http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_(band)#.22One_straight_from_the_factory....22:_Gold_Afternoon_Fix_.281990.29
If this is correct, I did not realize why Richard Ploog got the boot. If there is one person in the band that needs to stay sober - it is the drummer.
"One straight from the factory...": Gold Afternoon Fix (1990)
After an extraordinarily exhausting tour, the Church returned to the studio to craft a follow-up to Starfish. With one gold album now under their belt, there was mounting pressure from Arista to create another. The band had been negotiating over bringing in former Led Zeppelin keyboardist and bassist John Paul Jones, who had recently built a reputation as a sophisticated producer. Despite enthusiasm by all four members, company and management vetoed the option. To reproduce Starfish’s success, the Church would record in LA with Waddy Wachtel once again.
While the last recording sessions were tense, the next were to prove poisonous. Already unenthusiastic about the forced pairing, the band now had the double stress of needing to create another hit album. From the start, the musical angle was very different. While Starfish focused on a raw, live sound, the new recordings employed more ambient aspects, piano, acoustic guitars and keyboards. On some tracks, the music was punctuated by clanging metal, rustling wind or sharp, industrial sounds, like in some David Lynch movie. But the conflicting undercurrents were all there. "Metropolis" had a commercial, but typical Church ring, while the bleak "Pharaoh" concealed thinly veiled barbs at the stifling music industry around the band. Resigning tones dominated in some songs ("Monday Morning," "Disappointment"), while tinges of nostalgia filtered through others like "Fading Away" and "Laughing."
The external demand for perfection was bound to take its toll somewhere. The breaking point came to be centered on drummer Richard Ploog. All members were fairly outspoken about the creative role that drugs played in the Church’s creative process. Ploog, however, began to retreat further into his own habit as the pressure increased. As recording takes numbered into multiple double digits, his relationship with Kilbey rapidly deteriorated - only accentuated by Wachtel's demands for a consistently reliable tempo. In time, his isolation led to exclusion, and his drum tracks were sampled out and replaced by a rigid, but meter-perfect drum machine. Initially intended to last for a year, his "temporarily excommunicated" status eventually turned out to be permanent.
The final result, Gold Afternoon Fix, was heavily backed by a marketing and promotion campaign by Arista. The band went on tour for almost two years, hiring Patti Smith drummer Jay Dee Daugherty to replace Ploog. Despite the company push, the album spawned only minor hits with the singles "Metropolis" and "You're Still Beautiful", and sales fell noticeably short of Starfish's. Strong commercial pressure and private affairs left their mark. Press was mixed and interviews tended towards incoherence or peevishness. The band - and particularly Kilbey - would later go on to dismiss the album as "lousy," "hashed together" and "hideous." The mega-release that would catapult the band to superstardom was not to be.