Monthly Archives: May 2019

Mike Patton didn’t originally sing “As the Worm Turns,” which appears on Faith No More’s debut album We Care A Lot. But like a number for tunes that were originally sung by the band’s original vocalist Chuck Mosley, Patton took the song and made it his own.

The story of the end of the Mosley era and the beginning of the Patton era is a story of 1) annoyance and 2) a musical fork in the road.

As we explained in the “Introduce Yourself” passage, the rest of FNM just kind of got tired of dealing with Mosley as Mosley seemingly was moving in a different direction than the band.

“There was a certain point when I went to rehearsal, and Chuck wanted to do all acoustic guitar songs. It was just so far off the mark—I think I actually attacked him again,” said bassist Billy Gould, who had previously punched Mosley on tour.

So, FNM basically fired Mosley and went on the search for a new singer—apparently Chris Cornell was considered because Soundgarden had opened for FNM on a few dates of a previous tour. But, as Louder Sound explains, after drummer Mike Bordin and keyboardist Roddy Bottum visited Cornell’s house to jam, they discovered the chemistry with the singer wasn’t there.

A few years earlier, Patton had met Bordin and had given him a Mr. Bungle tape. Bottum had listened to it—and he was not a fan.

“Mike Bordin really liked his Mr. Bungle tape he gave us,” Bottum told Louder Sound. “So did Jim Martin. I didn’t. Not my cup of tea.”

Guitarist Jim Martin said that, among the other five singers the band had auditioned, Patton clearly had the most natural ability.

“We called him and told him to come down; we wanted him to go to work immediately,” Martin said. “He was very hesitant, like, ‘I can’t do this right now; it’s not a good day. I have a school box social to go to. And tomorrow is show and tell. If I had plenty of advance warning, I might be able to come down for a little while, but today is not good.’ I told him he was at a crossroads in life—one way was to become a singer, the other way was to be a record store clerk in a shitty little town in Northern California. He really was like that. Very clean and shiny, nice kid. Milk and cookies type.”

Patton eventually saw the light, joined the band, and eventually improved on many of Mosley’s numbers.

Here’s Mosley’s version with really beautiful piano and synthesizers by Bottum.

Like usual, Mosley does more of his spoken-word style that I never loved. But I really love the song when Patton does it.

Here he is in 1990 during the You Fat Bastards video taping at Brixton Academy in London …

… And in 2010.

Whether it’s Patton screaming it 25 years after the tune first came out or Mosley doing more speaking than singing, the song rocks pretty hard. Patton just makes it a little better.

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

Aside from Faith No More’s breakout hit “Epic” in 1989, I hadn’t seen many of the band’s official music videos. Not sure why. I guess when I stopped watching MTV in the mid-1990s, I stopped searching for music videos in general, even the ones from my favorite band.

But “Last Cup of Sorrow” from FNM’s Album of the Year is an interesting one. The video is a parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. The video features Mike Patton in the Jimmy Stewart character. Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Madeleine character. Bassist Billy Gould dressed as a woman. And drummer Mike Bordin, for some reason, eating a bagel.

I’ve always loved the song—it was the album’s second single, and it landed at No. 14 on the Billboard charts, better than the other two songs releases from the album—but until this very second, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the entire music video.

That’s kind of cool. And considering some of Patton’s career revolves around his love of movies—his second Fantomas album is a cover of a bunch of old soundtracks, and he’s produced a number of film scores in the past decade or so—it’s interesting that his love for that artistic genre had leaked into his most successful band.

“I always thought Vertigo had an interesting music video feel to it because of the [rich graphics] in the film,” the video’s director Joseph Kahn told Billboard, via Faith No More Followers. “Also the of idea of FNM’s Mike Patton playing Jimmy Stewart seemed funny to me. Basically you’re taking this really subversive person and putting him in this clean, sterile, technicolor 50s world, yet pieces of the subversiveness of his persona keep coming through this world. It’s like blending an old film with this totally weird 90s type of guy.”

As for the song itself, it’s dominated by Roddy Bottum’s keyboards, Mike Bordin’s crisp drumming and Gould’s “dub-ish” bass. As for Patton’s vocals, they’re gritty at times and then his voice turns more pure on the chorus. Like many of his songs, I enjoyed the contrast.

As Gould told Keyboard magazine in 1997, “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.”

Previously from Album of the Year:

• “Ashes to Ashes” (Day 48)
• “Naked In Front of This Computer” (Day 18)

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

If you’d like a soothing, do-wop style song in the middle of the all funk and metal on Faith No More’s The Real Thing album, “Edge of the World” is the song for you. It sounds like a jazzy love song, but beware: It’s basically the opposite.

It’s a song written from a pedophile’s point of view.

So, the lyrics of “Come here, my love/I’ll tell you a secret/Come closer, now/
I want you to believe it” and “You can trust me/I’m no criminal/But I’d kill my mother/To be with you/Be with you/Be with you/Be with you” all of a sudden, become that much more creepy.

As bassist Billy Gould—who composed the tune with drummer Mike Bordin and keyboardist Roddy Bottum—explained, via Song Facts, “The way we write is visual. We start by describing a scene to one another. Say there’s a guy in a beat-up Cadillac with ripped upholstery. Empty Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes and malt liquor bottles in the back. And there’s a baby seat. In fact, that image became ‘Edge Of The World.’ Mutated a little on the way.”

Yeah, I’ll say.

Previously from The Real Thing:

• “Underwater Love” (Day 32)
• “Epic” (Day 2)

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

One of my favorite songs on one of my least favorite Mike Patton-led Faith No More albums is “Ashes To Ashes.” And my ears didn’t deceive me. According to FNM bassist Billy Gould, this song just clicked when it was being created.

“The bulk of that song was written the first week,” Gould told Keyboard magazine in 1997, via Faith No More Followers. “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.”

It features Patton crooning, it features Patton shouting and it features Patton’s intensity. Meanwhile, the guitar is heavy, the keyboard is haunting and the bass is brooding.

The Album of the Year record didn’t get great reviews, and ultimately, FNM broke up soon after it was released. But “Ashes To Ashes” is a good enough song that it would have starred on any of FNM’s albums (and the last 20 seconds or so of the tune is some of my favorite FNM music ever).

The band even made a music video for the single—which peaked at No. 23 in the U.S. and made the top 10 in Australia and Finland.

The song also made for a fantastic moment during FNM’s reunion. Playing the Troubadour in L.A. in 2015, Patton did a little crowd surfing on his way to the bar while singing “Ashes To Ashes.” Would have been pretty cool to be in the room that night. Make sure to check out 1:20 when he gives an epic scream from the top of the bar.

Previously from Album of the Year:

• “Naked In Front of This Computer” (Day 18)

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

I’ve discovered a few vocal coaches who react to other singers on YouTube, and I quite enjoy watching them dissect and analyze live performances from musicians of all genres. Earlier this week, the Rebecca Vocal Coach channel (with more than 400,000 subscribers) watched and commented on Faith No More’s “Midlife Crisis” performance from The Tonight Show in 1993.

Naturally, she took a close look at Mike Patton to watch who she called “a fascinating creature.”

Just a few seconds into the song, she said she was drawn in by his attitude and, I don’t know, his essence.

“Straight away, I was blown away by the rhythmic, the beat, that pulse that you need inside your body when you sing,” she said.

She also called him a “great manipulator” of the larynx, and she certainly appreciated his contrast in vocal styles in the song, going from a clean sound to plenty of distortion. She also called him a spider, because she doesn’t know where he’s going to go in the song. Then, she called him a wildebeest.

Rebecca seemed blown away by the performance though there are plenty of other Faith No more songs that show off Patton’s vocal range and skills. Apparently, another one of the YouTube vocal coaches I watch, Beth Roars, is also going to create a video on Patton. I’m interested to hear what she has to say as well.