He has faith in himself
With Peeping Tom, Mike Patton straddles genres to eclectic effect
Mike Patton did not make his most accessible record in years on purpose. In fact, at first, he wasn't even trying all that hard. He swears.
The California native, best known for his decade-long tenure as the lead singer of Faith No More, began working on what would become a multi-artist, genre-straddling project and album, both dubbed Peeping Tom, almost four years ago. The album features contributions from, among others, Massive Attack, Norah Jones, and Kool Keith.
"I would say it took the length of time that it did because I didn't treat it as a priority," says Patton on the phone from his home in the Bay Area, where he was collecting musicians for the Peeping Tom tour, including vocalist-violinist Imani Coppola, beatboxer Butterscotch, and reggae-rock fusionists Dub Trio. The tour comes to the Paradise Tuesday.
"I didn't know really what I was doing with it. I didn't say 'I'm going to start a band and it's going to sound like this.' It happened much more organically. As I was working on two or three other things, when I had time and got a little sick of that, all of a sudden I found myself in the lab cooking up all of this stuff that didn't belong anywhere. And it all kind of sounded like explorations into the song form . . . songs . . . pop songs," he fumbles out this last bit with a laugh that relates his sense of surprise at the notion of one of noise rock's most revered ambassadors writing pop songs. "Once I had enough of them on the table, I realized that I'd better take it more seriously, and to get to that point it took a couple of years because it was just a hobby for me, really. Something I was doing in my spare time."
Time was a rare commodity for the 39-year-old. Although his mainstream profile dipped in concert with the diminishing commercial returns of Faith No More, which disbanded in 1998, his respect among his cultlike fan base and within musicians' circles never dimmed, thanks to a host of projects he helmed or participated in before, during, and after FNM's early '90s run on the alt-rock charts with hits like "Epic" and "Midlife Crisis."
In addition to starting his own label, Ipecac, Patton guested on records by quirky Icelandic chanteuse Bjork, versatile producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura, and skronk-monster jazz saxophonist John Zorn while working concurrently with three groups -- Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, and Fantomas.
Each of those acts represented a challenge for those enamored of Faith No More as Patton and his bandmates explored densely composed sounds that lurched from avant jazz to punishing horror metal to breezy lounge music, sometimes in the space of one album. But for fans of Patton's expansive voice and tilted worldview who have more conventional tastes, Peeping Tom offers plenty of easy-to-grasp hooks even as it reflects the singer-songwriter's insatiable need to diversify.
Which means that while the album's 11 songs by and large contain discernible, catchy choruses, the various cuts also feature weird eruptions of Middle Eastern-sounding guitar, beatboxing courtesy of the Roots' Rahzel, West Coast hip-hop piano menace, caterwauling metal guitars, and ambient keyboard loops. Patton stretches his voice to reach shrieking peaks and plummet to malevolent whispers. The funky "Sucker" features Jones uttering a four-syllable curse word with seductive cruelty, while Bebel Gilberto duets on the bossa nova goes boss rocker "Caipirinha."
"The way that I've learned to compose and write is by listening [to music] or seeing movies and reading books," says Patton. " I think the more that you're exposed to and the more you try to digest, the more output you're going to have."
Another Jones, Howard, lead singer of Massachusetts metal titans Killswitch Engage, is also in the Patton camp. "He's able to manipulate his voice in a way most people don't understand," says Jones.
"Mike is a music person's music person," says Nakamura. This is evidenced by the fact that Peeping Tom's two opening stints in 2006 were for Gnarls Barkley and the Who. "I can't say I love everything he does, but I like it all, and the thing about it is it's always very unadulterated," says the producer, who has collaborated in various guises with Patton for years . He contributes to two tracks on "Peeping Tom," and will be hitting the road with the band.
Nakamura thinks that passion is part of the reason Patton has amassed such a devoted following over the years. "I think in whatever he's doing he's 100 percent, and I think he's very pure in that respect. I think that a certain type of person really respects that and can get intensely involved."
Glenn Howerton, co-creator and star of FX's irreverent comedy "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is that type of person. Drawn first to Faith No More, Howerton has followed Patton's career and is impressed by his undeterred vision. "He doesn't seem to let anything get in the way of what he wants to do, and that to me is the highest echelon of artist, who just does not seem at all concerned with what anyone thinks."
Not that many people are thinking about him at all. "Peeping Tom" has sold 48,000 copies in 11 months, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Although that is a home run by Patton's standards ; Tomahawk's "Mit Gas" has sold an identical amount in four years.) Small though the tribe may be, it includes not only fellow musicians, record buyers, and critics, but apparently some soap opera scribes, as well. Last August, two characters on "All My Children" -- an aspiring transgender musician named Zarf and a cosmetics industry person trying to get said musician to endorse her product -- had a lengthy exchange about the singer that began, "Mike Patton is not God, you know." The sheer bizarreness of the scene, and the idea that its writer was such a fan that he or she risked total audience confusion to insert Patton into it, perfectly fits his madcap profile.
"I think what makes the rabid fans so rabid is that nobody knows [Patton], and as a really big fan of his, you feel like you want to go out and spread the gospel," says Howerton, who discovered that his "Always Sunny" costar Danny DeVito is a member of the cult as well and a good friend of the singer's. "Surely, I thought, this [62]-year-old man could not be talking about the same Mike Patton," he recalls thinking when DeVito invited him into his trailer to hear an advance copy of "Peeping Tom."
Patton may not be a deity -- and he refuses to drink from the well of fanatical Kool-Aid, saying, "If anyone's listening at all, that's a good thing" -- but he is the master of his own domain.
The coming year will see new releases with Zorn and Tomahawk, work on a second Peeping Tom record with different co conspirators he has yet to name (he has his fingers crossed for Burt Bacharach), and, why not, a live album of Italian pop and folk songs.
"You can hear the Italian spirit in them," says the singer, "but there's rock stuff, there's mambo stuff, it's kind of all over the place."
Just like Mike Patton. 