POSTS FOR BREAKFAST # 18 - IN THE PAPERS

 

FAITH NO MORE are not only dominating online publications but are now appearing in physical magazines too, and it's about time!


REVOLVER

Faith No More appear on the cover of the next issue of Revolver, which will hit newsstands on March 31 and is available for purchase online right now. Photography by Revolver Photography Director Jimmy Hubbard.


You also can read an excerpt from the issue’s cover story, written by Senior Writer Dan Epstein. In this section, vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Bill Gould and keyboardist Roddy Bottum talk about the band’s breakup and how they came back together.

On April 19, 1998, the members of Faith No More made a bid to regain control of their individual destinies by breaking up the band. Gould sent out a press release announcing the band’s mutual decision to call it a day. “The split will now enable each member to pursue his individual project(s) unhindered,” read the release.
“We broke up under pretty shitty circumstances,” Bottum recalls. “We’d gone through so much together, doing what we had to do to get from Point A in the back of a crappy ’66 Dodge, to a point where I don’t even know how to set up my keyboard stand, because somebody sets it up for me. To get from Point A to Point B is a really long, long road. And for people, good friends, to get from that point to that point at the age that we were, it was really, really a strain on relationships. So by the time we broke up, it was kind of like we never really wanted to see each other again,” he laughs. “I mean, that’s where we were! It was kind of like going through war together—working together, making decisions together, doing finances together, making art together, living together — it was so much more difficult than any marriage would be, or any friendship would be. It was just really hard on us. So by the time we broke up, it was like, ‘Enough!’”
Whenever any well-loved band breaks up, the question of “When are you getting back together?” inevitably becomes part of the conversation. With Faith No More, the odds of a reunion were slim, indeed; though the band’s legend and influence continued to grow after its demise, FNM’s four core members all seemed happily active in their post-FNM lives. Gould and Patton both started their own labels, Koolarrow Records and Ipecac Recordings, in 1999; Gould went on to produce a wide variety of bands, and collaborated on recording projects with Korn’s James “Munky” Shaffer and former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, while Patton’s discography (which includes several albums with his bands Fantômas and Tomahawk) seemed to expand on almost a weekly basis. Bottum continued to record and tour with Imperial Teen, and got into film scoring; Bordin continued to play with Ozzy, and also filled in for David Silvera on Korn’s 1999-2000 tour. “Everybody just went in different directions,” says Gould.
But in 2009, Faith No More surprised the world by announcing that they were reuniting their ‘Album of the Year’ lineup to play some tour dates in the United Kingdom. “We hadn’t seen each other in 10 years,” says Bottum. “So when we kind of came back to a group place, everyone was 10 years older, 10 years more mature; everyone was really like going out of their way in a crazy, over the top way to ask, ‘Are you okay with this? I’m cool with this, are you?’ We were making room for each other’s creativity in a real grown-up way,” he laughs. “Whereas, where we started was just such a bratty place to be, you know?”
“The Second Coming Tour,” as it was dubbed, eventually took the band around the world in 2009 and 2010, though they played only a handful of dates in the United States. “When we first got back together, there wasn’t actually a lot of interest from promoters in the States in bringing us out,” Gould explains. “It was weird; how we’re perceived in the States is so much different than in the rest of the world. We have a lot of fans in the States, but the media and the promoters primarily see us as this one-hit wonder that had a hit in 1989, or whatever.”
Musically, the band was stronger than ever, thanks to the additional decade of playing under their respective belts. Fans kept their fingers crossed for a new Faith No More album, but the band publicly pooh-poohed the notion, and was reluctant to even discuss the issue amongst themselves. Finally, frustrated with performing set lists made up entirely of old Faith No More songs and various covers, Gould emailed a file of some new music that he’d been working on to the rest of the band.
“I kind of had to break that ice,” he says. “Because nobody was talking about making new music. I know I brought it up, but the subject would always change. Nobody ever said no, but nobody ever said yes, either. So finally, I was like, ‘I’m gonna say something—at least I’ll know where we’re at!’” Much to Gould’s surprise, everyone responded positively to the track, which eventually became “Matador,” the first new Faith No More song to appear in the band’s set list in fifteen years.
“Honestly, ‘Matador’ felt so obvious,” says Bottum. “Not in a bad way, but like a comfortable shoe. It felt like somewhere we go typically as a band. We have this language among the four of us that’s sort of unique and inherent to people who sort of grow up together; we have a go-to language that we all relate to really well. So hearing it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that. I get it!’”
Inspired by the positive band (and audience) reception afforded “Matador,” Gould began working with Bordin and Hudson on additional demos for what would eventually become ‘Sol Invictus.’ “I was very shocked to hear that they’d been working on stuff,” laughs Patton. “One night a couple of years ago, I was hanging out with Bill, and he was like, ‘I was just working on some stuff. Do you want to hear it?’ He played me some stuff, and I was like, ‘This is fucking great!’ He was like, ‘Well, would you like to sing on it?’ ‘Well yeah, of course!’
“I didn’t even know that it was Faith No More music, at first,” Patton continues. “But then he told me, ‘No, this is stuff that I wrote for us!’ And I was a little taken aback… I didn’t know what to say. I was flattered, put it that way. I was like, ‘Damn! You wrote this shit thinking of me? Like us?’ Because my head wasn’t even near that space; I was somewhere else.
“Relationships are complicated—put it that way, okay? Maybe some lines of communication [between us] hadn’t been exactly open. But I was beside myself, like, ‘Oh my god, yeah! Of course! I know exactly what to do!’”

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KERRANG!

There is a small interview in this week's KERRANG! MAGAZINE, Issue 1562.

BILL GOULD

 'What we've done with this album is create something new that conforms to the long running chemistry that we have.'

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CLASSIC ROCK

And finally there is a review of FNM at SOUNDWAVE Festival in this month's issue of CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE. With photos by Ross Halfin.

'Faith No More are head and shoulders above anything else here'.