Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum and his partner Joey Holman this week announced a new music project produced in isolation. They've dubbed their duo MAN ON MAN (“They're gay lovers making gay music.”) and say they'll be releasing their first single next week.
Bottum made headlines back in 1993 when he came out in an interview with the late Lance Loud in The Advocate, becoming one of the first out rock musicians.
Faith No More announced in November 2019 that they would be reuniting in 2020 for a European tour but that has been obviously postponed due to the pandemic.
Bottum gave an interview to Kerrang earlier this year in which he talked about the band reuniting: “I think the world needs a little provocation right now. It's a kind of dark, dark place out there, and I think that bringing our craft and our musical exploration to the planet can only be a good thing. … It's kind of been a long time in the making, honestly. I think all of us were at the point collectively where we felt like what we had done five years ago in reforming, and the subsequent recording and touring of that recording [the Sol Invictus album], was an unfinished task. There were places that we didn't go, things we didn't do, and ways that we would have liked to perform but hadn't. The option to do it again was still there, but it kind of took us a while to get our head around how we wanted to do it, and what the impetus for going forward was.”
He also talked about coming out in '93: “I certainly did feel that the rock community was a tolerant place when I came out. But the rock community was not why I made that gesture – in fact, it was the least of my worries. It was more important for me to make that statement and make that gesture for the gay community and for the unrecognised people of that time. Back then, Judas Priest's Rob Halford wasn't even out of the closet. My statement was a provocative statement for the straight world in general, but more important to me was the fact that it needed to be said for the gay community, for my community. It needed to be said, and to be heard as a way of signifying gratitude and compassion for my people.”
