YOU FAT BASTARDS! : Faith No More’s Brixton gig captured on VHS
- Faith No More Followers
- Aug 20
- 2 min read
On August 20, 1990, Faith No More released Live At The Brixton Academy: You Fat Bastards - the band’s only officially released, professionally filmed live show on VHS.
Recorded at London’s Brixton Academy on April 28, 1990, the footage was shot by William Shapland, directed by John Booth and mixed by producer Matt Wallace. Released to satisfy growing fan demand, it captured Faith No More at the peak of their The Real Thing explosion.
The concert ran to 18 songs but the VHS contained only 11. Still, what made the cut was enough to bottle the glorious chaos of FNM in full flight.
And the title? That came directly from the crowd, with the band encouraging the chant. “We felt a certain warmth,” Jim Martin recalled in 1990. “A feeling of affection.”
Only Faith No More could turn an insult into a souvenir.
Mike Patton dominates the screen, bouncing, stomping and contorting while Jim Martin lurks menacingly with his Flying V. Behind them, Mike Bordin, Bill Gould and Roddy Bottum create the muscular, eccentric backdrop that made FNM such a compelling live act.
The set rips through songs from The Real Thing and Introduce Yourself with a monstrous version of War Pigs, while Patton’s skull mask and assorted props add another layer of mischief.
That’s the enduring appeal of You Fat Bastards.
It’s incomplete, rough around the edges and hardly a definitive record of the Brixton set. But it captures something far more valuable: Faith No More at the exact moment their bizarre chemistry was exploding into the mainstream.
Patton is manic. Martin is stoic. Gould, Bordin and Bottum provide the unpredictable machinery underneath.
No polish. No safety net. Just eleven songs of glorious live mayhem.
Thirty-six years later, the bastard still sounds fucking brilliant.
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