| Even though he has suffered from
depression, dated Courtney Love, and is a Cubs fan, Billy Corgan had overcome
these early adversities to become
the popular vocalist and lead guitarist for the Chicago
alternative rock band "The Smashing Pumpkins."
Billy
one told Rolling Stone in a 1994 interview that his future as a musician began when he was "Eight years old, I put on the
Black Sabbath record, and my life is forever changed. It sounded so heavy. It
rattled the bones. I wanted that feeling."
Billy allegedly came up with the name "Smashing
Pumpkins" a few years before her formed the band in 1988 with James Iha. He used
to tell everyone that he had a band called "Smashing Pumpkins" and kept the name
because people apparently remembered it. The Smashing Pumpkins built thier audience with extensive touring and their follow-up, double
album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995), which debuted
at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart.
However, internal fighting and drug us led to the band's break-up in 2000, When
Greg Kott of the Chicago Tribune interviewed Billy in in 1908 about the
breakup, Billy said, "The real story was Iha was driving me out of my mind. He
was so negative. The guy literally drove me insane. When I walked out of that
band, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t have a direction, a central
focus. I wandered through different things, but I couldn’t find that central
thing. As soon as I got back in the band my brain started working again. I was
engaged again.
On June 21, 2005, Billy took out full-page advertisements in the Chicago
Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times to announce that he planned to reunite
the band. "For a year now", Billy wrote, "I want my band back, and my songs, and
my dreams." In 2006, Billy and former pumpkin mate Jimmy Chamberlin convened a
new Smashing Pumpkins ménage and recorded the album, Zeitgeist. The band
toured with a varying number musicians through 2007 and 2008. Chamberlin left
the band in 2009 and was replaced by Mike Byrne. They added returning guitarist
Jeff Schroeder, and newbie Nicole Fiorentino, and began recording the
44-song Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, which has been released, one song at
a time, since late 2009.
Even though Billy once said he would like to come
back as a turnip, a more appropriate culinary option for his birthday is to
smash a few pumpkins and make a pumpkin cheesecake. Enjoy it with Spun
(2002) in which Billy
plays the doctor.
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