
L to R: Jim Martin, Bill Gould, Cliff Burton, Mike Bordin
Sometime in 1984 or 1985, a band called The Chickenfuckers played one show at San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens. This one-night-only band consisted of legendary Metallica bassist Cliff Burton and three members of Faith No More: guitarist Jim Martin, drummer Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin, and Bill Gould, who took the role of vocalist for this casual, just-for-fun jam session. Burton, Bordin, and Martin were old buddies from a band they’d been in together previously.
In Steffan Chirazi’s 1994 book Faith No More: The Real Story, Bill Gould recalled: “So just to fuck around, me, Puffy, Cliff and Jim got this one-off band together called The Chickenfuckers. We got as drunk and wasted as we could and opened for 45 Grave at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. I was singing and smoked two joints, Puffy’s kick drum had a picture of a chicken with a dick down its throat and a pentagram, which was how seriously we took things.”
Related: The Complete Story of Faith No More’s ‘King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime’
Gould also reminisced about the event in a recent interview with Culture Creature. “It was ridiculous,” he said with a laugh. “I’d never sung in a band before, and I’ve never sung in one since. I think I drank a half a bottle of whiskey during that performance. It was kind of an ‘anything goes’ jam, just try to go as out there as possible. Unfortunately for that reason, I remember very little of it…. It was a complete open improv. It was fun.”
Sounds like a fun rock and roll experiment. Cliff Burton tragically passed away in 1986.