[davin]

Originally Posted by jimmy1974

The band launched right into "Thats The Way (My Love Is)". As it ended the host asked Billy where a song like that comes from and Billy starts talking about November 2005 in Scottsdale, Arizona where him and Jimmy rented a house and lived once deciding to put the band back together. Billy and Jimmy then went on to play the original version of the song, the way it was written and it sounded like a cross between 33 and an acoustic Muzzle. That was the problem with the original version for them, they thought it sounded like it just fell off of Mellon Collie and they were not interested in doing anything like that. So they messed with it over and over till they got it the way it is now. They performed the beginning of this song about 4 times, showing the evolution of it to where it is today. Jimmy spoke at length about the rehearsal process, how every day they would write for 4-5 hours in the morning, go out and play baseball and come back and practice what they had written, making reference to all of these practices having been recorded in one form or another.

As soon as "God & Country" ended billy started talking about the evolution of that song, how it started out like a "civil war funeral dirge", a very slowed down dreary march. Jimmy played the original beat and Billy began playing the song as it was originally written, they got through to the first chorus and stopped it, commenting on how boring it was, that while trying to record it, Billy would start to fall asleep strumming it. He said that they werent happy with the original version and that they still arent very happy or convinved that the version on the album is the "final" version of the song. And that is where the talk of Roy Thomas Baker began. Roy loved the song, and made it his own in the studio. Billy and Jimmy talked for a long time about Roy, working with Roy and the effect that he had on the album. When Billy originally called the record label and they asked "who are you thinking of working with on this album" and they replied, Roy, the label said "Why would you want to work with that old has been. We have Green Days producer lined up for you". He talked alot about the problem of "short money" in the music business, where bands/labels are in there to get as much money out of a product as fast as they can and then they move on. That was not something that they were interested in, they were in it for the music. Jimmy told some hilarious stories about how wealthy Roy is, "he was complaining one day that he had to sell his castle and the town that surrounded it". This was a good 20 minutes of the show.

now thats worth the price of admission right there. nice.

and thanks for the write-up.