“An alt-rock sideman recalls navigating queerness, heroin, and a now-vanished San Francisco bohemia . . . Bottum’s candor is refreshing, and the book serves as a vibrant snapshot of a time when San Francisco was better known as a creative haven than a tech-bro bunkhouse. A melancholy tribute to punky, grassroots community-building.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A dark, candid, well-written memoir of gay life as a punk musician with tales of drugs, a stint in rehab, camaraderie among friends, and, hanging over it all, the pallor of inevitable death and decay.”
—Booklist

“As much a love letter to a San Francisco that no longer exists as a reflection on his own life, Bottum’s memoir is bound to elicit nostalgia among fans . . . Accounts of Bottum’s time with the band [Faith No More], his coming into his own identity as a gay man during the height of the AIDS crisis, and his struggles with and eventual recovery from addiction form the bulk of a narrative marked by chaos and loss, but also a great deal of sweetness . . . Affecting, reflective, and unflinching.”
—Library Journal

“Bottum’s new The Royal We autobiography is achingly honest and forthcoming, sparing little detail from his troubled youth in San Francisco through Faith No More’s roughshod early days when no one quite knew what to make of them. It’s a fascinating, highly recommended page-turner that displays Bottum’s depth as a writer and also someone with little to hide.”
—Blabbermouth

“The Royal We shines when Bottum vividly takes the reader back to pre-tech San Francisco: the grime, the venues, the underground bands, the bike messengers, the ‘anything goes’ of it all . . . [A] compelling read. It’s a swift 252 pages full of youthful folly, alternative culture, unchecked rebellious instincts and an undercurrent of oddly formed faith that things will work out the way that they’re supposed to . . . While this memoir doesn’t always adhere to the rules of the format, that is in many ways a fitting reflection of the way Bottum has lived his life. If he ever writes a follow-up to fill in the gaps, it will surely be worth reading, just as The Royal We is.”
—KQED

“Faith No More keyboardist Bottum recalls coming-of-age as a gay punk rocker in San Francisco in his punchy debut . . . Bottum’s account toggles between wild-eyed memories of his adolescent antics, including drinking, smoking, and stealing the family car for joyrides, and graver adult dalliances with hard drugs alongside prefame Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Meanwhile, Bottum reflects on his formative sexual experiences with older men, provides gossipy backstage anecdotes about touring with Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, and sweetly lionizes his sisters . . . Far from a milquetoast music bio—one of the most memorable scenes features Bottum and his friends vomiting pea soup—this lively self-portrait has spirit to spare. It’s a riot.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Bottum, the co-founder of the band Faith No More, offers up an elegy to a lost time and place: pre-tech bro San Francisco in the 1980s, when cultural ferment was in the air. Bottum’s touching memoir is a story of a gay man finding himself in a time of great exuberance and upheaval as the AIDS epidemic wiped out so many of the creatives that made that efflorescence possible.”
—LA Times

“The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy—Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his ‘youth escapades’ in San Francisco, ‘before the internet, before that city got ruined.’ Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life.”
—Guardian

“In his new memoir, the Faith No More and Imperial Teen musician writes with unflinching honesty about heroin addiction, gay sex, and his early and ‘insanely open minded’ fling with his good friend Courtney Love . . . The Royal We . . . stands far apart from the usual trauma-to-triumph rock star redemption stories. The tone he takes in his writing—flip, blunt and utterly unrepentant—captures the unmistakable voice of an accomplished provocateur.”
—Independent

“The longtime Faith No More keyboardist and queer icon says he wrote his new memoir The Royal We as an act of defiance in a time when truth itself feels embattled.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Faith No More founding member, queer icon, and all-round good guy Roddy Bottum has released a memoir that is in turn touching, funny, devastating, and ultimately beautiful. The keyboardist, also known for his indie pop group Imperial Teen, takes us by the hand and leads us through his journey from Los Angeles (‘growing up gay with no role models’) to San Francisco. It was there that he formed FNM, survived heroin addiction and the AIDS plight, and came out on top. Bottum is a gifted musician—a true creative—and as it turns out, he’s a talented storyteller too.”
—Music Connection, One of Ten Great Books Released in 2025

“Bottum made music history by coming out as gay, telling The Advocate in ’93, ‘I would never have thought as a gay teen I’d be in a band that would be considered heavy metal or hard rock.’ And yet there he was, shattering expectations in an industry and a genre that, at that point, seldom made space for queer voices to be heard. Decades after his trailblazing revelation, Bottum is now ready to tell his full story in the new memoir The Royal We (available now via Akashic Books), which recounts his coming-of-age as a queer kid in 1980s San Francisco. Though he found his community—and eventually his bandmates—in the underground arts & punk scenes of the city’s post-Free Love era, it was a difficult time amid the growing AIDS crisis when fears and stereotypes around gay men had spiked.”
—Queerly

“On Nov. 4, Faith No More cofounder and queer musician Roddy Bottum celebrated the release of his memoir The Royal We (by Akashic Books) a reflection on his journey through the underbelly of a San Francisco that once was and now, no more. The book serves as a tribute to a city and community that no longer exists. In The Royal We, Bottum documents his childhood growing up queer in Los Angeles (without any queer role models) to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS.”
—Dallas Voice

“Roddy Bottum’s The Royal We doesn’t just offer an important portrait of an era, scene, and sound—it also gives voice to a sensibility all Bottum’s own, along with offering a startling cri de coeur about loss and death. It’s a pounding example of what it sounds like to be ‘alive not dead,’ and we are the luckier for it.”
—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“A very honest and extremely well-articulated story of coming of age, parallel and within the evolution of the alternative music world. Roddy Bottum comes into his sexuality in a homophobic music scene, creating a stunning landscape of alienation and drug use that he manages to lift himself out of. There’s an exuberance to the telling of his adventure that guides the reader along through the darkest of moments.”
—Kim Gordon, author of Girl in a Band

“This memoir of a rarefied world made me realize I was so lucky to live through it on the fringes—San Francisco in the eighties during the glory days of punk rock, written as if Salinger was there, queer, and started a band. A band I was actually in, but they rarely admitted! Roddy has been an incredible influence on my life, love, friendship, and language. A brilliant and gorgeous book—just like Roddy Bottum.”
—Courtney Love, musician

“The Gen X Cancerian daddy king of California rock has delivered to us an oral history of a time when queer boys who rocked still played hard and RULED the underground. Emotionally charged, but never reckless (okay, maybe a BIT reckless), this book flows with an emotional IQ that only Roddy Bottum could give us. All the grit and grime aside, this is a story based in wisdom, recounting, and, above all, beauty.”
—Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends

“Thump, thump, thump went my heart as the words popped and the pages turned and I fell more and more in love with Roddy Bottum. Written with the right amount of flourish and punk abandon—what a treat.”
—Chloë Sevigny, actress