FAITH NO MORE | Hot Metal 1990
Hot Metal | August 1990
CAN YOU FEEL IT, SEE IT, HEAR IT TODAY? IF YOU CAN'T, THEN IT DOESN'T MAKER ANYWAY...
Faith No More's Billy Gould talks to Steven Coates on the
eve of the San Franciscan 'metal/rap/punk/funk/ weird shit' outfit's Australian
tour.
"There were probably like 5,000 people spitting on
me... people were yelling and screaming 'Get off! Get off so loud their veins
were bulging out of their necks! I was laughing so hard - it was a great
thing!" recalls Faith No More's bassist Billy Gould.
He's talking about the lime when the
metal/rap/punk/funk/weird shit outfit supported fellow San Franciscans Metallica
for a month late last year. But what did Faith No More do to elicit such a
dramatic response from the crowd?
"People were just staring at us and looking at us, and we got kinda angry because we were putting in all this work and people weren't
giving anything back. So we started insulting them a little..."
I guess you could conclude from that incident that Faith No More are the type of band who don't
really give a flying f_k. But then again, if you're a fan of their unique brand of
musical mayhem, you'd already know this. And if you're not... well, they
probably don't give a flying f_k. Billy called from Los Angeles just before
Faith No More's Australian tour was confirmed ("We're taking our first
break in almost a year - we have about 10 days!"), and mine was the last
in a line of about six interviews. "I've been doing these interviews
today," he chuckled wearily, "and everybody was saying, 'Oh, your new
record is coming out in a week,' NEW RECORD?! We've been touring that (The Real
Thing) for a year now!"
The reason Billy had to cope with the torrents of meaningless, outdated questions was because
Mushroom Records in Australia have just decided to release The Real Thing now,
FIFTEEN months after it came out in the U.S. Now, to give credit where credit's
due. since Mushroom did release it, they've done an excellent promotion job;
ads all over the place, getting it played on video music shows, the whole bit.
But the question which must be asked is why? Why only now? Why not last year, when The Real Thing, to rapturous applause, hit a
world-wide market hungry for something new. "The bottom tine is,"
reckons Billy, "you have to convince the people who are promoting you that
they're excited about it, and the only thing that's gonna show them that they're
excited is that there's a demand for you already. And when you're playing weird music like
us, you really have to show them!
"None of the success that we've gotten has come from
the record company. It's happened because there's been a lot of word of mouth,
and interest from people that have bought the record.
"You'd be surprised at the people working at some of
the stinking record companies. Most of then don't know shit! Who knows how they
got their jobs? But rather than sit and complain about it, we just get on the
road and tour our asses off."
Time to clear up that rumour; no, Mike Patton is not
leaving Faith No More as I'd been led to believe before I spoke to Billy (kinda
ruins all the questions you've prepared about the new singer when you realise
that there isn't one..!).
"It's funny that story's made it all the way down
there, huh?" he laughed when I asked him. "It's just some crazy
rumour thing. We laughed about it. At our last show in Paris, we told everybody
that it was Mike's last show!
"The rumour came from somewhere in San Francisco
apparently. The London magazines heard it and said 'Well, we heard it from a
source in the States'. We managed to trace it to a source back in San
Francisco.
"And then some girl in Texas showed up at a radio
station, and told the DJ that she was Mike Patton's girlfriend and said that he
was leaving soon."
As is widely reported, Patton is still involved in Mr. Bungle, the band Faith No More snatched him
from after their original vocalist Chuck Mosley was unceremoniously sacked. In
fact, he has been quoted as saying that if Mr Bungle ever got a record deal, he
would leave Faith No More. So maybe it's not so surprising that rumours about
his departure are springing up. Gould, however, denies that Patton would quit
Faith No More. "No way. If he ever did, that would be the stupidest
decision of his life, because really, they're two different bands. He knows
that.
"Mr Bungle's a great band, but it's just a different
thing; it's just a bunch of friends that he grew up with that he plays with.
It's nothing to take seriously, and he'd be the first to say that he doesn't
take it seriously."
Dare I suggest that this is another example of the infamous
Faith No More 'inner tensions'..?
"Well, there's always that. There's always inner
tensions, but it hasn't got that bad...yet! It might, but y'know, if it did,
I'd tell ya...
"We've just had to work real hard the past few years
under less than favourable conditions. We kicked out Chuck because he just
wasn't putting in 100 per cent like we were, so we had to put in 120 per cent
to compensate for him.
"Mike Patton has been really hard working, but it's just
been really hard work, so there's times when you just get pissed off. You take
it out on each other, of course..."
And while on the
subject of Mike Patton, Gould also took time out to deny claims made recently by the 'Chili Peppers' Anthony
Kiedis that Faith No More's dynamic vocalist has... dare I say it... ripped him
off, "That's an interesting one. I don't think he has, really. Y'know,
we're not threatened by each other, because our music is really a lot
different. The similarities are there in a superficial way, but really, there's
a huge chasm between us. We are kind of on
different sides of-the spectrum - we're on the rock side,
and they're kinda more on the traditional funk side."
All this talk of funk brings to mind the multitude of
'funk/metal' bands that seem to be springing up all over the bloody place.
Billy's view of this recent fad is...
"F_k 'em - I don't give a 1_k! I don't give a f_k about
any of them, I just don'1 care.
"The 'Chili Peppers are a great band, and I think that
Living Colour had a lot to do with this funk rock thing, because they... got
popular. They pushed, and they toured for a year before their record even got attention. And they worked
their asses off, and basically created an opening for a category, just like
Guns N' Roses kinda made the rock/glitter thing what it is. Guns N' Roses were
getting played on commercial radio, which was at the time unheard of for a rock
band like them in the United States. And then when Metallica got played on
MTV... that was unheard of for a metal band like them. But they did it.
"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there's a lot
of bands that saw this happen, and now there's the inevitable flow of copiers.
"Y'know, we get classified with this funk/metal thing,
and really *e've gol nothing to do with it at all. I mean, we listen to metal
music and we listen to funk music, but we're just kinda playing what comes out
of our heads. It's kind of a shame to be put in some trendy category to make
some advertising guy's job easier, some writer's Job easier, or
the record company's job easier. Really, you're kinda shortening the life span
of your group and you're not taking
something at face value - you're comparing it to a category.
"Did that make sense..?!"
It sure did.
"The title funk/metal really annoys me. Any band that
comes out that says they're funk/metal, my first impression is not to give them
a first listen. I'm not interested."
Faith No More seem to have recently almost 'broken big' in
England, playing to larger crowds every time they hit those shores, and even appearing on pop music show
Top Of The Pops on their last visit. Ironically, the band seem to be much more
appreciated in the U.K. than in their
own country.
"I think people are a lot more open minded in England
and Europe," says Billy, "cause they have a lot more access to
independent records. They've got bands like Napalm Death and Carcass.
"The States is just such a commercially orientated
place. In England it is too, but it's different. There's independents, and
there's independent distribution, and people are just exposed to it
even if they don't like it. They have access to it. They have music magazines like the NME that
will write about Whitesnake and The Cult. then write about Napalm Death, and
then write about Sade.
"In the United States, there's nothing like that at
all; it's completely categorised, because it's such a large country. And
because there's so much money being generated, because there's so many
Americans buying records, it's really a big business - a super-big business. It's almost impossible for
the independents to get decent distribution.
"So what you're getting is an industry that's really creating the people's demand, and people are
buying what the industry is giving them. It's all above ground, commercial
stuff, there's no underground. Only the bands that really kick arse and work
their f_king arses off - like say,
Metallica, who just toured for ever because they were making
sure that they weren't just gonna be a forgotten thing - get out of the underground."
And they sure as hell aren't a forgotten thing now...
"No. And when they do get out, they shake things up,
y'know? And Metallica were really smart, because they had a good thing, them
and Slayer.
"But now there's so many speed metal bands coming out
of the States that every major label has signed a speed metal band. They don't
even know what speed metal is, most of them. They're just like, 'Oh, this
Metallica thing did real well - we don't
understand it. That one sure slipped by us!' "This is
the mentality in this country. So many shit bands. It's an industry, a
business."
Getting back to the talk about English magazines, it must
feel weird to be in a band that gets rave reviews for practically everything
you do. I don't think I've ever read a bad thing about the band...
"There's a
couple coming out this week, actually. In the NME there's a pretty big slag. It
says that at our show at Hammersmith we looked like bloated old rock stars,
which is pretty funny. It's funny too because they also say, 'Oh, but of course
the crowd loved it - they lapped it
up,..', which goes to prove the old expression 'Eat shit - a
million flies can't be wrong!'
"Y'know, you're talking about a writer's personal
opinion - it was a great show and everybody loved it, and there's one nasty
bastard up the back sitting in the corner who decided he hated it.
"But it's to be expected. I mean, you can only get good
things written about you for so long..."
Maybe so, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Faith No More
are a band that's gonna command more salutations than slags for a
long time to come.
"If you're not gonna like us, then you're gonna hate
us," Billy concludes, "so we're gonna make sure you hate us! We're
gonna get you to move one way or another, you're not gonna sit
there like you're watching a movie. Our shows are audience participation 100
percent..."
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