Memories | The Smashing Pumpkins

Cool kids like MCIS

Clem Besancon, Doubs, FR

I was 13, in high school, and bought the album after reading a good review in some magazine. I’ve been a SP fan ever since! But the most specific memory I have is about this girl who asked me to lend her the CD – I thought “wow, she must be pretty cool if she likes this kind of music!” I didn’t know yet that we’d get married and be the proud parents of three kids!

“I have to get that guitar”

Felipe Constanzo santiago, CL

I clearly remember the first time I saw Billy Corgan on my TV and said "I have to get that guitar" ... at the end of the year 95 I started to find out what kind of guitar it was and how I could get a "57 Fender Reissue Stratocaster in a place like Santiago -Chile. As a beginner musician MCIS was a great impact both for the sound and for the "guitar wall" that Billy put in his songs and his beautiful lyrics just blow me away. Finally one day in 1999 I bought the guitar, I arrived home, I put "Muzzle" on my old radio system .. "I fear that im ordinary just like everyone" and started playing and crying at the same time, I had made it, I had Billy Corgan's guitar! I finally became musician and 21 years later the guitar is still with me along with the best memories of my youth! From the bottom of my heart thank you very much Billy for making my life better!

Infinite High School Memories

Andrea Rae St Petersburg, US

I despised high school. My mother fought with me every day about going. She finally promised me that if I went every day for a week, she would drive from our small town of Okeechobee to the closest Spec’s Music an hour away to get me MCIS the day it came out. It was the only week I had perfect attendance. That album consumed my life. “Tonight, tonight” was the last song my friend and I listened to before he drowned. I cry within the first seconds of hearing it every time. As a tradition, when I get a new car or a new apartment, I put this record on full blast. It still makes my heart beat different than any other record I have ever heard. (Adore is a close second but we can talk about that in a few years.)

MCIS Was the Soundtrack of my First Girlfriend

Robert Clatskanie, Oregon, US

My story starts in Texas in 1995 where as a 15 year old I begged my sister to buy me the double album (she did). I spent the next month memorizing every lyric, every guitar riff and every drum beat. November 1995 we went camping as we always did and that’s where I met my first Girlfriend. We bonded over the new album as she too was a fan. I liked her so much. I remember sitting around a campfire, on a chilly Texas night, singing “In the Arms of Sleep” under my breath. Wishing for her to be mine in the same way Billy wrote in the song. I would hear “Galapagos” and imagine carving her name in a old Texas Live Oak tree. We ended up dating for year. Most of that year was lived with MCIS as the soundtrack. She was my first gf, my first kiss, my first heartbreak. We were supposed to see the Pumpkins live together in the spring, but the concert was postponed until November. I attended the concert November 30, 1996 Frank Irwin Center in Austin, Texas with friends, but without her. Little did I know a few weeks later it would become known she had been cheating on me. Hearts were broken, teenage love was shattered. But I’ll always remember MCIS. I’ll remember as a 15 year old hearing Thirty Three, and thinking that age was so far off. Now as a 40 year old, I just look back and smile. Good and bad memories, with MCIS playing in the background.

A Way to Bond

Sophie Meadowview, Virginia, US

I remember the first time I heard 1979; I was sitting in my room one night and my dad came in and told me he wanted to play a song for me. Instantly, I was mesmerized by this amazing band. Mellon Collie was the first album I ever owned. The music makes me feel included, it gives me something to talk to with my dad. I can never thank the Pumpkins enough for everything they’ve done for me and I will always remember them for shaping me into the person I am.

Beginnings for a dream

James seal Adelaide , AU

I remember hearing MCIS when I was 11 when my mum showed me it. Having been too young to have heard it when it came out I wished I was there. Immediately it made me want to learn guitar and get that sound. I think that I’m still searching for the perfect rig and sound but I know that my dreams of having good gear started with this album.

Inspired to rock.

BJ Russell Charleston,MS, US

I will never forget being 11 and watching SP on PBS On Tour playing Bullet and Porcelina. The first thing i thought was i want to do that one day. Fast forward 9 years and here i am in 2006 playing for 5,000 on stage opening for a famous band at a festival. Fast forward 10 years from that and i have a top 40 single on the Billboard Rock Indicator Chart with my band Allyria titled 50 Shades of Crazy. I can’t thank SP enough for that level of inspiration and teaching me a sense of melody at a young age. One day i pray i get to meet at least one of them.

Billy and me

Thomas Mafrouche FR

I was a fourteen years old boy in 1996, when my uncle brought me to the SP live show, in Lyon (France). It was my first concert ever. I still remember when Billy arrived on stage on “Zero”, or when Jimmy played guitar on “1979”. No ear plugs at the time, and I’ve never heard something as loud as “Bodies” and “X.Y.U.”. After that night, I decided to dedicate my life to rock’n’roll. 25 years later, I’m editor in chief of a French music magazine, I had the chance to talk with Billy, James and Jimmy a couple of times, and I can never thank those guys enough for their music. I’m sure my life won’t be the same without them. Now I’m ready for the next 25 years with SP !

The only way is through.

Dereck Boston, MA, US

MCIS was the most important record of my teen years. I was 15 when it came out, just learning how to really play guitar, pushing myself in my creative life, and going through an absolutely awful family dynamic. I related to every song on this record wether through anger, love, or hormones. I recorded the Riv show to cassette and listened constantly. Traded tapes with other fans on tape trees through AOL. Dissected and analyzed song after song to its absolute minutae which is probably why I make records for a living myself. It also helped me identify and maintain my SELF through a physically and mentally abusive family situation, for that I will be forever grateful. I bought this shirt at the October 1996 show at the Rosemont Horizon. I wore it until it couldn’t be worn anymore and its been in storage since 1999. MCIS is one of the few records I can listen to now as an adult without cringing. Many of its themes still feel the same 25 years later. And now that its not just about the art but we know more about the process of the band and the engineers and producers behind the record – that makes it even more special. I don’t have anything else to say except I appreciate this records place in my life and the artistic effort that it took to bring it to life. <sp3

And my life was forever changed

Kara Tsukerman Atlanta, GA, US

This is going to sound crazy, but I discovered Smashing Pumpkins because I had a huge crush on Simon Rex and watched him on MTV every day after school. At the time I mainly listened to Paula Abdul, Maria Carey, Janet Jackson, etc. Simon played BWBW every single day and I slowly just because obsessed with it. I was 12 and it was like nothing I had ever heard and it made me feel a way that I had never felt. I didn’t convince my parents to buy me the album until January of 1996 and in the meantime I scoured AOL for all information I could find about SP. I spent hours in SP chatrooms, downloading MP3 files, and learning as much old material as I could. I will never forget when my parents bought MCIS for me and I listened all the way through. We were on vacation and I got it at some random music store in a mall and stayed in the hotel room with my Discman listening as much as I could.

I am no less of a fan 25 years later. There are so many things that happened because of MCIS. I fell in love with another SP fan and left my small hometown for him, I have made friendships that will last a lifetime because of SP, I have traveled all over the U.S. and even to Paris to see SP, and I feel like I am forever part of a special community of people who just get it. Thank you for making the soundtrack of my life and for making Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, my favorite art in the entire world.

We only come out at night!

Babs Mexico city, MX

I’ve never heard such music, i was running by when i stopped and asked my brother “Who are you playing?”… “The Smashing Pumpkins”…… I was teenager.

From that moment MCIS was the CD’s that i play over and over, learn lyrics… see every illustration on the booklets. I took Tonight, Tonight lyrics to fill in the blanks on my english class. I remember that the other classmates were wondering who i was playing since they hear pop music . lol

From that day, I knew i was different and i love it!

Stars like fireworks

Danny Smith Birmingham , GB

I booked a camel trek across a desert in Rajasthan while travelling in India. But it was well into the hot summer so out of season and I ended up riding alone with two guides. At the end of the first day we stayed in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The guides dragged the camp beds into the sand out and they sat up well into the night drinking, eating spiced peanuts, and talking. They tried to include me but none of us shared a language, but I was happy to share their warm laughter.

Then they got in a Land Rover that I never noticed was parked behind the cabin. And drove away leaving me with the peanuts and camels.

I reached for my phone and put on MCAIS

That night I lay on the camp bed, the cheap whisky taste still in my mouth and looked up to a sky I never thought possible. That far away from ambient light the sky was a firework display of stars. They don’t tell you how deep the night sky can be, so much so I started to get vertigo. And as the music swelled and dipped, it reached out into my chest laying everything I’d been hiding there out bare, breaking and fixing my heart a million times a song.

Alone in the desert, falling into the sky

Pinching Pennies

Will Gish Los Angeles, CA, US

I had the release date for Mellon Collie marked on my calendar, and set myself the mission of saving enough money by that date to buy the double cassette. I was 12 years old at the time. I raked a neighbor’s lawn for a few dollars, helped an old woman take out her trash for fifty cents, stole change from my parents’ change jar, and kept lunch money to save enough for the album.

When the album was released, my parents bought it for me as a suprise. I spent some of the money I had saved on an issue of Guitar World with Corgan and Iha on the cover. The weekend after the album came out, my family went on a road trip, and I spent the whole eight hour drive (both ways, so sixteen hours total in a weekend) listening to MCIS over and over again while reading and rereading the Guitar World interview. It became my favorite album very quickly, and still is, 25 years later.

Album of my life

Francesco Tamburrano IT

MCIF is the album of my life for many reasons. I listened it for the first time in 2001 when I was in high school. Immediately I felt that this was album of life. It guided me in countless moments, both those full of joy, both the sad ones. The beautiful and infinite melancholy that keep me and feel me alive has MCIS as soundtrack. Thank you guys for this music, it will walk with me always.

Drive to Heerlen with Hussi

Andreas Dahm Remscheid, DE

My friend Hussi (he died 2019) and I drove all two day to Heerlen/Netherland to buy Heroin when we heard the Maxi-CD of 1979.It was 1995 and after that we wait with fever for Mellon Collie.

Then we heard it first time and I thought what is this for a music? It took me away, it was the best I heard for so much years and yes I thought this is The Wall of the 90th.

Every time Hussi and I drove in car (every day,) we heard SM and SO OFTEN Mellon Collie!

Over years I buy the album ever and ever again…

Teenage Dreams

Carlo Bertone Rome, IT

In 1998 i was 13 and i fall in love with Ava Adore, so I rush to the record store to get Adore. Unfortunately i couldn’t afford it because i missed a few bucks so I go for the previous album: MCIS. It was love at first sight, I listened to both CDs on loop for a whole afternoon and something inside of me clicked. Now I’m 35, and here’s a picture of me and my girlfriend in Bologna for the 2018 tour. I proudly have the MCIS cover tattooed on my arm because Smashing Pumpkins are the only thing that I still love as I did when I was a teenager, and I know it’s forever.

MCIS made my parents SP fans

Kristen Philadelphia, PA, US

I was 14 in 1995. When the tracklist for MCIS was made public before the album release, I was so excited, I printed it out & asked my mom if she’d drive me to the mall on release day to get the CD (she said yes). My dad found the printout, saw the track title “Fuck You” and said there was no way I was getting the album because of the profanity. A huge fight ensued. Long story short: I got the album on release day. The following summer, my dad drove my friend & I an hour to Philadelphia to see our first Pumpkins show, on the MCIS tour. Even he couldn’t deny how good the album was, and how happy the music made me. Over the years, he has been to 3 SP shows with me! I also still catch him & my mom singing “despite all my rage…” when they think nobody can hear them!

Music of my youth: 90s kid

Jinky Balame Great Yarmouth, GB

In 1995, I was 15 and I kept myself to myself. Music was my confidante.

Smashing Pumpkins was my favourite band to listen to when I wanted to transcend to a diff dimension.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a double-album which was full of melodic, ethereal, trans music with a dash of electric guitars, drums and thick bass lines by D’arcy. Billy Corgan’s voice and his extraordinary songwriting skills helped me travel to cloud nine without drug consumption (I don’t do drugs. Never did. Never do. Never will.)

Young & Impressionable

Mike S. Colonia, NJ, US

The video for “Tonight, Tonight” captured my
imagination – hurtling in space and fighting space invaders while the jovial moon
watches overhead. I was only 11 and very impressionable. Though, even at that
age I knew it was special. To this day I cannot listen to that song without picturing
scenes from the video. I knew I had to own the album.

Since my brother worked at a local music store I asked him
to purchase me a copy. One morning I found it waiting for me at the foot of the
living room steps. I clutched the fatboy jewel case and inspected the contents and
waited to dive in after arriving home from school. That evening I was able to
unearth the music that would mark my soul forever. The first notes of the piano
perked up my ears. This is a rock album? I was too young to understand how
varied and nuanced an album could be. This was my coming of age. Its scope is broad
and yet every track is so focused. No detail is left to chance.

When I hear it now memories flood back to me of my youth.
Nostalgia drowns my thoughts more than any other musical recollection. It’s a
reminder of the awe-inspiring nature of music and why musicians dedicate their
lives to the cause. Reaching just one of us makes it all worth it. I am
evidence of that.

Smashing Pumpkins - Memories!