Faith No More and RHCP had had a somewhat of a shared history with FMN opening for the Chilis on a number of occasions. By 1989, Faith No More, together with new vocalist Mike Patton, had risen to the height of their popularity and were of an equal status to RHCP. Both bands were due to tour Europe with Faith No More scheduled to do so just ahead of the Chilis. There should have been no issue between the bands but that was until FNM released a new music video for their song, ‘Epic’:
“I watched [their] “Epic” video, and I see him jumping up and down, rapping, and it looked like I was looking in a mirror.” Anthony Kiedis
‘Red Hot Chili Peppers By The Way The Biography’ by Dave Thompson (page 163)
Kiedis was concerned that people, especially in Europe where RHCP was not so well known at that point, would think that it was in fact, he Kiedis, who was the imitator rather than Patton; Kiedis made a few comments referring to this to the press who immediately blew the whole thing out of proportion and announced that there was a feud between the two vocalists even though nothing had effectively happened…
… Fast forward 10 years later. By that point, Faith No More had disbanded and Patton had returned to his previous/on-going side-project, Mr Bungle, for the recording of their third album; an album to be entitled California and scheduled for release in June 1999- just when RHCP’s Californication was also due to be released. Mr Bungle pushed back their release by six weeks and forged ahead with the tour to promote their album, only to find themselves being dropped from a number of pre-booked festival slots. Questioning revealed that they had been dropped at the request of the headlining act, RHCP, and further enquiries between managers confirmed that Anthony Kiedis was personally behind those requests.
Although little could be done about the cancelled dates, revenge was exacted at a Halloween concert in Anthony’s home state of Michigan in 1999, when Mike Patton took to the stage dressed as Kiedis with the rest of the FNM entourage dressed as other members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (including one person as Hillel Slovak’s drug taking ghost) with the group proceeding to parody RHCP, covering several of the Chili’s songs with deliberately distorted lyrics:
Intro & Around the World
Kiedis was understandably incensed:
“I would not have given two fucks if they played there with us. But after I heard about [the] Halloween show where they mocked us, fuck him and fuck the whole band.”
‘Red Hot Chili Peppers By The Way The Biography’ by Dave Thompson (page 253)
The two bands were scheduled to play the Big Day Out in Australia but, unsurprisingly, Mr Bungle was dropped from the festival.
Update: In July 2010, Mike Patton was interviewed by Bizarre magazine and had this to say:
You had a feud with Anthony Kiedis in 1999 which led to Mr Bungle being taken off several festival bills. Are you friends yet?
It’s not worth talking about. I’ve no idea what it was about then and I don’t know now. But I bet we’d have a warm embrace if we saw each other now.
Bizarre Magazine July 2010
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