There is no way you can arrive at this point in a straight line,” says Billy Corgan with a crooked smile. The Smashing Pumpkins’ singer, guitarist and producer is talking about the making of the band’s new album, “Adore” (Virgin), which arrives June 2, and it’s difficult to determine if he is ruing the memory or luxuriating in it.
“We took this weird, crooked road — lose the drummer, lose the producer, have all these personal problems, live with all these expectations hanging over you,” Corgan continues. “It’s an atmosphere that creates something of this intensity, which is basically, `(Expletive) you. We’re doing what we want.’ “
Last summer, Corgan knew what he wanted. He and fellow Pumpkins — guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy — would bring Matt Walker on board as a full-time drummer. They would hire Brad Wood as a coproducer. And they would record a low-key album of “arcane night music” in Chicago.
The Pumpkins were coming off a multiplatinum double-CD, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” that had established them as one of the biggest rock bands in the world, and the new album would be a daring departure into more atmospheric terrain. But last fall, the plan began to unravel. Walker — hired to replace the ousted Jimmy Chamberlin during the “Mellon Collie” tour — left the band. Wood — who had previously produced acclaimed records by Liz Phair and Red Red Meat — departed after a few weeks. Both fell victim to Corgan’s high expectations, and the band left for Los Angeles to try and refocus the album.
“I was in charge of the whole thing, but I made a mistake,” Corgan is saying, his lean, black-clad frame folded into a lounge chair in the Pumpkins’ rehearsal space on the North Side. In only a few days, Corgan will be on stage tossing customized Cheap Trick guitar picks by the handful into the audience at Metro. He will be wearing a dorky baseball cap and a giddy smile just like one of his childhood heroes, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, who will be standing next to him, matching him guitar lick for guitar lick.
But at the moment, Corgan’s mood is conveyed by the steely resolve in his voice. “The mistake I made is that I played the record for a lot of people in our inner circle before it was done,” he says. “And I will tell you that this was the first time I ever was seriously doubted. We were still trying to deal with the mess of the Brad Wood situation and the album was in this gray area. I felt a lot of doubt for the first time — from the label, from management, from friends. I definitely felt this kind of hovering `uh-oh,’ and even if you went on the Internet and read what fans were saying, I could feel everyone bracing as if to say, `Now they’re gonna screw up.’ I can’t explain that, but it was an atmosphere, and I can tell you it seriously pissed me off.”
D’Arcy: “You were freaking out.”
Corgan: “That’s not the right word. I was pissed off.”
D’Arcy: “I was freaking out.”
Corgan: “It just pissed me off because I felt I was still walking down this road as a writer and producer, defining this album, and our world didn’t show us this 100 percent confidence. I don’t think it’s a fluke that we make great albums. We have a feel for things and we knew it wasn’t quite there. We never really played our stuff for people before. And In the quest to help define it, and look to other people to say, `What do you think?,’ it interjected a certain negativity that really made me angry. Because I was expecting not necessarily praise, but some support, like, `I hear what you’re doing, you’re almost there.’ “
D’Arcy: “We needed them to have a little faith.”
Corgan: “Put it this way: The wind starts blowing real cold real fast. It was a good wake-up call, because it redefines in my mind just how brutal the world is. You’re either going this way (his thumb points up) or you’re going this way (points down).”
Backs against the wall, nothing left to lose, rats in a cage, us against the world — choose your cliche, the Pumpkins have been there before. In the early ’90s, they were seen as pariahs on the local scene: too baldly ambitious to be accepted by the underground, too weird for the mainstream. In the mid-’90s, they embraced elaborate arena-rock arrangements and extravagant emotional extremes at a time when slacker cool and grunge guitars were the rule. And then came the drug-overdose death of keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and the subsequent ouster of Chamberlin, who had been abusing drugs but who was also the muscle behind the band’s big sound. Each time, the Pumpkins kept plowing ahead and each time they took their music to a higher level, commercially and artistically.
One former associate of the band describes that ambition this way: “I remember walking into the studio one day and for the first time I felt completely out of my league. And Billy just looked me in the eye and said something like, `The train is leaving the station — either get on for the ride or get run over.’ “
“Adore” got rolling only when the band pulled out of the station and left producers, collaborators and outside distractions behind. “Matt had left the band, so it was just the three of us and this drum machine,” Iha says. “I hate to say this, but it was us getting back to our roots, because that’s the way we started 10 years ago.”
Corgan: “I wrote this song, `Shame,’ at 10 in the morning and by 3 p.m. we had played it and recorded it. The chemistry of the Pumpkins just reappeared like that (snaps his fingers). Not blaming anything on Matt Walker, but finishing the `Mellon Collie’ tour with Matt playing Jimmy’s parts, there was a kind of ghost feeling about it. I don’t think we ever completely settled back in. All of a sudden, with just the three of us, we went back to being the Pumpkins again.”
Adds D’Arcy, fingering a pair of new-wavish, yellow-tinted sunglasses: “New wave and goth (rock) — all roads meet there for us, because of our background in that music. And that’s what `Shame’ is: midtempo, ethereal, dark, ambiant, weird.”
“Shame” is one of the simplest, and also one of the most nakedly emotional performances ever on a Pumpkins record. Technically, it’s imperfect. Corgan says he’s singing out of key and was concerned the lyrics were uncharacteristically straightforward, almost “inane.” Iha thought he could improve on his ghostly guitar part, but later found he couldn’t re-create it. It’s a song on which Corgan exhorts someone — a lover, a friend, perhaps even himself or the band — to persevere, and then offers solace: “Love is good and love is kind/Love is drunk and love is blind.”
“Adore” is full of heartsick valentines sung with almost adrogynous delicacy, sometimes supported by little more than a piano or an acoustic guitar. Gone are the multi-layered electric guitars and bombastic drums that defined the Pumpkins’ earlier records. In their place have come weird electronic textures, after-hours lullabies and quirky nocturnes. If the Pumpkins had previously been about adding layers of production and lyrical imagery, “Adore” is about stripping them away.
“We’re learning,” Corgan says. “We started out trying to make these perfect, methodical modern-sounding rock records. Now it’s like we’re going backward away from this perfectionism, and into something more primitive. Now, what’s important is the spirit. If you capture it, and it’s out of tune, who cares?”
NOT YOUR TYPICAL ROCK TOUR
The Smashing Pumpkins knew the low-key, atmospheric “Adore” was a risky album for them to make because it’s not more of the same. Nor will the band’s forthcoming summer tour follow the previous pattern.
It will consist mostly of free outdoor concerts and smaller indoor shows, guitarist Billy Corgan says, with all proceeds going to charity. Among the performances will be a free July 7 concert in Grant Park, he says. The band, which will be augmented by five touring musicians, including drummer Kenny Aronoff and multi-instrumentalist Lisa Germano, expects to lose at least $1 million on the summer circuit.
“This record was made with no touring in mind,” Corgan says. “So when we do tour, by playing for free or playing for charity, it’s a different expectation level. We’ll be a lot more comfortable playing `Adore’ to an audience that isn’t paying for and expecting your typical arena-rock show.”
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: For a real audio version of Greg Kot’s interview with Billy Corgan, go to: chicago.tribune.com/go/pumpkins
