Big Tea Blog

As Siamese Dream approaches its twentieth birthday, and following on from the recent remastered editions of both Siamese Dream and Gish released by EMI, the time seems right to look back at this fabulous record, one of the greatest records of its time. Smashing Pumpkins finest hour, and Billy Corgan’s insurmountable masterpiece.

The date was July 27^th 1993 when Virgin Records released Siamese Dream, the second, and arguably finest work, by Smashing Pumpkins, Chicago’s answer to the all dominant Seattle grunge scene of the time. Grunge finally proved itself to be America’s greatest sonic invasion since the late sixties of Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane and left in its wake a trail of timeless records, an intrigue in its protagonists that endures to this day and an unhealthy trail of bodies over the years. The death of Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood kicked things off, and following in his wake were Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. Kristen Pfaff succumbed too and then came the lesser knowns, John Baker Saunders of Mad Season and Smashing Pumpkins’ touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin, who died from a heroin overdose after being supplied by Jimmy Chamberlain, the Pumpkins troubled but brilliant drummer who departed the band for the first time shortly afterwards. And then there were the few isolated copycat Cobain suicides. Heroin single-handedly blighted a whole scene, yet without it the music wouldn’t have been as deep and dark and consequently brilliant as it was. Grunge’s bodycount was unnaturally high, and continued long after grunge had moved on and faded from the limelight, especially if we factor in the tragic deaths at Roskilde during Pearl Jam’s performance in 2000 and the passing of Bernadette O’Brien at the Pumpkins show in Dublin in 1996 too. And if were are to dig a little deeper, then of course there was Jeremy, whom Eddie Vedder immortalised in the song of the same name.

Every band from this period had its troubles, but they also had moments of immense clarity and unrivalled brilliance, and from their various difficulties arose an inspiration for some of the greatest and most era-defining music ever to be recorded. When Billy Corgan began to write Siamese Dream, the Smashing pumpkins weren’t without their own turmoil. Chamberlain’s heroin addiction was intense and relations between D’Arcy and James Iha were fractious following their split a short while before. Corgan himself was rumoured to be depressed, suffering a nervous breakdown and losing his muse somewhere along the line too, but this all served him well in the end as from this dark place he wrote the best songs of his career and in Siamese Dream produced an album of immense scope and vision, marrying seamlessly the raw aggression of ‘Silverfuck’ and ‘Geek USA’ with the simple beauty and catharsis of ‘Disarm’ and the aching beautiful ‘Mayonaise’.

The rat-a-tat snare drums that kick off ‘Cherub Rock’ and open Siamese Dream never did sound as if they really fitted, coming from nowhere and never repeated throughout the song, they’re disjointed but somehow seem quite fitting now. They serve almost as an alternative to the more traditional 1-2-3-4 count in of clashing drumsticks and in their wake the lonely guitar repeating its incessant call of an octave chord, which builds with bass and drums until the distortion kicks in and the sliding scale down the guitar has reached its end, lay the foundations for the riff that dominates the song. Corgan’s breathy vocals add a gentleness of touch to the dirty, gritty but ultimately finely polished rock that drives the song onwards beneath lyrics which take a subtle stab at the music press. As an opening salvo, ‘Cherub Rock’ is the perfect introduction to Siamese Dream, and indeed became the first single ahead of the more radio friendly and ultimately successful ‘Today’.

The Cherub Rock video, directed by Kevin Kerslake: