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Mike Patton on stage with Faith No More in 1990. | Credit: Getty Images\/Goedefroit Music<\/p>\n
When Faith No More returned with their third album The Real Thing in 1989, the San Francisco rockers not only had a new singer in Mike Patton, they\u2019d also written what would quickly become the biggest hit of their career.<\/strong><\/p>\n Epic was released as the second single from the album in January 1990, and had begun life as a jam between bassist Billy Gould, drummer Mike Bordin and keyboard player Roddy Bottum.<\/p>\n As Gould described it, the track was \u201cconceived naturally as a riff in the studio between Roddy, myself and Mike that later got fleshed out into an entire song\u201d.<\/p>\n In truth, the band were in a place of uncertainty at the turn of the \u201990s. Initial sales of The Real Thing were disappointing after the first single, From Out Of Nowhere, had flopped.<\/p>\n It was the decision of their label, Slash Records, to let the group pick the second single, and though the A&R team weren\u2019t particularly keen on Epic, for the band members themselves it was one of the bona fide highlights on the album. But even by their own admission, they had \u201cvery little expectations of it becoming a commercial hit\u201d.<\/p>\n As fate would have it, the track performed very successfully across the globe, topping the Australian charts for three weeks, peaking at No.2 in New Zealand and climbing to No.9 in the US Billboard Hot 100.<\/p>\n By blending elements of rap, funk and classical with heavy rock, Epic would also lay the groundwork for the wave of nu-metal that followed later in the decade.<\/p>\n In 1997, Billy Gould explained how \u201ca lot of our songs start music first, lyrics later\u201d and how its title was \u201ca kind of code word\u201d because \u201cit was a preposterous grandiose thing!\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cWe\u2019ve always had a sort of campy, semi-serious approach to writing, with these big cinematic sounds. Patton wrote the words to it about a week after he joined the band. I remember him explaining it to me and I didn\u2019t know him very well, so I wasn\u2019t sure what to make of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The song is lyrically ambiguous, with Patton\u2019s enigmatic lyrics continually alluding to \u201cit\u201d though never quite articulating what \u201cit\u201d actually is. Interestingly, the word \u2018epic\u2019 is never mentioned during its 4 mins 53 secs. When the conversation later turned to masturbation, the eccentric frontman explained how \u201cmost people don\u2019t like to talk about it\u201d but he nevertheless counted himself as a big fan, adding \u201cthat\u2019s kind of what Epic\u2019s really about\u201d.<\/p>\n Guitarist Jim Martin can be seen playing a black Gibson Flying V with a mirror pickguard in the video, which was mostly likely plugged into a Marshall or Mesa\/Boogie amp for the recording.<\/p>\n Martin can also be seen wearing a t-shirt that says \u2018A Tribute To Cliff Burton\u2019 \u2013 as the Metallica bassist who had died a few years earlier was a schoolmate and close friend of Martin\u2019s.<\/p>\n The guitarist\u2019s parts evolve throughout the song \u2013 starting with simple E, B, C and D power chords. In the second verse he introduces a bluesy riff that features an E7#9, a shape commonly referred to as \u2018the Hendrix chord\u2019.<\/p>\n For the second chorus, he switches to an octave idea instead of power chords that sits above the original movement being continued by Gould\u2019s bass. There\u2019s also a heavy palm-muted riff playing off the open low E-string and an E power chord one octave up at the seventh fret of the A-string.<\/p>\n The guitar solo is played in the key of E Aeolian and gets harmonised a third up for extra depth.<\/p>\n More octave ideas are brought in for the outro which get layered against some single-note lines in the same key and low E power chords.<\/p>\n The final segment of music is played on piano by Bottum.<\/p>\n In the Salvador Dali-inspired music video, Bottum walks away just seconds before the piano explodes.<\/p>\n Moments before the explosion, a fish can be seen flapping on the ground, which led to criticism from animal rights activists. There was also a rumour that the fish actually belonged to Icelandic singer Bj\u00f6rk and had been stolen by the members of Faith No More.<\/p>\n \u201cThe floundering goldfish was my idea,\u201d Gould revealed in 1997. \u201cIt was that kinda [cult director] John Waters thing where you try to get maximum attention for minimum money! The piano exploding was pretty cool, too.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2010, the music video\u2019s director Ralph Ziman confirmed that several fish were used for the shoot in London and none were out of the water for very long, with all of the animals being released into a river following the video\u2019s completion.<\/p>\n 36 years on from its release, Epic serves as a time capsule for the changing of the guard in rock music at the end of the \u201980s, heralding the more outlandish and experimental type of sonic aggression that would soon be typified by groups like Korn, System Of A Down and Slipknot.<\/p>\n Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor himself once revealed that seeing Faith No More at the 1990 VMAs performing Epic on a television set saved his life after a suicide attempt.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for Faith No More, I wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d Taylor revealed, explaining how the funk rockers \u201cre-energised my whole will to make music\u201d.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThey were so good and they were so powerful and it was so different than anything I had ever seen, you know, that they really got me off my ass and that\u2019s when I started writing and making music again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[264],"tags":[169196,18,117,10619,118576,19,17,169199,169198,152992,337,169197],"class_list":["post-363509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-billy-gould","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-epic","tag-faith-no-more","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-martin","tag-mike-bordin","tag-mike-patton","tag-music","tag-roddy-bottum"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116158161808021314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In a 1990 interview with Circus Magazine, Patton explained that lyrics like \u201cit\u2019s in your face but you can\u2019t grab it\u201d were about \u201csexual frustration\u201d in its various forms, airing his grievances with both sides of the coin (\u201csex and lack of sex\u201d).<\/p>\n