“I want no limitations”: Why did Billy Corgan release a huge Smashing Pumpkins album for free?
Brevity is the soul of wit. Less is more. Don’t use ten words when five would do. These are all tips that Billy Corgan, in his 57 years of life on this earth, has almost certainly come across before. This leaves us with two options. Either he was too busy noodling on a Strat or watching pro-wrestling to actually notice, or the most likely option. He did hear it, though. He just completely ignored it.
Despite coming up in the punk-indebted grunge boom of the 1990s, the idea of three-minute songs with two chords and one chorus never sat well with the Smashing Pumpkins main man. Like many of his peers, he was a student of 1970s hard rock. There was a key difference between him and the likes of Vedder and Cornell, though. Corgan’s tastes went beyond the accepted likes of Led Zep and Sabbath and into the likes of Peter Frampton, Rush and that anathema of cool in the ’90s, prog.
Combine that love with arguably Corgan’s key influence, late ’80s shoegaze, and you’ve got a pretty good Rosetta Stone for the Smashing Pumpkins’ sound during their 1990s imperial phase. Jangling guitar orchestras laced with feedback and sighing vocals. Always shot through with 20-ton riffs and song structures (not to mention song lengths) pilfered straight from the Dark Side of the Moon playbook.
Shockingly, this wasn’t a rabbit hole he fell down after success came calling. He was different from so many of his forebears. Those who hopped up on success, money and hot-and-cold running cocaine reasoned that if their music was great at three minutes long, it’d be amazing at three days long (oh, Oasis are back together, are they? You don’t say). This attitude made Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness not only one of the most vital records of the ’90s but one of the most successful, too.
Unfortunately, what also sets Mellon Collie apart is the stellar songwriting and barefaced emotion on display. Something he seemed to forget about as the band’s heyday ended. If there’s one thing that connects Corgan’s post-1990s output (and there may be only one thing), it’s his almost dogmatic commitment to doing things his way and his way alone. So, after bringing the Pumpkins back together in 2007, he decided the next project wasn’t just going to be 44 songs based on the tarot. It was also going to be released for free.
Calling it an album isn’t even entirely accurate. Simply because the project, named ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’ (sure, Bill), contains multiple albums and EPs within it. This was a conscious decision made by Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain. They considered their previous album, 2007’s ‘Zeitgeist’ going Gold a heroic achievement given the way the music industry was going, so their plan for Teargarden was to drip-release it four songs at a time.
Corgan explained to Artist Direct, “I want no limitations on what I can and will do. I think the size and shape of the traditional album is just morphing into something much more in the moment. Four songs at a time will mean I can give my heart over to the music fully without giving away my now happy life.”
Credit where it’s due. For a band so inspired by progressive rock, this was a release method a decade ahead of its time. This is a mixed blessing, though, considering it pre-empted an era of empty bloat, shoving two-hour-long albums on streaming sites and letting the diehard fans run through it to pick up those increasingly light royalty checks. Unlike all those careerist hacks, though, you can be 100% sure Corgan was doing it for the art, and for that, if nothing else, you’ve got to hand it to him.
