Faith No More Quotes

1992 1993 1994 1995 1997

The following are quotes from FNM band members as they appear in various articles.

If you're interested in reading any of the articles quoted here, go to the complete listing of all articles and show reviews at: The Caca Volante Database.

This week's quotes are taken from the interview:
Swedish Television, Interview with Billy Gould and Mike Patton, by Tony Balogh
March 1995
Thanks to Johan Svard

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1992:

In the article that appeared in Guitar Magazine, September 1992; the author reports the band members' attitudes about their new album: Angel Dust.

• "It really pissed me off. I don't think the difference between the parts they wanted me to play and the parts I played was enough of a difference to affect our careers. It seems like they wind up the bass player and the drummer." --- Jim Martin
  
  
• "I got one entire song from fortune cookies (Land of Sunshine). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it." --- Mike Patton
  
  
• "Puffy's the only guy who's jealous. "All drummers want to be singers. I think it's a myth that the singer needs to be the focus. Bands perpetuate that myth. With somebody like Sebastian Bach it makes sense. Look at him. He could be in an Avon ad." --- Mike Patton
  
  
• "It's (RV) about a slob sitting around who doesn't do anything. I kind of identify with it." --- Mike Patton
  
  
• "They weren't really satisfied with some of the things that I was coming up with for their songs. I think that was the pressure showing, because I thought the parts were fine." --- Jim Martin
  

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1992 1993 1994 1995 1997

In "Midlife Crisis?" (Kerrang!, Issue 452, July 17, 1993), Steffan Chirazi talks with some of the band members towards the end of the Angel Dust tour.

• "I was convinced he (Patton) was going to shit onstage. We'd just been talking about it the night before, how no one's taken a shit on a big stage - G.G. Allin in the clubs, but not places like that." --- Billy Gould
  
  
• "I'm glad he didn't. "It wouldn't have suited the day at all; It wouldn't have been a nice thing to do." --- Mike Bordin
  
  
• "This record saw us get over the category thing and we liked this record better than the last one, because it was more interesting for us, so it was nicer to tour. It's still been hard." --- Billy Gould
  
  
• "I don't think he (Martin) has any idea what we're doing; I don't think he understands our music at all." --- Billy Gould
  
  
• "Nothin' much is happenin'; I'm just sittin' around drinkin' beers. I have my scrambler, so I can listen in on private conversations - mostly these old bastards calling young girls. And I have my binoculars. I was watching hookers in Portugal with them right ouside my window.!" --- Jim Martin
  
  
• "But in my opinion it's definitely time to do something new, because this last record didn't work out all that great and didn't measure up to what it could have." --- Jim Martin
  

1992 1993 1994 1995 1997

In Interview: Faith No More, Brilliant Studios, San Francisco, Friday, November 18, 1994, Jai Young Kim interviews Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin, and Trey Spruance, just after they finished recording King For A Day...Fool For A Lifetime. Trey was still in the band at this point.

• "Angst-ridden. Good punctuation. Good definition and instruments for me. No keyboards." --- Roddy Bottum describing 'The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies'
  
  
• "I like that song, it's pretty different for us. It's very laid back, groovy. There are some real strings on it, the punctuating sort of strings... a sort of Soul II Soul vibe." --- Roddy Bottum describing 'Evidence'
  
  
• "Yeah, it creates a pretty viable, alternate world to me. There aren't too many holes in it. You can actually get lost in that world without having something obstruct your visit that would remind you that it's what you would call a rock band playing it." --- Trey Spruance describing 'Evidence'
  
  
• "I like the chords that the horn guys did during the verses; they sound really thick. That's my favorite part. That and that little spy section... That's a nice little breath of fresh air. It opens up into a space that the album never touches upon anywhere else." --- Trey Spruance describing 'Star A.D.'
  
  
• "I knew they were trying out different guitar players. Yeah, once the Jim Martin spot opened up, there was a whole bunch of auditions happening. The obvious thing that people think is, 'Okay, now Mike has a chance to get his friend in the band.' It really actually is pretty opposite of that. I think Mike was the one who was most against it. 'Cause for whatever the reasons, there's plenty of reasons..." --- Trey Spruance
  
  
• "We didn't even know if we were gonna make another record. It was very difficult, changing guitar players, and all the things that go on when you're having down time. We wanted to make sure this record was absolutely the best record of our lives. This record, what you hear, is our blood, and it's no joke. This is us saying if we only have one more record to make, how is it gonna be absolutely the *best* record? 100%, which it's gotta be that way, you gotta do it like you mean it, you can't bullshit around, you can't be self-satisfied and fat. You gotta do it like that. You *got* to. And that's the only way to get a special result." --- Mike Bordin
  

1992 1993 1994 1995 1997

In "Dangerous Jokers" (Nieuwe Revu, 17-24 May 1995), Serge Simonart interviews Mike Patton.

• "Big Jim is over and out, as far as I am concerned."
  
  
• "Trey Spruance didn't want to tour for ages. And Dean Menta has always been our guitar-roadie during Angel Dust, and I remember him playing fantastically during soundchecks. During each gig, he was watching from the side of the stage, seeing Big Jim play stuff that he could play better."
  
  
• "There's a lot of positive stuff to say about him... Why can't I think of any now? (laughs) Oh, here's something positive: Big Jim's best trait of character was that he has always been himself... which was his worst trait of character at the same time."
  
  
• "Oh, have you seen Beavis and Butt-Head when they watch one of our videos and Beavis goes: 'These guys sound just like the Chili Peppers?' As if I haven't heard that one before!"
  
  
• "Recently, a girl chained herself to me with hand-cuffs after a gig, just because I refused to talk to her. I politely declined, though. I am a well-bred boy. I don't want to be too specific, but... it got pretty ugly."
  

• "Despite the aural onslaught, King (For A Day) is not an assault I think it's us being us, more than anything. I think we finally had the resources to be us on this record." --- Mike Patton
  
  
• "Revenge is good. I think revenge is healthy too, and if you can use music in that way, a sort of therapeutic way for yourself, it can't do any harm. So if King (For A Day...Fool For A Lifetime) is angry in any way, it's angry in a random, chaotic, healthy way. Like the guy who goes into a building, shoots a bunch of holes in the wall and then leaves. He didn't kill anybody." --- Mike Patton
  
  
• "That's the one (Evidence) I'm most proud of. All the loud songs turned out really great on this album, really aggressive, and we've always done that really well. But the smoother songs I've never felt we've gotten exactly right. And this one is pretty damn close to being *exactly* right." --- Mike Bordin
  
  
• "To lead people by the hand is wrong, so we just keep doing what we're doing while trying to not be too disgusted with ourselves." --- MIke Bordin
  
  
• "We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all." --- Mike Patton
  

1992 1993 1994 1995 1997

"Faith No More - The Making of Album of the Year"(Keyboard Magazine, September 1997)

• "Usually we put out a record every three years, and then we tour it to death for a year or so until we're sick of each other. The last thing we want to do after a tour is go right back into the studio, so on the last tour [King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime] we decided to cut it short, stop while we were ahead, and get back into the studio and crank out another album while we had some momentum. --- Billy Gould
  
  
• "My schedule was pretty hectic at that time, but to tell you the truth, everybody's schedule was hectic. And so it was a situation of making the record around people's other projects. It was sort of precarious, but it ended up coming together pretty well. We've always done records as a group together in one studio at one time, but this one was all done in parts." --- Roddy Bottum
  
  
• "The bulk of that song was written the first week. We arranged it here, and then we sent Patton a tape. He was in Italy, but he came up with the lyrics and the singing right away. It was one of those songs that just clicked -- one of those songs that we do most naturally. That's our sound." --- Billy Gould describing 'Ashes To Ashes'
  
  
• "Roddy, Puffy, and myself like to jam together. We're the guys who started the band, so we like to get in the same room and play. A lot of my playing comes off the drummer. So when we get together, we can really work things out together and fine-tune stuff. A lot of times we come away with a bed to work from." --- Billy Gould
  
  
• "Angel Dust was like a hurricane coming - a big, ugly storm. King for a Day was like when the storm was hitting you, with all this stuff flying all over the place. And this record...this record is kind of like digging through the wreckage and pulling out bodies afterwards. --- Billy Gould
  
  In the same article, the author takes notes as Billy Gould describes some of the songs from Album Of The Year:
  
  Stripsearch
  
• "The loop in the beginning made such a difference. Before we put it in, the song sounded more like Queensryche. But after the loop, it sounded more like Portishead or something. It gave it a darker, different slant. It didn't sound like a rock band anymore."
  
  Last Cup Of Sorrow
  
• "Mike can do a lot of wild things with his voice, for one. But, yeah, he sang through an old Telefunken tube mic and we compressed the living shit out of it."
  
  Naked In Front Of The Computer
  
• "Actually, this song is about email. Patton is kind of obsessed with the idea of how people can communicate and have relationships over the computer without talking or ever meeting. So this is an extreme version of that concept. Funny thing is...the image of someone sitting naked in front of a computer might not have made sense to people a few years ago, but now everybody knows what it means. It's become part of our culture."
  
  Mouth To Mouth
  
• "This song has an interesting story. Last year I went to Albania. I got an old car, and I drove through the country - a country that's been isolated from the world for like 30 years. So I went in there, and one thing I noticed were a lot of thug-type guys running around in leather jackets with ghetto blasters, but they weren't listening to heavy metal music: it was this loud Arabic music, and it was really inspiring."
  
  She Loves Me Not
  
• "This song almost didn't make it on the record. We almost didn't even record vocals for it because it's so different from all of the other songs. I wrote this song, and I was almost embarrassed to play it for anybody in the band because it's so soft - but at the same time it's a good song. It's like a Boyz II Men song of something. I didn't play it for anybody for, like, a half a year, and then finally I played it for Puffy. He thought we should give it a try, so I gave it to Patton, and he said, 'I wrote words, but they're pretty over-the-top.' But we went forward with it, and he really sang his ass off."
  
  Got That Feeling
  
• "This is a Mike Patton 100-percent original. Basically it's a song about a guy who's a compulsive gambler. I think it would make an amazing video."
  
  Paths Of Glory
  
• "This song is all about a mood. It's not: 'Entertain me.' It's a vibe."
  
  Pristina
  
• "This song took quite a bit of work in the studio because there are so many big open chords of distorted guitar, which doesn't leave much room for anything else. You've got room for drums, vocals, and maybe a deep bass, but trying to get the strings to cut through was a challenge. We spent a lot of time EQing and working with them to get hem placed just right."
  

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