Faith No More And The Easter Bunny: How Mike Patton Met Faith No More

1986. For Faith No More, it was the year everything started moving.

Slash Records came calling, the band got its first real taste of life on the road venturing beyond California for the first time. Touring would eventually become the lifeblood of FNM, but in ’86 they were still discovering just how far this strange little band could go.

They were also forging friendships and alliances with bands including Soundgarden and Frightwig, while back home, the death of Metallica bassist Cliff Burton would leave a profound mark on Mike Bordin and Jim Martin, forcing both to confront just how fragile life on the road could be.

And then there was Mike Patton. Not yet the voice of Faith No More. Not even remotely. Just an 18-year-old kid standing in a crowd, watching the band that would eventually change his life.

On October 4, 1986, Faith No More rolled into Humboldt State University in Arcata for a pre-Introduce Yourself show with Chuck Mosley still behind the mic. Somewhere in that small crowd were two teenagers from Eureka: Mike Patton and his Mr. Bungle bandmate Trey Spruance.

After the show, Spruance got talking to Mike Bordin and handed him a cassette. The Raging Wrath Of The Easter Bunny the first Mr. Bungle demo. On said cassette Patton unleashes a torrent of screams, growls and guttural metal vocals across tracks such as ‘Spreading The Thighs Of Death’ and ‘Raping Your Mind’. For Jim Martin, who quickly became fascinated by the tape, the voice conjured an image of some enormous, terrifying bastard roaring into a microphone. The reality was rather different.

'He [Trey] gives me the tape and we play it later doing whatever we were doing, and Jim loves it, because it sounds like Slayer, it sounds like speed metal with death growls and all this crazy stuff. And I'll never forget it; Jim turns around and says to us, 'This guy has got to be this giant fat guy with all the power that he's got in his voice!' And time goes by, and then when we were looking for a new singer, Jim was like, 'Let's get that big fat guy from Mr. Bungle!' - Mike B 2015

"He didn't get the tape directly from my hands NO, God NO! It always kinda makes me wonder, because he likes maybe 5 or 6 bands in the whole world. So why would he like Mr Bungle ever in any form? It may well have been savage tape, but the world is filled with savage music so why would he like this one? I always wondered about that, right to this day. How does Mr Bungle fit in with Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the DUNE soundtrack, the PLATOON soundtrack and Celtic Folk music? I don't get it, although it was obviously some weird misfortune, a twist of fate. It shouldn't have happened that way, but he was the only member of the whole band who liked that tape." - Mike P 1993

The rest of Faith No More weren’t quite as convinced. Patton’s vocals on Easter Bunny were ferocious, but they were also comparatively one-dimensional. The band were looking for something more versatile.

Still, Martin kept the tape.

The two bands met again on December 28, 1987, when members of Mr. Bungle travelled to San Francisco to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More at the Fillmore. Once again, Spruance and Patton crossed paths with Bordin, this time handing over a new demo: Bowel Of Chiley. The difference was immediate.

Bordin was blown away by how much the band had developed. This wasn’t simply the same teenage metal assault with a new coat of paint. Mr. Bungle were becoming something stranger, smarter and far more musically unpredictable.

Fast forward to the autumn of 1988, Faith No More desperately needed a new singer following the ugly split with Chuck Mosley.

Patton was studying English. He was working in a record store. He certainly wasn’t sitting around waiting to become the frontman of one of America’s most unpredictable rock bands.

Then the phone started ringing. Jim Martin had already heard Easter Bunny and had been trying to track Patton down, leaving messages that effectively amounted to: Easter Bunny good. Bowel Of Chiley bad.

Faith No More producer Matt Wallace had independently heard a Bungle demo, too. Eventually Bordin called Patton and invited him to San Francisco to audition.

Patton hesitated.

Then Trey Spruance convinced him to go. He loved We Care A Lot, and Patton finally agreed.

So the 18-year-old packed his bags and embarked on the 10-hour journey south with Spruance and Trevor Dunn. His destination was Bill Gould’s home - an abandoned animal hospital.

It was hardly the conventional beginning of a major rock-star career. Fresh-faced Patton had never been on a plane and was unadjusted to the raw sights of San Francisco, while Gould was stunned by just how young the prospective singer actually was.

Then came the audition.

Faith No More didn’t ask Patton to sing one of their established songs. Instead, they started playing their new material.

Patton responded immediately.

It wasn’t an instant, jaws-on-the-floor revelation. The band auditioned several other singers afterwards, with Chris Cornell among those who would jam with them. But something about Patton was beginning to make sense.

Then Gould and Martin disappeared for a weekend at the Martin family cabin in the woods - the same place where Martin had previously jammed with Cliff Burton.

They took the Bungle tape with them.

Away from the rehearsal room, the penny finally dropped. Patton understood the music.

The band discussed his potential with management. But, in a typically MTV generation move they demanded a photograph rather than listen to a demo.

Photographer Mark Leialoha shot the band, producing what Gould would later describe as a “great horrible band photo”. It was sent down to management, and Entner and Vasiliou travelled up from Los Angeles to witness the second audition.

They were impressed.

More importantly, the rest of Faith No More were beginning to realise that Patton spoke their musical language.

In October, he returned to San Francisco, this time staying with Bordin and spending time in the makeshift studio Gould had constructed inside a former surgical room at his bizarre pet-hospital home.

Patton had already begun working on ideas for six songs. These weren’t tentative sketches. They were rapidly becoming the songs that would define the next chapter of Faith No More.

From Out Of Nowhere. Patton didn’t just sing it. He nailed it.

From that moment on, Faith No More would never be the same. The teenager who had once seemed an unlikely candidate to replace Chuck Mosley was suddenly standing at the centre of the band’s future, armed with a voice that could go from a whisper to a howl and a brain seemingly wired to turn every musical rule inside out. Patton wasn’t simply stepping into someone else’s shoes - he was about to help create an entirely new pair. Within months, Faith No More would begin recording The Real Thing, and the strange little meeting sparked by a battered Mr. Bungle cassette would set in motion one of the most remarkable reinventions in alternative metal history.