Jimmy Chamberlin : "The Smashing Returns"
Editor's Note: As we were going to press with this issue, we learned of
Billy Corgan's decision to break up The Smashing Pumpkins after the
band's current tour ends. The following interview with Chamberlin took
place earlier this year.
Jimmy Chamberlin's first US tour since returning to The Smashing
Pumpkins wasn't in arenas, but in record stores for disc-signing
sessions. He imagined the digs and barbs from fans lined up for
autographs and handshakes: Are you still doing drugs? Do you care that
someone died? You don't deserve to be back in the band.
To some degree, Chamberlin figured he deserved the scrutiny. On the
night of July 11, 1996. he shot heroin with Jonathan Melvoin, the band's
touring keyboardist, and Melvoin died of an overdose. A week later, the
remaining Pumpkins released a statement saying they'd "decided to sever
our relationship with our friend and drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin." A week
after that, Chamberlin pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct
and was sentenced to a rehabilitation program. The Pumpkins toured and
recorded without him, and few people heard anything of Chamberlin for
the next two and a half years.
"How do you go from being adored to being thought of as a loser?"
Chamberlin asks now. "I cry in my heart every day for Jonathan, but I
expected the band to be like the Four Musketeers -- all for one and one
for all -- so getting fired hit me like a ton of bricks. Was I shocked?
Yeah. Was I pissed? Yeah, for a second. But as I stepped back and looked
at it, I realized that's what they had to do to save their own careers,
and also for their own integrity. Why should they put up with that
nonsense? I certainly wouldn't. I knew they didn't do it out of hate,
and I didn't love them any less for it."
Chamberlin's impact and influence on The Pumpkins was never more
clear than with Adore, the 1998 album created without him. Gone were the
jazz-influenced rhythms, atop-the-beat accents, and crushing snare fills
that established Chamberlin as one of modern rock's elite craftsmen.
Largely supported by flat, mechanized rhythms, Adore fell flat with
fans. Chamberlin noticed it all from an emotional and physical distance.
Emerging from rehab, he went to auto racing school, earned a license,
and raced on the professional street-stock circuit for two years. He
indulged an interest in astronomy -- he owns four telescopes and has an
observatory in his plans for a new home -- and saw a windfall of cash by
investing in a company that makes medicinal cervical caps.
Rumors of his forming a new band with Kelly Deal and Sebastian Bach
were greatly exaggerated -- they jammed together for a day. Otherwise,
Chamberlin didn't touch his drums until Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan
invited him back.
Machina: The Machines of God is somewhat a "welcome back" party for
Chamberlin -- listen to the outro of the opening track, "Everlasting
Gaze" to hear what he means to this band. Chamberlin is quick to note,
though, how much the band means to him. The day after Corgan asked him
back, he dove into a disciplined practice regimen to make up for lost
time. Along with drugs, he's also kicked what was a multi-packs-a-day
smoking habit.
Chamberlin hasn't ditched the trappings of rock stardom altogether,
though. He's wearing tight black pants and a black cotton long-sleeved
mesh shirt that hugs tight to his body -- all purchased during a recent
trip to Milan, Italy. His bleached dirty-blond hair is designed to look
like a mess. He isn't quite clean, either -- he still drinks -- but says
he has a handle on the "demons" that lead him to drugs and nearly ruined
his life, in and out of the band. Chamberlin found the record-signing
sessions personally and artistically validating, and he no longer takes
for granted the potentially widespread impact of his music.
"The signings, for me, were like being welcomed back by every kid,"
he says. "The greatest thing I hear is, 'You're the reason I play
drums,' and the second greatest thing I've heard is, 'You're the best
rock drummer since John Bonham,' which almost made me fall out of my
chair. I don't know of the kid knew what he was talking about, but that
was quite a compliment -- and I'll take it."
Just before sitting down for another autograph outing this past
February, Jimmy talked about his ouster and return to Smashing Pumpkins,
his evolution as a player and a person, and the creative process behind
Machina: The Machines Of God.
Jimmy: Yeah, at the time of the interview I was.
MD: So what happened?
Jimmy: I don't know...stress? Whatever happens. We're a lot older now,
and I kinda look at it like that. When your unreality becomes your
reality, it's hard to put a gauge on it, and that's what happened. At
the time, we were arguably the biggest band in the world. You achieve
this rock star status and start believing your own bullshit. You start
thinking you're indestructable.
But there's a lot of stress and responsibility that goes along with
that, and you may not want it. At some point you begin having this
love-hate relationship with your career, and then it all becomes about
escapism. Some people deal with it one way and some deal with it another
way. A lot of times people deal with it the wrong way. That's what
happened.
MD: Did you feel like a public pariah during your time away from the
band?
Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely, and I think I was for a while. But that went
away. It's amazing the amount of forgiveness that's out there.
MD: How did you emerge from all this? Were you determined in a personal
or professional sense to move on?
Jimmy: The music business has been my life since I was eight years old.
Up until this, it was the only thing I could turn to that was constant.
But I was pretty fed up with the music business for what it had done to
me, and I wasn't going to go back to that. But you can either implode or
grow. You can either kill yourself or.... But what can you do but go on?
What was I going to do -- stop playing altogether? I didn't really want
to play with any other bands; I wanted to play with The Pumpkins.
I knew in my heart that we'd get back together at some point. But
at the same time, there were other things I wanted to do, and road
racing was a great outlet for me.Jack Baldwin, one of the top racers out
there, kinda took me under his wing, and the racing community was very
supportive of me and welcomed me into their family with open arms.
MD: Did you start seeing invitations from other bands?
Jimmy: Not really. I mean, a few things came up, but I don't think
anyone seriously wanted any of my baggage. But it was a little upsetting
because I felt that I was pretty capable of playing with anybody at that
point. If I learned anything in thirty-five years, though, it was to
trust my heart and intuition, and I just knew I was eventually coming
back to The Pumpkins.
MD: When you were out of the band, how much did you know or care to know
about what was going on with them?
Jimmy: I pretty much stayed away from it. But I heard they were having
problems with drums, which really upset me. I really hoped when they
went to make Adore that Matt Walker or somebody else really kicked some
drum-ass on the record. I mean, with the groundwork I'd already laid, it
was just about as open a canvas as a drummer could get. Billy could have
gotten any of those guys to play like me -- they're all great drummers
-- and it took a lot of guts for Billy to go completely away from that.
MD: What was your reaction when you first heard the record?
Jimmy: I was a little surprised, and I think a lot of people had that
reaction about it, that it just wasn't the same without me. But it
wasn't supposed to be the same -- there's no way it could have been.
There really are no drums on it, and the couple of drummers who came in
to play a track or two didn't have any music that allowed them to shine.
I could see where Billy was going probably better than anybody
could, but part of me was glad that there weren't a whole lot of drums
on it. It kind of saved my drum-ass, in a way. Had it not been any
different -- had it sounded even sixty percent like a Pumpkins record --
I would have been so sad. So I kinda let out a deep breath and it
reinforced to me that, yeah, I am capable of doing something unique. It
was artistically validating. I don't mean that in a negative way, that I
thought the record was bad, I really like the record for what it is, and
I'd like to go back in sometime and re-record it. It would be an
interesting, fun project, but I don't know if it'll happen. We're doing
a couple of songs from Adore in our shows -- "Ava Adore" and "Punk" --
and they're full-on rock songs. Part of the beauty of the four of us is
anything can happen -- the wheel could fall off the cart at any time --
and that's part of the magic of this band.
MD: Did you touch your drums at all during your time away?
Jimmy: Pretty much not. If I didn't step away so completely, I wouldn't
have been able to come back to it now like I have. I was having a great
time in racing, but music has always been my first love, and the
opportunity to make another Pumpkins record was too good to pass up.
MD: Talk about the process that brought you back into the band.
Jimmy: Six months before I got back in the band I knew it was going to
happen. I just knew it in my heart, some kind of cosmic alignment going
on. Billy and I have always been very close, and our hearts are very
close. We were together for ten years, so no matter where we are, we can
pick up on each other's energies.
I'd been in contact with his assistant for a while, and then I was
in LA for a Halloween party, and The Pumpkins were doing some show with
KISS. Billy and I had lunch and talked about the new record. He was
saying something like, "When we make the new record," and I was like,
"What do you mean we?" just to mess with him. But it wasn't weird at
all. It felt exactly the same as it had always been. When Billy said he
wanted me back in the band and to play on the next record, I literally
flew home the next day and started practicing. It was the best day of my
life.
Of course, after not playing for two years, making another record
with this band wasn't the easiest thing in the world. I started out with
Stick Control and Around The Drums, all those books, and I got myself a
set of Roland V-Drums and worked out on those. They have a built in
metronome and they're just amazing practice tools. But it took me six
months to even get close to being ready to record a song.
MD: What aspect of your playing needed the most reconditioning?
Jimmy: Playing the simple stuff was the hardest part. The fills and
chops are just a matter of getting your muscle-memory back together. The
fast single-stroke rolls are just a matter of calisthenics and getting
back in shape. But I was never the best groove player in the world to
begin with, so playing slow stuff was a real bitch. But if I know one
thing, it's how to practice. I'd sit in the room for five or six hours a
day. That's the kind of commitment it takes. Even when we were in the
studio rehearsing, I'd get up at nine in the morning and go into the
studio. We'd work from noon to midnight and then I'd stay there
practicing until three. I talked with Billy about having to catch up,
but he didn't seem worried about it, and he was pretty surprised at how
fast I got it back.
MD: What kind of role did you have in the development of songs on
Machina?
Jimmy: I think I had a pretty integral role. The record was basically
written with me in mind. I don't think Billy would have written songs
like "Stand Inside Your Love" wihtout me on the drums.
MD: From the opening track, it's clear that you bring so much soul to
The Pumpkins' music. Your beat as the song closes is almost like saying,
"I'm back." But in general, you're much more restrained than you were in
the days of Gish and Siamese Dream.
Jimmy: I don't think I'm restrained at all. I played exactly what I
wanted to play whenever I wanted to play it. It's just that this is the
way I am now and the way the band is. I made Gish when I was twenty-four
-- eleven years ago -- and I was just out of control then. Listen to
Steve Gadd's playing on Aja and then now. There's a maturity that may
sound restrained, but it's not.
MD: Yeah, but it's also self-imposed. Maturity aside, why do you think
you're happier to settle into a pocket now?
Jimmy: I don't think you can easily separate it from maturity. When
you've been doing this as long as I have, you learn to hear certain
things in the music. You're not only thinking of the drum parts, but
also how they affect the song, and I'm realizing that sometimes playing
a groove does more justice to a song than a blazing single-stroke roll.
The whole point while making this record was to use our hearts and
not our brains. We've been through so much -- you name it, anything,
we've done it -- so the last thing we wanted to do was get caught up in
expectations and overthink anything. Mellon Collie came from the heart,
but there was a lot of math on that record, too. I didn't use any
electric drums on this record. There's no triggering. It's all outboard
effects and a little contact miking.
One song, "The Imploding Voice," had an electronic track, but we
took it off. "The Sacred And Profane" is just a drum loop I did and then
played over. Take a song like "Heavy Metal Machine." The drum track on
the record was only the second time I'd heard that song. That's a
perfect example of Billy and me not having to use words at all to
communicate. "This Time" was the same way. Billy came in with a
Dylan-esque folk song and I put in an Allman Brothers-type drum part,
and the song went in a completely different direction. They're all very
different songs and I regarded each very differently as a drummer --
there are about five different drumsets on this record -- and I don't
think I did that before.
MD: Your tempos are very solid on this record.
Jimmy: I was very conscious of that. That's always been my weak point,
which is stupid for a drummer to admit to, but I have a heard time with
it. Songs like "Sacred and Profane" have a drum loop on them, so the
tempos have to be right on. We recorded that song very slowly, then sped
the tape up so the drums would have that nice, crisp sound.
MD: What about the drumkit you're playing now?
Jimmy: My drumset's exactly the same as before, except now I also use
three concert toms. I had Yamaha make me a set of them. I used to have
some timbalitos and timbales, but I got really sick of them. Maybe with
some smaller concert toms, I can achieve the same kind of percussiveness
live without the whacked-out timbale sound.
Yamaha came through with the Maple Custom Absolute, which is on the
second half of the record. It's the most amazing set of drums I've ever
had. The shells are really thin and they have that old, classic Ludwig
sound. I also used my old white marine pearl maple kit and a gold maple
kit. So for the record I basically used those three kits and different
configurations of them, and my main snare was a steel Manu Katché model.
MD: Were there any drum parts that gave you problems or evolved much
from what you'd originally planned?
Jimmy: "Stand Inside Your Love" was a bitch. "Glass And The Ghost
Children" was originally a straight groove song, but Flood [co-producer]
was integral in the development of it. He said, "Why don't you try
playing it as a samba, like some calypso song," and it worked. Flood
brings out playing i[co-producer] was integral in the development of it.
He said, "Why don't you try playing it as a samba, like some calypso
song," and it worked. Flood brings out playing in me that I would never
do naturally. I think it's realy important
MD: Do you appreciate music any more since coming through this latest
episode?
Jimmy: I don't think music was really the enemy. Performing music was
the enemy, the business of music was the enemy. Music has always been a
beautiful thing to me, but having to produce it got to be a mental
strain on me. Now we operate more like a sports team. On a typical day,
I'll have breakfast and then go for a run or hit the steam room.
It's not like I could be like I used to be -- drink all night and
then go play a gig. I quit smoking just before New Year's -- to the
disbelief of everybody -- and my drumming has really improved because of
that. A three-hour show is nothing to me now, whereas before I would be
wiped out. The problem now is I can't go to sleep because I have too
much energy. But I do enjoy this band more than ever. It's like coming
back to an old lover, and I appreciate it so much more now.
Will I make music with Billy forever? Maybe not. I mean, I'll
always have the relationship with Billy that we could come back to each
other at any time and make music. If this is the last record we ever do,
which if very well may be, I think this would be a healthy way to break,
whereas the other way would have been unhealthy. There's a lot of life
out there, and music can be part of it for me, but it doesn't have to be
all of it. No matter what, I won't let the realities and
responsibilities of a music career destroy me again. I'll quit before
that happens.
- Matt Peiken
Modern Drummer Magazine (August 2000)
MD: When we interviewed you last, on the eve of Mellon Collie's release,
you said you were clean. Were you?