Memories | The Smashing Pumpkins

World Trade Centre

Kevin South Queensferry, GB

As a young angsty teenager my family took me to New York City.

My dad had been made redundant and soon my ooded brother and I would leave home so they decided to go all out and take a trip to the big apple.

Of course we went up the tallest building around, WTC2.

Later that day I wandered into a record store and bought the coolest looking album I saw.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

It was July 2001.

A little over a month later, well, you know history. Infinite sadness. But I fell in love with the album, and my special American edition.

I fell in love with music because of MCIS

Christina Storch Toronto, Ontario, CA

I remember the first time I saw the Bullet With Butterfly Wings video on TV – I was blown away and immediately called up my friend who I knew had Siamese Dream and demanded to know if that song was on the record. She told me that no, this was the new single. A short while later, the same friend took me with her to see the Winnipeg stop of the Infinite Sadness tour. My life was forever changed. I became ravenous for music. I started playing the bass guitar. I met new friends who also loved music as much as I did and we started a band. At my first gig ever, I wore my ZERO shirt.

A new beginning

Kaylee Christchurch , NZ

I moved to New Zealand when I was 12 and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. My first friend was a boy at school who introduced me to a band I’d never heard before and from the first time I heard 1979, I was hooked. MCIS is the soundtrack to my navigating a new country and growing up and I will always have a special place in my heart for the band that made me feel less alone.

Fond memories

Anita Columbus, GA, US

MCIS is what started it all for me when I was 10 years old. “I fear that I am ordinary just like everyone” was my mantra for many years. It was also the first album my dad ever let me play in the car, which was a huge deal back then. I distinctly remember him saying, “Well this is a lot heavier than I expected.” I still listen to MCIS regularly and have never grown tired of it.

Wasted youth

Jamie Raymond Kirkwood, US

My friends and I were basically “wasted youth” , Gen X high schoolers when this hit. I could recall dozens of memories, considering it was like the soundtrack to our teenage years but what stands out above all is the time my friends and I were at a friend’s house when she was complaining to her mom that she felt like a “rat in a cage”. We knew, we all knew and we all felt the same way. We just needed The Smashing Pumpkins to put it into words which obviously helped her (and all of us) describe our mutual angst.

“Drags from a death Rock boy”

Bryan Derry, IE

From the moment I first heard Siamese Dream, I knew SP were that special band I had been looking for. I located Gish and Pisces Iscariot soon followed, and I was obsessed. When I heard a double album was being recorded I was thrilled. Never before or since have I waited with such enthusiasm and excitement for an album. MCIS did not disappoint. What an album it is, too many great songs to pick a favourite! it brings back great memories from my late teenage years, and beyond. Even now as a 42 year old I still love it. I saw SP twice on that tour, travelling to Dublin both times. The band were amazing but one gig ended in tragedy unfortunately. I’ve listened to all SP music old and new, but MCIS will always be special to me.

Mutual Memories

Eden McKenna-Bateman Chicago, IL, US

I grew up listening to SP, my mom had introduced me to their music at a really young age. Along with hearing the story of how SP stayed at the house that her and her roommates rented in Wisconsin while recording their first album, Gish. The love of their music really only grew from there.

MCIS is an album full of emotions. I feel giddy when listening to Cupid De Locke, and cry like a baby when it comes to Stumbleine. This album is the background music to a countless amount of memories that I treasure. I have one in particular that stands out to me; my mom and I had a habit of going to the grocery store only after it had gotten dark, and whenever we did this, she would begin singing the intro to “We Only Come Out at Night.” Even though this was such a small blip in life, it means a lot to me and I will cherish it forever.

Thank you SP, for everything.

Discman

Theodore Atwood Phoenix, AZ, US

I wore out those blue and pink cd’s in my Discman, riding my bike around the neighborhood at night as a 14 year old. I will never forget the sublime peace I felt listening to that album, alone in the quiet comfort of my neighborhood shopping center, in the dark, my imagination learning to grow through the sound and messages of those songs. Perhaps I will never again feel so free or limitless, or perhaps this memory will remind me of how I can feel that way again.

Despite all my Rage

Monica Santa Ana, US

MCIS has provided me with comfort, courage, and strength in my adolescence and well into adulthood. I remember laying in my pitch black bedroom, staring at the ceiling, headphones on and Walkman by my side, riding the wave of emotions that is this album. 25 years later and I still get goosebumps. Thank you SP and Corgan for being there and helping to guide me through all life’s journey’s.

Lullabys for a pre-teen

Diana Magoveny Middletown, CT, US

I somehow got someone that I barely knew to loan me their MCIS CDs. I remember taking my sister’s boombox and playing the last 5 tracks of Twilight to Starlight on repeat over and over again, each night. It sort of lulled me to sleep, even at a young age I was full of anxiety and insomnia. I was mostly a loner and wanted nothing more than to connect with people. I felt this was my way of connecting by just listening to this music, I was not alone. While I loved the rest of the album, these last 5 songs were quirky, friendly, inviting, and accepting. I needed to hear this. I usually listen to songs and take their words literally. So I was able to imagine creatures coming to life, someone pining over someone in their window, someone promising to be my “one and only.” It took me out of this lonely deep depression I had started to fall into. Things were bad. I was a chaotic preteen who was scared. This broke me out of that habit. I slowly started hearing other people talk about the album and I was able to find something in common to talk about with others. I won’t go into detail, but they have become life long friends. I finally got a copy of MCIS of my own for Christmas. I still have that copy.

Aesthetic of my Heart

April Coxsackie, NY, US

Having long been SP fans, my younger brother and I waited with baited breath for MCIS to come out. The second we were able to purchase it, we listened to it together all the way through and were just blown away – still one of my favorite memories. Having been a Méliès and Edwardian fan myself, the look of the art was the most satisfying thing to behold, aside from the music. We never had much growing up, but when we could have it, we made sure it was SP. My brother also taught himself the guitar by studying Billy’s videos, a skill he has worked on ever since. I first got drunk when I was stuck in college and my mother took my siblings to the concert during this tour without me – pure devastation. SP and MCIS are life.

“Farewell and goodnight*

Maria pia coletti Benevento, IT

This album was relased the same year I was born.

My dad often say that when I was baby the only way to make me fall asleep was let me listen “farewell and Goodnight”. I loved this album before i was aware of myself!

This album reminds me of carefree moments made of laughter and fairy tales.

And even today, when i feel down, I listen this album. It makes me smile.

Every times I listen it, I come back that little girl with big naive eyes.

P. S. Ecuse me for the bad english.

Inspiration from the greatest band ever

Hudson New Braunfels , US

I had been listening to SP since my freshman year of high school, but I went to their reunion concert in the summer of 2018 and bought the Mellon Collie vinyl box. Every day after that i would loop it CONSTANTLY on our record player while looking at the pictures and artwork from the box, which completely transported me to another world it seemed. Jimmy’s drumming mixed with the harmonies and melodies and overall vibe of the whole album gave m a newe appreciation for music and for SP themselves. I constantly write songs and always use inspiration from SP, and mellon collie specifically, to use as the root of all of them. Thank you guys!

Blown Away

Jon M. New York, NY, US

I was 10. It was the fall of ‘95 and I snuck into the living room to catch cartoons. Flipped to MTV by accident and caught Bullet With Butterfly Wings. My jaw dropped and nothing was ever the same again. My mom’s friend got me MCIS as an early Christmas gift. They had a huge falling out, but that lady will always have a special place in my heart for gifting me my first CD ever.

And nothing was ever the same

Philip Mississauga, Ontario, CA

Up until I heard Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness, I was aware of the Pumpkins mainly through their singles like Today and Cherub Rock, but my appreciation of popular music and rock up until that point was mainly dictated by what the record industry decided was to be played on the radio or TV.

As soon as I heard the piano on MCIS, I was intrigued. Like every other Pumpkins album to follow, the opening salvo defied expectations for a band known for distortion-heavy guitar-driven tracks. This was unlike anything I had heard before from a band supposedly classified as “rock”.

And then the follow-up to the opening instrumental-only track was… the strings on Tonight, Tonight. I was hooked, and my idea of what a rock band could be and the kind of music they could write would be forever changed.

BWBW video :)

Martin S Beaumont, Alberta, CA

I remember being up late at night as usual watching Much Music and BWBW randomly came on. The video was so beautiful and stylish and the song is such a powerful one. The next day at school I got to tell the two people that cared about it. That confirmed (before Internet ‘for me’) there was an imminent album! The preview to another door in my little SP world. Thank you SP for the amazing journey and being there when I have no one else, always SP! Also I tried to color my hair like James’!!!

I forget about where it all began…

Edith Denton Bridlington, GB

I got Mellon Collie for my 18th birthday, a couple of years after it was released, and it struck a chord with me like no album had before, the themes contained echoed my life so accurately I couldn’t stop playing it. I spent months learning to play my favourite songs on guitar and still play them now well into my 30’s. It’s helped me through some dark times and finally seeing The Smashing Pumpkins in 2018 and Billy solo in 2019 was amazing to hear some MCIS played live. Thanks for the memories!

My favorite band became my OBSESSION… MCIS was my world.

John Vincent Kenosha, WI, US

I first discovered the band catching one of the local Chicago station’s late-night concert series shows when they aired the Siamese Dream show from the Aragon Ballroom. I instantly fell in love and bought SD and Gish on cd that weekend. Fast-forward to October 1995 and after wearing out SD, Gish AND Pisces Iscariot cds, I saved up more allowances to make the $20 for the double album (it was a fortune back then) because I was making sure I was the first one to listen to MY band’s new album as soon as it came out. (I asked the local record store owner about every detail of the release incessantly for months anxiously awaiting the day! He hated me but loved all my allowance money I spent in there on SP Merch…) Not only did I wait outside the record store to get the album immediately upon the store opening, but I opened it and started listening on my cd walkman before I even left the store. It was like I was on DMT before anyone even knew what DMT was! MCIS, WAS my drug of choice, not only because the whole world of sound that even the first six songs of From Dawn to Dusk put me on, literally changed my DNA, but it was a piece of art that I had never experienced before. I had listened to The Wall, Band of Gypsys, Sgt. Pepper’s, etc. and even those to my ears were not as dense, layered and powerful as the variety-rich epic that MCIS was. I was 15 years old and I had in my mind, my soul, and my hands, the greatest piece of music ever created. Little did I know how I would be made fun of, then applauded and everything else, for championing that “weird guy” with the strange band from Chicago (as many kids my age still thought of them as, while they were all mainstream hip hop and “punk” fans) until 1979 came out and it was them cool to like the Pumpkins. I learned all the songs on guitar and wore out many a discmans, as almost exactly a year from the MCIS release date was consumed by listening to 99% only Mellon Collie, until October 10th of 1996 when I saw the Pumpkins live for the first time at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, WI. I still have that bootleg, now in mp3 form. I can close my eyes and be in the arena, in my seat, and see the band and remember the rumble of the Silver fuck/Space Jam that seemed to go on forever. I started a band after the MCIS concert and we played, well, tried to play as much MCIS as possible. I was Zero, I was Glass and June and Ruby and Porcelina and I stumbleined along with the Pumpkins through the rest of my life because Mellon Collie changed the world.

A Friendship Cemented

Charles Horton Hillsville, VA, US

Didn’t know much about music as a kid, but I knew what I liked. One day my friend, Andrew, said “you gotta see this new video!” It was “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” on VHS. I obsessed over this new sound, this band, the album, the artwork, and the music! It was the soundtrack to my childhood and to a dear friendship. To this day, it remains my most favorite album of all-time.

Street Date

Lance Logan, Utah, US

An older friend of mine worked at Gray Whale CD in Logan, Utah and my buddy Dave and I would visit all the time and check out new and old music. It was our senior year in high school, we were weird, and didn’t care about nothing. We were both big fans from the Gish and Siamese Dream eras. I remember seeing the StreetDate magazine and asking if I could have the cover. We picked up our double CDs the day of the release and made a pact to listen all the way through that day and night and to meet up and talk about it the next day at school. If I remember right, we called each other after an hour with our heads fully exploded and our horizons expanded musically. There was so much to digest and process, what an experience. The next thing for us was to learn the songs and book our tickets for the show the next year in SLC. Long live The Smashing Pumpkins and “hail, hail rock and roll”!

Smashing Pumpkins - Memories!