When Led Zeppelin came to an end in 1980 after John Bonham’s tragic death, it was hard for the surviving members to carry on as solo artists or as members of other bands. The vocalist Robert Plant was the most prolific one and also who experimented the most with other music genres, not trying to repeat the same kind of music Zeppelin did.
This showed his broad musical taste and how open he was to listen to different music and new bands. He had the chance to see many of them up-close and one was the famous American group Faith No More.
What is Robert Plant’s opinion on Faith No More
Robert Plant has been a fan of Faith No More since the early days and he even took the band on the road as his opening act in 1990. One year before, he had already praised them in an interview with Q magazine in 1989. He revealed which were some of the albums of his record collection. One of them was Faith No More’s 1987 album “Introduce Yourself” and he said: “Their first album. It’s like, I, ME, listen to this! And if you don’t like it, fuck off!!! You can’t spend all your life whimpering away about the ex-wife. The vocal attitude, the hard, heavy garage rap. I like very much,” Robert Plant said.
By the time the Led Zeppelin vocalist praised them, they had already released three albums: “We Care a Lot” (1985), “Introduce Yourself” (1987) and “The Real Thing” (1989). So he had already heard the band with two different vocalists: Chuck Mosley and Mike Patton. When the band toured with him in 1990, Robert Plant was promoting his fifth solo studio album “Manic Nirvana”.
Faith No More’s line-up had Mike Patton (Vocals), Billy Gould (Bass), Jim Martin (Guitar), Roddy Bottum (Keyboards) and Mike Bordin (Drums). “The Real Thing”, released in 1989, already had some of their biggest hits like “From Out of Nowhere”, “Epic” and “Falling To Pieces”.
Robert Plant was very supportive with them on tour
The band’s founding member and keyboardist Roddy Bottum recalled in an interview with Butt Magazine in 2015, that Plant was very supportive and sweet to them. Even said that one day they ended up taking Plant to a LGBTQ+ bar.
“Yeah, I did, kind of accidentally. We replaced Black Crowes on a tour with him. We used to go to the thrift shops and pawn shops in every city. One time we were thrift shopping, and he was out on the street and we were like, ‘Oh, hey. Come with us.’ And he kinda hung out with us. He’s such an amazing guy, really sweet. He’s like, ‘You guys care to go for a drink?’”
Roddy Bottum continued:
“And we’re like, ‘Yeah sure,’ and kinda looked at this bar. There might even have been a rainbow flag — and it was like, ‘Oh wow, this could be awkward.’ So we walked in and it dawned on everybody, ‘Oh, this is a gay bar.’”
“There we are with Robert Plant in a gay bar! He was like, ‘Oh, this is great. Great. Let’s have a seat. Let’s have a drink.’ Then we left the gay bar, and some kid pulled up in a pickup truck. He’s like, ‘Hey, you’re Robert Plant.’ And Robert Plant’s like, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘Where you guys going? You guys want a ride?’ And we all got into the back of the pickup truck,” Roddy Bottum said.
Faith No More’s singer Mike Patton told The Album Network magazine in 1997 that they didn’t want to be part of a category. Their idea was to be like “Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd; (since) they are in a group unto themselves. Similar to that, we want to create our own category, where there are no comparisons of any kind.”
Faith No More was formed in San Francisco, California in 1979. They were active until 1998, reuniting from 2009 to 2020. Since then the group has been inactive and the drummer Mike Bordin recently said that the vocalist Mike Patton is the one to blame, since it seems he doesn’t want to tour with the band.
They have released seven studio albums, the most recent one being “Sol Invictus” in 2015.
