We Care a Lot

Alright Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has the turntables fired up and we're laying down "We Care a Lot" by Faith No More from their debut album of the same name. This one's a sharp little blast of sarcasm that came out of those Bay Area misfits who never quite fit the regular rock mold. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum once told Mojo that the band was very sarcastic and that's exactly where the song came from. It pulled from stuff they loved like Soulsonic Force, Kraftwerk and the first Run-D.M.C. album while taking shots at the modern culture and media nonsense they thought was stupid. The whole thing functions as a sly dig at those big charity concerts like Live Aid where the pop stars struck poses and asked everyone else to open their wallets.

Chuck Mosley handled the lead vocals back then, and he shared writing duties with Roddy on the lyrics. In a Songfacts interview Chuck explained that Roddy came up with the title and the chant along with a lot of the first verse material, while Chuck added the part about it being a dirty job but someone's gotta do it. He figured that matched the feeling of the track. The words rattle off a list of things the band sarcastically claims to care a lot about, from disasters, fires, floods and killer bees to the food that Live Aid bought, the Garbage Pail Kids, the Transformers, Madonna and Mr. T. There's even a nod to Rock Hudson in the original version right around the time the actor became a high-profile victim of AIDS. Chuck later said the lyrics were basically just about current events mixed together.

The music had been floating around as an instrumental for about a year before Roddy put words to it. Bassist Billy Gould recalled that it was only when they recorded it at Prairie Sun that he heard the full thing with Chuck singing. He told Kerrang it was just music before that, then Chuck got on the mic and Gould realized this is a real song. Chuck himself has called it the first rap-rock track, pointing out that the Red Hot Chili Peppers rapped over funk and the Beastie Boys rapped over beats, but this was rap over rock. Jim Martin once said the song was an accident. They just played it and everybody liked it. Roddy has described the sound as Kraftwerk meets Black Sabbath and mentioned he wrote it after listening to a whole lot of Run-D.M.C.

When the band got signed to Slash they were asked to re-record the song for the next album because the label thought it was a hit that hadn't reached enough ears yet. That led to the updated version on Introduce Yourself with some lyric changes for more current relevance. Chuck remembered that once the track got picked up by MTV's 120 Minutes the crowds on the supporting tour grew a lot bigger almost overnight. He admitted in later interviews that his initial response was that it was the least challenging song to him and a bit more commercial than what he was used to. Being a punk rock rebel he felt he had to complain about it, thinking he was above that kind of thing. It was fun to sing for a while, then it started feeling kind of silly, but he respected Roddy's ear for catchy hooks.

Years afterward MC Hammer had a big hit with "Pray" that lifted the vocal melody and the chant style from "We Care a Lot." Chuck also went back and recorded his own version on a 2009 album with Roddy guesting, tweaking some of the lines including a reference to the guy who wanted it all but couldn't have it. Billy Gould has said that looking back at the debut album feels like checking old high school pictures. They were stupid kids just trying to survive with this really weird music they were stubborn about, but the spirit was right there. The band had a massive fight during their first big interview in England and thought they might have blown everything, yet the record still found its way.

Faith No More got their start in the early 1980s around the Bay Area as a bunch of musicians who refused to stick to one style. In 1981 Mike Bordin, Billy Gould, Mike Morris and Wade Worthington formed a group called Faith No Man. A year later Worthington was replaced by Roddy Bottum on keyboards and Morris was ousted, so the remaining members took the name Faith No More after a friend suggested it as a play on the old moniker. They went through a series of singers that included a young Courtney Love for a short stretch before Chuck Mosley came aboard in 1983. That same year Jim Martin joined on guitar after Mark Bowen left. A four-song demo tape recorded in 1984 helped land them a deal with Mordam Records, and their first full album We Care a Lot came out in 1985. Ruth Schwartz at the label heard the tape when it was playing at Rough Trade in San Francisco and offered to put it out. The core of Gould, Bordin and Bottum had been crafting those hypnotic riffs in a San Francisco space, mixing post-punk, funk, metal and whatever else felt right at the moment. They pooled their own money to start recording before any label money showed up.

The band stayed stubborn about their weird sound even when it meant fighting with each other or struggling to get by. Gould has said that once the music is recorded and let out into the world everything becomes subjective, and he can listen to the early stuff now without the old embarrassment. You can check out more of the story and current news on the Faith No More official website. The crew also keeps things moving on their Facebook, Instagram and X accounts. Fans keep the deeper history and updates flowing over at the Faith No More Followers site. Keep the needle dropping on this one and the rest of the deep cuts right here with the Zoo Crew on THE ZOO, Zoo Freaks. We care a lot about the records that still hit the right way after all these years.