Alonso MuOZ

Faith No More made their Saturday Night Live debut (hosted by John Goodman) performing their hit “Epic.” The performance remains memorable not only for the music, but for Mike Patton climbing the stage scaffolding into the overhead lighting rig mid-song. As NBC producers panicked over the unscripted stunt, the rest of the band—Billy Gould on bass, Jim Martin on guitar, and Mike Bordin on drums—stayed locked into the track without missing a beat. With their 1989 album The Real Thing, the band bridged ’80s thrash and the ’90s alternative explosion. Before grunge took over radio in 1991, this SNL appearance forced mainstream audiences to confront a raw hybrid of rap, funk, and heavy metal on national television for the first time.