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Corgan says original Smashing Pumpkins line-up could never reform

By | Published on Monday 9 May 2011

Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan has said that there’s too much bad blood between him and his former Smashing Pumpkins bandmates D’arcy Wretzky and James Iha for them ever to perform together again. He might do something with drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, though.

Asked by Rolling Stone if he could ever see the band’s original line-up getting back together, Corgan said: “No. That’s just one of those things that are never going to happen. If you don’t see somebody for a while, there’s the old thing, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Well, we haven’t had absence. The things that have happened between us in the interim haven’t been good. There’s been lawsuits and lots of stupid stuff. It’s only made it worse. If it was bad before, it’s really bad now”.

He continued: “Jimmy and I aren’t enemies – he’s just off doing what he wants to do, as he should. There’s not super bad blood between me and Jimmy that we’d never get on stage again. But I cannot in any way, shape, or form ever envision standing on a stage, playing music again with James and D’arcy. I just don’t see any situation where that would be possible”.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Corgan discussed the previously reported upcoming series of re-issues of the band’s material, spanning everything from their debut album ‘Gish’ to the final release by the original line-up ‘Machina II: The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music’.

Explaining the bonus materials he was planning for each release, he said: “EMI would like a bonus disc of material. I think what it’s going to have to be is a balance between some of the better B-sides that somebody who bought ‘Gish’ back in the day wouldn’t be familiar with. I want it to be a document about the materials that surrounded the records, so if you’re a fan of that record, you kind of get more of that record. But I want to be really selective and not just put out anything. I want it to be almost like a nice mix tape – if you’re a fan of ‘Gish’, then the ‘Gish’ bonus disc would have some really cool stuff to listen to that’s in that period”.

He added that some albums have more previously unreleased material associated with them than others, saying: “For the first album, there are something like 30 demos from even before the album was made. So a lot of that stuff needs to be remixed, and there’s a lot of good versions of things and unheard stuff. The second album, not as much, so I’m probably going to have to dig more in my home demos. I’ve gone on some message boards to see what fans are saying, and they think they’ve heard everything and they haven’t. There’s a lot of stuff we have that no one’s ever heard”.

The programme of re-issues will begin later this year, and will be completed in 2013, at which point a new greatest hits compilation will also be released.



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