As Smashing Pumpkins began work on their second record in 1992, Billy Corgan was feeling the pressure. The band – frontman, songwriter and chief mouthpiece Corgan, guitarist James Iha, bassist D’Arcy Wretsky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin – had achieved unexpected success with their 1991 debut Gish, a thrilling meld of dynamic, explosive rock and intricate guitar work that had sold over 300,000 copies and placed the Chicago quartet amongst the wave of bands redefining US rock. But rather than enjoying the wind in his sails, Corgan felt like he was fighting the tide.
For one, rather than feeling part of the generational trailblazers, Corgan saw his group as a band apart, and not just because they were 2,000 miles east of the rest of the crowd over in Seattle. Ever-competitive, Corgan perceived the mammoth success of Nirvana’s Nevermind, released four months after Gish, as something that had derailed the Pumpkins’ fledgling success. “We went from being seen as future stars to has-beens,” he said to Rolling Stone in 1995.
Secondly (and thirdly and fourthly and fifthly, etc…), there was inner turmoil in the band, something that would become a recurring theme throughout the Pumpkins imperial phase and beyond. Out of all the 90s bands, no-one seemed to thrive on civil unrest as much as Smashing Pumpkins and 1992 was one of the most turbulent eras in a band who were never without a turbulent era.
Iha and Wretsky had been a couple since the group’s early days but had broken up during the tour to support Gish, Chamberlin was in the throes of heroin addiction (Corgan would later claim Wretsky too had drug issues), and Corgan himself was going through a nervous breakdown and deep depression. Not ideal conditions, then, but it all went into the stew: the inferiority complex, the dysfunction, the spite, the doubt, the anxieties and the ego. All were essential ingredients of the album that became Siamese Dream as much as Corgan hitting his songwriting sweet spot, and the virtuoso playing.
