On December 29th 1992 Faith No More released their cover of the 1977 Commodores song Easy . The song is to this day their most successful selling single, however amongst fans it is possibly their most controversial. "It feels really good to have couple of thousand people flipping you off. Just to see the number of middle fingers go up when we went into 'Easy' was amazing." - Bill Gould | Billboard | 1993 The song aided them in reaching their highest UK chart position of number 3, and number 1 in Australia in 1992. The song reached out to a much wider audience, whether it was an audience FNM wished to reach out to is another question, but we can be sure the record company were pleased. So why did FNM chose to cover Easy ? And why was it so successful; why did this slick and slightly tongue in check rendition sell more in the UK and Europe than their own unique brand of music? FNM have been playing Easy in their live set since April 1990, the earliest record of it being played is at Rock City on April 25 1990 . According to setlistfm.com the band have played it live 418 times and it is their third most played song after Epic and We Care A Lot . The band decided to add Easy to their set as a counter balance for their faithful version of War Pigs by Black Sabbath , which they had been playing to audiences since Chuck Mosley 's days: "First off, we did it live. We used to do (Black Sabbath's) 'War Pigs', so the meat heads started coming just to hear us do that all the time, and Jim's chest was puffing out. He got to be Mr Black Sabbath, so we decided we wanted to do 'Easy' to fuck with people. We heard It on the radio and went, 'This is a great song, let's do it!'' - Bill Gould | Kerrang | 1995 It was during the recording sessions for Angel Dust that the band laid down a studio version originally to be released as a b-side. However the record company decided to add it to later copies of the album and of course release it as double a-side with Be Aggressive under the title I'm Easy . "Recording it was probably Billy's idea. Our fans would scream for 'War Pigs', but being the kind of band we are, never wanting to be pigeonholed, never wanting to give people what they expect, and as a way of balancing things up ... when people yelled for the cover song we gave them a different cover. The flip-side of the coin. Then because we liked how we played It and the way Mike sang it. we recorded It tor a B-side. Then the record company had a brilliant idea to put it out as an a-side: we made a really nice video." - Roddy Bottum | Kerrang | 1995 "For our own personal satisfaction, we like to do things that are left field. Warner Bros. has been marketing us a a rock band; we like to think we're other things too. There was a little hesitancy to put the record out there, but it's just exploded. I think it might be our best hit." - Bill Gould | Billboard | 1993 Section from an interview in 1995 | Kerrang Do you get any weird reactions from that? Have people come to the band from that single? Roddy: 'Not really. I honestly don't think we got a lot of easy listening fans from that song! Maybe it's the video. Even though the execution of the song is pretty faithful you can see from the video that we're up to something. The tongue is definitely in the cheek' Bill: 'I don't think we were ever gonna play it live again at that point, but we just happened to have it recorded. It wasn't a hit in the States, though. In fact, we were over there while it was a hit here, and it's only now that we've come back that it's managed to sink in: people keep saying to us, 'Well. your last big hit was 'Easy' ' Patton: 'It's a bit like stealing your own gun, then shooting yourself with it.' Bill: 'Or stealing your gun and shooting somebody else with it!' The coupling of these two songs is in itself a comical match due to the homoerotic sexual references of Roddy's lyrics from Be Aggressive and love sick Lionel Richie . Was there any sense of irony in the FNM version? Were the band playing the song to provoke a reaction? "The only ironic moment in that whole song is right before the guitar solo when Patton goes 'eww', which was a comment, not on the song, but on Jim Martin. Because there was such acrimony and tension between the band and him during the making of that record." - Matt Wallace | Diffuser | 2015 ”It would be too obvious just to slag it. We like it in a painful kind of way. It gives the band memories of our childhood. We all grew up with it." - Bill Gould | Billboard | 1993 ”Usually we just do songs we like, 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." - Mike Patton | Kerrang | 2009 Easy had two different design packages. The US version featured the photo of two rhinos 'having fun' also used for the covers of Everything's Ruined and the EP Songs to Make Love to . The rest of the world were treated to a rather disturbing image of two young boys and a pistol a photograph by William Klein . The video clip mixes live footage from the Angel Dust tour and the band hanging out in a hotel with a bunch of transvestites and flamingos! The live footage also features a snippet of Mike Patton 's infamous 'drinking piss from a tennis shoe incident' at Brixton Academy . The video is opulent and indulgent; watching Patton throw luxury chocolates from a hotel balcony, Bill Gould swigging champagne from the bottle and Roddy Bottum crooning over a grand piano is nothing but classic FNM style. "Of all the videos we've done, it probably has our personality the most'" Gould says, "people can find something sympathetic through a weird medium. It's almost touching that this transvestite is sitting there drinking champagne while Mike's singing." - Bill Gould | Billboard | March 1993 If we look at the array of cover versions FNM have committed to vinyl we notice that majority seem to explore genres of music far from that of their own unique brand of music; jazz, pop, punk and soul; I Started A Joke , Spanish Eyes , This Guys In Love With You , I Wanna Fuck Myself . With the exception of a few particularly fantastic songs FNM generally make aggressive up tempo music, so these cover songs sit amongst their own compositions as a complete contrast. At the time of Easy 's release FNM fans heard the song differently than the general public, it was a bit of a joke, the band poking fun at the record industry and the rock genre like they had pulled off live. But we get a song such as Evidence on the very next album and She Loves Me Not on Album Of The Year , each flirting with the soul and pop genres. Years later we hear Mike Patton experimenting with soul and easy listening music. The Patton we know now is adept at creating beautiful, soulful and sensitive laments with his Mondo Cane project and recent movie soundtracks, amongst others. Mike Bordin is reported to be a huge collector of Jazz music. And of course Roddy 's other band Imperial Teen are much more pop. The media had always cited Jim Martin as 'the rock influence' in FNM, he was the guy with the leather, beard and attitude, but this song was recorded and played during his time with the band and his contribution is essential to the song. A note perfect solo. All this suggests FNM wanted to play songs like this from very early on but weren't sure how to place them on their albums amongst the rock genre they had been slotted into. The song Edge Of The World was there only nod towards lounge previous to Angel Dust . So maybe this cover of Easy was a way of doing that without alienating too many fans and testing the water for further song writing on their later albums? As to why Easy was so successful in Europe and Australia, the UK public in particular are suckers for a revamped golden oldie and a song that translates into karaoke! FNM and their record company might care about the money but we as fans don't give a monkey's how successful a song was in the charts, we care about the music. Let us leave you with Lionel Richie 's opinion on Faith No More EASY. . ... "I was actually quite flattered that much about the song. Yes, I loved it." - Lionel Richie | Washington Post | 2001

On December 1st 1997 Faith No More released their collaboration single with Sparks , This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us . ‘They found out that we're fans of theirs, and have asked us to appear on their next album. That's just f**king amazing. Sparks were the first really campy operatic-type band. I always thought Queen ripped them off.’ -  Bill Gould 1997  The original version of the song was featured on the 1974 album Kimono In My House and was the lead single from the album, reaching number 2 in the UK singles chart. "This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” was so atypical of the time. It wasn’t your usual verse-chorus-verse song. We’re proud of that fact. A lot of bands seem to enjoy the status quo of things, but we’ve always gone for the more provocative approach. “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” tries to challenge the listener, to show what pop music is capable of. We did try and recruit Brian May around that time. We met up a few times, just before Queen had really broken through in the States. We were looking for a guitar player for Sparks and he gave it some thought. He was ruminating on it, but it wasn’t to be." -  Russell Mael 2006 Sparks' 1997 album Plagiarism included two collaborations with FNM – This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us and Something for the Girl with Everything . ' We’re both real oddball outfits — and we like to push buttons. I get the sense that Sparks put a lot of thought into their presentation and how they come across. Faith No More does too. We started employing ways to (mess) with our audience early on. We rode our bikes up to the weirdo record store and enquired within. There was an ambiguous Bowie type rocker with earrings and colored hair who we were able to confide in. It kind of changed our lives.” - Roddy 2011 FNM have been joined onstage by Sparks to perform the song on two definite occasions, Brixton Academy 29.11.1997 and Hollywood Palladium 01.12.2010.  The later performance also featured Dean Menta on guitar who since leaving FNM has performed and recorded with Sparks. Sparks albums that he has contributed to include Plagiarism (1997) Lil' Beethoven (2002) Hello Young Lovers (2006) Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008) and The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman (2009).

Photo by Ross Halfin A IS FOR… Angelo Moore Mike Bordin played drums on Sacrifice , the second album by Fishbone singer's side project Brand New Step , released in 2013. B IS FOR… Cliff Burton In 1975 impressionable thirteen year old Castro Valley High School classmates Mike and Cliff Burton became friends. They hung out listening to Black Sabbath and The Sex Pistols . This adolescent comradeship led to the pair taking up the instruments that would later define their professional lives. "I was thirteen years old. It was 1975 and I was sitting in my friend Cliff Burton’s bedroom and he said, “Hey man, I’m going to play bass.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll play drums.” It was a total knee-jerk reaction. It was completely unthought-out. And from the moment I started playing it kind of took over for me. It was an obsession, but it was positive. It was something that kept me out of trouble and defined those middle years where I could’ve gone way off the rails and gone the wrong direction." - Bordin 2015 C IS FOR… Choked Mike played drums on the song Choked , a collaboration with Primus ' Tim Alexander and Tool's Maynard James Keenan , released on the compilation Flyin' Traps (1997). D IS FOR… Dub War In June 2022 Welsh alternative metal heads Dub War released the single Get Back Up which featured Mike on the kit. The song was taken from Westgate Under Fire , the band’s first album of all new material in 26 years. E IS FOR… EZ Street At the age of 15 Mike and Cliff Burton joined the band E-Z Street whose leader was future FNM guitarist Jim Martin , and which took its name from a strip-club in San Mateo. E-Z Street didn't last very long due to the mutual dislike between Bordin and Martin. F IS FOR… Fry By Night Mike and Cliff Burton’s very first band was Fry By Night which also featured 12 year old Eddie Chacon on vocals who would later find fame as one half of the pop duo Charles and Eddie . “They were a little older. I was 12 and obsessed with songwriting. I had this little Radio Shack tape recorder with a pitch button and I’d slow down songs in order to fully understand what was going on.” - Chacon 2020 The band’s name was originally Fly By Night until a typo on their first gig poster fatefully changed it for them. G IS FOR… SF Giants Mike is a huge fan of baseball and supports home team San Francisco Giants. Bordin appeared in the unreleased 2019 documentary film Baseball Furies talking about his love of the game. “Mike is a serious Giants fan, and he’s very proud of his fandom. It was really special to talk to him about how much he loves the team and the game. He showed us some of the best baseball cards in his collection and then took us to this shed where he had some incredible vintage baseball arcade games.” - Jason Dummeldinger 2019 H IS FOR… Hockey New York Rangers hockey star Dan Boyle joined FNM as a drum roadie during their Sol Invictus tour. Boyle being a huge FNM fan and Bordin being a huge hockey fan was a match made in heaven. “It’s not like a TV show or a gimmick because we’re out there playing shows. I would never presume to take myself seriously, but music is who I am and what I do, so I don’t fuck around with it. He’s helping us do our work, and it’s great because I like having him around.” - Bordin 2015 I IS FOR… Introduce Yourself Chinese Arithmetic is quintessential Mike Bordin. His signature power beats are instantly recognisable. “I wrote it on the stage at the Metroplex, just one afternoon when there was no show. My drums were up, and I started playing that intro to it. I just started playing the drum beat because it sounded so good there. It was a room like the On Broadway, like a miniature Brixton Academy, with a little balcony and a high roof, and naturally sounds big. There’s natural ambiance—stuff like rims and clicking aren’t lost. It’s got every element of Faith No More.” - Bordin 2013 J IS FOR… Joe Holmes Former Ozzy and David Lee Roth guitarist Joe Holmes is currently working on a solo album which features Mike on drums. So far we have only heard a teaser of the track Deadfall . K IS FOR… Korn Mike joined Korn on tour in 2000 filling in for drummer David Silveria who suffered an injury to his wrist. L IS FOR … CK Labzepko Mike studied African percussion in school with the Ghanaian teacher C.K. Ladzepko . His teacher couldn't play a drum kit but he could play 30 different instruments with his hands, feet and elbows and sing different rhythms. “I did that for a year or two, and it was nothing to do with the drumset, it was a dude from Ghana who was really cool, just this little guy - and man, every single limb, more than one rhythm could come out of each limb, plus his dancing, singing and he just had everything, he had rhythm everywhere. And the way that they stack the rhythms and put them against each other was really something for me. He was the real deal.” - Bordin 2015 M IS FOR … Mr Krinkle Track 11 from the 1993 Primus album Mr. Krinkle is about Mike Bordin, who used that name as an alias when he checked into hotels. "The thing about Mike, he is one of these guys like Mike Watt - he has a very interesting perspective on things, and he's really good at tossing out these colorful little quips on how he perceives things. So we would have these great conversations on the phone. That's what 'Mr. Krinkle' is all about. mThe line, "Seems the rumors are about your team might move away" refers to the San Francisco Giants, who were considering a move to Tampa. Mike Bordin was not happy about it.” - Les Claypool N IS FOR… Nevermind The Bollocks Mike was at the Sex Pistols final show at Winterland SF in 1978 with Cliff. The concert had a profound effect on him. “A major turning point was when the two of us saw the Sex Pistols at Winterland. Would you have guessed that judging by where Cliff ended up professionally? Maybe you would, but the point is, we were open-minded. We were open to evolution. Evolution is important. You’ve got two choices: you’ve got to roll with it or it’s going to roll right over you.” - Bordin 2015 O IS FOR… Ozzy Mike first played with his hero Ozzy Osbourne at an RIP Magazine birthday show in Hollywood, on November 9th 1990. The Prince of Darkness joined FNM for their rendition of the Black Sabbath classic War Pigs . Mike was able to explain to Ozzy how his music had changed his life and in 1996 Mike was invited by Ozzy to join his band. During the 1997 Ozzfest Tour Mike played with Black Sabbath filling in for Bill Ward who was suffering from health issues. Mike featured on three Ozzy Osbourne studio albums Down to Earth (2001), Under Cover (2005) and Black Rain (2007). As well as Live at Budokan (2002) and re-recordings of Blizzard of Ozz (2002) and Diary of a Madman (2002). Mike left Ozzy's band when FNM reunited. But returned to play at the Back To The Beginning concert in 2025. “Black Sabbath was really important to me as a kid, growing up, I don't want to overstate it, but we sat and talked, and he said, 'You guys are so different, why did you do War Pigs? Are you taking the p**s?' And I said, 'No, Black Sabbath are super-important to my life and I owe a lot if not all of the path I've taken to that early influence and he remembered that.” - Bordin 2016 P IS FOR… Puffy In his late teens Mike sported an Afro hairstyle and was given the nickname 'Puffy' by Jim Martin which stuck. Q IS FOR… Queen of England In 2002 the late HRH Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her golden jubilee with a concert which featured the likes of Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney. Oddly enough Ozzy was on the bill also. When Mike B found out his band would be playing for The Queen, he had this to say. “It’s beyond belief when we found out we were playing for the Queen of England.” Only to be dropped for Phil Collins in the final performance! R IS FOR… Rhythm Section Together Mike Bordin and Billy Gould create an unformidable rhythm section, often voted by music press as the best in metal. Their super tight locked in tone and style serves the music whilst also breaking free to create some of the most intense FNM musical moments. "It always kind of has been. You know, starting with Cliff—what a gift. Playing with Robert [Trujillo] and the great Geezer Butler, who’s the king of everybody—again, what a gift. But with Bill there’s just this weird language that we use to relate with one another. And I don’t think that particular language is very common, it’s unique to who we are as a rhythm section. And when it works well, in a collaborative sense, it’s really great because the result is more than just two people. It’s like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And like I said, to get a second chance to play with Bill and all the guys—it’s just so special. I really treasure it." - Puffy 2016 S IS FOR… Sharp Young Men In 1981 Puffy answered the same ad as Bill Gould and both became members of Sharp Young Men , with Mike Morris (guitar/vox) and Wade Worthington (keyboards). The band soon became Faith. No Man , Worthington left and was replaced by Bill's childhood friend Roddy Bottum . Bordin, Gould and Bottum became a unit and replaced Morris with Mark Bowen , who stayed with them for a year. For a while the band tried different singers until Chuck Mosley became their permanent frontman. T IS FOR… Robert Trujillo Mike and the third Metallica bass player Robert Trujill o both became Ozzy Osbourne touring musicians in 1996. They also recorded together on Degradation Trip , the second solo album by Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell . Today the two remain close friends. U IS FOR… UC Berkeley Mike Bordin was the fourth and final drummer for the Fun Addicts and this was Mike's first working band while attending UC Berkeley where he earned a degree in English. V IS FOR… Violet Mike has two daughters; his youngest Violet is an artist who designed a poster for FNM in 2015. W IS FOR… Who Wants to be a Millionaire Mike appeared on the U.S. version of the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on January 21, 2001 and won $1,000 after incorrectly answering his $32,000 question. He did not use his 50:50 or Phone-a-Friend lifelines. He was not on one of the celebrity editions, he appeared on the show with regular contestants. In the audience were Mike’s wife and friend Robert Trujillo. X IS FOR… Exploits! Mike is never one to shy away from getting stuck in whatever the task. He has bungee jumped, sky dived and been a passenger in a race car on MTV. And also shown presenters the right way to pot plants. Y IS FOR… Yamaha “I’m a good Yamaha boy. I’ve always played them. All Yamaha drums are totally hand-made. Most other companies start with pre-made shells and Taiwanese hardware, but Yamaha makes the shells and hardware themselves. It’s quality stuff.” Live, Bordin usually uses a large Birch Custom Absolute kit, but he strips things down in the studio. “I usually use just one 24” kick, one 15” rack tom, and a 16” as a second rack or floor tom,” he says. “Yamaha has also been making me other drums I sometimes use, like a 22” kick and 12” and 13” toms. And I love their 13” x 7” Akira Jimbo snare, a big beech drum with an open sound. It’s as loud as a handgun, even though I don’t think it was originally designed to be a big rock snare." You can pick up a Mike Bordin signature snare for a few hundred dollars today! Z IS FOR… Zildjian For all the drum nerds… MIKE BORDIN'S SETUP 1.19" K China 2.21" A Zildjian Sweet Ride 3.21" Z Power Ride 4.15" A Custom Mastersound HiHats – Pair 5.19" K Dark Crash Thin 6.20” A Zildjian Medium Thin Crash

Photo by Ross Halfin A IS FOR… Angelo Moore Mike Bordin played drums on Sacrifice , the second album by Fishbone singer's side project Brand New Step , released in 2013. B IS FOR… Cliff Burton In 1975 impressionable thirteen year old Castro Valley High School classmates Mike and Cliff Burton became friends. They hung out listening to Black Sabbath and The Sex Pistols . This adolescent comradeship led to the pair taking up the instruments that would later define their professional lives. "I was thirteen years old. It was 1975 and I was sitting in my friend Cliff Burton’s bedroom and he said, “Hey man, I’m going to play bass.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll play drums.” It was a total knee-jerk reaction. It was completely unthought-out. And from the moment I started playing it kind of took over for me. It was an obsession, but it was positive. It was something that kept me out of trouble and defined those middle years where I could’ve gone way off the rails and gone the wrong direction." - Bordin 2015 C IS FOR… Choked Mike played drums on the song Choked , a collaboration with Primus ' Tim Alexander and Tool's Maynard James Keenan , released on the compilation Flyin' Traps (1997). D IS FOR… Dub War In June 2022 Welsh alternative metal heads Dub War released the single Get Back Up which featured Mike on the kit. The song was taken from Westgate Under Fire , the band’s first album of all new material in 26 years. E IS FOR… EZ Street At the age of 15 Mike and Cliff Burton joined the band E-Z Street whose leader was future FNM guitarist Jim Martin , and which took its name from a strip-club in San Mateo. E-Z Street didn't last very long due to the mutual dislike between Bordin and Martin. F IS FOR… Fry By Night Mike and Cliff Burton’s very first band was Fry By Night which also featured 12 year old Eddie Chacon on vocals who would later find fame as one half of the pop duo Charles and Eddie . “They were a little older. I was 12 and obsessed with songwriting. I had this little Radio Shack tape recorder with a pitch button and I’d slow down songs in order to fully understand what was going on.” - Chacon 2020 The band’s name was originally Fly By Night until a typo on their first gig poster fatefully changed it for them. G IS FOR… SF Giants Mike is a huge fan of baseball and supports home team San Francisco Giants. Bordin appeared in the unreleased 2019 documentary film Baseball Furies talking about his love of the game. “Mike is a serious Giants fan, and he’s very proud of his fandom. It was really special to talk to him about how much he loves the team and the game. He showed us some of the best baseball cards in his collection and then took us to this shed where he had some incredible vintage baseball arcade games.” - Jason Dummeldinger 2019 H IS FOR… Hockey New York Rangers hockey star Dan Boyle joined FNM as a drum roadie during their Sol Invictus tour. Boyle being a huge FNM fan and Bordin being a huge hockey fan was a match made in heaven. “It’s not like a TV show or a gimmick because we’re out there playing shows. I would never presume to take myself seriously, but music is who I am and what I do, so I don’t fuck around with it. He’s helping us do our work, and it’s great because I like having him around.” - Bordin 2015 I IS FOR… Introduce Yourself Chinese Arithmetic is quintessential Mike Bordin. His signature power beats are instantly recognisable. “I wrote it on the stage at the Metroplex, just one afternoon when there was no show. My drums were up, and I started playing that intro to it. I just started playing the drum beat because it sounded so good there. It was a room like the On Broadway, like a miniature Brixton Academy, with a little balcony and a high roof, and naturally sounds big. There’s natural ambiance—stuff like rims and clicking aren’t lost. It’s got every element of Faith No More.” - Bordin 2013 J IS FOR… Joe Holmes Former Ozzy and David Lee Roth guitarist Joe Holmes is currently working on a solo album which features Mike on drums. So far we have only heard a teaser of the track Deadfall . K IS FOR… Korn Mike joined Korn on tour in 2000 filling in for drummer David Silveria who suffered an injury to his wrist. L IS FOR … CK Labzepko Mike studied African percussion in school with the Ghanaian teacher C.K. Ladzepko . His teacher couldn't play a drum kit but he could play 30 different instruments with his hands, feet and elbows and sing different rhythms. “I did that for a year or two, and it was nothing to do with the drumset, it was a dude from Ghana who was really cool, just this little guy - and man, every single limb, more than one rhythm could come out of each limb, plus his dancing, singing and he just had everything, he had rhythm everywhere. And the way that they stack the rhythms and put them against each other was really something for me. He was the real deal.” - Bordin 2015 M IS FOR … Mr Krinkle Track 11 from the 1993 Primus album Mr. Krinkle is about Mike Bordin, who used that name as an alias when he checked into hotels. "The thing about Mike, he is one of these guys like Mike Watt - he has a very interesting perspective on things, and he's really good at tossing out these colorful little quips on how he perceives things. So we would have these great conversations on the phone. That's what 'Mr. Krinkle' is all about. mThe line, "Seems the rumors are about your team might move away" refers to the San Francisco Giants, who were considering a move to Tampa. Mike Bordin was not happy about it.” - Les Claypool N IS FOR… Nevermind The Bollocks Mike was at the Sex Pistols final show at Winterland SF in 1978 with Cliff. The concert had a profound effect on him. “A major turning point was when the two of us saw the Sex Pistols at Winterland. Would you have guessed that judging by where Cliff ended up professionally? Maybe you would, but the point is, we were open-minded. We were open to evolution. Evolution is important. You’ve got two choices: you’ve got to roll with it or it’s going to roll right over you.” - Bordin 2015 O IS FOR… Ozzy Mike first played with his hero Ozzy Osbourne at an RIP Magazine birthday show in Hollywood, on November 9th 1990. The Prince of Darkness joined FNM for their rendition of the Black Sabbath classic War Pigs . Mike was able to explain to Ozzy how his music had changed his life and in 1996 Mike was invited by Ozzy to join his band. During the 1997 Ozzfest Tour Mike played with Black Sabbath filling in for Bill Ward who was suffering from health issues. Mike featured on three Ozzy Osbourne studio albums Down to Earth (2001), Under Cover (2005) and Black Rain (2007). As well as Live at Budokan (2002) and re-recordings of Blizzard of Ozz (2002) and Diary of a Madman (2002). Mike left Ozzy's band when FNM reunited. But returned to play at the Back To The Beginning concert in 2025. “Black Sabbath was really important to me as a kid, growing up, I don't want to overstate it, but we sat and talked, and he said, 'You guys are so different, why did you do War Pigs? Are you taking the p**s?' And I said, 'No, Black Sabbath are super-important to my life and I owe a lot if not all of the path I've taken to that early influence and he remembered that.” - Bordin 2016 P IS FOR… Puffy In his late teens Mike sported an Afro hairstyle and was given the nickname 'Puffy' by Jim Martin which stuck. Q IS FOR… Queen of England In 2002 the late HRH Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her golden jubilee with a concert which featured the likes of Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney. Oddly enough Ozzy was on the bill also. When Mike B found out his band would be playing for The Queen, he had this to say. “It’s beyond belief when we found out we were playing for the Queen of England.” Only to be dropped for Phil Collins in the final performance! R IS FOR… Rhythm Section Together Mike Bordin and Billy Gould create an unformidable rhythm section, often voted by music press as the best in metal. Their super tight locked in tone and style serves the music whilst also breaking free to create some of the most intense FNM musical moments. "It always kind of has been. You know, starting with Cliff—what a gift. Playing with Robert [Trujillo] and the great Geezer Butler, who’s the king of everybody—again, what a gift. But with Bill there’s just this weird language that we use to relate with one another. And I don’t think that particular language is very common, it’s unique to who we are as a rhythm section. And when it works well, in a collaborative sense, it’s really great because the result is more than just two people. It’s like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And like I said, to get a second chance to play with Bill and all the guys—it’s just so special. I really treasure it." - Puffy 2016 S IS FOR… Sharp Young Men In 1981 Puffy answered the same ad as Bill Gould and both became members of Sharp Young Men , with Mike Morris (guitar/vox) and Wade Worthington (keyboards). The band soon became Faith. No Man , Worthington left and was replaced by Bill's childhood friend Roddy Bottum . Bordin, Gould and Bottum became a unit and replaced Morris with Mark Bowen , who stayed with them for a year. For a while the band tried different singers until Chuck Mosley became their permanent frontman. T IS FOR… Robert Trujillo Mike and the third Metallica bass player Robert Trujill o both became Ozzy Osbourne touring musicians in 1996. They also recorded together on Degradation Trip , the second solo album by Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell . Today the two remain close friends. U IS FOR… UC Berkeley Mike Bordin was the fourth and final drummer for the Fun Addicts and this was Mike's first working band while attending UC Berkeley where he earned a degree in English. V IS FOR… Violet Mike has two daughters; his youngest Violet is an artist who designed a poster for FNM in 2015. W IS FOR… Who Wants to be a Millionaire Mike appeared on the U.S. version of the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on January 21, 2001 and won $1,000 after incorrectly answering his $32,000 question. He did not use his 50:50 or Phone-a-Friend lifelines. He was not on one of the celebrity editions, he appeared on the show with regular contestants. In the audience were Mike’s wife and friend Robert Trujillo. X IS FOR… Exploits! Mike is never one to shy away from getting stuck in whatever the task. He has bungee jumped, sky dived and been a passenger in a race car on MTV. And also shown presenters the right way to pot plants. Y IS FOR… Yamaha “I’m a good Yamaha boy. I’ve always played them. All Yamaha drums are totally hand-made. Most other companies start with pre-made shells and Taiwanese hardware, but Yamaha makes the shells and hardware themselves. It’s quality stuff.” Live, Bordin usually uses a large Birch Custom Absolute kit, but he strips things down in the studio. “I usually use just one 24” kick, one 15” rack tom, and a 16” as a second rack or floor tom,” he says. “Yamaha has also been making me other drums I sometimes use, like a 22” kick and 12” and 13” toms. And I love their 13” x 7” Akira Jimbo snare, a big beech drum with an open sound. It’s as loud as a handgun, even though I don’t think it was originally designed to be a big rock snare." You can pick up a Mike Bordin signature snare for a few hundred dollars today! Z IS FOR… Zildjian For all the drum nerds… MIKE BORDIN'S SETUP 1.19" K China 2.21" A Zildjian Sweet Ride 3.21" Z Power Ride 4.15" A Custom Mastersound HiHats – Pair 5.19" K Dark Crash Thin 6.20” A Zildjian Medium Thin Crash

Faith No More were between 21 and 25 years of age in 1984 when they wrote and recorded their debut album We Care A Lot. As part of our 40 years celebration of this record we are reposting photographs of the band for this early period taken by Joan Osato . In the early eighties Joan was Roddy Bottum 's roommate and captured some fantastic shots of Roddy, Chuck, Mike, Jim and Billy - her photos featured on the cover of We Care A Lot. Joan has kindly allowed us to share these photos. In addition to these check out this gallery of photos from We Care A Lot era shared with us by Bill G.

Today is the day, the release of AVTT/PTTN, an album that has Mike Patton teaming up with Scott and Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers. The album is out via Thirty Tigers, there is a Onyx Vinyl Variant with alternate artwork , limited to 2000 copies, and only available in Ipecac Blixt US , Townsend UK and Bandcamp stores. The guys have announced a Spring 2026 Tour . Most dates on sale Nov 21st (unless noted below) They are also coming to NYC in a couple weeks for a series of special events including In-store signing at Rough Trade (11/24) Grammy Museum with Eric André (11/25) The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (11/26) 2026 TOUR DATES 3/28 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival (on sale 12/4 )    4/9 - Louisville, KY - Palace Theatre 4/10 - Louisville, KY - Palace Theatre   4/11 - Nashville, TN - The Pinnacle   4/14 - Chattanooga, TN - Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Auditorium (on sale 12/5 ) 4/16 - North Charleston, SC - North Charleston Performing Arts Center       4/17 - Greensboro, NC - Tanger Center   4/18 - Columbia, SC - Township Auditorium    5/8 - San Francisco, CA - The Masonic 5/9 - Paso Robles, CA - Vina Robles Amphitheatre (on sale 12/5 ) 5/10 - San Diego, CA - The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park 5/12 - Phoenix, AZ - Arizona Financial Theatre (on sale 12/5 ) 5/14 - Austin, TX - Moody Center  5/15 - Dallas, TX - AT&T Performing Arts Center 6/10 - Boston, MA - Wang Center  6/12 - Brooklyn, NY - Kings Theatre 6/14 - Baltimore, MD - Chesapeake Employers Ins. Arena 6/16 - Lewiston, NY - Artpark Mainstage 6/18 - Cleveland, OH - Jacobs Pavilion  6/19 - Ann Arbor, MI - Hill Auditorium (on sale 12/10) 6/20 - Waukegan, IL - Genesee Theatre (on sale 12/5 )

On November 9th 1992 Faith No More released Everything's Ruined , as the third single from Angel Dust . "It's radio friendly for sure, a pop song. But our singer always adds the unexpected and the twists." - Roddy Bottum 1992 Everything's Ruined made the top ten in our The Greatest Faith No More Song Poll , ranking at number 9 out of 105 songs. With a working title of The Carpenters Song - it has contrasting moods, euphoric choruses and melancholy verses. Also one of the only songs on Angel Dust to feature a full length guitar solo. "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." - Mike Patton 1992 Patton explained the working title's reference to easy-listening music. "One thing I've been doing is listening to a lot of mood music, easy listening. And I've taken a lot from that. The chorus of 'Everything's Ruined' reminds me of Sinatra, Jackie Gleason." - Mike Patton 1992 The music video, directed by Kevin Kerslake, who also directed the video for Midlife Crisis , remains a fan favourite regardless of it's seemingly cheap production following the elaborate 'perfume commercial' style of A Small Victory . The extras in the video were found through a competition hosted by MTV Most Wanted. “Oddly enough, I grew up with Billy Gould and Roddy Bottum. We were neighbours and our parents actually went to school together, so I had a life long relationship with those guys. I was also a big fan of Faith No More." - Kevin Kerslake 2016 "Warner's spent the video budget on 'Small V' and 'Midlife' so that when it came time to 'Everything's Ruined' there's wasn't much left (!!). It was our idea to take this further and make a video as cheap as humanly possible, in one of those video booths like they had at county fairs, where you sing and dance in front of a blue screen. We didn't quite get to do that, but we got it as close as possible." - Bill Gould 2012

On November 4th 1988 Faith No More played at the IBeam in their hometown of San Francisco. This was their first live performance with Chuck Mosley 's replacement Mike Patton fronting the band. Photo : Mark Weiss Steffan Chirazi , who had been championing FNM in the music press since 1987 and who had written the band's only magazine feature in Kerrang!, wrote this preview. FAITH NO MORE - I Beam SF. Your chance to check out the new version of the SF funk/punk/metal/rap kingpins. New vocalist Mike Patton of Mr Bungle has come on board to replace Chuck Mosely. Early indications are that the group's moving in a more metal direction. These guys are god-like in England by the way. - Bam Magazine | October 1988 At this stage songs for their next album The Real Thing were written. Demos had been recorded and submitted to the record company for approval but work on recording the album itself would not begin until December 1988. This show was to gage public reaction to the new music and more importantly the band's new singer. However reactions of the crowd were not all positive and some returning fans were not happy by the radical change in vocal style. 'The first show I did was in San Francisco about November 1988, and after the gig the bouncer brought this note back and said, 'Some girl asked me to give this to you' I'm like, 'Oh great, cool, neat- my first groupie!' And silly me, the note read: 'You stupid, sexist, macho asshole. What are you doing? Get off the stage. Where's Chuck? He rocks...' All this stuff you know. I just went, 'Killer! I'm going home ''- Mike Patton | Australian Publication | 1990 Chirazi's review of the show was much more complimentary. Who knew what to expect when FNM unveiled their new singer at The IBeam recently? But Patton lay waste to the band's previous singer. Patton's advantages. He wasn't drunk, he can sing, he can dance. He has energy and conviction. The band seems recharged and ready to roar with new material that could break the band big. By the evening's end, the scene sported a return to real ugliness, broken glasses, a broken camera and a piece of Patton hate mail that read 'You guys were cool, but get this long haired asshole off the stage...' To the person that write that - stop taking drugs and realise it when talent spits you in the face . - Bam Magazine | November 1988 We spoke to Bill Gould about the show and although his memory was hazy he confirmed that the set list was mainly comprised of songs from The Real Thing and Steffan Chirazi agrees that From Out Of Nowhere, Falling To Pieces and Underwater Love were in the set, as were As The Worm Turns, We Care A lot and War Pigs with also a strong possibility that The Cowboy Song was in there too! Patton's first gig has been confirmed as being the November 1988 I-Beam show, one final mystery remains - when was the From Out Of Nowhere live footage recorded, and when did Patton hurt his hand? Adrian Harte 's biography The Real Story says the footage in the From Out Of Nowhere video was recorded at 'Patton's second gig with the band at I-Beam'. Again thanks to BAM Magazine we have a record of three I-Beam Faith No More shows before The Real Thing is released: 4th November 1988, 24th February 1989 and 7th April 1989. If we take The Real Story at its word, the 24th February gig would be the I-Beam show The Real Story refers to. If so, the band managed to play a gig the next day in Berkley, and keep touring throughout March, even though Patton's hand was badly cut. It seems more likely the 7th April 1989 gig is the gig where Patton hurt his hand as there isn't any record of any gigs after this date until June. The band is known to have taken a break around this time, with reasons including "to enable Jim Martin to have surgery" and also due to Patton's "unfortunately accident" . As further evidence, an article on Faith No More by Michael Snyder in the San Francisco Chronicle from 9th July 1989 says: A couple of months ago, Patton could have written a symphony of misery. The occasion was a video shoot for the new LP at an I Beam gig. First, Patton cracked his front tooth in half on his mike stand. Then, during the band's cover of the Black Sabbath number, "War Pigs," Patton lost his footing, tumbled forward and smashed his hand against a broken bottle on the edge of the stage, severing a tendon. He finished the show and, the next day, spent 5 1/2 hours in microscopic reconstructive surgery. "The nerve is growing back," he said, "and we got it all on film."

In 2016 Trey Spruance talked exclusively to us about Mr. Bungle , his latest projects at the time and Halloween. Since then a lot of creepy shit has happened. Happy Halloween..... When we approached Trey Spruance he was busy with his latest project, a composition for the Kronos Quartet. However Halloween seemed like the perfect opportunity to reach out to the man again and he kindly freed up some time to chat with us about the first two Bungle records, Secret Chiefs 3 and more. Trey's is an incredibly talented multi musician, composer, producer and founder of Web Of Mimicry Records. Since Mr. Bungle he has explored realms of music and philosophy that will boggle the mind and he has performed his music all over the world. With great pleasure we give you..... Trey Spruance....The Halloween Interview Let's dive right in to the Halloween stuff! Secret Chiefs 3 recorded an inspired version of John Carpenter's theme from the movie Halloween. What's the story behind 'Personae : Halloween’? The connotation of the word “personae” is that of the mask, yet not just in the simple sense of masking or disguising the face or character. The word operates more specifically as the familiar “face” itself, the one shown outwardly, the one constructed to effect a particular impression in the outer world. The eternal tension of personae’s characteristic of simultaneously masking and revealing makes it of interest as one of the classic examples of coincidentia oppositorum. For Secret Chiefs 3 it’s an ever present subject, and the paradox is maintained at all costs. On the UR version of John Carpenter’s excellent piece, we are, like Michael Myers, far away from the “impersonation of the souls of the dead” of the guisers and pranksters hoping to temporarily propitiate malignant spirits with small-time maliciousness; and far away from their legacy echoed in the extortionist practice of "trick or treat”; and even farther away from the cheap and de-natured practice of this lost paradigm under mainstream modernity. As a young child Michael Myers killed his sister apparently for her perceived entry into typical adolescent douchbaggery one Halloween night. He killed her while wearing a mask, and since we as viewers were behind the mask with him, we can only guess at his deepest feelings at the time. What we know for certain is that afterwards he went into a numbed-out catatonic sociopathic drone, that of a future serial killer. His psychologist Donald Pleasance relates that before going on his murderous rampage, Michael Myers was a man staring blankly at the insane asylum wall for over a decade. So we are to understand that his inner countenance was in fact exactly like his mask. A blank. Nothingness. He was masking nothing with that mask -- or more precisely he was revealing that nothingness with the mask. So enters SC3, which enlists 7 distinct modes, or categorical / conceptual / harmonic approaches in its music. Each mode is presented as a satellite ‘band’, which functions as the dramatis personae appropriate to its region of the SC3 universe (UR being the surf-rock and repetitive 1/8th note rock manifestation of SC3, whose primitivism in terms of time and of “progress”, seems to flow backward in UR). There’s a story, a feel, a vitality, and a distinct personality driving each ‘band’ — actually a mania — and each band will color the material within the Secret Chiefs 3 repertoire a certain way. An easy way to say it is that each band is a ‘face' by which SC3 reveals aspects of it’s internal world to the world at large. Each band colors that internal world with its discreet personae. Often the deeper aspect is revealed ‘secretly', in the sense that attention is drawn away from the SC3 information by the strong personae of the “band". For example, the uniting of the Macrocosm to Microcosm (or hexagram to pentagram) is a classic SC3-theme, and was carried out by UR when it began the John Carpenter song with an alteration of the original time signature at beginning to a hexagrammic “6”, before settling into the pentagrammic “5” at the first chorus. A pun no doubt, and one not essential to the thorough enjoyment of the music of course, but there nonetheless for further contemplation. The Phildickian element that the theme of the revealing mask applies to divine things as much as it does to trashy cinema is to be found not just in UR, but also in Traditionalists, and FORMS. In any case, SC3 is very fond of putting things like this right out there in the open where no one will see them. One of the lost infamous Mr. Bungle shows was on October 31st 1999 at Clutch Cargos. Many fans have watched the show on YouTube with delight as you ridicule the Red Hot Chili Peppers after they got you kicked off some festival lineups. Yeah, that day on tour in the van we’d gotten the news we’d been kicked off of Big Day Out in Australia. This was a familiar pattern by that point. RHCP (specifically Kiedis apparently) had gotten us kicked us off of a LOT of European festivals the previous summer. We’d been good up until that point, keeping that dirty secret quiet & not reacting publicly to what could only be understood as a weird and unprofessional jealous vendetta (from a huge successful band towards an industry pip-squeak it must be remembered). I was pretty weird, having been fans of the first two RHCP albums, realizing that somehow something personal had gone amiss somewhere. So amiss that a decade and a half after we’d liked this now hugely popular band’s music (and hadn't thought much about about since), we'd be dealing with the fact that they were unmistakably trying to bury us. The latest atrocity, the Big Day Out cancellation, was the final straw for us. Why keep quiet? I remember drawing everybody’s tattoos. James Rotundi our touring keyboardist knew the band's more recent music, and he's a great guitarist, so he did those duties. My main contribution was the tattoos and the Grim Reaper conscience of Hillel Slovak standing there with an accusing finger pointing from the "other side". My favorite character was our sound guy Randy, who stood there shirtless by the drums in a turban like an Egyptian slave boy out of an exotica-era epic, waving a palm branch over ‘“Chad” to keep him cool in between holding up badly-drawn (mine?) drum company logo endorsement ads (in the manner of Dylan’s "Subterranean Homesick Blues” video — get it?). This sounds pretty crazy but..... I always imagined Eureka to be like the setting of Stephen King's 'It' and Mr. Bungle to be the kids battling their own demon clown. Can you understand the analogy? I don’t know the “It” material but I think I sort of know what you mean. The thing is, every now and then while driving around aimlessly as teenagers blasting Sodom’s “Obsessed by Cruelty” album at 3AM, Patton and I would run across these redneck carnivals popping-up overnight on the periphery of town, in the middle of nowhere. We called them “Satanic Carnivals” due to their unexplained phantasmic arrival, and their pointless neon lights no one was around to appreciate as they sparkled up against the dreary fog. The next night, when they'd be open, we’d actually go to these god-damned things. There was certainly a malice to the toothless meth-heads running the barely-functioning rides, and the fights that would break out among drunken loggers and various shades of hashers could get pretty dark, but it was all pretty standard fare — no evil clowns. The other thing is that Mike and Trevor were pretty well-adjusted and well-liked by their peers. Prior to high school I had a really different experience than them. I went to a different Junior High School, the worst imaginable really, where I was regularly stuffed into garbage cans, humiliated, beaten on, all that shit. My older brother and I spoke with good grammar, so in the backwoods post-pioneer California of failed enterprise, Indian massacres, domestic abuse, Calvinism, good ol’ boy's white supremacist networks, and lots of meth, my brother and I with our Standard American English, Devo, Beach Boys and velour shirts were surely in for some kind of reckoning. And yes, it came. My brother actually ditched half a year at that fucked up school it got so bad. You wouldn’t even call it “bullying”, it was a bit more colorful than that. Kids were hanging cats from ropes and cutting their bellies open and flinging them around like a helicopter so their guts would fly out all over the basketball area. Hijinx like that were pretty everyday there. And that was really just a reflection of the neighborhood. Like all economically depressed places, the ghetto madness sometimes emerges in surprisingly macabre forms. A block from the school in front of early SC3 bass-player John Law’s house, a guy got machete’d with both his hands cut off and and the skin of his face pulled right off his skull. I mean, if I was going to tell you gruesome Eureka stories from those days we’d be here for 100 pages. But to wrap it up for relevance, the school was condemned while I was there and I had to transfer, thank God (it’s still there boarded-up and rotting), and things improved for me. I met Mike and Trevor a few years later under very different circumstances at Eureka High School, a comparative paradise. I think the curious should understand that the long death of the pulp-logging industry in Eureka was, in terms of economic impact, a lot like the death of the steel and car industries in Detroit and the greater "rust-belt”. Socially it wasn’t as much about a bunch of “dumb hicks” bullying people, as much as the whole thing was (and is) about the bottom dropping out of an economy leaving people desperate. Some of them, faced with zero prospects in a pretty dreary and hard-assed landscape, were definitely fucking losing it. Not everyone. And half of the crazy people around ended up being very benevolent characters in our personal stories (including the character we'd privately dubbed "Mr. Bungle" before we had a band name). Eureka is just a deep well, that’s all. Another paradox. Even now, when things are a little different. Despite all the miserable things I’ve been emphasizing, there's a lot of heart there that seems to be missing from a lot of the rest of the world. And I guess none of us in Mr. Bungle can deny the debt we owe to that hell hole, and the few extraordinary mentors we found there. One thing is for sure, jokey hyperbole about evil clowns isn't the way anyone should think about Eureka -- let's just say if there is any demon or curse haunting the place, it is something to do with the state-sponsored militias attempted extermination of the Yurok peoples in the late 1800s. By the way, in terms of cinema, the later mid-80’s high-school era culture we all came from is pretty well represented in the film "River’s Edge”. It’s the closest I’ve seen. I really like that movie, actually. I guess it’s not for no reason that the Dennis Hopper character who lives with a blow-up sex doll mentions Eureka. Jesus!! What do think to the sudden crazy clown sightings in the US? Almost like a scene from 'Cotton Candy Autopsy’! I’ll answer you honestly: my wife and I very much enjoy watching the videos where some poor generic horror movie-costumed “clown" tries to scare the wrong person, only to end up end up getting pistol-whipped or beaten up by someone whose not very impressed with their dumb idea of what’s “scary” or “funny”... Can we talk a little about Mr. Bungle's first album which celebrated 25 years in August. How did the writing process work for the music on this album. Did you each bring songs to the table, or were they written all together? Both. As always. Collaborative compositions in Mr. Bungle were developed as skeletal chains of riffs we'd call "snakes". The trick was always in the morphing of complimentary riff ideas that came from different worlds into a coherent song. From this first record, Dead Goon is a good example of a song where riffs from everyone in the band were worked together into a song. Dead Goon concluded with a recreation of a collective improv we'd done at some earlier point. That process was a bit unto itself, actually. The truth is that there was almost always a different writing process for each song we did. In the Halloween spirit, I'll give another example. Travolta, another collaborative composition, started life as a series/chain of riffs I wrote in college called "A Walk Through Necropolis", which had been scored and part-written for the university jazz band, but to me never had a satisfying bridge section. Later on Patton had written a riff that contrasted perfectly if inserted into this piece, and it was 100 times better and more inspired than any of my own hitherto uninspired solutions. With that addition, and the magic glue of the atonal "come-down" section ('Grease is the Word' etc) which came from a collective improv, the "snake" was complete. By myself, in the context of an independent study college composition class, I'd trapped myself in a morbid snafu with some promising but dead riffs -- but looking back, maybe those were always destined to be resurrected in a Mr. Bungle song. This is the appropriate metaphor, because we always referred to our unfinished sketches as "graveyards" of riffs. At first Patton and I especially compiled these endless mortuaries of ideas on cassette and would hand copies out to everyone in the band. It was almost like a cry for help. Later on Bär caught that bug too. For sure, the collective song writing was always more like a resurrection of 'parts' stitched together, given life by a Frankenstein possession to make it all finally LIVE. But other songs arrived with fully written chords and lyrics: Trevor's "Slowly Growing Deaf" and "Egg", Patton's "My Ass Is on Fire" and "Squeeze me Macaroni", with instrument voicings and other details being collaboratively worked out. Patton did the lyric writing on songs I wrote the music for, like Carousel, and I think most of Stubb [a dub]. Pretty sure those songs would be unbearable now otherwise. Differently, Travolta's lyric concept (which was very well redacted by Patton), came about in a very unique way. There was a spontaneous brainstorm by the whole band during a long night drive somewhere. For some reason we were obsessing on the hypothetical inner experience of a person who lacks almost all sensory input (deaf, blind, limbless and with mouth sewn shut). Everything he experiences is tunnelled through a highly developed, almost miraculously compensatory sense of smell. He is thrown onto a trampoline --- by who? a sick torturer laughing at him? loving parents attempting to provide something joyful that "normal" kids do? How would it matter in either case? As you might expect from a bunch of alienated teenage delinquent heshers pondering over such questions, we were in collective hysterics over all of this. The truth, though, looking back is that we very much identified with this tragically monstrous character, who in his extreme sensory isolation was effectively living outside of time and space. I say this now, but 400 miles from anywhere, pre-internet, we were receiving our cultural referents in a way that could be compared to breathing through a tiny straw. And in some way, therefore, we were therefore free from their actual influence, free to imagine them any way we wanted to. We weren't thinking this about ourselves at the time, but the Travolta figure exemplifies the idea that when left only with one's imagination, and some vague other impressions from far off, such a suffocated entity might not feel deprived so much as take advantage of the elasticity of his state. To become something of a shapeshifter. In our adolescent gloom, therefore, "Travolta" would of course take on the identities of various megalomaniacs; Hitler and Trump are mentioned, and there's something prescient there about pathological narcissism mixing with the unbounded entrepreneurial spirit, peppered with a life mission of compensatory revenge. Anyhow, somehow Patton managed to capture the mass evocation of this unfortunate/fortunate hallucinatory character in his lyric, and the song became "Travolta". Interestingly, Travolta, as a Scientologist, struck fear into the hearts of the Warner Brothers legal department, so after the initial pressing of 20,000 CDs, we were summoned to the legal office and told that the song had to be renamed. Hence, "Quote Unquote". Did the band record live sessions? In the studio not so much. Everyone would play at once, yes, but when we were doing that we were really going for drum takes. Sometimes we'd keep a bass scratch take, might've kept a part of a vocal once or twice. This goes for all three albums. Did you use several different guitars to achieve the many sounds used on the record or was it just a case of using multiple effects? I had only one amp, a shitty little Peavey "Renown". So both heavy and clean parts were initially tracked on that. When Zorn came in (he came in at the mixing of the record, to our elation), and heard the pathetic heavy guitar tones we'd done ourselves, he rented a Marshall halfstack on the spot and made me re-do all of the heavy guitar parts. That was a great move. I'd never even really seen a proper "heavy" amp in real life at that point, much less plugged in to one. From that day forward, even up to the present, I get more juxtaposition out of an A/B box switching between a dirty and clean amp than you could ever get with even an infinite chain of effects. In an age before computer technology was used in music production was it difficult to arrange so many layered tracks? On the first record it was less difficult than on Disco Volante and especially California (which was still effectively pre-digital multitrack, since we were dealing with well over 100 input returns). On the first record we were much more traditional in the studio approach, mainly because we had very little idea what was going on in there. But this was the Bay Area after all, so on every record we were working with "hi-tech" stuff: flying fader automation on a 48-channel SSL 4048E (on California we had to mix in LA because there was only one place that had a 96-channel SSL). And I remember on the first record the final 2-track mix was edited on some proto-Sound Designer format that was capable of working 4 channels in 16bit/44.1khz. It was the first time any of us had seen digital editing, which is pretty early, actually. But yes, as mentioned, throughout Mr. Bungle's career we never had occasion to exploit any kind of multitrack digital recording/editing. Everything was on tape the whole time and only went to digital in preparing the final 2-channel masters. Was it frustrating to put things on hold while Patton flew off to perform with FNM? Not at all. We never put things on hold, because there was nothing to put on hold until we'd come up with something and decided it was time. And that happened naturally. When Patton was around we never consciously rushed to get things going. It'd happen more naturally than that. He'd come home and there was always catching up to do. Show n' tell. Mutual inspirations. Eventually we'd start piecing things together... spontaneously freak out on organs and record the good parts. Trade those graveyard cassette tapes of ideas and ponder on each other's riffs for the months we never or rarely saw each other (meaning all of us). Nothing was ever on hold. I can paint the picture better for you. All the rest of us had very active lives in music in San Francisco in the early 90s. Danny was in a really popular local band called Dieselhed. Trevor, once he moved down from Eureka, had real gigs with real musicians almost every night. I rarely ever saw him. Bär was holding down multiple jobs. For myself, I was immersed in a scene of I guess "post-punk" something-or-other that was pretty vital at the time. Gregg Turkington came out of this scene. Caroliner Rainbow. Thinking Fellers Union Local 6. Three Day Stubble. I made some good friends in that world & once I finally stopped fucking around living in my car, I went pretty full on into honing my recording/production skills. Got happily lost in a billion odd projects, with many very brilliant not-so-known people, many of whom are too shy or too unimpressed with their own creative output to assert themselves very much. So to me (and the rest of the band I'm sure), Mr. Bungle in the early 90s was like an orbiting satellite that we the band members all had in common. It benefited from each of our separate musical forays. Are there any songs/moments on the album you are particularly proud of? I think the end of Dead Goon holds up really well. The scene where the stereo auto-panner has the dying kid (vocals and creaking rope) swinging one way and the whole world (the band/music) swinging the other. I realized awhile back that it's a perspective trick not unlike Wozzeck's death in Berg's Opera, where the sound of rising instruments is in relation to Wozzeck's perspective going down, sinking and drowning. In Dead Goon there's an ecstatic (out of body) sense in that whole section that really worked. Partially, I think, because after a whole album of over-determined indulgences of male musical angst, the arrangement becomes indeterminate and free as eros and thanatos finally collide in an aleatoric suspension. If nothing else, it's got to be the most lucid depiction of autoerotic asphyxiation ever attempted, and what a fitting end to such a "libido charged" record. Many bands have cited this album as a major influence on their music (Incubus, Slipknot, Korn). How does make you feel? Often I feel that the public that took to this album had pre-existing mental problems that the wide distribution of the CD only exacerbated. So when I hear about how this music affected these youngsters it really just makes me sad. This album turned many fans onto different genres, opening them to new worlds of music. Was it in any way you intention to 'educate' people? This is always a funny thing. It's hard to identify any discernible 'genres' on that record, other than some metal riffs and some very abortive/dissonant Stravinsky-esque takes on ska and funk. Since the whole thing is such a hybridized mutation, I never really know how to take it when we get credit-for/accused-of genre adept-ship on that record. Certainly some of the confusion is warranted, but what I think happened is that, just like ourselves at the time, most teenager's frames of reference back then were really small. We just took it out beyond those frames a little bit, peppered things up with a little 20th Century existentially-agitated classical-music dissonance. Maybe with mass distribution pushing the effort out into the burbs and rural areas it seemed to pry the box open wider than it actually, objectively did. I can tell you honestly, and I feel like it's not very nice to admit in public, but we had no noble intentions to educate people in any way. You'll remember that at the time, notoriously, the public disposition of Mr. Bungle was a tornado of sociopathic escapism and scatological ultraviolence. Of course as humans we DID have our own voracious appetites for every avenue of musical excellence we could lay ears on. But we also had gotten used to the fact that almost no one but us really actually cared about those things, not really, not the way we did. If that sounds a little arrogant for us to think at the time, it was also very demonstrably true. It’s different now of course. Maybe no one ever asked us to offer philanthropic or pedantic statements about the more learned side of what we did because goodwill towards mankind wasn't so ubiquitously assumed as it is now. I don't know. But no, the thought of “educating” the public would have seemed a bit remote to us, and we didn't feel we were in a position to invite queries! A further thought looking back, to be real, it really says a lot about the state of things that there were so many people who responded so favorably to the sociopathic and ultraviolent aspect of early Mr. Bungle. We famously had those people in our faces throughout the band’s existence (although the Disco Volante era helped re-orient the fervor somewhat). But I find it super interesting that in that early era, Mr. Bungle's influence struck such an intensely and clearly mentally disturbed chord almost exclusively out among the 'masses' serviced mainly by media like Warner Brothers. Those were times when GG Allin and the Dwarves and that type of thing were still happening, and I went to their shows. I couldn't help but notice that elements of the Mr. Bungle audience, minor rural/suburban phenomenon that it was, with no crossover in any hardcore underground scenes at all, did have a somewhat similar fanboy variation of the Stockholm Syndrome thing happening out there. It was pretty out... If we can move on to Disco Volante which celebrated its 21st anniversary this month. How do you feel about this record two decades on? It’s definitely the "coming of age" album. I’m happy with it. Disco Volante sort of sublimated or re-purposed our mania of 91/92 towards things like record production, i.e. getting the sound, whatever it takes — not just being content to have all the parts represented. We weren’t worrying about it sounding like a “band”, as much as worrying later on about how to arrange the music for a live performance as a band. That was a healthy challenge to ourselves as much as to anyone else. But in '95 if you wanted to do anything ambitious you'd really have to smash through the 80's / 90's crust that had been obscuring the whole music world's approach to "the studio"— I think we did it. I’ll wait for another time to elaborate on your further questions regarding this album. There is so much to say, it’s such a gigantic turning point, and I’ve blabbed way too much as it is! Ok 'to be continued....'. Recently your composition 'Séraphîta' was performed by the Kronos Quartet in Austria. Can you enlighten us more on this project? Yeah, they commissioned me as part of their ongoing “50 for the Future” initiative, which showcases 10 composers a year for five years, each composer contributing a piece that not only will Kronos play and record, but also publish as a “learning repertoire” for contemporary and future string quartets to have easy access to, as a kind of songbook. All the composers they work with vary wildly, so part of the idea is to get ensembles used to approaching a broad plethora of techniques and approaches to the quartet. It was certainly an honor to have been approached by them! Since when I work with orchestral instruments I usually work either with great masses of ensemble sound, or with a soloist, I don’t consider myself as much of a string quartet composer. That is a very special kind of ensemble, both in the details reflected in the traditional repertoire, and in the rigors of that kind of ensemble playing, which is just as particular and demanding in contemporary music. It’s really a very very deep world. And Kronos of course is at the forefront of it. At first I was worried about if I’d have artistic clarity… I took it very seriously, listening to my favorite quartets, following scores, worrying about how to choose the best approaches to the instruments for a lot of vague ideas I had. But then, all of a sudden, the real ideas came all at once, and they were really very strong. They seized me. That’s always a good sign. The problem then was how to make those ideas work -- how to translate them into string quartet land. And that really was a challenge. I don’t really know if I succeeded! It’s funny, my strength as a musician is definitely in arranging and orchestration, and I slaved over this piece. Moreover I feel really good about it musically and artistically. But honestly it remains to be seen whether it actually translates as a string quartet. One thing is for sure: Kronos is the group to find out. I learned so much from doing it’s been a priceless experience. Which would you say gives you the greatest satisfaction composing, performing or producing music? All three have their charms. But I’m going to put producing above performing, and composing above producing. What are projects are you currently working on? Can we expect to see you on the road again anytime soon? All year I’ve been working very hard on a new SC3: Holy Vehm album, and the follow up to "Book of Souls: Folio A", its big brother "Folio B". Also a new John Zorn Masada record, “Beriah”. So it's been lots and lots of work this year! As far as going on the road, not soon, but eventually in 2017. 2016 has been a time to really hunker down and solidify the next chapter of SC3. Since 2006 up until 2014 we’ve been on the road so much I haven’t really had time to clear my head and concentrate in the seriously deep way I need to in order to create works I’m personally satisfied with. This last year of working intensively on upcoming releases has been such a godsend. For the first time since 2004 I feel like I have something that will withstand the decompositional gales of the passing centuries. If I may say a word on gigs and releases and such: SC3 has been fiercely DIY since day one in 1995, self-producing, financing everything, records, tours, all of it, from direct fan support through music sales, never veering a millimeter from that path. The reality in this day and age for intensive productions on the scale that I work, since no one really wants to buy music anymore, is that there really is no money to pay for these elaborate, real productions with real musicians anymore. I’ve though about this a lot. There are those few generous friends out there who make such nice offers from time to time, but whose friendship is too important to hazard the back hole of music industry finance with. And there are the kickstarter / go fund me campaigns. We all hate to admit how far standards seem to have to fall, along with our expectations, while we all get suckered, or compelled, into ‘adapting’ to the ‘new’ and at best mediocre realities. Maybe for a time we can embrace them, with “sharing" and other virtuous intentions as motivators. What species of curmudgeon am I to sneer at the well-intended? SO! What I’m doing right now is putting the finishing touches on a single (2 sides), to be released in early November. Instead of fundraising/begging to finance the two major future SC3 releases, we are going out on a limb and throwing two supremely polished and very proud releases of finest SC3 pedigree out there by the end of the year. There will be no “object” associated with these releases, they will enter the digital ephemera of a SC3 Bandcamp launch. The hope is that on the strength of this music alone, and the hoped-for support of our listeners, we’ll be able to finance production on these two next big ones: Holy Vehm and Folio B. It’s a bit of a long shot, yes… but SC3’s career is riddled with things that should not be. Trey's favourite Horror movies soundtracks.... The short list: Quincy Jones, “In Cold Blood” Ennio Morricone, “Bird with the Crystal plumage”, “Cosa avete fatto a Solange?”, “Spasmo” Jerry Goldsmith, “The Omen” and “Damien: the Omen II” Goblin “Suspiria”, “Zombie/Dawn of the Dead”, and “Profundo Rosso”. (SC3 had the honor of touring with them in 2013). John Carpenter, “Halloween” Bernard Hermann, “Psycho" Bruno Nicolai, “Tutti I Colori del Buio”, “La Dama Rossa Uccide Sette Volte” A lot of people may not know that there’s a sleeper Secret Chiefs 3 album out there in the giallo horror genre called “Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini” (2009). I still totally stand by that record.

On October 30th 1989 Faith No More released From Out Of Nowhere , their third official single. It was the first single released from the acclaimed album The Real Thing and the first to feature Mike Patton on vocals. 'Without a doubt this kicks everything, apart from Wreck, into perspective. Faith No More are climbing up to the heady heights of the music biz and if they pause to look behind it's only to stick a derisive two fingers up at the struggling competition. If you haven't got this or heard it, get up off your arse now and get some! It's addictive. The 12" inch remix's funkier, but doesn't take anything away from the original Faith No More art Rock's greatest hope.' - Raw 1989 'If like myself you are increasingly aware of a staleness creeping into many new bands, you could do worse than to snap this up. Like it bites, Faith No More take risks and have produced some of the most exciting and invigorating rock of the decade...' - Kerrang 1989 From Out Of Nowhere was one of those ' Frankenstein ' songs which was sculpted from separately written parts, one section dated back to 1983 titled Mike’s Disco , the other section was developed by Roddy Bottum.  He spoke about writing the song in Adrian Harte 's biography Small Victories : The True Story Of Faith No More. "It was about controlling the development of the song, not only just with the actual melodic structure, but you also can use rhythm to break things up, too. And that’s obviously different from most bands, where it’s the guitar player, and the singer, and I’ve got my lyrics and you’ve got to fit everything to it. It was the opposite of that, and I’m sure that made it challenging for someone like Mike where it was already written. But that also shows his inspiration and brilliance, and the willingness to just fucking go for it ." Roddy also revealed details about when it was written with Classic Rock Magazine in 2005. "Billy, Mike Bordin and I wrote that song together at our rehearsal space in Hunter's Point. It was among the first batch of songs that we wrote after Chuck left the band. Typically, the three of us would get the skeleton of a song going on, and then get Jim Martin to put his guitar part on. Sometimes Billy would write [Martin's] guitar part for him, but I think in the case of From Out Of Nowhere he wrote his own part." Bill Gould also recalls the writing of FOON, attributing the most part to Roddy. "That song came from Roddy. That’s completely Roddy’s melody, so maybe it was deliberately pop. But it was originally called “The Cult Song”, because it reminded me of The Cult." The backbone of the song was in place before the band's newest addition had been recruited, it wasn't however until Patton added his unforgettable melody and passionate lyrics that the song became a pop/rock sensation. "[Patton] came in and did the melody and the lyrics. All of the music of the songs on The Real Thing was written prior to Mike joining the band. He sat with the songs for a couple weeks and wrote all his vocal parts. Really fast." - Bottum "We tracked a cassette demo [of .. .Nowhere] in the rehearsal room. Mike Patton took it home and worked on the melody and lyrics, then he would come to my house and we'd put the parts down on four-track to hone them down. The majority of the lyrics and singing melody was from him." - Gould "The first song I heard with Mike P was 'Out of Nowhere'…we had a rehearsal recording and he came over to my house to work on his vocal ideas to a few songs. I hadn’t heard his voice recorded before, and within 30 seconds of hearing his contribution, it almost freaked me out on how well it worked. And it wasn’t even in a control room, per se, but I could hear it and it was quite exciting." - Bill The Real Thing 30th Anniversary 2019 The song seems to reveal a vulnerability rarely displayed through Patton's words, they deal with obsession and unrequited love. "That song is one of the first lyrics I wrote, in a day I think. It’s what I thought rock music should be at the time." -  Patton BAM Magazine 1990 "From Out Of Nowhere is more about people who are obsessive and feel the need to fill up on somebody else." - Patton Raw Magazine 1989 The song was one of the first to be committed to tape at Sausalito's Studio D in late 1988. Roddy told Adrian Harte the sessions were, "...a weird, 'getting to know each other' time with Mike Patton. We all got along and worked together pretty easily. Everyone was pretty proactive in the studio. Jim Martin was becoming very particular about his guitar sound, I remember that." Version 1 It is unclear the exact date that the video was filmed. It is highly likely it was during Mike Patton's very first show on November 4th 1988 at the I Beam in SF. We do know that the show was fraught with disaster. "I threw my neck out at rehearsal. That was back at the Pet Hospital, and at the venue they were giving me massages and I was taking codeines, just so I could play the show. My neck completely froze when they were filming the video. If you watch it, I’m barely moving. That was a horrible experience." - Bill Patton's onstage wild antics saw him break a tooth and gash his hand on some jagged glass from broken bottles which required microsurgery. Luckily for Patton, Mike Bordin ’s old man was at the show.  Puffy explained in Adrian's book, "My dad was there at that show. He said, “Dude, come on, let’s go,” and he took him to the hospital, and I think had he not have had somebody advocating for him, it would have been a lot worse." The video was disliked by the band who partly attributed it to the lack of MTV interest from MTV over the single release. The promo clip was directed by  Doug Freel , known for filming 80s hair metal bands such as  Def Leppard  and  Poison . "He was the director that the label got in. He was giving the label what he thought we wanted. I saw it and I didn’t dig it. I didn’t want to be in that kind of band." - Bill "The video was bad; we were represented as something we weren't. We had no control over the content. I'm not surprised it did nothing to enhance our career"  - Bordin Hard as it is to believe this blisteringly intense power pop song was the forgotten single that initially failed to stir interest in the band. It was released on October 30th 1989, four months after The Real Thing and when FNM were still thought of as a bunch of hippy misfits, played only on student radio. Not even touring with old buddies Metallica  plus  Kirk Hammett , Slash and others heaping praise on the song did much to impress FNM's unique blend of genres onto young fans. The song didn't reach the UK singles chart. After the success of Faith No More's breakthrough single Epic in 1990, quirky phrases such as 'Nothing comes to those who wait!' and 'Turn on! Tune in! Blow out!' accompanied adverts accompanied a release of  From Out Of Nowhere  on April 2nd. This time it reached number 23 on the UK singles chart and also fared well in the USA and Australia. This second release was an extended mix of the song and printed on picture disc vinyl featuring the infamous 'underwear' band portrait by Ross Halfin . From Out Out Nowhere has been a staple song in Faith No More's set throughout their career. Bill explained why to Classic Rock Magazine,  “That song was so good because most of our stuff was mid-tempo that the set was always in danger of dragging. With that one we could at least start things on a high note, and hopefully this spark would keep the rest of the set alive. There’s nothing worse than being on stage for 80 minutes or so when things are not working correctly. Generally it seemed to work out well, and we stuck with it as an opener until with hated it so much we scrapped it from the set altogether.” Thirty four years here and thirty one years there... and you wave goodbye... goodbye. Check out Podcast Croissant Episode 42 for all there is to know about From Out Of Nowhere .

Faith No More 's version of the  Bee Gees  song  I Started A Joke  was released on October 26th 1998. The song first appeared on the B-side of the limited edition single release of  Digging The Grave  in 1995 and on a bonus CD available with the Australian version of  King For A Day Fool For A Lifetime  also in 1995.  It was recorded along with three more cover versions of other songs in  Bill Gould 's home studio and produced by Gould and  Dean Menta . These songs were the only studio recordings to feature Menta on guitar. I Started A Joke  was released by the record company as a single in 1998 from the greatest hits album  Who Cares A Lot?  released on November 24th, the year FNM split.  Most recently the song was available as part of Rhino's now-famous SIDE BY SIDE Series, pairing two artists with one classic song, pressed on mint green vinyl. The video was directed by Vito Rocco starring Martin Freeman in an early (pre Office / Hobbit) role and UK drag performer David Hoyle as the sensational karaoke singer. The video was released after FNM had split and was produced by the record company as part of the promotion for Who Care's A Lot , FNM had no input and Mike Patton does not star in the video contrary to some beliefs.  "The b-sides that we did were three cover songs that were actually recorded at my house. There's "The Joke" by the Bee Gees, there's a song by a band called The Brothers Four called "Greenfields", and "Spanish Eyes" by Al Martino! They all sound really good, I'm really into it! We were in this bar in Gwaum, god, it was so twisted! You see, Gwaum is like a rock in the middle of the ocean; they have like two million snakes per mile -- they have so many snakes that they have killed all the birds, they have no more birds in all of Gwaum. So, we're sitting in this bar and they have posters of hard-core porn videos all over the wall. It was a regular bar, and they had animal porn on the wall! And we're like, 'What the hell is this?!', and in the corner of the room they had this karaoke machine and they were all singing the words "I started a joke ..." and there was this bouncing ball so they could follow the words. The lyrics were so pathetic and depressing that we just said 'We have to do this song!' It's the most miserable song I ever heard in my life!"  - Bill 1995 The original Bee Gees song was from their 1968 album  Idea , which was released as a single in December of that year. According to  Robin Gibb , the melancholic melody of the song was inspired by the sounds on board an aeroplane. Bee Gees Anthology, Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1991. "The melody to this one was heard aboard a British Airways Vickers Viscount about a hundred miles from Essen. It was one of those old four engine 'prop' jobs, that seemed to drone the passenger into a sort of hypnotic trance, only with this it was different. The droning, after a while, appeared to take the form of a tune, which mysteriously sounded like a church choir. So it was decided! We accosted the pilot, forced him to land in the nearest village and there; in a small pub, we finished the lyrics [with Barry]. Actually, it wasn't a village, it was the city, and it wasn't a pub, it was a hotel, and we didn't force the pilot to land in a field... but why ruin a perfectly good story?"

The Faith No More and   Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E collaboration single Another Body Murdered was released as the first single from the soundtrack of the film Judgment Night on October 25th 1993. The song was the first time FNM would collaborate with another artist in the studio. It was the first FNM song to not feature Jim Martin even though at this time he was still a member of the band, the guitars were recorded by Bill Gould . This song gave fans a glimpse of FNM without Martin's signature guitar riffs and the sound they would use on King For A Day ..... "We didn’t know the Boo-Yaa guys before we did the collaboration…in fact, we met at the studio. They were all great musicians in their own right, and what was surprising is that we clicked immediately on a musical level. Once the instruments were set up, we proceed to do a probably 30 minute jam, which I have to say was excellent. Sadly, the engineers thought we were just soundchecking. So we did another, for probably another 30 minutes straight. It was also really good, maybe not quite the same as the first attempt, but great nonetheless. However, as luck would have it, the producer had forgotten to hit “record”.  The music on this soundtrack came from our 3rd attempt, which turned out ok, but sadly probably the least interesting of the three takes." - Bill Gould 2018 You can read more about how the Judgment Night Soundtrack was produced HERE .