The Smashing Pumpkins

• 1. Introduction

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  The Smashing Pumpkins played their farewell concert on the 2nd of December 2000. The show ran four and a half hours and held 35 songs. It took place at the Metro, a Chicago club. A single called "Untitled" was released commercially to coincide with the night.

  The Smashing Pumpkins are an American alternative rock band, and over their career they sold about 30 million albums worldwide, as counted in 2012. Billy Corgan, the lead vocalist, guitarist and main songwriter, is the only member who has been present since the very beginning. Everyone around him has changed, some of them more than once.

  How did a band from the Chicago scene become one of the most successful of the 1990s? What pulled it apart, and what kept bringing it back? And why did a sound built from stacks of guitars divide the critics and listeners around it?

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• 2. Drum Machine Beginnings

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  Billy Corgan was working in a Chicago record store when the idea for the Smashing Pumpkins arrived. He had just come home from St. Petersburg, Florida, after his gothic rock and metal band, the Marked, broke up. At the store he met the guitarist James Iha. The two began writing songs with a drum machine, wearing paisley and other psychedelic touches, and borrowing heavily from the Cure and New Order.

  On the 9th of July 1988 the duo played their first show at Chicago 21, a Polish bar. Corgan played bass, Iha played guitar, and the drum machine kept the beat. Soon afterward Corgan met D'arcy Wretzky following a Dan Reed Network show, where the two debated the merits of having a band. Once he learned she played bass, he recruited her. The trio then played a show at the Avalon Nightclub.

  Joe Shanahan, the owner of Cabaret Metro, offered to book the band after that show. His condition was simple. The drum machine had to be replaced by a live drummer.

  A friend of Corgan's recommended Jimmy Chamberlin, a jazz drummer who knew little about alternative music. His arrival changed the sound at once. Corgan later said the band had been deep in "the sad-rock, Cure kind of thing." Within "two or three practices" he realized Chamberlin's power let them "rock harder than we could ever have imagined." On the 5th of October 1988 the complete band took the stage for the first time at Cabaret Metro.

  In 1989 the band made its first appearance on record, on a compilation called Light Into Dark that gathered several Chicago alternative bands. Its first single, "I Am One", came out in 1990 on the local label Limited Potential and sold out. A follow-up, "Tristessa", appeared on Sub Pop, and the band then signed to Caroline Records. That deal set up the recording of a debut album.

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• 3. Albums Born Under Strain

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  Butch Vig produced the 1991 debut album Gish at his Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, for US$20,000. Corgan wanted consistency, so he often played every instrument except drums himself. That created tension in the band. The music fused heavy metal guitars, psychedelia and dream pop, and critics compared it to Jane's Addiction. The single "Rhinoceros" got some airplay on modern rock radio, and the album became a minor success.

  After the Lull EP arrived in October 1991 on Caroline Records, the band formally signed with Virgin Records, which was affiliated with Caroline. They toured behind Gish, opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses. The road was hard on all of them. Iha and Wretzky went through a messy breakup, Chamberlin became addicted to narcotics and alcohol, and Corgan sank into a deep depression. He wrote some songs for the next record in the parking garage where he lived.

  Alternative rock was breaking into the American mainstream by then, thanks to grunge bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Critics kept filing the Pumpkins under grunge, and Corgan complained about it. He said, "We've graduated now from 'the next Jane's Addiction' to 'the next Nirvana', now we're 'the next Pearl Jam'."

  In late 1992 the band moved to Marietta, Georgia, to make Siamese Dream, with Vig producing again. Part of the reason for such a distant location was to avoid friends and distractions. The larger reason was to cut Chamberlin off from his drug connections. It failed, because Chamberlin quickly found new ones and was often gone for days without contact. Corgan and Vig again decided that Corgan would play nearly all the guitar and bass, which fed resentment. The music press began portraying Corgan as a tyrant. His depression deepened until he contemplated suicide, and he practically lived in the studio. The record took over four months, and its budget passed US$250,000.

  Siamese Dream became the mainstream breakthrough anyway. It peaked at number ten on the Billboard 200 and sold over four million copies in the United States alone.

  Pavement's 1994 song "Range Life" mocks the band directly in its lyrics. The mainstream success worsened the Pumpkins' reputation as careerists among their former peers in independent music. Pavement singer Stephen Malkmus said, "I never dissed their music. I just dissed their status." Bob Mould, formerly of Hüsker Dü, called the band "the grunge Monkees". Chicago musician and producer Steve Albini wrote a scathing letter after an article praised them. He compared them to REO Speedwagon, "by, of and for the mainstream", and concluded they were ultimately insignificant. Fred Armisen, whose band Trenchmouth had made five albums, said the Pumpkins simply "flew past us" in 1990s Chicago. The album's opening track and lead single, "Cherub Rock", answers Corgan's feud with the "indie-world" directly.

  In spite of the backlash, Siamese Dream is often ranked among the greatest albums of alternative rock. Also in 1994, the B-sides collection Pisces Iscariot reached number four on the Billboard 200, higher than Siamese Dream had. That Christmas, Corgan gave ten copies of an informal five-CD box set, Mashed Potatoes, to close friends. It held demos, interview snippets and live recordings from 1988 to 1993. Music journalist Ned Raggett called it "the holy grail of Smashing Pumpkins collectibles for the hardcore fanatic". It reached the internet in the early 2000s.

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• 4. The Overdub Army

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  Co-producer Flood coined a nickname for the band's recording method, the "Pumpkin guitar overdub army." Until Adore, their distinctive sound came from layering many guitar tracks onto a single song. Gish already had plenty of overdubs, but Corgan truly explored the idea on Siamese Dream. By his account, "Soma" alone contains up to 40 overdubbed guitar parts. Many songs were hard or impossible to reproduce in concert, and some were drastically altered on stage.

  Corgan defended the approach with a question. "When you are faced with making a permanent recorded representation of a song, why not endow it with the grandest possible vision?"

  David Bowie, Cheap Trick, Queen, Boston and the Electric Light Orchestra, all favorites from the 1970s, inspired Corgan's multilayered sound. Shoegaze fed it too. That British style of the late 1980s and early 1990s relied on swirling layers of guitar noise. Corgan admired the shoegaze bands My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive. That admiration is why Alan Moulder, who had produced them, was originally hired to mix Siamese Dream.

  Hüsker Dü's album Zen Arcade showed the band how to set gentle material against aggressive material. Corgan made those swings between quiet and loud central to his grand ambitions. He liked the idea of building an alternative universe in sound. Corgan imagined it speaking to the listener. "Welcome to Pumpkin Land, this is what it sounds like on Planet Pumpkin." That atmosphere carried into Adore, promoted as "arcane night music", and into the Machina albums, which are concept records telling the story of a fictional rock band.

  Dimebag Darrell of Pantera was Corgan's favorite contemporary guitarist, and he openly loved heavy metal at a time when critics scorned it. When an interviewer suggested the band had relegitimized the genre, Corgan raved about Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East. The song "Zero" reminded Iha of Judas Priest. It is an example of what the band called "cybermetal".

  Joy Division, New Order, Bauhaus, the Cure and Depeche Mode shaped the band, which covered such artists in concert and on record. Corgan also named Siouxsie and the Banshees. Corgan jokingly claimed a "Pumpkin chord", a G# octave chord at the eleventh fret with the low E string played under it. It underpins "Cherub Rock", "Drown" and other songs. He later conceded that Jimi Hendrix had used it first.

  Jimmy Chamberlin said few influences were shared at the start. His own came from jazz, including Tony Williams, Jeff Beck, Return to Forever and Weather Report. Corgan loved Joy Division, New Order and Bauhaus, and he was a closet fan of Mahavishnu, Yngwie Malmsteen and progressive rock. Iha adored Johnny Marr, and Wretzky followed her own path.

  Journalist Greg Kot wrote in 2001, "Whereas Nirvana spawned countless mini-Nirvanas, the Pumpkins remain an island unto themselves." Still, artists from Deftones to Fall Out Boy have cited the band as an influence. My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way said his group patterned its career on the Pumpkins', including music videos.

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• 5. Mellon Collie Years

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  In 1995 Corgan wrote about 56 songs. The band then entered the studio with producers Flood and Alan Moulder. Corgan called the project "The Wall for Generation X". It became Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double album of 28 songs lasting over two hours. The vinyl edition held three records, two extra songs and a different track order. The songs were meant to hang together as a symbol of the cycle of life and death.

  Time praised the record as "the group's most ambitious and accomplished work yet". It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in October 1995. It was certified ten times platinum in the United States and became the best-selling double album of the decade. Seven Grammy nominations followed in 1997, including Album of the Year. The band won only Best Hard Rock Performance, for the lead single "Bullet with Butterfly Wings".

  Five singles came from the album: "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight" and "Thirty-Three". The first three were certified gold, and all but "Zero" entered the Top 40. Corgan said "Tonight, Tonight" was inspired by Cheap Trick's "I'll Be with You Tonight". Songs that missed the album ended up as B-sides, later gathered in the box set The Aeroplane Flies High. It was first limited to 200,000 copies, but more were made to meet demand.

  The 1996 world tour produced an image that stuck. Corgan wore a shaved head, a long-sleeve black shirt printed with the word "Zero", and silver pants. That year the band also guest-starred on The Simpsons, in the episode "Homerpalooza". With heavy MTV rotation, major awards and "Zero" shirts selling in many malls, the Pumpkins counted among the most popular bands around.

  MTV's 2001 anniversary special Testimony: 20 Years of Rock on MTV credited the Pumpkins, along with Nine Inch Nails, with treating the music video as an art form. Corgan said the band generally resisted what he called the classic MTV rock video, full of people jumping around. Kevin Kerslake directed "Cherub Rock", and Samuel Bayer directed "Bullet with Butterfly Wings". The team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris made "Rocket", "1979", "Tonight, Tonight", "The End Is the Beginning Is the End" and "Perfect".

  Corgan helped conceive the videos, and he admitted his first versions ran darker. "I know my initial versions are always darker, and they're always talking me into something a little kinder and gentler." Clips like "Today", "Rocket" and "1979" used exaggerated images from middle American culture. The videos so rarely illustrated lyrics literally that "Thirty-Three", with images close to its words, was made as a deliberate departure.

  At the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards the band won eight awards for the "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight" videos. "Tonight, Tonight" took Video of the Year and also earned a Grammy nomination at the 1997 ceremony. Corgan said of the reaction, "I don't think we've ever had people react like this... it just seemed to touch a nerve." The tour behind this album had a much darker side, and it surfaced in Ireland.

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• 6. A Tour Turns Dark

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  A seventeen-year-old fan named Bernadette O'Brien was crushed to death at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, in May 1996. The band had repeatedly asked the crowd to stop moshing. The concert ended early, and the next night's show in Belfast was cancelled out of respect for her. Corgan maintained that moshing's "time had come and gone". Even so, the band kept requesting open-floor concerts for the rest of the tour.

  On the 11th of July 1996, touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and Chamberlin overdosed on heroin in a New York City hotel room. Melvoin died, and Chamberlin was arrested for drug possession. A few days later the band announced that Chamberlin had been fired. The Pumpkins finished the tour anyway, hiring drummer Matt Walker and keyboardist Dennis Flemion. Corgan later called that decision the worst the band ever made, saying it damaged both their music and their reputation.

  Chamberlin told Rolling Stone in 1994 that he had "gotten high in every city in this country and probably half the cities in Europe." In the years since, he had reportedly been clean. On the 17th of July the band issued a statement. "For nine years we have battled with Jimmy's struggles with the insidious disease of drug and alcohol addiction. It has nearly destroyed everything we are and stand for." They closed by wishing him the best they had to offer.

  Interviews given after the release of Mellon Collie had already said it would be the last conventional Pumpkins record, and that rock was growing stale. At the end of 1996, Iha put it bluntly. "The future is in electronic music. It really seems boring just to play rock music."

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• 7. Electronica and Farewell

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  Early in 1997 the song "Eye" appeared on the soundtrack to David Lynch's Lost Highway. It relied almost entirely on electronic instruments, a sharp turn from the band's earlier styles. Corgan said his "idea was to reconfigure the focus and get away from the classic guitars-bass-drum rock format."

  Later that year the group gave "The End Is the Beginning Is the End" to the soundtrack for Batman & Robin. With Matt Walker on drums, it had a heavy sound like "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" plus strong electronic touches. It won the 1998 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Corgan said it showed what to expect, yet the next album would contain few guitar-driven songs.

  Adore, released in 1998, was recorded after the death of Corgan's mother and his divorce. It veered into electronica, built with drum machines and studio drummers including Walker. The mood was darker than most of the band's earlier work, and the group traded its alternative rock look for a more subdued appearance. Adore earned favorable reviews and a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Performance. By the end of the year it had sold only about 830,000 copies in the United States. Still, it debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 and sold three times as many copies overseas.

  To support Adore, the band staged a seventeen-date, fifteen-city charity tour across North America. At every stop they gave 100 percent of ticket sales to a local charity, and they paid the tour's expenses out of their own pockets. In all, they donated over US$2.8 million. On the 31st of October 1998, Halloween, they opened for Kiss at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, dressed as the Beatles.

  In 1999 the band surprised fans by reuniting with a rehabilitated Chamberlin for a brief tour called "The Arising", which mixed new and classic songs. That lineup did not last. In September the band announced Wretzky's departure while they worked on Machina/The Machines of God, and Sharon Osbourne Management dropped them. Former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur joined for the Sacred and Profane tour and appeared in the album's videos.

  Machina came out in 2000, pitched as a return to a more traditional rock sound after the gothic, electronic Adore. It debuted at number three on the Billboard charts, then quickly disappeared, and by 2007 it was only certified gold. Critic Jim DeRogatis called it "one of the strongest of their career". He saw the weak sales as "concrete proof that a new wave of young pop fans has turned a deaf ear toward alternative rock."

  On the 23rd of May 2000, in a live radio interview on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles, Corgan announced that the band would break up at the end of the year. The split is tied to internal conflicts, drug use and falling sales. In September 2000 came Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, pressed on vinyl in a limited run with permission and instructions for fans to share it free on the Internet. Only 25 copies were cut, each hand numbered and given to friends of the band and to the members themselves. It came out on Constantinople Records, a label Corgan created, as one double LP and three ten-inch EPs. The band had first asked Virgin to offer it as a free download to anyone who bought Machina. When the label declined, Corgan released the music himself.

  People who attended the final show also received a recording of the band's first concert at the Metro, titled Live at Cabaret Metro 10-5-88.

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• 8. Reunions and Rebuilds

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  In 2001 Corgan and Chamberlin reunited in Zwan, a short-lived supergroup. Its only album, Mary Star of the Sea, appeared in 2003. Corgan announced its demise that year after cancelling a few festival appearances. During 2001 he also toured with New Order and sang on their comeback album Get Ready. In October 2004 he published a book of poetry, Blinking with Fists. A 2005 solo album, TheFutureEmbrace, drew mixed reviews and lackluster sales.

  James Iha played guitar with A Perfect Circle, appearing on its 2004 album eMOTIVe, and kept running his label Scratchie Records. Chamberlin formed the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, which released Life Begins Again in 2005. D'arcy Wretzky has given almost no interviews since leaving in 1999, apart from one radio interview in 2009.

  On the 17th of February 2004, Corgan used his personal blog to blame Iha for the breakup and to criticize Wretzky harshly. Iha answered in 2005. "No, I didn't break up the band. The only person who could have done that is Billy."

  On the 21st of June 2005, the day TheFutureEmbrace was released, Corgan took out full-page advertisements in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote that he had carried a secret for a year and now planned to "renew and revive the Smashing Pumpkins." The ad also declared, "I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams."

  The band's first show since 2000 came on the 22nd of May 2007 in Paris, France. It introduced new touring members Jeff Schroeder, Ginger Reyes and Lisa Harriton. Iha and Auf der Maur had each confirmed in April 2007 that they were not taking part. Zeitgeist, released in July 2007 on Reprise Records, entered the Billboard charts at number two and sold 145,000 copies in its first week. Reviews were mixed, and much of the criticism targeted the absence of half the original lineup. Corgan later explained that "you don't just roll out of bed after seven years without a functioning band and go back to doing that."

  In March 2009 Chamberlin left, calling the move positive for him and saying he was glad Corgan chose to continue under the name. Mike Byrne, a 19-year-old drummer from Corgan's tribute group Spirits in the Sky, replaced him. Corgan began Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, a planned 44-track concept album to be released free online one track at a time. Its first track, "A Song for a Son", appeared in December 2009. The project eventually covered singles, EP releases and two full albums. Oceania arrived on the 19th of June 2012 and debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200. Monuments to an Elegy followed on the 5th of December 2014, with Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe on drums.

  On the 26th of March 2016, his birthday, Iha walked on stage unannounced at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. It was his first appearance with the band in 16 years, and he played "Mayonaise", "Soma" and "Today". On the 15th of February 2018, Iha and Chamberlin officially rejoined. The tour that followed sold over 350,000 tickets and filled arenas including The Forum, United Center and Madison Square Garden. Jack Bates, son of Joy Division bassist Peter Hook, played bass. Wretzky claimed she had been offered a contract that Corgan then rescinded, and Corgan denied it, saying she had repeatedly been invited and always deferred.

  Albums kept coming: Shiny and Oh So Bright in 2018, Cyr in 2020, and Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, released in three parts between 2022 and 2023. Jeff Schroeder left in October 2023, so the current lineup is Corgan, Iha and Chamberlin. On the 5th of January 2024 the band invited guitarists to apply by email. By the 17th of January it had received over 10,000 submissions and employed eight people full-time to review them. On the 26th of April it named Kiki Wong as touring guitarist, and Corgan noted he was a fan of hers "before she submitted her name to be considered."

  Corgan said the band spent two years on a guitar-driven album, partly in response to the negative reception of the synthesizers on the Atum releases. That album, Aghori Mhori Mei, was released on the 2nd of August 2024. In 2025 the band reissued Machina. The box set Machina: Aranea Alba Editio, released in October, holds 80 songs across eight records, including 48 resequenced songs from the Machina and Machina II sessions plus 32 demos, outtakes and live tracks. In May 2026 the band announced The Rats in a Cage Tour, a North American arena run from September through November 2026, marking thirty years since Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

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