Karpe Faith No More

In the 1990s
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-78952-649-3
Verlag: Sonicbond Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

It may have taken them a few years to achieve a stable line-up, but Faith No More did just that with the arrival of enigmatic frontman Mike Patton in 1988. By 1990, the San Francisco quintet were flying high on the back of their third album, The Real Thing, and the influential anthem for a generation, 'Epic'. Becoming a household name and mainstream chart botherers with colourful and diverse songs ranging in style from heavy metal to jazz, and rap rock to lounge music, Faith No More refused to follow trends and instead pushed forward with a gung-ho attitude and a talent for songwriting built around sonic experimentation.
The band released the critically acclaimed Angel Dust, as well as King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime and the ironically titled Album of the Year, before stunning fans by parting ways in 1998. Faith No More in the 1990s is the story of a largely rewarding but tension-filled decade for rock music's greatest underdogs.
Providing a detailed timeline of events, frenetic touring schedules, and, most importantly, the songs, this book documents the rise and progression of one of the most distinctive bands of all time.

An avid music fan, author, and journalist, Matt Karpe has written for multiple print and online magazines over the last decade, including Powerplay Rock & Metal Magazine, and the punk and hardcore publication, Down For Life. Faith No More in the 1990s is Matt's seventh book overall, his previous releases being We Own the Night: The Underground of the Modern American Hard Rock Scene, two volumes of Nu Metal: Resurgence; and the Sonicbond published Nu Metal: A Definitive Guide, Korn On Track, and Tool On Track. He lives in March, Cambridgeshire, UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Karpe, Matt

Leseproben

Chapter 1

1989: The Real Thing

The Real Thing

Personnel:

Mike Patton: vocals

Jim Martin: guitars

Billy Gould: bass guitar

Roddy Bottum: keyboards, rhythm guitar

Mike Bordin: drums

Record label: Slash

Recorded at: Studio D, Sausalito, California, December 1988-January 1989

Produced by: Matt Wallace

Release date: 20 June

Running time: 54:58 (CD and Cassette releases), 43:22 (Vinyl release)

Highest chart positions: Australia: 2, US: 11, UK: 30

Tracklisting: 1. ‘From Out of Nowhere’ 2. ‘Epic’ 3. ‘Falling to Pieces’ 4. ‘Surprise! You’re Dead!’ 5. ‘Zombie Eaters’ 6. ‘The Real Thing’ 7. ‘Underwater Love’ 8. ‘The Morning After’ 9. ‘Woodpecker from Mars’ 10.’ War Pigs’ (non-vinyl) 11. ‘Edge of the World’ (non-vinyl)

(All songs written by Faith No More except ‘War Pigs’ by Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward)

Things were changing; it was still the Whitesnake and Poison world, the new breed hadn’t come around just yet. We were insinuating ourselves into the mainstream, taking up the charge from bands like Metallica. You needed bands like Metallica and Guns N’ Roses to make it huge but keep in that punk rock energy. There was less and less nutrition and more acts just surviving, so there had to be some kind of change in there, opening up new fields where something could grow.

Mike Bordin, Loudersound, 2019

Faith No More’s third album was more or less completely written before Mike Patton’s arrival, his lyrical contributions hastily added in just two weeks.

Basing his writing around the sounds and rhythms of words instead of their actual meanings, which often led to undecipherable sequences and passages very much left open to interpretation; his unorthodox methods allowed the final pieces of the songs to come together quicker than perhaps the band first anticipated.

Having already visited Studio D in Sausalito in 1986 to record Introduce Yourself, Faith No More returned there to record The Real Thing at the end of 1988- after first demoing the new batch of songs at Dancing Dog Studios in the warehouse district of Emeryville. While there, the band worked with Dave Bryson, who owned the studio and in just four years’ time would be the guitarist and co-vocalist for Counting Crows – a rock band signed to Geffen Records and whose debut LP (August and Everything After) would sell over ten million copies worldwide.

The recording process at Studio D ran into January, thus beginning what would be the band’s most important year yet. Becoming known for its live room with a 20-foot ceiling and tuneable acoustics, Studio D had also played host to prestigious artists such as Aretha Franklin, Huey Lewis & the News, and Earth, Wind & Fire, since opening its doors in 1984; the ideal setting for an act to utilise all of its functions in order to create music that would stand out from the crowd.

Matt Wallace first met Billy Gould when he produced Sharp Young Men’s three-song demo back in 1982. Impressed by Gould’s determination and musical vision, the two men remained friends and Wallace was always the first person to spring to mind when Faith No More required a producer. Working on both albums, which came before it, Wallace left no stone unturned in making The Real Thing sound as big and fresh and loud as possible. Roddy Bottum’s keyboards were more melodic than ever, and the guitar work was brought further into the spotlight after Martin and Wallace searched high and low in trying to achieve the guitar tone Martin so desperately craved. Even visiting the world-famous Sound City Studios in Van Nuys to watch Rick Rubin and engineer David Blanco in action whilst working on Wolfsbane’s Live Fast, Die Fast record, Martin and Wallace then returned to Studio D and spent three days painstakingly searching for the best sounds and settings. Before the duo began guitar tracking, each day, the two would partake in a morning ritual which started by playing Ennio Morricone’s ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’ as loud as the studio speakers allowed. Once the song ended, the two men saluted the speakers, and then each other, and only once these things were undertaken would the guitar tracking commence.

Mike Patton’s vocals exercised an assortment of styles and ranges that very few if any, could replicate, and during the recording process, there were times when Patton would offer up ideas to improve the songs, but his input was met with resounding refusal. Whether or not the singer felt like a hired gun in those early days is hard to say, but instead of taking issue with being repeatedly shot down, Patton focused on the job in hand, his jack of all trades voice box swiftly making him as equally important to Faith No More as any other member of the group. The core force remained firmly intact, though, as Gould’s stirring bass lines and Mike Bordin’s thunderous drum sections added a strong sense of familiarity, and for the first time in their existence, the quintet was happy with the finished product. An explosive set of songs had been created which perfectly flowed simply because there was no flow, each song different to the last thanks to a conscious decision to avoid repetition. Funnily enough, Matt Wallace wasn’t so impressed with his work when he heard the final mixes and the album’s overall sound, feeling he had overdosed on high-frequency EQ and compression. Virtually inconsolable, he even considered quitting music production altogether and finding a new career path, until Faith No More shared their delight at how grandiose their new record sounded. Containing lethal blasts of heavy metal, infectious bouts of synth pop, progressive and funk rock delicacies and even a bit of rap metal to really spice things up, The Real Thing was a treasure trove of goodies accompanied by a darkened sense of humour. Slash Records president, Bob Biggs, liked the album so much that he wanted it to be titled ‘Album of the Year’, and while he didn’t get his wish, Faith No More would keep the name in mind for use further down the line.

Originally plotting for a March or April release, various delays resulted in the album not getting its launch until the summer. The cover art was partly to blame, the image depicting a liquid flame coming from a milky substance as the main focus, with an area of cracked earth forming the background. Slash Records created the artwork reportedly inspired by Harold Edgerton, whose ‘Milk Drop Coronet’ photo from 1937 was taken with a camera he had created himself which was able to freeze the impact of milk being spilt on a table. In the 1930s, an image such as Edgerton’s was impossible to be captured by any cameras of the time, and his work would go on to be considered among the first steps towards modern electronic flash technology. With no input required from the band, Slash refused to add Faith’s eight-pointed star logo to the cover, its reference to chaos and order through disorder not the kind of statement the label wanted to associate with both the album and the band ahead of their attempt to finally become a breakthrough act.

Further delays to the release were partly to do with the hand injury Martin had sustained during his scuffle with Joe Ventress in London, as well as an unfortunate but scary stage accident suffered by Patton. Taping up his hand and playing through the pain to finish the final UK tour with Chuck Mosley, Martin had to have his hand re-broken when he returned to America as it had failed to properly heal. Before Martin’s visit to the doctor, Faith No More played another show at San Francisco’s I-Beam. Also acting as a music video shoot for the album’s lead single, Patton was full of his usual uncontrollable energy. Breaking a tooth on his microphone stand early on was just a minor footnote because what came next could have easily stalled the singer’s momentum before it had even got into full flow. During a rendition of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’, Patton slipped and cut his right hand on some broken glass from a beer bottle, the persistent blood loss enough to realise something was seriously wrong. Five hours of microsurgery later, a patched-up Patton was told that due to severing the tendons and nerves, he would never recover the movement in the hand, but he would however regain full feeling. Oddly, the exact opposite happened, but in the years that have passed, the frontman has managed to become a fully-fledged left-hander.

Finally setting a 20 June unveiling for The Real Thing, Faith No More played a successful launch show at the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles the night before its release. With the venue full of label execs, radio and magazine journalists, and even big-name rockstars, a memorable evening was made all the more so when Guns N’ Roses guitarist, Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan, joined the show’s headline act on stage for a rapturous performance of ‘War Pigs’. Early reviews of The Real Thing were extremely positive, and it seemed that the album was destined to turn its creators into America’s next big rock band.

Ushering in a new era of Faith No More, The Real Thing opened with the relentless ‘From...