The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan has vowed that the band will never play any of their popular albums all the way through in a live show “just to reclaim some light.”
Although the band is amidst some significant album milestones – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness turned 20 last year and Adore reaches the same age the year after next – the veteran frontman has ruled out the possibility of playing a concert tribute to any one particular album, saying such a pursuit “smacks of consumerism.”
“That stuff is the dregs of the music business,” he said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. “I have a hard time believing that everybody out there doing it really wants to do it.”
Corgan’s pride in classic Pumpkins albums is evident in the interview but he also expresses his belief in keeping relevant and keeping writing.
“I’m proud to have made such an album that’s important,” Corgan says of Mellon Collie. “[And] the millennials love [1993’s] Siamese Dream. Who’d’ve guessed, I mean, no one’s harder on the millennials than me. But they loved Siamese Dream? Great!”
He continues:
“But I’m not gonna go out there and hack around just to reclaim some light that I don’t feel has gone out. The light is still in my eyes. I’m still more than capable of producing new work. I wrote a new song this morning and that’s what I’m out here doing.”
Dave Grohl expressed similar sentiments back in 2014 when he said he “fucking hates” it when bands tour with classic album shows. “I don’t like it when bands do that,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview. “It’s presumptuous. It’s lazy.”
Corgan was forced to look back into the Pumpkins past again recently when never-before-heard demos were leaked online; he and fellow original band members swiftly swore vengeance on those responsible.
Watch: The Smashing Pumpkins – Run2me
