“I spent four days arguing about what could be done with an orchestra.” The story of a Smashing Pumpkins classic, aided by The Who, the cast of Titanic and SpongeBob SquarePants

Billy Corgan live at Reading in 1995.

The sweeping strings and cascading drum rolls that began Tonight, Tonight was a grandiose statement of intent for The Smashing Pumpkins, a sign that Billy Corgan & co. were entering a whole new realm on 1995’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. It’s for that reason, you imagine, that the track was placed right up top on their double-disc third album, the first song proper after the instrumental introduction of the title track.

Mellon Collie… is packed with some scintillating rock moments, most notably Zero, Bullet With Butterfly Wings and Thru The Eyes Of Ruby, but you could argue that the Pumpkins had reached their epic guitar zenith on 1993’s Siamese Dream. Certainly, there was a different tact on Mellon Collie… compared to the layered, labyrinthine dynamism of the shoegazing-inspired guitar sound on that record, something a little more barbed and metal in its menacing directness.