Musician and queer icon Roddy Bottum will be at A Satellite of Love on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m., to read from his new book.
“This one is so exciting,” SLO Poet Laureate Caleb Nichols gushed. “Roddy Bottum—a founding member of Faith No More, Imperial Teen, and more recently Man on Man—will read from his memoir, The Royal We. Roddy is a freaking legend, and it’s really cool that he’s stopping through SLO on his book tour.”
The book has been garnering praised from every direction, including endorsements from Hole singer Courtney Love, Sonic Youth singer Kim Gordon, and actress Chloë Sevigny, among others.
“Written with the right amount of flourish and punk abandon—what a treat,” Sevigny wrote.
Available through Akashic Books (akashicbooks.com), “The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world relentlessly, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS, to become a queer icon.”
The book will appeal to those interested in memoirs about artists’ lives such as Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Kathleen Hanna’s Rebel Girl.
A Satellite of Love is located at 1335 Walker St., SLO. Call (805) 439-1604 for more info. ∆
This article appears in Nov 13-23, 2025.