The 1996 song Billy Corgan called his “biggest regret”
After two outstanding albums that kick-started their career, Smashing Pumpkins arguably had the world at their fingertips as they entered the studio to make their third record.
While debut album Gish was a promising start, its follow-up, Siamese Dream, demonstrated that they were a serious force to be reckoned with in the world of alternative rock, and that they had the potential to really make an impression on the overall trajectory of the genre. With Nirvana no longer in the picture shortly after, following the tragic death of Kurt Cobain, there was an opportunity for the Chicago band to take their position on the throne and usher the genre into new territory.
Frontman and principal songwriter Billy Corgan had plenty of talent for writing something heavy, but also something with a considerable amount of emotional heft, which led people to believe that the next thing they released could turn out to be a decade-defining masterpiece.
However, rather than take the straightforward approach, the band opted to take the risk of recording a conceptual double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which was intended to be their own version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Most people would perhaps turn their nose up at the idea of attempting something so grandiose at such a pivotal moment in a band’s career, especially when they still had plenty to lose, but nonetheless, Corgan saw fit to venture on with this sprawling project.
While it is astounding in places, the move was, on reflection, perhaps taken too early on in their career for it to work out. Corgan found himself getting exhausted by this grand undertaking, and over the record’s two-hour runtime, there are a number of glaring flaws that could have been avoided had they chosen to whittle the project down to half the size.
As a consequence, there were also some songs that got rejected due to there simply not being enough space on this epic record, and some happened to be among Corgan’s personal favourites from the sessions, with one standing out to him as an example of a track that he felt he should have given more attention to rather than allowing to fall by the wayside.
Speaking to Guitar World in 1997, two years after the release of Mellon Collie, he noted that ‘Cherry’, a discarded song that was eventually released as a B-side to ‘1979’ and on the 1996 box-set, The Aeroplane Flies High, probably ought to have made the final cut. “Of all the B-sides, this song is probably my biggest regret,” Corgan admitted. “I never spent as much time on it as it probably deserved, with this version showing very little improvement from the demo. This one probably should have made the album.”
“I love its feeling and atmosphere,” he continued, noting how the recording that stemmed from the sessions still had elements of what he originally envisioned. “The warbly guitar courtesy of an effect that changes oscillation in ratio to signal input, the harder you hit it, the faster it goes.”
Of course, at the time, it simply wasn’t coming together how he wanted it to, and there was no use bulking up an album already exceeding two hours in length with something that could easily have been considered as filler. Sometimes, it just isn’t worth putting something out if it doesn’t feel like it competes with your usual high standards, and at the time, Corgan simply couldn’t afford to make a mistake like that on a project that had so much riding on it.
