1992.MM.DD - Excerpts from various interviews with members of Faith No More
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1992.MM.DD - Excerpts from various interviews with members of Faith No More
by Blackstar Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:33 pm
RAW Magazine, May 27, 1992:
[...]
This fragile balancing act is about to join the equally combustible Guns n'Roses on their European stadium trek. "I don't really know what to expect," Roddy shrugs. "Big shows and a lot of people, sorrow and agony, soap opera acting. I've never heard them to tell you the truth."
"We haven't really experienced anything like that yet," Gould reveals. "This is our first time going out on the road with a band like that. We did do the Billy Idol tour and we were a little bit uncomfortable with that. It'll be interesting to see exactly how many Bodyguards Axl Rose has, I want the inside story. More than anything it's just something to poke fun at. Not to say that's what we're going to do, but..."
"We're the reporters and were going to get our scoop," Patton hollers. "We don't do any of those glamour things like flying first class and riding in limos I guess we're just dumb. Everybody always tells us that we can't afford to do it, so someone is walking around with a lot of money. We even flew over to the UK miserably this time. I couldn't get up and go to the bathroom 'cause I was sat in between two fat pigs slobbering over each other."
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/05/faith-no-more-27051992-raw-magazine.html
***
NME, June 20, 1992:
[...]
I finger a 22-date tour itinerary, titled 'GN'FN'R'S: STORMING THE MOTHERLAND'. Among the Gunners' road crew listed are: Personal Assistant to Axl Rose, Assistant to Axl Rose, Assistant to Axl Rose's Assistant, and get this, Witch Doctor.
Keyboard player Roddy Bottum (ex-boyfriend of Courtney Love, trivia fans) tells me that a well-known female American artist employs a crew member specifically to blow cocaine up her anus with a straw.
"It's gossip that keeps this band alive. We're like a bunch of old ladies," muses Patton. "It's the only thing that's new when you're traveling in a time capsule. All you can do is talk shit."
FNM have struggled with their reasons for supporting on the GNR tour. Patton will admit openly that he's a "whore." Bill, meanwhile, enjoys an intimate view of the ugly circus: "GNR and their management are like a small government. Axl's the president, and his manager's a personal advisor. A couple of the other more visible band members are vice-presidents. Then there's the little guys who come underneath, to make sure only the right information is leaked out. They're dependent on the band for their living, so they will police themselves. Support bands are like other countries with whom they maintain a diplomatic front. Like, keep your mouth shut, enjoy the ride and everything will be cool. Open your mouth, and jeopardize your own position. It's an interesting thing to experience first hand."
In addition to the regular security, 500 CRS men have been deployed to the GNR gig. The stench of paranoia hangs heavy in the atmosphere.
As guests of FNM, we are shunted into a small marquee, which is absolutely bare save a couple of chairs and tables, and faces out toward the coach park at the back of the site. Ridgers and I are ordered not to move from the spot. However, our clot-ish guard does not prove too challenging to out-manoeuvre.
Duff McKagan lopes through the Gunners' terrain backstage. He looks punch-drunk, swollen and decaying. "That's business, man," Patton will comment drily. "You have to hold your hat off to the guy who's done that to him." Duff is hoisted up the back of the stage to watch FNM by two sides of beef in uniform. This is as much as I will see of GNR.
The FNM performance is fearsome -- even in the gentle light of the Paris afternoon -- the band bludgeoning their instruments obscenely. It is Patton, however, that really embodies the transition that FNM have made between the clean and linear shape of 'The Real Thing' and the 'Angel Dust' mania. The singer is quite willfully self-abusive; battering his body against stray monitor equipment, twisting mic leads tightly around his throat, he buckles and crawls, and lashes at obtrusive photographers, eyes sparkling like Hopper in Blue Velvet.
Fanatics stockpiled against the steel 'safety' barrier are suffocating directly behind me. The weaker are plucked out like mushrooms from manure, and stretchered away. Limp.
We are back on the bus, attempting to make a dash from the site, however the French tell FNM's long suffering tour manager, "va motorway iz brooken."
Barry Adamson's "Moss Side Story" is playing. Roddy, Patton and I watch a little fellow who is wobbling the monster gargoyles inflating on either side of GNR's stage, so as to achieve some kind of 'scary' effect. Pyro cannons explode. Search lights chase through the blackening skies.
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/06/faith-no-more-nme-20061992.html
***
Rip It Up, July 1992:
This Seattle sound, or whatever, seems to have pretty much killed off the old leather pants style rocker - at least in New Zealand.
Patton: "Well you guys are lucky. They don't die in the States, they just mutate. To me there's a big equals sign between them and bands like Pearl Jam. They may look different, but they sound the same - scum are survivalists. We've been on tour a while so I can speak from experience - a cockroach is always a cockroach."
Talking of such, how's touring with Guns neuroses?
Patton: "We never have any contact at all. They seem to live in a whole different world so I can't relate to them. I can tell you funny stories and that's all."
Such as?
Patton: "A juicy tit bit I heard the other day was that Warren Beatty was fucking Axel's girlfriend. I think he knows because we had a show cancelled the other day and maybe - just maybe - that had something to do with it."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2019/03/faith-no-more-rip-it-up-july-1992.html
***
Melody Maker, August 8, 1992:
Any other band in the world would cream their jeans over being asked to support Metallica and Guns n Roses on a megatour across the USA. Not Faith No More. They fuckin' hate it, maaaaan! Come to that, they fuckin' hate just about everything. Matt 'Tex' Smith gets in the firing line.
[...]
I resist the desire to pull out my dog-eared copy of "Wuthering Heights", and talk to Patton about Guns N' Roses instead.
AXL'S GOING BALD
"He is, he really is! They were playing one night and Duff walks up to Axl and pats him on the head like a loving comrade-type thing and Axl Rose immediately brings the show to a halt, this is in front of 80,000 people, and be screams, 'Don't you ever touch my head again, motherfucker!' Duff just walked away, wounded. We found out later that it was cos he's going bald and he's worried that, if you touch his hair, it will fall out. Every follicle counts.
"He came up to me the other night and said, 'Hey, man, your song really helped me through some really heavy shit in my life'. I said, 'Really? What song is that?' He said, 'Midlife Crisis'. 'What kind of shit?' l asked, He looked at the ground for about an hour then shook his head and said, 'Mmm, just a lot of shit, man'. I tell you, I was biting my lip so hard trying not to loose it. 'We've given up trying to be quiet about their stupid games. It's gotta come out somewhere. For a while we were a little cautious of saying anything, but we were uncomfortable with that. Did you know about the Warren Beatty thing?"
"Then, for the last show of the European tour, Axl's psychic (who has her own bodyguard) went out and blessed his microphone and blessed the stage."
I ask Jim, who seems to have taken on Puffy's role as group loner since the recording of the "Angel Dust" album, whether he'd join the headliners given half a chance. "I sure would!"
What? No loyalty to the rest of the band? "Absolutely not."
"And more than that," Roddy interrupts. "We'd be happy to get rid of him. Tie him up in a bow and put a stamp on his ass."
What do you think you could bring to them, Jim?
"Nothing," he replies. "I'd just take from them. All these guys are implying that they hate Guns N'Roses, but they actually admire Slash as a guitar player."
"That's probably true," Billy acknowledges. "if we hated them a little more we'd probably be more forthright.
"I'd fuck Slash in a minute," says Roddy. "Trouble is, I think he'd nod off and be a bit dozy I think he'd be very romantic, take me out for a nice dinner and pay for my cab back to my hotel and say, 'See ya tomorrow'. Actually, I'm being sarcastic. He's not my type at all. Who is? Actually, I kinda like the look of Kriss Kross."
Patton warms to the idea in a most unprintable way.
"I'd like to mastermind a group of retarded rappers. Who would give a bad review to a retarded rap band? You'd be a villain! People would buy it for that reason: Morbid curiosity, guilt, sympathy. You could play on every emotion."
AXE MURDERERS Of THE WORLD UNITE
AS we enter the environs of the stadium, the bus glides past 32 Mac trucks, their silver bodies glinting in the Pittsburgh sunshine.
"Guns N'Roses use 'em to stash all the money," Roddy sneers. The stadium car park itself is a mass of sweaty, human flesh. As they walk passed its occupants hidden behind tinted windows, pieces of meat in an attempt to be a part of whatever rock n roll dream they think is being enacted inside.
"Look at those fuckers," Roddy snarls. "I hate you,and you,and I'd like to shoot you in the mouth," he adds, as one particularly bloated example wobbles past.
"I don't wanna go backstage," Patton screams. "I'm not getting out of this bus 'til one minute before we are due on"
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/faith-no-more-08081992-melody-maker.html
***
El Paso Times, August 7, 1992:
[...]
And on the stadium tour, Faith No More is at the mercy of Axl Rose, the temperamental GN’R lead singer who has earned the tour title “The Little Prince.” The past six shows have been canceled after Rose didn’t like getting hit by a thrown hot dog in New York. Rumor also has it that Rose’s psychic has told him not to play cities that begin with the letter “M.”
Gould was in San Francisco for this interview, the day they were scheduled to play Minneapolis.
The lost performances have cost Faith No More about $30,000, Gould said.
“Really, only one guy knows if we’ll be (in Las Cruces), and he’s not telling,” Gould said.
And as far as their role in this concert:
“We’re the little guvs. We didn’t expect any different,” Gould said. “We’d be greatly overestimating our own worth if we did.”
Tired of stadiums and the whims of others, Faith No More soon will headline its own six-week club tour, playing for crowds of one to 2,000.
“It’ll be nice to get back.”
[...]
***
OOR Magazine, August 8, 1992:
[...]
And how inspiring is it to be a support act to Guns 'n Roses?
Mike Patton: 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.
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/08/faith-no-more-oor-magazine-08081992.html
***
Select Magazine, August 1992:
A Real Ugly Experience.
STORY BY MARK PUTTERFORD
IF THERE WAS ANY SUBSTANCE IN THE THEORY OF BEAUTY SLEEP, THEN FAITH No More would surely require a fix of Rip Van Winkle proportions.
You'd have to call them 'sartorially challenged', or perhaps 'aesthetically underprivileged', but in the liberated vocabulary of a distant society they might well be referred to as 'scruffy bastards'. Singer Mike Patton is the least beautiful of all. Inside the billowing cocoon of a huge catering marquee planted behind the stage area of Gateshead Stadium he shuffles from table to table in the most stomach-wrenching pair of leather knickerbockers imaginable, bought, he boasts, at an Iranian flea market in Paris and hewn from such crusty hide that "it feels like I've got half a dead cow wrapped around my balls". On his feet are boots a brickie wouldn't be seen dead in, on his back a tea towel masquerading as a T-shirt, on his head enough grease to fry a Full English Breakfast. As he approaches, a sixth sense urges you to train your eyes on your shoes, in case he thrusts a slimy palm under your nose and grunts something about "the price of a cuppa, guv?". "Guuuu-UUUU-OOOO-ooood!" is in fact his opening gambit when he eventually arrives, the celestial refrain stretching through a jaw-breaking yawn.
"I'm so tired, man. I mean, doing nuthin' kinda knocks me out, and we've had so much time off on this tour it's disgusting. There's, like, a week off between each show and when we do get to play it's only for 45 minutes. And it takes us five songs to warm up, then we've only got three songs left! It sucks..."
[...]
It's 6.30pm by the time Mike Patton slams himself into the stage floor one final time, and within a minute Faith No More are slumped across the leather sofas of a dressing room tastefully equipped with a sumptuous spread of food and several crates of ice-cold lager. They hardly need a dressing room as none of them wear anything onstage other than what they've had on all week, but if they needed a quiet place to pluck out their ear plugs (essential FNM stagewear), this specially adapted locker room, complete with potted plants and moody lighting effects, might as well be it.
The conversation, like almost everything with this band, leaps from one extreme to another Princess Diana, birth abnormalities, Spain, tunafish sandwiches, the Beastie Boys, com circles, radiation, ketamine, bestiality - it's difficult to keep up. Yet diarrhoea remains the recurring theme, the result of a bout of mass food poisoning caused, everyone suspects, by a cook who was spotted returning to duty from the lav without washing her hands. "I've just lost half my intestines!" wails Mark the tour manager from a nearby cubicle, strides visibly bunched around his ankles.
"C'mon Mark. Let's hear you hit that pan real hard," yells an excited Patton, "I want to hear that mutha echo." "Squirt for me baby, squirt." squeals the dreadlocked Mike Bordin, snatching lan Lawton's camera and holding it over the top of the cubicle door for a few paparazzi-style snaps. "I almost squirted tonight onstage," confesses Bill Gould. "It was real buttock-clenching time for a while there. Shit, I hope Axl doesn't have the same problem tonight, what with him wearing those tight, white pants an' all..."
"Hey," Mike Bordin exclaims, "didn't Axl speak to Jim yesterday?"
"Naw, I think it was Patton," says Bill, "I think he said, Huhrrrmmmnn as he flashed past with his minders."
"Oh, I heard it was more like, Rrrraaahhggg actually," adds Roddy. "Naw, I'm pretty sure it was, Huhrrrmmmnn," protests Bill. "Some guy said to Patton, Hey, Mike, Axl just spoke to you, and Patton was like, He did?"
BY AND LARGE, FNM FEEL THEY'VE BEEN TREATED well on this European trek with Guns N'Roses, although there's hardly been plenty of opportunities to hang out with their illustrious compatriots. As Bill says: "Touring with Axl has been like touring with Michael Jackson - although I think I've seen Michael Jackson more times on this tour than I have Axl."
You get the feeling that the FNM chaps haven't exactly had the time of their lives on the trip. Roddy was so bored after the Wembley Stadium show that he went to a Spiral Tribe rave in Blubberhouses, West Yorkshire, to help Select with its 'research'.
"We're not the kind of band that's made for this kind of stadium show," explains Bill. "It's just not what Faith No More is about. It may be good from a business point of view because our record has just come out, and what better way to promote it than to get on a big tour like this? But if we had our way we wouldn't be doing this; I'd rather do ten nights at the Newcastle Mayfair than one at Gateshead Stadium.
"I mean, it's cool to be out there in front of a lot of people, but man, the sound is shit, the place is too big, the crowd is a fuckin' mile away... It just lends itself to more of a cabaret act, the kind of band who want to indulge in all that theatrical bullshit, with costume changes every other song. I mean, we do change our clothes too, but usually only once a month."
The whole sickly circus that surrounds any GN'R activity has made life pretty difficult to bear for Faith No More as well. Ask any of the band how they feel being at the eye of the hurricane and chances are the enquiry will be met with an expression which suggests someone nearby has passed wind.
"When is this interview going to be printed?" asks Bill with a nervous laugh. "You see, I have to watch what I say...but hey, fuck that, just print this: I hate the whole circus thing, we all hate it. But at the moment we don't have the power to do what we want to do, so we still have to eat a little bit of shit. (Seems were back to the catering lady again) We almost have the power to control what we do, but not quite, so we're just gritting our teeth and getting through it best we can.
"Every band in the world might think they want to open for Guns N'Roses, but lemme tell you, it's been a real ugly personal experience, having to deal with all the shit that surrounds this fuckin circus. I've always hated that aspect of rock music and I've never wanted to be part of it, so to find myself being associated with a tour this big kinda sucks."
"Besides," Roddy pipes up, "I'm getting more and more confused about who's who in Guns N'Roses, and it's blowing my mind. There's Dizzy and Iggy and Lizzy and Tizzy and Gilby and Giddy... Shit man, onstage now there's a horn section, two chick back-up singers, two keyboard players, an airline pilot, a basketball coach, a coupla car mechanics..."
[...]
IN THE BACKGROUND, GUNS N' ROSES CAN BE HEARD launching into 'Live And Let Die', and those still hanging in the FNM dressing room exchange silent smirks. They're gonna have to put up with all of this until October, as, shortly after the European tour ends, an all-conquering bill of Guns, Metallica and FNM is set to mop up the States throughout the rest of the summer and autumn. But then they're free to do what the hell they want to do, which will probably mean headlining a European tour of their own before Christmas, with someone like The Young Gods supporting.
"This is really just the beginning for us," sighs Bill. "Last time we toured with 'The Real Thing' I left home at the age of 26 and got back when I was 28. I found some of my friends had moved away, some had got married, some had had kids... I had a hard time dealing with that. This time I'm 29, and I know I'm gonna be on the road until I'm 31. Fuck, I don't even wanna think about it..."
Mike Patton shuffles back into the room with a pint of coffee in a transparent plastic container and welcome news that it's almost time to get on the bus for the long haul to London, where they'll crash the night before heading on to some Godforsaken German hell-hole.
Guns N'Roses will be flying down in their private jet, Axl probably on a magic carpet. But that doesn't bother Faith No More, least of all the explosion-in-an-Oxfam-shop figure of young Patton who, after all, is just as happy playing with and promoting his other part-time band, the mysterious Mr Bungle.
"I can't see this band going that way," he grins, "we'd probably go the other way and end up hitchin' rides to each town with truck drivers or something."
Patton paws his little goatee beard and smiles, as if someone has just tossed ten pence into his cup. Somehow, you cant imagine him flashing by, surrounded by bodyguards with only a "Huhrrnnmmnn" (or perhaps a "Rrrraaahhggg") for his fellow tourists, in a few years time. But then, such is the sick, schizo world of Faith No More, that maybe he will...
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/faith-no-more-august-1992-select.html?m=0
***
Hot Metal, August 1992:
[...]
See! It really isn't easy trying to make sense of all this. And if you've heard any of 'Angel Dust' you'll understand exactly why that is. Faith No More (who, apart from the reprobates already mentioned, is made up of Roddy Bottum on keyboards, Jim Martin on guitars, and Mike Bordin on drums) are not out to do what you expect of them, but merely to do what they expect of themselves. 'Angel Dust' is by no means just a follow-up album to the hugely successful, chart-shaking 'The Real Thing'. No, this is the San Franciscan quintet's fourth album and it will stand or fall on its own merits.
"When we did 'The Real Thing'," exlpains Billy, "we had a tiny budget, we were broke and on top of that nobody really gave a shit about us. Nobody knew what kind of music we played and nobody could classify us. We were at a real disadvantage in those days, but now we're at a real advantage." Adding to the advantageous position the band find themselves in is the fact that all through June and most of July this year they joined Spundgarden as support to the metal circus that is Guns 'N' Roses' European tour. And then, from July 17 to who knows when, they'll be warming the stage for Metallica and the Gunners on their co-headlining jaunt around America. Rock 'n' roll or wot?
"Oh God yes," agrees the now short-haired Patton. "Its a total spectacle, a sick circus..."
And what part of this sideshow do Faith No More play? My guess is the freak show, or perhaps the clowns. I'm wrong again.
"We're not even involved. We're just watching it. Guns 'N' Roses are the circus... it's amazing... it's just a lot of money and way too much time to spend it in."
Continuing the theory that Faith No More never really listen to each other, or totally disregard what the others say, Billy Gould thinks "it's fucking amazing that we even got on the tour, one of the biggest tours in the world. I don't know... I mean, aesthetically we're different!
"I think it's good though. I've gotta give Guns 'N" Roses credit, and give Metallica credit, too. Right now it's really responsible of them to pick bands that are different because they didn't have to do that. They could pretty much tour with anybody."
Referring back to the tour's carnival atmosphere and blatant excess, and hinting at Faith No More's unerring ability to be the fly in the ointment, Patton adds, "It's more like you see so many thing that are fucked up that you wanna say something - and we're already pushing it. The amazing thing is that everybody knows something is going to happen," he laughs. "By the time we get to the States, I'm sure something will have happened!" Mike didn't have to wait very long for something to happen. On the day of our interview, Guns 'N' Roses decided, two hours before they were due on stage, that Axl was "too exhausted" to play to 30, 000 eager fans in Manchester, England.
Billy says that kind of thing has happened every day, that the Gunners go on stage late "all the time. We wouldn't do it, so I don't know why it is. I'd like to know myself!"
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/08/faith-no-more-hot-metal-august-1992.html
***
The Face, August 1992:
[...]
Why do you go so mad on stage?
Mike Patton: 'I always feel a need to provoke, especially if we're supporting some band like Guns N' Roses and people aren't really listening. By insulting them, you make them at least look: it's the lowest common denominator. When I do flips, I always land correctly, I only bruise myself. But I do have an ongoing fight with glass which I keep losing. Once my arms were flailing and I cut four tendons and the main nerve in my right hand. It's practically numb now.'
[...]
What makes you laugh?
Mike Patton: 'What a nebulous fucking question. Ha ha! I saw two people in a bar recently, really drunk and flirting with each other. My first instinct was "Oh my God!" 'cause I knew one of them. They were sitting on high bar stools and they were learning forwards, just about to kiss, when they fell off and crashed to the ground. Justice!'
Who were they?
Mike Patton: 'Axl Rose and Warren Beatty.'
Can we print that? Axl probably won't see it anyway.
Mike Patton: 'Oh yes he will. He has Axl policemen checking things like that for him.'
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/mike-patton-august-1992-face.html
***
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 11, 1992:
WORD CAME through the grapevine that the San Francisco hard rock quintet Faith No More, currently wrapping up a U.S. tour with Guns Ν’ Roses, was dishing more dirt on Axl Rose.
Last year, while touring England with GNR, Faith No More told tales that among other things had Rose hiring a personal exorcist, something GNR publicists later denied.
Because of Rose’s status as an antihero here, owing to the GNR/Ri-verport riot during the summer of ’91, I felt obliged, in a phone interview, to prod FNM bassist Billy Gould for Axl Rose stories.
“Call me back in 10 days,’’ the bassist demurred. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. That’s when we get off this tour. All I’ll say is, everything you’ve heard is true.’’
OK, OK — this is supposed to be a Faith No More story. They will perform Sept. 18 at the American Theatre. "Still,” I demanded, “how is it you guys have come to be so careful?”
“At the level we’re dealing with now, it’s all politics,” explained Gould. “We’ve got big mouths. We had big mouths when we were in school and we have big mouths now. It’s just that now when you have a big mouth, everybody reads what you have to say like it’s a valid opinion or something.
"It’s funny because every adviser we have says, ‘Just don’t talk about this,’ or ‘Just don’t mention that’ or ‘As your career adviser I advise you just to keep your mouth shut.’ ” “Career advisers”!? — what an intriguing concept. What I mean is, this band emits a certain intensity. Their latest longplayer, “Angel Dust,” confronts listeners with songs like “Crack Hitler,” a clenched, toxic snarl having to do with a cocaine dealer, and the corrosive, expres-sionistic “Jizzlobber.” And now I find out that they’re saddled with “career advisers”?
“We don’t like to say those words,” Gould said. "But it’s there. I mean, there’s too much money in this business for people to want you not to have that kind of thing. There’re too many other people behind the scenes, making money.
“Musicians, to most people in the music business, are real estate. And they’re not going to let their investment go away just because the guy’s got a big mouth. And they have more to gain than the actual artists themselves.
“I don’t want to really trip out on it and say I’m upset that that’s what’s going on, or anything like that. It’s just that there are little kinds of pressures that people aren’t aware of.”
[...]
***
Kerrang, September 19, 1992:
Testing The Faith
By Chris Watts
It is a fucking massive tour. It is reputedly the hottest North American rock for years. It looks like it. The luxury trek has crossed Europe and most of America. It will grind to a halt this week, and Faith No More will breathe a sigh of relief. It's not easy touring with Guns N' Roses and Metallica.
"It's not a rock n roll tour really," muses bassist Bill Gould, surveying the Texas Stadium in Dallas. "It's a mini empire."
Some redneck asshole strolls past. His T-shirt says 'Shut Up Stupid Bitch'. Two micro-skirted starf**kers emerge from one of the 40 equipment trucks on the tour, closely followed by two grinning riggers. The girls are clutching passes for Metallica's backstage complex. It's funny.
It's not bad going for a bunch of five upstart Californian pranksters. It's okay that Faith No More go on stage at four o'clock in the afternoon and only get to play for 45 minutes. It's okay that they have to drive 1,000 miles to the next gig in a bus when Metallica and Guns N' Roses fly in a privately chartered 747 and DC10 respectively. It's okay that the band are afforded just one paragraph in the local papers. It's okay that the girl in the ticket office of the Houston Astradome has never heard of them, and it's okay that no one seems to be wearing a Faith No More T-shirt. As Jim Martin comments:
"People who buy Faith No More T-shirts just don't like to wear them in public!"
It might just be okay that Faith No More are the Support Band That Axl forgot.
AXL ROSE is invisible but his presence is overwhelming. The backstage outer circle is a heaving paranoia of publicists, lackeys and diplomats. Everybody claims to know the little singer. Well, they've never actually met him, but... GN'R arrive at the stadium mere minutes before they are due on stage. As usual they are late. Slash is the only member of the band to walk to the sprawling arena stage. The rest are driven in a transit van to the stage ramp, emerging with minders in tow, then disappearing into their limos almost before the dying chords of 'Paradise City' have been struck. Axl has only ever spoken to Faith No More once, via tour managers. The surly missive relayed a message that if Mike Patton ever asked the crowd to throw beer at Jim Martin again then the band would be off the tour. The crowd take this as a sign of approval and spend the concert hurting projectiles at anything onstage. Axl doesn't like getting his feet wet.
"We've had a few close calls," Patton admits. "We're lucky to still be here." "This tour is like a crowning glory for both headline bands," says Mike 'Puffy' Bordin. "There hasn't been a tour like this for years. We're not used to the atmosphere. To me, the atmosphere is not really conducive to this band playing well. It's like the Village People syndrome. Show Business. Mass entertainment."
Bill Gould: "It's difficult playing every night to people who aren't interested in us. Maybe some of them do hate us, but that's cool. If they didn't hate us a little bit we'd feel like we were kissing ass."
"I feel like a zoo animal up there," Patton comments.
"It's like when you fart in the presence of someone you shouldn't. You laugh. It's like a nervous reaction to the whole scale of things out there. It's embarrassing. "You have to take a certain amount of reality out there with you. We just walk out without an intro tape, in the middle of the afternoon, and play stuff. It's like, 'Here we are, people' Time to start!'.
"Basically, we are a small band. We are a pubic hair in Guns N' Roses' shower!"
FROM THE stage of the Texas Stadium the crowd looks terrifying. The sound is haphazard, but Faith No More cope. Combating indifference is something that Patton enjoys. This afternoon he rounds on Jim Martin. The singer catches the guitarist throwing a plectrum into the front rows. "Is he throwing shit at you?" Patton asks. The crowd cheer. "I think you have the right to throw shit back at him! This is an open invitation to f**k Jim"
"F**k me!" growls Jim, standing alone in the middle of a shower of plastic glasses. Behind the scenes, Faith No More's reputation for personal animosity towards each other is starting to get ugly. The enormous scale of this tour is affecting the band. Their reaction to the "Village People syndrome" differs drastically.
Patton, Gould and Roddy Bottum return from a backstage walkabout to discover Jim Martin in heaven. The guitarist is standing on a table, trying to persuade a vacant blonde to remove her top for the camera. The band stride past the couple and slam into their dressing room. Patton's furious.
"That is f**king vile!" he shouts. "F**k that! God, what an asshole! I don't want anything to do with that. That sucks! Goddamn it, man! F*'k him. That's Bullshit."
"It's kind of a hard thing to say," sighs Roddy, "but that's kind of anti what we're all about. All the bad things about this tour are outside the window right now. It's disgusting. It's ridiculous."
"Hey, Jim," Patton sneers, "who are you pandering to? Shit. Next question."
WHAT'S WRONG with Jim having his photograph taken with a large breasted female?
Bill Gould: "Nothing's wrong with it. It's just such a cheesy way out. It's the easy way out. It's the cliche."
But the girl volunteered. She wasn't press-ganged.
"But that doesn't mean that we have to go along with it," says Patton. "I cannot take that seriously."
Bill Gould tries to rescue the situation.
"I think you're right," he says. "That is the real world. To 50,000 people in the audience that is the real world of rock 'n' roll."
Roddy doesn't care. "But we've never catered for that in the past, so there's no reason why we should pander to it now."
Bill: "And you just know that you're gonna pick that shot for the cover! It's not a true picture of what this band is all about. It is of Jim, sure."
This from a band who reputedly tied a groupie to a hotel bed and let their road crew piss on her.
"Where did you hear that?" Patton exclaims. From someone she now works with in London.
Patton: "WHAT? NO WAY!" "We didn't tie her up," admits Bill. "It wasn't the road crew either. Maybe we just look like the road crew!
Anyway, she was in the shower. Jim couldn't piss, which is surprising for the amount of beer he drinks! I never thought we'd hear about that again."
Patton: "How did you hear about that stuff?!"
Bill: "She didn't mind. I think there's a difference between doing that - for whatever reasons - and doing what Jim is doing outside for the benefit of a photographer. It means different things to Jim than to us. That is exactly what Jim is. Jim is the token rocker in Faith No More!"
FOR HIS part. Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin is having a ball. In Houston, the guitarist is reunited with his cousins. Bob, Marie, Robert and Wanda are backstage at the Astradome, obviously thrilled with Jim's performance. They take snapshots and swap stories of the band's first appearance in Houston at the infinitely smaller Warehouse club. Robert has never seen the band perform until tonight, but is nonetheless full of praise.
[...]
SO THE tour is coming to a close. After each of the most recent concerts, GN'R's crew have been throwing parties for themselves. Last night in Houston they organised 20 strippers. Tonight in Dallas there are rumours of a strip-fest involving 50 girls! Jim tries to manipulate a vote to stay in Dallas. He is unanimously out-voted.
"I hope you will go in my place and be my official party delegates!" he grunts. We never did make it. The local reviews praise FNM's performance. The Dallas Fort Worth Star reported that 'there was no great outcry for an encore, which seemed to suit Faith No More just fine'. The same paper is less kind to GN'R. Adjectives like 'self-indulgent' are bandied about.
The final verdict? 'The Gunners' show has too many stadium rock touches. Faith No More don't care. Ahead of them are 1 ,000 miles of road before another brief appearance and more audience humiliation.
"Our job is just to be ourselves and not to suck corporate dick," says Patton. "But I'm looking forward to playing the smaller venues on our own tour after this. I just can't imagine this band becoming as big as Metallica. I don't think I'd enjoy it.
"This tour is not a real thing. The best thing about it is that at the end we can all just pack up and walk away. from it. The other bands on the bill have to live with it."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/09/faith-no-more-kerrang-issue-410-19091992.html
***
Details Magazine, September 1992
Twist of Faith
By 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 canceled. 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 deadpans.
So far, the Guns N' Roses European tour is averaging two concers per week. FNM are used to gigging six nights out of seven.
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."
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. "I think watching us might get in the way of snorting coke from some strippers snatch," Pattons says laughing....
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."
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."
The Wembley show is in a couple hours. 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."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/09/faith-no-more-details-magazine.html
***
Kerrang, November 28, 1992:
That's how FAITH NO MORE bassist BILL COULD describes the experience of touring with Guns N' Roses. But despite the band's attempts to "diss" him in the press, Axl Rose was "pretty cool"! Now liberated from the stadium millstone and back in the UK playing theatres, FNM are feelin' much more at home - and actually like each other for the first time in years! MIKE GITTER is the man sprinkling a little 'Angel Dust'...
Making Friends With The Devil
[...]
BOREDOM CAN have that effect. Being on tour with Guns N' Roses, and then Guns N' Roses and Metallica, since what seems like the dawn of time will almost certainly drive you to it. Faith No More have endured both.
"It was really good for the band," Billy admits, tactfully. "But it wasn't really good for our heads."
That's an understatement. As the bassist intones: "Things happen when our minds are given the space to degenerate".
Let's talk pros and cons of living in a situation known as 'The Circus', with its staff numbering into the hundreds of crew, chiropractors, publicists, diplomats, witch doctors...
"The good thing was playing in front of 80,000 people a night, when on our own we'd bring maybe 3,000 people to a show," Gould calculates. "So we'd have to play 200 shows to make up for one Guns N' Roses' show's worth of people."
"Unfortunately," he says, "we're used to much more relaxed situations, just being able to hang out after the show and not having to worry about our fans shooting us or anything. Getting thrown into that atmosphere was really uncomfortable. Plus, with the security so intense, what can you do backstage? Get drunk and look at strippers? Oh yeah, that's real exciting." So what were some of the more 'creative' ways to amuse yourself? "Being able to talk shit in the press and have a lot of people read it! That was really fun. That was how we got our amusement. We like to create dissension. It was this gigantic body of people that travel just like some big circus, where no one ever really communicates with each other. We thought that if we could stir it up just enough to where we wouldn't get in trouble, it might make it more interesting! After all, it's kind of uncool when a band invites you on tour and you diss 'em a little bit just to have some fun."
APPARENTLY, INVISIBLE ringmaster Rose caught wind of the shenanigans. Faith No More's hi-jinks in the press, and decided to arrange a little meet-and-greet for their own benefit.
"He read all the bad press we said about him and asked us about it!" Bill Gould chuckles. "We actually talked to him for a while, and y'know what? He was pretty cool! "One day we came to the concert, and Axl was there waiting for us. Like, 'What's the deal?'. And we just said we tried to stir up as much trouble as we could. We told him we felt like that was our job, and he just laughed. He just sat and explained his position to us a little bit. He's an easy guy to take pot-shots at, and we definitely went for the easy thing. "He was cool about it. He likes to see the system shook up as much as anyone, but he's in an awkward position. We left the tour friendly. It was like making friends with the Devil. I thought all hell was gonna come down, and he let us off with, 'Aw, right, you f"kin' idiots'. "That was a cool response. Most people in his position would have been real uptight dicks. I can think of 100 other bands we've done a lot less to that have freaked out 10 times as bad!"
[...]
BILLY IS ecstatic to be out on the road in Faith No More's own twisted merits once again. "Y'know what's funny about being on the Guns N' Roses/Metallica thing?" he points out. "It was the biggest tour in the world, and the most happening tour any band could ever want to be part of. We did it. And we realised it wasn't that big a deal. "It's like getting a Platinum record - just a thing to do, and once you do it and realise that you're not any happier, you learn what it is that makes you happy. That's why we did 'Angel Dust'. I dunno, after being out on our own for the past four weeks it seems like we're just at the beginning of things. Everything else was like one long, strange dream."
Faith No More are back on UK soil. "Forget the glamour and mumble a jack hammer." It's bound to get stranger.
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/11/faith-no-more-28111992-kerrang.html
***
Sky Magazine, December 1992:
Mike's pierced eyebrow epitomizes Faith No More's finger to the world. With a trail of trashed hotels and hospitalized fans behind them and a singer who, ahem, doesn't use the toilet, FNM make most grunge bands look like The Osmonds. Simon Witter joined them on the American leg of a tour which has now hit Britain.
Mike Patton is running wild-eyed through the foyer of Grand Rapids' Club Eastbrook, dragging a chunky skinhead by the collar. "Get on stage and fucking stay there!" he shouts as they head back to the auditorium. Tonight Patton is not the bouncers' friend, but then security has been winding him up something rotten. Not that it takes a lot to wind Patton up. On stage he seems born to be intense.
[...]
wo days into this odyssey, and I've yet to see any sign that any of FNM (bar Jim) are anything other than the kind of guys you'd want your sister to marry. So open, trusting, kindly and hospitable. Where did they get their reputation?
"A lot of pieces written about us," explains Patton, "selectively edit together all the vile and disgusting stuff, which is fine, cos nobody wants to read about us making coffee."
"But I don't think we buy into a lot of the myths of what we're doing. We just lived with that for three months [GNR], and saw so much of it... The whole idea that there has to be something outrageous and abnormal is washed up and gone. I mean we do our own thing, like I don't use toilets -- I just don't. It's not a wild rock n' roll thing; it's a hobby -- shit terrorism. I did a shit on the bench outside Charles and Diana's palace, but that didn't cause any rumpus. It could have been anyone's shit really. The consistency wasn't so good. It wasn't a prizewinning trophy."
They've caused offence in other ways too. Although GNR gave them their big break by specifically inviting them to support them on tour, FNM hardly seemed grateful at the time. All the press generated while FnM were touring with GNR was bursting with vitriolic attacks on Rose & Co. They simply aren't able to put a sock in it. "Oh, it was real ugly!" says Billy.
"We said a lot of shit, and didn't realize how bad it was until we got caught. Axl was real straight with us, but it was an ugly scene. He said: 'It's like I went away and came back home to find you guys fucked my wife.' We were thrown off the tour for five hours, but we apologized. It was like being in the principal's office. He said, 'I only like you guys, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, and two other bands, and all of you hate me. Why do you hate me?'" "We're still hoping he hasn't read some of it," Patton chips in. "We were just being honest, and that felt great, but it can also get you killed. As far as the press was concerned, we were like caged animals. They'd throw us a little bit of meat and we'd attack. And we realized that we were the ones who were getting screwed. The interviews that we did belonged in the National Enquirer. We were like a gossip column rather than a band."
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/12/faith-no-more-december-1992-sky-magazine.html
[...]
This fragile balancing act is about to join the equally combustible Guns n'Roses on their European stadium trek. "I don't really know what to expect," Roddy shrugs. "Big shows and a lot of people, sorrow and agony, soap opera acting. I've never heard them to tell you the truth."
"We haven't really experienced anything like that yet," Gould reveals. "This is our first time going out on the road with a band like that. We did do the Billy Idol tour and we were a little bit uncomfortable with that. It'll be interesting to see exactly how many Bodyguards Axl Rose has, I want the inside story. More than anything it's just something to poke fun at. Not to say that's what we're going to do, but..."
"We're the reporters and were going to get our scoop," Patton hollers. "We don't do any of those glamour things like flying first class and riding in limos I guess we're just dumb. Everybody always tells us that we can't afford to do it, so someone is walking around with a lot of money. We even flew over to the UK miserably this time. I couldn't get up and go to the bathroom 'cause I was sat in between two fat pigs slobbering over each other."
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/05/faith-no-more-27051992-raw-magazine.html
***
NME, June 20, 1992:
[...]
I finger a 22-date tour itinerary, titled 'GN'FN'R'S: STORMING THE MOTHERLAND'. Among the Gunners' road crew listed are: Personal Assistant to Axl Rose, Assistant to Axl Rose, Assistant to Axl Rose's Assistant, and get this, Witch Doctor.
Keyboard player Roddy Bottum (ex-boyfriend of Courtney Love, trivia fans) tells me that a well-known female American artist employs a crew member specifically to blow cocaine up her anus with a straw.
"It's gossip that keeps this band alive. We're like a bunch of old ladies," muses Patton. "It's the only thing that's new when you're traveling in a time capsule. All you can do is talk shit."
FNM have struggled with their reasons for supporting on the GNR tour. Patton will admit openly that he's a "whore." Bill, meanwhile, enjoys an intimate view of the ugly circus: "GNR and their management are like a small government. Axl's the president, and his manager's a personal advisor. A couple of the other more visible band members are vice-presidents. Then there's the little guys who come underneath, to make sure only the right information is leaked out. They're dependent on the band for their living, so they will police themselves. Support bands are like other countries with whom they maintain a diplomatic front. Like, keep your mouth shut, enjoy the ride and everything will be cool. Open your mouth, and jeopardize your own position. It's an interesting thing to experience first hand."
In addition to the regular security, 500 CRS men have been deployed to the GNR gig. The stench of paranoia hangs heavy in the atmosphere.
As guests of FNM, we are shunted into a small marquee, which is absolutely bare save a couple of chairs and tables, and faces out toward the coach park at the back of the site. Ridgers and I are ordered not to move from the spot. However, our clot-ish guard does not prove too challenging to out-manoeuvre.
Duff McKagan lopes through the Gunners' terrain backstage. He looks punch-drunk, swollen and decaying. "That's business, man," Patton will comment drily. "You have to hold your hat off to the guy who's done that to him." Duff is hoisted up the back of the stage to watch FNM by two sides of beef in uniform. This is as much as I will see of GNR.
The FNM performance is fearsome -- even in the gentle light of the Paris afternoon -- the band bludgeoning their instruments obscenely. It is Patton, however, that really embodies the transition that FNM have made between the clean and linear shape of 'The Real Thing' and the 'Angel Dust' mania. The singer is quite willfully self-abusive; battering his body against stray monitor equipment, twisting mic leads tightly around his throat, he buckles and crawls, and lashes at obtrusive photographers, eyes sparkling like Hopper in Blue Velvet.
Fanatics stockpiled against the steel 'safety' barrier are suffocating directly behind me. The weaker are plucked out like mushrooms from manure, and stretchered away. Limp.
We are back on the bus, attempting to make a dash from the site, however the French tell FNM's long suffering tour manager, "va motorway iz brooken."
Barry Adamson's "Moss Side Story" is playing. Roddy, Patton and I watch a little fellow who is wobbling the monster gargoyles inflating on either side of GNR's stage, so as to achieve some kind of 'scary' effect. Pyro cannons explode. Search lights chase through the blackening skies.
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/06/faith-no-more-nme-20061992.html
***
Rip It Up, July 1992:
This Seattle sound, or whatever, seems to have pretty much killed off the old leather pants style rocker - at least in New Zealand.
Patton: "Well you guys are lucky. They don't die in the States, they just mutate. To me there's a big equals sign between them and bands like Pearl Jam. They may look different, but they sound the same - scum are survivalists. We've been on tour a while so I can speak from experience - a cockroach is always a cockroach."
Talking of such, how's touring with Guns neuroses?
Patton: "We never have any contact at all. They seem to live in a whole different world so I can't relate to them. I can tell you funny stories and that's all."
Such as?
Patton: "A juicy tit bit I heard the other day was that Warren Beatty was fucking Axel's girlfriend. I think he knows because we had a show cancelled the other day and maybe - just maybe - that had something to do with it."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2019/03/faith-no-more-rip-it-up-july-1992.html
***
Melody Maker, August 8, 1992:
Any other band in the world would cream their jeans over being asked to support Metallica and Guns n Roses on a megatour across the USA. Not Faith No More. They fuckin' hate it, maaaaan! Come to that, they fuckin' hate just about everything. Matt 'Tex' Smith gets in the firing line.
[...]
I resist the desire to pull out my dog-eared copy of "Wuthering Heights", and talk to Patton about Guns N' Roses instead.
AXL'S GOING BALD
"He is, he really is! They were playing one night and Duff walks up to Axl and pats him on the head like a loving comrade-type thing and Axl Rose immediately brings the show to a halt, this is in front of 80,000 people, and be screams, 'Don't you ever touch my head again, motherfucker!' Duff just walked away, wounded. We found out later that it was cos he's going bald and he's worried that, if you touch his hair, it will fall out. Every follicle counts.
"He came up to me the other night and said, 'Hey, man, your song really helped me through some really heavy shit in my life'. I said, 'Really? What song is that?' He said, 'Midlife Crisis'. 'What kind of shit?' l asked, He looked at the ground for about an hour then shook his head and said, 'Mmm, just a lot of shit, man'. I tell you, I was biting my lip so hard trying not to loose it. 'We've given up trying to be quiet about their stupid games. It's gotta come out somewhere. For a while we were a little cautious of saying anything, but we were uncomfortable with that. Did you know about the Warren Beatty thing?"
"Then, for the last show of the European tour, Axl's psychic (who has her own bodyguard) went out and blessed his microphone and blessed the stage."
I ask Jim, who seems to have taken on Puffy's role as group loner since the recording of the "Angel Dust" album, whether he'd join the headliners given half a chance. "I sure would!"
What? No loyalty to the rest of the band? "Absolutely not."
"And more than that," Roddy interrupts. "We'd be happy to get rid of him. Tie him up in a bow and put a stamp on his ass."
What do you think you could bring to them, Jim?
"Nothing," he replies. "I'd just take from them. All these guys are implying that they hate Guns N'Roses, but they actually admire Slash as a guitar player."
"That's probably true," Billy acknowledges. "if we hated them a little more we'd probably be more forthright.
"I'd fuck Slash in a minute," says Roddy. "Trouble is, I think he'd nod off and be a bit dozy I think he'd be very romantic, take me out for a nice dinner and pay for my cab back to my hotel and say, 'See ya tomorrow'. Actually, I'm being sarcastic. He's not my type at all. Who is? Actually, I kinda like the look of Kriss Kross."
Patton warms to the idea in a most unprintable way.
"I'd like to mastermind a group of retarded rappers. Who would give a bad review to a retarded rap band? You'd be a villain! People would buy it for that reason: Morbid curiosity, guilt, sympathy. You could play on every emotion."
AXE MURDERERS Of THE WORLD UNITE
AS we enter the environs of the stadium, the bus glides past 32 Mac trucks, their silver bodies glinting in the Pittsburgh sunshine.
"Guns N'Roses use 'em to stash all the money," Roddy sneers. The stadium car park itself is a mass of sweaty, human flesh. As they walk passed its occupants hidden behind tinted windows, pieces of meat in an attempt to be a part of whatever rock n roll dream they think is being enacted inside.
"Look at those fuckers," Roddy snarls. "I hate you,and you,and I'd like to shoot you in the mouth," he adds, as one particularly bloated example wobbles past.
"I don't wanna go backstage," Patton screams. "I'm not getting out of this bus 'til one minute before we are due on"
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/faith-no-more-08081992-melody-maker.html
***
El Paso Times, August 7, 1992:
[...]
And on the stadium tour, Faith No More is at the mercy of Axl Rose, the temperamental GN’R lead singer who has earned the tour title “The Little Prince.” The past six shows have been canceled after Rose didn’t like getting hit by a thrown hot dog in New York. Rumor also has it that Rose’s psychic has told him not to play cities that begin with the letter “M.”
Gould was in San Francisco for this interview, the day they were scheduled to play Minneapolis.
The lost performances have cost Faith No More about $30,000, Gould said.
“Really, only one guy knows if we’ll be (in Las Cruces), and he’s not telling,” Gould said.
And as far as their role in this concert:
“We’re the little guvs. We didn’t expect any different,” Gould said. “We’d be greatly overestimating our own worth if we did.”
Tired of stadiums and the whims of others, Faith No More soon will headline its own six-week club tour, playing for crowds of one to 2,000.
“It’ll be nice to get back.”
[...]
***
OOR Magazine, August 8, 1992:
[...]
And how inspiring is it to be a support act to Guns 'n Roses?
Mike Patton: 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.
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/08/faith-no-more-oor-magazine-08081992.html
***
Select Magazine, August 1992:
A Real Ugly Experience.
STORY BY MARK PUTTERFORD
IF THERE WAS ANY SUBSTANCE IN THE THEORY OF BEAUTY SLEEP, THEN FAITH No More would surely require a fix of Rip Van Winkle proportions.
You'd have to call them 'sartorially challenged', or perhaps 'aesthetically underprivileged', but in the liberated vocabulary of a distant society they might well be referred to as 'scruffy bastards'. Singer Mike Patton is the least beautiful of all. Inside the billowing cocoon of a huge catering marquee planted behind the stage area of Gateshead Stadium he shuffles from table to table in the most stomach-wrenching pair of leather knickerbockers imaginable, bought, he boasts, at an Iranian flea market in Paris and hewn from such crusty hide that "it feels like I've got half a dead cow wrapped around my balls". On his feet are boots a brickie wouldn't be seen dead in, on his back a tea towel masquerading as a T-shirt, on his head enough grease to fry a Full English Breakfast. As he approaches, a sixth sense urges you to train your eyes on your shoes, in case he thrusts a slimy palm under your nose and grunts something about "the price of a cuppa, guv?". "Guuuu-UUUU-OOOO-ooood!" is in fact his opening gambit when he eventually arrives, the celestial refrain stretching through a jaw-breaking yawn.
"I'm so tired, man. I mean, doing nuthin' kinda knocks me out, and we've had so much time off on this tour it's disgusting. There's, like, a week off between each show and when we do get to play it's only for 45 minutes. And it takes us five songs to warm up, then we've only got three songs left! It sucks..."
[...]
It's 6.30pm by the time Mike Patton slams himself into the stage floor one final time, and within a minute Faith No More are slumped across the leather sofas of a dressing room tastefully equipped with a sumptuous spread of food and several crates of ice-cold lager. They hardly need a dressing room as none of them wear anything onstage other than what they've had on all week, but if they needed a quiet place to pluck out their ear plugs (essential FNM stagewear), this specially adapted locker room, complete with potted plants and moody lighting effects, might as well be it.
The conversation, like almost everything with this band, leaps from one extreme to another Princess Diana, birth abnormalities, Spain, tunafish sandwiches, the Beastie Boys, com circles, radiation, ketamine, bestiality - it's difficult to keep up. Yet diarrhoea remains the recurring theme, the result of a bout of mass food poisoning caused, everyone suspects, by a cook who was spotted returning to duty from the lav without washing her hands. "I've just lost half my intestines!" wails Mark the tour manager from a nearby cubicle, strides visibly bunched around his ankles.
"C'mon Mark. Let's hear you hit that pan real hard," yells an excited Patton, "I want to hear that mutha echo." "Squirt for me baby, squirt." squeals the dreadlocked Mike Bordin, snatching lan Lawton's camera and holding it over the top of the cubicle door for a few paparazzi-style snaps. "I almost squirted tonight onstage," confesses Bill Gould. "It was real buttock-clenching time for a while there. Shit, I hope Axl doesn't have the same problem tonight, what with him wearing those tight, white pants an' all..."
"Hey," Mike Bordin exclaims, "didn't Axl speak to Jim yesterday?"
"Naw, I think it was Patton," says Bill, "I think he said, Huhrrrmmmnn as he flashed past with his minders."
"Oh, I heard it was more like, Rrrraaahhggg actually," adds Roddy. "Naw, I'm pretty sure it was, Huhrrrmmmnn," protests Bill. "Some guy said to Patton, Hey, Mike, Axl just spoke to you, and Patton was like, He did?"
BY AND LARGE, FNM FEEL THEY'VE BEEN TREATED well on this European trek with Guns N'Roses, although there's hardly been plenty of opportunities to hang out with their illustrious compatriots. As Bill says: "Touring with Axl has been like touring with Michael Jackson - although I think I've seen Michael Jackson more times on this tour than I have Axl."
You get the feeling that the FNM chaps haven't exactly had the time of their lives on the trip. Roddy was so bored after the Wembley Stadium show that he went to a Spiral Tribe rave in Blubberhouses, West Yorkshire, to help Select with its 'research'.
"We're not the kind of band that's made for this kind of stadium show," explains Bill. "It's just not what Faith No More is about. It may be good from a business point of view because our record has just come out, and what better way to promote it than to get on a big tour like this? But if we had our way we wouldn't be doing this; I'd rather do ten nights at the Newcastle Mayfair than one at Gateshead Stadium.
"I mean, it's cool to be out there in front of a lot of people, but man, the sound is shit, the place is too big, the crowd is a fuckin' mile away... It just lends itself to more of a cabaret act, the kind of band who want to indulge in all that theatrical bullshit, with costume changes every other song. I mean, we do change our clothes too, but usually only once a month."
The whole sickly circus that surrounds any GN'R activity has made life pretty difficult to bear for Faith No More as well. Ask any of the band how they feel being at the eye of the hurricane and chances are the enquiry will be met with an expression which suggests someone nearby has passed wind.
"When is this interview going to be printed?" asks Bill with a nervous laugh. "You see, I have to watch what I say...but hey, fuck that, just print this: I hate the whole circus thing, we all hate it. But at the moment we don't have the power to do what we want to do, so we still have to eat a little bit of shit. (Seems were back to the catering lady again) We almost have the power to control what we do, but not quite, so we're just gritting our teeth and getting through it best we can.
"Every band in the world might think they want to open for Guns N'Roses, but lemme tell you, it's been a real ugly personal experience, having to deal with all the shit that surrounds this fuckin circus. I've always hated that aspect of rock music and I've never wanted to be part of it, so to find myself being associated with a tour this big kinda sucks."
"Besides," Roddy pipes up, "I'm getting more and more confused about who's who in Guns N'Roses, and it's blowing my mind. There's Dizzy and Iggy and Lizzy and Tizzy and Gilby and Giddy... Shit man, onstage now there's a horn section, two chick back-up singers, two keyboard players, an airline pilot, a basketball coach, a coupla car mechanics..."
[...]
IN THE BACKGROUND, GUNS N' ROSES CAN BE HEARD launching into 'Live And Let Die', and those still hanging in the FNM dressing room exchange silent smirks. They're gonna have to put up with all of this until October, as, shortly after the European tour ends, an all-conquering bill of Guns, Metallica and FNM is set to mop up the States throughout the rest of the summer and autumn. But then they're free to do what the hell they want to do, which will probably mean headlining a European tour of their own before Christmas, with someone like The Young Gods supporting.
"This is really just the beginning for us," sighs Bill. "Last time we toured with 'The Real Thing' I left home at the age of 26 and got back when I was 28. I found some of my friends had moved away, some had got married, some had had kids... I had a hard time dealing with that. This time I'm 29, and I know I'm gonna be on the road until I'm 31. Fuck, I don't even wanna think about it..."
Mike Patton shuffles back into the room with a pint of coffee in a transparent plastic container and welcome news that it's almost time to get on the bus for the long haul to London, where they'll crash the night before heading on to some Godforsaken German hell-hole.
Guns N'Roses will be flying down in their private jet, Axl probably on a magic carpet. But that doesn't bother Faith No More, least of all the explosion-in-an-Oxfam-shop figure of young Patton who, after all, is just as happy playing with and promoting his other part-time band, the mysterious Mr Bungle.
"I can't see this band going that way," he grins, "we'd probably go the other way and end up hitchin' rides to each town with truck drivers or something."
Patton paws his little goatee beard and smiles, as if someone has just tossed ten pence into his cup. Somehow, you cant imagine him flashing by, surrounded by bodyguards with only a "Huhrrnnmmnn" (or perhaps a "Rrrraaahhggg") for his fellow tourists, in a few years time. But then, such is the sick, schizo world of Faith No More, that maybe he will...
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/faith-no-more-august-1992-select.html?m=0
***
Hot Metal, August 1992:
[...]
See! It really isn't easy trying to make sense of all this. And if you've heard any of 'Angel Dust' you'll understand exactly why that is. Faith No More (who, apart from the reprobates already mentioned, is made up of Roddy Bottum on keyboards, Jim Martin on guitars, and Mike Bordin on drums) are not out to do what you expect of them, but merely to do what they expect of themselves. 'Angel Dust' is by no means just a follow-up album to the hugely successful, chart-shaking 'The Real Thing'. No, this is the San Franciscan quintet's fourth album and it will stand or fall on its own merits.
"When we did 'The Real Thing'," exlpains Billy, "we had a tiny budget, we were broke and on top of that nobody really gave a shit about us. Nobody knew what kind of music we played and nobody could classify us. We were at a real disadvantage in those days, but now we're at a real advantage." Adding to the advantageous position the band find themselves in is the fact that all through June and most of July this year they joined Spundgarden as support to the metal circus that is Guns 'N' Roses' European tour. And then, from July 17 to who knows when, they'll be warming the stage for Metallica and the Gunners on their co-headlining jaunt around America. Rock 'n' roll or wot?
"Oh God yes," agrees the now short-haired Patton. "Its a total spectacle, a sick circus..."
And what part of this sideshow do Faith No More play? My guess is the freak show, or perhaps the clowns. I'm wrong again.
"We're not even involved. We're just watching it. Guns 'N' Roses are the circus... it's amazing... it's just a lot of money and way too much time to spend it in."
Continuing the theory that Faith No More never really listen to each other, or totally disregard what the others say, Billy Gould thinks "it's fucking amazing that we even got on the tour, one of the biggest tours in the world. I don't know... I mean, aesthetically we're different!
"I think it's good though. I've gotta give Guns 'N" Roses credit, and give Metallica credit, too. Right now it's really responsible of them to pick bands that are different because they didn't have to do that. They could pretty much tour with anybody."
Referring back to the tour's carnival atmosphere and blatant excess, and hinting at Faith No More's unerring ability to be the fly in the ointment, Patton adds, "It's more like you see so many thing that are fucked up that you wanna say something - and we're already pushing it. The amazing thing is that everybody knows something is going to happen," he laughs. "By the time we get to the States, I'm sure something will have happened!" Mike didn't have to wait very long for something to happen. On the day of our interview, Guns 'N' Roses decided, two hours before they were due on stage, that Axl was "too exhausted" to play to 30, 000 eager fans in Manchester, England.
Billy says that kind of thing has happened every day, that the Gunners go on stage late "all the time. We wouldn't do it, so I don't know why it is. I'd like to know myself!"
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/08/faith-no-more-hot-metal-august-1992.html
***
The Face, August 1992:
[...]
Why do you go so mad on stage?
Mike Patton: 'I always feel a need to provoke, especially if we're supporting some band like Guns N' Roses and people aren't really listening. By insulting them, you make them at least look: it's the lowest common denominator. When I do flips, I always land correctly, I only bruise myself. But I do have an ongoing fight with glass which I keep losing. Once my arms were flailing and I cut four tendons and the main nerve in my right hand. It's practically numb now.'
[...]
What makes you laugh?
Mike Patton: 'What a nebulous fucking question. Ha ha! I saw two people in a bar recently, really drunk and flirting with each other. My first instinct was "Oh my God!" 'cause I knew one of them. They were sitting on high bar stools and they were learning forwards, just about to kiss, when they fell off and crashed to the ground. Justice!'
Who were they?
Mike Patton: 'Axl Rose and Warren Beatty.'
Can we print that? Axl probably won't see it anyway.
Mike Patton: 'Oh yes he will. He has Axl policemen checking things like that for him.'
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2016/08/mike-patton-august-1992-face.html
***
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 11, 1992:
WORD CAME through the grapevine that the San Francisco hard rock quintet Faith No More, currently wrapping up a U.S. tour with Guns Ν’ Roses, was dishing more dirt on Axl Rose.
Last year, while touring England with GNR, Faith No More told tales that among other things had Rose hiring a personal exorcist, something GNR publicists later denied.
Because of Rose’s status as an antihero here, owing to the GNR/Ri-verport riot during the summer of ’91, I felt obliged, in a phone interview, to prod FNM bassist Billy Gould for Axl Rose stories.
“Call me back in 10 days,’’ the bassist demurred. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. That’s when we get off this tour. All I’ll say is, everything you’ve heard is true.’’
OK, OK — this is supposed to be a Faith No More story. They will perform Sept. 18 at the American Theatre. "Still,” I demanded, “how is it you guys have come to be so careful?”
“At the level we’re dealing with now, it’s all politics,” explained Gould. “We’ve got big mouths. We had big mouths when we were in school and we have big mouths now. It’s just that now when you have a big mouth, everybody reads what you have to say like it’s a valid opinion or something.
"It’s funny because every adviser we have says, ‘Just don’t talk about this,’ or ‘Just don’t mention that’ or ‘As your career adviser I advise you just to keep your mouth shut.’ ” “Career advisers”!? — what an intriguing concept. What I mean is, this band emits a certain intensity. Their latest longplayer, “Angel Dust,” confronts listeners with songs like “Crack Hitler,” a clenched, toxic snarl having to do with a cocaine dealer, and the corrosive, expres-sionistic “Jizzlobber.” And now I find out that they’re saddled with “career advisers”?
“We don’t like to say those words,” Gould said. "But it’s there. I mean, there’s too much money in this business for people to want you not to have that kind of thing. There’re too many other people behind the scenes, making money.
“Musicians, to most people in the music business, are real estate. And they’re not going to let their investment go away just because the guy’s got a big mouth. And they have more to gain than the actual artists themselves.
“I don’t want to really trip out on it and say I’m upset that that’s what’s going on, or anything like that. It’s just that there are little kinds of pressures that people aren’t aware of.”
[...]
***
Kerrang, September 19, 1992:
Testing The Faith
By Chris Watts
It is a fucking massive tour. It is reputedly the hottest North American rock for years. It looks like it. The luxury trek has crossed Europe and most of America. It will grind to a halt this week, and Faith No More will breathe a sigh of relief. It's not easy touring with Guns N' Roses and Metallica.
"It's not a rock n roll tour really," muses bassist Bill Gould, surveying the Texas Stadium in Dallas. "It's a mini empire."
Some redneck asshole strolls past. His T-shirt says 'Shut Up Stupid Bitch'. Two micro-skirted starf**kers emerge from one of the 40 equipment trucks on the tour, closely followed by two grinning riggers. The girls are clutching passes for Metallica's backstage complex. It's funny.
It's not bad going for a bunch of five upstart Californian pranksters. It's okay that Faith No More go on stage at four o'clock in the afternoon and only get to play for 45 minutes. It's okay that they have to drive 1,000 miles to the next gig in a bus when Metallica and Guns N' Roses fly in a privately chartered 747 and DC10 respectively. It's okay that the band are afforded just one paragraph in the local papers. It's okay that the girl in the ticket office of the Houston Astradome has never heard of them, and it's okay that no one seems to be wearing a Faith No More T-shirt. As Jim Martin comments:
"People who buy Faith No More T-shirts just don't like to wear them in public!"
It might just be okay that Faith No More are the Support Band That Axl forgot.
AXL ROSE is invisible but his presence is overwhelming. The backstage outer circle is a heaving paranoia of publicists, lackeys and diplomats. Everybody claims to know the little singer. Well, they've never actually met him, but... GN'R arrive at the stadium mere minutes before they are due on stage. As usual they are late. Slash is the only member of the band to walk to the sprawling arena stage. The rest are driven in a transit van to the stage ramp, emerging with minders in tow, then disappearing into their limos almost before the dying chords of 'Paradise City' have been struck. Axl has only ever spoken to Faith No More once, via tour managers. The surly missive relayed a message that if Mike Patton ever asked the crowd to throw beer at Jim Martin again then the band would be off the tour. The crowd take this as a sign of approval and spend the concert hurting projectiles at anything onstage. Axl doesn't like getting his feet wet.
"We've had a few close calls," Patton admits. "We're lucky to still be here." "This tour is like a crowning glory for both headline bands," says Mike 'Puffy' Bordin. "There hasn't been a tour like this for years. We're not used to the atmosphere. To me, the atmosphere is not really conducive to this band playing well. It's like the Village People syndrome. Show Business. Mass entertainment."
Bill Gould: "It's difficult playing every night to people who aren't interested in us. Maybe some of them do hate us, but that's cool. If they didn't hate us a little bit we'd feel like we were kissing ass."
"I feel like a zoo animal up there," Patton comments.
"It's like when you fart in the presence of someone you shouldn't. You laugh. It's like a nervous reaction to the whole scale of things out there. It's embarrassing. "You have to take a certain amount of reality out there with you. We just walk out without an intro tape, in the middle of the afternoon, and play stuff. It's like, 'Here we are, people' Time to start!'.
"Basically, we are a small band. We are a pubic hair in Guns N' Roses' shower!"
FROM THE stage of the Texas Stadium the crowd looks terrifying. The sound is haphazard, but Faith No More cope. Combating indifference is something that Patton enjoys. This afternoon he rounds on Jim Martin. The singer catches the guitarist throwing a plectrum into the front rows. "Is he throwing shit at you?" Patton asks. The crowd cheer. "I think you have the right to throw shit back at him! This is an open invitation to f**k Jim"
"F**k me!" growls Jim, standing alone in the middle of a shower of plastic glasses. Behind the scenes, Faith No More's reputation for personal animosity towards each other is starting to get ugly. The enormous scale of this tour is affecting the band. Their reaction to the "Village People syndrome" differs drastically.
Patton, Gould and Roddy Bottum return from a backstage walkabout to discover Jim Martin in heaven. The guitarist is standing on a table, trying to persuade a vacant blonde to remove her top for the camera. The band stride past the couple and slam into their dressing room. Patton's furious.
"That is f**king vile!" he shouts. "F**k that! God, what an asshole! I don't want anything to do with that. That sucks! Goddamn it, man! F*'k him. That's Bullshit."
"It's kind of a hard thing to say," sighs Roddy, "but that's kind of anti what we're all about. All the bad things about this tour are outside the window right now. It's disgusting. It's ridiculous."
"Hey, Jim," Patton sneers, "who are you pandering to? Shit. Next question."
WHAT'S WRONG with Jim having his photograph taken with a large breasted female?
Bill Gould: "Nothing's wrong with it. It's just such a cheesy way out. It's the easy way out. It's the cliche."
But the girl volunteered. She wasn't press-ganged.
"But that doesn't mean that we have to go along with it," says Patton. "I cannot take that seriously."
Bill Gould tries to rescue the situation.
"I think you're right," he says. "That is the real world. To 50,000 people in the audience that is the real world of rock 'n' roll."
Roddy doesn't care. "But we've never catered for that in the past, so there's no reason why we should pander to it now."
Bill: "And you just know that you're gonna pick that shot for the cover! It's not a true picture of what this band is all about. It is of Jim, sure."
This from a band who reputedly tied a groupie to a hotel bed and let their road crew piss on her.
"Where did you hear that?" Patton exclaims. From someone she now works with in London.
Patton: "WHAT? NO WAY!" "We didn't tie her up," admits Bill. "It wasn't the road crew either. Maybe we just look like the road crew!
Anyway, she was in the shower. Jim couldn't piss, which is surprising for the amount of beer he drinks! I never thought we'd hear about that again."
Patton: "How did you hear about that stuff?!"
Bill: "She didn't mind. I think there's a difference between doing that - for whatever reasons - and doing what Jim is doing outside for the benefit of a photographer. It means different things to Jim than to us. That is exactly what Jim is. Jim is the token rocker in Faith No More!"
FOR HIS part. Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin is having a ball. In Houston, the guitarist is reunited with his cousins. Bob, Marie, Robert and Wanda are backstage at the Astradome, obviously thrilled with Jim's performance. They take snapshots and swap stories of the band's first appearance in Houston at the infinitely smaller Warehouse club. Robert has never seen the band perform until tonight, but is nonetheless full of praise.
[...]
SO THE tour is coming to a close. After each of the most recent concerts, GN'R's crew have been throwing parties for themselves. Last night in Houston they organised 20 strippers. Tonight in Dallas there are rumours of a strip-fest involving 50 girls! Jim tries to manipulate a vote to stay in Dallas. He is unanimously out-voted.
"I hope you will go in my place and be my official party delegates!" he grunts. We never did make it. The local reviews praise FNM's performance. The Dallas Fort Worth Star reported that 'there was no great outcry for an encore, which seemed to suit Faith No More just fine'. The same paper is less kind to GN'R. Adjectives like 'self-indulgent' are bandied about.
The final verdict? 'The Gunners' show has too many stadium rock touches. Faith No More don't care. Ahead of them are 1 ,000 miles of road before another brief appearance and more audience humiliation.
"Our job is just to be ourselves and not to suck corporate dick," says Patton. "But I'm looking forward to playing the smaller venues on our own tour after this. I just can't imagine this band becoming as big as Metallica. I don't think I'd enjoy it.
"This tour is not a real thing. The best thing about it is that at the end we can all just pack up and walk away. from it. The other bands on the bill have to live with it."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/09/faith-no-more-kerrang-issue-410-19091992.html
***
Details Magazine, September 1992
Twist of Faith
By 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 canceled. 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 deadpans.
So far, the Guns N' Roses European tour is averaging two concers per week. FNM are used to gigging six nights out of seven.
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."
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. "I think watching us might get in the way of snorting coke from some strippers snatch," Pattons says laughing....
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."
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."
The Wembley show is in a couple hours. 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."
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/09/faith-no-more-details-magazine.html
***
Kerrang, November 28, 1992:
That's how FAITH NO MORE bassist BILL COULD describes the experience of touring with Guns N' Roses. But despite the band's attempts to "diss" him in the press, Axl Rose was "pretty cool"! Now liberated from the stadium millstone and back in the UK playing theatres, FNM are feelin' much more at home - and actually like each other for the first time in years! MIKE GITTER is the man sprinkling a little 'Angel Dust'...
Making Friends With The Devil
[...]
BOREDOM CAN have that effect. Being on tour with Guns N' Roses, and then Guns N' Roses and Metallica, since what seems like the dawn of time will almost certainly drive you to it. Faith No More have endured both.
"It was really good for the band," Billy admits, tactfully. "But it wasn't really good for our heads."
That's an understatement. As the bassist intones: "Things happen when our minds are given the space to degenerate".
Let's talk pros and cons of living in a situation known as 'The Circus', with its staff numbering into the hundreds of crew, chiropractors, publicists, diplomats, witch doctors...
"The good thing was playing in front of 80,000 people a night, when on our own we'd bring maybe 3,000 people to a show," Gould calculates. "So we'd have to play 200 shows to make up for one Guns N' Roses' show's worth of people."
"Unfortunately," he says, "we're used to much more relaxed situations, just being able to hang out after the show and not having to worry about our fans shooting us or anything. Getting thrown into that atmosphere was really uncomfortable. Plus, with the security so intense, what can you do backstage? Get drunk and look at strippers? Oh yeah, that's real exciting." So what were some of the more 'creative' ways to amuse yourself? "Being able to talk shit in the press and have a lot of people read it! That was really fun. That was how we got our amusement. We like to create dissension. It was this gigantic body of people that travel just like some big circus, where no one ever really communicates with each other. We thought that if we could stir it up just enough to where we wouldn't get in trouble, it might make it more interesting! After all, it's kind of uncool when a band invites you on tour and you diss 'em a little bit just to have some fun."
APPARENTLY, INVISIBLE ringmaster Rose caught wind of the shenanigans. Faith No More's hi-jinks in the press, and decided to arrange a little meet-and-greet for their own benefit.
"He read all the bad press we said about him and asked us about it!" Bill Gould chuckles. "We actually talked to him for a while, and y'know what? He was pretty cool! "One day we came to the concert, and Axl was there waiting for us. Like, 'What's the deal?'. And we just said we tried to stir up as much trouble as we could. We told him we felt like that was our job, and he just laughed. He just sat and explained his position to us a little bit. He's an easy guy to take pot-shots at, and we definitely went for the easy thing. "He was cool about it. He likes to see the system shook up as much as anyone, but he's in an awkward position. We left the tour friendly. It was like making friends with the Devil. I thought all hell was gonna come down, and he let us off with, 'Aw, right, you f"kin' idiots'. "That was a cool response. Most people in his position would have been real uptight dicks. I can think of 100 other bands we've done a lot less to that have freaked out 10 times as bad!"
[...]
BILLY IS ecstatic to be out on the road in Faith No More's own twisted merits once again. "Y'know what's funny about being on the Guns N' Roses/Metallica thing?" he points out. "It was the biggest tour in the world, and the most happening tour any band could ever want to be part of. We did it. And we realised it wasn't that big a deal. "It's like getting a Platinum record - just a thing to do, and once you do it and realise that you're not any happier, you learn what it is that makes you happy. That's why we did 'Angel Dust'. I dunno, after being out on our own for the past four weeks it seems like we're just at the beginning of things. Everything else was like one long, strange dream."
Faith No More are back on UK soil. "Forget the glamour and mumble a jack hammer." It's bound to get stranger.
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/11/faith-no-more-28111992-kerrang.html
***
Sky Magazine, December 1992:
Mike's pierced eyebrow epitomizes Faith No More's finger to the world. With a trail of trashed hotels and hospitalized fans behind them and a singer who, ahem, doesn't use the toilet, FNM make most grunge bands look like The Osmonds. Simon Witter joined them on the American leg of a tour which has now hit Britain.
Mike Patton is running wild-eyed through the foyer of Grand Rapids' Club Eastbrook, dragging a chunky skinhead by the collar. "Get on stage and fucking stay there!" he shouts as they head back to the auditorium. Tonight Patton is not the bouncers' friend, but then security has been winding him up something rotten. Not that it takes a lot to wind Patton up. On stage he seems born to be intense.
[...]
wo days into this odyssey, and I've yet to see any sign that any of FNM (bar Jim) are anything other than the kind of guys you'd want your sister to marry. So open, trusting, kindly and hospitable. Where did they get their reputation?
"A lot of pieces written about us," explains Patton, "selectively edit together all the vile and disgusting stuff, which is fine, cos nobody wants to read about us making coffee."
"But I don't think we buy into a lot of the myths of what we're doing. We just lived with that for three months [GNR], and saw so much of it... The whole idea that there has to be something outrageous and abnormal is washed up and gone. I mean we do our own thing, like I don't use toilets -- I just don't. It's not a wild rock n' roll thing; it's a hobby -- shit terrorism. I did a shit on the bench outside Charles and Diana's palace, but that didn't cause any rumpus. It could have been anyone's shit really. The consistency wasn't so good. It wasn't a prizewinning trophy."
They've caused offence in other ways too. Although GNR gave them their big break by specifically inviting them to support them on tour, FNM hardly seemed grateful at the time. All the press generated while FnM were touring with GNR was bursting with vitriolic attacks on Rose & Co. They simply aren't able to put a sock in it. "Oh, it was real ugly!" says Billy.
"We said a lot of shit, and didn't realize how bad it was until we got caught. Axl was real straight with us, but it was an ugly scene. He said: 'It's like I went away and came back home to find you guys fucked my wife.' We were thrown off the tour for five hours, but we apologized. It was like being in the principal's office. He said, 'I only like you guys, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, and two other bands, and all of you hate me. Why do you hate me?'" "We're still hoping he hasn't read some of it," Patton chips in. "We were just being honest, and that felt great, but it can also get you killed. As far as the press was concerned, we were like caged animals. They'd throw us a little bit of meat and we'd attack. And we realized that we were the ones who were getting screwed. The interviews that we did belonged in the National Enquirer. We were like a gossip column rather than a band."
[...]
http://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/2015/12/faith-no-more-december-1992-sky-magazine.html
Last edited by Blackstar on Mon Apr 15, 2019 4:27 am; edited 2 times in total
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Re: 1992.MM.DD - Excerpts from various interviews with members of Faith No More
by Soulmonster Sun Mar 17, 2019 9:07 am
Really interesting, especially the last interviews where they talk about Axl having a meeting with them. I kind of understand why they behaved the way they did, and their almost embarrassed reaction afterwards make sense, too.
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Re: 1992.MM.DD - Excerpts from various interviews with members of Faith No More
by Blackstar Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:01 pm
Slash wrote in his autobiography that he was also at the meeting - in fact, that he was the one who called it:
Maybe there were two meetings: one with Slash, Axl, Patton and Jim Martin, and one between Axl and all the members of Faith No More.
| We had a much more antagonistic situation on our hands with our other support band, Faith No More, once their front man, Mike Patton, started talking shit about us onstage. We let it go once, twice, but after that, that was it. We had to have a talk with him. Axl came in with me, as did their guitarist Jim Martin, because Jim was as fed up with Mike as we were. “Listen, man,” I said. “If you don’t like it here, just fucking leave. It can’t be like this. Either let’s do this thing and make it great, or forget it, go home.” They ended up finishing the tour and that was the last outburst we heard from Mike during their set. [Slash's autobiography, 2007] |
Maybe there were two meetings: one with Slash, Axl, Patton and Jim Martin, and one between Axl and all the members of Faith No More.
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Re: 1992.MM.DD - Excerpts from various interviews with members of Faith No More
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