How did Mike Patton join Faith No More?
No other singer since AC/DC recruited Brian Johnson for their monster-selling Back in Black album had there been such a fortuitous and successful exchange of a singer in rock. Jumping into the frontman role for 1989’s The Real Thing, Mike Patton filled the hi-topped shoes of original lead Chuck Mosely with aplomb, effortlessly enmeshing himself into hard rock’s Faith No More‘s eccentric musical patchwork of confoundingly disparate influences and smart-arse genre contrarianism.
Faith No More’s roots can be traced back to 1981 when bassist and drummer Billy Gould and Mike Bordin were playing in the earlier post-punk indebted incarnation Faith No Man in California’s Bay Area, the shifting line-up eventually bringing in keyboardist Roddy Bottum, guitarist Jim Martin, and charismatic frontman Mosley, following a six-month spell with Courtney Love on vocal duties. Swapping the ‘Man’ for a ‘More’ in their title and pursuing a path of heavy funk, the band’s newly settled membership cut their first demo in 1984, followed by their independent LP We Care A Lot on Mordam Records.
Signing to Slash and enjoying a bigger budget, their major label debut, Introduce Yourself, and its re-recorded ‘We Care A Lot’ single brought further success, helping with an extensive 50-odd-date tour with the up-and-coming Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was during their first set of shows in Europe in the summer of ’88 that Mosely’s future in the band was shot. Erratic behaviour and drunken brawls led to Mosely’s dismissal and an urgent need for a replacement.
Briefly considering Pop-O-Pies singer and friend of the band Joe Callahan and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, the band remembered encountering a teenage fan who thrust a demo tape of his Mr Bungle band into their hands during a gig in Eureka. Impressed with the tape’s eclectic flavours and animated character, Martin gave the Humboldt State University student a call.
“We auditioned about five other people, and it was pretty clear that Patton had superior natural ability,” Martin told Kerrang. “We called him and told him to come down; we wanted him to go to work immediately. 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.”
Convincing the label of Patton’s frontman chops with a demo tape recorded on a Tascam, the new singer was pulled from little Eureka and dropped into San Francisco, tasked with conceiving lyrics and melodies for the upcoming album in a fortnight. Playing his first live show with Faith No More on November 4th, ’88, Patton and the band entered Sausalito’s Studio D to cut their defining The Real Thing. While the UK were quick to embrace their offbeat blend of hefty groove rap, it took the release of ‘Epic’ to win over their home country, helped by the bombastically cartoonish video played every five minutes on MTV.
Was Mike Patton lucky to be in Faith No More?
Patton’s creative output has always maintained a dogged pursuit in firmly eschewing the mainstream, from fronting Mr Bungle, Fantôma, and Tomahawk to having collaborated with the likes of John Zorn, Merzbow, and Kool Keith. With such a disregard for appealing to the musical middle of the road, Patton would likely have become a cult artist on alternative’s fringes without his lucky break back in ’88.
However, Patton’s creative freedom was certainly fast-tracked by the mammoth success of The Real Thing, affording him the luxury of indulging in all manner of unorthodox bands and side projects that fill his hectic schedule to this day. While Patton may be ambivalent about Faith No More’s presence in his chequered musical CV, no one could deny that ‘Epic’ and its enormous success blew the doors off and invited Patton’s new, creative horizons.
