"Everyone keeps telling us how pretentious this album is without even hearing it. Yet doing a double album is the most suicidal thing we could do at this point. We're certainly not sucking anybody's dick. We've earned the right to do whatever the fuck we want."
It's the afternoon of August 23, 1995, and the Smashing Pumpkins are having lunch at Dublin's five-star Shelbourne Hotel ahead of the second of their two sold-out gigs at the city's 1,000 capacity SFX (Saint Francis Xavier) Hall, on their first ever visit to Ireland. The shows are the Chicago quartet's first appearances onstage in six months, inserted into their itinerary in order that the group can warm up for their headline slot on the opening night of Reading festival on August 25, where they'll perform in front of 60,000 fans, atop a bill featuring Green Day, Hole, Beck and more.
Last night, as part of their 16-song set, Billy Corgan's band performed no fewer than seven unreleased songs from their forthcoming third album, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, which the world won't hear for another two months, as it's scheduled for release on October 23, 1995. Post-gig, after midnight, the band's UK press officer handed me two advance cassettes featuring the 28 songs which will make up the follow-up to 1993's Siamese Dream, a lot to absorb ahead of a lunchtime interview about one of the year's most anticipated records.
Not that the Pumpkins seem overly keen to get into the minutiae of the album anyway, as they dine on leek soup and vegetarian pasta dishes. And the somewhat chilly temperature in the hotel dining room plummets several few degrees lower when, in a discussion about the group's current mood, I make the mistake of mentioning that on Siamese Dream, Corgan put noses out of joint by personally over-dubbing a significant number of the bass and guitar parts originally recorded by, or earmarked for, D'arcy Wretzky and James Iha.
