Tag Archives: 365 days of mike patton

Straight out of the late 1990s, when people were just beginning to embrace the internet and email and all the possibilities of both, this song on Faith No More’s Album of the Year record was written solely by Patton (a rather rare accomplishment for this band). He apparently was fascinated by the power of being online.

“Actually, this song is about email,” FNM bassist Billy Gould told Keyboard Magazine in 1997. “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.”

Yes, and you probably don’t need me to spell out what Gould (and Patton) are talking about. After all, there aren’t too many reasons to be nude in front of your laptop screen.

A number of reviews for Album of the Year—which was the band’s last for 18 years—were not kind, and it’s hard to blame them. It’s my least favorite Patton-led FNM album, and Rolling Stone wrote, “All in all, Faith No More are floundering around desperately, groping for a sense of identity and direction in a decade that clearly finds them irrelevant.”

Maybe FNM was (slightly) irrelevant at the time, but the song’s title and subject matter have not gone out of style. These days, everybody knows what sitting naked in front of your computer means.

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

After the astonishing success of The Real Thing album—Mike Patton’s first effort with Faith No More and a certified hit, thanks in large part to the single “Epic”—the band had to figure out what to accomplish on their follow-up album, Angel Dust. Aside from perhaps guitarist Jim Martin, nobody wanted a repeat of their rap/funk/rock sound from The Real Thing. The band wanted something different.

“If you just look at the transition from The Real Thing to Angel Dust, that’s a band that’s absolutely willing to let go of something that was really successful,” producer Andy Wallace told Diffuser. “They could’ve done The Real Thing Pt. 2 and probably made a really nice living, but they decided to really distance themselves from that sound that they helped create and move in a completely different direction. And their instincts were right: Angel Dust stands the test of time.”

Aside from the music video that was released (more on that in a sec), there’s not much strange about “Everything’s Ruined.” It feels like a straight-ahead rock number with a fairly straight-ahead vocal performance from Patton.

Even keyboardist Roddy Bottum once called it “radio friendly” and a “pop song.” In fact, the working title for the song was reportedly “The Carpenters,” because it was such an easy listening tune.

“It’s one of the more straight-forward rockers we have on this album,” Patton said, via Faith No More Followers. “Compare it to something like “Surprise You’re Dead” (we’ll get there) from the last album. I think you’ll see how we’ve changed. You can’t put your finger on it, but it’s there. We’re getting better at playing what we’re visualizing.”

The music video, on the other hand, is strange.

It features the band (and other random people) playing in front of B-roll like video footage (a bride and groom walking, pigs in a pen, men riding horses, two people sunbathing, etc.).

The reason for the amateurish video was simple. According to bassist Billy Gould, it had to be low budget.

“The easy answer is, Warner [the band’s music label had] spent the video budget on “A Small Victory” and “Midlife Crisis” so that when it came time to “Everything’s Ruined,” there wasn’t much left,” Gould told the Faith No More Blog in 2012. “It was our idea to take this further and make a video as cheap as humanly possible, in one of those video booths like they had at county fairs, where you sing and dance in front of a blue screen. We didn’t quite get to do that, but we got it as close as possible.”

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

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.

https://twitter.com/KenPark81536571/status/1066909888381624320

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.