The Cavern
Rock & Words
SMASHING PUMPKINS
“And you can make it last, forever you
You can make it last, forever you
And for a moment I lose myself
Wrapped up in the pleasures of the world”
“D+”
Main Decade: 90's
Main Eras:
Alternative II: The Big Bang (1990-1999)
Key Members:
Billy Corgan, Vocalist and Guitar
James Iha, Lead Guitar
Jimmy Chamberlin, Drums
D'arcy Wretzky, Bass
Key Songs:
1979, Disarm, Today, Siva, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero, Thrirty-Three, Rhinoceros, Perfect, Tonight Tonight, Adore, Cherub Rock, Love, Sweet Sweet, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, To Sheila, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Hummer, Mayonaise, Spaceboy, Geek U.S.A., Silverfuck.
Uff! The Smashin' Pumpkins are a very difficult band to review. Well, not to review, but perhaps to appreciate objectively. They have a good handful of great songs, songs that were defining of the 90s sound and that would end up becoming anthems for a generation. Who doesn't listen to "1979" today and travel back in time to 1995, when Mellon Collie was king and those bizarre videos of bald Corgan and company played all day on MTV?
The Pumpkins definitely have very good songs, and VERY good musicians. Corgan has a voice that sometimes gets grating and seems to want to compete with Cobain in terms of screaming, but in other songs his nasal voice is perfect, it sounds expressive and bright, and it's one of the group's greatest distinguishing features. D'Arcy is a good bassist and she grew with each album, until her departure in 1999. Jimmy Chamberlin is Undoubtedly one of the last great drum virtuosos, he's partly responsible for the band's tremendous punch—powerful, lightning-fast, and precise. Sometimes it seems like the band is too small for him, but he's certainly a major defining characteristic of the Pumpkins, although his temperament and addictions led to his departure a little earlier than D'arcy's, in '96, after an overdose incident that killed the group's keyboardist. James Iha, for his part, is a good guitarist. While not spectacular, he manages some good solos, and occasionally some tremendous riffs, before going on to join A Perfect Circle.
Billy Corgan is the son of a jazz and funk guitarist, so he received musical training from a very young age. His parents divorced, and he and his brother stayed with their father, who remarried soon after. After a while, his father divorced again, and he and his brother went to live with their stepmother and a half-brother in difficult circumstances. The guitar... He rediscovered rock in high school, becoming impressed by bands like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jeff Back, and later Black Sabbath, Queen, and Rush. His father taught him the basics, but Billy essentially learned the rest on his own. He was a good student, and upon graduating high school with honors, he was offered several college scholarships, but he decided to leave his native Chicago for Florida to pursue his musical dreams. There, in 1985, he founded his first band, The Marked. The group failed, and Corgan returned to Chicago to live with his father. He would later say that in that band he experienced all the darker aspects of rock, such as sex, violence, and above all, drugs.
Corgan started a new band in Chicago, forming the Smashin' Pumpkins in 1988. He met guitarist James Iha in a record store and they immediately began recording demos. Later, he met bassist D'arcy Wretzky and invited her to join the band. The Smashin' Pumpkins started as a trio with a drum machine instead of a drum kit (can you imagine?!). However, to play at Chicago's Metro club, the owner required a live drummer. So they placed an ad, and a guy named Jimmy Chamberlin responded. The band was revitalized by the immense power provided by Chamberlin, a true master of the drumsticks, and the group began working on their songs, heavily influenced by Jane's Addiction and The Buzzcocks, with heavy distortion, but always driven by Jimmy's relentless drumming. Soon, the band began to make a name for themselves in the Chicago alternative music scene. After releasing a couple of moderately successful singles, one with Limited Potential and the other with Sub Pop (sound familiar? The same label that released Nirvana's Nevermind?), Smashin' signed with Caroline Records, a semi-independent subsidiary of Virgin. The producer was none other than Vig Butch, who had produced the famous Nevermind…
Their debut album, El Gish, is undoubtedly their rawest work, and the only one that truly fits the Grunge label, although we'll generally categorize the band's sound as Alternative. El Gish was a resounding flop on the charts and wouldn't sell well until years later, when their subsequent albums led fans to this darker sound. With Siamese Dream, they began to achieve commercial success and break out of the underground scene. This album is somewhat underrated, as it's the one that achieves the most balance in their sound and showcases the band's creative peak without falling into excessive excess. But it was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness that propelled them to superstardom, with massive airplay, awards, surreal videos running 24/7, and songs that received the most radio airplay. The Pumpkins headlined festivals and enjoyed massive exposure, becoming one of MTV's favorite bands after Cobain's death, and at times it seemed Corgan would take up the mantle of generational leader. But perhaps his ego got the better of him. Subsequent albums declined in quality, internal conflicts fractured the group, and by 2000, Machinas had finally shattered the Smashing Pumpkins myth.
The problem with the Smashing Pumpkins is that they often don't know when to stop. They have few albums, but some are excessive in their sound, becoming too dense and heavy, very repetitive. The Pumpkins aren't exactly known for their variety, at least not in terms of the atmospheres and saturations they achieve. And that's why the good songs get lost among the filler, or more average, material that predominates in their discography. This is what prevents them from being given a C rating.
On the other hand, their influence in the '90s is very limited. Of course, they're part of the soundtrack of everyone's lives who was there, and they even appeared in one of the most memorable episodes of The Simpsons. But they weren't really an influence on many bands, to say the least. In fact, I can't recall any. The Pumpkins maintained a characteristic style, but they wandered around and changed their sound from album to album. This is a plus and shows that they tried not to stagnate or get pigeonholed. Gish is raw and the band's most grunge-oriented album. Siamese Dream, in my opinion their best album, is more rock-oriented and shows more care in the riffs and song structure. Mellon Collie is an attempt at a concept album; it was conceived to be THE masterpiece of the '90s. And for many, it is. For me, it has some of the band's best songs, but being a double album, it can't avoid having massive amounts of filler. It's an album that experiments more with orchestral sounds, pays more attention to dreamlike atmospheres and all that, but it's way too long to be considered a masterpiece, let alone the best Smashin' album. With Adore, they begin to experiment slightly with the electronic music that was starting to dominate at the end of the decade. It's not disastrous, and it's another change of direction, but you can already see the band and their ideas starting to crumble. The Machinas albums should never have existed. Ever. They're horrible sonic experiments, and I understand why Jimmy and D'arcy jumped ship before it sank.
This variety of styles, which showcases their attempt at versatility, is also a drawback, as they never fully mastered any of them. Ultimately, Corgan's 2007 "reunion" and the release of Zeitgeist were completely misguided. Not even Iha wanted to be part of such an idea, let alone Chamberlin and D'arcy. Billy gathered a bunch of unknowns, recorded an album, and went on tour using the Smashing Pumpkins name, disrespecting his former band and their fans, and reminding me of the stubbornness of a certain Axl Rose. But hey, he owns the name and has the right to try and make money however he wants. However, Zeitgeist and its single "Tarantula" are yet another reason why it's impossible to give the Pumpkins a high rating.
I have a lot of respect for the Smashing Pumpkins. They have great songs. But they failed to transcend that. They didn't create a movement and were far too pretentious. They left good memories, but not an indelible mark. In short, I can't imagine the '90s without Pearl Jam, but I can imagine them without the Smashing Pumpkins. Even so, the fact that they're still hanging around The Cavern is for a reason. It's not like they're the worst band in the universe. They're just not as good as they wanted us to believe.
Billy Corgan was right: The World is a Vampire…
By Corvan
Aug/16/2011
