Biography

"To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy, mortal existence."-Billy Corgan

In 1987, after the breakup of Billy Corgan’s old band "The Marked," Billy met James Iha in a Chicago club. They decided to form a band. Corgan was working in a used-record shop and living with his father, Bill Corgan Sr., a professional guitar player. Iha, on the other hand, was still in school, studying graphic arts at Chicago's Loyola University. James and Billy made their first public appearance at a Polish bar in 1988. Soon after he and Iha's Polish bar gig, Corgan got into an argument outside a club about a band called the Dan Reed Network with a woman named D'Arcy. As the two argued, D'Arcy let it slip that she played guitar. Corgan immediately stopped being confrontational and asked her if she'd like to play bass in his and Iha's band. Corgan handed her his phone number, and despite an awful audition, she soon became the third Pumpkin.

By this time James’ girlfriend, D’Arcy Wretzky, would be the bassist and Jimmy Chamberlin, a jazz drummer who attended an audition for the Pumpkins, was to become the drummer. From the beginning, Billy said, "The Smashing Pumpkins were either going to be a big band or no band."

So how did the Smashing Pumpkins get their name? In a 1993 interview, Billy Corgan said that, "There was no band…it didn’t exist. I was telling people that I wanted to start a band, and…and at one time I was making a joke or something, and I said something about smashing pumpkins and I thought, ‘Oh, that would be a good band name.’ So then when I would tell people I was forming a band, or I wanted to form a band, people would say, ‘Oh well what’s going to be the name of the band?’ And I would just say Smashing Pumpkins as…like a joke, a then, um…people would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, how’s your band the Smashing Pumpkins?’ And people were remembering, and I thought, well, ‘That’s good enough for me,’ and then you just don’t…you just don’t, when you’re starting a band , you just don’t think that for the next five years you’re going to be stuck with it. You know, ‘Why the f*** has he got this stupid name?’"

They got their first look at stardom when Mark Williams, then an executive at Virgin Records, found them in Chicago. They made a demo tape and were signed -onto the Virgin based record label, Caroline. On the actual album, Billy played most of the guitar and bass; time in the recording studio was expensive, and if Billy could do things in three takes instead of ten, he did. Gish was a fairly popular album, selling 300,000 copies. They made videos for two of the songs on Gish and released three singles. They went on tour, but had only a small fan base, and begged friends and relatives to come to the shows.

Their next album, Siamese Dream, took a different path. The album was made very differently from Gish. On Gish, the music was written first and the words added later. Billy wanted the next album to be different, so he sat down to write words. But what could he write about? He brainstormed and wrote down a lot of ideas. There was "Today," a song about suicide, "Spaceboy," a song about Billy’s disabled brother, and "Quiet," a song about distraction and delusion. There were soft songs and loud songs, angry songs, happy songs, sad songs. Siamese Dream was a collection of emotions, packed into thirteen songs. Once again, Billy played most of the guitar and bass for the CD, seeing as he was, musically, the most skilled of the group. Siamese Dream was a hit, debuting at number ten on the billboard charts. It went double platinum, selling more than 2 million copies, and introducing Smashing Pumpkins into a world of super-stardom.

The first single off of Siamese Dream, "Cherub Rock," didn’t get much attention. The song didn’t get much air play, and the video was what Billy calls "The big mistake." "Cherub Rock" was followed by "Today," a favorite of all Smashing Pumpkins fans. Although they were advised against it, they decided to make a video that was not just what MTV wanted, not like every other performance video out there. No, this was to be different, "the turning point," Billy says as he recalls their video history. Even people who were not fans, turned their heads when the video came on. Billy driving an ice cream truck, James in a dress, and Jimmy and D’Arcy as gas station assistants. This was followed by "Disarm," another interesting video, shot in black and white, showing a more personal side of the band.

"Rocket," their fourth and final video, was another breakthrough video. You’d turn on the television and watch some kids build a rocket out of junk, their parents picnicking and shaking their heads, until the rocket took off, bringing them to the planet where the pumpkins were, blasting "Rocket" in silver space suits. Hence, the Smashing Pumpkins went on tour.

Touring for Siamese Dream was not such a glamorous experience. The band was going through some rough times in their relationships, and still adjusting to stardom. During the tour it became apparent that Jimmy had a drug problem, and Billy told him no second chances, one more time messing with such deadly drugs as heroin, and he would no longer be a pumpkin. Jimmy went to rehab and shaped up, but the rest of the tour was rough, too, and the band was at each others’ throats by the end of the tour.

After the tour, they spent some time away from each other, not doing any more recording for about two years. During this time they managed to release another album, a compilation of Gish and Siamese Dream B-sides. Pisces Iscariot didn’t sell many copies, and the Pumpkins didn’t acknowledge it as an album. By 1995, they had enough material to produce two records. Billy had said to reporters, he would follow up Siamese Dream with a double album, and true to his word, he did. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a 28 track double album, became the highest selling double CD ever. The album was followed by disaster.

In July of 1996, only on the second leg of their world wide tour, touring keyboardist, Jonathan Melvoin overdosed and died while doing heroin with drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin, in the hotel where they were staying. Billy, James, and D’Arcy took immediate action by firing Jimmy from the Pumpkins and resting from the tour.

They resumed the tour in September with Filter drummer, Matt Walker.

They just recently finished the third and last leg of their world wide tour, winning best tour in 1996 Rolling Stone poll. The Pumpkins haven’t made a final decision on whether or not they’ll keep Matt Walker as their permanent drummer, but have begun to record tracks for their upcoming albums with him.

In his last weeks with the Pumpkins, Jimmy played the drums on five cover songs they planned to release on a five CD box set. The box set included all five singles from ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,’ 28 B-sides, 8 previously unreleased songs, and a 36 page booklet. They released 100,000 copies of the retro style, 45’s case box set, ‘The Aeroplane Flies High,’ on November 26, and within a few weeks, this limited edition collection was completely sold out of stores and number one on the alternative billboard charts. Realizing that this would be profitable, Virgin Records released another 100,000 copies, still keeping it a limited edition. Once again the Smashing Pumpkins proved that they were worthy of the alternative music world, pleasing both fans and critics.

Videos were released for all five songs, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," the first, promoting their album with the hard rock performance video, "1979," the catchy video about Billy’s childhood, "Zero,"…"Super creep," Billy said when recalling the video. "Zero" didn’t get much play on MTV, but was a popular song on the radio. "Tonight, Tonight" took a different turn. The amazing video was at one time the most popular video on MTV, cleaning up the music video awards with seven awards. "Thirty-three" was another popular video. It was different than any other video the Smashing Pumpkins had made, making a stop action scene for each line in the song. "Thirty-three" was a work of art, staying in the top 10 videos for many weeks.

Smashing Pumpkins have been on many soundtracks, most recently the Lost Highway soundtrack, contributing a techno song called "Eye." Like the 1992 soundtrack song "Drown," "Eye" has gotten a lot of radio play, filling in the gaps between albums. The Pumpkins are now working on the theme song for the upcoming Batman movie that will be released in June, 1997.

When I asked Brad Hargraves, drummer for San Francisco band, Third Eye Blind, what he thought of the Pumpkins, he said, "I love the Pumpkins…yeah, Billy Corgan is probably the leader of rock next to maybe, Kurt Cobain." He said that he thought Jimmy was a great drummer, but couldn’t relate to this summer, "I just don’t believe in that stuff." He said, like Billy had in early interviews, that hearing one of your songs on the radio is a great feeling, because you know that you’ve been accepted, and that all the hard work was worth while.

Brad said that keeping up with the world of music today is hard. Rock seems to be going pretty "techno" with lots of drum machines and computers, which he hopes doesn’t take over. To him, music is a escape, and he plays about two hours a day on his drums with his CD’s and the radio, though he says it’s hard to listen to his own CD because he hears all the little mistakes that he made. He plays everything from jazz to rock, but most enjoys it when its just plain old "good music." Brad told me that the band had been influenced by bands like Stone Temple Pilots, U2, Led Zeppelin, and even Smashing Pumpkins in the earlier songs.

As of now, the Pumpkins consist of Billy Corgan, James Iha, and D’Arcy Wretzky. They are recording tracks with drummer Matt Walker for their two upcoming albums, one all acoustic and one hard rock/techno. They signed a contract with Virgin records, agreeing to release four albums over the next five years. Meanwhile they’re relaxing after finishing their year long tour at home in Chicago. Jimmy now plays drums for rock band, The Last Hard Men, and James is recording for his upcoming solo album.

On the seventeenth of March, Billy celebrated his 30th birthday, at home and away from the media, and James will celebrate his 29th birthday on Wednesday the 26th. The Pumpkins enter their tenth year together in good spirits, and hope to continue playing together for another ten years.

"We've had an interesting year.... We lost a friend. We lost a drummer. But I hope we haven't lost any fans. To anyone who wonders, we're fine." -Billy Corgan
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