interview by Gelu Sulugiuc / photos by Jay Blakesberg
LINKS:
Eight years after the breakup of Faith No More, charismatic singer Mike Patton has finally departed from avant-garde, cinematic, and just plain weird noise-rock projects to release Peeping Tom. He calls it a pop album, but for Patton that still means that the head-bobbing music still takes some surprising twists here and there. Fittingly, for someone who shot to fame in 1989 with the rap-rock anthem Epic, Patton's newest offering is a melody-based record that fuses hip-hop and alternative rock.
Crusher's contributor, Gelu Sulugiuc, caught up with the vocal wunderkind recently in New York and quizzed him on making a record by swapping music files by mail, on getting Norah Jones to sing on it, and on the likelihood of a Faith No More reunion.
MIKE PATTON: Balance. I really feel like I had a lot of avenues to explore, and I kept piling them up. I really feel 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, in my mind 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, I realized that 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, no matter where they lead me, and bring them to life.”
I'm about to enter the romantic part of the Peeping Tom season,
putting a live formation of it together which will be kinda challenging
but real fun. There's talk of doing some festivals and some touring, we'll
see.
GS: How hard will it be to tour with so many guest artists?
MP: I'll reel some of the guests in, bribe some others
and then fill in the holes with some outside help. For the Conan O'Brien
performance, I got Dub Trio, Rhazel, Dan the Automator, Rob Swift from
the X-ecutioners... Not a bad band. If I could take that on the road I'd
be a happy camper.
GS: How did
you select your collaborators for the record? Who did you know from before
and who did you just cold-call?
MP: Some where outright strangers, some were friends
of friends, some where people that we'd always said we should do something
together down the line. There's a lot of that in this business, and rarely
do people actually act on it. I decided this was gonna be one of those
times when I did. if this whole experiment doesn't work, I know the tracks
with Rhazel, the Automator and Amon Tobin are gonna be killer, cuz I know
those guys.
GS: How much of it was it you telling them what to do,
how much leeway did they have?
MP: 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.
GS: What was the most surprising contribution?
MP: They all
surprised me. 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, and I sent out much more than this.
I bit off much more than I could chew. 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.
GS: Are there any of them you have yet to meet?
MP: Norah Jones for sure--and Kool Keith.
GS: How will you promote this? The first single "Mojo" should be a hit all over the place this summer, but will it?
MP: You hope
for the best, and then you knock on wood. All I can do is get the word
out there, I've been doing way more press than I usually do ‘cuz
I think the record deserves it and needs it. Beyond that, you can't worry
too much. That's the key. I'm not expecting anything. If you come into
it with that sort of frame of mind, then anything is a pleasant surprise.
I'm already pleasantly surprised that there is so much interest in it.
I'll take it on the road and treat it like everything else I do.
GS: So to you it's already a success?
MP: Yeah, I finished it! (laughs) It's out of my hair, and it's the world's problem now. I just hope people check it out and give it a chance. Beyond that you can't invest too much emotion into it. I don't wanna stay awake at night and worry about how well it does. Do I think it could be on the radio? Sure, but I'm not kidding myself, I'm not holding my breath. I’ve heard what's on the radio, and it's a fuckin' sewer out there.
MP: Sometimes both. When I start a new project I have
certain parameters. This was song form -- verse, chorus, bridge, verse,
chorus, 3-4 minute songs melodically driven. Instead of writing on a guitar
or piano the way I normally write, I tried starting with samples or beats
because that's what I wanted the backbone of these songs to be. I wanted
to start to sound different, so I figured if I wrote it differently then
maybe that would work.
GS: How do you see the music business today versus the
days when you used to tour with Guns N' Roses and Metallica?
MP: Very similar. 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.
GS: Are fans more fickle now with the Internet?
MP: 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. (The Peeping Tom
CD is a digipak with a special pull-out tray.)
GS: It's more expensive to do that?
MP: 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. When you see something like this, 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.
MP: 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 right at the right time
and everyone's moved on. And they're happy doing what they're doing now.
And 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 for this stuff. 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.
GS: So how's your label Ipecac doing?
MP: Really good. It was one of the best decisions I
ever made in my life. I was really nervous about it at beginning, but
it's a pleasure. My role in this label is going out, buying records, checking
out new bands -- I would do that anyway. It's even more enticing and satisfying
to see a band and offer what we can offer them, which is a one page contract,
a no bullshit deal. The deal I'd always wanted to sign. It's not rocket
science.
GS: What guides you in deciding what bands to sign?
MP: Whatever's
good. Instinctively we're attracted to bands that are outsiders, that
don't really fit in anywhere. I have a soft spot for those kinds of artists,
but there's some real inside kind of stuff on our label too. Keeping a
wide variety is important. In a way I wish we did have more a streamlined
vision, because there's too much great shit out there. I'm having to say
no to some great shit because it's just me and two other people at the
label. We can't overextend ourselves. We're really grass roots.
GS: What has been Ipecac's biggest financial success
so far?
MP: Recently
ISIS has been doing really well. They're working really hard, and I'm
happy for them. The press really picked up on this last record. I keep
telling them any day Columbia is going to come calling. I would be the
first to tell them, pack your bags, do your thing, get paid and we're
not going anywhere. When that shit dries up, come back. That's what you
gotta do. We don't own any band or any record. If bands aren't happy at
our label, they can take their record and start walking. That's the way
it should be.
GS: Your vocal range is amazing. How can you go from
screaming your lungs out to whispering menacingly to singing all kinds
of high notes without destroying your vocal chords?
MP: 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.
GS: Man, Axl Rose should have a chat with you. He could
use some tips, ‘cuz his voice seems to give out a lot...
MP: No one
can teach that guy anything, he's a perfect prick!
