Smashing Pumpkins Takes 'Last Gasp'
December 4 -- Smashing Pumpkins rocked one last time Saturday night, treating fans to a four-plus-hour show at the small Chicago venue where the band got its start 12 years ago.
Bandleader Billy Corgan wept at the conclusion of the marathon event, which marked the demise of yet another influential band from the early 1990s heyday of guitar-driven grunge rock. Fellow alternative rock bands Nirvana and Soundgarden are now defunct, while holdovers like Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails sell a fraction of the albums they used to.
After selling more than 22 million albums worldwide, Smashing Pumpkins also suffered in the sales stakes recently, and Corgan announced in May that he would retire the band at the end of the year, semi-facetiously blaming competition from manufactured pop stars of the moment, like teen idol Britney Spears.
The band's relationship with its recording company, Virgin Records, had become strained, and the band recently released a final work, MACHINA II/the friends and enemies of modern music, over the Internet.
The retirement took place at the Metro, a theater holding 1,100 people in the shadow of baseball Mecca Wrigley Field. The members of Smashing Pumpkins played their first-ever show there Oct. 5, 1988, months after singer-songwriter-guitarist Corgan had co-founded the group with fellow guitarist James Iha.
"Welcome to the last gasp of Smashing Pumpkins," Corgan said at the outset of Saturday's show, dressed in a sleeveless silver dress of the sort he has been wearing onstage all year.
With his father and girlfriend watching from the balcony, Corgan led Iha, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and bass player Melissa Auf Der Maur through a set that consisted of three "acts" and four encore performances. His father, William Corgan Sr., took the helm during one of the encores with a version of the blues classic "Born Under a Bad Sign."
The band played its big hits, including "Today," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," and "Cherub Rock," and was joined on the latter by Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen. It also dredged up early nuggets like "Rhinoceros," from 1991's Gish album, and "Drown," from the 1992 Singles soundtrack.
