Pumpkins carve out new ground
Billboard October, 1995
By Craig Rosen
(Thanks to BCorgan4SP@aol.com for typing this out)
28-song double CD a daring musical move
On Tuesday, Virgin Records worldwide will release the Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," a sprawling, two-CD opus of new material that will likely separate the Chicago-based band from its alternative-rock peers.
It's a risky move for Virgin and the Pumpkins. In the CD era, double-disc packages are usually reserved for greatest-hit sets or live albums, not 28 new songs. In fact, few rock artists have dared to release so much new material at once since the CD became the dominant configuration for recorded music.
The Pumkpins are one of modern rock's brightest commercial and artistic forces. The band's lastest studio album, 1993's "Siamese Dream", has sold more than 3.4 million copied in the U.S., according to SoundScan.
Outside of the U.S., the Pumpkins have had the most success in Canada, where "Siamese Dream" has been certified quadruple-platinum (400,000 units). The band has also received platinum sales in Australia (70,000 units), went double-platinum in New Zealand (200,000 units) and went gold in the U.K. (500,000 units).
The question remains: Is the Pumpkins' survival fan base willing to shell out for a double-CD?
That's just the challenge that Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan wants to make with the album. "It's not what anyone would expect from a band that is supposedly going to be big," he says. "These days, selling records has been so formulised. This is the record that we should be going after Top 40 radio with, but I wanted it to be the best artistic album I could do, and if it sells, it sells because of its artistic success, not because we are conforming to some kind of preconceived idea on how to make a band big."
To alleviate the gamble to some extent, the album will be released with a suggested list price of $24.98 on CD and $19.98 on cassette, which is significantly lower than other two-album sets. Michael Jackson's "HIStory: Past, Present, and Future-Book 1" for example, is priced at $32.95 for CD and $23.98 for cassette.
With the lower price, Corgan is optimistic that Pumpkins fans will "take a leap of faith" and purchase the double CD. "We are willing to take less money that we would normally make, to make [selling the album] not seem like such a difficult decision," he says. "All we are basically asking someone to do is to pay $5 or $6 extra and get a whole other album's worth."
On Monday, the band will celebrate the release of the album with a live appearance in Chicago that will be broadcast via WXRT-FM (93.1).
Opening with the piano-based instrumental title track, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" runs the gaunt from rockers to ballads. The songs incorporate a variety of sounds and instrumentation, including strings on *Tonight, Tonight* and pedal and lap steel guitar, played by Greg Leisz, on *Take Me Down*.
As a whole, the album "is not self-indulgent," says Corgan. "It doesn't have long-winded guitar solos or space jams--it's a song-based album."
Tour plans remain up in the air. "We want to be able to fairly represent the album, but going out and doing a convention rock show just isn't going to do that, so we aren't sure what we're going to do."