Take Me Down

"Take Me Down" is a song from The Smashing Pumpkins' third studio album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It is one of two songs written by James Iha to appear on the album, the other being "Farewell and Goodnight".

Background
Billy Corgan explained in the liner notes of the 2012 reissue that "Take Me Down" was a turning point for Iha's involvement as a songwriter for the band. Corgan said he felt the song was a worthwhile inclusion from the very beginning, but thematically it did not fit alongside most of the other songs, leading to the decision to make it the concluding track on the first half of the album. According to Corgan, Iha "saw the demotion of his favored song to the back of the line as an unforgivable slight, killing his desire to contribute to the band as a writer of note from that moment on."

Greg Leisz, who provided pedal and lap steel guitar on the song, said of his involvement: "I just got contacted. I forget if it was directly by James Iha or the management. It was just that Billy Corgan was allowing James to do one song on a double album. [Laughs] He was like, 'Here’s this carrot. You can do anything you want.' He asked me to come to Chicago and I was there. I overdubbed on the song. He had Flood and the other producer [Alan Moulder]. They had two different studios in the same complex. Billy was in one room working on his stuff and James was in this other room working on his song. It wasn’t much."