The resurgent popularity of The Smashing Pumpkins in the 2020s is something I never saw coming. When I became obsessed with the band in 2010—after a lifetime of being a casual fan—Billy Corgan was at the nadir of his career. The original run of the band lasted from 1988 to 2000 (although the last time the original four members played together was at the Roxy in Los Angeles April 1999); Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin reformed the band in 2007 with hired hands after bassist D’arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha declined to join, and they released Zeitgeist, an album of cyber-metal with DNA going back to Mellon Collie songs like “Zero,” “Bodies,” “X.Y.U.,” “Fuck You (And Ode to No One),” and “Jellybelly.” It debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts, but hipsters weren’t on board, and many fans jumped ship once Corgan started blaming them and laying into crowd after crowd of people for not being enthusiastic, open, quiet, or loud enough for his liking. Part of being a Smashing Pumpkins fan is accepting Corgan’s sensitivity (verging on myopia) and taking his megalomaniacal tendencies in good humor. He certainly does.
The Zeitgeist era ended in 2009 when Chamberlin was fired for unknown reasons. The first time I saw the Pumpkins—at Baltimore’s Ram’s Head Live in July 2010—Corgan was the only original member, playing with yet more hired hands including a drummer barely out of high school. The music they were putting out at the time remains the low point of the band’s storied four-decade run, and while I’ve come to appreciate oft hated tracks like “Run2Me,” “Astral Planes,” and “Owata,” I still hit a brick wall whenever I try again with “Widow Wake My Mind.” But that song is the exception that proves the rule: Corgan is the most prolific and accomplished songwriter of his generation. His only true peer, Kurt Cobain, died before he could create a comparable body of work. With half a dozen classic albums and hundreds upon hundreds of obscure tracks, bootlegs, and side projects, it’s hard to argue against Corgan as the preeminent musical artist of Generation X.
The Pumpkins were not cool in 2010. Or 2011. Or 2012, 2014, 2015, or even 2018, when I last saw the full band. By then, Chamberlin had returned, along with Iha, and while Wretzky took her frustrations with Corgan public, King Pumpkin took the high road and to this day emphasizes how important Wretzky was to the band’s philosophy, attitude, and music. When I saw the Pumpkins that year at the arena in downtown Baltimore—once 1st Mariner Arena, then Royal Farms Arena, then the Baltimore Arena, now CFG Arena—the 13,000 capacity venue was maybe 70 percent full. Last Saturday night, the place was sold out save for maybe a hundred seats. It was remarkable how diverse the crowd was—I was in the front row, with a woman on my right who saw the band’s last show before the death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin in 1996, and with a fan on my left who was born in 2008. It was, for once, a wholesome and celebratory atmosphere, with none of the ambient hostility and darkness that inevitably announced itself every time I went to see the Pumpkins in the past.
This was the third night of the band’s “Rats in a Cage Tour,” which lasts through mid-November. You might think a promoter forced that name on them, but when Corgan was asked if he was pressured into calling a 2024 tour “The World is a Vampire,” he said he was the one who came up with the idea. “If you don’t know why it’s funny to call our tour ‘The World is a Vampire,’ then you just don’t know very much about the band.” The Smashing Pumpkins have always been celebrating, mocking, deconstructing, and building rock ‘n’ roll back up. They are a band about a band, what it means to be in a band, how you’ll get a bigger response if you end a song with a bang rather than a whimper. Windmills and bad jokes—that’s the Pumpkins. “We Love You,” as they once sang themselves.
The show consisted of two sets, the first drawing exclusively from the double CD Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The band played every song from the first disc except “Love” and Iha’s “Take Me Down,” along with a number of selections from disc two including “1979,” “Thirty-Three,” “Bodies,” “By Starlight,” and a brief instrumental tease of “Tales of a Scorched Earth,” a barnburner that they’ve never played live. Unlike the 2018 show, which had more multimedia production and a couple of covers, this show put the music and the band first; in 2018, there was a sense the band was reintroducing themselves to a mass audience that had either rejected, forgotten, or never known them in the first place, and there was more of a sampler platter feeling to the show. This was different: although all the five singles from Mellon Collie were hits, the rest of the songs from the album were never appreciated by most of the crowds I’ve been in over the years; but on Saturday, everyone was thrilled to hear songs like “Galapagos,” “Here is No Why,” “Cupid de Locke,” and “To Forgive.” Despite the best efforts of Pitchfork to erase the band’s influence, legacy, and body of work, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness has become an acknowledged classic of 1990s popular music, along with 1998’s Adore and even Machina/The Machines of God, released in 2000 and cut in half by a record label that no longer believed in the band.
They’re all gone, but the Pumpkins are still here. I’m not sure how much longer that’ll be the case, or if I’ll ever get to see them again—Corgan said recently on his Substack that this is the first tour where he’s really felt his age and the wear on his body and his voice. He’s a phenomenal guitar player and a one-of-a-kind singer who’s never really gotten his due, and up close, I could see him struggling, I could see his frustration making tiny mistake after tiny mistake (he blew a chord during the first verse of “Mayonaise,” and out of pure frustration he shrieked “FUCKKKKKKKKKKKK!” off mic). I don’t care if Corgan forgets some lyrics or chords, I just want him to be healthy and happy. That’s the insanity of being a Pumpkins fan: Billy’s wellbeing is very important to us, and now that he’s happily married with three kids, we just want him to live the best life that he can. Corny, cliché, schmaltzy: everything The Smashing Pumpkins both are and aren’t.
Right before he started singing “By Starlight,” Corgan threw a guitar pick into the crowd. I caught it. Never thought that would happen. I’m on a natural high, and I say godspeed to the mighty Pumpkins as they crisscross our beautiful country this fall. I hope I’ll get to see them again, but if not, boy, was this one to go out on. Don’t miss this tour—you might not get another chance to see the greatest rock band in the world.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM