The drummer was Steve VanHausen from Cradle of Fire, the bassist Jeff Cabenieri from Diamond Head. The two had never played together before, but their bands had toured with Billy on Lollapalooza the previous summer. By the end of the first take of a song called “Black Curtain,” the chemistry in the room was palpable. But it wasn't good enough for Trevor Rail, who might as well have been pacing the control room with a cat o' nine tails. The producer wanted to splice together the best performance of each section culled from three or four takes of each song. In the computer, the edits would have been fast and easy, but Rail insisted they be done on the analog master tape with a razor blade, resulting in a grueling series of late nights for the engineers. After the fourth night of edits wrapping up around four in the morning, Kevin Brickhouse was starting to feel like a zombie. The mirrors on the handlebars of his Indian had told him he was looking like one too, but his assistant, Jake, wasn’t looking so hot either, and Jake didn’t use rocket powder.
