REVOLVER - March / April 2002
Mike Patton Interview


Experiment in Terror:

 Forsaking Fame and Faith No More for Mr. Bungle,Fantomas, and a slew of other bizarro projects,Mike Patton
 has earned his status as the King of the Aggro-Avant-Garde.

 By: Mike Azerrad

 Mike Patton is one complicated guy.At this moment,backstage at New York's Bowery Ballroom after a powerful
 show by his band Tomahawk,he's very happy because a New York policeman--complete with bullitproof vest--has
 not only professed his admiration for Patton's work but promised to lead him a genuine NYPD outfit to wear
 for next evening's show."I've just got this fetish about police uniforms,"Patton explains gleefully.

 But just a minute before,the singer had been giving me a stern lecture about how he wasn't sure he wanted
 to do an interview."If this is some kind of tribute thing,"he said,his eyes staring darts at me,"why should
 I even be involved?"We eventually found ourselves in a tense discussion about the purpose of
 journalism,with the whole future of this article in deep jeopardy.Then the officer walked up.And they say
 they're never around when you need one.
 "You know what?"Patton says after the delighted cop leaves."Let's do it."

 Multitasker:

 The next afternoon,Patton arrives at the Bowery Ballroom in a good mood.He's just come back from an
 exhibition of handmade movie posters from Ghana,which is just the sort of thing that makes his day.After
 soundcheck,we sit down for the interview in a dark little alcove off the club's mezzanine."I hope I didn't
 spook you last night,"he says apologetically.

 It's true,Patton is a little spooky."He's a mystery,"says Papa Roach's Coby Dick,who's a big Patton
 fan."You don't see him everywhere,his face isn't everywhere,and his words aren't printed in magazines
 everywhere.His music is your way to get to know him,and since his music is so strange,you know there's a
 strange person behind the music."Whenever one of his records comes out,Patton always goes to a record store
 and buys it the day it's released--just so he knows he sold at least one copy.Most of his records have no
 track 13;he won't even stay at a hotel on the 13th floor.

 Musically,it's especially hard to get a handle on who Patton is.Once the frontman for rap-rock precursors
 Faith No More,he's worked with artists as wildly disparate as Sepultura,the Kronos Quartet,Japanese
 noise-techno maven Merzbow, and the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.Although Patton is currently in at least four
 bands,including Tomahawk,Fantomas,Peeping Tom,and Mr.Bungle,he doesn't place more weight on one project
 than another."He gets irked when people say,'So Fantomas is your side project,right?'"says Patton's genial
 manager and label partner Greg Werckman."And he's like'No,there is no side project."His four bands right
 now are all his main bands."Other upcoming projects include a record tentatively titled Patton vs. the
 X-Men,a kind of battle of the bands between Patton and the X-ecutioners turntablist crew.He's also teaming
 up with Massive Attack's 3-D and a thrid electronica musician to be determined.Then there's an EP with
 brilliant aggro-math rockers the Dillinger Escape Plan.Oh,and somewhere along the line there will be a solo
 record"with an orchestra--ballads,"says the singer.

 Mike Patton sets up various contexts for himself,well-defined worlds with their own rules and their own
 language.It's a way of testing the limits of his formidable gift,seeing how it reacts in different
 atmospheres,and ,with any luck,outdoing himself in the prcess."That's the way I'm trying to find my
 voice--and I'm still figuring it out,"he says."I just feel comfortable doing lots of things at the same
 time.I would think any musician,any artist,would want to work in as many different contexts and
 environments as possible,even uncomfortable,weird ones.Sometimes you can be surprised what you can
 accomplish."

 "Most musicians are not in this for music,that's no secret,"Patton adds."The bands that you see on
 Mtv[are]making a particular kind of mayonnaise that goes down well with a certain age group and then
 repeating it.And doing it again and again and again.Until they've mortgaged the Ferrari for dope."

 Faith No More:

 At 19,Mike Patton put his band,Mr.Bungle,on temporary hold to join San francisco's Faith No More just in
 time to sing on their breakthrough album,1989's The Real Thing.The album sold millions and not only helped
 introduce rap metal to the Mtv masses but also played an early role in breaking alternative rock to the
 mainstream.

 Faith No More were huge,and their handsome young lead singer not only became something of a heartthrob but
 also created the vocal blueprint for many bands that followed--long,ominous lines with a slow vibrato that
 soared above the band's chunky rhythms.Tons of today's nu-metal bands,whose members were in those
 impressionable teen years when Faith No More were at their height,claim them as a major influence.I tell
 Patton,"So many musicians from the nu-metal scene..."."Suck!"he hollers."claim you as an inspiration."

 "I hate all those people,"he says."I don't hear it in there.I think it's nice that they listened to that.If
 that's really true,you'd think they would have been able to do something with it.But I guess that's asking
 too much.So @!#$'em all!No mercy!"Patton pauses a moment after his mock outburst and adds,"Seriously,I
 accept no responsibility for that stuff."

 Patton hadn't had much to do with The Real Thing besides providing the vocals.But the follow-up,1992's
 Angel Dust,began to reflect his many-faceted proclivities--as the Trouser Press Record Guid put it,one song
 seemed to"run Madame Butterfly through Metallica and Nile Rodgers."With albums like 1995's King for a
 Day/Fool for a Lifetime and 1997's Album of the Year,Faith No More not only got darker and more wildly
 varied,they also got better.But sales dropped with every release after The Real Thing."First record I ever
 made,"jokes Patton,"and it's been downhill ever since!"The band eventually ran out of steam in 1998.

 It was the proverbial long,strange trip for Patton,especially considering he was so young when it
 happened."For me,many years of Faith No More were really uncomfortable,weird years.I was a fuckin' dumb
 kid,I didn't know what was going on,"he says."It was a huge,very fast,ridiculous comedic roller
 coaster.That's the best way I can describe it."It was,one supposes,just one of those lessons along life's
 path."Yeah,exactly,"Patton says."I would not be the way I am without
 it--musicially,personally,everything.But especially here,"he adds, pointing to his heart.

 Mr.Bungle:

 Even as he rode the Faith No More roller coaster,Patton never abandoned Mr.Bungle.The group released a
 self-titled major-label debut in 1991,produced by avant-garde saxophonist and composer John Zorn.The
 combination of the northern California rock band and the downtown New York composer was an unlikely one.Not
 only did it work but Patton also joined Zorn's trailblazing band Naked City for some U.S. and European
 touring that same year,spawning a personal and artistic alliance between the two men that continues to this
 day.

 A totally unbridled affair,Mr.Bungle's debut featured maniacal cutting and pasting of
 Funkadelic,thrash,downtown art jazz,noise,ska,and whatever else they could get thier hands on.With titles
 like"My Ass is on Fire"and "The Girls of Porn,"the album appealed to the same bunch bright,slightly
 maladjusted,scatolgical guys who a generation prior were listening to Frank Zappa.Mr.Bungle wasn't a huge
 seller,but it found an enthusiastic and loyal audience,many of whom seemed to be
 musicians.1991,then-15-year-old Brandon Boyd of Calabasas,California,was a big Iron Maiden fan."I was up to
 Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and I thought it was the best record I'd ever heard,and then this stoner
 friend of mine said,'Hey,check this out,'"says Boyd."It was Mr.Bungle.And then I listened to it,and it made
 Iron Maiden seem ridiculousb to me.It made them seem lazy."Inspired by Mr.Bungle,Primus,and the Red Hot
 Chili Peppers,Boyd and some buddies formed the band Incubus that year.

 Patton was spending half the year touring with Faith No More,singing"We Care A Lot"and"Epic,"and answering
 questions about the goldfish in their video,and the other half venting his angst with Mr.Bungle.People
 would come to Mr.Bungle shows and scream for Faith No More songs,so the members of Mr.Bungle wore
 masks--that way,no one could be sure the guy from Faith No More was really in the band.And Mr.Bungle's
 music got even weirder.The band has released only two more albums since then,but it remains one of Patton's
 many and varied projects.

 Solo Flight:

 Patton recorded his first solo album,1996's Adult Themes for Voice(on Zorn's Tzadik label),while on tour
 with Faith No More in a long succession of hotel rooms--dozens are listed are listed in the liner
 notes--using a portable four-track cassatte machine.It's basically just Patton making a bewildering
 assortment of vocal noises that would make Yoko Ono proud:Screaming like a puppy getting flayed
 alive,spewing frantic Martian gibberish,crooning like a Buddhist priest,or just getting into the highly
 amplified sound of his tongue slapping against the roof of his mouth.One can only wonder what his next-door
 neighbors thought.It's illuminating to realize thta,at the time,Patton was on huge stages singing"Epic"for
 thousands of people,then going home and making this oddly intimate music.It was an unusual career move,to
 say the least."Yeah,I was in a big fucking band,"says Patton."I could have gone off and made some bullshit
 Chris Cornell love ballad record or something,but i wasn't feeling it."

 Pap Roach used to play Adult Themes before they hit the stage."And people would just
 be,like,fuckin'completely annoyed,"says Coby Dick."It's one of the most fucked-up records in the
 world."(And that was a compliment.)

 His 1997 album,Pranzo Oltranzista(also on Tzadik),featured a cast of downdown all-stars--Zorn on
 sax,legendary avant-garde percussionist William Winant,guitarist Marc Ribot,and cellist Erik
 Friedlander.Each movement of the composition is illustrated by a recipe from the 1932 absurdist classic The
 Futurist Cookbook,like,"The right habd carries directly to the mouth black olives,fennel
 hearts,andkumquats.The left hand contemporaneously stricks pieces of sandpaper,silk,and velvet.A perfume of
 carnations is sprayed on the diners' necks."There are few vocals in the traditional sense,although several
 tracks feature what sounds like Patton chewing on a carrot.And yeah,it's execellent.

 Fantomas:

 The solo albums were a long way from the hardcore and death metal that Patton grew up on in small-town
 Arcata,California,250 long miles north of San Francisco."Metal was just what you did--you had no option,"he
 says with a laugh."Yeah,that was our world."Not that Patton has much use for the hard stuff being cranked
 out these days."Most of it is fuckin' just cardboard garbage,"he scoffs."Nothing is extreme in that world
 anymore."

 Despite his disillusionment with the current state of metal,Pattonstill feels the need to be heavy in his
 blood,and it figures prominently in one of his latest projects,Fantomas,which also includes Melvins
 guitarist Buzz Osborne,virtuosic Mr.Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn,and ex-Slayer superdrummer Dave
 Lombardo.Fantomas reconfigure the sounds of Patton's youth--the machine-gun double-kick drum,the
 chugga-chugga guitars,the demonic bellowing--into something challening and new.It's music played by
 execellent musicians who want to stay true to their roots and yet test the limits of the music and their
 own capabilities.

 Fantomas are named after the mysterious antihero of a legendary World War 1-era French pulp crime novel
 series--the type of guy who uses gloves made of human skin to leave behind a dead men's fingerprints or
 puts razor blades in all the shoes in a department store.Patton is in good company: The Fantomas books were
 a favorite of a whole constellation of key 20th century artists including Kurt Weill,Luis Bunuel,and Jean
 Cocteau.

 The band's musical influences are clear--the Melvins and Slayer,of course,but also Japanese maestros of
 mayhem the Boredoms,Ween,and classic Warner Bros. cartoon music with its sudden shifts and unorthodox
 structures.But the granddaddy of it all is John Zorn,who not only pioneered the extreme art fringe of speed
 metal way back in the mid Eighties with bands like Naked City and Painkiller but has also along been
 fascinated with soundtrack composers.In fact,many of the composers Zorn singled out--John Berry,Jerry
 Goldsmith,Ennio Morricone,and Henry Mancini--also get the treatment fronm Fantomas.

 Fantomas' jump-cut compositional forms never slip into any one pattern for more than a few bars at a
 stretch.It's easy to think they're improvised,but music that precise can't be made up on the spot.Patton
 actually plots it with the utmost care,something that becomes apparent when you realize that all that
 abstract hammering in the live show is just like what's on the record.Live,Patton is Fantomas'
 conductor,setting off cataclysmic eruptions of sound from the band with the subtle nods of his head as he
 stands behind a keyboard and a table full of effects boxes that wall him off from the audience.While
 Osborne and Dunn hand back by the amps,Lombardo,who sets up at the left-hand edge of the stage,is a big
 part of the show,peeling off dense,abrupt flurries on his drums or just setting up a variegated wash with
 his cymbals.

 A buzz about Fantomas spread through the music industry soon after the band formed."Every major label
 called and wanted to be in on the bidding war,"says Greg Werckman."And then when I sent the music,oh my
 God,they just ran."So Werckman and Patton decided to do it themselves,officially forming Ipecac
 Recordings--named after a medicinal syrup that makes you puke up something nasty you might have
 swallowed--on April Fool's Day of 1999.

 Fantomas released their self-titled debut album that spring,hoping it would sell 10,000 copies.Instead,it
 shipped 30,000.Since Ipecac grosses $8.10 for every album sold,the label was soon in the black.Low overhead
 helps--the Ipecac offices are located in a one-room cottage behind Werckman's northern California
 home;Werckman is the only employee there,not counting his cats.(The label just opened a one-person New York
 office as well.)

 Ipecac is one of the few rock labels,indie or major,that has its own following.Patton's fans trust his
 taste so much that they'll even buy a country record on his label,as they did with the Lucky Stars
 album.Ipeca is a right-brain/left-brain thing,with Werckman handling the nuts and bolts and Patton handling
 much of the A&R and artwork duties.Ipecac takes a serious financial hit when Patton insists,for
 instance,that the Tomahawk album be packaged in an embossed Digipak or that the cover of the Fantomas album
 should be printed on special metallic paper.But Patton feels cover art is crucial."It balances out what can
 be kind of alienating music,"he explainbs."You've got this collection of songs and you need something
 that's going to throw you into the mix,right into the middle of it so there are no questions."

 Tomahawk:

 Toamahwk are yet another underground hard rock supergroup thta Patton is a member of.This one features
 ex-Jesus Lizard guitarist extraordinaire Duane Denison,former Cows and current Melvins bassist Kevin
 Rutmanis,and former Helmat drummer John Stanier,all of whom know each other from the infernal late
 Eighties/early Nineties art-punk-metal scene that centered around legendary Minneapolis label Amphetamine
 Reptile.

 The started in early 2000 when Denison and Patton met at a Mr.Bungle show and Patton offered to sign
 Denison to Ipecac,assuming,"it would be some prepared guitar trio or some shit like that,"says Patton.But
 Denison not only had a rock album in mind,he also wanted Patton to sing on it.The catch was,this was
 Denison's band,not Patton's."It's difficult to do that,especially being a bald-faced prick such as
 myself,"Patton says."It's difficult to step back at times."Still,when Patton gets involved with a
 project,his influence is soon pervasive."Mike,he can't step away from something,"says Werckman."He can't
 not be more involved."So even though Denison is driving the car,Patton has a hand on Tomahawk's steering
 wheel.

 Tomahawk had never all played inthe same room until they got to the recording studio this spring.The
 group's music features the same kind of nefarious,vaguely blues-based odd-meter riffs that Jesus Lizaed
 regularly annihilated audiences with for years.But Patton introduces samples into the mix and also actually
 sings,as opposed to the apoplectic raving of the Jesus Lizard's brilliant frontman,David Yow.(Patton
 probably won't try Yow's infamous onstage genital origami either.)

 Peeping at pop:

 Already there are die-hard Fantomas and Mr.Bungle fans who don't like Tomahawk because they're more
 conventionally structured,more"normal."But wait until they hear Patton's next project,a collaboration with
 red-hot producer Dan "the Automator"Nakamura(Gorillaz,Dr.Octagon,Handsome Boy Modeling School)called
 Peeping Tom(named after the creepy 1960 thriller.)"The way I'm hearing it in my head is lush and
 overorchestrated and too many musicians all playing ay once,but in a pop-song format,"Patton says."It's
 still pretty layered,complex,dense stuff,so even though it's in a thre-or-four-minute song format,it's
 still maybe too weird for radio or any of that kind of stuff.I expect nothing and I'm sure I'll get even
 less[laughs]."

 Running Free:

 "If music is dying,musicians are killing it,"wrote Patton in Arcana:Musicians on Music,a collection of
 essays by musicians,edited by John Zorn."Why?Insecurity--the need for acceptance--maybe even money.We're
 not thinking about our music,just how it looks."

 In most areas in our culture,fame and wealth are universally admired and respected,it doesn't matter what
 it took to get ther.Patton rejects all of that.For a frontman,he's fairly comfortable beibg the center of
 attention,and he's not a self-promoter.He's certainy got the looks and talent to be famous,but he
 absolutely doesn't care about that.Maybe that's why he's won the respect of so many musicians."He could
 have milked it but he decided not to,"says Brandon Boyd."That comes from his trust in his self and his
 sense of integrity with himself,which is very admirable.And it's helped him remain something special to his
 fans."


 So while most commercially successful musicians live with the myriad compromises pressures,and stifing
 extra baggage of stardom,Patton is blissfully free of all that.He gets to do whatever the hell he wants and
 he's got a following that won't evaporate just because his new album doesn't have a hit single.Patton chose
 this route because he's a lifer."Being able to continue as a musician for your entire life,it takes an
 incredible amount of focus and dedication,"says Zorn."And not everybody has it--some people have incredible
 talent but they lack that drive.And Patton has everything it takes to make great music for the rest of his
 life.He's got the talent,he's got the pipes,he's got the creativity,he's got the imagination.And he has the
 dedication and the energy to put all his time into it."

 "He's doing some really important shit,"Zorn continues."He's one of the few people in rock music that's
 streching the boundaries of things.I hope that he gets a little appreciation for all the work he's
 doing,because I can tell you,when you sit out on that limb.it's prety lonely out there."

 So Mike Patton has taken a massive leap of faith--thta staying true to your instincts will win you a small
 but intensely devoted following.It's panned out well for him and stands as a shining example for musicians
 of all strips.But why is Patton lucky enough to have found an audience for such challenging music?"I don't
 know why,"he says."I'm even a little suspicious about knowing why."