The Smashing Pumpkins
September 5th, 2018
Pepsi Center – Denver, Colorado
Words by: Tyler Hypnarowski
Photos By: Bruce Moore
If you wanted hits, you probably left happy. If you wanted deep cuts, you probably left happy. If you wanted to get home before midnight on a Wednesday night, you might have been out of luck there. The Smashing Pumpkins brought their monster 3+ hour, 31 song set to Denver’s Pepsi Center as they entered the final few shows of their two-month long Shiny & Oh So Bright Tour. Nearly 40 shows in, and the Pumpkins, now reunited with original members guitarist/singer Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, showed no signs of fatigue as they ran up and down their 30 year catalog. With an impressive lighting rig and a show choreographed almost to the second, Corgan wasn’t joking earlier in the year when he said that this would be the group’s biggest undertaking since the 1995-96 Mellon Collie & Infinite The Sadness Tour.
The show would begin not with one of their heavy rockers like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” or “Cherub Rock” (both would come later), but with rather “Disarm”, the softer smash hit from 1993’s Siamese Dream. As Corgan strummed an acoustic guitar, childhood photos of the frontman scribbled with words like “Broken Boy” and “Christ Child” were projected on massive screens behind him. Even as this tour was hyped as a “reunion” tour, Corgan continued to assert himself as being synonymous with the Smashing Pumpkins, with his face continually to appearing in various formats on screens throughout the evening.
In spite of that, his bandmates were still able to shine and did so often. After being away from the band nearly two decades, James Iha showed just how much the Pumpkins have missed him. Corgan has brought aboard some talented guitarists in his absence over the years including Jeff Schroeder, who stuck around as third guitarist on this tour, but seeing Iha play songs such as “Zero”, “Stand Inside Your Love” or the ultra melancholy “Mayonaise”, the difference was evident. Iha adds a certain level of authenticity to the band that has been missing since their 2000 split, and onstage it appeared him and Corgan were getting along great.
As you’d expect at a Smashing Pumpkins show, the drums were upfront in the mix right up there with guitars, giving Jimmy Chamberlin the chance to showcase why his name is often tossed around discussing top drummers in rock. “Tonight, Tonight”, “Hummer”, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”…The list goes on for songs that simply would’ve had a much different feel had anyone other than Chamberlin been playing drums on them. After touring with the band on and off for much of the last 10 years including all of the last 3, it seems Chamberlin is in it for the long haul from here. But in Pumpkin Land and the unpredictability of Billy Corgan, anything is possible.
To round out the show, the evening included a handful of covers including David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Stairway, while perhaps overplayed on the radio as James Iha later in the show joked, is a complicated song to pull off live. With Corgan on piano and collaborator Katie Cole on organ, the song built up very nicely as Schroeder and Iha shared Jimmy Page licks to the song’s peak. Speaking of complex songs, the band also nailed “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans”, the 9+ minute epic from their multi platinum 1995 album Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness.
The evening slowed down a few times as well, often with those aforementioned deep cuts. The back-to-back pairing of “For Martha” and “To Sheila”, two gems from 1998’s Adore was an example of a nice change of pace along with tunes such as “Thirty-Three”, “Blew Away” and their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”. The Smashing Pumpkins sound can in part be summed up with the contrasting dynamic between loud distortion and softer melodies, and their Shiny & Oh So Bright setlist was able to capture that on a macro level by performing songs from both ends of the band’s spectrum.
The set also concluded with an encore of “Solara” and “Baby Mine”. The former being the band’s new hard-hitting single, the only post-2000 song performed all night, and the latter being a Betty Noyes cover. Yes, the 1941 song from Disney’s Dumbo movie. After 3 hours of big guitars and crashing drums, it was a surprisingly pleasant way to cap off the night.
It would have been easy for the Pumpkins to take a cautious approach and play 14-15 song shows, especially given the new lineup change. They quite literally doubled down on that and put on a theatrical 3 hour rock and roll extravaganza that exemplified exactly why they will go down as one of the greatest bands of their era. The energy was certainly there, as was inspired playing. As long as things can stay a-ok backstage, the future for the Smashing Pumpkins for 2019 and beyond looks, well, Shiny & Oh So Bright. But as Billy sang in “Today”, you “can’t live for tomorrow, tomorrow is much too long…”
Special thank you to Bruce Moore for the photo contributions.
