Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

BC is savvy enough to know (and has said as much) that the nostalgia factor of seeing the full original band was going to be massive, and it’s well documented that he’s been in contact with D’arcy and James for a year or more. So yes, I’m interested to know what conversations went on between BC and DW.

Big purple billboard in Times Square now: “THE IMPOSSIBLE IS POSSIBLE TONIGHT”

So, Corgan, hologram Prince, Jason Bonham and Victor Wooten?

what is so hard about Smashing Pumpkins bass parts?

Getting a permanent bassist, apparently.

They should at least try to get Melissa Auf Der Mar back if D’arcy is not in

Big purple billboard in Times Square now: “THE IMPOSSIBLE IS POSSIBLE TONIGHT”

Oh so they ARE releasing the final remasters.

(Yes I will harp on this point.)

Put me down as a skeptic about the whole 'D'arcy sucks at bass' narrative. I've never been to any of their shows but I've been listening to some of the real early live stuff on archive.org and she doesn't sound bad on any of them afaict

They should at least try to get Melissa Auf Der Mar back if D’arcy is not in

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Sunday, February 11, 2018 8:03 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Melissa is fantastic and they really should

Put me down as a skeptic about the whole 'D'arcy sucks at bass' narrative. I've never been to any of their shows but I've been listening to some of the real early live stuff on archive.org and she doesn't sound bad on any of them afaict

yeah Ive seen old live footage she seems fine. Billy always acts like Pumpkins is some crazy mind-blowing shit it's gonna
hilarious, and agreed about the sexism/Meg White factor

I'm sure the overwhelming reason Billy played in the studio was that he's an arrogant asshole

To be fair Butch Vig is the one that suggested he play their parts when they did Gish, only because they had limited time & money & Billy could do it quicker & James and D’arcy agreed.

Big purple billboard in Times Square now: “THE IMPOSSIBLE IS POSSIBLE TONIGHT”

Ugh. Big fan and all, but no need to hark back to bloody 1996. Do us all a favour and don't look back to 22 fucking years ago man.

again, to be fair, they took a pretty hardline stance against the past when they came back in 2007. it didn't work out. I expect this reunion will be more measured: they're working on a new record, it's not going to be a Pixies hit parade thing, but they won't be indignantly ignoring & tainting the past this time. besides, what's wrong with that lyric? is the classic SP heart any different?

"They" didn't come back in 2007 though: it was Billy's vanity project back then, and it is now. It's not the Pumpkins coming back together - D'Arcy's not even there.

"they won't be indignantly ignoring & tainting the past this time"

Yeah ok, here's hoping.

Classic SP is totally different. In every way imaginable. I'm ok with SP getting back together, but lets not kid ourselves: Billy gathering some people to do SP songs live is what's been happening for nearly two decades now. It is what it is; but an SP reunion, it is not.

it was Billy and Jimmy in 2007. call the Zeitgeist era whatever you want (i have some ideas), but it was anything but a vanity project. it was a sincere attempt to make a contemporary SP record. and yeah, we will see about this time, but now James is back. does that make the Machina tours illegitimate? i mean of course i agree, without the original four it'll never be the same, but i think this go round has a better chance of producing interesting results, in concert and on record.

Billy and Jimmy does not equal Smashing Pumpkins. Smashing Pumpkins = Billy, Jimmy, James, D'Arcy. Calling any other reincarnation a reunion is bollocks.

(i know we agree, not you I dig at, it's this commercial "reunion" idea that irks me: it's not right, especially if it's not a proper reunion. Which it isn't)

i'm just saying, the "reunion" in 2007 was Billy and Jimmy from the beginning. it wasn't Billy's vanity project or him ordering anyone around. it got to that place eventually, but at least they tried to come back with something new. as far as the commercial idea of a reunion and all that entails... that's show business. Billy knows and has said publicly that the band hasn't existed fully since 1996 (Arising tour aside, which was rough going for D'arcy). we'll see how they market it this time and what the angle is. I'm optimistic.

Casual fan at the very best, but I can't think of a single memorable SP bass part. Michael Anthony has more standout moments.

"Rhinoceros" is a bass-driven song. Arguably the massive riffs of "Quiet" are mostly bass (unless that's an octaver). "Hummer", "Soma", "Bullet WBW", "Ava Adore" have pretty great bass parts. The goth roots of the Pumpkins sound depend on big bass riffs, they even remastered Gish very early on to boost the bottom end.

Holy crap I dialed up Mellon Collie in writing that post, listening for the first time in years. "Here Is No Why" my god what a CRUSHING track.

yeah like I said above, you can count the number of notable bass lines and bass driven songs in SP's catalogue on 1 hand more or less: Rhinoceros, Bury Me, Hummer, Glass and the Ghost Children, I of the Mourning. what you're hearing on Quiet is Octaver / pitch shifted guitar, yeah.

Here is No Why has my favorite written guitar solo Billy's ever played

FB I get where you're coming from but I guess my loss of interest in SP's music coincides with D'Arcy's departure - they became less goth-rock and more hard-rock after Adore, and that thick bottom end was displaced by a midrange snarl which doesn't do much for me.

^wholly agree with this

Definitely Rhinoceros and Crush have great bass moments at least

I half-suspect, just with all the different moving parts in those SP songs, that Billy might actually be fleshing out a lot of the structures on the fly in the studio--at least from SD on--so I don't doubt that it would be easier for Billy just to record all the guitar and bass parts himself and then just to teach them to James & D'arcy during rehearsals, in their finalized forms

making D'arcy play roots and fifths all the time seems a more glaring example of Billy's egotism tbrr

Casual fan at the very best, but I can't think of a single memorable SP bass part.

I disagree - Gish is awash with good basslines. Bass plays the lead melody on Bury Me.

Well, musically speaking, when I think of the Smashing Pumpkins, I think first of Billy Corgan's voice/songwriting/guitar playing and then think of Jimmy Chamberlin's drumming. Those are the defining components of the band for me. I don't give anywhere as much thought to the contributions of Iha and D'arcy.

I stand by my Van Halen comparison. Yes there are bass parts, but damned if any of significance come to mind, and even if they did, Michael Anthony's playing is the last reason anyone is listening to those records.

they would be way worse records without his bass playing though. locking down "running with the devil" the way he does is EXACTLY the right decision. stable bedrock for the two wild off-the-chain performers. song would be a mess without that. i mean the way y'all are talking just describes what most rhythm sections do in rock music, right? like very few people would name the bass and rhythm guitar as the key aspect of most rock bands, but they do all kinds of work making the songs move and set a mood and become earworms that it's easy to attribute solely to the lead guitar riff or the vocal part when you're playing it back in your head.

So many of those early VH classic tunes are without multitracking on Eddie's part (guitar overdubs for solos only?) so Anthony frequently straying from the root would have been a mess

No, I get that, bass is important, that's why most bands have bass players. But they can also contribute so much more than "locking down." I think of Iron Maiden or Metallica with Cliff, or the Who/Beatles. And so on. It would be one thing if I said the bass playing in SP (or Van Halen) was *bad*. That would take you out of the song. It's just not notable or noteworthy or essential to the music. Like, I can't think of any memorable bass parts in Slayer songs, either.

Set the ray to jerry is driven by a bass riff and awesome drums.

Trying to think of good Def Leppard or Boston bass lines ...

I can't tell the full extent of the bass part on "Glynis":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsvtXg7fMY4

like there's definitely a bass playing the root, but i can't tell if the bass part is also following along with the riff on another string

making D'arcy play roots and fifths all the time seems a more glaring example of Billy's egotism tbrr

lmao

i mean of all the infinite examples of Billy being an asshole... this is wild

p4k reporting on that new interview with "BlastEcho" with "D'arcy"... the first and only time i've ever encountered this site is when they're talking to "D'arcy"

every great band is allowed to have one member who mostly coasts. in most bands it's the singer.

Seriously. I've seen lots of bands where the singer has just left or stood there and done nothing for a stretch. GNR, Tool, Oasis, Morrissey, the Who ...

again though, look at or listen to any Pumpkins show and the myth of D'arcy being a bad bassist will evaporate... this is just one example, & I'm posting it bc it wasn't circulating until v recently (only acoustic performance of Ruby ever)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75aYiJnEU2I

No one said bad. I don't think? the shows I saw her with were no good but it was not her fault.

which shows did you go to? any of the Rosemont Horizon gigs in October 1996?

I honestly can't remember! One was Lollapalooza '94, another ... was a club date?

Expanding on a previous statement D’arcy made to BlastEcho, D’arcy said that Corgan initially made a contract offer to her, Iha and Chamberlin, which was agreed upon by all parties. However, a month later D’arcy says Billy told her “well, that wasn’t a real offer.” It’s unclear whether or not the initial offer remains for Iha and Chamberlin, although D’arcy is under the impression it is.

An explanation as to why the offer was rescinded, too, remains unclear. Cryptically, she said she has an inkling but “that is a whole other can of worms and a big, ugly one! Another time.”

https://www.stereogum.com/1982667/darcy-wretzky-says-billy-corgan-rescinded-her-invitation-to-play-in-smashing-pumpkins-reunion/news/

i dunno maybe after playing music for decades she forgot how to play dead simple bass lines

I'm trying to picture Van Halen with a McCartney or Entwistle on bass and while YMMV, in my head it sounds like a total mess. Basically I don't think "has a lot of memorable bass parts" is a really good measure of whether a bassist was an important or hard-to-replace aspect of a band's sound. Especially since it's also so dependent on arrangements and composition - Kim Deal's bass part on Monkey Gone To Heaven is memorable despite not being very unique, because the soft/loud dynamics and the lopey pace of the verse vocal put it way way up front in the mix as the main thing tracking your way through that song. The Pumpkins' guitar-orchestra sound, like Boston's, isn't going to do that most of the time, so yeah, the Bullet With Butterfly Wings type songs are the count-on-one-hand exceptions. But that doesn't really tell us that D'Arcy didn't bring anything to the band on other songs.

But I know you know all this, JiC, and I don't mean to come onto a board full of heavy musical hitters and do a rehash of every "is Ringo a great drummer?" conversation ever. I think I'm mostly just talking myself into paying attention to the bass parts next time I put some Pumpkins on!

removing bookmark bc i hate this thread title that much

xpost Ha, no, I totally get you. But I'm not saying VH needed a better bassist. The *last* reason Michael Anthony made it as long as he did was for his bass playing. Reading their manager's book reaffirmed that he was kept on for his harmonies and for being an all-around good guy. As a bass player, he was absolutely replaceable. In a way that EVH (obviously.), AVH (debatable) and DLR (for sure) were not. In the Pumpkins, you need Billy (duh) and Chamberlin (for that classic sound), but D'Arcy and Iha were just there to take up space (in every sense). That said, given Corgan is a shredder and Chamberlin a virtuoso, and that the band essentially operated at its prime like a prog band (vs. VH's bar band boogie rock), they probably would not have been hurt by the presence of some bass wiz. Then again, they might have just ended up sounding like the Mars Volta or something.

Bouncing off your aside, btw, the Pixies example is apt. Kim's no virtuoso, but she was essential to the band's sound, as a player (simple or no, she found a way to stick out), as a singer and as a presence. Her ouster was probably the total flip side to D'Arcy's - Deal was competition, D'Arcy was distraction.

Iha was crucial to the classic band’s sound, and totally not replaceable as the last 11 years have shown. Also yeah, complicated bass playing would’ve made the Pumpkins’ already insane music cross over into, you called it, Mars Volta total prog territory.