Faith No More

Rip It Up, Issue 211, 1 March 1995, Page 22

Faith No More

«T° be quite honest with you, I’m Il not in a very happy mood right Il now. It’s six O’clock In the evening here. Yesterday we shot the first video and we were on the set for 17 hours, from four O’clock In the afternoon, and I got home at eight this morning. So I’m pretty outta my mind and pretty tired,” Mike Bordin states gaily over the phone from his home in San Francisco. Bordin, the drummer for Faith No More otherwise known as ‘Puffy’, even though he isn’t, certainly doesn’t sound “in a bad mood” to me (well, he isn’t exactly the guy from Tool!). We

have a very nice chat Indeed for about 45 minutes about all manner of things, including and especially Faith No More’s new album King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime, which was recorded In upstate New York in October and November last year. |»-J m.'aX U — — I 1— ! —1 — I • r r- . .. »>

I’d not heard hide nor hair of Faith No More for the last year (except for rumours that Mike Patton was arrested for having kiddie porn mags, and that keyboardist

Roddy Bottum is gay). Gosh, and what a shock for everyone this year certainly shall be (hearing from Faith No More, that is). Their new album is

very, very interesting, and I mean that. Stick your hand in and either get it bitten

or licked; the bites being the Faith No More style ‘rawk’ songs, and the licks from the plentiful assortment of weird and wonderful ‘rawk’ ballads and otherwise — from the Tom Jones-ish number called ‘Evidence’, to

a beauty of a freaky rock opera called ‘I Am Just A Man.’ What with the band’s original guitarist Jim Martin leaving (or being pushed) early in 1994, them finding a replacement guitarist in the form of Trey Spruance (who also plays guitar for Mr Bungle), who left shortly after the new album was recorded, and the band replacing Trey with keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s keyboard technician Dean Menta — one could say it’s been a somewhat shambolic year for the band. “We’re a band that believes in making our

time and effort and we believe in getting the most out of doing the best we can," says Puffy. “We do a lot of work. We spend a lot of time writing songs. We do the homework. Yeah, this album was definitely a challenge. Around the time when we did the Real Thing, we were thrilled to have a singer who could sing [they extracted the then 21 year old Mike Patton from his porno mags in January 1989 and put him to good use], because it wasn’t easy with the previous singer [Chuck Mosely]. Mike was able to sing to all the sorta things we wanted to play. After Angel Dust we knew two things. We knew it was a

record that did well and that we were proud of, but, on the other hand, we also knew we were fortunate that it turned out as well as it did. We had a lot of difficulties with the guitar player [Jim Martin], He

felt he could

have

done

more and we felt he could have

done more, so we knew we needed something more, and we felt we could improve. “This new album was a very big challenge for us when we eventually fired him and sent him away. The challenge was to be as good as we could be. It was like, you think you can do something so now you make the steps to go out and do it. It was an exciting time actually. We were pretty confident ‘cause we knew that we could be a hell of a lot better, in our minds. It was sorta like we got the car keys back, y’know [chuckles]. We didn’t like how he was drivin’ the car, so we got the

keys back.” Indeed they did. King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime is the third delinquent offspring of Faith No More. Being a little more mature and consistent content wise than the others, it rocks along charmingly, but still takes the opportunity to smear shit over its face when you’re not paying attention. “If you look at our other two records, I think you can find elements of both those records in this record. You could say Angel Dust was a challenging record, it wasn’t as obvious as Real Thing. It had layers of stuff heaped on it and you had to go looking for it,

but it was there and it did quite well everywhere. People had to listen to it though, and it wasn’t an obvious hit single album. It’s also great to have a giant hit single — ‘Epic’ was beautiful for us.

Americans

loved

it, and

Americans have gotta

short attention span. This album is a nice combination of both. We went into it basically only knowing one thing, we knew we could be better. “The only thing me, Mike and Billy said was: ‘Let’s try something a bit less dense and layered. Let’s try and be a bit more direct and to the point, rather than putting poison gas in the air and smothering people.’ That was what we wanted to do. You can put this record into context with our other records, and to me that means this is honestly us without a doubt. Having said

that, I don’t want to seem like an asshole, a big positive guy, but I really don’t have any regrets about this record. I’ve never said that about a record before.” When and why did Trey Spruance decide to leave the band, just when he was on the verge of rock-stardom? What sorta person would not want to travel around the world and play music every night for a living? Has he got something better to do? “Y’know, Io and behold, one day when we were talking about going overseas to Europe, he said: ‘l’m not gonna get a passport. I’m not comfortable with the commit-

ment of touring for 16-18 months. I don't wanna leave home. I like my home. I have plenty of money for my family. I’ve never worked a day in my life and I don’t want to.' “Whaddya gonna say to that? It was like, see ya later! Have a nice life! It’s a funny

thing. Trey was and is in Mike Patton’s other

band Mr Bungle. Mike Patton, the only person that knew him, didn’t want him in the

band — he voted against him. Most people would be saying: ‘Oh, he's just the

guy from Mike’s other band in the band and he’s trying to get the guy in the band.’ It was absolutely, completely the opposite. Faith No More is

a band. We tour a lot and we have a

commitment that we make. We started

playing with him in April last year. Mike was saying: ‘The guy is going to be undependable in some way and he’s going to screw us up. I’m against putting our trust in him.’

“Trey helped us get what we wanted on the record, and I’m glad I got the chance to play with someone like that, because he has a very good, broad range of different musical styles. It was different to what we used to do with [Jim] on guitar and that was very exciting. It was always a battle with our old guitarist [Jim again]. It was always like: ‘I don't know what you’re talking about. I don’t like it. I’m not gonna do it, blah, blah, blah.’ This time [with Trey] it was like: ‘Well, I can do this,' or ‘how ‘bout this?’ It was real refreshing. It’s too bad the guy wanted to be a com-

Once you start thinking everything is beautiful, and you ’re guaranteed a happy life ever after, it’s a buncha bullshit. You’ll start suffering and your art will suffer for it.