Happy 30th: Faith No More, THE REAL THING

30 years ago this week, Faith No More released their third studio album, an LP which unexpectedly vaulted the Bay Area band out of cult status and transformed them into superstars…at least for a little while, anyway.

Produced by Matt Wallace and the band at Studio D in Sausalito, California, THE REAL THING was the first album to be released by Faith No More with their new lead singer front and center. At the time, Mike Patton was best known as the frontman for Mr. Bungle, which is to say that he wasn’t very well known at all, since Mr. Bungle were – and remain – a band with a less-than-mainstream sound. (There, that’s a politically-correct choice of phrase, isn’t it?) When Patton joined the band, he did so with tremendous exuberance: when original lead singer Chuck Mosley left the ranks in December 1988, Patton proceeded to write lyrics for all of the songs that the band had already written for THE REAL THING, completing the task in about a month. Six months later, the album was in stores and on its way to becoming a hit.

If you can’t place the singles from THE REAL THING, we can help you with that, although we’re pretty sure it won’t take you more than a few seconds of “Epic” to recognize it, at which point you’ll probably begin banging your head to the music. We don’t blame you.

•    “From Out of Nowhere”

•    “Epic”

•    “Falling to Pieces”

Given that neither of Faith No More’s previous pair of albums had managed to chart in either the US or the UK, it’s not really saying much to proclaim that THE REAL THING was the biggest selling album of the band’s career up to that point. But it did end up hitting #40 in the UK, where it went silver, and #11 in the US, where it went platinum, and it raised the band’s profile to such a degree that their next album, 1992’s ANGEL DUST, went all the way to #2 in the UK.