FAITH NO MORAL
by Mike Gitter
Metallica loves 'em enough to take 'em on tour.
Axl Rose stagedives for 'em. Even wimps like Def
Leppard's Joe Elliot say their record was just about
the best thing he's heard all year-him and the
rest of the world, that is. You see, when they titled
their latest album The Real Thing, they meant it.
It is a fresh, mean record that refuses to be
pigeonholed; it's as diverse and unconventional
as Faith No More could get while still rocking like
madmen. The final vinyl product provides BIG
guitars courtesy of crusty old man Jim Martin, a
rabble-rousing stomp from tribal to hardcore beats
via bassist Billy Gould and drummer Mike Bordin,
Roddy Bottum's eerie keyboard flourishes and
wide-range howling from the lungs of Mike Patton.
Jim puts i best? It's not five different people
trying to sound like the same person. It's five
different jerks, all trying to sound individual but
fitting together."
San Francisco, dawn of the 80's: "Mike [Bordin]
and I were in this band called Faith No Man,"
recalls Gould. "We released a single, kicked out
the singer and changed the name of the band to
Faith No More. It wasn't as loose or interesting as
what we're doing now. It was a tight-fisted thing."
Early hometown gigs with just Bordin, Gould and
Bottum were met with relative indifference. "We
were called 'evil geeks' or 'electronic playpen.
music," says Bordin. "But if you look at what was
happening at that time, not a lot of bands were do-
ing their own thing. There were a ton of hardcore
bands-Flipper, DRI, Verbal Abuse, Black
Athletes, Toiling Midgets, the Sleepers, MDC-
and if you think we don't fit in now, it was even
more the case back then. We weren't cool guys
and we didn't hang out with the cool guy scene."
"Excuse me, I've always been a cool guy
and have always hung out with other cool
guys, pipes in Roddy.
"Plus, our early gigs were more extreme."
says Bordin, "We'd burn tons of incense
"And imply devil worship," says Botturn
"We liked to impart a sense of terror," says
Bordin "We would hang up bloodied
banners and have these ominous keyboards.
It was more of a spectacle than anything else
What we really wanted to do was play a
'skip like an evil broken record with a totally
wild rhythm against which somebody would
simply talk. We were more of a performance
thing than anything else.
"The original intent, actually, was to do a
different show every time we played. Even
tually, we started to get good at the hypnotic
skip thing. Then, we got our original vo-
calist, Chuck (Mosely). He started off as more
of a screamer, but once we realized he had
a pretty docent voice, we convinced him to
maybe try singing. We sort of blundered into
being a rock band. Now, we're actually the
opposite of what we started out as"
After booting guitarist Jake (who went on
to play in Crucifox), they settled upon then
clean-shaven Jim Martin, a friend of Mike's
who gigged with Metallica's Cliff Burton in
a band called Vicious Hatred. "All he wanted
to do at first was play solos, says Billy "Of
"I hated the guy" Gould says.
"It got absurd," adds Bordin. "He was
freaking out on us, telling us that our music
was evil. EVIL!?!"
Gould continues. "The funny thing is that
now, it almost feels like a whole different
band. In the past, we all hated each other
a little and we hated Chuck an awful lot. Now
that Chuck's gone we all mysteriously seem
to like each other and play with a real sense
of chemistry. It feels like a whole new band!"
Introducing man of the hour, 21-year-old
self-described jock and vocalist Mike Patton.
He's also been known to front a band.
remarkably similiar to Faith No More called
Mr. Bungle, with
whom he still gigs in
between FNM's hec-
tic touring schedule.
He was their only ap-
plicant for the gig to
replace Chuck and
has become the
band's unifying ele-
ment. "We had these
Mr. Bungle
tapes," says Jim,
"one had the heaviest
sub-Slayer vocals im-
aginable and the
course, we all hated solos. We had to keep that sounded like
him in check up until this past record." They
recorded a demo tape which found its way
into the hands of Mordam Records' Ruth
Schwartz, who signed the band to her fledg-
ling label and fronted them the scratch to
record more tracks. The result? Faith No
More's '85 debut, We Care A Lot.
Love" comes out of that, it's about drown-
ing. Emotional drowning that is-fears of
being exposed, fears of becoming obsessed.
fears of being hurt."
There are things Faith No More aren't
scared of. Bill elaborates. "The greenhouse
effect is largely overrated. It's a scam by
nuclear plants to greatly over-exaggerate the
problem. The greenhouse effect isn't going
to go to the dimension they predict in thirty
years, it's more like thirty thousand years.
They just want to convince people that
they're going to need nuclear power."
Jim's got guns. He supposedly turned
James Hetfield on to hunting. He owns two
M-1 Carbines, an 8
millimeter, a semi-
automatic machine
gun and two pistols.
"It's kind of like throw-
ing rocks when you're
a kid," he chuckles.
"This is the way big
guys throw rocks."
What about facing
thousands of blood-
thirsty die-hard Metal-
lica fans on the Faith's
recent West Coast
dates opening for
Hetfield, Ulrich and
Co.? "Oh, that!" says
Bill. "It had its mo-
other had a singer "It's not five different people trying
Sade! We had trouble to sound like the same person. It's
figuring out just what five different jerks, all trying to
the guy looked like." sound individual but fitting together" most part it was cool.
ments, but for the
"We figured Mr.
Metallica went out of
Bungle...he had to be this huge fat guy" their way to make us comfortable and part
says Bordin.
of their scene. James would come out and
jam with us on 'War Pigs' and Kirk would do
the solo on 'Epic.' It was great.
Patton rushes to his own defense. "They
"Ruth pegged it from the beginning." wanted David Lee and ended up with me."
interjects Mike. "She said that either we were Onstage, he's a tornado-a sharp,
going to put out a classic cult record or we welcome contrast to Mosely's overrated, af-
were going to become hugely successful-fected gesticulations. A nonstop flurry of
no in between."
They toured the U.S. in a beat-up station
wagon and signed with Slash Records for
1987's Introduce Yourself Lp. They won a bit
of attention and college airplay with a re-
recorded "We Care A Lot," and for all their
trouble got tagged as some sort of Beastie
Boys rip-off because of the song's guitar
heavy rapability.
"We're different than them," says Jim.
"We play instruments and they play these
giant hydraulic dicks."
To say that former vocalist Mosely and
Faith No More didn't get along would be like
saying San Francisco was a mildly inconve
nient place to be this past October. Follow
ing a successful though internally
tumultuous European tour, the erratic Mosely
was shown the door amidst flying rumors of
alleged drug use and very definite flying fists
arms, legs, diving masks, fake tits, rubber
faces and assorted pyrotechnics.
"It's physical, aggressive music that
makes me want to thump!" laughs Patton.
"It makes me feel big, powerful-ugly feel-
ings...in a beautiful way, of course. Fear is
a big part of it, a real influence for me. It's
probably the most important emotion there
is. Why do you walk down a certain side of
the street? Up to this day, I'm still afraid of
toilets. Don't ask me why, but since childhood
I've been afraid of what's down the toilet
"I like being scared. If I listen to something
that's so good it scares me or moves me, I
really appreciate it. The song "The Morning
After" comes out of that film Siesta where
this woman wakes up on an airport runway
only to find out at the end that she's been.
dead the whole time. There's also the whole
aspect of fear of relationships. "Underwater
"At one of the first shows in Salt Lake City.
Mike was trying out stage banter and her
asked the crowd, 'Would all the Mormons in
the crowd put their hands up.' The 'fingers'
started coming up and the spit started to fly.
Of course, we figured we'd be 'cooperative'
and I ended up playing the same mono-
tonous chord for a half-hour straight. There
were twelve thousand people yelling for
us-to get off stage, that is!
"The funny thing is, I don't think they
minded us that much. I guess people need
something to get pissed off at, something to
rally against-that's most people's natural
disposition anyhow. They need something to
get pissed off about and we give it to them.
Now that's something to brag about!"
DISCOGRAPHY
Faith No Man "Song of Liberty"""It's Quiet in
Heaven" (Ministry of Propaganda) 1983
Faith No More We Care A Lot (Mordam) 1985
Introduce Yourself (Slash) '87
The Real Thing (Slash/Reprise) 1989