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Artist News
Original Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin was asked to join reunion, says Billy Gould
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 13 May 2015
Faith No More bassist Billy Gould has revealed that original guitarist Jim Martin was asked to join their reunion, despite his acrimonious departure from the band in 1993.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gould explains that first, he, keyboard player Roddy Bottum, drummer Mike Bordin and vocalist Mike Patton got back together to see if a reunion was possible. When they’d decided that they could play together again, the matter of a guitarist came up and Martin was called.
“It was a very strange conversation”, said Gould. “He said he would do it. He said this was not an emotional thing. [I said,] ‘But there are some songs we wrote after you’. And he’s like, ‘That’s not a problem’. So on the surface it was great, but it didn’t really feel right”.
The confirmation that Martin wasn’t the guy for their reunion project came when he made a quip about sending a contract to his fax machine, referencing the medium via which he was fired from the band.
“We left on a bad note”, continued Gould. “It had been 20 years. We have some catching up to do with ourselves; do we really want to bring this other energy into this fragile thing where we don’t even really know what it means? So it’s like, no. It just didn’t feel right”.
In the end, they went with Jon Hudson, bringing back together the band’s final line-up before they split in 1998. ‘Sol Invictus’, their first album together since 1997’s ‘Album Of The Year’, is due out next week.