Mellon Collie was the first CD I ever bought myself. I was ten years old and “Tonight Tonight” was all over the radio (93XRT). I loved it. And confined to my quiet, forest preserve-bordered northwest corner of the city, I marveled at the reality of the band on the radio playing that song being from here. The same place I was from.
I saved up allowance so I could go up to the Best Buy with my Dad and buy the (double!) CD. I didn’t even have a CD player yet. I listened to it on an old “portable” CD player of my Dad’s. It weighed about three pounds and was caged in a metal case that made it look like a cinder block and it only wouldn’t skip if it sat on the floor under the end table in the corner of the living room. So I crawled under the table and listened to Mellon Collie. I got a CD
player that Christmas and my repeat listens moved to my bedroom and continued for months. I stared at the booklet with the “funny animal art” and the “star lady” on the cover. I read and re-read the lyric book. It was my favorite CD. The Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite band. And “Tonight Tonight” was my favorite song.
The favorite CD and favorite band didn’t change, but over the following years the favorite song did. As other albums came into my life in the final years of elementary school, Mellon Collie became less frequent in the rotation, but still “Zero” and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” became more prominent in my life soundtrack. As I transitioned from my familiar elementary school into the disorienting jungle of high school, “The world is a vampire” and the wistful longing invoked by “1979” took on a new significance.
As my freshman year dragged on I found myself turning more and more to Mellon Collie, my old companion. I didn’t know it then, but that move to high school triggered my first bout with depression. I didn’t know what was wrong with me or what to do about it, and it would be quite some time before that first bout would dissipate. In the meantime, in the absence of my old friends, amidst increasing
arguments with my Mom, and a new aloofness towards my Dad that I seemingly couldn’t control, Mellon Collie was who I turned to. I returned to repeat listens and hours spent staring at the lyrics. At one point, instead of writing a science report, I picked out clip art and fonts for each of the 28 songs and typed them out according to how Billy sang them (the line breaks in the lyric books didn’t quite match). I taped each sheet up in border around the top of my bedroom walls and got a D in biology, continuing my epic descent from straight A student to misanthropic fuck up and setting off a bomb in my relationship with my Mother.
Still, it helped me. That ring of lyrics encircling me in my room tethered me to myself. Lost as I was, they were a lighthouse beam I could focus on in the dark. And “To Forgive” and Thirty-Three” captured all the feelings I couldn’t recognize, let alone express.
But none of them, beautiful, dependable friends that they were, gave me the roots that “Galapogos” did.
It was late evening in one of the cold months—late Fall or early Winter. I was sitting on my bed with the annoyingly bright lamp on and the door closed over to the noise of the kitchen. “Galapogos” was playing. And as it played I found myself standing up on my bed, turning to where the lyric sheet was taped on my wall. And it was like the sun hitting you in the face when you emerge from an unlit basement. It was painful and soothing and new, but had been there
forever, and suddenly “blanket skies” were safety and warmth and it was “funny how we pretend we’re still a child” and there was no need to deny pain or change or anything else. And even if you were a fool, someone was here with you.
Many years, bands, albums, songs later, and “Galapogos” is the only one that has ever wrapped me up in itself like that. It became and remains my favorite Pumpkins song. A few years after that night, my Dad came out from hanging shelves in my room asking if he could put on my Pumpkins CD. He was curious about a song whose lyrics had caught his attention. “Galapogos.” If ever I doubted I’m my father’s daughter.
I still have my first CD and the vinyl re-issue is a treasured piece of my record collection. And even if I sometimes go years without listening to it, I still know all the words to all the songs on Mellon Collie.
Thanks, Pumpkins.