My obsession with Faith No More has been something ever growing, and it doesn’t look like it will ever die. Everyone who knows me, even slightly, will know that Faith No More is my favourite band. Tom Nunziata introduced me to Faith No More in the summer of 2003 while we were working at the Red Cross together. He sent me a song from “Angel Dust” called “Malpractice” and honestly, I wasn’t that into it and I don’t think I listened to the whole thing a single time for the next few months. Shortly after, he showed me two live videos of  Tomahawk performing “Flashback” and “God Hates a Coward” on an Australian TV show. I started liking Tomahawk and I knew that Tom was a big fan of Mike Patton, so I started collecting all the music videos and the live footage I could find of his bands, in hope of putting together a DVD for him. While collecting this, I finally heard “Epic” and fell in love with it. Tom then made me a copy of “The Real Thing” and “Angel Dust”, and I became obsessed with “From Out of Nowhere”, “Zombie Eaters” and “The Real Thing”. From then on it was all up for Faith No More. I bought all the albums on ebay, through a friend who had a paypal address, and later on when I got my own credit card I started buying rare FNM stuff myself.

During this obsession, I met Rob Alvarez, who was a fan from Florida. He had the Faith No More book “The Real Story”, which I had not gotten yet. Upon obtaining this book, and of course loving it, I found that Stefan Chirazi had left some stuff out. The book stopped in early 1994, with Jim Martin leaving the band. Chirazi did however do a write-up for the “King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime” 7″ vinyl box set in 1995, as well as for the “Who Cares a Lot” greatest hits collection in 1998, which rounded out the other parts of the story. But that wasn’t enough for me, and I needed to document my love for Faith No More and advance my research. During my discussions with Rob, I decided that I was going to write a book on FNM. This idea probably began in the spring of 2006. I had just finished high school and had no plans of working, so I dedicated my time to music. By the summer, I had the title for the book, “Kings of a Lifetime – The Definitive Story of Faith No More”. I got in touch with a few of the members through email, and was planning a trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco with Rob (who lived in Miami) to meet them and interview them. Some of the members I remember contacting for sure were Roddy Bottom (keyboardist), Billy Gould (bassist), Dean Menta (guitarist) and Joe Pye (their first vocalist). Joe Pye gave me some really good information on their early days, such as their first name after “Faith.No.Man” was “Your Grandmother’s Penis”.

At the same time I started a forum (my fourth at the time), which was called “Kings of a Lifetime – The Complete Faith No More Forum”. This forum was going to hold for free download all the media, from albums and singles to commercials and music videos. But not only that, it would be incredibly detailed. Not only would it have had the downloadable album for “The Real Thing”, for example, but it would have also had each of the countries special editions. That was a very difficult task to tackle, but I started on it, and worked on it from its inception on August 4th 2006, until the end of the year (while I was living at my grandma’s place in Montreal).

That month, I needed to find out what was going to happen. Were Rob and I going to California to do this book or was I moving back to Montreal to go to cooking school and live with my grandma. At the time Rob was unsure of what he was willing to do, and so I moved back to Montreal. It turned out that three years later he moved to Los Angeles. But while I was in Montreal, my work did not stop. I got my first real paying job, at a cafe, and got myself a credit card so I could buy rare Faith No More stuff on ebay. At the same time I found this private art-book store in Old Montreal. Librissime was located on Saint-Paul, close to the cafe I worked at, so I became acquainted with the owner and his wife. He told me that he knew of Faith No More, and would be interested in publishing the book, under condition that it was a deluxe hardcover, with many bonus offerings, such as a DVD or CD of unreleased songs. We discussed the possibility of releasing the book in April 2008, to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the band breakup. He also told me that I should continue my close contact with the band, and possibly send them a picture of myself with a biography and my ambitions, just to make them more at ease. That evening, as excited as I was, I went home and found my best picture at the time, and sent it off to them with my good-will-promise. Unfortunately, I think the members were not interested in putting the faith of a book into the hands of an eighteen year old fan, and half of them stopped responding to me.

The picture I sent to the band members.

In 2007, I planned to film a series of shorts called “What do You Think of Faith No More?”. My friend Phil Altobelli (Darklink) and I were supposed to do it together, going up to random people and asking the question, seeing what their reaction would be, and chosing the best ones to compile into a short film. I never got around to doing any, but Darklink did start with a few at his work back then.