“Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember”: Billy Corgan on the making of Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – and how one of its biggest hits nearly didn’t make the record

Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins performing with a Zero T-shirt and Fender Strat, on a stage illuminated in orange with pink lights on his face.

“We were the first band of our generation that started to grow up,” Billy Corgan says, reflecting on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 grand opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

“The band was coming off a golden moment, which was the grunge explosion. But all movements start to run out of gas, and then the gatekeepers come in and start trying to say what it really means – when they had nothing to do with authoring it.