__________________________________________________________
The Smashing Pumpkins
Siamese Dream
Virgin
5099967928927
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disc one - cd
siamese dream remastered
1. cherub rock
2. quiet
3. today
4. hummer
5. rocket
6. disarm
7. soma
8. geek u.s.a.
9. mayonaise
10. spaceboy
11. silverfuck
12. sweet sweet
13. luna
Disc 1 Credits:
Original album produced by Butch Vig and Billy
Corgan
Recorded at Triclops Sound Studios, Atlanta
Engineered by Mark Richardson, Jeff Tomei, and Butch
Vig
Special technical engineering by Tim Ilolbrook
Mixed at Rumbo Recorders, Canoga Park, CA by Alan
Moulder with
Butch Vig and Billy Corgan
Mix Engineers: Andy Udoff and Dick Kancshiro
Remastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering,
Portland, Maine, 2011
® 2011 Virgin Records America, Inc.
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disc two - cd
lollipop fun time
1. pissant (siamese sessions rough mix)
2. siamese dream (broadway rehearsals demo)
3. stp (rehearsal demo)
4. frail and bedazzled (soundworks demo)
5. luna (apartment demo)
6. quiet (bbc session/bc mix)
7. moleasskiss (soundworks demo)
8. hello kitty kat (soundworks demo)
9. today (broadway rehearsal demo)
10. never let me down again (bbc session)
11. apathy's last kiss (siamese sessions rough mix)
12. ache (silverfuck rehearsal demo)
13. u.s.a. (soundworks demo)
14. u.s.s.r. (soundworks demo)
15. spaceboy (acoustic mix)
16. rocket (rehearsal demo)
17. disarm (acoustic mix)
18. soma (instrumental mix)
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disc three - dvd
live at the metro, 1993
1. introduction
2. rocket
3. quiet
4. today
5. rhinoceros
6. geek u.s.a.
7. soma
8. i am one
9. disarm
10. spaceboy
11. starla
12. cherub rock
13. bury me
14. hummer
15. siva
16. mayonaise
17. down
18. silverfuck
__________________________________________________________
Siamese Dream was a rock dream come true — and a
bit of a nightmare too.
Far from any dreaded sophomore slump, Siamese Dream
would represent The Smashing Pumpkins' wildly successful
second coming — and become an acknowledged classic
album, a characteristically idiosyncratic yet strangely
accessible masterpiece in the midst of a historic sea
change in rock.
"We were coming from an alternative universe where if
you got lucky, you became Sonic Youth and could sell out
a club like the Metro," Corgan remembers. "And if you
were really lucky, you were Echo & The Bunnymen or
Depeche Mode and could play to 3000 people. That was the
world we were living in and understood. Then suddenly,
Nirvana's blowing up and Pearl Jam's blowing up —
and don't forget we've been on tour with Red Hot Chili
Peppers with Pearl Jam opening up for us. We saw what
was happening and suddenly you saw this massive tide
coming in — or going out, depending on how you
look at it. I'm not a stupid guy, so I thought, I better
learn how to write some pop songs now. You could see
that the bands that survived were the ones that had
actual good songs. My attitude was, I'm not going back
to work at the record store."
Such was the intensity of that time in alternative rock
that right before Siamese Dream was recorded, Corgan
found himself summoned to a big label meeting at Virgin
Records in Los Angeles. "They all gathered and gave me
this big speech. They saw what was happening and wanted
to do a complete re-release of Gish on Virgin and blow
it up to another level." Recorded for the independent
Caroline Records, Gish had become an unlikely hit. "The
people at Virgin told me that this was our moment and
basically offered us the keys to the kingdom. I listen
to this whole spiel, and then I said, 'No.'" There was a
screeching silence. I told them, 'Gish isn't the record
you want. There are no hit songs on that album. Let me
go back to the studio and make a different kind of
album.' They seemed stunned I'd say no. Then I'll never
forget it — the head of radio there Phil Costello,
who was coming off working like four #1 Paula Abdul hits
said, "The kid's right." After that, they all backed
off, and we went on to make Siamese Dream."
"I immediately went into a major depression and writing
block," Corgan recalls. "I was whacked out of my mind
for eight months. I was whacked out of my mind by
whatever we were taking — like copious amounts of
LSD and mushrooms. I just thought, I can't do this."
Corgan says the turning point came when he was in a
bookstore and found the book The Artist's Way by Julia
Cameron. "That book changed my life. She suggested you
do these affirmations — like write 'I Am An
Artist' three times, and I couldn't do it. I'm not even
joking. It was hard for me to go through the transition
from thinking I'm a musician to saying I'm an artist.
That's how messed up in the head I was. So I went
through a massive suicidal depression where I came
within a hair's breadth of tossing myself out of a
window. The next day I sat down on my bed in the morning
and wrote "Disarm" and "Today" within twenty-four hours
— and that was when I knew I had something
different to say. I finally submitted to whatever was my
own voice inside. If you listen to Gish, I wanted to be
someone else like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Cure or
Led Zeppelin, or Black Sabbath. I didn't want to be this
whiny sad guy, but that's who I was. So I decided to be
myself, and that's when these songs poured out of
me."
Siamese Dream — which once again found The
Pumpkins working with producer Butch Vig — was
recorded not in Chicago, or Madison, Wisconsin where
Gish had been cut, but rather at Triclops Studios in
Marietta, Georgia. As Corgan explains it today, "That
was about trying to keep the band out of Chicago, and in
particular it was a way to keep Jimmy away from Chicago.
We felt it was important to keep Jimmy away from his bad
influences at home, but of course he could find as many
bad influences in Georgia. The infamous story is that
Jimmy disappeared for a week in Georgia, and we went on
the radio and said, "If anyone sees our drummer, can you
send him back? We need to finish our album." True story.
"Back then, Jimmy had some major issues with his life,
but he was never inebriated in the studio. None of us
ever were."
This is not to say that band relations between The
Pumpkins were even remotely dreamy during the Siamese
Dream sessions. "This is where things went wrong,"
Corgan explains. "This is where there was maximum
pressure. We all felt it. Butch felt it too. I became
very intense. There was a feeling of walking in a room
and thinking, if things don't go right here, my dream
will never come true. You worry if you're going to be a
one hit wonder. So I don't know what positive spin I can
put on it for you because after a period of time I end
up essentially working on the album alone with Butch.
That's where my friendship with James ended because he
was so furious with the way the whole thing worked out.
Jimmy went off the deep end and ended up in rehab during
the making of the record. And D'arcy quit the band for a
time during the making of the record. It's amazing we
all survived it somehow."
Corgan did share two co-writes on the album with Iha. As
Corgan explains, "The way we worked back then was James
would make riff demos and play stuff for me, and those
ones stuck out. I remember 'Mayonaise,' James played for
me in Japan. I put on headphones, and as soon as I heard
it I started singing the melody, which was weird. 'Soma'
was this beautiful riff from James that was the kind of
thing I would never have written on my own, but it was
so lovely that I completely connected to it. In fact, it
was such a beautiful riff that I thought I've got to
build a really beautiful song around it. So we worked
really hard on 'Soma' for around four months." Asked
what songs on Siamese Dream mean the most to him today,
Corgan thinks for a moment then answers. "I think you
have a couple things that stand out," he says. "We start
the album out with 'Cherub Rock' which is basically my
big F.U. to the indie world. If you read the lyrics,
that was basically me railing against the
hipper-than-thou NYC indie mentality. 'Today' sticks out
because it's basically a really happy song about suicide
— which suits me somehow. 'Disarm' stands out
because it's basically about being abused as a child,
and it represents something that was bottled up in me
for years. Those songs stood out for a lot of people,
and they stood out for me too."
Corgan is quick to add that Butch Vig deserves
tremendous credit for the enduring sonic power of
Siamese Dream. "The record I wanted to make was
completely unruly," Corgan says today. "It was this
massive sound using fuzz pedals and stuff that are
really hard to record well. But Butch was really patient
for me. He's not a guy who would ever subvert you or
play head games with you. Butch supported me all the way
in this crazy vision. So if you listen to Gish and then
listen to Siamese Dream, that's a pretty vast sonic leap
to make. Butch was really on me to sing and play my
best. He drove us crazy with all the takes, and made
Jimmy do like nine hundred takes. Basically, he really
insisted that we step up and make an A-level record. Put
it this way: Butch was the only person who could have
made that record with us because we respected him so
much to live up to his high standards."
Revisiting Siamese Dream again for this expanded reissue
nearly two decades later has only made Corgan appreciate
it more. "This is probably the only record I'll ever
make that is that perfect in its intention," he says. "I
was just listening to the remastered version and it
sounds beautiful. I was thinking about it today and now
it's like I have at least one thing in my life that is
that shiny. I'm by nature a deconstructionist. As a
rule, messy records make more sense to me than this
shiny Cadillac of an album. But I'm really happy because
it's not like I'm sitting here at 44 thinking, I should
have done "the" one. At the time, I was happy Siamese
Dream was successful, but I worried it was too rigid
because the band was very ferocious. I felt like we
neutered the ferocity in search of perfection. But now
Siamese Dream makes total sense to me. You listen to
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and that's more
The Pumpkins as we were, which was very dark. But now in
retrospect, I love both because one's the ideal of the
band, and the other is the reality of the band."
David Wild
September 2011
__________________________________________________________
Siamese Dream - Track By Track
Cherub Rock: The opening figure is a
sneaky twist on a Rush riff that lights us up. We have
lift-off to the planet Now-or-Never. The song's message
is aimed squarely at the empty hearts of our detractors,
who question our doleful mix of cheeky sincerity and our
lack of reverence for false indie gods and
oh-so-carefully posed pedestals. Shame that little has
changed since then, amen brothers and sisters! The solo
is uncorked down from the gentle glades of Itchycoo
Park, where on a rainy day you can't tell which way your
mind is melting and into what sewer it may be carelessly
thrown. There is no getting out of here, but you can
still ask any stranger politely to take your leave. We
are now on our way to the bottommost of the
alternamess.
Quiet: I'll admit I was always
uncomfortable with this song at the number 2 position,
seeing as there are stronger songs left in the gaggle.
But it still has a nice adrena-lean to it, an icy sheen
that gets over because it does ask for excessive quiet
while giving none at all. "Silent metal mercies /
castrate boys to the bone" has always made me wince a
little in familiar refrain. Trust the song, not the
singer. A car chase starts, winter ends.
Today: The song that changed my life
more than any other. The ultimate in irony: a chirpy
song about my near-suicide that all the kids can sing
along to. Probably would not have been a hit if I had
offed myself in the gloaming before its release, but one
can still ponder past the graveyard. I stood in our
dingy rehearsal space, amps a-buzzin', and said, "This
song needs an opening bit." I placed my hands on the
guitar, stared down waiting, and without warning out
came this chiming clock of anticipation. I wasn't sure
why I needed to sing 'I want to turn you on,' but in
hindsight it makes perfect sense locked in the dust of a
new millennium. We are born, a generation dies soon
enough.
Hummer: The first time we played this
song at rehearsal, I got a skull crushing headache from
playing the opening figure for thirty minutes straight.
But we couldn't stop; that same entranced, menacing
eastern yadda-yadda over and again; a hum de plume in
honor of major keyed faith; all those Catholic dreams
that one has inverted growing up in those bleak
post-industrial burbs. It's a beautiful song, that in
its totality lends a message that is hard to convey, but
bigger than its original intention. To be yourself, you
must live your life. To live your life, you must be
free.
Rocket: The first song written for
Siamese Dream, and for a time, the only good new song we
had, which we played on the Gish tours. I had never
bothered to take the time to write any formal lyrics, so
I would just fake my way though them at each show. No
one could hear what I was singing anyway, but the title
was enough. The arrangement still sounds fresh so many
years along, and watch as it all ends with a beautiful,
cascading up; the boom-boom of our ship taking off. It
stands as a poem to the past that has just left us
behind. We are going places fast! And we can't get there
fast enough. Don't forget to bring your fresh nails for
the crosses hidden up on the dark side of the moon.
Disarm: A song once banned by the BBC
for the use of the lyric 'cut that little child'. No one
wanted to hear that it was all a stoic euphemism for the
deepest cuts within. I was offered a hurry-up chance to
re-record the line with a replacement that would pass
the censors. The song could become a hit! I flatly
refused; I wasn't going to honor the dead by dishonoring
my own death. I knew the troubles this song would cause
in my family. The ripple of the message got through. The
string arrangement was invented on the spot, line by
line. Beautifully played and stated, and understated by
the men involved. There are moments where it works
precisely because you trust it will, and when it does
work so effortlessly you wonder again why they all can't
have such lucky stars.
Soma: From the Aldous Huxley book Brave
New World, it is the narcotic we need to get by all that
we cannot stomach to see in others. Or ourselves. A
lover betrays his other. He slips into the night. He
asks her to sleep while-he is awakened by the looming
city just beyond. He is alone no matter who he takes in
his bed. Love is a fraud. But solitude is a friend you
can rely on. Robot eagles fly up to the spotlights, to
circle and hover above when the lost live. Hie sun comes
up slow, and the vampires scurry home to brew fresh
lies.
Geek U.S.A.: Hie song is made absent a
lyric or a melody. It is a locomotive without
discernible motive. We are certain we need this song to
drive side two of the record. By the time we take it
into the studio, it is clocking in at over seven and one
half minutes. Words are frantically typed up, Dadaist
fractures like bits of glass glued onto the page. Go!
Tracking day I have to cut over two minutes of the song
out. Go! Gibberish. Broken people, lovers swing over
chasms. Families wait for kids to break. Go!
Mayonaise: In Japan I hear the scratchy
sound, I hum along. 'The words come easy at first, and
then a blank is drawn. I can go no further. Endless drum
takes, thousands are played. None satisfy. The tape is
spliced so many times it begins to disintegrate. My
mother appears at the refrain. What is she doing here,
weeping missing years? Who are these people that
populate this nothing world? Hope abounds in what had
gone missing, but why?
Spaceboy: My little brother was born
'not right.' The doctors advise that he be put in a
state home, to be raised without love or family. "He
will be a burden upon you," a miracle we shall keep. He
is an astronaut, a wandering soul. When he goes he goes
out into deep space and may never come back. But he is
not an innocent. He is not oblivious. He does see. He is
no longer a child.
Silverfuck: An endless jam that we beat
into submission, using the club crowds as test dummies
for what needs to be a ever-infinite magnum opus. We are
inspired by a date we play in Minneapolis by a UK band
called Thee Hypnotics, who play a thirty minute encore
that goes on for so long that the club cuts the power,
yet the band refuses to stop. A fistfight breaks out. We
stand in awe of their magical power. One can only find
these hidden realms by pushing past the bounds of time
and expectation. Eventually this song will stretch in 45
minutes, driving half the crowd for the exits. Managers
warn that this song alone is costing us t-shirt sales. I
end the song by breaking every string off with my bare
hands. We are all fucked. It doesn't matter what t-shirt
you are wearing when you figure that out.
Sweet Sweet: A hobo that hops the
tracks and jumps on the train. He wants to go wherever
the ride will take him. There is joy in a refusal to
change, even when you know that the journey is fixed.
Luna: Written in a hotel room in London
on a three week stay. We come early for press, and the
powers that be figure it's cheaper to have us sit and
wait than fly us home, only to return. I am in love with
someone that doesn't love me. My songs are better than
hers. This is my way to prove a point not worth making.
I lean my back up against the wall of my room, pushing
my spine up straight. My guitar has been painted day-glo
at the hands of a sweet madman. I sing a love song in an
empty room. It is for the moon. It can never be for the
one you love.
Billy Corgan
September 2011
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Disc 2 Credits:
1. Pissant (Siamese Sessions rough mix)
Produced by Butch Vig and Billy Corgan
Recorded at Triclops Sound Studios, Adanta, Spring
1993
Previously unreleased
2. Siamese Dream (Broadway Rehearsals demo)
Recorded by Billy Corgan, Chicago, 1992
Mixed by Howard Willing
Previously unreleased
3. STP (Rehearsal demo)
Recorded by Billy Corgan, Chicago, 1991
Mixed by Howard Willing
Previously unreleased
4. Frail and Bedazzled (Soundworks demo)
Produced by Kerry Brown and Billy Corgan
Recorded at Soundworks, Chicago, Spring 1992
Mixed by Kerry Brown
Previously unreleased
5. Luna (Apartment demo)
Recorded by Billy Corgan, Chicago 1991
Mixed by Howard Willing
Previously unreleased
6. Quiet (BBC Session / BC mix)
Recorded at BBC Studio, London, September 12,1993
Mixed by Billy Corgan
Previously unreleased
7. Moleasskiss (Soundworks demo)
Produced by Kerry Brown and Billy Corgan
Recorded at Soundworks, Chicago, Spring 1992
Mixed by Kerry Brown
Previously unreleased
8. Hello Kitty Kat (Soundworks demo)
Produced by Kerry Brown and Billy Corgan
Recorded at Soundworks, Chicago, Spring 1992
Mixed by Kerry Brown
Previously unreleased
9. Today (Broadway Rehearsal demo)
Recorded by Billy Corgan, 1992
Mixed by Howard Willing
Previously unreleased
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DVD Credits:
Filmed at the Metro, Chicago, 8/14/93
Live Concert Video Production by JBTV / Jerry Bryant TV,
Inc.
Audio Recorded, mixed and mastered by Tim Powell at
Metro Mobile
Audio remastered by Tim Rusin at JBTV Studios
Executive producer, camera, editor: Jerry Bryant
Director of photography: Mark Zurawiec
Introduction by Joe Shanahan
Introduction produced by JBTV / Jerry Bryant TV, Inc.
Executive producers: Jerry Bryant and Christian
Picciolini
Director: Christian Picciolini
Director of photography: Jerry Bryant
Camera operator, lighting director and audio engineer:
Tim Rusin
Editors: Aidan Brezonick, Paul Lopiccolo,Tim Rusin
Menu design by Alpha Dogs
DVD authored by Monkeyshark
SUPERMAN and S-SHEILD LOGO are trademarks of DC
Comics.
Used with Permission.
© 2011 Miles Hye, Inc. under license to Martha's
Music, LLC
__________________________________________________________
Reissue Credits:
Reissue produced by Billy Corgan and Kerry Brown
Reissue co-produced by Dennis Wolfe, Michael Murphy and
David K. Tedds
Reissue art direction / design: Noel Waggener
Inner photos courtesy of Billy Corgan & Jimmy
Chamberlin
Photography: Melodie McDaniel
Legal: Jill Berliner
Original Siamese Dream art direction: Len Peltier
Original Siamese Dream design: Steve J. Gerdes
Illustrations by: William Corgan and Christine Fabian
Original A&R: Mark Williams
Mike Mills appears courtesy of Warner Bros. Records
Inc.
Billy Corgan: vocals, guitar, mellotron
D'arcy: vocals, bass guitar
Jimmy Chamberlin: drums
James Iha: guitar
with additional help from
Eric Remschneider: cello on "Disarm" and "Luna"
David Ragsdale: violin on "Disarm" and "Luna"
Mike Mills: piano on "Soma"
String arrangements by Billy Corgan, David Ragsdale,
Eric Remschneider and Butch Vig
All songs written by Billy Corgan (Cinderful Music, BMI),
except:
"Soma", "Mayonaisc" and "I Am One" written by Billy Corgan
and James Iha
(Cinderful Music / Cellophane Star / Chrysalis Songs,
BMI),
"Never Let Me Down Again" by Martin Gore (EMI Music
Publishing Ltd.)
"U.S.A."and "U.S.S.R." by Billy Corgan (Faust's Ilaus,
BMI)
Compilation ® 2011 Virgin Records America, Inc.
© 2011 Virgin Records America, Inc. 5099967928927
