365 Days of Mike Patton: “Take This Bottle,” Faith No More (1995)

If you once enjoyed Faith No More and yet stopped paying attention after its biggest hit “Epic” was released in 1990, you might remember the guitarist with the long black frizzy hair and the long black beard who looked to be about 20 years older than the rest of the band.

You know, this guy on the right.

That’s Jim Martin, and he played on the first four Faith No More albums (two of which were not fronted by Mike Patton and which we are completely ignoring on the 365 Days of Mike Patton (well, there might be a few exceptions to that because, in reality, we care a lot)). He managed some great guitar work on The Real Thing and Angel Dust albums, but he was kicked out of the band in 1993. The problem apparently was that Martin didn’t want to adapt to playing new music. The line on Martin has always been that he wanted to keep making The Real Thing over and over again and balked at the new direction the band was taking with the Angel Dust follow up. So, keyboardist Roddy Bottum fired him by fax.

“Getting rid of him was a real cleansing exercise,” Bottum said, via Metal Hammer. “There’s no point keeping someone in the band who’s only there for the money or something. Jim wasn’t committed to what the band wanted to do. I’m good at sacking band members. And by fax was such a… 90s way of doing things.”

Patton apparently did not enjoy his time with Martin at the end.

“Mike HATED Jim, wouldn’t even look at him on stage unless he was about to throw something at him,” Bottum said.

That was apparently the inspiration for the country-tinged song “Take This Bottle” from the King For a Day album. It’s because Patton apparently used to throw bottles at Martin while on stage.

“We weren’t having a good time together and it was pretty obvious,” Patton said in that Metal Hammer interview. “We saw it coming for too long, while we were making the Angel Dust album. The whole time for two years while we were touring, we kept hoping it would get better. After that much time you can’t help but feel like an idiot for feeling that way. Basically, what it came down to was that he couldn’t hold up his weight musically.

“When The Real Thing broke out, it was a shock. It’s kinda like being around somebody you don’t like, like a co-worker or family, somebody you’ve known for a long time but you realize you don’t like them. You get to know them, everything’s OK, you move in with them, everything’s fine but then all of a sudden, you realize what’s going on. You realize you don’t like them, so you HATE them, you know. You waste all your energy hating them, you hate them and hate them. So you kick them OUT of your house to pacify this hate.”

I don’t particularly love “Take This Bottle,” but when I saw FNM live in 1997 with my buddy Jeremy and his brother Mike, we had a cool tale to tell from that show.

In the last minute or so of this song, Patton retrieved a bottle of red wine and began shaking it at the crowd so it would splatter on anybody who was close enough to the stage. Mike was close enough, and I remember him coming up to us after the show, a sweaty beast with red streaks on his white undershirt. He had a big smile on his face. He had taken (what was inside) the bottle, and he had walked away loving it.

At least Patton didn’t throw it at him.

To follow along on the 365 days of Patton, click here for a list of each day’s post.