1326. Smashing Pumpkins / Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. 1995. 4/5

The fact that Smashing Pumpkins as a band had survived the process of writing and recording their previous album, their commercial breakthrough in “Siamese Dream”, is somewhat a miracle. The band had recorded that album away from their home town in order to keep Jimmy Chamberlin away from his known drug dealers, something of course didn’t work as he soon found a new supply source for his addictions. Guitarist James Iha and bass guitarist D’arcy Wretzky had begun a romantic relationship which had ended badly prior to the recording session which created a massive amount of tension. Billy Corgan reportedly ended up playing all of the guitar and bass on the album, with producer Butch Vig trying to pull all of the strings together. Corgan also seriously contemplated suicide during this time such was his headspace. At the very least, it would be fair to say that it was a fractured, tense and discorded workplace environment, one that still managed to produce an album that even today is regarded as one of the best produced in the first half of the 1990’s decade. The tour to follow gave the band a massive public profile, and also a platform to create whatever they desired for their follow up album.
In this regard, it meant creating something that allowed Corgan to explore his universe. He was quoted after the release of this new album as saying "We almost had enough material to make Siamese Dream a double album. With this new album, I really liked the notion that we would create a wider scope in which to put other kinds of material we were writing”. It meant that from the very beginning, there was a desire to produce a double album. During 1995, Corgan wrote 56 songs to take into the studio and form into the album he was looking for. Although Butch Vig had produced the band’s first two albums, they decided to go with a different combination for the new album, with Corgan admitting that he felt that they were too close to Vig that they needed a different producer to help to expand their ideas, rather than work within the same structure and fabric that they had previously. Co-producers in Alan Moulder and Mark Ellis, whose professional name is Flood, were employed for the roles.
Looking to avoid the tension that arose during the recording session for “Siamese Dream”, where there were periods of days into weeks where band members were waiting for overdubs to be completed, different ways of going about their craft were utilised. The band began the album in a recording space, getting a feel for how the album would be structured and how it would sound. Flood also had the band jamming and songwriting each day in order to help bring pieces together, something Corgan admitted the band had never done before. Also, to avoid the band remaining idle, they decided to use two recording studios at the same time. This allowed Corgan to do his song arrangements and develop his vocals in one room with Flood, while recording could occur at the same time in the other with Moulder. With such a large volume of material to refine and record, it turned out to be a great tactic. It was also noteworthy that both Iha and Wretzky had much greater roles in the recording sessions of this album compared to previous albums. Iha was quoted about how the recording sessions for Mellon Collie improved from that of Siamese Dream, noting: “The big change is that Billy is not being the big 'I do this—I do that'. It's much better. The band arranged a lot of songs for this record, and the song writing process was organic. The circumstances of the last record and the way that we worked was really bad”.
When the final album came together, some pronounced it the Smashing Pumpkins version of The Beatles White Album, while Corgan himself called it “The Wall for Generation X”. Either way, when it came to be released, it’s presence was most definitely felt in a similar way to both of those albums.

“Siamese Dream” and those iconic hit singles from that album had been all over the radio on their release, and had been my introduction to the Smashing Pumpkins, but had not been enough for me to want to jump in and actually buy the album itself. I enjoyed those songs buy at that time I didn’t find it a jump that I needed to make. Fast forward to the beginning of 1996, and by this point another Smashing Pumpkins single had caught my ear, one that had a bit about it that was much more in my wheelhouse. I happened to mention this to my lovely wife one afternoon after work and she said “Oh, I have that album! It’s right here!”, and she showed me her CD copy of “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. OK, what’s it like? “I really like it!” I look at the back cover, and discover that it is two CDs, not one. 28 songs in totals. And over two hours in length. OK. That looks like it is something that I don’t really have time to listen to in total, maybe I’ll listen to a few songs. So we do, and after the opening half of the first CD I have already wondered if this might be the best thing I’ve heard in years.
It took me a few days to actually listen to the whole album, with time constraints and life getting involved, and by the end I had cooled off a little. There were, as you will have already heard, a lot of different changes in the songs on this album, a lot of different genre changes, and on that first listen through that was something that took a little getting used to. And like all double albums, getting used to the length and having the TIME to listen to it in its entirety in one hit does become a problem. However, in 1996 we spent a lot of time with our friend group in Newtown in inner city Sydney, and in amongst the albums of other artists such as PJ Harvey and Nick Cave and Foo Fighters, this album was played around that rotation a lot, and it became one of the anthem pieces of the time.
You can here in the previous segment with myself and Helen that we have a different view on what are the best parts of the album and the less interesting parts of the album. That hasn’t changed over the years. Those heavier tracks for me, where Billy Corgan digs deep into his heavy metal alter ego, are the ones that truly drag me in every time. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some of the softer songs that don’t bring me enjoyment, it's just that my own musical preference tends to win out on most occasions.
Would kids today have the attention span to get through an entire album of this length? 30 years on, this album does tend to split opinions more to do with the length of the album and the mixing of the genre of the songs on the album. I know people who get bored with it quickly and won’t listen to it as a result. I know people who just don’t want to listen to an album that stretches beyond two hours. And yet there are other people, like the lovely Helen, who still love this album as much today as they did 30 years ago. Yes, it provokes discussion amongst the fans as to how THEY would edit it down to one album, and which songs they would choose, but as for Corgan’s vision when writing the album, it is as massive as the albums he proclaimed to be inspired by. And perhaps, just as important.