10 Greatest Keyboardists In Hard Rock

10. Roddy Bottum - Faith No More

Ever since the '90s, the world of hard rock has had somewhat of a tolerance for some weird stuff. Hell, as far back as the '70s, acts like Frank Zappa were rewriting what rock and roll could be in their own bat-sh*t crazy image. Though Faith No More fit right in with their zany mixes of funk and rock, no one could have predicted an actual keyboard would factor into the mix.

Across Faith No More's classic output, Roddy Bottum's piano lines were very much an oddity compared to some of the punishing riffs across songs like Mid Life Crisis. Just when you think you're going to play out on some heavy riff on a song like Epic, Bottum's keyboard would come in and treat you to a damn recital in the middle of things. While this may have pulled you out of the groove sometimes, these keyboard riffs always brought a certain level of sophistication to the band's tunes.

By the time that Mike Patton and co. actually started to branch outside of their comfort zones on later projects, it was Bottum's piano lines that made them unafraid to take on some outlandish material like covering the Commodore's hit Easy. For as much as this shouldn't work on paper, Faith No More have always been masters at making their crazy ideas actually palettable.