10 Things You Didn’t Know about Mike Patton
Mike Patton has been known to get involved in a number of things such as voice acting, film composing, and running a record label. However, he is best-known for being the lead vocalist of the rock band Faith No More, which broke up in 1998 but has been reunited since 2009. A lot of people were looking forward to an expected tour in 2021 and 2022, but in recent times, it was revealed that it had been canceled because of concerns for Patton’s mental wellbeing.
1. Born in Eureka, CA
Patton was born and raised in Eureka, CA. Said city is the biggest of the cities that can be found between San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR. However, Eureka isn’t particularly populous, seeing as how its population is measured in the low tens of thousands. In any case, interested individuals should have no problem guessing that it was named for the famous cry, which is connected to the past interest of gold rush miners in the surrounding region.
2. Grew Up as a Big Fan of Sports
It is interesting to note that Patton was a big fan of sports when he was a child. In part, this was because of his father, who worked as a PE teacher. Patton himself played sports on a regular basis until he started touring in 1989, which is the kind of thing that eats up a lot of time to say the least.
3. Used to Watch a Lot of Slasher Movies
Besides sports, Patton had other childhood interests as well. For instance, he used to ask his parents to drop him off at the local movie theater on a frequent basis. There, Patton would often watch slasher movies, which are distinguished from other horror movies by their adherence to a specific set of characteristics such as the occurrence of a wrongful action in the past and some kind of event that causes either a reactivation or a reinspiration of the killer in the present. Of course, Patton watched other movies as well. To name an example, he was fond of Star Wars, not least because he was inspired by its soundtrack.
4. Identified as Straight Edge
On the whole, Patton was a well-adjusted individual who was well-liked by his peers when he was still a child. However, he had what some have called a “hyper geek” personality, with the result that he shifted towards arts because he felt more and more alienated from sports-people. Still, even though Patton embraced the metal scene, there were elements of it that he didn’t like. As such, this is the reason that he identified as straight edge in those days, thus defining himself as being against the drug epidemic in his hometown.
5. Had Plans to Become a Writer
Patton has said that he has written on a recreational basis for as long as he can remember. Furthermore, when he went to university, he had serious thoughts about wanting to become a writer. This can be seen in how Patton wrote a number of short stories in said period. Meanwhile, music was still no more than a hobby for him at that point in time.
6. Not the First Singer for Faith No More
In those days, Patton was still playing with a band called Mr. Bungle. Eventually, his second demo tape with said band was noticed by Faith No More, which is why he was asked to audition for the position of its singer. Something that Patton managed to win because of his sheer versatility. As for why Faith No More needed a new singer, well, apparently the last one Chuck Mosley had experienced a breakdown in relations with the rest of the band. For example, he punched one of his band-mates on stage at one point. Similarly, one of his roadies got into a fight with another one of his band-mates. Eventually, this culminated in the rest of the band agreeing that Mosley had to go, which was exactly what happened.
7. Did the Score for 1922
Patton has been known to work on movies from time to time. For instance, he was the one who did the score for 1922, which would be a 2017 horror drama based on Stephen King’s novella of the same name. In short, it is centered on a farmer named Wilfred “Wilf” James who is opposed to his wife Arlette’s plans to sell their farm before moving to the state of Omaha. As a result, he decides to convince his son to help him in murdering his wife. Something that perhaps unsurprisingly has catastrophic consequences for him as well as everyone else in his life.
8. Has Done a Fair Amount of Voice Work
Moving on, Patton has an interest in video games as well. Presumably, this is connected to his reasons for doing voice work, seeing as how a lot of his roles have been in video games. For example, Patton provided the voice for the titular entity in both The Darkness and The Darkness II. Similarly, he is said to have provided the voice work for most of the zombies in Left 4 Dead. On top of this, Patton even helped out with a remake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song for an upcoming video game in said franchise.
9. Used to Do Strange Things and Make Strange Claims
Patton has been known to behave in a pretty unusual manner himself. In fact, he was infamous for doing strange things as well as making strange claims in the past. This continued until the late 2000s, which was when he started doing these things less and less. Something that he attributed to having grown up and gotten better, meaning that he didn’t find those things to be funny anymore.
10. Is a Foodie
Among other things, Patton is a foodie. In fact, one of his records was about futurist cooking, which is every bit as strange as it sounds. For those who are unfamiliar, futurism was an early 20th century movement that stressed speed, technology, violence, youth, and dynamism, which was connected to the Italian originators’ desire to free their country from what they perceived as the chains of the past. As such, futurism took on many forms in many spheres, with one of the most noted being futurist cooking. Some of its recommendations were quite outlandish, as shown by the suggestion that people eat in a mock aircraft as well as the suggestion that ozonizers be used to give food the smell of ozone. Other recommendations were less unusual though perhaps no less controversial, seeing as how the rejection of pasta was met with an uproar from the Italian press of the time.
