Jimmy Chamberlin had spent most of his adult life drumming in two rock bands commandeered by his musical foil, Billy Corgan: the multimillion-selling Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan.
And then in summer 2003, Zwan folded. The Pumpkins were long gone. Chamberlin was married, with a new child and a mortgage. The next year he would turn 40, but he was without a band, or even a clue about what to do next.
“I entertained the thought of doing some [drum] clinics to make ends meet and make some money,” says the Joliet native during a recent Chicago visit (he moved his family to Los Angeles last year). “I didn’t want to stagnate, which was what was happening with Billy and myself. I wanted to play music, but there wasn’t a lot going on in Chicago. I knew Billy was going to do his solo record and it was him that called me up and said, ‘Why don’t you do your own record?’ “
Chamberlin thought the idea sounded far-fetched, even though he and Corgan had mused about making “a supermodern instrumental prog-rock” record even while the Pumpkins were a going concern. Further encouraged by Merck Mercuriadis, CEO of the Sanctuary Records Group, a label that specializes in releasing albums by veteran artists considered past their MTV prime, Chamberlin finally dove in.
The results, as heard on the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex’s “Life Begins Again,” due out Jan. 25, aren’t what the drummer or his record label originally had in mind.
“It started out as this project for a former drummer of the Smashing Pumpkins and we were expecting a record that was a bit more jazz-fusion based,” says Cory Brennan, Sanctuary’s senior vice president of marketing. “It turned into this very wide open musical record, and it became obvious that is has a lot broader appeal than we originally thought it might.”
Though progressive-rock elements remain in some of the more technically demanding twists and turns in the arrangements and tempos, the album isn’t for hardcore drum nerds only. Melodies rather than busy solos dominate, dirty guitars and keyboards bring an off-the-cuff rock flavor, and a handful of guest vocalists — the Catherine Wheel’s Rob Dickinson, the Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley and Corgan himself — reveal that Chamberlin’s inner poet is surprisingly articulate.
The drummer’s first attempt at writing lyrics won’t make anyone forget Bob Dylan, but there’s not much to cringe at, either: It’s mostly heartfelt expression of spiritual renewal, rebirthand positive “vibes,” as suit the newly minted California resident.
As much of a breakthrough as the lyrics are for Chamberlin personally, the album’s central strength lies in the flexibility of the songwriting and arranging: the dusky enchantment of “Lokicat,” the streamlined rock groove of “Love Is Real,” the muscular acrobatics of “Streetcrawler.”
Unlikely radio play
Still it’ll be a stretch if “Life Begins Again” gets much radio airplay. Though Sanctuary’s Brennan says he hopes to break the album at adult-leaning music outlets such as KCRW, the influential Santa Monica College station in California, music director Nic Harcourt says the station is taking a pass. Locally, longtime Pumpkins supporter James Van Osdol, music programmer at hard-rockers WZZN-FM 94.7, had complimentary things to say about several tracks, but says it’s unlikely the record will be added to the station’s playlist.
That doesn’t mean the album won’t find an audience. The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex plans to tour, with a homecoming show Saturday at Double Door, and Sanctuary is banking on listeners discovering that this is more than just a vanity project for a drummer who once played in an iconic alternative-rock band.
“It’s the kind of record you could see appealing to the same jam-band audiences that listen to Trey Anastasio or Neil Young,” says Brennan, as he invokes marketing catch-phrases such as “slow build” and “word-of-mouth.”
For Chamberlin the album represents a culmination of sorts, a stew of all his influences. This is a musician, after all, who had gigged in a polka band, a swinging lounge combo and hard-rock band that covered Ted Nugent’s “Great White Buffalo” well before he had made Corgan’s acquaintance. He was well-versed not only with the vocabulary of rock’s drum hierarchy, but with Gene Krupa, Elvin Jones and Weather Report’s Peter Erskine.
He grew up the youngest of six children in a musical household, spellbound by his sister Laura’s record collection, his brother Paul’s drumming dexterity and his clarinet-playing father’s love of classic jazz. With that breadth of experience, replacing the drum machine in the nascent Smashing Pumpkins circa 1988 was a snap, even if Chamberlin hardly fit the part with his blue-collar demeanor. The Pumpkins were an artsy, Goth-tinged trio when Chamberlin showed up for his first practice dressed in a baseball uniform; long before the drums consumed his life he was a rifle-armed third baseman. But the band’s chagrin turned to smiles as soon as the new recruit walloped his kick drum.
“I had a Tony Williams banana-yellow set,” Chamberlin recalls with a grin. “I wasn’t screwing around. I started rocking up the tunes a bit and we started working at an alarmingly fast rate.”
Good rapport
Corgan and Chamberlin in particular hit it off; the drummer was the only musician in the band who could consistently stand up to the singer-guitarist’s demanding regimen. The quartet rejiggered the alternative-rock landscape with three acclaimed albums, “Gish,” “Siamese Dream” and “Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” and became one of the world’s biggest bands.
They were set to headline New York’s Madison Square Garden for the first time in summer 1996 when tragedy struck. Chamberlin had been struggling with drug addiction for several years and it finally got the best of him; he and tour keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on the eve of the concert, but only Chamberlin woke up. Melvoin was dead, and Chamberlin was fired from the band.
After cleaning up his life, he returned in 1999 for the Pumpkins’ final album and tour, and then he and Corgan established Zwan in 2001 with three veteran musicians. The band’s early promise disintegrated by summer 2003, and Corgan pulled the plug. “I was disappointed [in Zwan] a long time before we broke up,” Chamberlin says. “I was disappointed in everybody’s commitment. For me, being a new father and spending time with my baby became much more important than playing with three people who were less than into being in the band. Everybody walks to their own tempo, and we [Corgan and Chamberlin] tend to leave people behind because our work ethic is pretty strong. If we kept the band going, I was going to take bullets for other people’s shortcomings, and I’m too old for that.”
Chamberlin rediscovered his musical bearings last year in tandem with Billy Mohler, a Los Angeles-based jazz-rocker who had played previously with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. They improvised the musical foundation for “Life Begins Again,” with the idea of making an album steeped in their mutual passions: early King Crimson, “Blow by Blow”-era Jeff Beck, Weather Report.
But “what started coming out was a little more accessible, a little more pop than prog,” Chamberlin says. After initially fighting the impulse, the drummer embraced the direction he and Mohler stumbled upon together.
“I’m at my best when I don’t get caught up in what I’m doing, but I get caught up in what everyone’s doing,” he says. “I learned that from Elvin Jones and the love and warmth he created around him. I mean, [pianist] McCoy Tyner was great, but he was unbelievable when he played with Elvin Jones.”
Just as with the Pumpkins, he aimed his drumming to suit the songs as they developed rather than to show off his musical training: “I always had the lyrics in front of me when I played Corgan’s songs. I don’t want the drums to be saying, `Piss off!’ when the vocals are saying, `I love you.'”
Later, guitarist Sean Wulsetnhulme was recruited to add guitar, and his contributions proved so integral that Chamberlin cut him in on the songwriting credits. A keyboardist, Adam Benjamin, was added to the Complex for the current tour.
Practicing 12 hours a day
Though Chamberlin gets star billing, he describes the quartet as a democracy of strong musical wills and chops. “It gets terrifying because these guys are so good, so for me it was a matter of practicing 12 hours a day just trying to hold on,” he says. Less terrifying, improbably, was the idea of Chamberlin writing lyrics for the first time.
“I know the pitfalls you expose yourself to when you do write lyrics, and I know I’m not the next Emily Dickinson,” the drummer says. “But I just wrote what was on my mind. We were moving out of Chicago. My mother was dying. There was a lot of stuff going on. So a song like `Lokicat’ is about the idea of God taking things away and putting new things in their place — like my daughter and family. I thought that was the perfect song for Billy to sing because he was instrumental in helping me get through that grief.”
“I gaze into the sun / My green eyes burn / I found no angels / I found myself,” sings Corgan, while Chamberlin’s sticks dance around him.
“We’re still in the same place, just on opposite sides of the street,” Chamberlin says of his longtime friend. “I feel really lucky to have people like that around me. It’s good to know that if you’re going to do it on your own, you’re not going to be alone.”
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Drummers who went solo and succeeded
For every rock drummer who began a successful solo career, or even made a good solo album, there are countless more who discovered that life as a band leader can be a dead end. Without their pedigrees in the Who and the Beatles, respectively, Keith Moon’s “Two Sides of the Moon” or Ringo Starr’s “Beaucoups of Blues” likely never would have been released, nor should they have been.
But Jimmy Chamberlin can take solace in the knowledge that the exceptions are more notable and numerous than one might assume. Here’s a brief overview of drummers from famous rock bands who ventured out alone and hit the artistic jackpot in projects built on their songwriting and playing:
Bill Bruford, “Feels Good to Me” (EG, 1978): After stints with King Crimson and Yes, Bruford’s solo debut melds a Who’s Who of Britain’s progressive scene, including guitar maestro Alan Holdsworth, into a white-hot avant-rock excursion.
Robert Wyatt, “Nothing Can Stop Us” (Gramavision, 1986): A founding member of British progressive-rock titans the Soft Machine, Wyatt went on to make a series of solo albums that mixed bucolic psychedelia, quietly passionate singing and bleak sociopolitical songs, none better than his cover of Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding.”
Volcano Suns, “All Night Lotus Party” (SST, 1986): Drummer Peter Prescott wrote many of the strongest melodies in this high-energy folk-rock band formed after his previous outfit, Boston’s legendary Mission of Burma, called it quits.
Grant Hart, “Intolerance” (SST, 1990): Though he didn’t get the media coverage accorded the solo career of his Husker Du sidekick, Bob Mould, Hart made several exceptional solo albums steeped in his love of ’60s garage rock, baroque pop and psychedelia.
Foo Fighters, “Foo Fighters” (Capital, 1995): After Nirvana’s demise, Dave Grohl traded his sticks for a guitar and began a multiplatinum solo career with this surprisingly strong set of rage-‘n’-roll songs.
— Greg Kot
