Guns N’ Roses accused of macho behavior
In a new interview with The Guardian in promotion of his memoir “The Royal We,” Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum recalled the band’s 1992 tour with Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. Despite Bottum calling it “the biggest tour that had ever happened,” he also says the environment was “toxic.”
In his book, the musician remembers troubling encounters with the many groupies brought in for Guns N’ Roses entertainment.
“The misogyny and the bravado of the macho dynamic coming from the Guns N’ Roses camp was suffocating,” Bottum told The Guardian.
“They had that song ‘One In a Million,’ with the N word and the F word [f*gg*t], and that was the vibe backstage,” he added. “I didn’t want any part of it. We didn’t want to loan our credibility, our culture, our individuality to this poison.”
Two weeks before the tour ended, Faith No More were fired for allegedly badmouthing Guns N’ Roses to the press. Body Count stepped in as their replacement, serving as the opening act for the remainder of the dates.
While the tour may not have gone the way they’d hoped, it ultimately marked a turning point for Bottum, inspiring him to publicly come out as gay.
“I needed to be who I was,” he said, “to talk about being gay, to distance myself from this toxic environment.”
Roddy Bottum recently spoke with Alternative Nation about what it was really like for Faith No More to tour alongside a band as massive as Guns N’ Roses during their heyday. In Part 1 of our interview he announced Faith No More’s permanent breakup.
Faith No More saw GNR’s ‘toxic’ male energy
Alternative Nation: Another memorable story in your book is when Faith No More toured with Guns N’ Roses in 1992. It seemed like it was two different worlds colliding.
Roddy Bottum: It was two different worlds. It was like a world that I don’t think any of us were comfortable with. But in terms of where music was in that timeframe, historically, like the sort of toxic male energy of dudes in bands at that point was sort of at a real peak. And we’d never sort of been part of that world. So yeah, it was two different worlds, for sure. We were invited to open up for the biggest show on earth. Who wouldn’t do that? Who wouldn’t say yes to an invitation of, like, opening up for Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. It felt like it was the biggest opportunity.
We had a new record coming out [Angel Dust], and it felt like a golden opportunity for us to play to that many people. It felt like, ‘Wow, that was the route to go.’ And I think at the end of the day, we didn’t win that many fans doing what we were doing. But yeah, as I laid it out in the book, it was a very different world for us. Like me being a gay man in that sort of world, it was like…it couldn’t be further from my comfortability factor than it was.
Alternative Nation: Did you get a chance to actually speak to Axl Rose during that tour?
Roddy Bottum: No. I didn’t speak to him.
Alternative Nation: What do you remember about the tour in 1997 where Limp Bizkit opened for Faith No More?
Roddy Bottum: I didn’t know about them. At that point, I was sort of dealing with a lot of problems in my own life, and I didn’t really take a role in choosing – or helping to choose – the bands that were opening up for us. Which is a shame. I think at some point, it gets easy to let people make those decisions for you. And shame on us and shame on me that we let that decision be made for us. Because who wants to see Limp Bizkit play?
