The small-town English student who became rock's most restless voice
Mike Patton planned to be a writer. Then a demo tape by his teenage band reached Faith No More, who had auditioned more than fifteen singers, Chris Cornell among them, and picked the Humboldt undergraduate for his range. He left college, and a career spanning metal, jazz, opera and hip-hop followed.
Born on January 27, 1968, in the isolated northern Californian city of Eureka, Patton was the son of a social worker and a physical education teacher. The household was strictly secular, and he grew up playing sport. As a lonely, grade-focused boy he would ask to be dropped at the cinema, where he sneaked into slasher films and Star Wars; the latter's score hit him hard. At Eureka High School he met bassist Trevor Dunn and guitarist Trey Spruance, and in 1984 they formed Mr. Bungle, playing a first show that November in nearby Bayside.
He went on to study English literature at Humboldt in Arcata, writing short stories and treating music as a hobby while working at the town's only record shop. At a 1986 gig in a pizza parlour, Spruance handed drummer Mike Bordin a copy of Mr. Bungle's cassette The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny. Two years later Faith No More asked Patton to audition, and in January 1989 he was named as Chuck Mosley's replacement.
His first album with the band, The Real Thing, came out that year and climbed into the US top 20, helped by MTV playing the Epic video constantly; in it he wears a Mr. Bungle shirt. Faith No More split in 1998, reunited in 2009, released Sol Invictus in 2015 and announced a third reunion in June 2026. Commercially it was his biggest success, though it yielded only one American hit against three UK top 20 singles.
Around that core he kept dozens of projects going. With Buzz Osborne, Dunn and Slayer's Dave Lombardo he formed Fantômas in 1998; with Duane Denison he started Tomahawk; he sang on Björk's Medúlla in 2004. In 1999 he and Greg Werckman founded Ipecac Recordings, which he still runs. He openly scorns the mainstream industry, and singers in bands such as Deftones and Slipknot name him as an influence.
Source: Mike Patton
