like
this. For the past 10 years we've been playing as professionals. We
get offered to be on this huge tour, stadiums and everything and we
figure that this is where it all leads to, the highest point. But to be on
that level you have to want to be on that level. Subconsciously you
think of things in stages, levels of touring, and you tour at the biggest
level and it's a disappointment because you see a lot of unreal things,
a lot of bullshit. And, whether it's conscious or not, you wonder to
yourself, is this where I'm headed? Is this where it all leads to? To this
bullshit?" Billy offers.

"But that isn't true. The conditioning of this industry is that that's
where you go, to head for that level as opposed to doing something
that you're comfortable and happy with at whatever level. It you
headline stadiums you've gotta want to do that, which is great if
you're into it, but I think we learn that we aren't the type of people
who could do something like that."

As he sips his round bag cuppa in more serene surroundings than a

tour bus, I ask Roddy about his expanding roll in FNM. both musically
and visually.

"I think it was everybody's job on this last album to stretch, for
everyone to take a step forward. I don't see anything I'm doing now
as being any greater or more than before, but of course I had to come
out and forward even more, which is something you take for granted.
We have to do that with every album," Roddy explains.

Indeed, 'tis Rod that puts the pop into Faith No More - "That's the stuff
I listen to more than anyone else in the band," he says. Roddy is the
pop and Jim is the metal, two extremes that have co-habited with
superb results. Until now? What's Roddy's view on the Jim affair?

"Jim and I are absolute extremes and the balance will always be
there, but to enable the scales to keep balance, the further I go in my
direction the further he has to go in his. If he stays where he is and I
continue to go further, then things will go off kilter. I would hope that
next time he'd come up with even bigger riffs. On the last album I
didn't see moving so much in his direction, he kinda stayed where he
was - and not only that, but he didn't produce a whole lot of material.
So as it stands right now it is a little off kilter, but we'll just have to
work it out."

Opposites being what they are, Roddy has quite a different view on
the current live shows to Jim (as you'll read later).

"I'm extremely happy with the shows there's more aggression than
ever before. Mike's performance has improved so much, and the
intensity level has upped to a point where we take it much more
seriously." he says.

So have Faith No More grown from boys to men [sounds like a good
name for a dodgy band]?

"I suppose that's somewhat accurate." Roddy replies, "I mean our
initial success with The Real Thing was so unexpected that you kinda
have to laugh at it. Laughing at everything's your only guard And you
can only do that for so long before you start looking like an idiot. We
did it tor a long

time, we laughed at our success and then we realised that by

laughing at our success we were laughing at all the people who'd
bought our records. When we started to realise that things had to
change ."

Was there intense embarrassment that, to Dave in Wagga. 2 million

albums puts you in the same basket as Mr Big or whatever?

"Almost Embarrassing, yeah. It's your biggest hope and your biggest
expectation and fear, all of them. Suddenly you're not as
'underground' anymore, so you lose out there. You've sold a lot of
records so Dave in Wagga is listening to you and you're not what you
used to be - this 'cherished thing' for the 'in' few - you're this big
exposed band. More than embarrassment and discomfort, I think it
just look some adjusting to."
Adjustments which still haven't quiet kicked in. Moaning on The Real
Thing about this and that, the rigours of fame (sob) and now whinging
about playing to 40,000 people a night. I thought this band had learnt
that lesson once. Why didn't you just leave it it was so ugly?

"I guess it was discomfort again," Roddy replies. "We weren't into that
whole scene, it wasn't what we were about. But you're right, we were
stupid and we should've just spit. It would've been the gentlemanly
thing to do."

Are you an easy target for the press? You seem to be pretty easy to
wind up.

"I don't think people see us as being intelligent and sarcastic when
they do that, they see us more as being stupid, idiots who will say
anything and put their feet in their mouths. If I was a journalist and I
saw what we'd said in print, I'd probably assume we were idiots."

But the pop sensibilities combined with the intense sarcasm is what
ended up producing a cover hit. 'Pop' Roddy's the one to explain why
this is so. "The motivation was kinda to fuck with people." He laughs.
"We'd been covering Easy the same time as we were doing War Pigs,
and kids would literally expect us to do War Pigs. So being the
arseholes we are, when we hear people screaming for War Pigs. It's a
case of going in the absolute furthest opposite direction. Easy was the
cheesiest pop song we could think of - in America it was a staple of
the '70s, whereas in Australia and the UK it isn't as well known, I
mean. If we hear people shout for something that hard. we aren't
going to give it to them," he chuckles.

Martin sits, as ever, like an old man. He fiddles and tweaks with a
scanner, prying into other people's affairs as the bus steams for Santa
Barbara. "Hey... wait a minute. It's yer old lady and she's got a guy in
the house and they're... oooh oooh, ha ha ha..,"

He has become an aural voyeur, hoping to catch a wild sexphone

thing or at the very least a decent argument It's perhaps the most
convincing argument yet that cellular phones shouldn't be used tor
important calls because it isn't long before this man links up his
scanner with a tape recorder.

Cagey, a touch aggravated. I ask Jim about Easy, a song he doesn't

like. "Yeah. I never really did like that song. I mean, it's okay I guess. I
didn't even wanna record it, but we elected to do so... But I suppose,
as far as it being the biggest song about to be added to our albums,
CDs, tapes - to the best of my knowledge that's what's gonna
happen..." he laughs.

After all these months on tour, can he still get his jollies off onstage?
"Hmm... infrequently it has to be said," the behemoth replies
honestly enough. "Maybe once a week."

Is it just the monotony of touring, or are we back to the 'it' factor

that's going to need fixing?

"We're back to the 'it' factor. Hopefully when we do the next record
we can work it out and get back on track."

I put it to Big Jim that this is more serious than the usual wacky, black
FNM humour, that 'it' sees him as the epicentre of something big and
nasty, that maybe he should come forward and try to work 'it' out.

"I dunno. I don't know what 'it' is. I mean I can speculate as to what
'it' is, but there's nothing that can be nailed down as such."

In a sense Jim's just as reluctant to get involved in piss fighting as the

other four band members, choosing instead a passage of verbal
mirrors to bounce off the obvious point: that he is currently an
unpopular FNMer who doesn't want to confront the issues head on
any more than anyone else. That time will come.

He does seem disconnected from the rest of the band - he's in the
back lounge while they're in the front. He doesn't know how they
really feel, he is left speculating. No camaraderie in the workplace.
Those have to be hard working conditions.

"The best thing to do is look at things with your own two eyes. I look
at things with mine and make the best sense of what t see," he offers
cryptically.

It seems as if, on stage at least, the band are doing their best shows
ever though.
"Well, that's for someone who's out front to say. To me onstage
doesn't always seem that way, it seemed that there was maybe more
raw energy coming off the stage in the past. But you see, that's for
me - for Mike Patton there's probably a lot more energy than ever
before..."

Well, when you stand and look at them......

"Look at who?"

The rest of the band.

"I really don't tend to took at them that much, y'know."

Isn't there this delicate chemistry that requires interaction to make

things what they are?

"Probably, but it's nothing we know anything about. It's maybe down
to the combination of people. This is the thing, as a unit you may
have chemistry, but individuality you may have fuck all. Maybe a
band who loses a member would be doomed."