Mike Patton, of the band Faith No More (and many others) was recently intervewed by the Onion’s A.V. Club, and he talked a bit about Rock Band:

AVC: Faith No More appeared in Rock Band. Do you have any kind of input on those kind of decisions when you’re picked for a game like that?

MP: Well, if we do, I certainly didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it until it was in the game. Some friends told me.

AVC: So it’s one of those situations where the label’s just making these deals and they don’t even check with you guys.

MP: Yeah, when you’re on a major, basically they own the music and they can kind of farm it out however they want. And I do think there was probably a courtesy call or something like that at some point in the process, but I wasn’t involved in it. You learn very early on just to step back and put your hands up and say, “Whatever, whatever.” There’s nothing I can do.

AVC: Would you have picked a different song to be in Rock Band?

MP: No, it doesn’t matter to me. I had no agendas in that regard. I mean I’m glad they used anything in the first place. Fine by me.

AVC: Many regard music games as kind of silly. Do you see the appeal of those kinds of games?

MP: Sure. It’s hard not to. Any idiot, any stockbroker can get out there and live out a fantasy and pretend like he’s playing music. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I just recently did an interview with a videogame magazine in which I walked into the room and they had a whole Rock Band set-up and wanted me to play. I’d never really done that. And I realized how un-musical it really is. You play that guitar or that bass, and it has nothing to do with music. But nonetheless, it was pretty fun. It made me wonder if, at some point down the line, you could compose that way, because there’s obviously a whole generation of kids who have grown up on these games and using that method to make music. What if you weren’t just doing it for karaoke? If I was 11 years old and I wanted to start a band using that technology, with screens and that weird push-button, press the X here… It just made me wonder if there’s a whole generation of kids who couldn’t do something like that.

AVC: MPC samplers would make great videogame controllers. They could translate directly into that kind of gameplay.

MP: Absolutely. All it is is pressing a pad here and there. I mean this guy’s making music on the fucking iPhone now. There’s these programs if you jail-break your iPhone where you can use drum machine programs, all this kind of stuff. I don’t know what this stuff sounds like, but the idea definitely hits me in the geek nerve, and I love it.

AVC: Eventually there’s going to be that kid who learned to play drums because he played Rock Band.

MP: Yeah, absolutely. But there should be a way for him to actually not just play a Led Zeppelin song, to make music doing that.

AVC: Guitar Hero IV, the new game, is going to integrate some kind of music creation tool.

MP: I knew it. It had to happen. I’m all for it, man. I think it’s great. I am no one to be a purist. I didn’t go to school to learn how to do this. I taught myself. If these kids are teaching themselves by looking at a TV or doing it through a videogame, yeah, it’s pretty sick, but who am I to argue? If someone can do something creative with it, I’d buy it in a second. I mean, would you go see a band of 10 year old kids playing original music on Rock Band? I would. I’m not saying I’ll like it, but I definitely would go see it.

Maybe I’m just naive, but I had no idea that artists had so little control over their music! Does Mike even get any royalties at all from his song appearing in Rock Band?