Two years in a badly formed sentence with too many commas.
Instead, I give you this:
Faith No More: Patton to Epic
Midway through 1988 Faith No More took what can only be described as an enormous and risky step for a band that had not only had a hit single, a strong fan base in both the USA and Europe and a recently signed record deal; they fired their front-man, singer, vocalist, Chuck Mosley.
Risky perhaps, but Faith No More were no strangers to line-up changes. Their first half decade as a band saw many people join and leave the band. For the first two years as Faith No More they had no permanent singer or guitarist. Not until 1985, after Chuck joined on vocals and Jim joined on guitar, did the line up solidify. With Chuck leaving, replacing the singer would have seemed just part of the job.
Indeed the band wasted no time after Chuck's departure, immediately working on songs for a new album. In a couple of short months an albums worth of material was written, the search for a new singer beginning around August/September 1988.
Mike Patton, university student and vocalist of local cult band Mr. Bungle, was the first person approached to try-out.
Jim Martin was immediately keen to hire Patton. Jim was obsessed with Mr. Bungle after hearing their demo "Raging Wrath Of The Easter Bunny", a tape handed to the band by Mike after a gig in 1986 at Humboldt University. Patton has said Jim had become so obsessed with the tape he began calling him at home, leaving messages on his answering machine to complement him the band on their work.
Mike's singing on Raging Wrath was hardly rock-star material, but Matt Wallace, long time Faith No More producer, had also heard Patton's much more impressive vocals on another Mr. Bungle demo, "Bowel of Chiley", and also suggested the singer as a possible replacement.
Mike was reluctant to try-out at first. While he knew the band and liked Faith No More's second album "Introduce Yourself", he didn't think much of "We Care A Lot". He was also reluctant to give up his studies and take the plunge to quit Mr. Bungle for another singing gig. Mr. Bungle bass and guitar players Trevor and Trey, both huge fans of the band, convinced Patton to have a go. Patton eventually (illogically as he later admitted) rationalised his decision to join by thinking of Faith No More as "school", and Mr. Bungle as his weekend gig.
Patton's audition went well. Trevor, who Patton had brought along with him for support, was apparently amused at Patton's attempts to sing "properly". While Faith No More tried out a couple of other vocalists, within two weeks of the audition the band called Mike to offer him the gig. Mike, after making his peace with the school analogy, accepted and moved to San Francisco, out of home for the first time, to live at drummer Puffy's place.
The band provided Mike with demo tapes of skeletons of their new songs. Within a couple of weeks, Mike had composed lyrics, melodies and harmonies for all of them. The band remembers being excited to be working with a vocalist who was also a composer. Mike took notes, working on and improving his lyrics each day. Chuck, it is said, often made up lyrics in the studio. Mike gave the band a lot of confidence the album recording would go well.
The next two months were spent informing their label of their new vocalist choice via a four track demo recorded in Bill's attic and rehearsing the songs to ensure the recording process went as smooth and fast as possible. The demo, presumably recorded shortly after Patton joined, showcase early versions of four songs: Falling To Pieces, Surprise! You're Dead, The Cowboy Song and Underwater Love. The early versions show Patton did indeed write the lyrics quickly as those on the demos are similar to those on the final album, but the songs still evolved considerably before finally being recorded. Falling To Pieces in particular is much slower in the demo.
Mike was introduced to the band's biggest fans at a low key gig at San Francisco's I-Beam in early November 1988. According to reviews of the gig by Steffan Chirazi in Bay Area Music Magazine, the gig was rough, with a bad reaction from the crowd, broken cameras and glass.
While clearly talented as a vocalist, Mike didn't fit in with the band in any other way. He was ten years younger than the rest of the members, still a teenager, living away from home for the first time. The late 80s in San Francisco were still the domain of big hair, spandex and shirt-less centre folds in the heavy metal press. Whether deliberately or not, Patton fitted that image like a glove. While the rest of the band thought of Patton as a weird bike-shorts wearing kid, the media would love him.
Recording for The Real Thing began in November 1988 and finished mid to late December, with mixing completed by the 4th January 1989, a deadline set by the label.
The band recorded fourteen songs, including their popular War Pigs cover.
- From Out Of Nowhere
- Epic
- Falling To Pieces
- Surprise! You're Dead!
- Zombie Eaters
- The Real Thing
- Underwater Love
- The Morning After
- Woodpecker From Mars
- War Pigs
- Edge Of The World
- Sweet Emotion
- The Grade
- Cowboy Song
Most of the songs were brand new, but elements of some songs had existed for years. The guitar for Surprise! You're Dead! was written by Jim, but the name had existed since a film Roddy was involved with years before. The music for The Morning After was previously heard as New Improved Song, a song recorded during the Introduce Yourself sessions. The middle part of Zombie Eaters began as early as Faith No More's first shows.
Matt Wallace remembers being very impressed by Mike's abilities as a singer, but frustrated by his insistence on taking a very adolescent, nasal, snotty approach to the vocals, especially after hearing Patton sing R'n'B songs between vocal takes. Wallace eventually came around to Patton's "correct and astute perspective to the vocal style and tone".
Wallace admits today he over-used the commercial tricks of the trade on The Real Thing. After recording and mixing was complete, he was so unhappy with the sound of the album he seriously thought about quitting music production. In the end, the highly compressed sound would later work wonders on radio and MTV, but that success was still more than a year away.
Shortly after recording Jim found some time to play a few gigs in San Francisco with his sometimes band Spastic Children. No evidence exists of any Faith No More gigs until early February.
Faith No More played a number of gigs in February and March of 1989, including one in Los Angeles with Chuck Mosley in the audience. They travelled with a van and trailer and lived hand to mouth. Bill had no fixed address, leaving his possessions at his girlfriend's place while on tour.
While the album was finished very early January as requested by the label, its release would be delayed for almost six months. As early as February Steffan Chirazi's column in BAM Magazine suggested the album was due to for release in March, but had yet been named.
While both Slash and Warner Bros. said they loved the album, they thought there weren't any singles on it, stating to Wallace, "radio doesn't know what to do with it". Regardless, From Out Of Nowhere was chosen as the first single and a video was put together with director Doug Freel.
The video is supposed to be a parody of 80s hair metal band videos, for which Doug was famous. It is likely From Out Of Nowhere, with its big keyboard riff and chugging guitars, was influenced by keyboard heavy "metal" songs like Van Halen's "Jump", which Faith No More started to jokingly cover back in 1984.
While recording some live footage for the video, Patton cut his right hand on a broken bottle, numbing it for life. Doctors suggested he would be able to feel his hand but not move it. In fact the opposite occurred.
Label Slash's attitude to the album and Patton's injury, combined with Jim Martin requiring surgery and delays over the album's artwork keep it off the shelves until as late as the 20th of June.
During the record release party the band, as usual, played their cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", during which Slash and Duff from Guns'n'Roses jumped on stage to jam.
War Pigs was arguably the band's in to the heavy metal world, although they'd been playing the Black Sabbath cover for years, well before Patton joined the band. At least some of the band always played it with a drop of humour, despite playing it so straight. Playing amusing covers had always been part of the Faith No More live set.
The fact a studio version of a cover was recorded during The Real Thing was fairly unusual, the band never having recorded a cover before. Bill has said that they'd played the song so often, "it seemed a shame to waste it", and surely the band must have thought having extra songs on hand was insurance against the risk of hiring a new lyricist. They thought little enough of it to not include it on the vinyl version of the album, including it only as a bonus on the CD and cassette versions.
At the end of June, days after the release of The Real Thing, Patton returned home to record a demo (OU818) with his band Mr. Bungle.
It seems incredible that Faith No More accepted Patton's promotion of his band as readily as they did. Patton says he never promised to leave Mr. Bungle, and took every opportunity to bring them up in interviews. Faith No More complained little, going only as far as suggesting Patton could be a bit of brat.
Patton later used Faith No More's popularity to secure a huge ($100,000) advance for Mr. Bungle's first album. In The Real Story, Bill takes time out to suggest this was unfair, but by this time Faith No More was making money, which must have numbed the pain.
Although the newly fronted band was not gaining any large response in the US, Faith No More remained popular in England. Immediately after the release of The Real Thing, the band travelled to England for a short sold-out five date club tour. Unlike the US, Patton was embraced as the new singer, and the band's popularity in England remaining high, the album charting well.
The band returned to the US for a tour across the country, but the response remained lackluster.
From Out Of Nowhere was released as the first single from the album on August 30, before joining Metallica's "... And Justice For All" tour as support. Metallica's James Hetfield was not only a fan of the band (he wears a Faith No More t-shirt on the back of 1987's "Garage Days" covers EP) but also friends with Jim Martin. Jim later admits he felt that the support slot hadn't been earned, that it was given out of friendship, a musical experiment.
Faith No More's pop/metal/rap combination rarely went well with Metallica's fans, the band often booed and sometimes spat upon, especially during Epic. Faith No More, in their trouble maker style, relished the hatred. After having made jokes about Mormons, Bill deliberately irritated the fans at Salt Lake City playing a five minute single note bass solo.
Reviews of the support slot point again to "War Pigs" saving the day. On at least a few occasions members of Metallica would join the band on stage during the cover to jam. Their short set leaned toward their new heavier songs, but Patton's youthful exuberance and rapping rarely went well with metal fans.
In response to From Out Of Nowhere charting well overseas, Faith No More return to Europe for October and November, against the advice of their Europe label "London". Despite being warned off touring again so quickly, the tour again sold-out.
In December they hit the road at home, needing to keep touring in order to pay the bills. The album was still not selling very well in the US. By the end of 1989, The Real Thing had sold only 30,000 copies locally.
While local popularity was slow coming, they were gaining a lot of positive music press. Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is quoted complaining that Patton is "apeing" his style on stage, a fact Patton found hilarious, dismissing the claims in the press, kicking off a feud that arguably continues to this day.
The new year, 1990 starts well, with Faith No More joining a three band tour with Soundgarden and Voivod in early January. Faith No More were at least as popular as Soundgarden, who had yet to release their breakthrough album Badmotorfinger, while Voivod headlined. The band and label agree to release Epic as single on 30th January 1990, when they leave the Soundgarden/Voivod tour to return to England. Again returning to Europe was against the advice of their Europe label, and again their shows sell out.
In February, Faith No More's "The Real Thing" (as well as Soundgarden's "Ultramega OK") was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Metal Performance". The category was brand new, the result of splitting the "Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental" award in two.
The award was split after in 1989 it controversially went to Jethro Tull over the favourites Metallica. For the metal awards debut, Faith No More were beaten by Metallica (for their song "One").
Faith No More certainly never considered themselves metal (they thought "alternative" was more appropriate given their varied song styles), but the music press were persistent. To highlight the industry's confusion, Faith No More would be nominated for the "Hard Rock" award in 1991, for Epic.
MTV told the label if they were given a hand in the creation and editing of the video for Epic, that they would add the song to frequent rotation. However after the single's release, MTV only played Epic twice, late night on Sunday's 120 Minutes.
Only after much label pressure did MTV begin to play it again.
Faith No More had powerful support within Warner, with at least one strong and ardent supporter of the band absolutely loving the album. They felt the extra exposure of the Epic video would be enough to push it over the edge.
They were right.
After MTV started playing Epic on high rotation, which famously ends with a shot of a fish out of water flapping about in slow motion, and which includes Patton cheekily wearing his Mr. Bungle t-shirt, The Real Thing started selling by the container load, with incredible figures of "in excess of 40,000 copies a day" often quoted. Whatever the rate of sales, Epic hit the top 40 in July 1990, gold certification (500,000 copies sold) on the 18th July, and the Top 10 in August. The Real Thing was certified platinum on 26th September 1990 with a million copies sold.
Faith No More would, after the surprise surge in popularity, go on to tour solidly at larger venues for another six months, almost burning out. Their famous show at the Brixton Academy at the end of April was recorded for release as a record and video, apparently against the band's wishes. Wallace, while working on another project in Nashville, was sent the tape of the show and asked to mix it as soon as possible. He mixed the entire show on a Sunday night, dismayed at not having time to mix it properly. Two unreleased tracks from The Real Thing sessions would be included on the CD version album, The Grade and Cowboy Song.
Perhaps in response to all of their problems, to audience calls for War Pigs and the fact Jim loved playing it so much, the band deliberately pick a song as different as possible to cover next. Commodores' "Easy" joins the set for the first time in April 1990. The song was covered at Brixton but didn't make it to the album or video release.
The sudden attention was beginning to irritate the band, who'd already been on tour for so long. Despite being told they were doing "well" they didn't see any money, especially Bill, whose royalty cheques were being sent to the wrong B. Gould. A "gold record" photo opportunity at LAX before another long plane trip was almost the last straw.
While the band admits they never really thought the band would break up, it was a struggle to keep it together. The thought of having to keep touring for another year filled the band with dread. Rumours abounded that Patton wanted to leave the band, something he doesn't deny. He has suggesting he stayed only after hearing the band planned to tour Australia, giving him a chance to surf.
After playing Australia, New Zealand, South America, Japan, the US and Europe again, supports for Billy Idol and Robert Plant, their never ending touring stopped in mid 1991.
Their next album, Angel Dust, would be a reaction to their fame, a deliberately attempt to record the anti-Real-Thing. Matt Wallace would return to produce, significantly altering his style from that used on the previous album. Matt says the code name for Angel Dust was "Commercial Suicide".
On return to touring, Faith No More would drop War Pigs from their set, rarely playing it again.
Sources
- Interviews and comments from Matt Wallace
- "Faith No More: The Real Story Authorized biography", by Steffan Chirazi
- Various magazine articles 1989-1990, including Steffan Chirazi Kerrang magazine articles, and others at faithnomoreblog clipping collection
- Steffan Chirazi's column "Raw Power" in Bay Area Music Magazine, San Francisco, 1988-1989
- Faith No More Gig History
[Version 1.01 - 1st July 2012 - Added note on LA gig with Chuck in audience]
[Version 1.0 - 20th June 2012]