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When Roddy Bottum started writing his notable autobiography The Royal We, the keyboard player for Faith No More had a specific goal of the sort of book he wanted to steer clear of. “Those with photo inserts in the center,” he says, during a video call from Oxnard, California, where he is completing a new album with his group Imperial Teen. “I have little interest in rock memoirs – they often follow a tired formula, laden with famous names and lacking depth.”

The Royal We avoids being name-droppy – Bottum leaves out the surnames of his fellow musicians. And while he describes the band’s beginnings and initial growth, this is secondary to his “adventures as a young person” in San Francisco, “in an era pre-internet, when the city was still untouched.” Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the associated hiddenness and shame have shaped his life. “As a teenager, at 13 or 14, I began intimate encounters with men,” he states. “It was deeply forbidden, and that defined my life’s path.” In the memoir, incidents involving his visiting public facilities and parks as a teenager are narrated unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he notes. “Initially with shame, later with pride. Fuck off.”

“When I do readings, I start with that section,” he comments. “I understand how provocative statements like that are; it’s utterly unseemly. But I feel no embarrassment. With Trump in power, my truth needs to be shouted loud, to combat the racism, the transphobic and anti-gay attitudes.” He stops. “I aim to stir controversy. Some of my family members are devout Christians, and I fully plan to disrupt their holiday meal with this publication. Since they will inevitably read it.”

The memoir starts on the teenage Bottum moving from his native Los Angeles. “San Francisco was an abrupt about-face from the sunny superficiality of LA,” he says. “Bitter. Shadowy. Individuals with jet-black hair and pale complexions, people doing crystal meth and heroin. The queer culture that existed in San Francisco was all so different from Los Angeles. It motivated me.”

Joining Faith No More

During this period, in 1981, Bottum teamed up with Faith No Man, later renamed Faith No More with Billy Gould and Mike Bordin, accenting their “powerful bass and drums” with “a sense of beauty atop that darkness. Rock bands didn’t have keyboards then.” They rotate vocalists, including – temporarily – Courtney Love, the memoir’s most vivid character, an bold instigator of turmoil lighting homes on fire and making enemies at every turn.

“We immediately felt a bond, Courtney and I,” Bottum recalls. Their platonic friendship temporarily shifted into a physical connection, resulting in pregnancy and abortion; later, Bottum became a close advisor of Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain. Unlike the vilified image some hold, Bottum describes Love as someone with intelligence, drive and independence.

“Life was difficult for Courtney,” he nods. “An influential yet disputed individual, and so smart. And that’s a very attractive, exciting person to write about. She’s a warm, compassionate person, and a lot of people aren’t exposed to that. However, our relationship was tight, and we looked out for each other.”

The Early Days of Faith No More

The early Faith No More were, Bottum confesses, “utterly absurd.” Their music revolved around driving, repetitive riffs played freely while under the influence of multiple substances, including MDMA, while their frontman, eccentric drinker Chuck Mosley, “didn’t have a good singing voice.” But they had ambition. “Everyone in our scene was into goth and dark stuff, but we adored mainstream media and artists. Somehow, we felt connected to that world. Though there was nothing shiny or attractive or poptastic about us.”

But their cynical fusion song We Care a Lot became a small-scale success on MTV in 1988, Mosley ceded the mic to the photogenic Mike Patton (who did have a good singing voice), and by 1990 Faith No More’s third album was a true, critically acclaimed achievement. Characteristically, The Royal We doesn’t dwell on this triumph, shifting abruptly instead to their ill-fated tour on Guns N’ Roses and Metallica’s 1992 stadium tour.

“The heroin was me self-medicating, so I could feel OK about living all these secrets.”

Touring with Giants

It was, Bottum remarks, “the largest concert series of its time.” But Faith No More were quickly estranged by the “toxic” rock’n’roll circus they’d joined; in the memoir, he tells an uncomfortable encounter with followers recruited for GN’R’s entertainment. “The toxic masculinity exuded by that group was stifling,” he explains. “That song featured derogatory language, and that was the vibe backstage. I refused to participate. We didn’t want to loan our credibility, our culture, our individuality to this poison.”

The tour – from which Faith No More were sacked two weeks early, for criticizing GN’R in the press – marked a pivotal moment for Bottum. “I needed to be who I was,” he says, “to talk about being gay, to separate myself from this negative setting.” Against his managers’ advice, he announced he was gay in the pages of the Advocate the following year. “I stood alone as an openly gay man in rock music,” he states. “Freddie Mercury hadn’t come out before he died. Stipe avoided the subject, nor Judas Priest’s frontman, nor Bob Mould. I felt enraged. It was essential to document my story, to encourage acceptance of LGBTQ+ artists. And I met so many kids who were queer, who felt my being a queer person in music made a difference to them.”

Challenges and Recovery

Bottum never talked about his sexuality with his group, even though he travelled with his boyfriend on the tourbus. “Their tolerant attitudes meant they’d have understood,” he comments. “It was the damage of being a gay kid in that era, the damage of the shame and homophobia.” He found immediate support from Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who was the stark contrast of the gender bias and discrimination that had marred the GN’R tour. “Kurt was a rare find,” Bottum murmurs. “He wanted to be gay – Kurt loved the provocation of that. This connected us deeply. He appreciated my openness and presence. He stood out as extraordinary.”

Bottum developed a strong bond to Cobain and Love, the trio bonded at the time by substance dependence. Bottum