Great song. The instrumental passage still reflects some Squirming Coil type complexity in its composition (with a great melodic lead from Trey) but the vocal parts of the song are in a simpler form. I like the stuff on Billy Breaths because it combines the subtler and sometimes more serious material they’d been shifting towards since the Hoist era with elements of the clever arrangements that characterized the earlier material. It’s the same reason I like Theme From the Bottom, Train Song, and Swept Away>Steep. They seem like straightforward songs but they always included some twisted element that was challenging and exiting.
While the fact that they hardly ever play this is a common Phish complaint of mine, I would like to add that there are a few riffs in earlier versions that I would like to see make a comeback to the arrangement.
See: 12/9/95
What happened to that intro and the cool vibrato tone Trey puts on during the “softly” chorus? I want answers dammit!
I never knew about that intro. It kind of reminds of me the Wingsuit verses. That vibrato tone during the “softly” chorus is Trey’s Leslie speaker It’s a rotating speaker that gives the tone a Doppler Effect-like shimmer. Trey uses it a lot with his phaser to be all psychedelic and stuff.
The studio version of this song is a real beauty, but in 20 shows I’ve never gotten to see it live. 
Yeah I know about the Leslie speaker. I’m just wondering why it disappeared from this song. It is so cool on that riff!
I have been to 30 shows and have only gotten 1 Billy Breathes. It was at Red Rocks, and I was not inside the venue but listening from the hill behind it.