The Smashing Pumpkins 2018-09-13

September 13, 2018 – Los Angeles, CA
Live performance by The Smashing Pumpkins
Artist	The Smashing Pumpkins
Date	September 13, 2018
Venue	KROQ HD Radio Soundspace
Location	Los Angeles, CA
Venue type	Radio studio
Personnel	Billy Corgan, James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin, Jeff Schroeder, Jack Bates
Order of bands	The Smashing Pumpkins
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Setlist

1. "1979" (acoustic) 
2. "Blew Away" (acoustic) 
3. "Today" (abandoned) (acoustic) 
4. "Today" (acoustic) 
5. "Baby Mine" [Betty Noyes] (abandoned) (acoustic) 
6. "Freebird" [Lynyrd Skynyrd] (tease) (acoustic) 
7. "Baby Mine" [Betty Noyes] (acoustic) 
8. (interview)

Banter

Kat Corbett: Hi, you guys, welcome to the HD Radio Soundspace at KROQ, I’m Kat Corbett, we are just about ready to roll with the Smashing Pumpkins! I know they’ve been doing 30 hour sets, this will not be one of them, but we’re still gonna have a good time, so here they are! Welcome to the stage.
1979 (acoustic)
Iha: Thank you, thank you, KROQ. Thank you people, how are you? Uh, we’d like to thank KROQ, we’re doing a very short set, this is called Blew Away.
Blew Away (acoustic)
BC: (off mic to guy in front row) Can you hold that? (hands the guy his guitar and removes his sweatshirt to loud crowd cheering)
Today (abandoned after 7 notes)
Girl in crowd: Do it again!!
BC: All night long, baby.
Today (acoustic)
BC: ‘Preciate that. We’d now like to bring a young man up on the ukulele. You might know him as a drummer. ...
Baby Mine (abandoned after 4 seconds)
BC: (to Jimmy) Not really in tune.
Jeff: (off mic) You wanna tune it?
BC: Let’s tune it.
Girl in crowd: Freebird!
BC: We were gonna play Freebird on the ukulele, I just...but not now, nah.
Freebird (tease - Jeff)
BC: You could try Stump the Pumpkin.
Baby Mine (acoustic)
Kat: (off mic, to Jeff) I’m gonna be crowding in next to you.
BC: (off mic) Are we standing?
Kat: Yeah, if you wanna, do you wanna sit?
BC: (off mic) No no, I’m happy to stand.
Kat: I know it’s like an oven...
Jimmy: How ‘bout some A/C?
Kat: ...they keep telling me you can hear the air conditioning when you guys -– and I’m like, “I dunno, turn it on, you guys.” Smashing Pumpkins, everyone. (gesturing at somebody offstage) John –- oh, you’re in the microphone. Um, I have to say, you know, that Baby Mine, you almost took my interview down because it’s so emotional and um, y’all know it’s from Dumbo, right? When the mom is in...? No?
BC: No, I saw an influencer on YouTube singing and I just thought they wrote it.
Kat: The mama’s locked in a cage and the baby’s like -– and their trunks are touching and she’s like “It’s gonna be alright” and then, so, alright, now I’m getting emo again, thanks. Um, you guys, Smashing Pumpkins, are in the KROQ DNA. I was going through our library and the songs that we added in rotation are around 30, so like one a year. 30 tracks, there’s not a lot of bands in our library that have that. That’s not counting like, that’s not even counting Christmas songs and stuff, you know, that’s happened, so.... (Billy has gone to the back of the stage to point at the KROQ logo) Hahahahahaha.
Guy in crowd: One of the true greats!
Kat: Yeah, uh, you know, and I think I can speak for a lot of us here that you’ve been in our lives all our lives and um, we imagine apartments and um, boyfriends and girlfriends that we’ve had throughout all of the records, so thank you first of all for that, thanks, you guys. We got uh, you guys started teasing it, we got word we’re gonna play Silvery Sometimes tomorrow, can you tell us a little bit about that track?
BC: Uh...I don’t know.
Kat: Is it one of the Rick Rubin songs?
BC: It is one of the Rick Rubin songs, um, we had done about 15 or 16 demos and Rick picked eight songs –- we thought he was just gonna pick one -– so this was one of the ones he picked.
Kat: Now, you recorded a lot with Rick...right?
BC: Uh, I did a solo album with Rick called Ogilala that came out, I think, about a year ago.
Kat: Correct, but weren’t there some other songs that you were gonna be doing?
BC: Uh....
Kat: Or did you hide them in a vault somewhere and forgot about them?
BC: We re –- no, we recorded with Rick in 1998, we did a version of Let Me Give the World to You that didn’t come out until like the box set many years later.
Kat: Okay, so this is one of those–-
BC: I was up in -– actually been friends outside of the business part of it, I’ve been friends with Rick for probably 20 plus years...
Kat: Wow.
BC: ...so I’ve known Rick just as a person and so, yeah, he’s an amazing –- he’s the best producer in the world and is just an amazing person, yeah.
Kat: I love what he brings out in an artist.
BC: And he lives...in California.
Kat: (laughing) I love that what he brings out in artists. I wanna ask you, ‘cause obviously we’re celebrating 30 years of Smashing Pumpkins and band mates have been in and out, you’ve got this–-
BC: Haha! A few.
Kat: Hahahaha! You’ve got James and Jimmy back as the core from the beginning, um.... (crowd cheers) I –- was it um, was it easy to slide into, did you slide into an old routine...when you got this conversion back together or was it a completely different vibe?
Jimmy: No, it was super, I mean it was literally like five minutes and we were kind of back...
Kat: Fighting? No, I’m kidding, ha, I’m sorry.
Jimmy: ...to where we always, yeah, yeah, arguing about what we were gonna have for lunch, haha. No, um, no, really, it was just one of the easiest processes I’ve ever experienced as a musician and even this tour, it was just so low impact, even though the shows were three and a half hours long and obviously pretty labor intensive, it was really the least wearying experience I’ve ever had on the road, I mean, it was really like just coming together for music, kind of like we did in the first place, right, so it was -– from that standpoint, it was surreal–-
Iha: I thought you told me you were exhausted.
Jimmy/Kat/crowd: Hahaha!
Jimmy: Look, what I tell you and what I tell her are two different things now. No, no, I mean, obviously it’s physically exhausting but I’m talking more from an emotional and spiritual standpoint where usually when you do a tour like this, it’s all of the above, right, emotionally exhausting, spiritually exhausting, but I didn’t feel like any taxation in that regard other than the kinda physicality of playing, so I mean, I think, you know, as a unit, we’re all completely in alignment, much like we were at the beginning, so it’s very exciting.
Kat: And James, um, because you guys -– Billy and Jimmy have played off and on, you know, for the longest out of the group -– James, you’ve been doing your other stuff –- A Perfect Circle, just to name one of them -– was there any trepidation coming back and being like, okay, this is gonna be this new round of Smashing Pumpkins?
Iha: Um, there were baby steps that led to this tour that we just finished and uh, yeah, I agree with Jimmy, you know, when we first started playing together, it was...took like just a couple minutes and then we decided to rehearse for two months afterwards.
Jimmy: Hahahahaha!
Kat: Oh, alright. The three and a half hour shows, you guys, I really wish I had done a yoga before I went to one of those. (to crowd) You guys been seeing the shows? Marathons. Um, you know, it wasn’t this building, I believe it was our dumpy other building in Burbank in 2000 when Billy, you announced the breakup of Smashing Pumpkins on air at KROQ. And it was around the time of Machina 1 and 2, um, and you’re -– I guess the word came out that you’re going to re-release those albums the way you initially intended.
BC: Yeah.
Kat: Did anyone –- Machina 2 was...
BC: Do you wanna–-?
Kat: ...what, 25 copies?
BC: Well, you want the quick version of it all?
Kat: I have all day if you guys wanna like hang out, I dunno.
BC: Okay, heh heh heh. Um, originally written as a musical with a lot of songs and then as the process went on and the band relationships sort of bogged down –- ‘cause it went on for eight months, which is a really long time to do a record. And we knew it was our last record, so that didn’t help, you know what I mean, it wasn’t like you’re looking at sunshine, you’re looking at sort of a weird doom at the end. So um, eventually I just tapped out and put together one record out of the materials. We put that out, the reaction was mixed to negative, we started touring on it and actually started to gain momentum as a band during the touring and rock journalists were literally pulling me aside saying “Don’t break up the band” after I announced it on KROQ.
Kat: Heh heh heh heh! Oops.
BC: Because they said you guys are back –- whatever you’re dialing back in, you know, you should stay on that route and I was like, no, it’s done, it’s just, we’ve just, the gas tank is empty. So then when we were getting to the end, when we gonna play these final Chicago shows, I knew if I didn’t finish the other songs that were left over from this project, um, that they would probably never get finished, so I went in the studio for about three weeks -– and of course, the other guys participated, it wasn’t just me by myself -– but I kinda took it upon myself at that point to finish the music that we had, ‘cause like there were a lot of songs that didn’t have finished lyrics or vocals. And then we even wrote some songs kind of on the fly. James had a beautiful song called Innosense that we put together that’s part of that and I’m sorry, I’m rambling, and then we even recorded one more song, Untitled, that was sort of an additional piece of that whole process. And then we actually went back to the record company –- which was Virgin Records at the time, which is now defunct -– and said, we feel good about releasing this other piece now because it’s kind of of this weird yin and yang of the records and they said we’re not interested, take a hike. So I got angry as I often do and I just released it on the internet and as far as I know, we were the first band to ever just put out a record for free. (crowd cheers) Thank you.
Kat: What? Really?
BC: Yeah, yeah. And just released the record and fans at the time seemed to like 2 a lot better than 1. The record company was so shocked by the reaction that they actually came back and wanted to release the record posthumously to me putting it out for free, which is really weird, ‘cause I just said like “Two weeks ago, you told me you didn’t give a hoot” and I thought, you know, sorta the horse was out of the barn. So they did actually help promote it kind of on the sly, and so there’s some digital copies that they pressed up and then I made 25 vinyl copies. I think Robert Smith has one of ‘em, you know, it’s like.... (crowd cheers) No no, not that Robert Smith.
Crowd: Awwww.
BC: No, I’m just kidding, yeah, no, that Robert Smith, this one. (gestures wiping lips and making a face) I love Bob. And uh, yeah, so, and then, you know, the band broke up and then the rest is history and then when we engaged in this process with what is now Universal to release all the basically box sets of every period of the band from the ‘90s, when it got time to Machina, it fell into this whole legal dispute, so it’s been basically on ice for I think four years? And so now that’s finally been cleared up, so now we’re gonna finally put all the pieces together and try to not only put the musical together in a way that it never got to be finished but also explain what the whole dang thing’s about.
Kat: When you, heh, alright, when you said –- you kind of said, you said musical...as in stage musical or is it some other idea?
BC: Ah...well, it’s a variation of things and as some people will remember, we even at one point was [sic] contracted to do an animated series based on the musical and Sony at the time, was like Sony Animation, did four episodes and then bailed on the project, not because of the project but ‘cause the whole thing blew up internally with them, so that project nev –- like, anything I ever did with that project always hit this weird wall. So it’s like, imagine having a film script and a bunch of songs that go with the film script and a story and it could be made anyway. The band could perform it on stage with visuals like the tour we just did, you could enact it theatrically –- which is probably not the optimal way to do it because the band sort of needs to be part of the show –- or you could turn it into a musical like, um, a musical movie like Tommy or The Wall or something like that, so hopefully this will set the stage for one day that being released, but that said, Mellon Collie was written sort of as a musical, although it’s never been explored publicly, and so we still are hopeful that as we go along, we’ll be able to kinda create similar shows around those albums in the way that we created a show around the Shiny tour.
Kat: Wow, well, the news was nice ‘cause it made me go back and listen...
BC: Oh, thank you.
Kat: ...and I played Stand Inside Your Love today and I was like, “What? This was like a great song, what?” So um, it’s nice to have those surprises. I wanna talk to you, uh, Jeff and Jack, I have my back to you, I’m sorry ‘cause there’s only so many ways I can uh.... Uh, so Jeff, you’ve been in the band for quite some years now, not from the beginning but you’ve uh, so you’re, you know, and Jack, you’re like, you’re touring with the band...
Jack: (off mic) Yeah.
Kat: ...um, how, I mean, you have two different levels of stepping into an established band, that has to be a little bit strange on some level, right?
(Jeff and Jack stand silently for a moment, neither really wanting to answer the question)
Kat: I mean, like you...
Jeff: I mean, I-I don’t know–-
Kat: ...or were you just excited and you’re like “I’m just here playing in the Smashing Pumpkins.”
Jeff: I think the whole thing, it’s been strange for like 12 years, so it’s just normal to me...honestly.
Kat: Jack, what about you here?
Jack: I was always a huge fan, so it’s just a–-
Kat: And now you’re playing on the stage.
Jack: Exactly. So it’s just great fun and a privilege to play with all these guys.
Kat: You’re gonna be on–-
Jeff: Yeah.
Kat: You’re, you’re gonna -– Jack, you’re gonna be a poster on someone’s wall, you know that?
Jeff: Yeah, the funny thing about Jack is we’ve, I don’t know, I mean, Billy’s seen him since he was like a little kid but I started meeting Jack when he was like, I don’t know, like 15 maybe?
Jack: Yeah, ‘round 14, 15, yeah.
Jeff: Just, like in, yeah.
BC: Liter –- like, well, I literally knew him while he was like little little, but as far as like getting to know him as a person, he would come to shows when he was a teenager and we’d hang out with him, so we’ve literally known him as a person for over a decade before he even started playing with the band.
Jeff: So he’s not like a stranger to us, I mean, it’s –- he’s been around us for a long time, so....
BC: He’s family, yeah. Yeah, he’s family, yeah.
Kat: Nice. Let’s talk about –- just a couple more questions, ‘cause your tour, um, the art is amazing, I can’t even imagine the stuff you went through for nostalgia purposes, for the photos, for the artwork and seeing yourselves as babies had to been [sic] quite a trip, you know, way, you know, in these massive landscapes on stage and Linda Strawberry did a great job of translating what you wanted. I love your little vignettes that you did online. Did you have one thing that you said to her, this is how we want this to appear, was there one instruction?
BC: No, ‘cause it’s such a mul –- I don’t know how many people here saw the show? (crowd cheers) Oh, thank you. Um, it’s such a multimedia thing, it was almost hard to -– it was even hard to explain to the band sort of what I was after.
Kat: Okay.
BC: I mean, to me, the best thing I’ve heard –- and it actually came from a fan ‘cause sometimes I have a hard time articulating what I’m after and I think a fan said it the other day to me on Instagram, which is like, the show is an immersive experience. And then they did this interesting thing where you extrapolate and said actually the whole band has always been an immersive experience and I think by codifying it into more of a visual narrative, it allows everyone to understand that the band’s always been sort of performing?
Kat: Mmhmm.
BC: And then where it’s confusing about that in rock and roll land is most people perform an idealized rock and roll version of themself, but the band’s always been performing to the character of whatever the album is, so that’s what’s confusing to people, like “Why are you so negative?” It’s like, but you don’t understand, I’m playing the character of a negative guy to portray these songs in a particular way, much like a movie or a play, and um, I feel like after all these years, people are finally starting to understand that it’s very, very, like a method actor, you go completely into character. And um, it’s much credit to my bandmates that they always supported my wont to go there and these shifts of musical styles, ‘cause you can imagine, you come off an album like Siamese Dream, which was very, very loved and very supported and certainly by KROQ, um, and to pivot off and do something that was completely dark and very, very different like Mellon Collie, you know, I had to really have the support of my bandmates and they’ve always been fantastic with that.
Kat: Alright, two more questions. New music. Are you guys going to get some writing together as the original unit?
BC: Um...I’m uh, I don’t know what he’s doing –- Jimmy’s doing musically, I have a solo album in the can that I have to mix literally starting in a few days and that will start to come out, it’s going to come out in two parts next year, so beginning the year and the end of year, it’ll just come out digitally: part A in the early winter and then, the whole album and the vinyl will come out at the end of the year, so I have that coming out and in between that, we’re figuring out how to write new songs and what we would do ‘cause, you know, hopefully we can, you know, really start releasing music as a unit again, you know, annually.
Kat: Okay, and my last question, you have been bringing up some spectacular cameos –- guests –- on stage...
BC: Yeah, right?
Kat: ...that range from Courtney Love to Davey Havok to Mark McGrath. Mark McGrath in a carnival barker’s outfit, y’all see that on the big screen?
BC: Mark McGrath is in our new video. The one we just shot two days ago, yeah.
Kat: Is he playing that character?
BC: (pause) Yes.
Kat: Alright, we look forward to seeing whatever you bring to it. Thanks for coming out.
BC: Don’t forget we brought Chino up, that was....
Kat: Yes, you did.
BC: Chino lit the night on fire, that was a great –- if you get a chance, check out Chino playing Bodies with us on stage in New Jersey, it was one of the greatest moments in the history of the band. Chino just blew us away, I mean, what a great artist, what a great band.
Kat: It’s such a pleasure to see so many artists that have come up through the same time getting to share the stage with you guys, do some really fun stuff. ‘Cause us an audience, it’s like “What?!” It’s a head trip, right? See those guys, you’re like, “Why would he ever bring Chino up, what, I don’t understand that.”
BC: At the risk of rhapsodizing, I think the old music business set everybody at odds with one another. And particularly in rock and roll, I don’t know why, because of the ego game of it all, you didn’t see as many collaborations as you’ll see in rap or country, and I think now that that old business has broken down, I think rock artists particularly need to work together in the way that everybody works together, it’s actually a lot of fun and I certainly know the fans like it.
Kat: Yeah, no, we love it. And it’s fun to just see people like out of the box, like who would ever think Mark McGrath and the Smashing Pumpkins?
BC: I mean, come on, we played Breaking the Law by Judas Priest with Mark McGrath...
Kat: Yes, I heard that too.
BC: ...that is meta, right? I mean, that is meta, right, as you would say.
Kat: Smash Mouth would be next level, I’m just throwin’ it out there.
BC: What’s that?
Kat: Smash Mouth.
BC: Smash Mouth?
Kat: Oh, come on, you know you would want it.
BC: Did you say Smash Mouth?
Kat: (laughing) Yes.
BC: No, that –- they’re mad at me.
Kat: Ooh!
BC: Don’t you know that?
Kat: Oh wait, did you guys, you -– are they getting in fights with everyone, I can’t even–-
BC: No, they’re mad at me.
Kat: Wait, what happened? Refresh my memory, I can’t....
BC: Um, well, in two thous -– actually, it goes back to Machina –- in 2001...
Kat: (laughing) It all goes back.
BC: ...we had this song Untitled and I went to have a meeting at DreamWorks with Jeffrey Katzenberg and they were talking about putting the song Untitled in the original Shrek movie. And so I met with Jeffrey, who was lovely, and I got to see Shrek in a very early form where it was like half of it was still pencil drawings and there were just even where it was just pictures -– it was amazing and you could tell it was gonna be a big hit -– and then somewhere in the process, um, and I never understood the chain of command but in somewhere in the process, they said, “No, we don’t wanna use you” and they used the Smash Mouth version of I’m a Believer. Which became a big hit and obviously it was a big movie, was never bitter about it, it’s just the way it happens in Hollywood. So 17 years later, I mention in a Instagram thing that –- somebody asked something about Shrek and I said “Oh, actually, we were originally up for that movie but, you know, we didn’t...” and I didn’t say anything negative about the band, next thing you know, they’re blowing me up on social media. And what’s so stupid about this story and what was kind of to me dumb was I used to hang out with those guys ‘cause we had mutual friends and they knew the story from like 2002 on. So it wasn’t like I was hitting them from the sideways like “Oh,” it was like, they knew the story, I told them the story, I was like, they knew –- oh, wait, I don’t have to repeat the story, I mean, they –- I told them exactly what I just told you, so I don’t know where the diss was or something and I never had a problem with the band and I think the band’s fine, so I don’t understand this but this is the modern world of clickbait.
Kat: So is that where you left off? Can we mend some fences and make this happen, I mean like, just see?
BC: Uh, I think the Smash Mouth bridge is burned forever.
(crowd cheers)
Kat: Well, at least we resolved one thing here today, thank you guys.
BC: There’s –- correct me if I’m wrong, there’s Smashing Pumpkins, there’s Smash Mouth and there was a band called Smashing Orange...
Jimmy: (off mic) Oh yeah.
Kat: Yes, I remember those guys.
BC: ...that we once played with at CBGB's. Is there any other Smash bands?
Kat: Not that I can think of.
BC: I think we won the battle of the Smash bands. Now there’s some clickbait!
Kat: You got my vote.
BC: There’s some real clickbait, red meat clickbait.
Kat: Thank you for coming in, gentlemen...
BC: Thank you everyone, thank you.
Kat: ...this is been a pleasure, seriously...
Iha: Thank you very much.
Kat: ...thank you thank you thank you. And thank you for the years of music. Smashing Pumpkins, everyone.