Mike Patton on Faith No More reunion (keep dreaming), Peeping Tom and Axl Rose
Mike Patton: the man, the screams, the wacky on and off stage antics, the Epic rap-rock smash hit single, the legend. After Faith No More broke up, he set up one of the most creatively exciting indie labels, Ipecac, and produced some crazy avant-garde music with Fantomas, Tomahawk and others, as well as discovering some real gems like ISIS. Still, we gotta admit, most of the songs he was himself singing on were pretty hard to digest, with the exception of Get Up Punk from the album General Patton vs. The X-ecutioners.
Then Mike brought us Peeping Tom -- music the masses and us poor chaps at Stereo Warning can understand. A bunch of awesome songs set to trip-hop beats and grooves and featuring cool cats like Rahzel, Kool Keith, Massive Attack, Dub Trio and even Norah Jones (her track is the weakest, though). Download Five Seconds, Mojo, Don't Even Trip and We're Not Alone.
Here's a conversation we had with Mike about Peeping Tom, about why Faith No More broke up and about how much money it would take to get them to reunite. Enjoy!
Stereo Warning: After Faith No More, your music has been very avant-garde and not very accessible. What brought the more mainstream music of Peeping Tom about?
Mike Patton: It's more song-oriented. Balance. I really felt stimulated to embark on these adventures and a lot of the time I don't know where they're going, and some of them ended up taking a lot more time than I thought. Fantomas, for instance, started out as kind of a studio experiment and it turned into a band, which is great. I'm gonna keep it on that path. But as a result, a lot of melodic song ideas were seeping up and I had no outlet for them. I remember looking over on my desk and seeing a pile of these tunes and I thought I really gotta focus and start to take note of other adventures and bring them to life.
I knew what I wanted. The songs had very specific deficiencies. There's nothing worse than saying 'hey I want you to guest on my record, do whatever you want.' You want direction, you want to be put on a path, and I feel like as a band leader it was my job to help them see my vision. Once they saw it and I trusted them, usually I'd send out the files and say here's what I want. In the case of Massive Attack, they felt more comfortable remixing the whole tune, doing a cover version of my version. I'm glad they did cuz it's fantastic. It's about figuring out how your collaborators work most comfortably and then working your vision around that.
What contribution surprised you most?
They all did. This was a learning experience for me. I was pretty open with deadlines but saying 'get to it when you get to it' was a big mistake. Sometimes so much time had elapsed that I'd almost forgotten about a particular song. One day something in the mail would show up and I'd go 'oh God, I forgot all about this!' It was like fucking Christmas or something.
The Kool Keith (collaboration) was maybe the most surprising of all cuz I had myself set up for this huge dramatic nightmare having heard how difficult he is to work with. We all know he is slightly off-kilter. I didn't expect to get that one back, ever. But I'm a big fan of his and I thought that he had a lot to contribute to this project so I said to myself I'll go above and beyond to make this happen. How wrong I was! He was one of the most responsible, professional collaborators on the whole record. I had one phone conversation with him and three days later I had the track and I didn't have to do anything to it, it was perfect. Goes to show, you never fuckin now.
How do you see the music biz today vs. the days when you, GNR and Metallica were playing stadiums together in America's biggest rock tour?
The climate changes a little bit here and there but the way I see it there's a vast majority of shit out there, the way it's always been, but if you look hard enough there's always good stuff. As an artist and as a fan of music I feel like it's my job to look between the cracks and find that stuff. Gnarls Barkley is brilliant. Bjork is consistently interesting. The amount of people that listen to it has nothing to do with whether it's bad or good.
Are fans more fickle now with the internet?
Maybe. Maybe the LP format is suffering a little bit, but it's still the format I'm working in and I'm comfortable with. For the most part, I'm a fetishist, I wanna hold the damn thing, I wanna have it, that's why I do packages like this. (Peeping Tom has a cool package where you pull on one end of the cover to reveal the CD coming out on the other side, like a drawer)
It's more expensive to do that...
Oh god, are you kidding? Yeah! And who pays for it? Me! But I think it's important and I think that it helps the music. It makes it less abstract, less weird, and more seductive. I don't know about you, but if I saw this in a record store I'd go oh my god I gotta hear this. I'd buy it on a whim even if I didn't know any of these names. But you know, I'm easy. I'm a sucker for this kind of shit.
Do you ever look back and say 'ah, the good old days...'?
Yeah, sometimes. But they're good because they ended. If they were still going, they'd be the sad new days.
Will there ever be a Faith No More reunion?
Well, not with me. I feel like when something's really done you have to have the courage and the strength to walk away from it and admit that it's done. We ended it at the right time and everyone's moved on and they're happy. In some strange way I'm busier than I was when I was doing that stuff. I'm in a really comfortable place, especially having my label and having created a bit of my own universe, it's pretty satisfying. But that was a great decade or so in my life and it's all a journey, I wouldn't be doing this now if I wasn't doing that then. I'm happy to still have something to say and have an outlet to do it.
Anyone ever suggests getting back together?
There's some guys in the band who would love to do that and then there's me. Everyone understands where I'm coming from and generally I think they agree. But every 3-4-5 years some brain surgeon in Scotland has an idea, some Svengali who thinks he can change the world, comes with a briefcase full of cash and makes a crazy offer. And it's not easy to go, 'eh, fuck it.' It would be very easy for some of us to rehearse for a couple of days, smile and cash the check. I'm not at that point. I got enough things to worry about, enough problems and enough things on my plate. Maybe if he comes with two briefcases full of money... (laughs)
What exactly did happen, you guys were still coming out with some great music, Album of the Year was awesome?
That was it though, I felt like we were slowing down. It was really hard to spit that record out. it took a long selection process with the music, I thought it was getting a little too scattered and it wasn't quite up my alley and I was ready to do some other things. I was happy with that record, I think it stands up to any of our others, but I was looking in the crystal ball and I could see where we were going with it. To me I felt like the best thing to do was to end on a good note, not walk away with a bad taste in my mouth. Surprisingly enough, everyone else agreed at that point.
So it was your idea?
Yeah, I think I brought it up first, but everyone really agreed. It was a very mutual decision, not teary-eyed. It was our time.
Your vocal range is amazing. How can you go from screaming your lungs out to whispering to singing all kinds of high notes without destroying your vocal chords?
I don't know, I don't have a good answer. I guess over the years I tried to put myself in situations where I exercise it. It's just a muscle and the more you do it the more you put yourself in situations where you gotta rise up. it's like learning a foreign language, total immersion you sink or swim. I've been lucky enough to tread water in some cases, in other cases I feel like I've learned a lot and done pretty well. I learned by doing and you have to be willing to fall on your face sometimes. I don't do it correctly, I don't do it classically, I just kind of do it.
Man, Axl Rose should have a chat with you...
No one can teach that guy anything. He's a perfect prick.
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