Jimmy is such a boss. Even while playing the heroin houdini role in Atlanta this fucking beast was still a 'one-take jake'!
One of the surprises fans learnt after Siamese Dream was finished was the
fact that Jimmy Chamberlin's drumming on the album was almost all live and
recorded in one take. "For one thing, we always fight over how many tracks
we have anyways... So there's never enough drum tracks to do drum overdubs."
Jimmy explains one of the few overdubs on the CD with his snare swap on
Today: "It's really heavy, and then it dries out when it comes into the
verse, with just the drums and bass. So what I did was play the heavy part
with a Pearl 61/2" chrome Free-Floating snare, which is really a kickin'
snare. Then I stopped the tape and matched up a click track to where I was
playing before. We then edited in the verse, which is where I used the Radio
King (1940 Gene Kruppa model snare). The drum is so totally dry and crisp
that you can barely hear the snares on it. In production, they kind of
matched the sounds up a little, but it sounds like night and day on the dry
tracks. "
This stuff is a pretty interesting read, it's also nice to read Billy quotes without needing cipher decryption. I still own all my old guitar magazines and the guitar books they made for SD, MCIS, and Adore.
Some of the best advice I read as a young musician many years ago were the introductory notes from Billy in the Siamese Dream book. Really good advice for me at the time, he discusses guitars, picks, strings, amps, etc.