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HISTORICAL FACTS: Smashing pumpkins - The Untold Story

“Billy has been an incredible mentor... He has such a vast knowledge of pedals”: Smashing Pumpkins’ Kiki Wong on how Billy Corgan led her down the stompbox rabbit hole

Kiki Wong discusses her pedalboard strategy for nailing classic Pumpkins tones and credits Corgan as a bona-fide guru of effects

Guitar World

"The multilayered, 10-dimensional record that would help imbue grunge with a panoramic afterburn." Smashing Pumpkins' debut album Gish mixes Zep rock grooves, acid folk, shoegaze and trippy psychedelic angst

Gish is celebrating its 35th birthday in shades of variously coloured vinyl

Louder

"He was drunk out of his mind and he asked me to make out with him." Billy Corgan on how he became a fan of The Cure...and the first time he met Robert Smith

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman and Cure leader went on to become fast friends

Louder

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Smashing Pumpkins up for Las Vegas Sphere Mellon Collie show

Billy Corgan says Smashing Pumpkins would jump at the chance to bring their operatic A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness production to the Las Vegas Sphere, even though they haven’t been asked yet.

BANG Premier

“If this isn’t a 10 out of 10 announcement, I don’t know what is”: The Smashing Pumpkins reunite with Siamese Dream producer for the first time in 32 years

Butch Vig was the man behind the board for Billy Corgan and co's landmark albums, and has been on production duties for their new single

Guitar World

"Four decades of hits and dark treasures." Smashing Pumpkins announce The Rats In The Cage tour

The tour celebrates the 30th anniversary of Smashing Pumpkins' multi-platinum album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

Louder

"This magical dream doesn’t have to end." Billy Corgan announces UK and European dates for A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, an orchestral and operatic rendering of The Smashing Pumpkins’ iconic 1995 album

"The success of translating Mellon Collie into operatic and classical form has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life"

Louder

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“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

Ghost’s Tobias Forge, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Judas Priest’s Rob Halford among 50 guests to appear on new album celebrating 50 years of German metal institution Accept

Members of Korn, The Smashing Pumpkins and Scorpions will also be on the 19-song set

Metal Hammer

"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

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

“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

"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

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"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

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

“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

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

Guitar World

“It was an extremely agile move. It was so smooth, it was like we had choreographed it”: Michael Angelo Batio on the time Billy Corgan spared his blushes during a Smashing Pumpkins guest spot

The double-neck guitar shred icon once shared the stage with Smashing Pumpkins during their Riot Fest headline slot

MusicRadar

“The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player”: Billy Corgan says virtuosic guitar solos mean nothing in the social media age – and argues guitar influencers need to make a bigger impact on popular music

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman sees virtuosos everywhere but he would like to see these talents being applied in the next generation of great alt-rock and metal bands

Guitar World

“There’s nothing that impressive about being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore”: Why Billy Corgan changed the way he plays guitar solos

Social media burnout has impacted the role of guitar solos in the Smashing Pumpkins’ live show

Louder

"I have this memory of killing myself, blasting my head off, and then throwing the guitar at the amp over and over." The story behind the most intense song on the most ambitious rock album of the '90s

Life isn't always easy as a perfectionist

Guitar World

“I walked into a Guitar Center one day and took it off the wall. It launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound”: The guitar that changed Billy Corgan’s life

It soundtracked two of the biggest alt-rock albums of all time, but as the Smashing Pumpkins leader remembers, the guitar itself was far from expensive

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