FEATURE:
In the Arms of Sleep
The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness at Thirty
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IT is always a risk…
when artists put out a double or triple album. In terms of how they will be received and whether they are going to have a lot more filler than they should. It can be a case of quantity over quality. However, I admire the ambition at play. In the case of The Smashing Pumpkins’ third studio album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, there is no denying that it is phenomenal. A classic! Released on 23rd October, 1995, in the United Kingdom and the following day in the United States, I wanted to mark thirty years of an album that arguably changed the face of Alternative Rock. I want to start out with a 1995 interview from Guitar World, where the band’s lead, Billy Corgan (who was the lead songwriter), and James Iha (guitars) spoke about Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and also some of the gear that they used on the album:
“There's everything from piano ballads to the thrashy-trippy guitar rave-ups that have won the Pumpkins their honored place in the alternative rock pantheon. There are also moments of Beatles-esque music hall whimsy, of Queen-ish massed guitar grandeur, and trips to that sub-aquatic textureland where Prince and Jimi chase foxy mermaids through eternity.
Produced by the British dream team of Flood and Alan Moulder, the record is one whopping huge canvas, which Corgan and co-guitarist James Iha have covered with every guitar color at their collective command.
Guitar World: Did you know from the outset that this was going to be a big album?
Billy Corgan: "Yes. We almost had enough material to make Siamese Dream a double album. With this new album, I really liked the notion that we would create a wider scope in which to put other kinds of material we were writing."
With this new record, I think you've found a way not to repeat yourself, but still to satisfy people's expectations of a Smashing Pumpkins record.
Corgan: "Well, we really went into the record with the notion that this would be the last Smashing Pumpkins record. I mean, we plan on doing another record, but we don't plan on doing another record as the band that most people know. This kind of approach, style, music... everything is going to change."
Are you disbanding? Is that what you're saying?
"No, I'm saying we've reached the end of one creative ebb and flow. And it's time to go down a different musical path. Our options are either to disband, or that we will force ourselves to go in a different direction.
"We've got a lot of different viewpoints on the culture at the moment. We believe that, to a certain degree, we're taken for granted. It's hard to explain, but you just reach a point where you know it's time to move on."
How did you get involved with Flood?
James Iha: "Billy and I are both real big fans of his work. I'm sure both of us own at least 10 CDs that Flood has worked on. And they're all different. Not typical rock bands – all very individual".
There are a couple of features I want to include before a review from Pitchfork. In 2016, Medium published their feature about Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, which they argued might have been the swansong for Alternative Rock. With ambition and ego, Billy Corgan and his bandmates might have arguably released their generation’s The Beatles (or ‘The White Album’):
“But as alternative rock was quickly slipping into the past, The Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, arguably the genre’s last great album. It’s the perfect swan song. While rock music was going towards a friendlier, but slightly fatigued sound, Mellon Collie was a whirlwind of energy — even its ballads were dynamic and exciting. To do so they drew from the entire history of the alt-rock, which seems impossible considering the genre itself is so diverse. But somehow the Pumpkins captured all of it and made what could be considered their generation’s White Album: a final recap of the movement made by the only band who was both egotistical and talented enough to take on the task.
It’s ironic that the band who released an album summing up alternative rock was in many ways an outsider to the rest of the scene. Many of the bands came out of a punk tradition where the ultimate sin is acting like pompous, self-centered rock stars. But that’s exactly what they were — especially Billy Corgan, the band’s dictator of a leader, who rivals Kanye West for having the most bloated ego in music history. Unlike the other alternative bands who eschewed fame, or at least wanted to look like they didn’t want to be famous, Corgan was explicit about his desire for the Pumpkins to be recognized as the best and biggest band in the world. And they certainly looked the part, being the only alternative band to fully embrace the glammed out rock star look.
Musically, the difference between Corgan and his peers was just as apparent. On their previous album, Siamese Dream, he famously layered dozens of guitar tracks on each song to make the album sound as grandiose as possible —Mellon Collie co-producer Flood calls this the “Pumpkin Guitar Overdub Army” tactic. When asked about this in a Guitar World interview, Corgan said “When you are faced with making a permanent recorded representation of a song, why not endow it with the grandest possible vision?” But his peers thought the exact opposite. Most alternative bands wanted their records to sound exactly how they performed live, without any studio frills. For those bands this was an important sign of authenticity that they learned from their punk rock upbringing. But Corgan was a maximalist at heart, growing up inspired by flashy arena rock and metal bands rather than the punk rock that inspired most of the scene.
Corgan’s “grandest possible vision” philosophy is laid out in full display on Mellon Collie — it’s an incredibly long and bloated journey. It opens with a three minute piano intro saturated in strings and woodwinds that makes it sound like its straight out of an old Hollywood cinema classic. And over the next 27 songs they do everything from electronic ballads (“Beautiful”) to pop-rock (“Muzzle”) to obnoxious, borderline unlistenable, metal (“X.Y.U.” and “Tales of a Scorched Earth”). Even the album’s most subtle moments sound like they’re added in to make the big moments sound absolutely huge.
This kind of sprawling epic wasn’t what typically sold in 1995, but it became a sensation because of Corgan’s ability to balance out his experimental side with the ability to write different kinds of hit singles that appealed to different audiences. Songs like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Zero” were as nihilistic and heavy as any Soundgarden single, while the soaring ballads “Tonight Tonight” and “1979” fit perfectly in the new softer landscape they found themselves in. As different as these songs are from one another, they all became smash hits. This diversity is how they managed to become the most successful band in the world — if only briefly — in such a wildly transitional year for music”.
Before coming to a review from Pitchfork, it is worth bringing in Guitar.com’s take on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. This is an album where guitar is very much key in the mix. Up front and loud. It is a sprawling album in many ways – not surprised given that it has twenty-eight tracks! – but it never feels bloated or has too much filler:
“There are a lot of bells and whistles on Mellon Collie but it’s saved from the double album scrapheap by the clear-eyed purpose of Corgan’s writing. It’s instructive, for example, to note how much of Tonight, Tonight’s pomp carries over to its guitar-bass-drums demo, with its majestic strings cast almost as the icing on the cake rather than a crucial structural element. There is the temptation to cut off disc one at the knees (or after the monstrous Bullet With Butterfly Wings) and draft in tracks like 1979, Stumbleine and X.Y.U. from disc two to create one all killer-no filler record, but that would betray the scope of the undertaking.
Mellon Collie is not a concept piece, and neither is it prone to meandering instrumentals or empty statements, but it is big. The singles are all hall of famers, and yet it’s impossible to discount the raw power of Here Is No Why (the Lemonheads with a violent streak) or singsong weirdness of We Only Come Out at Night (listen again with the Shins in mind, remarkable). Corgan knits the whole thing together with a sense of howling bombast, from the guitar freakouts of Jellybelly to the sweeping To Forgive, which knows precisely how affecting it is and lays it on real thick.
Triumph into disaster
Upon release, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness did what the Pumpkins wanted it to do. It sold. It became their first and to date only number one on the Billboard 200 and quickly went platinum. In 2012, it crossed the diamond threshold in the US. Similarly, it was generally well-reviewed and has matured like a fine wine. In a 9.3 review of the LP’s deluxe edition, Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen observed: “During a time when rock heroes were hard to come by, Smashing Pumpkins took it upon themselves to make a record that only teenagers could love and for many it was the only one they needed.”
But on the ground Mellon Collie was followed by a string of tragedies and fallings out. Touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin died of an overdose in the summer of 1996 after injecting heroin with Chamberlin in a Manhattan hotel room. Chamberlin was subsequently arrested on drug possession charges and later sacked. The tour was cancelled as it was about to crest at Madison Square Garden. Months earlier, a 17-year-old fan had been fatally injured at a show in Dublin despite the band’s vocal anti-mosh stance. Corgan was rocked by the loss of his mother, and he got divorced. By the time Adore was released in 1998 they were splintering. Wretzky’s dislocation from the group became permanent and the lights were turned out altogether following 2000’s Machina/The Machines Of God.
This ending cast a long shadow, but Mellon Collie’s legend has only deepened over time. With the Pumpkins back in action (Corgan joined by Iha, Chamberlin and Jeff Schroeder) each move they make is placed next to its high watermark. Outside of the music, its status as a priceless 90s rock artefact has been sealed in amber by tens of thousands of ‘Zero’ t-shirts and the band’s guest spot in Homerpalooza, a classic episode of The Simpsons. Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins. Homer Simpson, smiling politely. It doesn’t get bigger than that”.
In 2012, Pitchfork published their review of an album that they rightly stated was a very generous record. One that was purely intended for teenage. It communicated with them. For many, it was the only album that they needed. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness still sound remarkable and bracing thirty years later. There are great features like this, that look at the legacy and brilliance of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness:
“This is perhaps the only Smashing Pumpkins record where they acted like an actual band rather than Corgan and his resentful charges. It's hard to pinpoint where the influence of James Iha or D'Arcy came into play (not so with the phenomenal drumming of Jimmy Chamberlin), but with the oversight of producers Flood and Alan Moulder, Mellon Collie was developed through protracted jam sessions and personal interplay. Siamese Dream, for all of its symphonic grandeur, was a fairly standard rock album and a solitary one-- nearly all of the guitar and bass parts were rumored to have been performed by Corgan himself. Meanwhile, Mellon Collie indulges in styles more associated with hermetic artists-- ornate chamber-pop ("Cupid De Locke"), mumbly acoustic confessionals ("Stumbleine"), and synthesized nocturnes (mostly everything after "X.Y.U."). And it does so while feeling like the work of four people in a room.
Mellon Collie's remarkable breadth is the best indication of Corgan's ability to let loose. You could pick five songs at random and still end up with a diverse batch of singles that would make a case for Smashing Pumpkins being the most stylistically malleable multi-platinum act of the 90s. Maybe it wouldn't sell as many copies, but picture an alternate universe where heavy rotation met the joyous, mechanized grind of "Love", "In the Arms of Sleep"'s unabashed antiquated romanticism, the Prince-like electro-ballad "Beautiful", "Muzzle"'s stadium-status affirmations, or the throttling metal of "Bodies".
The ubiquity of the five songs that did become singles overshadows just how idiosyncratic and distinct they were in the scope of 1995. Has there been anything like "Tonight, Tonight" since? Orchestral strings typically signify weepy balladry or compositional pretension in rock music, not wonderful, lovestruck propulsion. While "Tonight, Tonight" is now inseparable from its Le Voyage dans la lune-inspired video, that the music existed without its guidance only stresses the Pumpkins' sonic creativity. "Thirty-Three" was the final and least heralded of the singles-- where on alt-rock radio was there room for a slowpoke, time-signature shifting country song with phased slide guitars and shuffling drum machines?
"Zero" and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" are the ones that riled up the older folks and, yes, the lyrics are pissy and juvenile and fairly embarrassing. That said, they're far more interesting from a sonic perspective than they're often given credit for. They're the songs where Flood's digitized production fits better than the saturated, analog warmth Butch Vig lent to Siamese Dream. They're basically new wave performed as pop-metal.
And of course, there's "1979", the one everybody can agree on. On a record that reveled in 70s prog and pomp without being restricted to it, it sounds futuristic. And while just as youth-obsessed as everything else here, it's one of the few times where high school sounds like something that can be remembered fondly. Corgan loves to stress how it was the last song to make the record, and while its chorus does have an effortless charge embodying the "urgency of now," it's the only Mellon Collie song that functions best as nostalgia. That reading is no doubt abetted by another fantastic video, but while "1979" is an unimpeachable song, the rush to praise it as an outlier does its surroundings a tremendous disservice. While Mellon Collie is the realization of all Billy Corgan's ambitions, most of the criticisms surround the lyrics for not being as personal as those on the tortured Siamese Dream. It's this way by design.
The terms "sad machines" and "teen machines" are interchangeably used during "Here Is No Why", a pep talk to the outwardly sullen mopes who Corgan urges to break free of either and ascend like its heroic guitar solo. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" is notorious for its chorus, but teen angst doesn't fight fair; you need some seriously heavy ammo to resist it. The mudslide of distortion that ushers in its bridge leads towards two minutes of the most viscerally exciting music that Smashing Pumpkins produced. Then immediately after, the mournful "To Forgive" devastates with a personal detail that gives Corgan credibility in all of this: "And I remember my birthdays/ Empty party afternoons." This is the kind of youthful, inexplicable emotional whiplash that can result in an immolating hatebomb called "Fuck You (An Ode to No One)" being followed by a giddy proclamation that "love solves everything." It's clearly not a mature way of dealing with life, but that's only a problem if you somehow believe Mellon Collie isn't meant as rock 'n' roll fantasy. When Corgan declares "I know that I was meant for this world" during "Muzzle", it's your happy ending.
So, yes, most people who have developed a meaningful relationship with Mellon Collie did so in their youth. The question is whether you can get anything new from this in 2012. As with all of the Smashing Pumpkins reissues, Mellon Collie is giving: the Deluxe boxed set justifies its sticker shock by containing "re-imagined cover art, velvet-lined disc holder and decoupage kit for creating your own scenes from the Mellon Collie Universe," which is everything you'd imagine and thensome. There are an extra 64 tracks and only a few of them appeared on The Aeroplane Flies High, though most of these inclusions are demos or alternate takes, the sort of thing that should only be listened to multiple times by people who are being paid to do so, i.e., music critics and Flood.
But there is a way of hearing the same album differently as you refract it through your own experiences. "Thru the Eyes of Ruby" is rumored to have contained 70 guitar tracks; it's a wedding vow punctuated by Corgan snarling "youth is wasted on the young." This isn't meant to negate the intent of the 90 minutes that preceded it, it's a reminder of how Mellon Collie can communicate different things to someone who's 30 as opposed to 15”.
On 23rd October, we mark thirty years of The Smashing Pumpkins’ third studio album. I guess, because of costs, you do not really get many albums that are a double or triple. There is always that risk that people will tune out and there will be too many fillers tracks. When it came to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, there was so much to love. It is a pioneering, groundbreaking and hugely influential album. If it was one of the last great Alternative Rock albums, in a wider sense, it is regarded as one of the best albums ever. This phenomenal work from a visionary Billy Corgan has lost none of its spark and potency…
AFTER three decades.