Twist of Faith William Shaw Faith No More wreak anarchy in the UK. William Shaw reports from London and Manchester. No one put a pistol to their heads and told them they had to tour with Guns N' Roses. Faith No More thought it would be good for their bank balance. Now, after three weeks of shows, they're bored silly. Monday they arrive in London from Paris. Tuesday morning, singer Mike Patton gets a phone call in his Kensington hotel room telling him tonight's show in Manchester has been cancelled. Axl Rose is suffering from exhaustion. Patton, looking a bit like an auto mechanic no one would trust, howls like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. Downstairs an unshaven, dispirited bass player sits in the lobby. Unlike Patton, Billy Gould says he was looking forward to tonight's concert, if only because it would give him something to do. "But I can understand how Axl would be kind of exhausted, with this rigorous schedule of ours," he dead pans. So far, the Guns N' Roses European tour is averaging two concerts per week. FNM are used to gigging six nights out of seven. There's something else about the tour that makes them itchy. In the last three years, FNM have transformed themselves from down-at-the-heel Bay Area misfits to unlikely platinum rock stars. As such, FNM should be appropriate road companions for GNR. But FNM don't share a common musical goal so much as a collective loathing for good taste. The whole stadium-tour circus bugs them. "I wouldn't go to the show," Patton tells me about their upcoming date at Wembley. "It's a spectator sport. If we can be annoying, then we've accomplished something. I think." From their first cult hit, "We Care a Lot," 1985's sarcastic riposte to the Live Aid generation, to "Midlife Crisis," this year's scathing assault on the thirty something set, FNM have always traded on their snot-nosed anti-establishmentarianism. The band started out ten years ago when a quiet, dreadlocked drummer named Mike "Puffy" Bordin hooked up with keyboard player Roddy Bottum, who looked like the villain from a Jim Jarmusch film, and Billy Gould, a genial, bass-playing slob. In need of a guitarist they hooked up with the Muppet-like figure of "Big" Jim Martin, an old-fashioned guitar regressive. Martin wears two pairs of glasses, drinks a lot, and loves FNM groupies. He announces rather proudly that he hasn't yet received one Father's Day card. In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Martin cameos as "The World's Greatest Guitarist." Finding a singer to suit the band's outlook took longer. Hole's Courtney Love sang a few dates with them, but the group say they were too macho for her ("I spoke to her last night," says Roddy. "She's my best friend..."). For their first two LPs they were fronted by Chuck Mosley. "We Care a Lot" won them an adoring college audience, but by 1989 the big break hadn't come yet. The band were ready to split. "Our singer was fucked up, and we hated him," remembers Billy, matter-of-factly. So they sacked Chuck and replaced him with Mike Patton, from a little-known California cult outfit, Mr. Bungle. Suddenly it all made sense. Sort of. The year Patton enrolled, they recorded The Real Thing. It was a maverick album, a fractious and improbable amalgam of West Coast punk nihilism, baroque progressive rock, and funk thrash that lurched unexpectedly from style to style. It sat around on the shelves for six months before anyone noticed. Then it started to take off. By early 1990, MTV had latched onto the sneery rock/rap of their single "Epic," which climbed to number five on the charts. Before they knew it, FNM were in the big pool, swimming through a promotional tour that was to last two years and end with them supporting Billy Idol and Robert Plant. Now, this year's Angel Dust manages to repeat the trick that The Real Thing pulled off so well, somehow containing the group's explicitly separate visions of what they really should be doing on the one album. Angel Dust is easily just as misanthropic as previous FNM records, but this time Mike Patton has given full rein to all of his voyeuristic obsessions. Each song is a piece of cruel theater, a chunk of twentieth-century Gothic melodrama. From the sexual sado-masochism of "Be Aggressive," to the sicko drug violence of "Crack Hitler," the LP is the most brutal music the band has ever produced. Typically, FNM set the rough stuff against ironic, sweet moments, such as their easy-listening cover version of the theme from the film Midnight Cowboy. The sleeve of Angel Dust features a picture of a beautiful white bird on the front cover and a slaughterhouse on the back. These sorts of inversions are central to the FNM world view, whatever that is. Billy studied Nietzsche at college and still invokes him bizarrely. "Nietzsche says, 'I make the rainbow of urine over the world, but the world is never slow to reciprocate,'" Gould laughs. "These are the most boring shows I've been to," complains Patton. "The crowd is so safe. Backstage is so boring. All we do is eat..." Patton is intensity incarnate. He's from the backwoods of Eureka, California, a place he describes as "a sick redwood cocoon, hippies on one side, loggers on the other." Having escaped from a place like that, Mike doesn't want to miss out on anything. With tonight cancelled, it will be a week between shows. The band have nothing to do until Saturday. The time off leaves them exhausted. They're starting to feel flabby, out of shape. I take Gould and Patton for a meal in Portobello Road. They start talking unguardedly about touring with GNR. Out it all pours. Patton claims one crew member got sacked just for bumping into Axl when the singer was changing costumes one night. Warming to the theme, Gould says that he heard Axl hired an exorcist because he believed he was possessed by the spirit of the dead AC/DC singer Bon Scott. (GNR's publicist later denies both of these tales, adding that "it's physically impossible for anyone to bump into Axl.") They paint Axl as a cranky headmaster that everyone's afraid of. But their stories are backstage hearsay. The fact is, they never get to see Axl much at all. One of Axl's minders has told Patton that Axl really likes Mr. Bungle. The minder says Axl wants to get into something heavier, more industrial. "Industrial," laughs Patton maniacally, banging the table. "That's sick!" They have sampled Axl's voice and used it a few times in their stage act, but no one seems to notice. GNR don't watch their shows. Patton thinks they may sometimes watch them over the monitors from their backstage area, but he's not sure. In the restaurant, Patton shares a secret. Axl has TV screens on stage that display the song words in case he forgets them. On the last night of the tour, Mike Patton tells me he wants "to take a shit right on top of those TV screens, in front of tens of thousands of people." After lunch we visit Honest Jon's Records, then Vinyl Solution, where we bump into Puffy, who's making the same devoted trawl. It's a West Indian area, and Patton and Billy want to buy some grass on nearby St. Paul's road. Puffy isn't interested. Mike "Puffy" Bordin confides to me he's worried FNM will get thrown off this tour because of the way the band is behaving. They're too unguarded about slagging GNR. When I tell Patton this, he wheezes with laughter. "See?" he says. "That's what he's frightened of, but that's what excites me the most." Mike's eyes shine. "Three weeks into the tour and we're already pushing it. We're going to spend the summer with these guys. To me there's nothing... no real reason why we're doing this tour. I mean, it makes real business sense, but on a personal level we have to provoke. To me, that's our duty." Later, we gravitate to a pub. Rain clouds gather outside. Patton orders a pint of snakebite -- a mixture of cider and lager beloved by English soccer hooligans -- but the barman refuses to serve it. "We don't do them anymore. We had too much trouble." So Patton orders a pint of cider. Billy drinks lager. When we've finished those we have another. "What time is it?" sighs Patton. "Five o'clock? Is that all?" They would be on stage right now. A Canadian fan shows up, and Patton discusses pornography with him. Mike is an avid consumer, an almost evangelical advocate of autoerotism. Unlike Martin, real sexual interaction leaves Patton cold. He calls phone-sex lines, but not live ones. "You don't call a 970 number because you want to talk," he explains. "That's not why I try it. I don't know why. I've always had a problem with interaction. I'm just not that good at it." Mike Patton says his adventures in self-stimulation began at an early age. He remembers humping the couch in prepubescent days while watching Gilligan's Island. "I did it in front of everyone," he smirks, "even my parents. I mean, I think it was very healthy in one respect, and very twisted in another..." As he goes on, Mike looks at me for signs of embarrassment. His other group, Mr. Bungle, sometimes perform in bondage masks. Patton collects them. "Those kind of masks are the most unfathomable, completely space-age thing, but I think they appeal to an instinct that's completely primitive. I have ones with horse bits and blinders, I have ones with tubes and pumps, one with zippers, regular gags. Do I wear them? Yeah, yeah. They have applications in real life. Though I can't say I'm into S&M. I experiment with it. You kind of owe it to yourself." Perhaps it's because of his demonic on stage charisma, or because his lyrics delve into themes of dominance and powerlessness, but Patton sometimes gets weird letters from fans. He's only written back once. "She started sending gifts and somehow twisted around the idea that I wanted to dominate her, you know? She called me her master... She said, 'I'll do anything for you. I'm your devoted slave.'" Soon she began inventing wild stories about Patton and his friends beating her and sexually abusing her. Now Patton doesn't answer letters anymore. Back at the hotel, it seems Jim Martin has bailed. He's gone to visit an old Scottish drinking buddy who lives in Birmingham. That night, I take Roddy, Billy, and Patton to the cinema to see Delicatessen. I pay, because their per diem allowances are running low. Afterwards, Roddy Bottum splits and ends up at the Limelight, talking to a conductor "called Michael Thomas something." It turns out he's Michael Tilson Thomas, the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. He wants to come and see them at the Wembley show. Thursday, Mike Patton gets drunk on cider. On the way back from the pub to his hotel he stops outside Kensington Palace -- just by the hotel -- where Prince Charles and Lady Di live. Patton drops his trousers and takes a dump on a park bench by the palace. That night Billy and Roddy are in Amsterdam to see L7 and the Rollins Band. Billy buys a priest's robes in a flea market there. He's already picked up an East German Trabant car that someone gave him at an earlier date in Stuttgart: "It's so cool. It pollutes so bad." "Did you HEAR what Patton did?" giggles Billy, just off the plane from Amsterdam. "The turd is still there." He disappears to unpack his priest's robes and put them on in the hotel bar. "I have kind of a problem," explains Patton. I don't like to use toilets -- ever." Mike says it stems from a childhood fear of invasive insects in the bathroom. But the singer has turned his aversion to the W.C. into a form of scatological terrorism. Without batting an eyelid, he recounts a story about a meanie club owner who locked Patton and the rest of Mr. Bungle up in his club because he claimed they owed him money. He left the man a special gift in the club's microwave oven. "It started out being a problem, but now it's more of a weapon than anything," Patton says. That night-- the night before Wembley -- the group go out. Roddy visits Madame Jo-Jo's, London's most famous transvestite club. Patton goes to a kitsch strip joint, where he watches the performers do fire-eating tricks. Saturday is the day when the group finally get to play a concert, one week after their last performance in Paris. Gathering in the hotel lobby to catch the tour bus, the overwhelming feeling is one of resignation. In May, FNM played a well-advertised "secret" date at London's Marquee Club under the name Haircuts that Kill. "We're playing Wembley in June," Patton announced from the stage. "Don't come." Billy opts to catch the Tube to Wembley, because he has heard that there is a drugstore along the way that stocks Somatomax, which he says is a slimming drug with side effects. "What does it do? It fucks you up," he grins. "The first time, I took it at a nightclub. I woke up on the toilet with my trousers round my ankles." By the tour-bus stereo, there's a David Sylvian CD. In four pieces. Patton puts on a tape a friend has sent him of songs recorded by educationally disadvantaged children. It features songs with titles like "I Got a New Car," and "Throw Away the Trash," sung in eager, bright-eyed voices. "I love this album," declares Patton. He jumps up and down in the narrow bus corridor. Everybody laughs. At the stadium, a fan is waiting. Kerry is ex-British army. He spent some time in Northern Ireland. This will be his fifty-ninth FNM concert. His nose is pierced with little horns that protrude from his nostrils and he wears a t-shirt that he designed himself. It features a picture of a man masturbating on a toilet and the caption: GIRLS ARE OK, BUT THEY'RE NOT THE REAL THING. FNM love it. T-shirts are an integral part of the FNM look. In the bland backstage area, they change into their stage wear. Patton changes into a shirt that features the Route 666 logo of a Texas noise band. Jim martin puts on one that sports the moniker of his favorite defunct metal band, the Mentors. Slash, Duff, and Matt from GNR appear in a rehearsal room down the corridor and start jamming. Slash is wearing a t-shirt that says "Fuck." A cigarette pokes out through a mass of hair. Queen's Brian May appears, looking sheepish in white clogs and a loud shirt. He plugs in a guitar and joins in the jam, rehearsing a GNR encore he's going to play on. Jim watches them rehearse. "What's up, Satan?" he calls to Slash. Slash looks up. "Hey," he waves at Jim, "where'd you get that shirt?" FNM don't get a soundcheck. They haven't had one all tour. Behind the stacks of gear, they wait to go on. One GNR flight case lays open, drawers marked with roadie jokes like "Lesbian Awareness Literature" or "Spare Panties." Billy lolls his head around, looking depressed. "People ask, 'Don't you get excited when you get onstage?'" he tells me. "For these gigs, it's more like I finally get to the head of the line in the department of motor vehicles." Roddy, chain-smoking, explains that at concerts like this, even the audience knows how to perform. "They cheer the first group a little, the next band more, and so on." Afterward, the group sit backstage in painful silence. After cooling their heels for a week, and pulling a hundred stupid stunts to pass the time before their show, they come away hating the set. They thought they performed abysmally. Kerry, the pierced fan, disagrees, swearing it was a great show. The band's reaction to the show has more to do with their own depressed state of mind than anything else. In reality it was a riveting performance, dominated by Patton's frantic charisma. He'll crouch down on his haunches like a medieval gargoyle, then spring up and fling himself forward until his feet sail over his head and he'll slap back down on the stage, barking out dementedly the whole time. Before launching into a song, he'll boom out at the crowd of 70,000, "I bet you feel pretty stupid out there." "Actually," Roddy says, in the dressing room post-match analysis, "I've got to say, Sometimes, Mike, you come off a little arrogant." Mike Patton looks destroyed. Billy's face is a mask of depression. They all need to talk. They no longer have any perspective on how good a show FNM put on. That night I will drive Roddy three hundred miles to a rave on the Yorkshire moors near Manchester. He's looking for something to do. We won't mention Wembley. The Manchester show has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Patton wants to come to the rave too, but he's put his back out with the on stage flips. But now, I follow Jim Martin out of the room. He's the only one who doesn't look bummed. "it was a sluggish, ponderous, sloppy show... but I had fun," he says. Then he sees a pretty woman wandering about backstage in a fishnet top and bra. Jim makes a beeline straight for her. "Hi," he says, "Tell me something new." "I don't know anything new," the woman answers, flustered. Jim persists. "Tell me something old then..."

The Beauty and the Horror Tom Lanham "You wanna know a great way to get even with somebody?" Mike Patton asks. It's a sunny afternoon in San Francisco and we're seated at La Cumbre, one of the hippest Mexican restaurants in town. But watching this guy's steely eyes flash with mischievous malice, you can't shake the feeling that there's one helluva storm blowing in. "My particular vengeance was against a business that had fucked me over really bad," the 24 year old continues. Today, his muscular six-foot frame is housed in work boots, skater shorts and a service station attendant's shirt that reads "Ron, Service Station Attendant." He waves his arms for emphasis, and speaks in a booming bass voice that makes the other cantina patrons a bit nervous. In short, this guy looks like someone you do not want to piss off. Patton continues his story, yapping with a mouthful of food. "So one morning, see, I woke up, ate an entire burrito, drank a half-pint of rum, downed some castor oil, then drank some Ipecac syrup, which takes about a half hour to work. Then I walked down to this business, and I'd timed it perfectly." Suddenly the food in front of me doesn't look so hot. I swallow the last bite and brace myself: "Uh, barforama?" "Yeah!" Patton is aglow. "Nothing is more repulsive, and no one would ever think you'd go to so much trouble! This place had a nice, clear counter and no janitor, either." But his lantern-jawed pugilist's features lose their intensity for a microsecond. "It kinda backfired, though, because I took too much castor oil, which coats the stomach, so not a lot of food came up. But a lot of blood did, though!" A few heads turn to look disgustedly at Patton, who's now cackling. If they'd look closer, the lunchers might recognize him as the guy who rolled spastically around onstage in furry pants while his band, Faith No More, plumbed out the power chords to their surprise Top 5 hit, "Epic," on an MTV awards show. Or as the guy whose group nailed five 1991 Bammies and Band Of the Year kudos in Rip, Spin, and Music Express in 1990. But the frenetic vocalist is on one of his off-days, relaxing in relative anonymity on the eve of a new FNM release, Angel Dust, on Slash/Reprise, as well as a pending jaunt through Europe with Soundgarden and Guns N' Roses. The Matt Wallace-produced Angel Dust was recorded in San Francisco, with not a note offered for label inspection until the project's completion. This naturally had a few execs worried, but our dauntless groin-grunge heroes cared not. "Everybody involved in working your 'new' record really wants your last record," Patton sneers. "And anything that deviates from that is a threat to their personal well being. Consequently, you're having meetings with bastards who are worried about their house payments telling you you've gotta add a chorus here and there. And you're left scratching your head, completely bent over..." As you've probably figured, Patton hits below the belt, and if you dare step into the ring with him, you either get KO'ed or puked upon in a vicious torrent. But few could deny that it's Patton's no-holds-barred spirit that sent FNM to new platinum heights when he joined in 1989 for their third recording, The Real Thing. First discovered in his tiny California hometown of Eureka, idling with his Mr. Bungle outfit, the singer has become a commanding showman and a meteoric vocal presence for FNM; his outrageous outlook melded perfectly with the grainy, whiff o'reefer raunch rock the group had patented (now, of course, dubbed the "San Francisco sound" by eager music mags). Patton still records and performs with Mr. Bungle. In fact, in a fit of bacchanalian excess at a New Year's Eve show in SF last year, he gave himself an onstage enema. Patton says, "I heard the crowd got a nice little spray, but I didn't see it because I was bent over." Why such extreme measures? "Hey, it was a nice, dirty show, a lot of dirty people, everything was dirty. So why not have a little clean segment -- wash out myself, wash out the audience...?" Makes sense, doesn't it? But when Mike Patton starts sounding logical, there's bound to be a big, walloping wrecking ball sailing your way. And Angel Dust is its crushing crane. Given that the confessed caffeine junkie Patton "came in at a really strange point on the last record, when all the music was written so I just threw some lyrics on top of it," the maturity he displays on this effort is downright electrifying. Through 13 strikingly diverse numbers he snaps, snarls, gargles, growls, wails and warbles, producing a Sybil-schizo persona for each track. It's a virtuoso performance, and a surprise for any naysayers who thought "Epic" was a fluke. "Land of Sunshine" whips open on Billy Gould's Joy Division-ish bass lead, then careers onto keyboardist Roddy Bottum's carnival-calliope keyboards. Then there's Patton, the geek at the centre of the tumbled tent, biting off the chicken's head in lyrics that ruthlessly indict mass consumerism. He actually sings, crooning style, on "Caffeine," sounding a bit like Sly Stone trapped in a little one-man submarine. On the initial single, "Midlife Crisis," marching to a processional beat from neolithic drummer Mike Bordin, Patton reverts to a guttural nihilism that would make Nivek Ogre blush. Guitarist Jim Martin's soft rockabilly textures lend an almost David Lynch aura to "RV," a Patton monologue on fat, beer-drinking middle America. Martin's reckless riffing in "Smaller and Smaller" -- coupled with Bottum's Phantom of the Opera washes -- falls before Patton's feral onslaught. It's frightening how much visceral power this lad has, and you get the feeling that his talent is still only half-tapped. Even on "Everything's Ruined," as close to a pop ditty as you're allowed on Angel Dust, he's got this knife-you-in-the-shower quality that keeps the adrenalin pumping. "Be Aggressive" seats Patton in the bleachers alongside a tape loop of cheerleaders changing "Be ag-gres-sive," and on the violent Wagnerian assault "Jizzlobber" (nice name, huh?), he ... well, you'll have to hear it for yourself. "One thing I've been doing is listening to a lot of mood music, easy listening," Patton explains, carefully dotting his tortilla chips with hot sauce. "And I've taken a lot from that. The chorus of 'Everything's Ruined' reminds me of Sinatra, Jackie Gleason." And "Land of Sunshine," he says, was culled from countless fortune cookie predictions, then pieced together into a thematic whole. And the Native American vocal sample on "Smaller and Smaller" he bluntly terms "shameless culture rape. We decided to take an Indian chant and fuck it up, sort of a Dances With Wolves aesthetic." He chuckles at the idea of Kevin Costner representing anything wild or Western. "White bread," he smirks. "White fuckin' bread!" FNM's front man was especially pleased with Bottum's new found wizardry -- it's his keyboards that provide much of Angel Dust's moody underpinnings. The sounds are founded in E-Max emulators, the manuals of which "got thrown away during the recording. But Roddy's trying a lot of different stuff this time, which is great. Actually, all he's really doing is using the samplers he's always had. Before, he was just too lazy to try it." Bottum, phoning a couple of weeks later from the midst of a UK arena tour with Axl's miscreants, seconds the motion. "Yeah, there's not a whole lot of guitar on it, is there?" he asks innocently. "In addition to the E-Maxes, I also used piano, Hammond organ, even an accordion on 'Midnight Cowboy.' "There was a lot more room to do different things," he adds. "We were on the road a long time with our last record, so we had a lot of time to decide what we would do for our next one, and it only made sense to expand technologically." Bottum, an FNM founder, was working at an obscure San Francisco movie house called the Cedar Centro back in 82 when the group first began scratching around for its now-distinctive approach. One night's film fare would be Tex Avery cartoon classics, the next Michael Powell's grisly Peeping Tom. This may account for the musician's wildly imaginative theatrical arrangements, which are honed to cinematic perfection on Angel Dust. Bottum thinks big, and wasn't afraid to lay it on thick. The record label, he says, "really wanted to hear what we were doing, but we refused from the start. We said they could listen to it when it was done, and we made it that way to avoid all that 'followup' pressure." Echoing Patton's edginess, he reflects, "The first time they heard it, I think they were pretty shocked and scared. They didn't trust us. So we had meetings with 'em, and we finally said, '*Listen* to us. We know what we're doing, so just go with it.' And now at least they pretend to like it." The album art was also done in typical renegade style. The cover is a decorous photograph of a beautiful snowy egret, while the backside is a wide-angle shot of a meat-packing plant, complete with a severed cow's head mounted on a hook. "We were going for the beauty and the horror -- it kinda works with the theme of the record." Beauty and horror. Yup, that pretty much sums up Angel Dust. As far back as the sessions with former vocalist Chuck Mosley, FNM was toying with such dualities. Remember "We Care a Lot"? But hey! You're probably wondering, "How's that Patton dude doing with his burrito?" Well, he's just about finished. With the food, that is, not his titillating tales from the dark side. "Did you hear the lyrics on 'Be Aggressive'?" he's asking, leaning forward dangerously in his chair. He of course means the screaming chorus of "I swallow, I swallow, I swallow," a catchy set of words by any standard. "What'd you think? Pretty fuckin' extreme, isn't it? Did you think it was a homoerotic song or something? That's what's gonna be good about it. I think certain people are gonna be really vocal about it, like 'What the hell is that?!' And others'll be so weirded out by it they won't say anything. "As long as we make a few people squirm," he grins, "our job is done." That's the first time the singer's used the word "job" in reference to his career with FNM. But, thanks to the Real Thing's staggering success -- which hit a full year after the album's release -- Patton was thrown into a whirlwind 18 month long juggernaut that reduced his life to waiting to play. "You don't spend time on tour," he says, "you waste time. You sleep, you wake up, it's time to play, everything else becomes very hard to deal with." Patton can still recall the moment he got the word, somewhere in Europe, that "Epic" was rocketing up the charts back home. "We didn't get it," he says. "We were playing shitty clubs, touring in a shitty van, and somebody said, 'Oh, your single is number 15 in America.' Your first reaction isn't to get excited, it's to go 'Fuck you!' But then we came back and all of a sudden we had some big tours lined up, and it was like the record had just come out that day -- we had to start over." How did it feel to achieve such overnight success? In his trademark doleful jargon, Patton makes it clear: "When a master comes in every day and beats you at 3:00, and one day he comes in with a chocolate eclair, you don't want that fuckin' chocolate eclair!" So much for bribing FNM with baked goods. "I need caffeine !" Patton blurts out. He races next door and orders a big latte, served in a cup the size of King Kong's cereal bowl. "I did this experiment," he explains, "depriving myself of sleep just to see how long I could go." He swears he only used coffee as his stimulant. Somewhere during day three Patton began to hallucinate while watching late-night broadcasts of televangelist Robert Tilton, whose mile-a-minute psychobabble is a hallucination in its own right. And anyone who wonders where Patton gets his rants from will find solace in the fact that God did figure in the picture. "I made a vow of faith to [Tilton]," he says. "You promise to send him $100 and he sends you all these neat things. He sent me anointing oil, prayer cloths, posters, books -- and I never sent him any money. And I do feel guilty about it, too!" Patton's cup is empty -- he's drained it. "In Eureka you drink so much coffee, you try and make believe there's something to do," he says, remembering his hometown as being comprised of "hippies and loggers." Patton's salvation, if you will, arrived in Trojan Horse garb. "FNM played in Eureka, and I can't believe they came. No bands came there. But here they were, in their shitty van, all rotten and stoned, and I gave 'em a tape of Mr. Bungle. They liked the tape and called me up. "But at first I didn't want to do it. You know how insulating college life is; I was very afraid of leaving that." By moving to San Francisco, he says, "I learned more in a couple of weeks than I learned in two years of school," including his most valuable lesson: "You just don't park your car wherever you want to." Now, thanks to "Epic," Patton and his band mates have entered the big leagues. They can call their own shots at a major label, land slots on top-drawing tours and feel free to develop their music. But at what price? "When you enter the music business, you essentially become a prostitute, and anyone who denies that is full of shit," Patton says. "There's no stipulation that we have hits in our contract, but it's understood. You've gotta have a single, and we took a lot of heat this time because the record is a little more eclectic." Both a brain-stimulating artistic enterprise and a creative leap forward, Angel Dust nevertheless stands on its own sharp-taloned feet. FNM is mutating, discovering both its limitations and its possibilities. And when it comes to his craft, Patton says, that nerve-shaking zeal coming back into his eyes, "You've got to be defensive, even when it's uncalled for. And my personal way of dealing with fame is simply not being satisfied. Ever." And of course there's always the other solution, blowing chunks all over the company floor until they finally get your drift.

Sperm and Cuddly Toys. Recently, Faith No More's repulsive fourth album, Angel Dust, was released. To the displeasure of the rock establishment, this revolting product of bombast, symphonica, and hard rock went up the charts like a comet all over the world. An interview with singer Mike Patton, a chameleon in a field of fritters. If U2's Bono says pop music should become primitive and wild again and parodies a rock star, something's going on. And something is going on! A much too great predictability. Everything that was developed in the past, has been divided in genre boxes. Once, survivability was needed to direct the public to the CD market, but now the same CD market suffers from it. The public is getting saturated and there's no ready-to-go new adventure. Artists have learned to adapt. Out of fear to loose their audiences they have unlearned to seek musical adventure beyond "their" boxes, "their" genres, "their" market segments. And because laziness and complacency go hand in hand, they have developed the annoying quality to take themselves much too seriously. All those rappers, singer/songwriters, housers, hardcore-grinders, and whatever, they keep preaching for their own church. All of them so damn sure of themselves, each his own bible under his arm, full of truth, like elders of obscure communions. But, excessive seriousness, religious conviction, and seeking financial security are the worst enemies of playfulness and creativity. It's not easy to admit, but pop music is becoming a rigid medium, with no place for freedom, eccentricity, and against-the-graininess. And if Bono recognizes this, it is to be expected that soon the public will not want the fast food the record industry is feeding them. This is the problem that faces the pop music of the 90s: how to freshen things up? Open things up? How to get rid of all those tangling conditions? Answer: mock the old and look for new musical freedom. There's one group who have taken the front stage on this: Faith No More. Their music provokes, banters, puts you on the wrong foot, balances on the brim of tastelessness, and basically does what has not been done before. Hangover There is little reason to remember the night Holland lost to Denmark through penalty shots [this was the European soccer championship of '92, FL]. Except that Faith No More played the Paradiso when Schmeigel stopped Van Basten's fatal run. "Did you guys loose?," singer Mike Patton teased the audience. A kind of national hangover hung across the room. People weren't happy, in the words of Mike Patton the day after, "a bit fed up." An yes, he did fight a guy who came on stage. It shouldn't have happened, but it's a fact that the guy shouldn't have been there at that time (I know some people who know this guy. He was an avid FNM fan, but sold his entire collection of FNM albums memorabilia after the incident, FL). After that, while the band played an almost endless bombastic instrumental salvo (Woodpecker From Mars, FL), he laid on the floor like dead for minutes on end. "I couldn't go anywhere, so I decided to take a rest." And when the room was boiling and bad vibes were in the air in the form of countless heated stage divers, the band played a neat soul ballad by The Commodores, Easy. "Let's pretend we're visiting our grandmothers. Let's all be very polite now," Patton spoke to the crowd [you can check the actual words in the video from this gig that circulates, FL]. Noteworthy: Mike does know how to sing ("If it ever gets to the point where I find it necessary to prove my singing abilities...I would like someone to bash me in the face and stop me"). And when Easy was finished: "Now let's pretend we're at a Slayer concert and fuckin' break everything." After which the hardcore violence started again. "No man, I wasn't angry," Mike evaluates the gig. "I had a great time." Horrible Why did you call your album Angel Dust? Is the band on drugs? Not that I am aware of. No good drugs anyhow. No no. We were delighted by the idea that angel dust is a horrible drug that makes you aggressive and paranoid. And the title together with the picture of a beautiful, restful bird, that you would normally see on an easy-listening sleeve. That contrast has a disturbing effect on people. The average rock fan will put a sleeve like that aside: bluh, I don't want to listen to this. That's what we like best. There is a very divergent `country song' on the album: R.V. What is it about? R.V. means recreational vehicle. A typical part of American culture: people live in holiday caravans. We call them white trash. In America, everyone knows someone who lives in an R.V. These people are looked down upon, while everyone knows they're part of society. These people are usually fat, watch TV all day, and eat TV dinners. The song R.V. is almost a mark of honour to those pigs. My family's like that. The kind of people who stay inside these caravans all day and complain: nobody speaks English anymore. No one listens to them, they're only talking to themselves. The song is a profile of the average redneck mentality. It was immediately called your Tom Waits song. Any problems with that comparison? Not at all. Tom Waits is great. And Jizzlobber, what is that about? `Jizz' means sperm, and `to lob' means to throw (remember this was originally for a Dutch audience, FL). The title is comic, but hasn't got anything to do with the rest of the lyrics. It is the song in which you speak about `dirty mattresses.' We thought about sperm immediately. Well, the song is more about being caged than anything else. It definitely is not an orgasmic song. But the title is okay. Fine image: sperm flying through the air. Triumphant. A while ago your (hobby) band Mr. Bungle released an album (a giant flop). You said in an interview: I want to go with Mr. Bungle. I don't want to be in a band that is going downhill any longer. But now you're here again. I might have said something like that, but it all seems a bit exaggerated. That was in the period I gave a lot of interviews that I shouldn't have given. I was fed up with Faith No More. Nobody bought our albums and we just kept touring. I was disillusioned. When you're touring, sometimes as a band you get the feeling you're living like rats. You're kept busy and stupid temporarily. You're treated like a pimp treats a whore. And if you don't want to be a part of that, it gets frustrating. We needed people to bang our heads against the wall. I wanted to crawl away. That's why I was delighted to record an album with Mr. Bungle. The interviews I did during that time were pretty negative. I said things like: Faith No More is like a job to me. Because I felt like that. But I don't think I portrayed myself correctly; It made me look like a teased son-of-a-bitch more than anything else. But you never thought: I quit Faith No More and go on with Mr. Bungle? I had responsibilities towards the record company, because they were worried. Worried that I would leave the sinking ship. To convince them that that was not my intention I had to defend myself in what looked like a lawsuit. In the end I got what I wanted. And that's good, because being in two bands at the same time is great. It isn't a threat. It's more like a physical need: I found I had to do more. You eat a little too much and then you have to shit some more. Target It seems to us that the bands of which it was said a few years ago that they would determine the future of rock music, bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica, have set out to sail a safe course. Therefore, we had expected the new Faith No More album to feature at least one commercial rock ballad. But no. That's the most pathetic thing you see other bands do; to get entangled in their own success formula. If you see bands do that...it's hopeless. It's no good for anyone in any way. I mean: they fill their pockets for some two years and then...The only way to keep Faith No More together is to motivate ourselves. And you can only do that by experimenting. We stay happy that way. If you don't do that you become a sun-burnt rich bastard, a target...Fuck that. Is that the idea behind Faith No More? To stay elusive? Faith No More doesn't seem to be so much as a crossover band, but more a collage of all kinds of styles. As a listener you never know what you're up to. It just happens like that, without us being aware of it. All five of us are rather stubborn personalities. So we all know exactly what we're up to. Most of the time, musicians get too fucked up when they listen to too much music at the same time. They get over-stimulated and the end result is garbage. Curiously enough, it turns out good for us mostly. I guess it's our merit. Do you use the lyrics as a connecting element? Do you use them to make clear what Faith No More is about? I don't think we have an obligation to clarify ourselves through our lyrics. Or even take a standpoint. All five of us simply couldn't agree on any standpoint. If one of use gets a little too outspoken, he's probably lynched by the others. About the lyrics: it's almost a pity they're printed on the sleeve. Because the public expects a revelation. That the lyrics will say something about our past, our lives. And to make that kind of connection via some lyric is almost dangerous. That's what we want to get at: to us, Faith No More is a band that deliberately doesn't provide any clarity, both musically and lyrically. You don't give the audience the opportunity to identify with you. Isn't that the idea behind the band? The reason we appear like that is that we're bored easily. We have to entertain ourselves. And give the audience a challenge. That's important to me. People shouldn't feel at ease about what they hear. Therefore, it is almost our duty to provoke. Is that where the element of parody gets into the concept? Absolutely. The rock press often reproached Faith No More of `tastelessness'. You would ridicule rock 'n' roll. I think people who look at us as a joke band take an extremely superior point of view. They look down on us and say: Oh my God, it's nothing. They're snobs. Maybe critics ought to be snobbish, it's their job. But I don't have to agree with them just because of that. I think it's easy to see it as an insult when a band uses parodying elements. They get confused about it. They think: does this band really mean this? Or not? They don't know, get frustrated, and the next thing you know is they don't want to have anything to do with you. I know that feeling: when bands leave me insecure...it's frustrating. And that's exactly what I like. For me it's one of the few things that are fun: you should be confused. You should think: what the hell is going on? During your performance in London you advised the audience to smoke crack. Yeah. It's one of those things...as a singer you are in a position of power. You're a media figure. You have an obligation towards your audience. You have the responsibility to be positive. That's trendy these days, it sells. When I advise people to smoke crack it's only a reaction to that trend. I only want to make clear that I never want to be the spokesman for whatever cause. Sometimes the only way to get your point across is being negative. What's wrong with that? As a matter of fact, it's only getting really interesting when everyone has a crack pipe with them at our next show. But all joking apart, you just shouldn't go on stage thinking you're a king. That would be really boring. The best shows we've done were under the worst conditions. At places where no on wanted to see us. We were supporting Metallica, somewhere in Utah. It's swarming with Mormons there. They hated us. Threw bottles. Spat at us. Fourteen, fifteen thousand people. Then I made a remark about Mormons and they hated us even more. Then our bass player played a fifteen minute solo. One note, dang dang dang. Bottles flew over our heads. War. But those circumstances, when you don't feel at ease, are often the most inspiring. And how inspiring is it to be a support act to Guns 'n Roses? Better than I thought. I'd thought our presence there would be totally misplaced. We said: we may not like GNR, we may not like playing in open air stadiums in broad daylight, where we sound like shit and look like shit on a much too large stage that wasn't built for us, and we may not like the fact that people are paying too much money for a ticket...that's all true. But the fact is: it's a very good opportunity to reach a large audience that otherwise wouldn't have come to see us. And that's good. The other side of it is that we want to headline again. It will happen in October. Playing with a roof over our heads. We're at our best like that. Cuddly toys Faith No More's lyrics often seem to be written from a child's perspective. Is that important to you? Does it keep you fresh, optimistic, etc.? Well, I don't know what exactly is childish about this band...whether it's the lyrics, or parody, it stems from the fact we enjoy childish things. But we don't ask how childish the band is, we ask how important the child's point of view is to your music? Hard to say. I think most of us have had a lousy youth, and maybe we are still stuck in it. [Long silence]. I think we are fascinated by little cuddly things. We're like old ladies: we like cuddly toys. Strange thing is, the only things I can get really upset about, are tiny trivialities, things I shouldn't get upset about at all. But it happens, and that is childish. Whether you explain it positively or negatively, it remains childish. To tell you the truth, I suspect I got stuck in the anal phase. It's all about shit, assholes, etc. I think we all got stuck in peculiar phases. You keep changing the way you look, that's for sure. It's because I am bored. You're touring. You have a lot of days off. So you get bored. We found something to it: haircuts. Haircuts that kill! We give one another new haircuts. To fool around with the way you look is great. To give yourself a new face every once in a while. Childish! Easily Bored! Another look each time! Boredom stems from watching TV too much. Children get bored easily too. Your music changes shape so often you can listen to it as if you were a two-year old yourself. Isn't that a bit over-romanticized? I don't think we give people that much! I think we arouse primitive urges. Two-year olds exist by the grave of their primitive urges. Absolutely. But you have to be careful to say you feel like a two-year old listening to our music. There are listeners who have been raped as a child. They sure don't want to be two years old again. What do you think of people having Mike Patton posters in their bedrooms? I've been in a room like that once and it scared the hell out of me.

Which Faith No More show do you wish you had attended? The first answer we are all in no doubt shouting at the screen is ‘the next one’ , but until that happens (we still have hope) let us look back over the band’s touring history and some of their most memorable gigs. Every FNM show is very different from era to era and some will of course mean more to certain fans than others - however there are some performances which are more significant within the band's time-line than others. We must thank Andrew at the Faith No More Gig Database and his tireless efforts in collecting an encyclopaedia of FNM's concert info. Thanks to journalists such as Steffan Chirazi, Neil Perry, and Mike Gitter for writing reviews that, regardless whether they were good or bad, preserve Faith No More touring history. And, we must also thank broadcasters and bootleggers who keep memories of these events alive - whether that be legally or not. 20 Faith No More Shows You Wish You Were At 1. Friday, 07 October 1983 On Broadway, San Francisco, CA, USA Imagine being at Faith No More's first ever show. In the summer of 1983 Faith. No Man went through several line-up changes, the most significant was that keyboard player Wade Worthington was replaced by Roddy Bottum . Soon bassist Bill Gould , drummer Mike Bordin and Roddy broke away and changed their name to Faith. No More . Their first show was in October at On Broadway featuring Jake Smith on guitar (his only ever show with the band) and Joe Pop-o-Pie on vocals. Early versions of The Jungle, Why Do You Bother? and Spirit were in the set and it was recorded by Matt Wallace . Even though the band was not yet complete FNM's unmistakable sound can be heard at this gig. So historic is this first performance as Faith. No More, Adrian Harte dedicates a full chapter to this night in his book Small Victories: The True Story. ‘We had incense. It was part of that neo-hippie vibe we were pushing. Incense, dashikis, dreadlocks. We were super ramshackle hodgepodge fashion. We wore dashikis for sure. We had gotten into Last Poets, and we loved fucking with all the punkers who were wearing the traditional Doc Martens. It was so uncool to be a dirty hippie at that time. It was our main intention to set ourselves apart from the scene that was going on at the time. And we just found it all really provocative and hilarious.' - Roddy Bottum 2014 2. Saturday, 04 October 1986 Humboldt State University Depot, Arcata, CA, USA The famous show that began Mike Patton 's journey into FNM. There is no set list available but you can bet that the band included early versions of songs from the Introduce Yourself album as well as We Care A Lot album tracks. Witness accounts suggest that there were only about 6 people in the crowd as the university was on study leave, and that the band’s performance wasn’t great. However, if you are a student of Faith No More history you will understand the significance of this show. The eighteen year old Patton and his buddy Trey Spruance were in the crowd and famously handed Mike Bordin a copy of Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny which was the catalyst that led to Patton joining FNM. 'Faith No More played Eureka in a pizza parlour place we played dozens of times. There were 6 people there and 3 of them were my friends. It was really bad, a really pathetic show and I remember them standing around the van really upset. Puffy was really uptight wanting to know where to get weed. Nobody was talking to him, I think he asked us because we were just hanging around. But their situation then never even registered with me, touring was unreal, Warner Bros was like a Tom And Jerry cartoon. At that time I didn't wanna know about any of that shit. I gave them a tape and told them, This is what music from around here sounds like, from this region.' - Mike Patton 1993 3. Friday, 22 January 1988 Dingwalls, London, England FNM’s first show outside the USA. By early '88 the band had already established a dedicated fan base in the UK mainly due to their sound fitting right in with English popular post punk / new wave. Many fans would follow FNM around England on this maiden voyage and stay connected to the band for the next twenty years. Reviews in Sounds and Kerrang! suggest the live mix was bad but the talent and personality of the band were enough to make a great show. 'The sound never improves and Chuck never really sung a note. If it's Metal then you could just die laughing. If Faith No More are a little more important then you may well be on the right track. "You've been a great audience. An ugly audience, but still a great audience!"' - Kerrang! 1988 4. Friday, 04 November 1988 I-Beam, San Francisco, CA, USA Patton's first live performance with Faith No More. Another first, as Patton appears on stage as FNM’s front man for the first time introducing the band's new lineup to their home town. According to Steffan Chirazi the sound was terrible and the FNM fan base didn’t take well to the appointment of a new singer. In fact one fan gave a note to Patton reading ‘ 'You stupid, sexist, macho asshole. What are you doing? Get off the stage. Where's Chuck? He rocks...’ Would you want to be there? Of course you would. What a chance to see to earliest incarnation of what would become the band that changed the face of music over the next decade. '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.' - Steffan Chirazi. Bam Magazine. 5. Saturday, 17 March 1990 L'Amours, New York, NY, USA Faith No More and Soundgarden on-stage together. In 1990 FNM were on the verge of exploding into stardom. The Real Thing tour lasted for nearly three years and the band enjoyed success around the globe. In March of the same year FNM were on the road with Voivod and Soundgarden. In this footage we see Kim Thayil and the late Chris Cornell invading the stage during War Pigs . What a chance to see two titans of the alternative metal scene in their early days. 6. Saturday, 28 April 1990 Brixton Academy, London, England 'You Fat Bastards...' The quintessential classic The Real Thing era show with FNM displaying all the characteristics we have come to love. A crude sense of humour, Patton's schizophrenic dance moves, Bordin's ferocity behind the kit, Jim Martin 's statuesque brilliance, Roddy's sex faces and Bill's famous hunch and skip. The gig includes moments that have become legend and that any Faith No More fan can recite. 'So what, are you ready to fuckin' go home?' or 'Hey, it's time to snap kids. It's time to fuckin' snap goddamnit.' Imagine being in the crowd and being forever immortalised on film. 'Whether or not you appreciate the vinyl, there's no denying Faith No More are one of the most compelling bands to hit the live circuit recently. Their ingenious hybrid of rock, rap, funk and the odd classical break is transformed into something magical on stage, while the crazy showmanship of singer Mike Patton — as unpredictable a character as former vocalist Chuck Mosley — makes the show visually as well as aurally exciting. Brixton was packed and heaving, but its all starting to look a little bit too easy.' - RIP Magazine 1990 7. Sunday, 20 January 1991 Rock In Rio II, Maracana Stadion, Rio De Janeiro, RJ, Brazil The show that began Faith No More's love affair with South America. For FNM's first appearance in South America they had their largest audience to date of around two hundred thousand. The TV and press coverage was immense and the media storm that followed FNM around Brazil over those few days was intense - they were mobbed by fans in the street and interviewed for numerous TV stations including several features for MTV. Their set was broadcast throughout Latin America by TV Globo. For most of the world it was this video footage shown on Raw Power at 3am that gave us a taste of this amazing performance. 'It was a huge moment for the world's best band right now, a culmination of their 18 month 'The Real Thing' campaign in the most spectacular of settings. The Maracana stadium was full. The band were on form. Vocalist Mike Patton was unstoppable. Faith No More ate this show up and spat it right back at the people, almost making the damn venue seem like an intimate club gig, not a vast stadium. In rising to this occasion FNM proved they are really here to stay.' - Kerrang! 1991 8. Thursday, 14 May 1992 Marquee Club, London, England Introducing Angel Dust to the world. In May of 1992 Faith No More held their album release party for Angel Dust in their adopted home of London. A select crowd of journalists and friends were invited to the (now gone) Marquee Club to be the lucky few to hear FNM, under the pseudonym Haircuts That Kill , play songs from their fourth studio album a month before it's release. The band gathered with the press for a release party then performed that night to a packed crowd, a warm-up show for their stadium tour with Guns 'N Roses . 'The joy of Faith No More is that they belong nowhere, to no movement, scene, label or geographical youth club. They owe nothing to no one. "We're playing Wembley in June," Bill informs the crowd. "Don't come". "Yeah," nods Patton in agreement, "stay at home and phone in some bomb threats".' - Neil Perry NME 9. Tuesday, 02 June 1992 Marquee Club, Hamburg, Germany Faith No More playing a truly oddball set. FNM took a rare break from supporting G'n'R at sell out stadiums to give fans a more intimate experience at this small club in Hamburg. The set is sloppy but a lot of fun and includes covers that the band only played on this night. What's more is that Mike Patton played bass for some of the songs. This show is preserved in one of the most famous bootleg recordings titled Undercover Gig . 'The concert itself is a blur. It was crowded, it was hot, it was long, it was fantastic. At one point Mike Patton called for a break as he needed some air. Later he announced they would play until everybody left. Nobody did.' - Review 2022 10. Tuesday, 30 June 1992 Estadio Benito Villamarin, Seville, Spain Pouring piss over Axl Rose 's monitor! Angel Dust era Mike Patton was fascinated with all sorts of bodily fluids, the self proclaime d shit terrorist was guilty of many disgusting onstage antics. The band also found pleasure in taunting tour buddies Guns N Roses. During an MTV interview Roddy revealed to fans that they enjoyed encouraging the crowd to throw litter on stage, and at a stadium show in Spain Patton had climbed up on Axl's monitor and emptied a bottle of urine over his head. Footage taken from Video Croissant shows the air filled with trash at the following show in Lisbon. 11. Monday, 05 June 1995 Pinkpop Festival, Renbaan, Landgraaf, Netherlands 'Faith No More love Hootie and the Blowfish. Go buy their fuckin' records. Everybody give it up for Hootie!' Faith No More supporting their album King For A Day... in 1995 was a wholly different experience for fans than ever before. The band looked like the cast of Trainspotting as Patton was acrobatically possessed, Roddy was glam and Dean Menta was the new kid on the block replacing Jim Martin. The band's performance at Pinkpop illustrates this perfectly and for those who weren't lucky enough to be there it's on Youtube in HD. Highlights include - replacing Mike B with a drum machine for the first time in FNM history! Also, Patton tearing up at the end of a stunning performance of the song King For A Day . 12. Friday, 08 September 1995 Monsters of Rock, Teatro Caupolicán, Santiago, Chile More bodily fluids! FNM skipped South America during their Angel Dust tour, cancelling five shows in August 1992 - possibly because of the divide with their Big, Sick and Ugly guitarist. They returned triumphantly in September 1995. At Monsters of Rock in Chile 3/4 of the band shaved their heads for possibly their most aggressive performance of all time! '...due to their characteristics may make one think that they are not capable of producing anything other than debauchery and violence, but if you listen carefully their capacity becomes evident.' Adrian Harte again dedicated a full chapter in his FNM book to the Chile connection . The spitting started straight away. By the third song, ‘Midlife Crisis’, Patton’s T-shirt was damp with saliva. Ten songs in—a cover of Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’—and the singer was showered in spittle, his face and shaved head dripping with saliva. Was this a more extreme version of the Viña del Mar opprobrium? It was merely tradition. Since the early 80s, performers at hard rock shows had been spat at, in a regional variation of the gobbing at 70s punk shows. It usually did not go down well. Axl Rose stormed offstage when spat on in Santiago in 1992, and then Iron Maiden singer Blaze Bailey cut a song short after he was spat at in 1996. Patton embraced it. During ‘Midlife’, he opened his mouth wide and pointed inside, directing the spitters to their target. During ‘Glory Box’, he picked a spit globule from his temple and tasted it. ‘It was such a disgusting display of honour,’ Bottum notes, ‘but I remember all of us were really into the spit.’ Gould adds, ‘That was a high energy show we gave them. It was September 11, so it was the anniversary of the coup. People were really jacked up, and we fed off of that. People liked to spit. We were totally fine with that. He had no problem with that. He did what he had to do.’ 13. Saturday, 29 November 1997 Brixton Academy, London, England Metallica joined Faith No More in 1989, Ozzy joined FNM in 1990, but Sparks joining FNM on-stage in 1997 was the first official collaboration was witnessed. The Album of the Year tour was the beginning of Jon Hudson 's live career with FNM. Faith No More's slick brat pack image would stick for the next fifteen years. At their favourite UK venue the band continued their funeral parade of a tour by bringing out electro oddballs Sparks to perform This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us with them during the encore. Something they would repeat in December 2010. 'But that's not to say that there aren't still moments of sheer brilliance in a Faith No More set - and that, I guess, is why we still keep coming. Tonight, they slither onstage in their typically outlandish fashion with their cover of the theme from 'Midnight Cowboy', before launching into the usually unusual hit- and-miss cabaret.  Mike Patton, as ever, is a totally captivating frontman, writhing and cavorting like the delinquent child of Iggy, crooning like the Frank Sinatra of metal. And it has to be said, when they get it right, Faith No More are unstoppable.'  - Kerrang! 1997 14. Tuesday, 07 April 1998 Coliseu dos Recreios, Lisbon, Portugal Faith No More's last show before an eleven year hiatus. Maybe this show should not appear in this list as it marked the end of FNM 1.0. However it stands as a landmark show in FNM's career. Only two weeks after this performance Faith No More announced that they were... no more. 'After 15 long and fruitful years, Faith No More have decided to put an end to speculation regarding their imminent break up... by breaking up.' 15. Wednesday, 10 June 2009 Brixton Academy, London, England 'Reunited and it feels so good...' On June 10th 2009 Faith No More played their first show after eleven years apart at Brixton Academy. So thrilling was this show that it deserves more than just a paragraph of text, read the full review HERE . 16. Sunday, 11 July 2010 Exit Festival, Novi Sad, Serbia During their Second Coming tour Faith No More made a point of visiting parts of the world they had never been, parts of the world no band of their calibre had ever been. Serbia has since become Bill Gould's second home. During his travels in Central Europe and The Balkans the bassist discovered new music to release via Koolarrow Records . He embraced the culture, food and drink. He introduced many to the alcoholic drink rakija by brewing and shipping his own brand called Yebiga . In July 2010 FNM were somewhat hindered by a late stage arrival and technical issues, however Mike Patton's stage antics were off the chart! Often now listed in favourite Patton moments , the frontman commandeered film cameras, rode around on the shoulders of manager Tim Moss and quite spectacularly scaled a camera crane. 'After a lengthy wait, Faith No More followed with a set that showed – in full force – the extent of frontman Mike Patton’s insanity. It included a wedding singer style cover of Peaches & Herb’s “Reunited”, a couple of tributes to new World Cup champions Spain, a short rendition of Michael Jackson’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and a dangerous clamber up the camera pole (whilst singing) in between some of FNM’s greatest including “Ashes to Ashes.”' - Clash Magazine 2010 17. Saturday, 12 November 2011 Maquinaria Festival, Santiago, Chile King For A Day in full with Trey Spruance ! On November 12th 2011 FNM returned to Santiago, Chile for a very special unprecedented show. The band played their fifth studio album King For A Day Fool For A Lifetime in its entirety. With the addition of the record's fifth composer Mr. Bungle 's Trey Spruance on guitar - this was first time he had played live with the band. During this show it was also the first time Star A.D. and Absolute Zero had been performed on the stage. Add a full choir to backup Patton on the chorus of Just A Man and you've quite possible one the greatest FNM shows ever! 18. Friday, 28 November 2014 Amoeba Records, San Francisco, CA, USA 'Get the motherfucker on the phone...' On November 28th 2014 Faith No More performed a surprise show at Amoeba Records in San Francisco. FNM surprised us with a show to celebrate Record Store Day Black Friday and the release of Motherfucker on 7" vinyl, their first new music in 17 years. Again, let us dedicate a full review of this outstanding show rather than a few words. Read HERE. 19. Thursday, 03 September 2015 Troubadour, Hollywood, CA, USA Intimate night with Lump ! For one night on the Sol Invictus tour Faith No More ditched the white stage dress, the flowers and the gimp for a close quarters undercover gig under the pseudonym Lump on Thursday September 3rd at The Troubadour, Los Angeles. 'Roddy Bottum, sporting a Tom of Finland tee alerted the crowd, “This is the first time we play without our stage “uniforms” in 21 years and it feels good.” Casual and relaxed. The band dressed like they were playing a living room gig. But they played like they were in a goddam arena.' - Grimy Goods 2016 20. Saturday, 20 August 2016 Chuck Mosley and Friends, Troubadour, Hollywood, CA, USA Faith No More return to their roots with Chuck! 'It was a blast. I mean it was brutal. Yeah, I was worried about falling over or fucking up but I didn’t do either. So, it was really good.' - Chuck The Quietus 2016 Of all the shows on this list surely this rates as one of the highest for hardcore fans of Faith No More. The last time FNM were live on-stage. The last time we would see the late Chuck Mosley with his old band mates.

London BST Hyde Park Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Motörhead, Soulfly. If it really does turns out to be Sabbath's final London performance, an on-form supporting cast - and flowers - ensured it was a day befitting it This is an historic event. Not because it's London and it's hot and sunny, but because it may well be the last ever big-scale London shows from Black Sabbath and Motörhead, with key members of both bands having health issues of late. And with Soundgarden and Faith No More also on the bill, it could be seen as a passing on of the flame. Maybe it already has been passed on; many of the 55,000-strong crowd have doubtless come primarily to see Soundgarden and Faith No More, and if they happen to catch the living museum pieces that are Sabbath and the 'Head, so be it. Soulfly are the first band on the main stage today, and they get a decent reaction, especially set opener Prophecy. But having formed as recently as 1997, the Phoenix metallers are the main stage's relative newbies - Motörhead, Faith No More, Soundgarden and Sabbath have been going for a combined total of almost 150 years - and so have less of the other acts' gravity and import. You could say it's a miracle many of them are still going. "We're Motörhead! And we play rock'n'roll!" announces Lemmy as he, guitarist Phil 'Wizzö' Campbell and drummer Mikkey Dee launch into old faithful Damage Case. Lemmy seems somewhat enfeebled, although at 68, and with the life he's lived, he has every reason to be. Still, sensing a muted response, Campbell tries to rally the crowd with instructions to "make more noise than you ever thought possible!" They play Lost Woman Blues, from 2013's Aftershock, and even Lemmy is dubious that anyone rushed out for a copy. "Did anyone buy it?" he asks, vainly. "Did anyone steal it?" There is an extended drum solo, but really Motörhead are about speed and concision, and it's only with Ace Of Spades and Overkill that the crowd's juices start flowing. By contrast, Faith No More are in fierce form. Fierce irreligious form: they're all in black, with priestly dog collars, and frontman Mike Patton, in the guise of a deranged preacher, keeps quoting from The Exorcist. "Let Jesus fuck you!" he yells. And "Your mother sucks cocks in hell!" Meanwhile, the stage, bedecked with flowers, couldn't be more Sunday-church-service. Zombie Eaters is similarly deceptive, with its softly-sung, balladic beginning ahead of its transformation into a funk-metal monster. Patton is red, hot and blue, his voice going from a facetious croon to a death-metal squeal. And whether it's an admonition of bullshit pop sentiment or an admission that entertainment is a lie, their cover of soul tune Easy goes down a storm. Patton throws 'holy water' on the front rows as he finally gets sincere. "Thanks for having us, guys, seriously." Faith No More: they care a lot. Soundgarden present themselves as sepia classic rockers, flanked by large-screen footage of themselves performing in black and white - you'd think Seattle photographer Charles Peterson, responsible for many an iconic grunge-era image, was directing. Going by Chris Cornell's leonine mane and lithe frame, you could believe he'd just stepped out of 1994. Fact is, he's 50, but that Plant-esque wail is still intact as the band run through the whole of Superunknown, which has just turned 20. They might, in the minds of many, be about to supplant the headliners, but they're in no mood to kill the king. "If you're here for Black Sabbath, maybe this is annoying," says Cornell. "But that's okay, cos we're here for Black Sabbath too." Pearl Jam's Mike McCready joins them for Mailman, Cornell joking that, with three guitarists, "we're going to be like Skynyrd". As the day grows darker and cooler, the growling menace of the music starts to take full effect. Black Hole Sun beats Nirvana at their own Beatles-meets-Sabbath game. Cornell dedicates 4th Of July (today's date) to the headliners, reminiscing about supporting them on tour. "It was one of the highlights of our lives," he says, paying obeisance to the ultimate masters. By the time Black Sabbath come on stage its dark just right for the ominous grainy images of war on the screens. Suddenly the crowd is all devil horns and fist pumps. Tony lommi commands with his large cross, and even Ozzy Osbourne, despite the odd doddery move, appears strong. Whether you consider him the original Prince of Darkness or a comical buffoon, there's no denying he demands attention, although mention of his wife (it's his and Sharon's wedding anniversary) is met with boos, reminding us that Sabbath occupy a dual position: underground overlords, with a mainstream pop icon at their helm Into The Void is just one of many quintessential rock riffs, with lommi and Geezer Butler laying down awesome slabs of metallic slurry; pure heads-down, no-nonsense Midlands boogie. There are songs from all points in Sabbath's career, right up to last year's superb comeback 13. Inevitably it's the early ones with the aura of doom that, paradoxically, elicit the greatest pleasure: the darker the better. The title track of their debut with its tolling bells, signals the onset of rain, and Children Of The Grave brings down the metaphorical curtain. "We'd play all fucking night if we could!" declares Ozzy, proceeding to do a series of weird frog jumps that are worth the price of admission alone There's an encore of Paranoid, and then that really is the end. Possibly forever. Still, they've had a good run, and helped change everything. We'll never see their like again. Or will we?

Phil Wilding SCAT OPERA have seven inches of stage space. Five full minutes of sound check behind them, and around three people at the front who are only half interested. Murder by numbers. Though, for a four piece from London who have risen from relative obscurity-a handful of Marquee supports are about all they can call their own, profile-wise-alienation is nothing new. The blond vocalist, who looks unerringly like a young Chuck Mosley, apologises for not being American and promptly launches 'Fifo F*»k' as if it's what the front row have wanted alt their lives. Scat Opera are as alarming asthe first time I saw, say, the Toll, or experienced a Jane's Addiction sampler They have no peripheries to their music, no recognisable tags. There's extremes and edges, but it's like attempting to make a punch count on the surface of an ocean. Momentarily, I thought it could have been weaned off Faith themselves, but back to back there are no comparisons. The bass funks, flattens and ravages, the guitar distorts and then slides while the drums just belt you in the mouth and tell you to shut up and listen. This one you've got to see for yourselves. Faith No More have a sound problem that rings like an alarm bell and growls like an irate feline. The snare resembles an inverted steel bucket being struck. For the rest of the evening I couldn't quite work out whether Mike Patton either knew or cared. There is something wrong with this man, very wrong. While we stood stuck to the walls, smeared with perspiration, he complained of the cold, chuckled like an edgy schizophrenic, and twirled insanely. Then he picked the best Metal T-shirt in the audience - a Whitesnake design took it, Napalm Death were a close second - grabbed the recipient out of the audience, congratulated him and then tipped him back off. Let me assure you, he was having his own proverbial ball. With the sturdy casting of 'Introduce Yourself' they blighted past shadows and confounded half the capacity audience who seemed familiar with 'The Real Thing' and very little else. 'We Care A Lot' fell the same indecisive dusty route, while 'Falling To Pieces' was welcomed like the return of a favoured son. So much so that the stage shifted dramatically, sloped threateningly and then shifted itself back into place. Patton chose the moment to examine the sweat on the ceiling and marvel publicly at the cool air breezing in through the grill above his head. There is something wrong etc. The barrage strode on, hand in hand with the clumsy showers of ice cubes falling into the front, Patton contributed with his Evian bottle, 'From Out Of Nowhere' slid gracefully in, bludgeoning Jim cracking his ridiculously hairy head in and out of focus. 'Woodpeckers From Mars' landed like a small Steinway let go from 20 storeys up, which opened the way for 'War Pigs' to carve a foul smelling swathe through the human mist. Dark and odious, lingering like the darkest cancer bud. Black hearted and for ever.

Facts Not Fiction Mike Gitter Once upon a time, FAITH NO MORE were just a novel act. Then they sacked a singer, released 'The Real Thing' and rewrote the touring rulebook. It speaks volumes tor their current status that this Friday, they're due back in the UK for a second-on-the-bill slot at the Reading Festival. Singer and chief librarian MIKE PATTON asks MIKE GITTER to turn over a new page in his notebook, cos he wants to tell him a story. He wants to clear up will-he-quit? / will-they sack-him? rumours and give you, to borrow? a phrase...Facts not Fiction. Caring a lot gets tiring. A year from the day 'The Real Thing' reared its ugly, multi directional head, Faith No More finally win the attention of their native land. It's been a difficult year in the spotlight: one of preaching honesty rather than cool; of exercising the ghost of original lead singer Chuck Mosley and adjusting to 22-year-old-frontman Mike Patton; of touring their brains out and still smiling for cameras. 365 days of this, with many months to go, and signs of strain are starting to show. Keep in mind it was nothing compared to the days of bitter fist-fights with the dreadlocked and gesticulating Chuck, but it has been a year of non-stop road-wear: getting spat on for their Californian Metallica support efforts; spending a dead Winter bottom-ending the US VoiVod/Soundgarden bill; six or seven European visits — counting this Friday's Reading Festival and other Continental outdoor shows; and a full-blown US arena slot with Billy Idol waiting in the wings. Add to that Patton's dogmatic insistence on keeping with his old outfit, Mr Bungle, and the grounds for disharmony and discontent more than slightly imbue FNM's mutant ranks... All this as 'The Real Thing' turns Gold. The culprit? The brilliantly unpigeonholeable 'Epic', a sliver of imagination thrust up the arse of middle America every hour on the hour by the great bastion of cultural conservation, MTV. Consider this: in the-space of a single sweltering June day, the damn thing outdid the business it generated In it's first six months of release. Seems that somewhere deep in the machinations of industry, someone was starting to get severely embarrassed by the critical buzz-dom and overseas acclaim Faith No More were receiving - to say nothing of the meagre US record sales. 45,000 units does not a band of the '90s make. "MTV is something we don't get to see everyday and record sales are just numbers," starts in Michael Patton with a conspiratorial sneer. To us, these accolades are a joke, a farce, something that's just not real. "We don't see ourselves prancing all over MTV - the truth of the matter is that we're still playing 200 seaters in the US. Europe is a bit better - we get to play festivals there - but then again, I shouldn't even say Europe. It's just England and that's got a lot to do with the amount of attention we've paid them. "I think we re just perceived as a pop band there, a disco, dance-mix sensation - like Kylie Minogue or Bros." Nevertheless, just a day back from Denmark's Ras Kilde Festival, the band find themselves with three weeks of sold-out US club headliners in front of them. An occurrence that would ordinarily thrill a band in their position. But Patton, no longer the sexy, svelte kid of a year ago, seems morose and unimpressed. It seems that for the most part, the past 12 months of back-breaking and proving themselves to generally apathetic ears have been, well... fruitless. "Right now, I've got to look back over the past year and ask myself 'How much of this has been a waste of time?', Mike reflects, staring out at the distant spires of Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University. "Now we're headlining a lot of the exact same clubs we opened for on the VoiVod tour. Couldn't this have happened sooner? Couldn't the video have been worked this hard a year ago? "It's frustrating. Now that the album's starting to pick up, it's new to 90 per cent of the world. We've got to cater to this totally new crowd and for us, the album's a f**king year old. We've got to act like everything's fun and great and we totally love each other. Lovely." Does Patton fancy himself a changed man? Recipient of an education he never expected when drafted from Bungle-land and thrust into the world of magazine covers; and press adoration? "I've grown to respect ; myself less and less," he admits, "and I feel bad for virtually throwing away the past year. I'll sit there sometimes and think, 'Okay, if this year didn't happen I'd be 21, not 22'. "There's a year gone from my life and although I guess; that all this stuff happened, it doesn't seem so. I m not making any more money than I was, I doubt I'm any smarter than I was. I've seen a lot more and I've done a lot more, but it's pretty much the same thing every night. "I've gotten myself caught up in this disgusting machine that's rolling down the hill, out of control and I can't get out of it. It makes me feel used." Well, if that's the case why not pack your bag and call it a day? "I really don't have anything better to do. Maybe, I'd be at school, enjoying about 30 per cent of it and the rest of the time, I'd probably be wondering 'Why am wasting my time?'" Is Faith No More at all like being at school? "Sometimes, yeah when I was at school, I'd also have a job and this is more like the job. Then again, sometimes it's just fast-food for me. It's nothing. A sub-nothing, actually. You're waiting to do the exact same thing that you did last night, sometimes say the exact same thing. It's just disgusting. Sometimes I feel like Steve Martin before he started acting and it really just feels like going through the motions all the time. "I used to think that you should be up for every show you play and you should be ready to throw away everything that's happened to you and play a really great show for the people who've come to see you..." Admittedly Patton has grown disenchanted. At the beginning of starship FNM's year-plus journey he tackled predominantly apathetic and uninitiated crowds with the force of a young bull. Months ago, a bundle of flailing, leaping spastic energy, it seems as if recent history has somehow buried his intense, emotional commitment. "I used to watch someone like Iggy Pop or Henry Rollins and wonder how they were always so angry, so pissed off. Now, it's dawning on me that they're not always pissed off. Maybe they had a great day that day and like me, sometimes, are going through the motions." And of course, there's that absurd Anthony Kiedis business. "That's a dumb thing I've got absolutely nothing to do with," Mike groans, "I don't care. I really don't. Reading that article gave me a good laugh - it sounded like old Anthony felt a little threatened, I dunno. "If he wants to give me press instead of his band, his girlfriend or whatever, that's fine by me. "I'm sure he didn't count on it getting slapped on the cover of Kerrang! Then, after that, they called me up right afterwards, asking me to do a rebuttal. What is this, Bonjovi vs Axl Rose? I don't need it." (Blame your publicist, who suggested it, not us - Ed.) The bottom line on Mike Patton is plain to see. He is a victim of a common ailment of Americans born after '65 - has Sesame Street Brain! It's not out of wanton brattishness or dissatisfaction with the band that he gripes, but due to an attention span of milliseconds requiring constant diversion. Nevertheless, the fact remains... "That I really, really like this band," he beams. "Still, I think the rumours are really, really healthy. They keep me on my toes. My favourite one is that they kicked me out of the band because I'm such a brat. Ha! I really like that one. "The other rumour that's great is that they're gonna kick me out because I wear the Mr Bungle shirt all the time. "Admittedly, a lot of my interviews don't particularly help. "Maybe people that interview me expect me to talk about how I'm such great friends with everyone in the band and how we go out together and drink beer - not to mention how, every night, I look over at Jim Martin and he really turns me on. He's so sexy. "I don't say that kind of shit so people immediately assume I'm bitter or not completely satisfied and that is just not the case." As for the self-labelled "frustrated spazz death disco" bone of contention known to the world as Mr Bungle, Mike, a self-proclaimed lover of uncomfortable situations" maintains: "Mr Bungle is something I've always done. Something I've done for six years and it's just not something I can break away from, ever." He confesses to feeling more like an "employee" in FNM though flatly denies he has any plans to leave. "Just the situation of being in two bands is cause for rumours," he furthers. "Being in two bands gives someone ammunition to write total bullshit about me. It's something for the press to pick up on, especially considering that was the case with Chuck, except we don't have fist-fights like they did. "This is something else for the press; 'Oh, the singer's got another band, he's not completely loyal, he's cheating, he's committing adultery, the sonofabitch, brat, pig!" Mr Bungle are white boy be-boppers with a serious porn fixation whose recorded output to this point has been a clutch of demos. They've had no shortage of record company suitors, both large and small .Bob Briggs, proprietor of Faith No More's own label, Slash, promises to indicate within the next few weeks whether he'll sign the band or pass them off to another label... Would a Mr Bungle album and tour be the ever-elusive "time-off" for Patton? "Yeah, definitely. It would be completely different for me - the music, the way we do business. "I'm more in touch with all of that in Bungle. For Christ sakes, I'm the singer, roadie, road manager and I love it. It keeps me in touch with reality. "I'd probably go crazy without it and I'm always calling the record label asking when I can do it- even though it won't be for months. "The nice thing is that people at Slash are starting to warm up to the idea now that Faith No More's doing so well. Some people, especially the ones dishing out the money were like, 'Why are we doing this for you if you're not completely committed?' "It's not about commitment. It's about being stubborn, maybe being a dick, but ultimately, being happy." ......And now for something completely different: just in time for the Reading Festival, BIG SICK UGIY JIM gives BIG BIG UGLY STEFFAN CHIRAZI some important tips on Bathroom Hygiene for all those queueing outside the portaloos.... Whenever using a lavatory seat on which other people's asses my have been placed, always be very careful to ensure that no part of your body touches the porcelain, explains 'Dr M' live from a secret Swiss hideaway somewhere in Lucerne. "Make sure to carefully wrap a double-ply strip of lavatory paper around the seat so as to lessen the risk of infection. "Place some paper down the lavatory and into the actual water, so that the risk of any diseased splash-back is greatly lessened. This will depend, of course, on the size of the turd. "Be sure to wash your hands, as whilst wiping your asshole, you can never be sure that a small amount of faecal matter hasn't strayed onto your fingers. Use a brush under your fingernails whenever possible..." Failing all else, Dr M advises festival goers to, "shit on the ground". Some of these methods were originally seen by viewers of a Faith No More special on MTV. When asked why Martin chose to do this on MTV, he responded: "As I have the opportunity to speak to millions of people, I figured I would give the young kids out there some advice on proper toilet procedures. After all, we don't really know what parents are teaching their kids these days." Indeed, as the FNM explosion gathers pace in the USA, their magnificent team have received numerous complaints from parents. One anonymous letter posted in anonymous letter posted in San Antonio, Texas, stated that Martin's facial hair and glasses were "a corrupting influence on my kids. This is not a healthy fashion." A management spokesman replied: "Jim's an easy target for some of these parents but hopefully if some of them saw the MTV special, they'll realise that you shouldn't ever judge a book by it's cover. "Personally we applaud Jim's efforts to promote bathroom hygiene and wish more rock bands would encourage matters such as cleanliness."

Faith No More played their first festival in the UK at Reading thirty five years ago on August 24th 1990. NME | September 1990 Faith No More are the most impressive band to come out of America this year, selling out two tours in the UK. This is their first festival show here in Blighty but we expect it won’t be their last. As always the San Franciscan fivesome blow up the stage and the crowd in their wake. Throwing out songs from their multiselling album The Real Thing like grenades, with covers of Madonna and NKOTB for shits and giggles. Lead singer Michael Patton wears a kilt parades the stage like a mad man. Set List From Out Of Nowhere Falling To Pieces Introduce Yourself The Real Thing Underwater Love As The Worm Turns The Crab Song Edge Of The World Chinese Arithmetic intro Madonna, "Vogue" We Care A Lot middle New Kids On The Block, "The Right Stuff" Sweet Dreams (Nestles) Surprise! You're Dead! Epic Woodpecker From Mars Easy (Commodores)

Faith No More played their first UK festival at Reading thirty years ago on August 24th 1990. Set List From Out Of Nowhere Falling To Pieces Introduce Yourself The Real Thing Underwater Love As The Worm Turns The Crab Song Edge Of The World Chinese Arithmetic intro Madonna, "Vogue" We Care A Lot middle New Kids On The Block, "The Right Stuff" Sweet Dreams (Nestles) Surprise! You're Dead! Epic Woodpecker From Mars Easy (Commodores) #faithnomore #therealthing

On August 20th 1990 Faith No More released Live At The Brixton Academy : You Fat Bastards , the band's only official pro-shot live recording to be released on VHS. The footage was recorded at the London venue (now O2 Academy) on April 28th 1990 by William Shapland, directed by John Booth with the audio mixed by Matt Wallace . The VHS was primary released to satisfy fan's demand for FNM music yet only included eleven of the eighteen tracks played at the show. The title of the VHS came from a crowd chant encouraged by FNM. "We felt a certain warmth when the crowd started shouted at us, a feeling of affection." - Jim Martin 1990 Raw Magazine Liz Evans AT LAST, in glorious colour, all the savage sensuality of a Faith No More gig! If you were at this London show, you can now happily relive it at your leisure, try to spot yourself in the crowd and pick out the bum notes. If you missed it, you can see what all the fuss was about. Either way it's a bit of a sparkler, avoiding the usual drab trap of vids such as these. Watching a gig from your living room can be unbearably dull, but Faith No More's goofy, sassy, downright sexy performance translates wonderfully well whether you're leaping from the stacks or vegetating on the sofa. Few bands are as visually addictive as FNM. Vocalist Mike Patton bounces, stomps, strides and contorts, a beautiful bag of ferocious energy working overtime and never tiring. Metal monster Jim Martin looks suitably eccentric lurking with sinister motion, like a throwback from 70s electric hippiedom, complete with Flying V and ridiculous spectacles. At the back, the dreadlocked Mike Bordin smashes a funky rhythm so tight it hurts, while Bill Gould pumps bass and Roddy Bottum sweats over his keyboards. Each has a presence peculiar to themselves, unity never having been a feature of this band, which results in an effective drama of conflict and contrast. From the juicy punch of 'We Care A Lot', the scowling intensity of 'Edge Of The World' and the earnest kick of 'Falling To Pieces', to the ambitious chant of 'Epic' and the hypnotic rendition of Sabbath's 'War Pigs', FNM tease your brain, jump on your toes and make your flesh itch. Their ingenius mix of heavy Funk and Metal is truly dangerous, Mike Patton's props (a policeman's hat and a skull mask to name a couple) and expressions lend mischief, cheek and humour, the outcome is utterly infectious. Whether it's a first or a flashback, You Fat Bastards is an hour of pure entertainment. Fast, fun, fierce and furious. RIP Magazine Living Of The Fat Of The Land by Neil Perry None of Faith No More, in their own little ways, are dealing with a full deck. A straight gig video couldn't hope to reveal that fact, save for singer Mike Patton's demented facial expressions, but it does capture adequately the collective madness in their music. Recorded at Brixton Academy in April, You Fat Bastards - a term of endearment form crowd to band - is a warts n all (as in no overdubs) representation of Faith No More with all the dirt, grit and grind that entails. The sound is as hard and cruel as Faith No More get, the camera work is bereft of any arty pretensions and right in your face, although the bias towards Patton is a little unhealthy. The only criticism, which to its credit doesn't detract from the video's capacity to entertain, is that this isn't the full gig and the best moments from the 'Introduce Yourself' LP have been omitted; no title track, no 'Chinese Arithmetic', just the crowd-pleasing killer disco of 'We Care A Lot'. But there is an added bonus with the inclusion of the thunderous 'As The Worm Turns' from the first LP - Patton sporting a gruesome skull mask - and Faith No More as total-live-mayhemic experience is caught on film superbly during 'The Real Thing', 'Zombie Eaters' and the opening 'From Out Of Nowhere'. You Fat Bastards is cohesive, alive and works well as a concert video, for the uninitiated or otherwise - just make sure you watch it with the volume approaching your pain threshold.

In 2022 Mike Patton told Rolling Stone about a new project that was 'a complete detour from what I’ve done in my past'. He added, 'it’s different. And it’s really cool and very exciting.' Neil Lim Sang In recent update of his musical projects Mike Crain of Dead Cross announced via his social media that he and his CNTS bandmate Matt Cronk have recorded a cover album featuring songs by soul singer Helen Folasade Adu better known as Sade . Crain revealed the record is awaiting vocals by a vocalist 'who shall be nameless and probably one of the few guys who could pull it off'. If this a big enough giveaway, Mike Crain previously mentioned Patton by name in a q&a. Patton is of course a Sade fan he said in 1989, 'Oh god, my influences suck! I don't know. But if I had to tell you one right it would be Sade. She's got it all man.' Also in 1989 at Night Moves in California Faith No More slipped a short cover of Sade's song Paradise into the set. Jim Martin described Patton's voice as sounding like Sade when he first joined the band. In 2013 Patton was invited to present a selection of his favourite videos on Rage TV among his choices was Sade’s 2009 song Soldier Of Love in which he revealed he had also a crush on the singer. 'Sade, I can't really say her name without blushing. I've enjoyed her in many ways, probably mostly holding up her poster with one hand - dig?! But I love her music too.' - Mike Patton 2013

The Prince of Darkness, aka the Godfather of Heavy Metal, aka John Michael Osbourne performed for the final time at Villa Park on July 5th with Black Sabbath. Back To The Begininng was a momentous live event featuring members of some of greatest metal bands including our own Mike Bordin . Ross Halfin Mike played Ozzy songs The Ulimate Sin and Shot In The Dark with Lizzy Hale, Jake Lee, David Ellefson, Adam Wakeman, Nuno Bettencourt and David Draiman. To mark this occasion we explore how Ozzy influenced the members and music of Faith No More . Before we attempt to convince you of anything let's firstly rule out Mike Patton and Roddy Bottum ! "Most of us weren't really weened on Black Sabbath. Just like two big Black Sabbath devotees, Jim and the drummer Mike. I f* * kin' hate those guys, to tell you the truth. I never really got into 'em. I never even owned one of their albums before I joined this band, and then we went to Warner Brothers and they gave us all these Cd's. I didn't like most of them so I traded them in! I mean I like that song, and I have a couple of the albums and there's some good songs on 'em, but ... I don't know, I Just can't relate to a lot of it." - Patton 1990 "Jim and Mike Bordin are really into Black Sabbath, but I've never listened to them in my life except for [one] song. Mike and Jim were little Heavy Metal Monsters. Jim's grown up into a big Heavy Metal Monster." - Roddy 1990 Ozzy rose to fame in the 70s as frontman of iconic originators of UK heavy metal Black Sabbath. Like for many young musicians Ozzy’s unique tone, unforgiving lyrics and lunatic persona had a profound effect on two members of FNM in particular, Jim Martin and Mike Bordin . For 'heavy metal monster' Jim, Black Sabbath's Paranoid was the first album he ever bought. ".... we had a small building we'd built in my friend's the backyard called The Shack. None of us drove, of course, we were far too young, so we'd go there to drink liquor, smoke weed and fuck chicks. We had this tape deck in there, and we'd play this Black Sabbath tape. I loved it so much it was the first record I ever bought." - Martin 1992 Puffy discovered a love of guitar music at an early age but it wasn’t until he heard Black Sabbath that he would truly find his passion. "Their music wasn't being played on the radio, it wasn't on jukeboxes at the pizzeria you had to go to a friend's house and discover it in the basement. It was an underground thing, which made it more special. It's no joke that Black Sabbath saved my life. I always dreamed of meeting Ozzy and telling him that." - Bordin 1992 Like Jim the first album he bought was by Black Sabbath. "Once I heard Sabbath, everything else was in second place. The first album I bought was Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and to me it was wow, wow, wow." - Bordin 2017 [Small Victories : The True Story Of Faith No More] It was Jim and Mike's devotion to Black Sabbath that prompted the band to add a note for note version of War Pigs to their set in 1986. Chuck Mosley also cited Ozzy as an early influence, however Bill Gould had an alternative explanation as to why the song was covered. "We did 'War Pigs' as a cover initially to piss off the punk bands we played with, and we did 'Jump' by Van Halen live to annoy the f* *k out of people. But Jim was starting to feel so proud playing 'War Pigs' that I didn't want to give him that pleasure, so we thought doing 'Easy' would be the perfect antidote. We always liked to do things that we could never imagine ourselves doing because it would open you up to musical possibilities." - Gould 1990 Whatever the motives were, in 1989 a stunning version of the song, complete with tongue in cheek powerhouse vocals by Patton, was recorded and added to FNM's album The Real Thing . "[Jim] is a victim of the 70s. He says nothing since then has really interested him that much. He's got pretty far-reaching roots. What made him play guitar was Black Sabbath, and if it wasn't his idea to cover 'War Pigs' on the album, he was probably the happiest when we decided to do it! To the people who were coming to see us at the time, 'War Pigs' was a real clash to our audience." - Gould 1990 Mike B's dream of connecting with his hero was realised on November 9th 1990, when FNM were joined onstage by Ozzy for a performance of War Pigs during the forth birthday party gig for RIP Magazine at Hollywood Palladium. "My recollection was that we were starting to get popular with The Real Thing and the videos were on MTV, and I think Ozzy was at home, retired, watching Perry Mason on morning TV and I think he saw us and heard the sound, and we orbited closer and closer. We did 'War Pigs' on The Real Thing, then he heard that and was intrigued, or confused, and the first time we played the RIP [magazine] party. He came and sang it [Ozzy jumped up on stage to sing it with the band] and that was the first time we met. 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 2015 In 1995 Mike would reconnect with Ozzy when he and FNM were both on the Monsters Of Rock stadium tour line up together in South America. During the next year all the individual members of FNM went their separate ways pursuing different projects. Patton toured with Mr. Bungle , Roddy recorded with Imperial Teen and Bill lost himself in foreign culture. When Ozzy decided to freshen up his band he called up Bordin and asked him to join him on tour. ".....he was coming out of retirement on that Ozzmosis tour and we were just finishing the King For A Day tour and we played shows together in South America, and he remembered we were pretty strong on stage and so he liked what we were doing, we talked a little more. And we were going home and he was just starting, and he called after we went home, a couple of weeks later, and said, 'Do you want to come and play?' and I said yes of course, I'd love to." - Bordin 2015 At a time when FNM were struggling to remain a band it was an opportunity to work at his dream job. “I was destined to play with Ozzy Osbourne. I had prepared for it all my life. I remember the phone call as plain as day. I didn’t freak. I didn’t get nutty – it just seemed normal in a way. Not that I wasn’t excited; of course I was excited. But there’s just certain things that are meant to happen in life, and for me, this gig is it.” - Mike 2015 Touring commitments with Ozzy during 1998 and a brief stint filling in for Bill Ward in Black Sabbath (who was suffering from health issues) interfered with FNM's plans, however after FNM broke up Puffy found full time employment with Ozzy for the next 12 years. FNM comically (?) placed the blame for their demise on their drummer, "Puffy started it" they said in a statement to the press. Mike B was part of Ozzy’s band on four world tours and recorded drums for three studio albums Down to Earth (2001), Under Cover (2005) and Black Rain (2007). As well as Live at Budokan (2002) and controversial re-recordings of Blizzard of Ozz (2002) and Diary of a Madman (2002). If you pay attention you will catch a glimpse of Puffy on The Osbournes TV show! Mike B only left employment with Ozzy when FNM reunited in 2009. He was introduced by Jason Mamoa during the Back To The Beginning show as long-time Ozzy drummer. Ross Halfin