THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
The band continues to mold and morph their music to appeal to an ever-changing musical ear, as they take their heavy rock sounds and combine them with the '90s answer to disco -- electronica. Like most bands, the Pumpkins' road to success was long and grueling. And it started in small clubs in the Windy City.
Corgan grew up in the Chicago suburbs; his father was a guitarist who played in local R&B clubs. Corgan began playing in his teens after exposure to "just about everything."
"Around the house," he recalls, "there were records by the Delfonics and Stevie Wonder and later, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and the Beatles. And I was hearing '70s radio: Cheap Trick, the Raspberries, etc."
Working in record stores also helped Corgan to "detect parallels between Hendrix and John Coltrane, or Sinatra and Miles Davis." Soon he had arrived at a crucial truth: "Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre." Such genre-busting, the deliberate erasure of stylistic boundaries, would characterize Corgan's own sound.
After heading the Marked, a Chicago rock band, Corgan hooked up with fellow Midwesterners James Iha (whom he met while working at the record store), D'Arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin. With Iha's flip-side six-string prowess ("His approach to guitar is angular," Corgan says, "where mine is fluid.") D'Arcy's punk grit ("She's a total groove player"), and Chamberlin's jazz-based chops, the quartet's skills were impressive, their collaboration unique.
Gish, their 1990 debut, erupted into global sales that now top a million; tracks like "Siva" and "Rhinoceros" broadcast a startling fusion of hi-amp power and indelible melody. And inside the thunder there was wisdom, wit and candor. Corgan's lyrics, no matter how densely poetic, aimed for the heart. "Around then," Billy remembers, "I felt we'd really hit on something. When we toured, the band became ultra-aggressive. By early '92, we'd become this lean, mean, on-the-edge, completely rocking machine. With a little bit of wizardry and a little bit of sheer will, we were either blowing people's minds...or they hated us."
Then came 1993's Siamese Dream, fully reaping the early promise. The triple-platinum record, "Cherub Rock", "Disarm," and "Today" among its standout cuts, was "alternative music" that justified the designation: remarkably original and heartfelt. "With that album," Corgan says, "working out of this strange isolation I felt a weird sonic kingdom was created that no other band could sound like. Siamese Dream stands apart because of its extremely distinctive aural signature."
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, begun shortly after the Pumpkins headlined Lollapalooza 1994, stands even farther, more bravely, apart. The ambitious double album was recorded in Chicago and Los Angeles, with half of its songs composed on guitar and half on piano (which Corgan only began playing a year before). Its multi-textured production by Corgan, Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails) and Alan Moulder, features pedal and lap steel guitar and string parts (composed on the computer by Corgan) performed by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The Pumpkins' fourth studio album, Adore, was released in the spring of 1998.
In the summer of 1999, bassist D'Arcy left the band, because of artistic differences. She was replased by former Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Mar
Siamese Dream, 1993
Pisces Iscariot, 1994
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, 1995
The Aeroplane Flies High, 1996
Adore, 1998
The Aeroplane Soars Higher, 1998
Machina/The Machines Of God, 2000
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