104 - Faith No More with Roddy Bottum

104 - Faith No More with Roddy Bottum

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club February 21, 2026 Duration: 56:58

Roddy Bottum is best known as the keyboard player in Faith No More & his new book The Royal We is out now on Akashic Books. 


Roddy moves to San Francisco from L.A. in 1981 & a l;ittle while later he joins what was originally known as Faith No Man. After a few lineup changes (including a brief stint with Courtney Love as lead vocalist) the band morphs into the first incarnation of Faith No More with Roddy writing their breakthrough track We Care A Lot. 


The band make their first trip to the UK for a small tour including a show at Dingwalls in London. 


Things really start to come together when lead vocalist Mike Patton joins & The Real Thing album comes out in 1989 - backed by a top 10 single in Epic. 


Roddy’s keyboard sound sets the band apart from their contemporaries & a huge tour with Metallica & Guns n Roses follows. We hear about Roddy’s experiences as a gay man in this very masculine & often toxic world. 


The Angel Dust album follows in 1992 as the bands commercial peak continues - the band comes to an end in 1998 although a couple of reunions have took place since in 2009 & 2015. 


Roddy also tells us about his other project Imperial Teen, a very different sounding band to Faith No More. 



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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Music Maps Podcast
Podcast Episodes
93 - The Beach Boys with Peter Doggett (Hawthorne, California) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:44
The story of the Beach Boys begins in Hawthorne, California in the late 1950s as the band come together led by Brian Wilson, originally as The Pendletones & Dennis Wilson suggests they focus on surfing themed material. T…
92 - Pamela Des Barres [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:51
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91 - Pink Floyd with Mark Blake [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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90 - Ride with Steve Queralt (Oxford) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:29
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89 - Live 8 with Paul Vallely [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:56
This week we travel back 20 years to 2005 with writer Paul Vallely to hear about Live 8, the G8 summit, Bob Geldof & Bono & more. So it starts in 1997 with the landslide general election win for Tony Blair & New Labour.…
88 - R.E.M. Twin Tone Records, Big Star & more with Peter Jesperson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:07
We are joined by Peter Jesperson as he tells us about his time spent with R.E.M. & his role in Twin Tone Records in the twin cities of Minneapolis/St.Paul. We also squeeze in a couple of stories about his time around Ale…
87 - The Wild Swans with Paul Simpson (Liverpool) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:53
This week we get to talk about one of the best music books of recent years Revolutionary Spirit by Paul Simpson. Paul was born in Liverpool but grew up in Lancashire alongside future members of Echo & the Bunnymen - Les…
86 - Donovan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:34
It is truly a pleasure to welcome Donovan to Music Maps - a true legend of the 60s. His book The Hurdy Gurdy Man is available on Penguin.We start with his early life in Glasgow in the 1950s & the family relocate to Hatfi…
85 - The Everly Brothers with Barry Mazor [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:43
This week we travel back to the 1950's & 60's to hear all about one of the most influential acts of all time The Everly Brothers with biographer Barry Mazor. Don & Phil's Dad Ike was a musician & the brothers are already…