Smashing Pumpkins
If All Goes Wrong
Concert/Interview DVD
Coming Home Media
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Way back when, in the early 90s, one of the biggest bands around was the Smashing Pumpkins. Not because they were publicity whores or that they sold themselves out to their A & R guy or anything like that: they were famous because they did their own thing, Billy Corgan wrote all the songs, he was the driving force and the so-called “needs” of the label took a back seat. After their debut Gish, the Pumpkins’ put out one of the all-time best albums: Siamese Dream, an album that was pure mind-blowingly great innovative stuff. In fact, the radio was all over this album, or at least all over one particular song: “Today”, which was played so much, in fact overplayed, that a lot of people, I’m sure, got really sick of hearing it. “Disarm” was another popular, or rather, radio-popular, “hit”. But there are a lot of great songs on that CD. Actually, it’s best heard from beginning to end, since every song is awesome and the whole album has a kind of continuity that is cleverly put together by producers Butch Vig and Billy Corgan.
After that high point, they rested on their laurels and the result of that was the way-too self-indulgent Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double-CD that was filled up with songs, but the problem was that most of the songs were not that great. They were all right, not cringingly bad, but it was filled with mediocrity. This was evidenced best by the radio’s continuous playing of “1979”, a personal song, but a hastily-written song, which was one of the problems of the whole album: the songs just seem to be thrown together and not given much afterthought. A song needs to develop and be self-edited, especially if you are sort of a perfectionist.
The next couple albums were put out without Jimmy Chamberlain, who was struggling with heroin and, after getting kicked out of the band, looking for work, I imagine, or at least a way to get dope. He got kicked out of the band after his addiction made the headlines when one of his dope-shooting buddies overdosed and died, causing some legal troubles. I don’t know what became of the thing with the dead dope-shooter, but I don’t think Jimmy should’ve been held responsible, especially if the guy OD’d and it was his own fault, you know? I know that he got busted for possession. In the interim Jimmy’s replacement was an electronic drum machine.
He got clean, rested up and just in time for what turned out to be the band’s swan song, Machina: The Machines of God, was back in the drummers seat. Then the band broke up.
Billy tried his hand at a couple things, one of which was his new band called Zwan. They released one album, Mary, Queen of the Sea, which never really went anywhere, commercially, but which did have one single.
Then, deja vu: out of nowhere, the Smashing Pumpkins came again. This time the idea of re-forming and the actual re-forming took place in Paris. Unfortunately, only Jimmy joined with Billy (due to some still-lingering animosity?) and opting out were Darcy and James. Replacing them were two very capable musicians: Ginger Reyes, on bass and Jeff Schroeder on guitar; they also added the slot of keyboardist to the lineup and for the spot put in Lisa Harrington, who is a very capable pianist. She is more attuned to the art of the piano, classical playing and the like, but somehow, Billy found her out and got her to join his fun circus. The result of this re-forming is Zeitgeist, a terrific album which shows a freshness that is not warranted, a pleasant surprised of great proportion: the music on this album harkens back to their beginnings: more loud, raucous, intense and focused guitaring going on amongst the two guitarists – Corgan & Schroeder.
Recently released is a double-DVD on what happened when they got back to the US, called If All Goes Wrong one disc containing a documentary of what they did – instead of doing a US tour they did two week-long “residencies” in two cities: Asheville, NC and San Francisco. In North Carolina they played exclusively at a smallish (1000 or so) club called “The Super Bee” and in SF they played a bunch of shows at the world-famous “Fillmore Auditorium.” What If All Goes Wrong, disc one, shows is the experiences the band has at both clubs and in both cities. Most of the daytime, or at least the morning, depending on how early he gets up, for Billy Corgan is filled with the onerous work of writing songs. This is the sort of thing that was a bad formula for Mellon Collie… - writing songs too hastily, without any kind of reflection or development. The documentary has a lot of footage of Billy writing songs incessantly in his hotel rooms in both cities. They make it to one of the shows – usually within a day or two; debuting that night or the next night. A couple of the “instant songs” click: “Peace & Love”, a song Corgan wrote about what he saw around him and what he knew about San Francisco. That song had a couple of good hooks and the lyrics were put together well.
The documentary also contains some snippets of the shows they played in NC and CA. One thing that gets some focus is a make-up-as-you-go song that they do at the end of the shows, a song they named “Gossamer”. The song is a behemoth that is played differently on different nights, but always about 20 minutes to a half hour or longer. The longest they played it for was on one of the last shows: it clocked in at 37 + minutes. The documentary shows them playing most of that last version of “Gossamer” as well as parts of a few other incarnations of it. It would definitely be an exciting part of the show to see them playing that one. Unfortunately, it’s stated that that was the last time they played “Gossamer” live.
Also a part of the documentary is a few clips of an interview with Pete Townshend of all people. He pontificates on what he likes about the band and this and that and how when he heard about the idea of “Gossamer” just blew his mind. Billy says that Pete just couldn’t get his head around the idea of a structureless, blob of a space of time in which to just have a chaotic, pulsating jam session, which is kind of odd, given that old Pete was around in the heart of the long, improvised jam session in concerts – from rock to jazz – including and especially Miles and Coltrane as well as the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, Quicksilver Messenger as well as Hot Tuna, not to mention the really progressive bands like Can or Henry Cow and the virtuosity of others in the same vein, so why is Pete so addled and surprised about “Gossamer”? He ought to try and open up that sticky old memory and remember the way things were 30 years or more ago.
Disc two contains one of the shows they did at the Fillmore, in San Francisco, CA. This is a fantastic show to behold. They play all new material, no “Today”, no “Cherub Rock” or “Rhinoceros” – as Billy said during the documentary disc: this is all about going forward and not looking back. The only “old” song they do during this show is a smoking version of “Heavy Metal Machine”, from their last album before breaking up, Machina: The Machines of God. But the song fits right in with all the new stuff, which is great. It does have a forward-looking vibe to it, it isn’t a “greatest hits” show, which is refreshing right there; instead it’s a showcase for new material that is very well crafted, loud, creative and frenetic as they can get. The band is also very tight. They’re not burned out or going through the motions, but really getting into the music. Jeff Schroeder really keeps up with Billy on the guitar and is not a rhythm guitar player the same way James Iha wasn’t either, Schroeder and Corgan each play some lead stuff and each do a little rhythm guitar chunka-chunka-chunka-ing, but a lot of the time they are dueling guitars, each playing a melody that gels into that Smashing Pumpkins sound. The other great new members are Ginger Reyes, who, behind the loud guitars plays a thumping bass that really anchors the band and gives some bottom to the arpeggios going on and on. Newly enshrined keyboardist, Lisa Harrington gives a great performance on the keyboards, synths and also does an organ solo – a solo on a B-3 that goes on for several minutes and just kicks ass and seals her fate as a keyboardist nonpareil. Jimmy has these tree trunks for arms, like he’s been working out or doing a lot of heavy lifting lately, which helps him in his drumming: he is bombastic, all over the place as well as a great time-keeper during the entirety of the show. He plays on a kit that is big, quite elaborate, not just a snare, a tom-tom and a bass with two cymbals. This enables him to get lots of variations of beats.
Anyway, If All Goes Wrong gets it quite right when documenting the newly re-formed Smashing Pumpkins: it shows the band at their best, looking ahead and not dwelling at all on the past. There is a brief mention of James Iha at the start of disc one, but you mostly just hear about what is going on now. And the concert, whoa…the concert shows that Billy and Company still are a driving force in rock and roll and they are just as tight, if not better than they were 15 years ago, when Billy Corgan had trouble overcoming the loudness of the rest of the band and holding those higher notes, or maybe insecurity got the better of his vocal cords. But he was in fine form during the week of July 14, 2007. His microphone was turned up so as not to be drowned out by the supersonic guitar noise swirling about in the most melodious of styles. It will definitely show you that, yes, Billy Corgan is a bit self-indulgent, but when he talks to the documentary camera he comes across as a regular, neurotic, perfectionist type of guy, albeit a regular talented and creative guy who just wants to make really good music. There is one point where he admits that for the previous couple days that he’s afraid he’s “pushed the band too far” in demanding greatness from them and the fast pace in which he works, as is evident in the songs that he writes in his hotel rooms. But you know, the better of the material they played were the songs that had had time to develop, that had evolved during the recording process for Zeitgeist, an album that is so good it actually is surprising to hear such ingenuousness from a re-formed band. If All Goes Wrong shows the ups and downs and explanations for such happenings by the instigator for most of it – Billy Corgan, who fancies himself a misunderstood genius. Well, I don’t know about that, but I know he is worthy of reviews that laud his effort to put together a fabulous record and subsequent showcase of the music in a live setting. - KM