"They had recorded a bunch of stuff and Josh Freese had recorded a lot of stuff. I think he recorded 90% of the drumming on the 25-30 tunes that were floating around. When I came it was right when they got [producer] Roy Thomas Baker. He was coming from Queen, The Cars, Journey, more the rock thing. He said we had to go re-record the drums because they sounded very industrial.
"We literally drove in his green Rolls Royce around LA and we picked up from every drum company probably every famous drum and tried out every drum. We had them ship it to The Village in LA where we were recording.
"We set up all the drums and I said, ‘This is the Guns N Roses album, we need a vibe’ and there was a temple upstairs that people used to do their speeches in. We went up there and it was a mini auditorium. As soon as I put drums up there and hit them I said, ‘Oh s***, this is the vibe’. They ran cords up there and eventually [then Guns guitarist] Bucket[head] set his chicken coop up there and that’s where he recorded. Bucket and I would look at each other and he’d been in the chicken coop with the wire and he brought in hay. We were up there for three years recording."