Billy Corgan confirmed that The Smashing Pumpkins will be going back to their Gish psychedelic roots on their next album, the followup to November’s CYR. Corgan discussed the third installment of the Shiny and Oh So Bright album series on Apple Music with Zane Lowe. The Smashing Pumpkins also confirmed a Mellon Collie 25th anniversary release yesterday.
Corgan said he still needs contributions from bandmates James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin, and Jeff Schroeder to complete the next record. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“Well, when COVID hit and I was sort of locked down, I wrote kind of a hazy psychedelic record that’s slated to be volume three, which would be the followup of the record that’s just now coming out. And that record’s maybe 60% done. But I need the contribution of other people. So it’s, at the moment, sort of set aside. And then because I didn’t have anything to do because that was being set aside, now I’ve started writing this magnum rock opus record.”
He added, “Basically you’re looking at a single psych record to be followed by a double rock album.”
Corgan later discussed falling back in love with the guitar, “Well, I’ve fallen in love and out of love with it three times. So we’re back into in love because I’m working on some new stuff now and it’s very whatever that is. I mean, I’m back into it like totally. I mean, I just can grin ear to ear just thinking about it. I’ll try to keep this short because I could go on forever. My father was a guitar player and I really wanted to be a guitar player, and of course, I became one.
But I can’t swear to you at 53 that if my father wasn’t a guitar player that I wouldn’t have been a guitar player. What I mean by that is, I so wanted to be like my father, I think part of my wanting to play guitar was to be like him. So I’ve had this strange relationship with the instrument where I’m not quite sure that I really wanted to play it. It’s a strange way to put it. You know what I mean? Well, in my mind, my father was a legend. So I still live in my father’s shadow on some degree.
So trying to live up to my father’s standard of guitar playing at a very young age was sort of daunting. So there was that sort of push pull relationship. So I’ve had to have this organic thing happen of falling … like I guess like a long marriage relationship where you stay together because you’re not going to break up. So I haven’t broken up with the guitar, but there’ve been like five years there where I was like, “I want nothing to do with this G damned instrument.” You know what I mean? So luckily I’m on round four or something of just getting back into it.”
