So, y’all remember a few years ago with Faith No More and Mr. Bungle cancelled their 2021 tour dates so that Mike Patton could tend to some mental health issues? And then, remember how Faith No More never really returned, even though Mr. Bungle kind of did? Well, the band’s keyboardist Roddy Bottom finally addressed some of the hubbub by saying how the band is going on a “semi-permanent hiatus.” Faith No More isn’t breaking up it seems, but they’re not not breaking up?
Bottom took to Substack to share the news in a somewhat detailed post:
“Readers, hey. Lemme introduce me but let’s also acknowledge us.
“Introductions can be awkward, I know, I’ll start. I’m Roddy. I’ve made a life for myself making music. With Faith No More and then Imperial Teen. I live in NYC and I work with my boyfriend in a band called Man On Man and two awesome friends in a band called Crickets and also sometimes the horror art project gnarl core Nastie Band. FNM is kind of on semi permanent hiatus and Imperial Teen is making a record slowly but definitely. I wrote an opera about Sasquatch a couple years ago but I can talk about all those projects later. I’m here in anticipation of a book I’ve written, it’s a memoir called The Royal We. It’s my first foray into writing and it’s exciting and scary and a whole new world for me..
“My initial purge and process was to lay out my life in story form from beginning to end. I did it every morning first thing for like over a year until I was happy with it. When I shared it with an agent he told me that ‘cradle to grave’ pieces don’t really sell that well. Say that phrase out loud. Cradle to grave. Can you even? I don’t care so much about the selling part, but the phrase scared the fuck out of me. For starters, i hate biopics. The predictability and the formula and honestly the straight line of a story, there just aren’t enough surprises, know what I mean? I find myself checking my watch, just waiting for the protagonist to die. Creating something formulaic and routine like that freaked me out so I went to Paris and reworked everything I’d done. I know. Paris. It’s ok to roll your eyes. I needed to change up everything so I could change up everything so I went there and sat in an old library for a month and wrote.
“Now as it sits, my book is more of an ode to San Francisco, bicycle messengering, sex work, heroin, dreadlocks, the birth of politics in punk rock, wheatgrass, witches, crystal meth, coming out, self love and the burning down and obliteration of a great American city. It’s not a tell all but it tells a lot. I’m leaning into the poetic and the literary. There are people you know in it, overdoses, tragedies and victories and failures. I’ll share excerpts of it here as we go forward but for now that’s me.”
Hopefully they’ll be able to make a comeback, but no matter how much we want their return, we want Mike Patton to be okay above all else. Seriously.
