Smashing Pumpkins

SMASHING PUMPKINS

Formed: 1988, Chicago, Illinois; Disbanded 2000

Members: Jimmy Chamberlin, drums (born Joliet, Illinois, 10 June 1964; fired in 1996, rejoined in 1999); Billy Corgan, guitar/vocals (born Glendale Heights, Illinois, 17 March 1967); James Iha, guitar (born Elk Grove, Illinois, 6 March 1968); Melissa Auf Der Maur, bass (joined 1998; born Montreal, Quebec, 17 March 1972)). Former members: Matt Walker, drums (touring member 1996–1997; born Chicago, Illinois); D'Arcy Wretzky, bass (born South Haven, Michigan, 1 May 1968; left group 1998).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)

Hit songs since 1990: "Cherub Rock," "Tonight Tonight," "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"

Like a rock and roll Icarus, Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins aimed high and flew daringly close to the sun during their decade-long ascent to the highest peaks of rock stardom. The brainchild of the restlessly creative singer/guitarist Billy Corgan, the group put Chicago on the rock and roll map in the early 1990s with a sound that paid homage to heavy metal, glam rock, folk, electronic music, and new wave. At the group's creative peak, albums such as the double-CD Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) took rock to dramatic new heights while spinning off such indelible alternative rock radio hits as "Tonight, Tonight" and "1979."

Origins

Billy Corgan, the son of a jazz guitarist, formed the Smashing Pumpkins in Chicago in 1988, playing at first with the guitarist James Iha as a duo with a drum machine. After a heated argument in a parking lot with D'Arcy Wretzky, Corgan asked the lithe bassist to join his group, rounded out by the drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. The band quickly won a following in their hometown with fierce live shows during which Wretzky would take her stoic stance alongside a wildly flailing Corgan, an impassive Iha, and the thundering, powerful Chamberlin.

Major-Label Breakthrough

After releasing the 1990 single "I Am One" on Chicago's Limited Potential label and "Tristessa" on Seattle's Sub Pop Records, the band signed with Virgin Records, though they released their debut album, Gish (1991), on the smaller subsidiary Caroline to retain their underground, "indie" credibility.

Gish is a template for the angst-ridden grunge rock sound that came to define early 1990s rock and roll. Produced by Butch Vig—who soon thereafter produced Nirvana's breakthrough album, Nevermind —Gish is a blend of screaming psychedelic rock and mellow, folk-inflected songs, many of which rise and fall through several dynamic passages. Featuring Corgan's high, nasal voice, furious guitar solos and confessional lyrics, tracks such as "I Am One" and "Siva" are closer to the grandiose arena rock of the 1970s than Nirvana's more intense, shorter, punk-inspired songs.

In a sign of their persistent personal tensions, the former lovers Iha and Wretzky underwent a nasty breakup while touring to support Gish; Chamberlin began a dangerous addiction to drugs and alcohol at the same time as Corgan slipped into a dark depression. With the various personal clouds hanging over them, the group again entered the studio with Vig in 1992 to record their official major-label debut, Siamese Dream (1993). Corgan threw himself into the work, writing all but two of the songs alone and reportedly playing nearly every guitar and bass line as well, which helped fuel the impression that the band's other members were mere observers of Corgan's creative vision.

The album, which debuted on the Billboard charts at number ten, is a triumph of dark emotion and soaring rock and roll, with Corgan's lyrical torment and Jimi Hendrix-like flights of guitar fancy gelling into a lush, fully realized sound that is at once pompous and touchingly insecure. Corgan's image of a tortured, wounded angel comes to fruition on songs such as the driving, explosive hit single "Cherub Rock" and the majestic rock ballad "Today."

While many of the songs revel in chaotic swirls of feedback and barrages of guitar, they are also clearly carefully crafted, over-the-top pop morsels meant to appeal to radio listeners and take listeners on a proscribed journey. "Cherub Rock," "Disarm," and "Today" all became radio anthems.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) is the realization of Corgan's wildest musical fantasies. A two-disc set of songs that runs the gamut from string and piano-laden symphonic instrumentals ("Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness") to searing, scorched-earth heavy metal ("Jellybelly," "X.Y.U."), the album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and was hailed as a masterpiece by many critics and fans. "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" won the 1996 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.

With production from Flood and Alan Moulder, both known for their work with the electronic rock band Nine Inch Nails, and a rich, orchestral sound, the album features bits of synthesizer-laden electronic songs that presaged the band's next musical transformation. The album sold 4 million copies in the United States and spawned such hits as the ballad "Tonight, Tonight," the fiery hard-rock song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," and the bouncy "1979."

Drugs, Death, and Dissolution

The good times were short-lived, however. On July 12, 1996, the band's touring keyboardist, Jonathan Melvoin, was found dead of a heroin overdose in the hotel room in which he had shared the drug with Chamberlin. The drummer survived but was fired from the group and arrested for heroin possession. The band went on a two-month hiatus and reemerged in late August.

The first Pumpkins album recorded without Chamberlin, Adore (1998), produced by Corgan, was the band's first musical misstep. A dark series of down-tempo acoustic tracks, layered with electronic drums, electric guitars, and keyboards, the album was dismissed by most critics and the band's fans. Songs such as "Perfect" reveal the influence of such new wave pop groups as New Order, with a syncopated drum track and a chiming guitar sound. The rebuke was especially difficult for Corgan, who had written some of his most emotionally naked lyrics to date for the album, such as the hushed piano ballad dedicated to his mother, "For Martha," which features the lyrics "If you have to go don't say goodbye / If you have to go don't you cry." In November1999 the former Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur replaced Wretzky, who quit the group after the release of Adore. Chamberlin returned to the group in mid-1999. To coincide with what Corgan announced would be the group's final tour, the band released the enigmatic rock opera MACHINA: The Machines of God (2000), which features a convoluted back story in which each band member plays the part of a fictional character in the band the Machines of God, after the fashion of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. A mixture of the majestic rock of Mellon Collie and the electronic keyboards and new wave influences of Adore, the album did not reach a wide audience.

When Virgin refused to release a second collection of songs, MACHINA II: The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music, the group offered it for free download on the Internet in September 2000. On December 2, the Smashing Pumpkins played their final show at the Metro in Chicago, the site of their first club show in 1988. Corgan reemerged a year later with a new band, Zwan, featuring Chamberlin on drums.

The Smashing Pumpkins tried it all during their decade-long assault on the senses: progressive rock, heavy metal, folk, electronic pop, and experimental rock. Billy Corgan's creative vision for the group helped make the Pumpkins one of the most revered, successful, and unpredictable groups of the alternative-rock era.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Gish (Caroline, 1991); Lull (Caroline, 1991); Siamese Dream (Virgin, 1993); Pisces Iscariot (Virgin, 1994); Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (Virgin, 1995); The Aeroplane Flies High (Virgin, 1996); Adore (Virgin, 1998); MACHINA: The Machines of God (Virgin, 2000); MACHINA II: The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music (Constantinople, 2000); Greatest Hits (Virgin, 2001)

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