Faith No More’s NHL Roadie: Dan Boyle on Touring With His Rock Heroes
Despite his fandom, Boyle says he only got to see Faith No More once before the band’s 1998 breakup. “I went to college at Miami of Ohio, and they played Cincinnati my junior year on the Album of the Year tour,” he recalls. “I brought a couple of teammates with me who had never heard of Faith No More. And then I obviously didn’t see them again until many, many years later.”
Boyle, who also lists Deftones, Tool and Pantera among his favorite bands, says that he’s kept Faith No More’s music in heavy rotation throughout his collegiate and professional career. (“It has always been a big part of my pregame ritual,” he says. “It gets me going.”) And as with his college teammates, he’s often tried to turn his NHL colleagues on to the band – with minimal success.
“Over the years, I’ve usually tried to grab one or two guys and convert them,” he says, “but most of them are into the Kanyes and the Drakes and all that stuff, and that’s not what I prefer to listen to. I usually bring my headphones [to the locker room], because most of the guys listen to dance music or rap, and it just drives me nuts.”
Boyle was playing for the San Jose Sharks in the spring of 2010, when Faith No More played three homecoming reunion shows at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, the band’s first stateside performances in nearly 13 years. “I told the Sharks PR guy to get me in,” he remembers. “The shows had sold out immediately, but I was willing to sit in the rafters if I had to. He pulled some strings and, the next thing you know, I was meeting their manager, Tim Moss, at the back door, and he’s walking me through the Warfield and then all of a sudden I’m in a room with Mike Patton and Mike Bordin. It was kind of surreal for me. I’ve met James Hetfield, I’ve met a lot of musicians and actors, and I don’t get starstruck – they’re people just like you and me. But with Faith No More, it was a little different. They were the guys that I grew up with, and I still think they’re the greatest band. So I was a little taken aback!”
Boyle quickly hit it off with his longtime heroes – not least because Bordin, a hockey fan since childhood, was just as keen to talk about the NHL as Boyle was to talk about music.
“The Sharks were starting their playoff with the Colorado Avalanche the next day,” Bordin says, “but here was Dan, dragging his pregnant wife around backstage at this noisy fucking rock show, and they’re both totally smiling the whole time.
“They were just the nicest people, and we immediately got along great,” the drummer continues. “It’s like when you’re playing a festival, and you meet guys from other bands – even if you’re working for different circuses, you have something you can relate to, and Dan was like that. He did something fun for a living, he traveled a lot, it was hard and it’s one of those things where you’re lucky to do it and you can’t do it forever. So we were all in that same spot. And it was super-cool that he liked our band!”
A friendship quickly blossomed between Boyle and Faith No More, and he returned the favor in 2012 by inviting the band to practice with the Sharks. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a hockey player when I grew up,” Bordin says, “so this was a total ‘bucket list’ thing, to put on all the gear. It was such an awesome thing for him to do for us – though I think he was surprised I could actually skate!”