After years of feuding, Smashing Pumpkins founding members Billy Corgan and James Iha reconciled last year, and their bromance is now reaching new levels. Corgan told Music Week that he gets ‘goosebumps’ thinking about performing with James Iha in March 2016 in Los Angeles. He also said an original Smashing Pumpkins reunion would be a ‘Cinderella story.’
“I don’t know. I’m just focussed on the solo album. But I do feel pretty strongly at this moment in my life that I don’t want to do Pumpkins without some version of the [original] band. I just can’t carry that anymore. I think it’s not for me alone anymore. I’ve taken it as far as I can take it on my own. Let’s say the band never reforms, never plays again, I put the band thing down and concentrate on going solo for a few years, and then seven years from now I feel inspired to do another [record] in the name Pumpkins, I can do it. I own the name. It’s up to me. It’s not like, ‘It has to be this way.’”
“I think it’s kind of the end, but I’ve said that before. I don’t feel declarative about it. I just feel like we’ve reached a point where – and I’m saying collectively ‘we’, whoever is still interested, and me on the other side – the generational memory of the band obliterates the reality of the band. And only the band can change that. I can’t change that. I’m not powerful enough to change it. I tried, I failed. Only the band’s alchemy can change that formula. That’s it. I think it would be nice, it would be a great story. I’ll tell you one thing, James and I made our peace and I said I’d love him to come play [live] and he said he’d be interested. I sent him a rehearsal tape showing the way we were doing the songs – we were doing a Siamese [Dream, Smashing Pumpkins’ 1993 classic album] set in the middle of the acoustic tour.
Obviously, he knows the fucking songs – he wrote some of them – but until he came to sound check we hadn’t played together since 2000. He didn’t come to a pre-rehearsal, we’re at sound check and there’s only so much time. He plugs in and motherfucker! He starts playing, I start playing, and Jeff looks at me like, ‘There it is! There’s that fucking sound.’ I’m getting goosebumps talking to you about it – that’s fucking real, that’s that sound. Jeff was like, ‘Holy shit!’ Jeff’s a fan, Jeff saw the band back in the day, he’s played in the band for 10 years, he knows all of James’ guitar parts. He was like, ‘Wow.’ It wasn’t like [the sound] was kind of there, it was there. The beautiful story is: if this [solo album] goes well, and I’m happy, and then we reform and we’re able to make music, that’s the Cinderella story. For once I’d like it to go the way I would like it to go [laughs]!”
