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HISTORICAL FACTS: Smashing pumpkins - The Untold Story

“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

"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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“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

Guitar World

"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

Louder

“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

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

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"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

Guitar World

“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

MusicRadar

“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

Guitar World

"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

Louder

“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

Guitar World

“Give the average guitar player the chance to own my live rig. My tone. The tone worth $100,000s”: Billy Corgan and Laney Amplification unveil the ultimate Smashing Pumpkins amp-in-a-box pedal

NAMM 2026: The Supergrace is a two-hander between Laney and Brian Carstens, and Corgan gave it a trial by fire when playing with My Chemical Romance in front of 60,000 fans

MusicRadar

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Guitar World

“Give the average guitar player the chance to own my live rig. The tone worth $100,000s”: Billy Corgan has shrunk his Smashing Pumpkins rig into a Laney pedal amp – and he tested it in front of 60,000 My Chemical Romance fans

When Corgan walked onstage with My Chemical Romance at Soldier Field stadium, he didn’t bring his guitar rig. He plugged into the Laney Supergrace and nothing else

Guitar World

“It’s one thing to be a visionary, but it’s another thing to have the gift to pull off the vision”: Why Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins collaborated with Yungblud

The alt-rock legend has become the latest big name to link up with Yungblud

Louder

"To watch one of my idols work on something that I had written was one of the greatest honours of my life. " Watch Yungblud team up with Smashing Pumpkins for a reworking of 2025 single Zombie

Another day, another cross-generational collaboration for Yungblud

Evening Standard

'Happy' new year! Yungblud and Smashing Pumpkins release Zombie

Goth rock fans are rejoicing for a new collaboration between the Pumpkins and Yungblud

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Guitar World

“I sold my first guitar to my drummer. He paid me $50, put SpongeBob stickers on it, then lit it on fire”: Kiki Wong reveals her Smashing Pumpkins live rig, gear regrets and how a Line 6 amp made her the player she is today

Kiki Wong might be the only guitar player alive today who can recall from memory Ibanez S series model numbers. Here's what the S40DXQM means to her...

BANG Premier

Yungblud announces new version of Zombie with The Smashing Pumpkins

Yungblud has reworked Zombie with the help of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Louder

"When we would align, it was powerful." Billy Corgan praises estranged bassist D’arcy Wretzky's contributions to the Smashing Pumpkins

Smashing Pumpkins mainman appears to extend olive branch to bassist with whom he's waged longstanding war of words

Louder

“M***********, you stole my guitar sound!”: the classic Nirvana song that another major 90s artist says ripped him off

This grunge icon reckons Kurt Cobain & co.’s biggest hit smells less like Teen Spirit and more like they nicked his guitar sound

Louder

"He said, ‘Kid, it’s a smash! You gotta trust me!’ I thought he was crazy." The Smashing Pumpkins classic Billy Corgan thought was "stupid" - and that his own label boss had to talk him round on

Praise be for the persuasive powers of the music exec who brought Corgan round to his way of thinking

Louder

"A decadent yet functional take on wellness": Smashing Pumpkins launch $20 charity smoothie

Like lion's mane and blue spirulina? Then you'll love Billy Corgan's OG Goth smoothie

Louder

11 sublimely mellow Smashing Pumpkins cuts

Despite all their rage, sometimes Billy Corgan & co. made some of the most perfectly tranquil music of the 90s

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