The Untold Truth Of The Smashing Pumpkins

It's difficult to define the Smashing Pumpkins. Is their music considered grunge? Hard rock? Alternative rock? Prog rock? It's unlikely that the band cares what they're defined as, instead choosing to criss-cross the boundaries of musical tribalism and embrace the purity of sound for its core genre-less essence. The proof of this was in their 1995 double album, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." Feeling more like a work of art that belongs at the Louvre than a commercial rock album, the record defied everyone's expectations, hitting the No. 1 spot on the U.S. Billboard charts. The success didn't stop there, though, as the band's magnum opus was nominated for seven Grammy Awards in 1996 (ultimately winning one) and even made Spin's 300 best albums of the past 30 years from the period of 1985 to 2014.

The mid-'90s was unquestionably a high point for the band, but they never seemed able to reclaim that momentum, eventually breaking up in 2000 before reforming in 2006. Yet, the tale of this outfit from Chicago, Illinois, is far from finished and has numerous chapters over the past three decades. From a famous manager walking out on them to the band being passed on for the "Shrek" soundtrack, here is the untold story of the Smashing Pumpkins.

Having formed in 1988, the Smashing Pumpkins have experienced the ebbs and flows of the music industry. They've outlasted grunge, nu-metal, and even indie rock fads as they continue to produce the music they want to make. That said, they aren't often mentioned in the same breath as other bands that formed around the same time, such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Radiohead. According to Billy Corgan, it doesn't faze the group since he believes most people don't seem to get what the Pumpkins are all about.

Speaking to Kerrang, Corgan said, "People don't always like what we do, but we're proud. We're more proud that we've done something new than whether or not people like it." One certainly can't accuse the group of lacking creativity, as they're more than capable of producing a dreamy, nostalgic radio-friendly tune in "1979," a headbanging delight in "Zero," or the electronic-infused "The Imploding Voice." In fact, picking up a Pumpkins album is a lot like buying a lucky packet since we never know what genres to expect.

While much of the attention around the Smashing Pumpkins centers on frontman Billy Corgan, the rest of his bandmates deserve just as much credit for the group's success. Like most bands that have been together for a long time, the members have had their ups and downs with each other over the decades. In the case of guitarist James Iha and former bassist D'arcy Wretzky, they have a bit more of a complicated history. Responding to fan questions on Alternative Nation, Wretzky confirmed that she and Iha dated for the first four years of the band's inception, from 1988 to 1992.

Undoubtedly, a breakup can cause tension in a band, especially if the couple doesn't part on the best of terms. According to one of Corgan's blog posts detailing the era, the two got on fine after the split. "James and D'arcy arrive together, because even though they are no longer a couple, James still plays the boyfriend role as far as picking her up and taking care of her whenever she needs something," Corgan wrote. Aw. Can't all breakups be this civil and friendly?

Think of any song from the Smashing Pumpkins discography. Whether it be off the likes of "Gish" or "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," these tracks aren't exactly the kind that anyone would imagine in a family friendly animated feature like 2001's "Shrek." Well, it turns out that someone at DreamWorks must have been a fan of the Pumpkins, because the band was offered the chance to appear on the soundtrack.

Answering questions on his Instagram account (via Exclaim), Corgan revealed the following: "We were offered the end credit song for 'Shrek,' but the offer was withdrawn and given to Smash Mouth." He added that the track chosen from the Pumpkins catalog would have been "Untitled." Smash Mouth responded to Corgan's claims on their official Twitter account, writing: "Actually, we said no, and Michael Austin from DreamWorks kept calling. That went on for over a month. We assume multiple bands [were] asked. If it feeds Billy's ego to think they [were] first, let him think that." Ah, all this beef over appearing on the soundtrack of a film about a green ogre and a talking donkey in a fairy tale parody.

Musicians are precious about their instruments. Some even believe a guitar could hold the same power as a totem, having a direct effect on their playing ability. For Billy Corgan, tone is everything, and he loved the fuzzy sound he got from his 1974 Fender Stratocaster for 1991's "Gish" album, as per a Smashing Pumpkins official YouTube video. Unfortunately, the guitar grew legs during a tour and disappeared.

"[I] played the show, walked offstage," Corgan explained. "I was down in the dressing room, and here comes the friend/roadie: 'Somebody just walked out the back door with your guitar.'" Initially, Corgan offered a $10,000 reward for the guitar's return before bumping it up to $20,000, but all he received were a bunch of phony leads. Many years later, an estate was being sold off along with a guitar that hung on the basement's wall. Corgan was alerted to the possibility of it being his long-lost guitar and investigated. Upon looking at the guitar, he knew it was his — just to be certain, he jammed a lick off of "Gish." Finally, the old friends were reunited.

In 1996, tragedy hit the Smashing Pumpkins camp. According to an E! Online report, Jimmy Chamberlin and touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin injected themselves with heroin in a hotel room and collapsed. When Chamberlin awoke, he tried to revive Melvoin but to no avail. The drummer called the police, who declared Melvoin dead upon arrival. To top off a terrible situation, the cops also arrested Chamberlin for possession of narcotics.

Reeling from the incident, the remaining members of the Smashing Pumpkins had no other choice but to part ways with Chamberlin. The band released a statement, saying (per E! Online): "We have battled with Jimmy's struggles with the insidious disease of drug and alcohol addiction. It has nearly destroyed everything we are and stand for. We have decided to carry on without him, and we wish him the best that we have to offer." The band secured the drumming services of Matt Walker and Jimmy Flemion for the rest of their tour dates. However, after having gone to rehab, Chamberlin was welcomed back to the group in 1999 (via Diffuser).

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

After Jimmy Chamberlin's 1996 exit from the band, due to the circumstances detailed above, the Pumpkins entered a strange and turbulent period. Their next album, "Adore," and the tour promoting it demonstrate that fact handily. In recording "Adore," they filled Chamberlin's erstwhile role with not one but three separate drummers and a drum machine, each taking a track or few. The end result was an album that, although beloved, was often cited as weird and confounding, and the band's subsequent tour is even weirder.

For the "Adore" tour, the Pumpkins again chose three percussionists, but this time, brought all three at once. Legendary studio drummer Kenny Aronoff supplied the main drums, while two percussionists supported him. Corgan encouraged them to improvise new percussion to the "Adore" material night after night. As the Los Angeles Times described it, the band "reworked the album's songs in ways so dramatic that the concert seemed like a musical workshop." Some understandably loved the experimentation, some hated it just as understandably. Corgan, for his part, has said in later years that it wasn't an experiment he wasn't keen on repeating.

On top of the new lineup and new attitude towards improvisation, the Pumpkins went into the "Adore" tour with another bold, new idea: total philanthropy. The band donated 100% of their ticket sales from the tour, which included 14 stops, to local charities in the cities they played. Though the total amount is unknown, it has been reported as well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For a band brimming with so much chaos and turmoil, their initial 2000 split was drama-free — Billy Corgan's comments suggested the Smashing Pumpkins had simply run its course, and it was time to do something else. Admirable, right? Well, a few years after the breakup, Corgan decided to talk about the real reason the Smashing Pumpkins broke up on a now-deleted blog post from his official website. CNN covered the story and quoted Corgan, who wrote: "The truth of the matter is that guitarist James Iha broke up the Smashing Pumpkins. Not me, not drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, but James. Did it help that bassist D'arcy Wretzky was fired for being a mean-spirited drug addict who refused to get help? No, that didn't help keep the band together, not at all."

Corgan added that close associates had told him and Chamberlin to part ways with Iha and continue the band; however, he couldn't do it because he and Iha had started the band together. The frontman admitted that his feelings were also hurt by the fact that Iha didn't say goodbye to him and Chamberlin after the band's last gig.

At one point in their career, the Smashing Pumpkins were managed by none other than Sharon Osbourne. Apart from being a well-known TV personality and the brains behind the highly successful Ozzfest, Osbourne managed musical icons such as Black Sabbath, Motörhead, and her husband, Ozzy. However, she cut her ties with the Pumpkins in the most dramatic fashion with one of the best press statements ever (via NME). Osbourne said the following about her resignation: "It was with great pride and enthusiasm that I took on management of the Pumpkins back in October, but unfortunately, I must resign due to medical reasons — Billy Corgan was making me sick!"

A week later, Osbourne opened up to Reuters (via NME) about what had exactly led to her departure. She revealed that Corgan had insisted on wearing a dress for a promotional item, but she was against it, believing it was a desperate attempt to be controversial for the sake of it. Upset by her reaction, Corgan proceeded to ignore her for several days. Osbourne didn't like this, presuming it to be a petulant game, so she put in her notice. Moral of the story here? Don't give Osbourne the silent treatment!

When Billy Corgan announced the band's breakup to KROQ in 2000, it was clear that the separation was necessary, and they needed some breathing room. Time, though, does heal all wounds, and most of the members have found their way back to each other since then (except for D'arcy Wretzky, who feuded with Corgan over her return to the Pumpkins).

Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin told NME that this version of the Smashing Pumpkins was much different from before, and they're getting on better than they did in the past. "For the first time, the band is in alignment in every way: musically, socially and familially," he said. "The band has come together in a way that's compassionate. There's a lot of compassion, grace and appreciation for one another." Chamberlin credited this change to the fact that they're all in a different place in life with children and families that help keep them in check. Who knows, maybe Wretzky and Corgan will be able to patch up their differences and reunite the classic lineup in the future.

When it comes to the media, Billy Corgan has had a career-long love-hate relationship with it (well, he does rub up people the wrong way, and you probably wouldn't want to meet him). There have been many instances where interviews have gone off the rails, or Corgan has responded in a not-so-friendly manner about questions to do with the Smashing Pumpkins, though he has softened his stance in recent years. That being said, he isn't afraid to air his true feelings on topics, refusing to err on the side of caution or spare feelings. In fact, his poor publicist must tremble every time he opens his mouth to speak to a media personality.

In a conversation with Radio X, Corgan detailed his frustration with festivals and their desire to push younger musical acts that aren't ready to be headliners. However, he attested that there was a larger culprit at play for this. "I'm cynical about the music business," he said. "I think the music business is one of the worst businesses on the planet. It takes great artists and makes idiots of them. It asks us to do things we really shouldn't be doing." For Corgan, the music industry should be doing more to support and ensure that younger artists are ready for the bigger stages, rather than just flinging them up there and hoping for the best.

The only constant member in the Smashing Pumpkins is Billy Corgan. No matter which incarnation of the band, he's the only one who's been a part of every cycle. It makes sense, though, especially when considering that his unique nasally voice is one of the band's greatest defining qualities. Plus, he's openly admitted that control of the band was important to him in the early days, and he shaped the direction.

Corgan, though, doesn't even think the band needs him, believing they'll be able to exist if he ever decided to step away. "I've said this before," he told Chicagoist, "I think it would be dumb to end the Pumpkins ever again because the Pumpkins live without me anyway." It's an interesting proposition. While most rock bands have replaced lead singers and gone on to still be successful in their own right, would the Pumpkins survive without him? He may have relinquished a degree of control and become more collaborative nowadays, but there's no disputing that his creative mind is one of a kind.

While the Smashing Pumpkins have experimented with different genres, they've yet to tackle evil disco: a style made famous by Static-X. This might not have been the case had Billy Corgan stayed in his band with the late Static-X vocalist-guitarist Wayne Static. In an interview with Ultimate Guitar, Static revealed all about his storied history with Corgan.

"He was in my band, and he also had the Pumpkins," Static said. "He was doing both bands. My band at the time in Chicago was pretty big. I had a band called Deep Blue Dream, and we were selling out shows at all the local clubs there, and the Pumpkins were just kind of this little startup band that didn't even have a drummer yet." Static added that after the Pumpkins added Jimmy Chamberlin to their ranks, they started to blow up, and Corgan had to make a choice about which band to prioritize. While Static was disappointed to lose him as a guitarist, he believed that Corgan made the right choice in the end, considering the global success the Pumpkins went on to have.

Try as they may, the Smashing Pumpkins haven't been able to top the success and legacy of "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," which is still the only Pumpkins album to debut at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard charts, as per Audiofemme. It was an ambitious project, to say the least, but it paid dividends in the end, as it's constantly cited as one of the greatest albums of its era, even ranking 26th on Rolling Stone's 50 greatest grunge albums. However, the story could have been much more different had the band listened to their record label's advice.

Chatting to Audiofemme, Billy Corgan explained how when he told Virgin Records the plans for a double album, the execs tried to get him to change his mind. He added that the label even tried to push certain producers to work on the album, but he had only one person in mind. "Flood was my personal choice," Corgan said. "His work with Depeche Mode, U2, Nitzer Ebb, PJ Harvey — he's a great human being and a great producer. He'd suggested Alan Moulder since they were very close friends, so that's how we ended up with the triumvirate of me, Flood, and Alan."

Courtney Love's most famous relationship will forever be her marriage to Kurt Cobain, but perhaps her most surprising — and certainly the most convoluted — relationship is her longstanding connection with Billy Corgan. Love and Corgan's bond has developed over more than three decades and in that time has ranged from lovers to friends to collaborators to enemies, seemingly switching up every few years.

The pair's rollercoaster relationship first began when they briefly dated in 1991, an affair that only ended because Love began to develop feelings for Cobain. Reportedly, Corgan and Love gave dating another shot shortly after Cobain's 1994 death, but in the roughly 30 years since, have kept things strictly platonic, though no less dramatic. Their next public milestone came in 1998, when Corgan contributed to "Celebrity Skin," an album by Love's band Hole, as a producer and songwriter. Almost immediately, the two began feuding, as Corgan implied he was the album's mastermind who saved it from failure, while Love described him as a hands-off mentor who was more inspirational than actually generative.

Though the two seemingly buried the hatchet following the "Celebrity Skin" debacle, they ignited a similar spat in 2010 over Corgan's contributions to Hole's album "Nobody's Daughter." According to Corgan, despite never agreeing for his work on the album to be released, Love did so anyway, causing Corgan to vehemently denounce her in the media. Nonetheless, in recent years, Corgan has surprisingly revealed that the pair are friends and keep in touch every few weeks.

In late 2023, the Smashing Pumpkins and longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder jointly announced that Schroeder was leaving the band after 16 years. For a band as mercurial as the Pumpkins, losing a member wasn't anything new. What was entirely unprecedented, however, came just a couple of months later when the band announced — via a Tweet, no less — that the band's next guitarist would come from an open audition. "Anyone who might be interested" was invited to submit their reel, and as you'd expect of such a rare opportunity for overnight rock stardom, more than a few jumped at the chance.

Over 10,000 auditions came in, and about three months later, after what must have been an exhausting and repetitive process (imagine how many renditions of "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" they must have heard), the band announced Kiki Wong as their new guitarist. Wong had previously been known as a popular social media guitarist, racking up more than half a million followers on Instagram for her metal-centric playing, and had also acted as a session guitarist for high-profile names, such as playing with Taylor Swift at the 2014 VMAs.

About the audition process, Wong told Guitar World, "Literally, my heart was going 1,000,000 mph because almost the whole OG line-up was there. It was like looking through a glimpse of my teenage years but in real life," and then "The day after I auditioned, I got the life-changing call. I honestly haven't felt joy like that since my baby was born."

Corgan has been outspoken about his love and admiration for post-punk kings New Order a few times over the years. For one, he once explained that, for himself and other outsiders of his generation, "The minute you heard New Order, you were like, 'They're one of me' or 'I'm one of them'. It was instant" (via NME). For another, he once proudly proclaimed that, "I've argued for a good 20 years that probably outside of the Beatles, Joy Division is the most influential rock band of the 20th century. I think it sort of speaks for itself" (via Loudwire). That helps explain why, after the Smashing Pumpkins' (ostensibly permanent) breakup in 2000, Corgan chose to reinvigorate himself by recording and touring with New Order.

Corgan toured as a hired gun (not as a full-time member, which would have generated considerably more headlines) with New Order for a good stretch of 2001, including the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. Hardcore New Order fans will be delighted to know that Corgan was with the band when they brought a few Joy Division songs back into the live setlist, something that, according to Corgan, they hadn't done in 22 years (and for those that don't know, New Order was a reformation of Joy Division after the untimely death of their frontman Ian Curtis). On top of the live tour, Corgan guested on New Order's 2001 album "Get Ready," singing lead vocals on the song "Turn My Way."

In the early days of professional wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance, or NWA, arose in 1948 to build an overarching relationship between the business's many territorial promotions and a single, unified championship. As such, the NWA was a highly esteemed organization in its age, and its championship was considered the industry's ultimate prize. For a while, at least. Eventually, certain territories like the WWF (now WWE) became big enough to push the NWA aside and take over, which left the formerly illustrious promotion in history's dustbin. That's where Corgan comes in, as the musician and lifelong wrestling fan bought the company in 2017 and has since made it his mission to restore its former glory.

As Corgan said to the crowd on an episode of the NWA's semi-regular show "Powerrr," "I bought this company to bring it back to the top, and we are going to do that. Because as long as I own the National Wrestling Alliance, we aren't going anywhere, we can't be stopped." He means it, too. Since he bought the company, Corgan has been involved both behind the scenes and as a regular on-screen figure, pouring a hefty amount of his time and money into making the brand the best version of itself. That hasn't come without a few stumbling blocks, however, including a legal dispute over the name "Shockwave," which both NWA and competitor AEW lay claim to, and another dispute with AEW (possibly caused by the first), over both companies calling one of their belts the National Championship Title.