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When Roddy Bottum embarked on crafting his notable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboardist had a clear vision of the type of book he did not wish to create. “Those with photo inserts in the center,” he remarks, during a video call from Oxnard, California, where he is wrapping up a new album with his musical project Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”

The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum omits the surnames of his bandmates. And while he details the team’s early days and formative stages, this is secondary to his “teenage exploits” in San Francisco, “prior to the digital age, before the city’s decline.” Much of the focus is on his personal journey with identity, and how the related secrecy and shame have influenced his life. “From a young age, around 13 or 14, I engaged in sexual relations 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 described without hesitation and defiantly. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he records. “Initially with shame, later with pride. Fuck off.”

“When I do readings, I start with that section,” he declares. “I recognize the inflammatory nature of such remarks; it’s utterly unseemly. But I’m not ashamed. In the era of Trump, my story must be proclaimed, to fight the racism, the anti-transgender and anti-gay attitudes.” He stops. “I want to be provocative. I have relatives who are Christian people, and I fully plan to disrupt their holiday meal with this publication. As they are sure to peruse it.”

The memoir opens on the teenage Bottum relocating from his home Los Angeles. “San Francisco offered a sharp contrast to LA’s glossy surface,” he says. “Cold. Gloomy. Individuals with jet-black hair and pale complexions, people doing crystal meth and heroin. San Francisco’s gay community was unlike anything in Los Angeles. It was inspiring.”

Becoming Part of Faith No More

It’s here, in 1981, that Bottum joined Faith No Man (later Faith No More) with Billy Gould and Mike Bordin, enhancing their “powerful bass and drums” with “an element of grace over the gloom. Most rock acts avoided keyboards back then.” They try out vocalists, including – temporarily – Courtney Love, the memoir’s most memorable personality, an fearless source of disorder lighting homes on fire and creating adversaries wherever she went.

“We immediately felt a bond, Courtney and I,” Bottum says. Their non-romantic relationship momentarily crossed into a physical connection, leading to pregnancy and abortion; later, Bottum became a trusted confidant of Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain. Unlike the vilified image some hold, Bottum describes Love as someone with intelligence, energy and agency.

“Life was difficult for Courtney,” he concurs. “An influential yet disputed individual, and highly intelligent. Such a character is fascinating to document. Her nature is caring and understanding, and few get to witness it. Yet we shared a deep bond and supported one another.”

The Band’s Beginnings

The embryonic Faith No More were, Bottum admits, “utterly absurd.” Their music focused on insistent, weighty rhythms played freely while under the influence of various drugs, including MDMA, while their frontman, eccentric drinker Chuck Mosley, “was not a skilled singer.” But they had ambition. “Everyone in our scene was into goth and dark stuff, but we loved MTV, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. Irrationality, we saw ourselves in that league. However, we lacked any pop charm or allure.”

But their cynical fusion song We Care a Lot became a minor MTV hit 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 genuine, award-recognized success. As usual, The Royal We doesn’t focus on this triumph, shifting abruptly instead to their disastrous stint on Guns N’ Roses and Metallica’s 1992 stadium tour.

“I used heroin to numb the pain of my concealed life.”

The Big Tour Experience

It was, Bottum says, “an unprecedented touring event.” But Faith No More were quickly alienated by the “toxic” rock’n’roll circus they’d joined; in the memoir, he tells an unsettling encounter with fans recruited for GN’R’s entertainment. “The misogyny and the bravado of the macho dynamic coming from the Guns N’ Roses camp was suffocating,” he says. “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 fired two weeks early, for badmouthing GN’R in the press – marked a critical juncture for Bottum. “I had to embrace my true self,” he says, “to open up about being queer, 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. “No other rock musician was openly queer at the time,” he says. “Mercury kept his identity private. Stipe avoided the subject, nor Rob Halford, nor Hüsker Dü’s member. It made me angry. I had to claim my place in history, to get people to accept a queer person in music. And I met so many kids who were queer, who felt my being a queer person in music made a difference to them.”

Personal Struggles and Sobriety

Bottum kept private his sexuality with his group, even though he journeyed with his boyfriend on the tourbus. “Their tolerant attitudes meant they’d have understood,” he notes. “It was the damage of being a gay kid in that era, the impact of internalized stigma.” He found instant acceptance from Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who was the clear opposite of the misogyny and discrimination that had tainted the GN’R tour. “Cobain was unique,” Bottum says softly. “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 became intimate to Cobain and Love, the trio united at the time by substance dependence. Bottum