Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer hints at 2018 reunion for first line-up

PanARMENIAN.Net - Smashing Pumpkins' original drummer has suggested the band’s classic, first line-up could reunite next year, according to NME.

Jimmy Chamberlin, who rejoined the group in 2006 for three years and then for a second time in 2015, added to frontman Billy Corgan‘s comments that he was planning to record an album with “people who used to be in the band”.

Speaking to WGN Radio, Chamberlin said: “We were talking about playing next year with the band and somebody asked me, you know, ‘What’s it like trying to co-ordinate that?'”

He continued: “I said it’s like ‘Grumpy Old Men 3′, only there’s four grumpy old men and one’s a woman’. So… that’s how it’s gotten to be.”

Talking about the dynamic between himself and Corgan, the drummer said: “The two hours that we spend playing music together is the greatest thing in the world. It’s the other 22 hours of the day that him and I are… He’s got opinions, I’ve got opinions. We’re both grown men, right?”

If the original Smashing Pumpkins line-up did reunite, it would be the first time they had played together since 1999, as Musicfeeds.com.au notes. Bassist D’Arcy Wretzky left the band in 1999 to pursue an acting career (although Corgan later said she was fired), while guitarist James Iha was not involved when the group reunited in 2000 with a new line-up. He has, however, made a handful of appearances on stage with Smashing Pumpkins again since 2016.

Speaking to Chicago’s 97.9 The Loop earlier this year, Corgan said “things look good” for playing with Iha again. “We’re talking about it. We’ll see,” added the frontman.

As for the rest of the classic line-up, Corgan isn’t ruling it out. “There’s a willingness for us to play, but also the world’s changed a lot since we didn’t play,” he said. “So the reunion thing is always a bit weird because people come in with their expectations.

“So my whole thing is if we’re gonna do it, I think we do it to make people happy and not go against the tide of what people would want to hear in that type of stuff, but my interest in it is sort of limited. I’m not gonna do it for like 14 years of my life.”