As Roddy Bottum began developing his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboardist had a definite idea of the type of book he aimed to avoid. “The sort featuring mid-book images,” he says, during a video call from Oxnard, California, where he is completing a new album with his musical project Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they tend to be cliché, full of name-dropping, and low on literary merit.”
The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum omits the surnames of his fellow musicians. And while he details the band’s beginnings and initial growth, this takes a back seat to his “adventures as a young person” in San Francisco, “in an era pre-internet, when the city was still untouched.” Much of the attention is on his discovery of his sexuality, and how the associated hiddenness and shame have shaped his life. “From a young age, around 13 or 14, I engaged in sexual relations with men,” he states. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his seeking encounters in restrooms and parks as a teenager are narrated without hesitation and without regret. “Intimate moments occurred with older men in outdoor hideaways,” he records. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Back off.”
“During presentations, I open with that segment,” he comments. “I recognize the inflammatory nature of such remarks; it’s so inappropriate. But I have no regret. Amid political shifts, my reality requires bold expression, to oppose the bigotry, the anti-transgender and discriminatory views.” He stops. “I seek to challenge norms. I have relatives who are Christian people, and it’s absolutely my intention to ruin their Thanksgiving dinner with this book. Since they will inevitably read it.”
The memoir opens on the teenage Bottum relocating from his home Los Angeles. “San Francisco was an abrupt about-face from the sunny superficiality of LA,” he notes. “Cold. Dark. Individuals with jet-black hair and pale complexions, individuals using hard drugs like meth and heroin. San Francisco’s gay community was unlike anything in Los Angeles. It motivated me.”
Becoming Part of Faith No More
It’s here, in 1981, that Bottum joined Faith No Man (later Faith No More) with Billy Gould and Mike Bordin, enhancing their “driving beat section” with “a sense of beauty atop that darkness. Most rock acts avoided keyboards back then.” They cycle through vocalists, including – briefly – Courtney Love, the memoir’s most striking figure, an unabashed chaos agent lighting homes on fire and creating adversaries wherever she went.
“Courtney and I both knew right away that we were soulmates,” Bottum states. Their close bond briefly blurred into a physical connection, leading to pregnancy and abortion; later, Bottum became a trusted confidant of Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain. Far from the grunge Lady Macbeth of misogynist legend, Bottum portrays Love as someone with wit, energy and self-determination.
“Courtney had a hard go of it,” he concurs. “A controversial woman who’s very powerful, and incredibly bright. And that’s a very attractive, exciting person to write about. She’s a warm, compassionate person, and few get to witness it. But we were very close and took care of each other.”
The Early Days of Faith No More
The embryonic Faith No More were, Bottum confesses, “completely ridiculous.” Their music revolved around repetitive heavy grooves jammed out while under the influence of assorted narcotics, including MDMA, while their frontman, unconventional addict Chuck Mosley, “didn’t have a good singing voice.” But they had drive. “Everyone in our scene was into goth and dark stuff, but we adored mainstream media and artists. Somehow, we felt connected to that world. However, we lacked any pop charm or allure.”
But their sardonic rock-rap anthem We Care a Lot became a modest television favorite in 1988, Mosley stepped down to the photogenic Mike Patton (who did have a good singing voice), and by 1990 Faith No More’s third album was a true, critically acclaimed achievement. As usual, The Royal We doesn’t focus on this triumph, jump-cutting instead to their ill-fated tour on Guns N’ Roses and Metallica’s 1992 stadium tour.
“The heroin was me self-medicating, so I could feel OK about living all these secrets.”
On the Road with Legends
It was, Bottum says, “an unprecedented touring event.” But Faith No More were quickly estranged by the “poisonous” rock’n’roll circus they’d clambered aboard; in the memoir, he describes an unsettling encounter with followers recruited for GN’R’s entertainment. “The misogyny and the bravado of the macho dynamic coming from the Guns N’ Roses camp was suffocating,” he states. “Their track One In a Million included offensive slurs, and that was the vibe backstage. I refused to participate. We resisted sacrificing our values for this negativity.”
The tour – from which Faith No More were sacked two weeks early, for criticizing GN’R in the press – marked a turning point for Bottum. “It was time to live authentically,” he says, “to open up about being queer, to separate myself from this negative setting.” Against his managers’ advice, he announced he was gay in the pages of the Advocate the following year. “I stood alone as an openly gay man in rock music,” he says. “Freddie Mercury never publicly acknowledged his sexuality. Michael Stipe didn’t talk about it, nor Rob Halford, nor Bob Mould. I felt enraged. I needed to put myself on that page of history, to promote inclusivity in the music industry. Many queer youth expressed how my openness impacted them positively.”
Overcoming Addiction
Bottum hadn’t even discussed his sexuality with his group, even though he travelled with his boyfriend on the tourbus. “They were open minded, they would have been OK with it,” he says. “The harm caused by societal homophobia then, the effects of discrimination.” He found immediate support from Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who was the stark contrast of the gender bias and discrimination that had tainted the GN’R tour. “Kurt was a rare find,” Bottum says softly. “He embraced the idea of queerness for its rebelliousness. This connected us deeply. He appreciated my openness and presence. He stood out as extraordinary.”
Bottum became intimate to Cobain and Love, the trio connected at the time by drug use. Bottum
