Rhinoceros

"I recorded 17 tracks of feedback for that one. I wanted it to sound like World War I airplanes dive-bombing around your head. I took three or four guitars and put them through a stereo vibrato; then I took about six guitars through a Leslie going the other way. I then unblended in some guitars to smooth things out."

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"We mutate most of our songs sooner or later," Billy says. "'Rhinoceros,' off of Gish, is a five and a half minute song, which just seems too long, so we've cut about two minutes out. And we like it now. I don't believe in being tied down to anything."

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Interviewer: Now he’s the oral drummer. Yeah. I have to ask you, and I’m sure you’ve been asked this a billion times, and I’m sorry, but why is “Rhinoceros” called “Rhinoceros”?

Billy: Um, I never talk about what my songs are about.

Interviewer: That’s not about what the song is about, but okay...

Billy: But that kind of is talking about what the song is about.

Interviewer: Okay then I thought you could answer this indirectly...

Billy: Here I’ll explain to you, this is how I write up my song titles and this kind of is the nicikitve high to “Rhinoceros” say you write a song about a chandlier. And the chandlier gives off light. And the light is the color red. And red reminds you of the color you’re not supposed to wear around a bull. So, you name the song “Cow”.

1991

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"I mean..I can remember bring in Rhinoceros, which didn't sound like anything else we had. But after a while you get used to playing Rhinoceros, so you bring in something that's a little weirder and then that fails, so you get rid of it, and it was just like back and forth until we knew all the territory that we were comfortable in. So now that we've shown where the band was at the time of Gish, we're trying to push out the extremes so that we can be both more mellow or more heavy, or both"

- Nick Wise book