by Mike Gitter, 1991
When you encounter the gaggle of lunatics who make up insane San
Francisco metallers Mr. Bungle, just don't mention the F-word. There's
no funk here, insist Mike Patton and his cohorts -- just a lot of John
Zorn-produced weirdness, not to mention masturbation. But will the
spectre of Faith No More hinder the unbalanced sextet forever, wonders
MIKE GITTER, or will they manage to duck the contractual hassles and be
left to their own devices -- that is, whiffing their own farts?
"I'm writing a book," Mike Patton deadpans. "It's called 'It's Lonely at
the Top'."
"If you read about him, he's not really like that," offers Danny Heifetz,
Mr. Bungle's balding skinsman. "So many lies, so much deceit, all the
mistrust ..."
Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn and guitarist Trey Spruance join in with a
grinning idiots' chorus: "'Life on the road -- they said it couldn't
happen!'"
See ya at Caesar's in Vegas too. Sarcastic, biting, miserable youths,
that's Mr. Bungle. Faith No More's vocalist has come home to his 'other'
bandmates. Here he passes himself off as Vlad Dracula. Get them
together in one room and they can barely eke out a coherent thought
between the six of them.
Still, when Mr. Bungle get down to business, they play like Earth, Wind
and Fire in a Salvador Dali painting -- if you can imagine that. In the
space of one four minute song they wheedle through more sudden shifts in
sound, texture and tempo than most bands pull off in an entire set.
Their much-anticipated self-titled debut proves Mr. Bungle are much more
than the t-shirt Patton's so fond of wearing at every possible
opportunity -- very different, but just as talented as FNM. An odd bunch
fond of masks and costumes to whom the words 'retard' and 'genius' could
apply in the same breath.
But what else can you expect from someone who got their name from the
puppet hero of a series of 1950s health and hygiene films? ("The 50s
version of 'Your Brain on Drugs'," according to Trey). As an interview,
they're often uncooperative; fixated on the schoolboy humor of
bestiality, porn, masturbation and how much their farts smell like
rotting eggs.
"Eggies! Eggies! Eggies!" Trevor howls like Pink Flamingos' Egg-Lady as
the reek of Patton's flatulence wafts through a New York hotel room.
"Don't know about you," chuckles Trey. "At least we're enjoying this."
Six years before Faith No More were to burst up the charts and become its
current vocalist's favorite uncomfortable situation, Mr. Bungle came
together in the remote Northern California coastal town of Eureka, some
300 miles north of San Francisco.
"It's full of retards," smirks Trevor.
"I'm frightened by a lot of it," admits Trey. "There's a lot of pot
growers with machine guns and cops running around, not to mention all the
rednecks who want to beat you over the head with baseball bats. It's
White Trash-ville USA! About 10 miles away, this town called Ferndale --
which is where they filmed 'Salem's Lot' -- almost had a Satanic mayor,"
the moustachioed guitarist continues. "He's this psycho-sculptor guy
named Hobart Brown who they wouldn't let run because he was a Satanist."
"He would have been good for the local economy," reasons Patton.
The sons of 'unbelievably normal' parents, Mr. Bungle first came together
from the merger of two Humboldt county speed metal bands. Mike and
Trevor were in Fiend -- a "Metallica-Slayer-Exciter cover band," Trey
calls it. The guitarist refuses to name his own former "Exodus-like
sorta band."
"Then we traveled down to the Bay Area to teach the bands there how to
play fast," Trevor interjects. "We'd walk into the Stone and everyone
would just bow to us because they knew we were way faster than any of
them could possibly ever imagine."
"Kirk from Metallica came up and asked me for permission to play fast,"
sniggers Trey. "And then I taught Joe Satriani how to play and he taught
Kirk how to play. That's the chain, it started with me ... of course, I
owe it all to Y&T. Dave Meniketti is my god."
"It's just like how the Incas taught speed metal and mathematics to
Sepultura," offers Trevor.
During one of these Frisco road trips, a topic came up that was forever
destined to change Mr. Bungle's lyrical bent: masturbation. "It was
like one big confessional," Trevor admits. "We all confessed to each
other that, uh, well ..."
"I don't," Mike jumps in.
"It's nothing we're, uh, uncomfortable about," Dunn notes.
"Then we started touching each other," Patton sneers.
"Telling each other what feels good," Trevor smirks.
"We're just like any young American boys, collecting our Easy Riders, our
Playboys," adds Trey. "Growing up, we'd keep 'em stashed in the woods,
away from our parents. Then they'd get rained on and we'd get a
blowdryer out to dry 'em. That's the way it started. By now we all have
pretty enormous ... collections."
Precisely the lyrical litany carried by songs like 'Squeeze Me Macaroni',
'Love is a Fist', or 'Girls of Porn'. So it's not surprising that,
before their mastering session, the foursome spend their free day in NY
in Times Square's 42nd Street porn district.
"This one store had the best sign in the window," Mike recalls. "'If you
don't see what you're looking for, just ask'. Now there's a thought."
Don't ask 'em about funk, though. "No, not the F word," Trey protests.
"I guess we sort of committed that crime on our last demo (OU818). But
Jesus, that was two years ago! It's too easy. You could jump out of
your punk roots or your metal roots, buy a Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt
and wholla -- you were F.U.N.K.! It's funny, we get criticized for that,
for not grooving or funking as hard as other bands from the northern
California area. Sorry, we're not here to apply background music to
people's bullshit."
To help them blaze a more unorthodox path, Mr. Bungle chose jazz-metal
noise terrorist John Zorn as producer. "We were just fans," says Danny
about the mad alto saxophonist, known for the jarring 'cable-TV-in-hell'
sound-bludgeons of Naked City, Painkiller and Torture Garden.
"And really, just like in porno shopping, all we had to do was ask,"
explains Mike. "Besides, he was cheaper than Thomas Dolby."
It is Zorn's twisted jazz sensibilities that give Mr. Bungle a certain
edge in the strangeness department, above and beyond their own headfirst
leap into the lunatic fringe.
"Zorn could lend a lot of definition of parts; his music moves in pretty
much the same way ours does," says Trey. "We wanted every part within a
song to have an entirely different character and he really brought that out."
As pay-back, Zorn "pinched my ass, ripped out a couple of butt-hairs and
asked me to sing for Naked City. I guess he liked the way I screamed,"
sniggers Mike, who fronted the outfit on a string of East Coast dates.
"By the way, I'm leaving both Faith No More and Mr. Bungle for Naked City."
There's that nasty issue again: which band is Mike Patton truly
committed to? Now that the Bungle disc is released, everyone insists the
problems are resolved. But as Mike bitched to the press for months,
getting matters to this stage was no mean feat.
"Lots of problems! Lots of problems!" squawks Trevor.
"Mostly legal," Spruance adds. "We didn't know what we could do and what
we couldn't do. We were running around with our hands tied behind our
backs because nobody was telling us anything. We all kept pushing, Mike
kept pushing and the people at the record company started seeing that
yes, it was a real thing and that it had to happen."
Admittedly, Warners did cut through an awful lot of legal red tape by
simply signing the band. Was there ever any fear that Mr. Bungle were
going to be contractualized out of existence? Any hints of a conspiracy
against them?
"No," Trey says flatly. "As extreme and sometimes inaccessible as the
album is, the people at Warners seem to really like it. They tell us
things like, 'You guys are great! It's really Zappa!'. In LA record
company talk, Zappa is the pinnacle of 'out there' and the standard
against which everything else is judged against. The further out there
you go, the closer you're getting to Zappa. Not to denounce Zappa, of
course!
"It's funny, FNM don't slow us down at all," he continues. "It only
affects us when it interrupts something we're doing -- like in the middle
of recording Mike had to go and do that Rock in Rio thing. He just
leaves and comes back. That's fine, we're not a full-time band anyway --
we're in college. Mike's doing his thing. I think if we were doing this
100 percent of the time we'd lose our momentum to make things the way
they are. FNM just gives us a schedule to work with."
Yet there's no denying that Mr. Bungle might not be as far along now if
it wasn't for Patton's more gainful employment.
"I guess," the guitarist says, mulling over the point. "How far along
are we, really? People have heard of us, sure. This wasn't exactly a
recording budget we couldn't have gotten elsewhere. In fact, before
Mike's offer to join FNM, we had an offer from another label that we
almost took. Who knows how things would have turned out? Who knows if
Mike would have even ended up in FNM? Mr. Bungle are as far along now as
Mr. Bungle should be."
And to the unwary FNM fan expecting a 'Real Thing' out-takes album as Mr.
Bungle's vinyl debut ... Think again.
"People will buy the record, some for the right reasons, others for the
wrong reason," Trey smiles.
"Regardless, they're definitely going to hear the difference
immediately. Look, you can sell the CD back for about four or five bucks.
"See ya in the used bin!"