Top 60 Mike Patton Quotes

When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it, and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way – ‘I’m gonna make this mine somehow.’ You need to put your imprint on the situation that you’re in.

I don’t like to use toilets – ever.

I’m not a trained musician.

The only way I can make sense of my music is to compartmentalize it as opposed to having one band that I have to throw everything into. For me, it’s just more fun and more challenging to create little worlds where a song or a piece can make sense.

Hearing other peoples’ interpretations of your lyrics, to me, is just a total kick in the pants. Half the time, they’re better.

I don’t get too much enjoyment out of sitting around the campfire and looking at old photos. That’s just not me. I don’t get the thrill of doing that. So, I don’t sit around listening to my old records.

I saw G.G. Allin live once.

I am perfectly aware of my position in commercial music.

My fear is getting stuck doing the same thing over and over.

I create a guise or a band that I can operate within, and within each one of those bands, I’ve got an M.O. or a set of rules and parameters I can work within.

Forgive me, but Wolfmother, you suck!

I’ve always been in awe of filmmakers and their patience in realizing their vision because I could never do that.

I had never been taken in like I was in Italy just by saying a few words. That made me feel like I had to put in the effort, and I want to be one of them.

I’m not in the business of suffering.

When you’re young and creative, you don’t know how to channel all that creative energy, so sometimes it goes to the wrong places.

I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it’s pop or noise or whatever, it’s always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It’s not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that’s fine.

Being able to have a home studio is the greatest thing ever.

In a way, sometimes collaborating is more difficult because you have to listen.

Golf is the only sport I’ve encountered where you can really suck but still have a good time.

I think that first and foremost, a lot of turntable artists end up using really the same sounds over and over, and they really get recycled.

With Faith No More, even though we’re a bunch of old men, what I remember about our best shows is some sort of confrontation with the audience.

I’ve had at least a couple botched surgeries.

Most solo artists go out on their own and put their name on the record. I prefer to create little alternative universes.

I would like to do more film scoring, period. Whether it is a big film, a small film, or just anything. I feel like I have a lot to learn, and what better way to do it than on the job?

Things die for a reason, and in Bungle’s case, it was a lot of reasons. It was great while it lasted but not something I’d go crawling back to.

When you have to put on shades in the studio, you know you have to stop.

I think you create your own boundaries, and you work within them.

A lot of concerts are just too safe.

Especially with Fantomas, i’m just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can’t get away with.

The career high would be putting out a Kids of Widney High CD on my label, Ipecac Recordings.

You don’t have to release everything you do. Some ideas need to just stay on the shelf.

There are reasons that bands and musicians make demos and outtakes – because they are not good enough to make the record. A lot of people forget that.

I like to have a few things going on at once. It feels natural.

I got a PS3 and a PSP. The Wii looks fun.

When you do live abroad, you’re basically searching for some kind of peace.

If I’m not happy with the quality of something I’m working on, I won’t put it out. That does not mean that others won’t question the quality.

I don’t read or write music in the traditional sense, so I have to figure it out on the fly while I’m in the studio.

From what I’ve heard, videogame soundtracks – obviously, there’s less budget and all of that – it just seems like game soundtracks are farmed out among friends. And it seems like more of an afterthought. It’s a videogame. It’s much more background.

To me, finding sounds, or even recording, is a compositional process. The studio is kind of an instrument.

If they’re acting like a dog, sometimes you’re forced to treat people like dogs.

If I admire someone’s music, I’ll walk up to ’em and tell ’em.

We’re constantly being fed images and being told what to like and what is good, and for the most part, I think people enjoy living that way. It takes a lot of the thinking out of it.

My wife is Italian, and I lived there for six years.

I’ve had the new band experience plenty of times, and sometimes, it just sort of peters out.

I like the cut of my gib. I dislike the way I move.

I consciously did not want to put a sub-Mr. Bungle band on the map. I don’t think the world needs that.

Orchestral musicians have a different approach than we do, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean musicians who don’t know what they are doing.

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

With Mr. Bungle, I’d lay down a really rough demo of my vocals and then play them for the guys without telling them what I was saying. Our drummer at the time had the coolest takes on what he thought I was saying, so I’d ask him to write out what he thought the lyrics were.

I’m a little tired of travelling the world, jaded as that may sound.

You can get bored up there on stage, night after night. But it’s an open forum where you can get away with almost anything, so you might as well do it.

There’s a danger in anything that is unfamiliar. That’s the world we live in.

I’ve got a comfortable home for my music where I can put out whatever the hell I want, and I feel like the slate is really clean, and I can get away with anything. It’s a nice, free feeling.

I really don’t want to put more than a couple of records out a year, and I think that makes sense – on an artistic level, but also for my label.

Legacy is something you talk about when you’re dead – and I’m not dead yet.

To me, the stage is like the free zone. That’s what makes it exhilarating. For whatever reason, there’s this weird little square where it’s kind of a romper room for adults.

Not all ideas are like a twinkling star in the sky, and you get inspired to make a record the next day.

A lot of people assume that musicians are comrades by nature. It’s cutthroat like anything else.

Touring is a weird thing. It’s like getting married to four different people.

I’m surprised that anyone cares about what I do.