[atsonicpark]

Here's the first interview I could find...

http://www.markprindle.com/spruance-i.htm

5. I know this is a tired old topic, but my readers would kill me if I didn't ask about it – why have you and Mike Patton not spoken in years? Did your friendship die out because of Mr. Bungle or Faith No More, or did you just go separate ways, or something else entirely?
As time wears on you find out who your friends are, and who they aren't. Mike and I always had the best working relationship imaginable. Really, very very good and fruitful. There are other things in life we see differently. I don't think those things are irreconcilable at all. But when you get used to having things your own way, and certain people around you resist the "natural order" of becoming subordinate to you, you may start nursing resentments. Even lashing out at them and calling them egomaniacs etc. for not assuming the position. I think in my case it was too painful for Patton to realize that where there are no subordinates there is no insubordination. Like most of us, Mike tends to begin the process of deciding whether or not he can afford to discard a person's point of view altogether, rather than facing certain difficult facts of life. So to answer your question, there was never any big mess between he and I specifically. The general dysfunction coming from being expected to silently endure more and more of this emerging top-down/top-dog order-barking thing he'd taken to just ended up getting really tiresome for everyone involved. In a band, strong personalities need to know where to draw the line on this kind of stuff. Anyway, since it wasn't going to happen, I was the idiot who started to draw that line. I admit I had more emotional involvement in the process than would be neccesary for a non-robot, having poured comparatively ridiculously copious doses of my blood into the project. Patton's subsequent resentment towards me is a fairly predictable outcome. You don't stand up to him and stay off the shit-list. A bummer, yeah, but its essentially a self-protecting reflex action - something I don't really feel a need to hold against him too much. He has his way. It won't change. And after all why should it? This method works well for him overall -- who am I to question it? I dare say it's even part of his charm. (we are a nation of pathological narcissists after all!). Whatever. Really, I feel fondly about the time we spent making music together, and feel we did some great things. And, while I am diametrically opposed to it on a human level, over time I do appreciate the clarity of his cut and dry approach: how black and white it makes things. You're either in the club, or out of the club. Unfortunately, I have to say I do prefer life as an excommunicate from that kind of 'friendship'. I know he prefers it that way too. I'm sure both of us would agree it was a good run, though.