GREAT FAITH NO MORE/MIKE PATTON INTERVIEWS DISSING GNR FROM 1992

These are some FNM interview segments (when they diss Axl and GNR) from the FNM Database website....Good stuff

Twist of Faith--June 1992
Faith No More wreak anarchy in the UK. William Shaw reports from London and Manchester.

No one put a pistol to their heads and told them they had to tour with Guns N' Roses. Faith No More thought it would be good for their bank balance. Now, after three weeks of shows, they're bored silly.

Monday they arrive in London from Paris. Tuesday morning, singer Mike Patton gets a phone call in his Kensington hotel room telling him tonight's show in Manchester has been canceled. Axl Rose is suffering from exhaustion. Patton, looking a bit like an auto mechanic no one would trust, howls like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. Downstairs an unshaven, dispirited bass player sits in the lobby. Unlike Patton, Billy Gould says he was looking forward to tonight's concert, if only because it would give him something to do. "But I can understand how Axl would be kind of exhausted, with this rigorous schedule of ours," he deadpans.

So far, the Guns N' Roses European tour is averaging two concerts per week. FNM are used to gigging six nights out of seven.

There's something else about the tour that makes them itchy. In the last three years, FNM have transformed themselves from down-at-the-heel Bay Area misfits to unlikely platinum rock stars. As such, FNM should be appropriate road companions for GNR. But FNM don't share a common musical goal so much as a collective loathing for good taste. The whole stadium-tour circus bugs them.

"I wouldn't go to the show," Patton tells me about their upcoming date at Wembley. "It's a spectator sport. If we can be annoying, then we've accomplished something. I think."

"These are the most boring shows I've been to," complains Patton. "The crowd is so safe. Backstage is so boring. All we do is eat..." Patton is intensity incarnate. He's from the backwoods of Eureka, California, a place he describes as "a sick redwood cocoon, hippies on one side, loggers on the other." Having escaped from a place like that, Mike doesn't want to miss out on anything.

With tonight canceled, it will be a week between shows. The band have nothing to do until Saturday. The time off leaves them exhausted. They're starting to feel flabby, out of shape.

I take Gould and Patton for a meal in Portobello Road. They start talking unguardedly about touring with GNR. Out it all pours. Patton claims one crew member got sacked just for bumping into Axl when the singer was changing costumes one night. Warming to the theme, Gould says that he heard Axl hired an exorcist because he believed he was possessed by the spirit of the dead AC/DC singer Bon Scott. (GNR's publicist later denies both of these tales, adding that "it's physically impossible for anyone to bump into Axl.") They paint Axl as a cranky headmaster that everyone's afraid of. But their stories are backstage hearsay. The fact is, they never get to see Axl much at all.

One of Axl's minders has told Patton that Axl really likes Mr. Bungle. The minder says Axl wants to get into something heavier, more industrial. "Industrial," laughs Patton maniacally, banging the table. "That's sick!"

They have sampled Axl's voice and used it a few times in their stage act, but no one seems to notice. GNR don't watch their shows. Patton thinks they may sometimes watch them over the monitors from their backstage area, but he's not sure.

In the restaurant, Patton shares a secret. Axl has TV screens on stage that display the song words in case he forgets them. On the last night of the tour, Mike Patton tells me he wants "to take a shit right on top of those TV screens, in front of tens of thousands of people."

After lunch we visit Honest Jon's Records, then Vinyl Solution, where we bump into Puffy, who's making the same devoted trawl. It's a West Indian area, and Patton and Billy want to buy some grass on nearby St. Paul's road. Puffy isn't interested.

Mike "Puffy" Bordin confides to me he's worried FNM will get thrown off this tour because of the way the band is behaving. They're too unguarded about slagging GNR.

When I tell Patton this, he wheezes with laughter. "See?" he says. "That's what he's frightened of, but that's what excites me the most." Mike's eyes shine. "Three weeks into the tour and we're already pushing it. We're going to spend the summer with these guys. To me there's nothing... no real reason why we're doing this tour. I mean, it makes real business sense, but on a personal level we have to provoke. To me, that's our duty."

Saturday is the day when the group finally get to play a concert, one week after their last performance in Paris. Gathering in the hotel lobby to catch the tour bus, the overwhelming feeling is one of resignation. In May, FNM played a well-advertised "secret" date at London's Marquee Club under the name Haircuts that Kill. "We're playing Wembley in June," Patton announced from the stage. "Don't come."

T-shirts are an integral part of the FNM look. In the bland backstage area, they change into their stage wear. Patton changes into a shirt that features the Route 666 logo of a Texas noise band. Jim martin puts on one that sports the moniker of his favorite defunct metal band, the Mentors.

Slash, Duff, and Matt from GNR appear in a rehearsal room down the corridor and start jamming. Slash is wearing a t-shirt that says "Fuck." A cigarette pokes out through a mass of hair.

Queen's Brian May appears, looking sheepish in white clogs and a loud shirt. He plugs in a guitar and joins in the jam, rehearsing a GNR encore he's going to play on.

Jim watches them rehearse. "What's up, Satan?" he calls to Slash.

Slash looks up. "Hey," he waves at Jim, "where'd you get that shirt?"

FNM don't get a soundcheck. They haven't had one all tour. Behind the stacks of gear, they wait to go on. One GNR flight case lays open, drawers marked with roadie jokes like "Lesbian Awareness Literature" or "Spare Panties." Billy lolls his head around, looking depressed. "People ask, 'Don't you get excited when you get onstage?'" he tells me. "For these gigs, it's more like I finally get to the head of the line in the department of motor vehicles."

Roddy, chain-smoking, explains that at concerts like this, even the audience knows how to perform. "They cheer the first group a little, the next band more, and so on."

Afterward, the group sit backstage in painful silence. After cooling their heels for a week, and pulling a hundred stupid stunts to pass the time before their show, they come away hating the set. They thought they performed abysmally.

Kerry, the pierced fan, disagrees, swearing it was a great show. The band's reaction to the show has more to do with their own depressed state of mind than anything else. In reality it was a riveting performance, dominated by Patton's frantic charisma. He'll crouch down on his haunches like a medieval gargoyle, then spring up and fling himself forward until his feet sail over his head and he'll slap back down on the stage, barking out dementedly the whole time. Before launching into a song, he'll boom out at the crowd of 70,000, "I bet you feel pretty stupid out there."

"Actually," Roddy says, in the dressing room post-match analysis, "I've got to say, Sometimes, Mike, you come off a little arrogant."

Mike Patton looks destroyed. Billy's face is a mask of depression. They all need to talk. They no longer have any perspective on how good a show FNM put on. ?

FNM have struggled with their reasons for supporting on the GNR tour. Patton will admit openly that he's a "whore." Bill, meanwhile, enjoys an intimate view of the ugly circus: "GNR and their management are like a small government. Axl's the president, and his manager's a personal advisor. A couple of the other more visible band members are vice-presidents. Then there's the little guys who come underneath, to make sure only the right information is leaked out. They're dependent on the band for their living, so they will police themselves. Support bands are like other countries with whom they maintain a diplomatic front. Like, keep your mouth shut, enjoy the ride and everything will be cool. Open your mouth, and jeopardize your own position. It's an interesting thing to experience first hand."

Duff McKagan lopes through the Gunners' terrain backstage. He looks punch-drunk, swollen and decaying. "That's business, man," Patton will comment drily. "You have to hold your hat off to the guy who's done that to him." Duff is hoisted up the back of the stage to watch FNM by two sides of beef in uniform. This is as much as I will see of GNR.

Talking of such, how's touring with Guns n'Roses?

Mike Patton:"We never have any contact at all. They seem to live in a whole different world so I can't relate to them. I can tell you funny stories and that's all."

Such as?

Patton:"A juicy titbit I heard the other day was that Warren Beatty was fucking Axel's girlfriend. I think he knoes because we had a show cancelled the other day and maybe - just maybe - that had something to do with it."