The Real Thing (1989)

The Real Thing is the third studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 20, 1989, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the first album to feature singer Mike Patton, following the dismissal of previous vocalist Chuck Mosley. On this album, Faith No More continued to advance their sound range, combining alternative metal, funk metal, and rap metal.

Background

Faith No More underwent several lineup changes before recording their first album, We Care a Lot, released in 1985 and distributed through San Francisco-based label Mordam Records. On the original vinyl release, the band is credited as "Faith. No More" on the album's liner notes, back cover, and on the record itself. Within a year the band signed up with Slash Records. The debut album's title track "We Care a Lot" was later re-recorded, for their follow-up album Introduce Yourself in 1987, and released as their first single. Membership remained stable until vocalist Chuck Mosley was replaced by Mike Patton in 1988.

Production

The writing for the majority of the music for The Real Thing took place after the tour for Introduce Yourself. An early version of "The Morning After", with alternate lyrics written and sung by Chuck Mosley, was released under the moniker, "New Improved Song" on March 12th, 1989. The track appeared on the Sounds·Waves 2 EP included with Sounds magazine issue 1574. "Surprise! You're Dead!" was composed by Jim Martin in the 1970s, while he was guitarist for Agents of Misfortune, which also featured Cliff Burton in their line up. The recording of the song took place in December 1988 after Chuck Mosley was fired from the band, and was completed prior to the hiring of Mike Patton, who then wrote all the lyrics for the songs, and recorded them the following month over the music.

Producer Matt Wallace said that Patton wrote the lyrics over a 10 to 12 day period; this is considered an impressive feat considering Patton was only 19–20 years old, and "pulled it out of thin air". The only input from Wallace came during a few days spent at a San Francisco coffee shop, where he advised Patton to incorporate more metaphors to soften some of the darker, heavier lyrical themes. Among the darker lyrics on the album are "The Morning After", "Surprise! You're Dead" and "Underwater Love". In 1995, British music publication Q described all three of these songs as lyrically revolving around murder. "Underwater Love" has upbeat music which contrasts the apparent lyrical matter.

Touring and support

Tours

The tour in support of The Real Thing was the first Faith No More tour conducted with Mike Patton. The band had begun to be marketed as metal by the media after the album's release, and they were now primarily playing with other bands from the heavy metal genre. Notable artists Faith No More performed with during the touring cycle include Metallica, Billy Idol, Soundgarden, Voivod, Sacred Reich, Forbidden, Primus, Babes in Toyland and Poison. They managed to attract controversy for mocking the party/sex-filled lifestyles of glam metal tourmates such as Poison at several shows in Europe during 1990. At a 1990 Monsters of Rock show in Italy, Patton asked the crowd "which member of Poison can suck his own dick?", and also made fun of Aerosmith, saying to the crowd "out of all the bands today, who do you think does the most drugs? I think it's Aerosmith." Ironically, Faith No More would later cover parts of Aerosmith's song "Walk This Way" on their subsequent Angel Dust tour, and were originally scheduled to go on a European tour with them in 1998, which was cancelled due to Faith No More's split that year.

In 1989, the second show of the tour was filmed for the music video to "From out of Nowhere" in the I-Beam nightclub. During the show, Patton had a beer bottle smashed over his right hand, causing lacerations to some tendons. He regained use of his hand after it healed, but he no longer has feeling in it. The band's August, 28 1990 concert at Burgherrenhalle in Kaiserslautern, Germany is notable for featuring the only ever performance of the song "Faster Disco" with Patton on vocals. The concert also featured several other Chuck Mosley-era songs which have almost never been performed live with Patton, including "Blood", "Greed" and "The Jungle". At that time, the band's first independent album We Care a Lot was not in circulation. "As the Worm Turns" and "Why Do You Bother" were the only songs from the album to be regularly worked into the band's setlists on the tour (aside from the title track, which was re-recorded for their major label debut Introduce Yourself). Regarding the decision to still perform material from We Care a Lot, bassist Billy Gould said to Metal Hammer in May 1990 that, "we'd feel weird cutting that part of ourselves off. We'd be ignoring a root of the tree, if you will."