It was the summer of 1997, I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was already a Rush fan thanks to my parents, but other than Rush I wasn’t a fan of any other band, until one day sitting in the backseat of my parents car on our way home from up north, a song played on the radio and it immediately captured me in a way that I made my mom turn it up, it was Tonight, Tonight. I had no clue who the band was but something about that song triggered me to wanna hear it again, after the station announced that the song was by Smashing Pumpkins I knew I had to hear more. A few days later my parents brought me to the mall and we stopped into a music store where I could pick up headphones and listen to sample tracks of popular albums, luckily Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was one of them, after listening to 1979 and Zero, I begged my parents to buy me the CD, they did. I got home and played the shit out of that CD for WEEKS! From there on, I was a SP fan. 

Fast forward 20 something years, I watched a Rush documentary film that had Billy in it, professing his appreciation of Rush. I had no idea! I laughed and said, yep…thats why I connected with SP.

Thank you, Smashing Pumpkins.