Australian Music wesbite Undercover.com.au has posted a video interview done by a USA based news service with Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, after their Rockwalk induction a few weeks ago. Not much new information came from this interview, nothing that we haven’t reported on before. From the video Billy talks about what they have planned for the rest of the year, here is a shortlist:
- Pre-Gish Demo’s later this year, maybe before Christmas
- DVD release of documentary on the Asheville Orange Peel and The Fillmore residency shows from mid-last year.
- A single from the “new” Smashing Pumpkins in the Fall (Australia’s Spring) around the 20th Anniversary tour
- A new album release for early next year
You can view the video on the Undercover.com.au website: Smashing Pumpkins Interview.
Transcript of interview
The Smashing Pumpkins, fresh off being inducted into Hollywood’s Rockwalk, show no signs of slowing down in 2008. After the much talked about reunion of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, who brought out new members Jeff Schroeder, Lisa Harriton and Ginger Reyes for a Smashing Pumpkins tour in 2007, the band are currently working on a documentary of their small club reunion tour. The small club reunion tour, which featured multiple night runs in Ashville, North Carolina and at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco, California, showcased The Smashing Pumpkins new lineup performing songs from their extensive catalog, songs from the band’s latest album ‘Zeitgeist’ and a certain amount of improvisation in each set list.
We caught up with Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain to get their thoughts on staying very busy in 2008.
“Right now we got a lot up in the air. We’re working on a DVD that’s sort of a documentary of our residency Fillmore shows. We’re going to put out hopefully some of our early demos for Christmas, probably put out a new Pumpkins single with new Pumpkins in the fall and then do a fall tour and then we start putting out a new Pumpkins album probably beginning next year.”
Billy Corgan also talked about the documentary capturing the bands surprise at some of the crowd reactions to the bands small club reunion tour.
“It was interesting because we didn’t do what you would’ve expected us to do coming back after seven years. We decided to play these small shows and also write new songs while we were doing it and play lots of different songs from our catalog and we were met head on by the new American audience that just basically wants greatest hits. So it was a very interesting dynamic. It kind of surprised us and the documentary we’re making actually sort of charts the progress of our sort of optimism to the shows going in to sort of being surprised and shocked by some of the reactions we were getting and then the songs that came out of that process. It’s not a bad thing because the world is changing and I think we were sort of blind sided a little bit by the world that we’re living in now. Which I think now we’re totally acclimated to. It doesn’t shock us at all but at the time was sort of surprising.”
The Smashing Pumpkins will mark their 20th anniversary this September with a special series of shows in New York, Los Angeles and their native Chicago. Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain say they want to make each show special and they plan to have special guests at each show. The Smashing Pumpkins are also currently suing Virgin Records over the labels use of the band’s music in a recent Pepsi ad. The lawsuit demands that Virgin pay the band the profits that were earned in the campaign, and asks for an injunction against using the Pumpkins’ name or music in the future.
