Mike Patton Was Just Taking The Piss In London

There is a legend, passed down through the ages, that for me started in a record store (remember those?) on the outskirts of Philadelphia in 2002.

As it goes, vocalist / madman Mike Patton was playing a show at the Astoria in London with Tomahawk. Before the gig, a ‘meeting’ was set up. It turned out to be an intervention, where all the nü-metal guys tried to get Faith No More to reunite. It didn’t go so well. We wrote all about it back in June.

This story supposedly leads to the infamous (and well documented) incident involving Mike Patton urinating on a security guard at the gig. The legendary prologue seems to have originated from a statement Tomahawk published, and the deep-seated sarcasm may just have been lost in translation among dumb kids in record stores.

At the time, it made Patton my hero. Without context, I believed it for years. Until some questions were raised in our comments section in June, and research suggested that it was a big, ridiculous joke “explaining” why Mike Patton saw in one security guard an open urinal.

We decided to get to the bottom of it, once and for all. And we got our chance in Brazil over the weekend, where our man Fernando Scoczynski ran into Chino Moreno of the Deftones at Maquinária Festival. Moreno confirmed that while he did attend the Tomahawk gig, the nü-metal intervention story was bullshit.

With that said, we never believed this was a rubber penis.

So let’s officially revise the legend for historical accuracy: At the London Astoria in 2002, in front of 1,500 people, Mike Patton urinated on a security guard. For no apparent reason. And got away with it.

I guess we can live with that one.

Stay tuned for Fernando’s full coverage of Maquinária 2009.