Faith No More Played a Secret Club Show in LA Last Night, and We Interviewed Them About Drinking Piss

All photos by the author

“You look good, LA I can tell you’ve been taking care of yourselves since the last time we were here.” So said Roddy Bottum, keyboard player and resident raconteur of Faith No More, during the sold-out, semi-secret show the band played last night at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Vocalist Mike Patton was a little less impressed. “I don’t know,” he ventured. “I see some jaded LA fucks in the balcony.” He promptly stretched the chest of his t-shirt in the balcony’s direction. “What do you think of this?” The shirt says simply “San Franfuckingcisco,” in homage to the band’s hometown. Patton winks slyly and the band launches into “Ashes To Ashes” from 1997’s appropriately titled Album of the Year. The rest of the set leans heavily on the band’s latest, Sol Invictus, but also includes old favorites like “Midlife Crisis” and their ingenious cover of the Bee Gees’ “I Started A Joke.” Caught up in the spirit of playing a 400-capacity club like it was 1989, Patton did some crowd-surfing and eventually ended up flat on his back on the bar with the microphone jammed into his pie hole. Right after the show, we got some time alone with Faith No More bassist/producer Billy Gould to talk about the band’s long-gone club days.

How do you feel after that?
Billy Gould: I feel good. We had a month off before this, so I was scared. [Laughs]

Were you surprised that Patton was crowd surfing?
No, that’s just like old times. In clubs like this, that’s what we used to do. I mean, you feel it a little more the next day when you do shit like that, but it’s cool. He got excited and he’s spontaneous, you know?

When was the last time Faith No More played a place this small?
We actually did about a month ago in Germany. We do it once in a while. But this was cool. The monitors weren’t much—you couldn’t hear too much up there. But we used to play shit like this all the time, so we’re used to it.

When’s the last time you played the Troubadour?
Patton played here with Fantômas about five years ago, but the last time I played here in I was in high school. A looong time ago. [Laughs] Different band, though.

So this was the first Faith No More show here?
I think it is, yeah.

You grew up in L.A. What kind of shows did you go to?
Oh, tons of punk rock shows—here, the Starwood, the Whiskey. I went out all the time. I used to see the Germs, Black Flag, X, the Bags, the Zeroes, stuff like that.

What were Faith No More’s club shows like back in the day?
Fucked. [Laughs] Well, there were different stages. There were the early club shows in San Francisco where nobody gave a fuck who we were. We played horrible shows for many years. Then we managed to get on the road in a truck and we did our first tour. Those were shitty shows, too, but we drove 12 hours a day and slept on people’s floors, so there was some added spice there. They were great times, actually. We were young enough to absorb it well. We fought a lot, but we had great shows. I actually really miss doing stuff like this. What I wanna do after this is walk straight downstairs and go to the bar because that’s what we used to do after shows. That’s where you meet people and hang out. That’s half the fun of the show—hanging out with people you don’t know. I was totally into that. Plus, you needed to find a place to stay. [Laughs] So that’s when the real work begins.

Did you guys have to deal with hecklers much?
Absolutely. We love hecklers. The thing is, in the beginning days, we were kind of the hecklers because we had so much indifference. We tried to piss people off, and if we did piss them off, that meant whatever we were doing was working. We liked that; we thrived on that. But back in the early ’80s, bands like Flipper were still playing. This culture of animosity was kinda part of the fun. Later, when we did bigger shows with Metallica, the audience didn’t quite see the humor in the antagonism. But we had fun with that, too. I mean, some of those people hated us. We were showered with spit and bottles. The Guns N’ Roses tour—those people totally hated us. But we had fun.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had thrown at you onstage?
Probably piss. Like, a bottle of piss. I mean, it’s not that bad. Patton’s poured piss on his head. He drank it before.

Jesus.
I know. [Laughs] Dude, there was a time—no bullshit—we were onstage in… I think it was Portugal. Someone had thrown a bottle of piss onstage and it was just sitting there. I mean, it’s yellow: You know what it is, right? We’re doing a song, and Patton picks it up and uncaps it. I’m looking at him, like, “Oh no. He’s really gonna do that?” And he just chugged it.

Did he instantly vomit?
He didn’t. [Laughs] But I couldn’t fucking believe he did that. It was insane.

J. Bennett claims it has been many years since he last drank piss.