A short while after Swervedriver leave the stage, on this already dreamlike seeming night in December of ’93, the target of our latest infatuation finally materializes before us: Smashing Pumpkins, a Chicago foursome who’ve blown up beyond belief just in the last few months. Primus might be the most unlikely top ten act in recent memory — more unlikely even than Vanilla Ice — and yet, while reflective of the current musical climate, I’m not sure they represent these modern times quite like the Pumpkins do. Few if any musicians can lay claim to that honor. Some unlikely alternative bands have punched through with their first and possibly only huge hits this year, including female led groups Four Non-Blondes and The Breeders, and after a couple years there suffering through the post-Vanilla Ice/M.C. Hammer novelty doldrums, rap has rebounded in a big way. Pearl Jam’s second album just set an all-time first week record for sales. Despite all this, though, I’m not convinced any of these efforts have quite captured the hearts and minds of today’s youths quite like Smashing Pumpkins have. As unthinkable as this would have seemed mere months ago.
So let’s back up a bit, to the summer of 1991. For really just about the only time I can ever recall, to this day, I was somehow onto Smashing Pumpkins before anyone else I knew. For some reason I just so happened to be watching MTV’s late night weekly alternative music show, 120 Minutes, which was by no means a regular occurrence. This weird video from some group I’d never heard of mesmerized me to the extent that I made a point of watching it the following week, too, this time with a tape recorder nearby, so I could capture the crude audio from this single, Siva, which I couldn’t get out of my head.
Over the ensuing months, here and there, I would encounter a couple other kids from my high school who were also into them. They became moderately successful — in fact, by selling a few hundred thousand albums, their debut album Gish set a record at the time, for an indie release (later obliterated to smithereens by The Offspring, in 1994). But they didn’t exactly become household names or anything.
Almost two years went by, during which I heard nothing about this group, or at least believed that I had not. It’s hard to picture now, but this was considered a relative eternity back then, for an up and coming band to take this long between albums. So much so that I had kind of assumed they’d just broken up and gone their separate ways or something. I remember one afternoon in the spring of ’93 when Heather and I were for some reason sitting in my car in the Wendy’s parking lot, at the Mt. Gilead interstate exit near her house, and wistfully telling her about this group, how awesome they were, and basically never expecting to hear from them again. Melodramatic teen stuff or not, in those pre-internet days, it was not the least bit uncommon to become infatuated with a band or a song, not learn a single thing about the people involved, as they then failed to ever attract notice or even do anything ever again.
Well, we all know now how this turned out, as Siamese Dream hit the shelves maybe two months later, and became a highly improbable top ten hit. The weird thing is, though, both of us had heard another Smashing Pumpkins song in between there, or at least a fragment of it, we just didn’t know it. We saw the movie Singles in the theater, during one of our first dates, which includes the Smashing Pumpkins song Drown.
Despite what you may hear, I feel like alternative music didn’t truly go ballistic until the summer or early fall of 1992 — basically when Pearl Jam’s Ten finally took off, nearly a year after it had been released. So much so that commercials for Singles didn’t even play up the angle that many of the later grunge superstars (members of Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden), actually had speaking parts and/or performed live in the movie, i.e. we had not a clue when we purchased the tickets. All you knew from the commercials is that it looked like some witty romantic comedy.
Therefore I’m coming moderately unhinged, as she giggles and keeps telling me to calm down, when one after another of these characters graced the screen: “that’s Chris Cornell!” “Oh my god! Alice In Chains!” “Hey, it’s three of the guys from Pearl Jam!” And so on.
I maintain to this day that if you want an accurate depiction of early 90s life, Singles and Reality Bites are the two films that come closest to nailing it. Both were of course mostly derided at the time by critics and audiences alike, maybe still are, while much trendier movies were getting reams of hype. Even so, although we loved this movie, and my brother would as well when it finally came out on video, none of us had gotten around to purchasing the soundtrack album, clearly, until after the release of Siamese Dream. Only upon doing so could we fully absorb the majesty of Drown.
It starts out normal enough, as your basic jangly grunge-lite cut, before gradually building up steam. And then of course veering off into another dimension entirely with this whole mind-bending feedback jam, where guitarists Billy Corgan and James Iha weave their parts in and out like a magical spell. It’s one of the most inventive uses of guitar feedback I’ve ever heard, and I’m not aware of any other song that sounds remotely like it.
It’s so extreme and weird, but awesome, that I got to where I enjoyed foisting it on other people, like for example if discovering the album on a jukebox in some bar. One night in particular stands out to me, at the original Buffalo Wild Wings on the OSU campus, where Alan and I decided to educate the masses by selecting this track. Damon was with us, and had never heard the song before, but was cracking up and I believe equally digging this song the longer it dragged on.
For about the first ten years of its existence, this was the only version, too. Except then a shortened version appeared on their greatest hits album, with the feedback part completely lopped off. I still have no idea why you would do this — other than possibly space constraints — as it took what is a completely novel song and turned it into something that, while catchy and solid, is otherwise basically your normal Smashing Pumpkins tune from that era. And then nowadays in the streaming era, that shortened version is the only one available on pretty much all the major services. You have to go to something like Youtube to hear it, or even (gasp) pick up the Singles soundtrack in physical form somewhere.
I go back and forth on whether I like this or not. On one hand it’s kind of annoying to not even have the best version of a song available anywhere. On the other, genuine rarities in this day and age are hard to come by. And in that respect, I guess it’s somewhat cool.
The show itself is great, though not quite otherworldly. I would probably rate it at 4 stars out of 5, and in fact their performance was about on par with opening act Swervedriver — one of the rare occasions where I would say that. Even then, though watching them that night, we are getting our first glimmers of Corgan’s mercurial streak. You start to recognize little signs that he might just be a major dick, which helps explain why they were ultimately unable to maintain such popularity heights over the long haul.
No, I would go on record say this is the reason that, despite continuing as a group to this day, they never really punched through to being a consistent arena filling rock band. With a healthy dash of Billy not being able to comprehend he is a major dick on the side. To this day he still acts as though it’s all been just one big conspiracy calculated by everyone to keep him down. Then you start to hear stories like former bassist D’Arcy Wretzky telling him one day she liked Mozart, which Corgan mulled over for a bit, before delivering his verdict with complete seriousness that it was okay for her to like Mozart, he would allow it. And it makes you wonder how it is that, despite being obviously a really intelligent guy in many respects, he is also somehow this completely clueless as to why so many people hate him. Sharon Osborne was even managing these guys for a short while before resigning over what she jokingly termed, “health reasons: Billy Corgan is making me sick.”
But I look at this band and hold them up against Pearl Jam, by way of comparison. Much as I love the latter, if being honest, their past handful of albums have only been okay at best. Love him or hate him, nonetheless if listening to any Smashing Pumpkins release whatsoever, they are almost always delivering the goods, and continue to crank out great songs. Yet they remain far less popular than Pearl Jam on any level you care to name, which I tend to chalk up as a) Corgan kind of turns people’s stomachs, and they prefer to root for musicians they actually like, as well as b) it works more to your advantage, generally, if you started out as a clearly defined band, to keep as many of those people around, instead of blowing through a bunch of hired guns.
After all, in Jimmy Chamberlin, he’s had what I consider THE definitive drummer of the grunge era, edging out even the likes of Dave Grohl or Matt Cameron. And whatever your opinions of James or D’Arcy and what they did or didn’t bring to the table, they had an interesting style about them, and a lot of fans nonetheless. You start running these people off left and right and your fortunes begin taking a nosedive, well, that’s not always a total coincidence. I remember in interviews right after he sacked Chamberlin for the first time and he was pretty much boasting about how he’d just replaced the best drummer of the nineties with a drum machine and I’m thinking, yeah, that’s probably not exactly something I would brag about. Predictably enough, the album in question, Adore, despite possessing a couple of big hits, went on to sell a fraction of its predecessor.
Well, anyway, I consider him a perfect case study in why these days, I try to learn as little as possible about the musicians I’m into. Their opinions have no impact on our lives whatsoever and are completely meaningless. Music makes for a wonderful escape, and I’d rather throw on a killer tune like Drown as I think about something else entirely.
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