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As Roddy Bottum began crafting his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the keyboard player for Faith No More had a definite idea of the sort of book he did not wish to create. “The sort featuring mid-book images,” he notes, during a video call from Oxnard, California, where he is completing a new album with his musical project Imperial Teen. “I don’t care much for rock memoirs – they often follow a tired formula, laden with famous names and lacking depth.”

The Royal We is definitely not name-droppy – Bottum omits the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the team’s early days and initial growth, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined.” Much of the attention is on his discovery of his sexuality, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he explains. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his seeking encounters in restrooms and parks as a teenager are narrated boldly and without regret. “Intimate moments occurred with older men in outdoor hideaways,” he records. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Get lost.”

“At book events, I begin by reading that part,” he says. “I am aware of the shock value in those words; it’s utterly unseemly. But I’m not ashamed. In the era of Trump, my story must be proclaimed, to oppose the racism, the anti-trans and anti-gay attitudes.” He stops. “I seek to challenge norms. I have relatives who are Christian people, and I fully plan to disrupt their holiday meal with this publication. Because they’ll all read it.”

The memoir starts on the teenage Bottum shifting from his birthplace Los Angeles. “The city was a sudden shift from LA’s bright facade,” he notes. “Cold. Gloomy. Individuals with jet-black hair and pale complexions, persons engaged in substance abuse. The queer culture that existed in San Francisco was all so different from Los Angeles. It motivated me.”

Joining Faith No More

In 1981, Bottum became a member of Faith No Man, which evolved into Faith No More with Billy Gould and Mike Bordin, accenting their “powerful bass and drums” with “a sense of beauty atop that darkness. Most rock acts avoided keyboards back then.” They cycle through vocalists, including – for a short time – Courtney Love, the memoir’s most vivid character, an fearless source of disorder causing domestic havoc and making enemies at every turn.

“Courtney and I both knew right away that we were soulmates,” Bottum recalls. Their platonic friendship briefly blurred into a physical connection, resulting in pregnancy and abortion; later, Bottum became a trusted confidant of Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain. Contrary to the negative stereotypes, Bottum describes Love as someone with intelligence, vitality and self-determination.

“Courtney faced many challenges,” he concurs. “A divisive figure with immense strength, and highly intelligent. And that’s a very attractive, exciting person to write about. She’s a warm, compassionate person, and many fail to see that side. Yet we shared a deep bond and supported one another.”

Faith No More’s Formative Years

The early Faith No More were, Bottum confesses, “completely ridiculous.” Their music focused on driving, repetitive riffs played freely while under the influence of assorted narcotics, including MDMA, while their frontman, alcoholic oddball Chuck Mosley, “didn’t have a good singing voice.” But they had ambition. “Our peers favored gothic and somber themes, but we loved MTV, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. In some crazy way, we imagined we were part of that mix. Yet we were far from glamorous or appealing.”

But their cynical fusion song We Care a Lot became a minor MTV hit in 1988, Mosley ceded the mic to the camera-friendly Mike Patton (who did have a good singing voice), and by 1990 Faith No More’s third album was a bona fide, Grammy-nominated hit. Typically, The Royal We doesn’t linger over this triumph, jump-cutting instead to their unsuccessful period on Guns N’ Roses and Metallica’s 1992 stadium tour.

“Heroin served as my coping mechanism for hidden truths.”

The Big Tour Experience

It was, Bottum says, “the biggest tour that had ever happened.” But Faith No More were quickly alienated by the “harmful” rock’n’roll circus they’d entered; in the memoir, he recounts an disturbing 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. “Their track One In a Million included offensive slurs, and that set the tone behind the scenes. I wanted no involvement. We declined to contribute our identity to such toxicity.”

The tour – from which Faith No More were sacked two weeks early, for criticizing GN’R in the press – marked a turning point for Bottum. “It was time to live authentically,” he says, “to open up about being queer, to remove myself from this negative setting.” Against his managers’ advice, he came out in the pages of the Advocate the following year. “No other rock musician was openly queer at the time,” he emphasizes. “Mercury kept his identity private. Michael Stipe remained silent on the topic, nor Rob Halford, nor the alternative rock figure. I felt enraged. I needed to put myself on that page of history, to get people to accept a queer person in music. I encountered numerous young LGBTQ+ individuals inspired by my visibility.”

Overcoming Addiction

Bottum kept private his sexuality with his bandmates, even though he travelled with his boyfriend on the tourbus. “Their tolerant attitudes meant they’d have understood,” he says. “The trauma of growing up gay during that time, the damage of the shame and homophobia.” He found swift approval from Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who was the proud antithesis of the sexism and discrimination that had tainted the GN’R tour. “Kurt was a rare find,” Bottum murmurs. “Cobain enjoyed challenging norms through identity. That likely strengthened our bond. My sexuality was something he valued. He stood out as extraordinary.”

Bottum grew close to Cobain and Love, the trio united at the time by drug use. Bottum