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As Roddy Bottum embarked on developing his notable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboardist had a definite idea of the type of book he wanted to steer clear of. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, during a video call from Oxnard, California, where he is finishing a new album with his group Imperial Teen. “I have little interest in rock memoirs – they often follow a tired formula, laden with famous names and lacking depth.”

The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum leaves out the surnames of his fellow musicians. And while he outlines the band’s beginnings and formative stages, this is secondary to his “adventures as a young person” in San Francisco, “prior to the digital age, before the city’s decline.” Much of the attention is on his discovery of his sexuality, and how the associated hiddenness and shame have affected his life. “As a teenager, at 13 or 14, I began intimate encounters with men,” he explains. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, incidents involving his visiting public facilities and parks as a teenager are described without hesitation and without regret. “Intimate moments occurred with older men in outdoor hideaways,” he writes. “First filled with guilt, then with confidence. Back off.”

“When I do readings, I start with that section,” he declares. “I am aware of the shock value in those words; it’s utterly unseemly. But I have no regret. In the era of Trump, my story must be proclaimed, to combat the prejudice, the anti-transgender and homophobic mindsets.” He halts. “I want to be provocative. My relatives include religious conservatives, and it’s absolutely my intention to ruin their Thanksgiving dinner with this book. Because they’ll all read it.”

The memoir begins on the teenage Bottum relocating from his birthplace Los Angeles. “The city was a sudden shift from LA’s bright facade,” he observes. “Cold. Shadowy. Figures sporting dark hair and light makeup, individuals using hard drugs like meth and heroin. The queer culture that existed in San Francisco was all so different from Los Angeles. It felt empowering.”

Entering the Band Faith No More

In 1981, Bottum became a member of Faith No Man, which evolved into Faith No More with Billy Gould and Mike Bordin, enhancing their “pummelling rhythm section” with “a touch of elegance amid the intensity. Rock bands didn’t have keyboards then.” They try out vocalists, including – for a short time – Courtney Love, the memoir’s most memorable personality, an fearless source of disorder lighting homes on fire and making enemies at every turn.

“Courtney and I instantly recognized our deep connection,” Bottum recalls. Their platonic friendship briefly blurred into a intimate involvement, resulting in pregnancy and abortion; later, Bottum became a close advisor of Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain. Unlike the vilified image some hold, Bottum portrays Love as someone with wit, vitality and independence.

“Courtney had a hard go of it,” he concurs. “An influential yet disputed individual, and highly intelligent. That makes for a compelling subject in writing. She’s a warm, compassionate person, and few get to witness it. However, our relationship was tight, and we looked out for each other.”

The Band’s Beginnings

The embryonic Faith No More were, Bottum admits, “utterly absurd.” Their music centred around insistent, weighty rhythms played freely while under the influence of multiple substances, including MDMA, while their frontman, unconventional addict Chuck Mosley, “was not a skilled singer.” But they had drive. “Everyone in our scene was into goth and dark stuff, but we were fans of pop culture icons. In some crazy way, we imagined we were part of that mix. Yet we were far from glamorous or appealing.”

But their ironic hybrid track We Care a Lot became a minor MTV hit in 1988, Mosley handed over vocals to the visually appealing Mike Patton (who did have a good singing voice), and by 1990 Faith No More’s third album was a true, critically acclaimed achievement. Characteristically, The Royal We doesn’t dwell on this triumph, skipping ahead instead to their unsuccessful period on Guns N’ Roses and Metallica’s 1992 stadium tour.

“I used heroin to numb the pain of my concealed life.”

On the Road with Legends

It was, Bottum says, “the biggest tour that had ever happened.” But Faith No More were quickly alienated by the “harmful” rock’n’roll circus they’d clambered aboard; in the memoir, he recounts an unsettling encounter with fans recruited for GN’R’s entertainment. “The sexism and arrogance from Guns N’ Roses felt overwhelming,” he explains. “They had that song One In a Million, with the N word and the F word [faggot], and that reflected the atmosphere offstage. I wanted no involvement. We didn’t want to loan our credibility, our culture, our individuality to this poison.”

The tour – from which Faith No More were fired two weeks early, for badmouthing GN’R in the press – marked a critical juncture for Bottum. “I had to embrace my true self,” he declares, “to talk about being gay, to remove myself from this negative setting.” Against his managers’ advice, he announced he was gay in the pages of the Advocate the following year. “I stood alone as an openly gay man in rock music,” he states. “Freddie Mercury never publicly acknowledged his sexuality. Michael Stipe didn’t talk about it, nor Judas Priest’s frontman, nor the alternative rock figure. I felt enraged. I had to claim my place in history, to promote inclusivity in the music industry. And I met so many kids who were queer, who felt my being a queer person in music made a difference to them.”

Personal Struggles and Sobriety

Bottum kept private his sexuality with his group, even though he travelled with his boyfriend on the tourbus. “They were accepting and would have supported me,” he comments. “It was the damage of being a gay kid in that era, the impact of internalized stigma.” He found instant acceptance from Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who was the proud antithesis of the sexism and anti-gay sentiment that had blighted the GN’R tour. “Kurt was like a unicorn,” Bottum whispers. “He wanted to be gay – Kurt loved the provocation of that. I think that’s why we were really good friends. He appreciated my openness and presence. He stood out as extraordinary.”

Bottum grew close to Cobain and Love, the trio bonded at the time by heroin addiction. Bottum