Everything about The Smashing Pumpkins totally explained
The Smashing Pumpkins are an
American alternative rock band that formed in
Chicago,
Illinois in 1988. While the group has gone through several lineup changes, The Smashing Pumpkins consisted of
Billy Corgan (
vocals/
guitar),
James Iha (
guitar/
vocals),
D'arcy Wretzky (
bass guitar/
vocals), and
Jimmy Chamberlin (
drums/
percussion) for most of the band's recording career.
Disavowing the
punk rock roots shared by many of their alt-rock contemporaries, the Pumpkins have a diverse, densely layered, and guitar-heavy sound, containing elements of
gothic rock,
heavy metal,
dream pop,
psychedelic rock,
arena rock,
shoegazer-style production and, in later recordings,
electronica. Frontman Billy Corgan is the group's primary songwriter—his grand musical ambitions and cathartic lyrics have shaped the band's albums and songs, which have been described as "anguished, bruised reports from Billy Corgan's nightmare-land".
The Smashing Pumpkins broke into the musical mainstream with their second album
Siamese Dream (1993). The group built their audience with extensive touring and their follow-up, the
double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995), debuted at number one on the
Billboard charts. With approximately 18.25 million albums sold in the United States alone, The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands of the 1990s. However, internal fighting, drug use, and diminishing sales hampered the band and led to a 2000 break-up. In April 2006, the band officially announced that it was reuniting and recording a new album. Returning members Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin were joined by musicians
Jeff Schroeder (guitar/vocals),
Ginger Reyes (bass/vocals), and
Lisa Harriton (keyboard/vocals) in 2007 to tour in support of their new release,
Zeitgeist (2007).
History
Early years: 1988–1991
At the age of nineteen, singer and guitarist Billy Corgan left his native city of Chicago and moved to
St. Petersburg,
Florida with his
gothic rock band
The Marked. The band had limited success and quickly broke up. Corgan returned to Chicago, taking a job in a record store. While working there, he met guitarist James Iha. Adorning themselves with
paisley and other psychedelic trappings, the two began writing songs together (with the aid of a
drum machine) that were heavily influenced by
The Cure and
New Order. Corgan met bassist D'arcy Wretzky in 1988 after a show by the
Dan Reed Network where they argued the merits of the band. After finding out Wretzky played bass, Corgan stated his band's need for a bassist and gave Wretzky his telephone number. Wretzky soon joined the band, and she and Iha later had a short-lived romance.
The first performance of The Smashing Pumpkins was on
July 9,
1988, at the Polish bar Chicago 21. This performance included only Corgan and Iha with a drum machine. On
August 10,
1988, the band played for the first time as a trio at the Avalon Nightclub. After this show,
Cabaret Metro owner Joe Shanahan agreed to book the band on the condition that they replace the drum machine with a live drummer.
Jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was recruited for the band after a recommendation from a friend of Corgan's. |format=
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In 1989, the group had recorded a handful of demo tapes, which appeared later on the bootleg release
Early 1989 Demos. The Pumpkins made their first appearance on vinyl that same year on the compilation album
Light Into Dark, which featured several Chicago alternative bands. They released their first record, a limited edition
single of "
I Am One", in 1990 on local Chicago label Limited Potential. The single sold out and they released another single, "
Tristessa", on
Sub Pop, after which they signed to
Caroline Records. The Smashing Pumpkins recorded their 1991 debut album
Gish with producer
Butch Vig at his
Smart Studios in
Madison, Wisconsin, for $20,000. In order to gain the consistency he desired, Corgan often played all instruments save drums, which created tension in the band. The music fused
heavy metal guitars,
psychedelia and
dream pop, garnering them comparisons to
Jane's Addiction.
Gish became a minor success, with the single "
Rhinoceros" receiving some airplay on
modern rock radio. After releasing the
Lull EP in October 1991 on Caroline Records, the band formally signed with
Virgin Records, which was affiliated with Caroline. writing some songs for the upcoming album in the parking garage where he lived at the time.
Mainstream success: 1992–1994
With the breakthrough of alternative rock into the American mainstream due to the popularity of
grunge bands such as
Nirvana and
Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins were poised for major commercial success. At this time, and amid their protests, the Pumpkins were routinely lumped in with the grunge movement. In a
Halloween night interview on
MTV's
120 Minutes in 1993, Corgan remarked, "We've graduated now from [beingcalled] 'the next Jane's Addiction' to 'the next Nirvana,' now we're 'the next Pearl Jam.' The group nevertheless contributed the song "
Drown" to the platinum-selling soundtrack of the 1992 movie
Singles, a film set in the
Seattle grunge music scene.
Corgan said that in the wake of Nirvana's landmark 1991 album
Nevermind, "We felt a great pressure that if we didn't come up with a record that was huge, we were done. It was that simple in our minds. We felt like our lives depended on it." To counteract his depression, Corgan worked overtime, saying he practically lived in the studio for the 1993 follow-up album,
Siamese Dream. The album was recorded at Triclops Sound Studios in
Atlanta, Georgia, mostly between December 1992 and March 1993. The band lived in
Marietta during the sessions, as Butch Vig reprised his role as producer. The decision to record so far away from their hometown was motivated partly by the band's desire to avoid local friends and distractions during the recording, but largely as a desperate attempt to cut Chamberlin off from his known drug connections. Rumors circulated that he'd recorded all the guitar and bass parts himself. It was never confirmed exactly how much each member participated on the album; Corgan did say he performed a majority of the guitar work, but only because he could record tracks and parts in far fewer takes. In 2007, Corgan would finally clarify the nature of the band's recording habits, stating "ninety-seven percent of what you'd hear off of any Smashing Pumpkins record is, pretty much, just Billy and Jimmy." In all, it took over four months to complete the record, with the budget exceeding $250,000. and sold over four million copies in the U.S. alone. MTV put the
videos for the songs "
Today" and "
Disarm" into heavy rotation, garnering the Pumpkins international attention.
While the Pumpkins were successful, they were not universally adored by the alternative rock community. Participants in the indie scene had derided the band as careerists since their early days. Former
Hüsker Dü frontman
Bob Mould called them "the grunge
Monkees", Others such as
Courtney Love of
Hole (who dated Corgan before marrying Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain) were vocal supporters of the band.
In 1994, Virgin released the
B-sides/rarities compilation
Pisces Iscariot which outperformed
Siamese Dream by reaching number four on the
Billboard charts. Also released was a VHS cassette titled
Vieuphoria featuring a mix of live performances and behind-the-scenes footage. Following relentless touring to support the recordings, including headline slots on the 1994
Lollapalooza tour and at
Reading Festival in 1995, the band took time off to write the follow-up album.
Reunion: 2005–present
On
June 21,
2005, the day of the release of his album
TheFutureEmbrace, Corgan took out full-page advertisements in the
Chicago Tribune and
Chicago Sun-Times to announce that he planned to reunite the band. "For a year now," Corgan wrote, "I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I've made plans to renew and revive the Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams." In February 2006, MTV.com reported that Corgan and Chamberlin had signed a new management deal with Front Line Management, and Melissa Auf der Maur stated that the pair were currently working on an album of new material.
On
April 20,
2006, the band's official website confirmed the reunion stating, "It's official. The Smashing Pumpkins are currently writing songs for their upcoming album, their first since 1999." The website later reported that the new album would be produced by
Roy Thomas Baker, who produced many of
Queen's albums, including
A Night at the Opera. According to a
MySpace blog posting by Jimmy Chamberlin on
October 20,
2006, they finished work with Baker and had also enlisted help from producer
Terry Date, who has worked with
Deftones,
Pantera, and
Soundgarden.
Corgan and Chamberlin were verified as participants in the reunion, but there was question as to whether other former members of the band would participate. In April 2007, Iha and Auf der Maur separately confirmed that they were not taking part in the reunion. Chamberlin would later state that Iha and Wretzky "didn't want to be a part of" the reunion. The Smashing Pumpkins performed live for the first time since 2000 on
May 22,
2007, in Paris, France. There, the band unveiled new touring members
Jeff Schroeder and
Ginger Reyes, who took over second guitarist and bassist duties, respectively, as well as
Lisa Harriton on keyboards. That same month, "
Tarantula" was released as the first single from the band's forthcoming album. On
July 7, the band performed at the
Live Earth concert in
New Jersey. The band's new album,
Zeitgeist, was released that same month on
Reprise Records, entering the
Billboard charts at number two.
The group released the four song EP
American Gothic in January 2008. The EP was released digitally on
iTunes in the US, while internationally, the EP was released as a CD. Chamberlin has confirmed that the band will be going back into the studio to record a new album at the completion of the current tour. The band is planning on releasing archival material from their entire career. No longer signed to a record label, Corgan and Chamberlin purchased a recording studio in Chicago and will begin recording in May, again, as a pair. Chamberlin contended that the band will release songs in blocks that will "all flow up to a larger body of work".
Musical style and influences
The direction of the band is dominated by chief guitarist, lead vocalist, and principal songwriter Billy Corgan. Journalist
Greg Kot wrote, "The music [ofThe Smashing Pumpkins] wouldn't be what it's without his ambition and vision, and his famously fractured relationships with his family, friends, and bandmembers." Many of Corgan's lyrics for the Pumpkins are cathartic expressions of emotion, full of personal musings and strong indictments of himself and those close to him. although he viewed the lyrics of later albums
Adore and
Machina as an improvement.
The Smashing Pumpkins' distinctive sound up until
Adore involved layering numerous guitar tracks onto a song during the recording process, a tactic that
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness coproducer Flood called the "Pumpkin guitar overdub army". While Corgan knew many of the songs would be difficult or impossible to replicate from their recorded versions in concert (in fact, some songs were drastically altered for live performance), he's explained the use of overdubbing by posing the question "When you're faced with making a permanent recorded representation of a song, why not endow it with the grandest possible vision?" This use of multilayered sounds was inspired by Corgan's love of 1970s
arena rock bands
Queen,
Boston, and
Electric Light Orchestra,
Like many contemporary alternative bands, The Smashing Pumpkins utilized shifts in song dynamics, going from quiet to loud and vice versa. Hüsker Dü's seminal album
Zen Arcade demonstrated to the band how they could place gentler material against more aggressive fare, Corgan said he liked the idea of creating his own alternative universe through sound that essentially tells the listener, "Welcome to Pumpkin Land, this is what it sounds like on Planet Pumpkin." This emphasis on atmosphere carried through to
Adore (described as "arcane night music" in prerelease promotion) and the
Machina albums (concept records that tell the story of a fictional rock band). When one interviewer commented to Corgan and Iha that "Smashing Pumpkins is one of the groups that relegitimized heavy metal" and that they "were among the first alternative rockers to mention people like
Ozzy and
Black Sabbath with anything other than contempt", Corgan went on to rave about Black Sabbath's
Master of Reality and
Judas Priest's
Unleashed in the East.
Post-punk and gothic rock bands like
Joy Division/
New Order,
Bauhaus,
The Cure, and
Depeche Mode were formative influences on the band, which covered such artists in concert and on record.
Psychedelic rock was also referenced often in the band's early recordings; according to Corgan, "In typical Pumpkins fashion, no one at that point really liked loud guitars or psychedelic music so, of course, that's exactly what we'd to do." Corgan acknowledged that a chord he jokingly claimed as "the Pumpkin chord" (a G#
octave chord at the eleventh fret of a guitar with the low E string played over it), used as the basis for "
Cherub Rock", "
Drown", and other songs, was in fact previously used by
Jimi Hendrix.
Regarding the band's influence upon other groups, Greg Kot wrote in 2001, "Whereas Nirvana spawned countless mini-Nirvanas, the Pumpkins remain an island unto themselves." and members of
My Chemical Romance. My Chemical Romance vocalist
Gerard Way has said that they pattern their career upon the Pumpkins', including the attention they pay to their music videos. The members of fellow Chicago band
Kill Hannah are friends with Corgan, and lead singer
Mat Devine has compared his group to the Pumpkins.
Deftones lead singer
Chino Moreno said in an interview that he's a fan of
Adore, listening to it extensively while touring, and that "Once Upon a Time" "really moves" him. Critics have found connections with the Pumpkins' sound in various Deftones albums.
Music videos
» For a complete list of the band's music videos, see The Smashing Pumpkins discography.
The Smashing Pumpkins have been praised for being "responsible for some of the '90s' most striking and memorable video clips" and for having "approached videos from a completely artistic standpoint rather than mere commercials to sell albums". MTV's 2001 anniversary special
Testimony: 20 Years of Rock on MTV credited the Pumpkins, along with
Nine Inch Nails, with treating music videos as an art form during the 1990s. Corgan has said, "We generally resisted the idea of what I call the classic MTV rock video, which is like lots of people jumping around and stuff." The band worked with acclaimed video directors including
Kevin Kerslake ("Cherub Rock"),
Samuel Bayer ("Bullet with Butterfly Wings"), and, most frequently, the team of
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ("
Rocket", "1979", "Tonight, Tonight", "The End is the Beginning is the End", and "
Perfect"). Corgan, who was frequently heavily involved in the conception of the videos, said of Dayton and Faris, "I know my [initial] versions are always darker, and they're always talking me into something a little kinder and gentler." Videos like "Today", "Rocket", and "1979" dealt with images taken from middle American culture, albeit exaggerated. The group's videos so often avoid the literal interpretation of the song lyrics that the video for "Thirty-Three", with images closely related to the words of the song, was created as an intentional stylistic departure.
The band was nominated for several
MTV Video Music Awards during the 1990s; in 1996, the '1979" and "Tonight, Tonight" videos combined to win seven VMAs, including the top award, Video of the Year, for "Tonight, Tonight". The video was also nominated for a Grammy at the 1997 ceremony. Fans reacted with equal fervor. Of the "Tonight, Tonight" video, Corgan remarked, "I don't think we've ever had people react [likethis]... it just seemed to touch a nerve."
Discography
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