Music Maps Podcast

104 - Faith No More with Roddy Bottum

Music Maps Podcast

Show Notes

Roddy Bottum is best known as the keyboard player in Faith No More & his new book The Royal We is out now on Akashic Books.

Roddy moves to San Francisco from L.A. in 1981 & a l;ittle while later he joins what was originally known as Faith No Man. After a few lineup changes (including a brief stint with Courtney Love as lead vocalist) the band morphs into the first incarnation of Faith No More with Roddy writing their breakthrough track We Care A Lot.

The band make their first trip to the UK for a small tour including a show at Dingwalls in London.

Things really start to come together when lead vocalist Mike Patton joins & The Real Thing album comes out in 1989 - backed by a top 10 single in Epic.

Roddy’s keyboard sound sets the band apart from their contemporaries & a huge tour with Metallica & Guns n Roses follows. We hear about Roddy’s experiences as a gay man in this very masculine & often toxic world.

The Angel Dust album follows in 1992 as the bands commercial peak continues - the band comes to an end in 1998 although a couple of reunions have took place since in 2009 & 2015.

Roddy also tells us about his other project Imperial Teen, a very different sounding band to Faith No More.

It takes anything from 5 to 40 hours to prepare each episode of Music Maps - if you’d like to make a contribution to help us cover the costs & time of producing these episodes for you, you can do so at this link: ko-fi.com/musicmaps

It is hugely important for us to get positive reviews & star ratings - if you have enjoyed Music Maps & can spare the time to do either we would hugely appreciate it.

You can see our upcoming live events here: https://rocknrollbookclub.co.uk/events

Instagram: @rocknrollbookclube17

X: @simonmusicmaps

Facebook: E17rockbookclub

Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell Music by Andy Maxwell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More from Music Maps Podcast

Oct 19, 2026

Jimmy McDonough joins us this week to tell us about his new book Gary Stewart: I Am From The Honky Tonks.

Oct 12, 2026

Roy Boulter joins us to talk about his time in The Farm & also his new film Algorithm Party starring PJ Smith, which marks Roy’s directorial debut.

Oct 5, 2026

This week we present an episode in 2 parts - in part 1 we welcome Holly Buckler daughter of The Jam drummer Rick Buckler.

Sep 28, 2026

Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne is our focus this week as Keith Kahn-Harris joins us to mark the release of his book The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osborne - How Metal Teaches Us To Live. Out now in the US & the UK.

Sep 21, 2026

Join us to go back 25 years to the release of The Strokes debut album Is This It.

See all episodes →