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EXPLAINED: 2 - The Real Truth

“Billy said, ‘I've never played a high-gain amp that I like.’ It was a tall order”: How a Smashing Pumpkins superfan made the only amp Billy Corgan has ever truly loved

Brian Carstens spent 30 years obsessing over Corgan’s guitar tone. Then he ended up making amps for his hero – not to mention John Fogerty, Tool and Misha Mansoor

Guitar World

"Look at the bands that are out there now, crap like Radiohead. You can't tell us that we don't deserve to be more than that." On the eve of the release of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins wanted to take on the world

"Everyone keeps telling us how pretentious this album is without even hearing it"

Louder

“I wanted a bicycle for Christmas, and they gave me a guitar. It pissed me off”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has played with everyone from Steely Dan to Dolly Parton – but he didn’t even want to be a guitar player

Baxter would go on to become a bona fide guitar great, but his life might have turned out differently had he got his wish...

Guitar World

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Girls in bands: two 90s rock icons on romance, ruthlessness and boring men

In the 1990s, Melissa Auf der Maur played bass in two of the decade’s most notable rock bands: Hole and Smashing Pumpkins.

The Conversation

"A masterpiece, and yet not the band's finest hour." Every Smashing Pumpkins album ranked from worst to best

The collected studio works of Billy Corgan and company rated and ranked, from the so-so to the smashing

Louder

“I would get up in the middle of the night, play it in the middle of the night, in the dark, no light”: Billy Corgan trained himself to play in pitch black

Corgan reveals the unconventional approach he took to learn the instrument

Guitar World

Roger Waters blasts back at Disturbed frontman David Draiman after being accused of ‘massive betrayal’ to ‘Jews everywhere’

In an escalation of a public row over the pair’s opposing stances on the Israel–Palestine conflict, Roger Waters has hit back at Disturbed frontman David Draiman after being accused of a “massive betrayal” to “Jews everywhere”.

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“Is it cool if I bring some rock royalty on the stage right now?”: Billy Corgan suffers mic malfunction as he makes his first ever appearance at Coachella alongside Sombr to sing a Smashing Pumpkins classic

You wait 30 years to sing one of your biggest hits in the desert, and then this happens

MusicRadar

“The two things I remember are the cool guitar stuff… and this never-ending scream”: Billy Corgan on the first time he met Courtney Love and witnessed Hole live

After meeting at a Chicago venue in 1991, the two artists and their respective bands were interlinked for decades to come

Guitar World

Courtney Love was 'angry' over Melissa Auf der Maur quitting Hole to join Smashing Pumpkins

Former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur has recalled Courtney Love's reaction to her joining The Smashing Pumpkins.

BANG Premier

"They told me I was insane – things like 'career suicide' and all that stuff was thrown around." The drama behind the recording of Smashing Pumpkins' era-defining, bombastic masterpiece

Thirty years after its release, Billy Corgan looks back at the making of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

Louder

"By writing obsessively in my diary I was admitting, This is madness, you are in danger, be careful." Hole, Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur on surviving the '90s, love, loss, and her brilliant memoir Even The Good Girls Will Cry

"There was a lot of pain from all the death and drugs and corporate destruction"

Louder

The beauty and brutality of '90s rock

"Even the Good Girls Will Cry" recounts the era's mythmaking and how the former Hole bassist managed to survive it

Salon

"I felt like an absurd grunge Cinderella, who’d found herself with VIP access to the ball." Melissa Auf der Maur's '90s rock memoir Even The Good Girls Will Cry is frank, fearless and fabulously revelatory

You won't read a better '90s music biography than former Hole / Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir

Louder

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The Independent UK

Hole’s Melissa Auf der Maur: ‘Courtney Love is a maniac and a hero – and yes, you can be both’

INTERVIEW: The bassist for the rock band Hole has written a tender, dishy and wildly funny new memoir about her time in a group beset by tragedy and chaos. She speaks to Adam White about beauty, trauma, her inevitable romance with Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, and her determination to reframe Courtney…

Guitar World

“Living in the shadow of my grunge parents, Courtney and Billy… it was a complex and exhausting shadow to come out from under”: Melissa Auf der Maur on joining Hole amidst tragedy and her “Master’s in Music” with the Smashing Pumpkins

In her love letter to the ’90s – the last analog decade – the Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist shares how she fell in love with the low-end and became an integral part of the noise-making generation

Louder

"I threw my guitar off, dove into the crowd, and began strangling him to the ground. I remember the look of terror in his eyes." The night that Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan met his future bandmate, and future Hole bassist, Melissa Auf der Maur

The night that fate brought two alt. rock icons together

Guitar World

“I threw my guitar off mid strum, dove into the crowd and began strangling him to the ground”: Billy Corgan on the first time he met future Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur

The pair reflect on how a heckler at an early Pumpkins gig led to a decades-long friendship

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Guitar World

“I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my God, it changed my level of musicianship forever”: Melissa Auf der Maur on what she learned from playing with Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins

Auf der Maur joined the Pumpkins in October 1999 following a five-year stint with Hole

Guitar World

“Ed was under the same pressure we all were. You can play your old gear, but it sounds old”: Billy Corgan on what drives guitar heroes to change their tone – and how it led him to package his sound in a pedal

The Smashing Pumpkins guitar icon reflects on a tonal journey four decades in the making, what pushes him to make signature gear like the new Laney Supergrace affordable, and why he’s the most excited he’s been to make a guitar album in 25 years

MusicRadar

“MTV in 1997 or 1998, suddenly they decided rock was out - it was replaced by rap… People were waving guns. Some people assert the CIA was involved... above my pay grade, but I saw it happen”: Billy Corgan says rock was “dialled down” in the late ’90s

He says rock stars don’t have “a voice in the culture”. Er...

Guitar World

“My dad said, ‘What happened to you?’ In six months I’d gone from a college-looking kid to looking like a real rock star”: From inventing the Quad Guitar to fast times with Yngwie, Michael Angelo Batio has stories for days – and no regrets

Determined to be a star from age 10, his highlights include seeing Yngwie Malmsteen's first US show, joining Manowar, being saved from a stage fail by Billy Corgan, and inventing the double guitar, Quad Guitar, and over 20 signature models

Guitar World

“Tony said, ‘Hey, you’re singing flat.’ My dad got really pissed off”: Jack Osbourne says a heated moment during soundcheck before Black Sabbath’s farewell show revealed everything about Tony Iommi and Ozzy’s relationship

Jack Osbourne says everyone needs a friend like Iommi was to Ozzy

Guitar World

"There’s clarity where you want it, and a glorious wall of noise when you need it": Laney Black Country Customs Billy Corgan Supergrace Loudpedal review

Laney distills Billy Corgan's legendary rig into a pedalboard-friendly amp that goes way beyond Smashing Pumpkins tones

Metal Hammer

"Breaking the Law is a revolution song." Watch Rob Halford discuss conflict, rioting and rage in trailer for forthcoming documentary The Ballad of Judas Priest, starring Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Kirk Hammett and more

"You cannot cage this music, you cannot put this music behind bars"

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