And Mike Patton talking to the Sydney Morning Herald:
This story
is not about Mr Bungle. So you have to marvel at the old geezer's timing. As
Mike Patton paces his home/ studio in San Francisco, answering his phone to
talk for the first time in five years about Faith No More, his older band is
foremost on his mind.
"I'm
prepping to leave on tour tomorrow … so I've kind of been in that weird
state," he explains. "Complete chaos."
The very
brief, US-only Bungle reunion is remarkable for a typically perverse reason.
"We're only playing our first demo tape. Most of the fans who know Mr
Bungle have not even heard this stuff. It's all very much pretty nasty thrash
metal stuff. So it's going to be interesting."
Preparing to
please and baffle his fans at the same time? Sounds like Patton. Some of us are
still processing his Mondo Cane tour of 2012: an immensely orchestrated set of
Italian pop songs from the 1950s and '60s delivered sans irony or translation
by the biggest voice in the alt-rock universe.
But let’s
leave those two suitcases half-packed in the hall, alongside a dozen other
Patton projects including, but not limited to, Tomahawk, Fantomas, Moonchild
Trio (with John Zorn), Dead Cross, and last year's Jean-Claude Vannier
collaboration, Corpse Flower. The band that dwarfs them all, in commercial
terms at least, is once more ready to rock.
Faith No
More's five-year hiatus is "not a long time for a band that’s existed for
30 years. That's just a pause," Patton says of the 2020 reunion that kicks
off in New Zealand in May. "When we finished our last run, we all said,
'Keep your ears open, keep your eyes open and … this isn't over yet'. It didn't
feel final."
Far from it,
if you lived in Australia. FNM joined the Soundwave Festival in early 2015, but
that was before they sprang their surprise comeback album, Sol Invictus. And
even then, it was almost 20 years since they'd played their own full-length
shows here.
"That
record has been out for a few years now, so this is us coming down to play on
our own terms," Patton says. "We're gonna play all sorts of stuff.
That record, a lot of other stuff too. We’re not promoting anything. There's
nothing to sell."
Except for a
legacy of course. Which, since they whacked John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme
at the end of their Angel Dust album in 1992, has revelled in delicate
curveballs as much as their trademark full-metal racket. The Commodores' Easy,
the Bee Gees' I Started A Joke and Burt Bachrach's This Guy's In Love With You
were covers of choice on the Sol Invictus run.
"Because
most of what we do is very, very loud and very abrasive," Patton reasons,
"we feel our covers have to be on the other side of the teeter-totter and
so usually we end up choosing, you know, more kind of easy listening or R&B
kind of stuff."
There may
also be a more wilful aspect to it, he concedes. "When we started out we
were kind of pigeonholed into this funk-rap-metal genre, which was horrifying
to us. We did everything we could to distance ourselves from that."
Looking way
back, it was a certain contrariness of spirit that attracted the 18-year-old
college student to the insurgent musical chemistry of bassist Billy Gould,
drummer Mike Bordin and keyboard player Roddy Bottum. With singer Chuck Mosley,
Faith No More was two albums old when they rolled through Patton's hometown of
Eureka, California, in '86.
"There
was a fierceness about them," says the singer who was fine-tuning a
six-octave voice with Mr Bungle at the time. "There was a 'We don't give a
f--k' attitude that attracted me."
Within a few
years, Mosley was out [he sadly died of drug-related causes in 2017]. With
Patton out front, The Real Thing was among the definitive rock albums of 1989.
Over four more, many things have changed — John Hudson is the first guitarist to
have survived two in a row – but intensity is not one of them.
"When I
first joined the band, I was the one who was really wound up tight,"
Patton says. "I was kind of serious and everything was like, monumental,
and they were telling me, 'Don't worry about this, don't worry about that', so
they really walked me through the whole experience.
"They're
still my mentors, in a sense, and I still assume that role. I mean, I think we
all learn from each other but still, when it comes down to decisions on serious
stuff, I pretty much always try to be a team player and that [means] like, OK,
respect to the elders," he says with a laugh.
It's hard to
reconcile the soft-spoken conversationalist with the gale-force frontman of
some 40 albums. Harder still to see the lost English literature student from
Humboldt State University in the towering figure Patton has become on the
modern music landscape.
"I
didn't intend to write, believe me. I didn't know what I was doing," he
says of those years. "I certainly wasn't very happy at that time, that's
for sure. I hated college. I hated everything. I just felt like I didn't
belong. And thank goodness music took me away from that."
The
literature angle, by the way, is a red herring.
"When I
write a song … the only agenda is to serve the music. It's not about telling a
story, it's not about being a poet or pushing some grand point across. It's
about Serving. The. Music. And I try to do that through words, and through my
voice, which is my instrument, and I don't really look at it any deeper than
that.
"I know
people that are singer-songwriters and they will literally write out a poem, or
five pages of stuff, and put that to music. I would never do that, ever. It has
to come from sound. I need to hear notes and I like to hear progressions and
moods and feelings before I can even put pen to paper."
And is that
likely to happen again soon? Sol Invictus arrived after sustained denial of new
album plans in 2015. But it seems necessary to ask.
"Ah,
who knows?" Patton says. "I've put my foot in my mouth so many times
in the past saying 'No, never, never', so I'm not gonna go there. You never
know. We don't."
“Do not postpone happiness”
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
Ugh... A Tuesday night at my least favorite venue.
All of a sudden I'm hoping Korn is the headliner so I can leave right after FNM & beat the crowd.
exactly my thoughts!!! you must be in Seattle also? I haven't missed a FNM show since '92 but I really don't want to sit through a Korn set. I will if necessary, just means more beers while I wait for the great Mr. Patton. Helmet will be good though
Ugh... A Tuesday night at my least favorite venue.
All of a sudden I'm hoping Korn is the headliner so I can leave right after FNM & beat the crowd.
exactly my thoughts!!! you must be in Seattle also? I haven't missed a FNM show since '92 but I really don't want to sit through a Korn set. I will if necessary, just means more beers while I wait for the great Mr. Patton. Helmet will be good though
I’m on the other end of I90 in Boston...
I need to correct my earlier post: tix were $137 before shipping... $143 delivered. (Roughly)
FNM is my all time favorite band, but between the cost, the venue, the night of week & rest of the lineup, I don’t know if I want to commit.
FYI there’s a live nation mobile app presale going on. I grabbed a ticket for $77 after fees to the Mansfield, MA show.
Now I hold my breath hoping that Korn headlines so I can beat the crowd out of there.
People keep shitting on Korn, but I have seen them 3 times and they were good.
Granted, they co-headlined and I went for the other bands (Rob Zombie, AIC and one festival) but my people love them. I'd say to give them a try live.
If they are (hopefully) headlining, I will stay for a few of their songs before I head out. I'm always game for checking out a band I've never seen before, even if I dislike the music.
If the parking lot at the local shed wasn't a shitshow to get out of, I would stay for most of their set, since I will already be there, but the place BLOWS.
The bottom line for me with Korn is that I've never been impressed with their music. I think they have a really cool sound, but beyond that nothing about them appeals to me. My comment wasn't intended to shit on them, but I'm really just in this for Faith No More.
FYI there’s a live nation mobile app presale going on. I grabbed a ticket for $77 after fees to the Mansfield, MA show.
Now I hold my breath hoping that Korn headlines so I can beat the crowd out of there.
People keep shitting on Korn, but I have seen them 3 times and they were good.
Granted, they co-headlined and I went for the other bands (Rob Zombie, AIC and one festival) but my people love them. I'd say to give them a try live.
If they are (hopefully) headlining, I will stay for a few of their songs before I head out. I'm always game for checking out a band I've never seen before, even if I dislike the music.
If the parking lot at the local shed wasn't a shitshow to get out of, I would stay for most of their set, since I will already be there, but the place BLOWS.
The bottom line for me with Korn is that I've never been impressed with their music. I think they have a really cool sound, but beyond that nothing about them appeals to me. My comment wasn't intended to shit on them, but I'm really just in this for Faith No More.
I hear you.
Parking coming out of Blossom (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio) and whatever the shed is now called in Burgettstown, PA sucks! I definitely understand the need for early exit to avoid an hour(s) of being stuck.
How are people seeing cheap tickets? Perhaps it is the local venue but the ticket prices were fooked, for Camden/BBT
I could have had a ticket in the center seated section, (behind the pit) for $160+ after fees - the next price tier in that section ($143 after fees) had already sold out.
As much as I wanted to be closer, I settled for the second section back, slightly to the side for $77 after fees. I've seen FNM enough times that I was on the fence about even going - there was no way I was going to spend $150+ for what will likely be a 75 minute set. (if FNM headlines, I'll STILL be leaving before they finish... this parking lot is that f'ing bad)
How are people seeing cheap tickets? Perhaps it is the local venue but the ticket prices were fooked, for Camden/BBT
I could have had a ticket in the center seated section, (behind the pit) for $160+ after fees - the next price tier in that section ($143 after fees) had already sold out.
As much as I wanted to be closer, I settled for the second section back, slightly to the side for $77 after fees. I've seen FNM enough times that I was on the fence about even going - there was no way I was going to spend $150+ for what will likely be a 75 minute set. (if FNM headlines, I'll STILL be leaving before they finish... this parking lot is that f'ing bad)
I always do VIP there. It's worth every penny, especially if you're splitting it. Breeze right out.
Comments
Think that as well, yep.
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
“Put yer good money on the sunrise”
(Tim Rogers)
Hopefully it’s a sign of more dates to come... not holding my breath however.
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
“Put yer good money on the sunrise”
(Tim Rogers)
Huge news for the fans down under... according to their Twitter feed, FNM haven't toured there since '95.
Congrats to the lucky ones!
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
“Put yer good money on the sunrise”
(Tim Rogers)
Awesome!! Waiting patiently for the NA tour dates!
https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/programs/mornings/double-j-mornings-zan-rowe-faith-no-more-roddy-bottum/11933434
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
“Put yer good money on the sunrise”
(Tim Rogers)
This story is not about Mr Bungle. So you have to marvel at the old geezer's timing. As Mike Patton paces his home/ studio in San Francisco, answering his phone to talk for the first time in five years about Faith No More, his older band is foremost on his mind.
"I'm prepping to leave on tour tomorrow … so I've kind of been in that weird state," he explains. "Complete chaos."
The very brief, US-only Bungle reunion is remarkable for a typically perverse reason. "We're only playing our first demo tape. Most of the fans who know Mr Bungle have not even heard this stuff. It's all very much pretty nasty thrash metal stuff. So it's going to be interesting."
Preparing to please and baffle his fans at the same time? Sounds like Patton. Some of us are still processing his Mondo Cane tour of 2012: an immensely orchestrated set of Italian pop songs from the 1950s and '60s delivered sans irony or translation by the biggest voice in the alt-rock universe.
But let’s leave those two suitcases half-packed in the hall, alongside a dozen other Patton projects including, but not limited to, Tomahawk, Fantomas, Moonchild Trio (with John Zorn), Dead Cross, and last year's Jean-Claude Vannier collaboration, Corpse Flower. The band that dwarfs them all, in commercial terms at least, is once more ready to rock.
Faith No More's five-year hiatus is "not a long time for a band that’s existed for 30 years. That's just a pause," Patton says of the 2020 reunion that kicks off in New Zealand in May. "When we finished our last run, we all said, 'Keep your ears open, keep your eyes open and … this isn't over yet'. It didn't feel final."
Far from it, if you lived in Australia. FNM joined the Soundwave Festival in early 2015, but that was before they sprang their surprise comeback album, Sol Invictus. And even then, it was almost 20 years since they'd played their own full-length shows here.
"That record has been out for a few years now, so this is us coming down to play on our own terms," Patton says. "We're gonna play all sorts of stuff. That record, a lot of other stuff too. We’re not promoting anything. There's nothing to sell."
Except for a legacy of course. Which, since they whacked John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme at the end of their Angel Dust album in 1992, has revelled in delicate curveballs as much as their trademark full-metal racket. The Commodores' Easy, the Bee Gees' I Started A Joke and Burt Bachrach's This Guy's In Love With You were covers of choice on the Sol Invictus run.
"Because most of what we do is very, very loud and very abrasive," Patton reasons, "we feel our covers have to be on the other side of the teeter-totter and so usually we end up choosing, you know, more kind of easy listening or R&B kind of stuff."
There may also be a more wilful aspect to it, he concedes. "When we started out we were kind of pigeonholed into this funk-rap-metal genre, which was horrifying to us. We did everything we could to distance ourselves from that."
Looking way back, it was a certain contrariness of spirit that attracted the 18-year-old college student to the insurgent musical chemistry of bassist Billy Gould, drummer Mike Bordin and keyboard player Roddy Bottum. With singer Chuck Mosley, Faith No More was two albums old when they rolled through Patton's hometown of Eureka, California, in '86.
"There was a fierceness about them," says the singer who was fine-tuning a six-octave voice with Mr Bungle at the time. "There was a 'We don't give a f--k' attitude that attracted me."
Within a few years, Mosley was out [he sadly died of drug-related causes in 2017]. With Patton out front, The Real Thing was among the definitive rock albums of 1989. Over four more, many things have changed — John Hudson is the first guitarist to have survived two in a row – but intensity is not one of them.
"When I first joined the band, I was the one who was really wound up tight," Patton says. "I was kind of serious and everything was like, monumental, and they were telling me, 'Don't worry about this, don't worry about that', so they really walked me through the whole experience.
"They're still my mentors, in a sense, and I still assume that role. I mean, I think we all learn from each other but still, when it comes down to decisions on serious stuff, I pretty much always try to be a team player and that [means] like, OK, respect to the elders," he says with a laugh.
It's hard to reconcile the soft-spoken conversationalist with the gale-force frontman of some 40 albums. Harder still to see the lost English literature student from Humboldt State University in the towering figure Patton has become on the modern music landscape.
"I didn't intend to write, believe me. I didn't know what I was doing," he says of those years. "I certainly wasn't very happy at that time, that's for sure. I hated college. I hated everything. I just felt like I didn't belong. And thank goodness music took me away from that."
The literature angle, by the way, is a red herring.
"When I write a song … the only agenda is to serve the music. It's not about telling a story, it's not about being a poet or pushing some grand point across. It's about Serving. The. Music. And I try to do that through words, and through my voice, which is my instrument, and I don't really look at it any deeper than that.
"I know people that are singer-songwriters and they will literally write out a poem, or five pages of stuff, and put that to music. I would never do that, ever. It has to come from sound. I need to hear notes and I like to hear progressions and moods and feelings before I can even put pen to paper."
And is that likely to happen again soon? Sol Invictus arrived after sustained denial of new album plans in 2015. But it seems necessary to ask.
"Ah, who knows?" Patton says. "I've put my foot in my mouth so many times in the past saying 'No, never, never', so I'm not gonna go there. You never know. We don't."
(Jeff Tweedy, Sydney 2007)
“Put yer good money on the sunrise”
(Tim Rogers)
http://www.fnm.com/
Cincinnati 2014
Greenville 2016
(Raleigh 2016)
Columbia 2016
Ugh... A Tuesday night at my least favorite venue.
All of a sudden I'm hoping Korn is the headliner so I can leave right after FNM & beat the crowd.
Halfway decent seats for FNM & Korn were starting @ $137 + fees.
F That.
exactly my thoughts!!! you must be in Seattle also? I haven't missed a FNM show since '92 but I really don't want to sit through a Korn set. I will if necessary, just means more beers while I wait for the great Mr. Patton. Helmet will be good though
I need to correct my earlier post: tix were $137 before shipping... $143 delivered. (Roughly)
FNM is my all time favorite band, but between the cost, the venue, the night of week & rest of the lineup, I don’t know if I want to commit.
Granted, they co-headlined and I went for the other bands (Rob Zombie, AIC and one festival) but my people love them. I'd say to give them a try live.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
If they are (hopefully) headlining, I will stay for a few of their songs before I head out. I'm always game for checking out a band I've never seen before, even if I dislike the music.
If the parking lot at the local shed wasn't a shitshow to get out of, I would stay for most of their set, since I will already be there, but the place BLOWS.
The bottom line for me with Korn is that I've never been impressed with their music. I think they have a really cool sound, but beyond that nothing about them appeals to me. My comment wasn't intended to shit on them, but I'm really just in this for Faith No More.
Parking coming out of Blossom (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio) and whatever the shed is now called in Burgettstown, PA sucks! I definitely understand the need for early exit to avoid an hour(s) of being stuck.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
I could have had a ticket in the center seated section, (behind the pit) for $160+ after fees - the next price tier in that section ($143 after fees) had already sold out.
As much as I wanted to be closer, I settled for the second section back, slightly to the side for $77 after fees. I've seen FNM enough times that I was on the fence about even going - there was no way I was going to spend $150+ for what will likely be a 75 minute set. (if FNM headlines, I'll STILL be leaving before they finish... this parking lot is that f'ing bad)