The Smashing Pumpkins

[Guest Booker T & The MG's]

SMASHING PUMPKINS TO REFORM?

BILLY CORGAN has said he wants to reform SMASHING PUMPKINS.

The singer, who has completed work on his debut solo album ’TheFutureEmbrace’ has taken out a full page advert in the Chicago Tribune newspaper where he said “his heart” remains with his old band.

He wrote: “When I played the final Smashing Pumpkins show on the night of December 2, 2000, I walked off the stage believing that I was forever leaving a piece of my life behind. I naively tried to start a new band, but found that my heart wasn’t in it. I moved away to pursue a love that I once had but got lost. SO I moved back home to heal what was broken in me, and to my surprise I found what I was looking or. I found that my heart is in Chicago, and that my heart is in the Smashing Pumpkins.

”For a year now 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 have made plans to renew and revive the Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again.”

Smashing Pumpkins split in 2000 after the release of their final album ‘Machina’. Following the split Corgan formed Zwan, who split after one record.

[Wee Man]

Hell Yehs! Get some more X.Y.U on the scene - that song owned their entire album

[Corizzle]

I think Corgan has just realized he can't have any major success without the band.

On the brightside, Ava Adore and Perfect were good

[zero]

Yes, dear God yes, gimme my goddamn Smashing Pumpkins back. Seriously, news like this makes me tear up a bit, please everyone get your shit together.

It's obvious SP was falling apart on the last two albums, but Corgan has seemingly got his shit together, and the Future Embrace (his solo record) doesn't have the feel of the hard-rocking Pumpkins I loved, it is a good disc nonetheless. Probably Corgan's finest work since Mellon Collie. This reunion has to happen, my name is Zero for a reason.

[Carnage]

Smashing Pumpkins were a great band and I hope they reform. Tonight Tonight is one of the greatest songs ever written in my opinion.

[ClaRK! Kent]

I agree entirely with Zero. A Pumpkins reunion would be amazing. The best American band of the 1990s reforming would be worth all of the bilge that the continent has turned out in the last year or so. Ten times over.

As Booker T said though, you'd have a hard time getting James and Billy sitting down now. The problem is that Billy is a total Nazi when it comes to being in control, he's a total megalomaniac. I've heard TheFutureEmbrace, and it's definitely a marked improvement on Zwan IMO, mostly because he had total freedom to boss everybody who worked on it around from the perspective of being a soloist, I imagine.

D'Arcy's work was totally and utterly outclassed by Auf der Maur's bass on the farewell tour (prove me wrong, I dare ya) and Auf der Maur is probably one of the best bass players you could get your hands on these days. She's got her own solo career now, and a damn fine one, but she does owe her entire musical career to Billy Corgan as it was he who reccommended her to Courtney Love, and drafted her into the Pumpkins, and introduced her to Josh Homme who helped her get her through the door with her solo stuff. Out of loyalty to him, she might be swayed.

It'd be a difficult thing to make happen, but it'd make my musical year if it did.

[Guest Booker T & The MG's]

D'Arcy's work was totally and utterly outclassed by Auf der Maur's bass on the farewell tour (prove me wrong, I dare ya) and Auf der Maur is probably one of the best bass players you could get your hands on these days. She's got her own solo career now, and a damn fine one, but she does owe her entire musical career to Billy Corgan as it was he who reccommended her to Courtney Love, and drafted her into the Pumpkins, and introduced her to Josh Homme who helped her get her through the door with her solo stuff. Out of loyalty to him, she might be swayed.

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Edited June 21, 2005 by Booker T & The MG's

[Quom]

You would have to think Melissa might work on the album and then leave them to find a touring bassist. I'm pumped for it if Billy can make it happen.

[Guest seattlebandfan9]

I am totally not excited like everyone else.

[Dr. Rated-R]

Damn. What a year this is/has been/will be. New discs from Audioslave, SOAD, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, last I heard Tool's new album comes this year... and now, there's a chance we get the Smashing Pumpkins back.

I'm channeling the spirit of Ron Simmons, so I can say "damn".

[zero]

I love MAdM, her debut album was easily the best CD released in 2004, but to be honest, I don't want her back in this possible Pumpkins-reunion. I certainly wouldn't argue if that's what we got, but I'd still prefer D'arcy, because that is the Pumpkins to me: Billy, D'arcy, James, Jimmy. If Corgan has changed his tune, I think we'll see it... God knows the music industry needs it.

[ClaRK! Kent]

D'Arcy is probably the purist's choice, yeah, but you'd have to ask her if she'd want to go back into the band with Billy after all of the stuff that went down at the end of her tenure with the Pumpkins, the drugs, etc. She's got a new career now, and she's probably doing okay for herself.

Would she want to return to the atmosphere of the Pumpkins given how she left it? I'm not so sure. MAdM is your more realistic choice, really, although Booker T has a point that it might be a problem for her to give up her creative freedom for it.

Either way, I hope it does better than Zwan, because they were gloriously short-lived and disappointing.

Has anybody heard TheFutureEmbrace yet? It's absolutely fan-fucking-tastic, Corgan puts all of the half-assed over-commercialised post-grunge American bands to shame in the first few tracks, let alone the entire album. Yes, I'm talking to you, Pennywise.

[Liam]

I'd like to see it happen, but as SC/RK/ZB said, Corgan is a cunt when it comes to control. He is a musical genius IMO, but he needs to have gotten over his control freak ways for this to have any chance of working. Hopefully, they can sort it out,but part of my highly doubts it. I'd love to be proved wrong, however.

[ClaRK! Kent]

Agreed. I'd never be more happy to be proven wrong about something (I hate being proven wrong) but unless Corgan has mellowed out in the last few years, or Iha has gotten over their problems, or D'Arcy yearns for the drug-fuelled days that got her into a mess in the first place, or MAdM is willing to give up her solo opportunities... it's unlikely that I will be.

Alas.

Still, it'd be the most significant reformation since the Pixies (and probably a Hell of a lot less disappointing) and the most anticipated reformation anywhere in rock music at the moment.

Unless they can find a way of digging up Kurt and using hydraulics to pump "Smells Like Teen Spirit" through his mouth.

[tristy]

Give me Zwan or give me death.

[ClaRK! Kent]

So you've been dead since fall 2003 then?

[tristy]

Dead inside, yes.

[zero]

Has anybody heard TheFutureEmbrace yet? It's absolutely fan-fucking-tastic, Corgan puts all of the half-assed over-commercialised post-grunge American bands to shame in the first few tracks, let alone the entire album. Yes, I'm talking to you, Pennywise.

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It's a decent record, but it lacks that certain something that made the Pumpkins so accessible. All this talk about how bands are "too mainstream" these days, that's bullshit. There's no such thing as too mainstream, it's just everything in the mainstream right now sucks my cock. The Smashing Pumpkins were an excellent band and could appeal to everyone while not being cheesy and that quality has never been duplicated by another band since them. While TheFutureEmbrace is enjoyable, it just feels like Corgan is experimenting, he doesn't seem comfortable and with this recent revelation of him wanting his band back together, these things become even more obvious.

[apsham]

I think Corgan has just realized he can't have any major success without the band.

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That was my thought on reading the topic title.

[tristy]

Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has told Chicago Tribune that he's back in the reunited SMASHING PUMPKINS and is raring to go, according to MTV.com.

Chamberlin is the first of PUMPKINS mainman Billy Corgan's former musical conspirators to confirm his return to the band. Whether guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky would follow suit, Chamberlin couldn't say.

"All I can say is that the SMASHING PUMPKINS are Billy, James, myself and D'Arcy," the drummer told the Tribune. "In an ideal world, that's what it will end up being. The hope is that everybody will come to the table, but I can only speak for myself in saying that I'm in, and I'm excited."

Chamberlin did tell the paper that he has not spoken to Wretzky since her departure from the band in August 1999, but does exchange e-mails with Iha regularly. The topic of a PUMPKINS reunion has never come up, Chamberlin said, but "I intend to reach out to him."