Isn't this the guy that created Zwan, then tried going solo, and now that all that's failed he's trying to milk the name brand of "Smashing Pumpkins"?

Smashing Pumpkins bassist is girl on 'Siamese Dream' cover



Billy Corgan has revealed that the band’s bass player is one of the two girls pictured on the cover of Smashing Pumpkins' ‘Siamese Dream’ album.

Nicole Fiorentino, who is 31 years old now, would have been around 13 when the album was released in 1993.

She joined the Chicago band last year, but has only just revealed to Corgan that she was pictured on the cover of the album.

Corgan tweeted last night from Twitter.com/Billy: “Just found out the weirdest news: our bass player Nicole just admitted she is one of the girls on the cover of 'Siamese Dream'.”

He didn’t reveal which of the two girls pictured on the cover Fiorentino was.

He added that the reason he’d only just found out was that Fiorentino "said she didn't want us to know because she thought maybe we wouldn't let her be in the band".

Fiorentino is a former member of Spinnerette and Veruca Salt. She is Smashing Pumpkins’ fourth bass player, and second since they reformed.

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan slams thieves over brother's mugging

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan has slammed a gang of thieves who mugged and attacked his brother Jesse Anderson.

The frontman took to his Twitter page Twitter.com/billy after his sibling, who suffers from cerebral palsy and Tourette syndrome, had his iPod stolen by a woman on a CTA train in Chicago on Thursday (June 9). Anderson pursued the woman but was apparently struck in the face by one of three other men.

"My little brother Jesse was attacked and robbed by three men," Corgan wrote. "The bad guys picked the wrong kid to fuck with. He's OK, but if you want to send him some love."

Anderson, who was listening to Nelly Furtado when he was attacked, also spoke to a number of TV stations including ABC News about the incident. Watch footage of the report posted on Perezhilton.com by clicking below.

He said he was approached by a woman and three men in the early hours while he was travelling on the train to work. The woman then sat down beside him and stole his iPod. "I thought you know she just wanted to see my iPod but she wouldn't give it back, so I said, 'Give it back to me, give it back to me," he said.

He then chased after the group but was attacked.

Video: http://bit.ly/k3TEJY

Cops ask for help finding CTA robbery suspects
By Liam Ford

Tribune reporter

6:48 p.m. CDT, June 11, 2011
Police today asked for the public’s help identifying three people in surveillance photos who are believed to be suspects in the robbery Thursday of the brother of a famous Chicago musician.

The bulletin released this afternoon says Belmont Area detectives want to identify the three people in the photographs. They are three of the five people suspected of "recently" robbing a rider on the Red Line near the Chicago Avenue stop on the State Street subway.

The strong-arm robbery took place Thursday, according to police News Affairs.

The photos, which are low-resolution, show three young people. Two appear to be male, one thin or medium in build, wearing a white shirt, dark cap, olive or khaki shorts and white sneakers with a dark tongue or dark laces, the other apparently with a heavier build, long hair, possible facial hair and a dark shirt.

The third appears to be a female, wearing a red cap with the brim facing to the right, a red T-shirt and a red sports jersey with the word "Hollister" and four numbers, including "19" and "2" on the left side, as well as dark pants or shorts.

Detectives would not disclose the exact time of the robbery described in the information bulletin, but police did say later that the robbery in question was that of Jesse Andersen, brother of rock musician Billy Corgan, who was robbed about 4:30 a.m. on Thursday on the Red Line subway.

The photographs appear to match the descriptions given by Andersen of at least two and possibly three of his attackers, one a "tomboy" wearing a red baseball cap, another a young man in a white shirt. The exact color of the second male's dark shirt is not easily discernible in the surveillance photograph, but Andersen described a teen who was wearing a navy blue shirt as being among his attackers.

Police at the time of the attack described Andersen's assailants as between 15 and 25 years old, four of them males and one female.

Police asked anyone with information about the three people shown in the photographs to call Belmont Area detectives at 312-744-8263.

lford@tribune.com

"My little brother Jesse was attacked and robbed by three men," Corgan wrote. "The bad guys picked the wrong kid to fuck with.

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan starts his own pro wrestling company

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has started his own professional wrestling company.

The singer, whose band are currently gearing up for the release of their new studio album 'Oceania', has called the firm Resistance Pro and has said he will be operating as 'creative director'.

Corgan's role will be to create 'story lines' for the wrestling events and to be the public face of the organisation. His company will host its first event on November 25 at Chicago's Excalibur Club. The event is called 'Black Friday'.

Asked about the company, he told Fox News Chicago:


Smashing Pumpkins tour the UK in November, playing a total of seven shows, including two nights at London's O2 Academy Brixton.

....

So what's he going to do? Write a whiney song about them? Rant about them on stage?

Billy Corgan on Touring with Marilyn Manson and Battling Nostalgia

Billy Corgan and Marilyn Manson have been close friends since the late Nineties, give or take a rift along the way. And on July 7th, Manson and Smashing Pumpkins will kick off a month-long co-headlining tour in California. "If you get two friends that have known each other this long, with the crazy journey that we've both had, I think it makes for an interesting spectacle," says Corgan.

The Pumpkins frontman called RS to talk about the End Times tour, why he hates nostalgia, and what it takes to be a rock & roll survivor. "This summer, it will be me and Manson onstage," he says. "Think of everything that has been written about him, and think of everything that has been written about me. At the end of the day, you'll have two friends onstage singing songs that they love and that they wrote and that they care for. And when the show is over, me and him are going to hang out and laugh and do shit that friends do. To me, that's what it's really about. Everything else is a bunch of drama."

Read on for a lightly edited transcript of our thoroughly illuminating, occasionally contentious, always entertaining conversation.

Are you approaching your set lists any differently on this tour than in the past? Which eras of the band are you emphasizing?
Oh, I don't look at it like that. I just try to pick the best songs for the show. Manson will have a somewhat heavier crowd, so I'm sure that we will play heavier than we normally play. But I'm loathe to talk about my set list, because when I do, no one is ever satisfied. No matter what I play, someone is always mad. And yet I consistently get good reviews over the past three or four years! I've been playing really good sets. The public perception versus the reality doesn't bear witness.

Will you stick to one set list over the course of the month, or switch things up as you go along?
I think it's really difficult these days to switch sets up, because the audience is so ADD. It's like a Broadway show. You figure out your best foot forward. If you have to tweak it, you tweak it, but it's not like the old days when you could change the set list every night and anything could happen. The audience doesn't want it. I've learned that lesson. I'm more than happy to play a really high-quality set that I feel confident in. It's not the rock & roll I grew up on, but that's your generation, not mine.

What do you mean?
Well, I assume you are younger than I am? [Laughs] I'm 48 years old. I'm assuming that you're somewhere in your twenties or early thirties? So that's what I'm saying. It's your generation versus mine. The generation that followed mine was more pop-driven, more spectacle-driven, more MTV-moment-driven, and it's gotten worse as it's gone on. You can fight that and be a lone soldier, or you can figure out how to be the best that you can be under a particular set of circumstances. I've said publicly many times, I am not about fighting the audience anymore. Those days are over.

Both you and Manson became stars in the Nineties. Do you think there's a risk of people seeing this as a nostalgia tour?
Anybody who calls us a nostalgia show does not know what the fuck they are talking about. Seriously. I mean, he has just released one of the best albums of his career, and my last two albums were super highly reviewed and well received, so they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.

Sure, but at least some portion of the audience is going to be there to hear the records they liked 15 or 20 years ago. How do you feel about that?
I don't care. That's a nostalgia-sentimentality-based business that I am not a part of. It's like saying because one movie company makes cartoons and another company makes movies, I'm in the cartoon business. I feel like people lump me into the cartoon business, and I don't want to be in the cartoon business. It's very simple: You've got two great artists, two great histories, still making great music. We are going to go out and kick ass as good or better than somebody in their twenties or thirties or whatever. Either believe it or don't – but if you don't, then you will miss something that you rarely see, which in this case will be three hours of really powerful music. I mean, there is a point where you can't apologize for that, or you can't really explain it to someone who's got their head up their ass with a selfie stick.

That's quite an image.
Thank you. I am a published poet. [Laughs]

You were quoted a few months ago saying the next Smashing Pumpkins album might be the last one. Is that still how you feel?
Never said that. I have been asked about it maybe 40 times since, and I have said the same thing every time. Never said it. All I was saying was that if these albums that I am doing – I'm now on the second of the two – don't go where I need them to go, then I would take the Smashing Pumpkins in a different direction, i.e., I would maybe make four-hour albums, or I would make one song at a time again. But it doesn't fly in the social-media era, because all it does is become clickbait. No one will actually read what you said. No one will actually read the subtext of your quote. I'm waking up and realizing that I don't want to be clickbait anymore. Here's a good headline: "Billy Corgan Slams Himself." [Laughs.] "Billy Corgan Rips Himself."

So just to be totally clear, as far as you're concerned Smashing Pumpkins are alive and well for the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think the new album we're making is very exciting. It's very futuristic. I've basically said that Smashing Pumpkins dies when I die, and maybe not even then. Maybe my niece will take over the franchise when I'm dead. Kiss is already talking about continuing past Gene and Paul, so why not the Smashing Pumpkins beyond William Patrick Corgan? We live in an era when everything is alive and everything is dead at the same time. If you are a fan of a particular band that's older, you can go on YouTube and relive their past as much as you want to. You don't have to go see them live. You don't have to listen to their new music. And then you have fans that are really not connected to, in my case, the Nineties. They know the Nineties music, sort of, but it's not their music. We are dealing with a conflux of so many different audiences coming from so many different directions now.

Another quote that's been widely circulated was when you said at a show that you wanted to be called William, not Billy. I have a feeling you might want to correct the record on that. Do you?
Well, there's another one. My name is actually William. I was born William. That's my birth certificate name. And so all I have been doing in my private life is that I've been asking people to call me William, because at some point Billy just feels weird. It's sort of a young man's name. I feel more like a William than a Bill or a Billy. I see Billy as a professional name, and William as my real name – much like Axl Rose is not Axl Rose's real name. His real name is William as far as I know. Again, it's clickbait stuff. I said to people jokingly, "By the way, you should call me William." It's a joke! Some people call me William, some people call me Billy, and I respond to both. But again, clickbait somehow turns it into me being dramatic because I asked people to call me by my name. [Laughs]

Smashing Pumpkins will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year. Is that something you care about?
It's a really difficult thing to get into, because the politics are really rich there. I'm a fan of Deep Purple. I'm a fan of Cheap Trick. Both of those bands belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, yet they are not in there. So is it a meritocracy or is it a political thing or is it that somebody pissed somebody off along the way? I don't know. Kiss and Black Sabbath finally got in. I certainly think that we have earned our place among the great bands, and I think that the longevity of the music and the fact that we are still out playing at a high level – that's what rock & roll is supposed to be about, you know? I feel like a day would come where it would make sense, but do I trust that it's going to happen when it is supposed to happen? Do I trust it's going to happen while I am alive? I don't live like that. I've been disappointed too many times to think that rock & roll is fair. No disrespect, but half the questions we're talking about are clickbait questions that are not about music, that are about me being a drama queen or not. For me, it's like, what does it all mean? That's why Manson is such a great artist. It's because – obviously, I'm in wrestling – he works the crowd. He finds those things that are uncomfortable or make them question their own sanity. I'm almost the complete opposite. I make myself a different kind of target.

It's interesting that you mention wrestling. Is there an element of that that you bring to your own performances now?
I've been doing it for 20 years. People are just not wise enough to understand that they're being, as we say in wrestling, worked. My public image is based on a series of things that I have done as a performance artist to convince people that I'm somebody that I am not. I've done it for so long and so well that people actually think I'm that person – so then I am asked in my current reality to answer to something that I did as an artist with the idea that somehow I was a real person who didn't have the sentient intelligence to know that I was being ridiculous.

Does that get tiring, having people expect you to play that persona?
It gets tiring when people don't realize that it is a persona. Just follow my logic, OK? I don't know you. Maybe you're a fan, maybe you're not. It really doesn't matter. You might have seen a headline, you might have seen a quote where I was having a bad day and I told somebody to fuck off. That's reality, whether I want it to be or not. And I could sit here all day and get into statistics and accomplishments, and give you a very sensible conversation about how the audience at times isn't very bright or sophisticated enough to even understand that performers are performers. That's what makes them really good at what they do, because they can turn it on and turn it off. And usually the ones who can't turn it off are the ones who die young. So they are not around to be asked questions about nostalgia, because they're dead. Manson and I have survived. We have survived trends, we've survived personal attacks, we have survived our own insanity. How is that possible? There must be a level of consciousness within us that separates the person inside from the performance artist.

Smashing Pumpkins Explain D'arcy Absence Ahead of Rumored Reunion

Two days before the Smashing Pumpkins are rumored to announce the long-awaited reunion of three-quarters of their classic lineup, the band issued a statement explaining why the fourth key member won't be taking part.

"In reuniting The Smashing Pumpkins, the band's dedication remains to its fans and its music. To that, James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin, and William Corgan haven't played a show with D'arcy Wretzky for over 18 years. But it's not for a lack of trying," the band said in a statement Monday.

"For despite reports, Ms. Wretzky has repeatedly been invited out to play with the group, participate in demo sessions, or at the very least, meet face-to-face, and in each and every instance she always deferred. We wish her all the best, and look forward to reconnecting with you all very soon."

The statement follows comments the bassist allegedly made to music site Blast Echo where she largely blamed Corgan for her exclusion from the reunion, which would have marked the first time Smashing Pumpkins' classic lineup performed together since April 1999.

Additionally, Wretzky claimed that Corgan offered her a contract to rejoin the Smashing Pumpkins, only to rescind the offer. "My apologies to all of the Smashing Pumpkins fans out there who are excited about this oncoming reunion tour of the original members of the band. I know this is a huge disappointment for me, as well, but it’s not going to happen," Wretzky told Blast Echo in late January. "I only just found about yesterday that the band has decided to go with a different bass player."

Attempts to reach Wretzky for comment on the situation were unsuccessful. On a Facebook page reportedly connected to Wretzky, the bassist further discussed the issue with disappointed fans, adding "I was really looking forward to it-probably more than all the guys combined."

Even though the Smashing Pumpkins have not yet officially announced their reunion – that is likely coming Thursday when a countdown clock on the band's website hits zeroes – Corgan has been pretty open about the band's plans on Instagram, revealing that he, Iha and Chamberlin have been working in a Los Angeles studio with producer Rick Rubin, who produced Corgan's 2017 solo LP Ogilala.

The upcoming album would be the first Smashing Pumpkins LP to feature Iha since 2000's Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, although Wretzky tempered expectations when she told fans that Iha only appeared on one of the songs Rubin produced.

Smashing Pumpkins Plot Reunion Tour Culling From First Five Albums



Three-fourths of the Smashing Pumpkins' classic lineup will reunite for a North American tour this summer. The trek marks Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin's first tour together since 2000, though the band's original bassist D'Arcy Wretzky will not join the trio.

The Shiny and Oh So Bright tour starts July 12th at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona and wraps September 7th at the Ford Idaho Center in Boise, Idaho. Tickets go on sale February 23rd at 10 a.m. local time with complete information available on the Smashing Pumpkins' website.

The tour notably coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Smashing Pumpkins' formation. During the tour, the band will exclusively play songs off their first five albums: 1991's Gish, 1993's Siamese Dream, 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1998's Adore and 2000's Machina.

"This show and staging will be unlike any we've ever done, and will feature a set unlike any we've ever played," Corgan said. "For if this is a chance at a new beginning, we plan on ushering it in with a real bang."

The official tour announcement comes after a lengthy buildup that included plenty of open secrets and in-fighting. Corgan first teased the reunion on Instagram in January, saying he was in the studio with Iha, Chamberlin and producer Rick Rubin. Not long after, when a countdown clock started ticking away on the Pumpkins' website, Wretzky gave an interview with the music site Blast Echo in which she blamed Corgan for excluding her from the reunion (the full Smashing Pumpkins classic lineup hasn't performed together since April 1999).

The interview prompted the Smashing Pumpkins to release a statement before officially announcing a reunion in which they claimed they'd invited Wretzky to partake in the reunion in various ways. "For despite reports, Ms. Wretzky has repeatedly been invited out to play with the group, participate in demo sessions, or at the very least, meet face-to-face, and in each and every instance she always deferred. We wish her all the best, and look forward to reconnecting with you all very soon."

In a follow-up interview with Alternative Nation, Wretzky claimed that Corgan had never intended to hire her full-time and had instead enlisted Jack Bates, the son of New Order's Peter Hook, to play bass. Instead, she said, Corgan planned on her making special appearances, similar to Steven Adler's sporadic cameos during Guns N' Roses' recent reunion dates. "The fucking nerve," Wretzky said, "and then for him to come back and say, 'Well, we haven't seen you in this long, and you haven’t done this, and you couldn’t even make it to this. Everyone has shown up, and you didn’t?’ How could I, I didn't even know you were there."

The band announced the Shiny and Oh So Bright tour with a short video soundtracked to the group’s hit, “Today.” In the clip, two grave angels – looking like grown-up versions of the cherubs on the Siamese Dream cover – torch a Smashing Pumpkins heart logo and watch as it burned.

Smashing Pumpkins Tour Dates
July 12 – Glendale, AZ @ Gila River Arena
July 14 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Chesapeake Energy Arena
July 16 – Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center
July 17 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
July 18 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
July 20 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
July 21 – Louisville, KY @ KFC Yum! Center
July 22 – Atlanta, GA @ Infinite Energy Aerna
July 24 – Miami, FL @ American Airlines Arena
July 25 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
July 27 – Baltimore, MD @ Royal Farms Arena
July 28 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
July 29 – Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
July 31 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
August 1 – New York City, NY @ Madison Square Garden
August 4 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena
August 5 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
August 7 – Montreal, QC @ Centre Bell
August 8 – Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
August 11 – Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center
August 13 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
August 16 – Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
August 17 – Indianapolis, IN @ Bankers Life Fieldhouse
August 19 – St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
August 20 – Omaha, NE @ CenturyLink Center
August 21 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Denny Sanford Premier Center
August 24 – Seattle, WA @ Key Arena
August 25 – Portland, OR @ Moda Center
August 27 – Oakland, CA @ Oracle Arena
August 28 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
August 30 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
September 1 – San Diego, CA @ Viejas Arena
September 2 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
September 4 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Smart Home Arena
September 5 – Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center
September 7 – Boise, ID @ Ford Idaho Center