Billy Gould is a musician, songwriter, and producer who originally hails from the state of California. Throughout his life, Gould has played in bands like Brujeria, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Fear and the Nervous System, and more, and he also started his own label, Koolarrow Records. But Gould’s most impactful work to date is in the band Faith No More, an idiosyncratic and subversive rock band he co-founded in 1981. After an 11 year hiatus, Faith No More reunited in 2009 and have toured the world sporadically ever since. This past May, the band released Sol Invictus, their first new album since 1997 and the first on their own imprint, Reclamation Records. They’ll continue to tour over the next few months, including Canadian stops at the Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto on August 7 and Heavy MTL in Montreal on August 8. Here, Billy and I discuss life in San Francisco with little sun and lots of tech, the city’s wild political and civil history, travelling to Austin and touring as much as possible over the past six years, getting Faith No More back together, meeting fan expectations and being better, starting a record label and working with cool international bands, Faith No More’s new record label, creative control, whether or not general audiences today are more open to being challenged by music, music festival globs, how we entertain us, the reception, writing and producing Sol Invictus, band geography, tapping into sounds he doesn’t hear, darkness and reality in a shiny city, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, heavy and catchy, Faith No More and a tipped over potato truck, fate no more, tension forever, it’s business time, fan demand, boxing, knowing one’s limits, touring with Refused, the song “Separation Anxiety,” and this is it.
Related links: fnm.com vishkhanna.com
Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.
