Producer Butch Vig Remembers the Drama of Making Siamese Dream with the Smashing Pumpkins
For many, Siamese Dream is the best album from the Smashing Pumpkins. According to producer Butch Vig, though, this record was almost the end of the band. This from a pro audio newsletter called PSN Europe.
Siamese Dream was a very difficult record to make,” Vig recalls. “It was recorded in Atlanta – we went there to get away from the media in LA and New York. As we recorded [debut LP] Gish at Smart Studios, we decided we wanted to go somewhere else.
“The band were from Chicago and didn’t want to record there because there were too many distractions, so we went to Atlanta and sequestered ourselves there. But from day one Jimmy Chamberlain was in trouble with drug dealers and crazy people who he met in clubs and on the street who he would invite into the studios.
“The band was really battling with each other, they were at each other’s throats pretty constantly through the course of that record. I’m surprised we actually managed to make it.
“A couple of times we had their management and the label flying in and had these big meetings where they were just screaming at each other. I thought, man, this is over. The band is over. But they toughed it out and we made a pretty epic sounding record.”
