There’s been much debate about what exactly the term “Smashing Pumpkins” means. It started back in the early 1990s, when the band rose to mainstream fame and people wondered what exactly its name was intended to convey.
Now, the question relates more to what it actually means to say that Smashing Pumpkins is back together. Original members James Iha (guitarist) and D’arcy Wretzky are conspicuously absent from the highly touted reunified band that still includes founder and frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain.
The band is touring behind “Zeitgeist,” its first new album since 2000. The band headlines ENDFest in the Qwest Field parking lot in Seattle on Saturday. Other bands on the bill include The Used, Bright Eyes and Hot Hot Heat.
The reunification was two years in the making, and started with a full-page ad in a Chicago newspaper, where Corgan announced his plans to get the band back together.
“I want my band back,” Corgan wrote in the ad, “and my songs, and my dreams.”
But Iha and Wretzky never showed.
“When I said, ‘I want my band back,’ I realized that I’d taken the best, proudest thing that I’d ever done and chucked it out a window and tried to build a new castle to live in,” Corgan says in press materials. “And in doing so, I took away every advantage of the one that I had built. Fundamentally, I asked myself, ‘Why build a new persona when Pumpkins was meant to include all the personas?’”
Chamberlain, who came along for the ride and was part of Corgan’s most recent project, Zwan, said the revived Pumpkins is very significant.
“I had advance knowledge of Billy’s ad, so I wasn’t shocked,” he says.
“But it was a real turning point in my life. It was an opportunity for Billy and I to re-solidify our relationship that never really went away. We were really always friends and partners through both our individual solo projects. So it really made musical sense and spiritual sense. It was a way to make a statement that we’re not going to make excuses; we’re just going to do what we do. If you like it, you like it. If not, we’re still going to do it. It was a very freeing thing to read.”
The Pumpkins’ new album attempts to create a link between the old stuff and what they could come up with for modern times. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart and the band has had extended engagements at theaters across the country.
“We immediately realized that Pumpkins wasn’t something you just pick up and start recording again,” Chamberlain said. “We set about re-identifying what was great about the band, re-languaging some of the music of the past, inventing new ways to play new Pumpkins that still sounded like the Pumpkins, but didn’t sound like old Pumpkins.
It was very difficult, at first. There was a lot of time when we were scratching our head, looking at each other, going, ‘Can we even do this?’
“At some point, about a month and a half in, we started turning a corner and the songs really started reflecting how we were feeling as opposed to trying to (go) back and recapture some kind of fire, we were rekindling a new fire. When that started happening, it became a very joyous experience. We had a vision and we had a way to achieve the vision — and then we were off to the races.”
C. Thomas Verfaille photo
Smashing Pumpkins perform Saturday at ENDFest in Seattle.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
