1979 was a song that sent the Smashing Pumpkins into a whole new realm, one that joined the worlds of alt-rock, mainsteam pop and 80s electronic grooves, but it nearly never was. As documented in the sleeve notes to the 2012 deluxe box set edition of the Chicago quartet’s third album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, the song was almost discarded and it was down to an ultimatum from producer Flood that it finally found it’s form.
Frontman and band leader Billy Corgan explains that it went through numerous, less successful incarnations to get there. “Every time we tried to play it, it sounded like The Rolling Stones – and not a good way,” he says in the sleeve notes. “It came out too bluesy. We were running out of time. Finally, Flood said, “what’s going on with this song? Tomorrow is D-Day, we either finish this song or it’s off the record’.”
