Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Mike Patton Exposes Himself
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
I love my parents to death, but I’ll never forgive them for mandating that I attend some random family function in Western New York when I was 14. Faith No More and Helmet were playing the Queen City that night, and I only got to read about it in the next morning’s Buffalo News:
What started Thursday as an appreciation party for radio station WGRF-FM, 97 Rock at the Impaxx Nightclub apparently turned into a sexually explicit exhibition by at least two members of the heavy-metal band Faith No More.
A number of spectators at the club interviewed today said they were disgusted by the actions of the group’s lead singer, who reportedly exposed himself to the crowd and performed lewd acts with the stage microphone. Also, witnesses said a guitarist with the band then used his guitar neck to also perform lewd acts with the singer.
“It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” said Mary Baker, who attended the concert.
Now, at the time, I attended Catholic Church pretty much every Sunday (free food and booze!), although I had heeded Kurt Cobain’s suggestion in the liner notes of Incesticide to not hate gay people, lest I accept his recommendation to dispose of Nirvana’s discography. So, although perhaps retroactively I was somewhat “cool” being down with FNM and Helmet in junior high (I’ll beat you to this one: I wasn’t), had I gone to Impaxx that night, my delicate sensibilities might have been just as offended as Mary Baker—who perhaps went on to donate her copies of Incesticide, Nevermind and Bleach to the nearest trash receptacle. In quite a few contexts, Faith No More were actually kinda dangerous.
Back to 2013. Mike Patton has exposed himself to countless audiences, and YouTube offers a buffet of far more stomach-turning onstage transgressions. What was cool in 1992 was not only the possibility of something legitimately fucked up happening at a “heavy-metal” show, but how, from the very beginning, Faith No More adhered to no rules governing such an act—from sound to appearance. FNM was only the start of our national exposure to Patton, who introduced Mr. Bungle with a soaked T-shirt in the “Epic” video, split our skulls with outré solo dalliances, fortified his heavy cred with a pre-Greg Puciato Dillinger Escape Plan EP, then doubled down with still-going extreme entities Tomahawk and Fantômas.
This month’s cover story had to cover that whole fucking spectrum; hell, press releases for Patton’s latest three Ipecac projects probably hit my inbox in the time I spent writing this, so that new Tomahawk’s already old news. As for the contents of said story, I can tell you this: It begins with an anecdote far more demented than pretending to blow a mike stand over 20 years ago. Change is a good thing, and Patton’s the master.
Oh, and P.S.: I finally lost my Faith No More live virginity on the King for a Day… tour in ’95. My friend skanked during “Just a Man.” Maybe not all change is a good thing.
The March 2013 issue of Decibel also features Voivod, Soilwork, an awesome Cathedral flexi disc, and a Slayer Hall of Fame, and can be ordered here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?
