It's not so much as rookie manuever, it's more like that is what happens when you live with your bandmates.
When you wake up in the morning, and before you even have that first cup of coffee, the tubes in the amps are already warmed up and you've played a couple of tunes.
When you can hear your drummer tapping his foot in a crowded room and know that he is thinking about the last fill in Achilles Last Stand.
When your drummer knows exactly what point your vocal fill comes in and leaves just enough air between his fills to let you hold that note for just another beat.
When you spend more money on tape than food cause you have to keep the tape rolling because there are so many songs coming out.
When the girls you slept with after last weeks shows still show up at the house because they actually like the music.
When you come off a 3 month tour and your drummer makes you sit down and finish the song you wrote at soundcheck right when you get home.
When you have the relationship in the rhythm section where you can stop on a dime and change time signatures on a whim cause you know that there is no way the train is going off the rails.
That is when you can tell them what to use on their kit, cause at soundcheck, he might come over to my amp and turn down the treble cause it sounds better that way. Because no matter what, when the band sounds better, we are all happier that way. If my drummer took 2 strings off my bass and told me to play that way cause it will sound better if I focus that way, then I would do that in a heartbeat, cause he knows I can sound better and he will do whatever it takes to get ME to sound better, even if it means putting me in a headlock and forcing me to stay on the one instead of doing an arpegio or something.
When I took away all my drummers stuff and left him with his stripped down kit, it was like we locked in that much tighter, and the fills that he did on the small kit were so great, he kept it that way for a few weeks, then gradually added things back into the kit.
It's like that time when he hid my 5 string bass from me cause he hated how the low B string sounded on certain songs. So I went back to the 4 string and never looked back.
It's like when the drummer stole the adapter to the guitarists pedal board cause it sounded so much better going straight into the marshall than through all those pedals.
When you have the relationships in the band that tight, the music is what matters most, not any individual and how much he wants to play. Gotta keep each other in check.
Try spending 87 nights in a row together in a rental van and see how much you have to say about each other's sound. And what you are willing to do about it.
