Smashing Pumpkins on their hopes to tour ‘Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness’

Expect a little musical theatre...

Smashing Pumpkins have their discussed their hopes to tour their albums ‘Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness’ and ‘Machina I/II’ in full.

The alt-rock veterans, who recently announced their new album with the majority of their ‘classic’ line-up, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of their 1995 double album and magnum opus in 2020. Judging by their latest comments, it looks like an anniversary tour could well be on the cards.

“Imagine having a film script, and a bunch of songs that go with the film script, and a story, and it could be made anyway,” frontman Billy Corgan said in a recent interview with KROQ. “The band could perform it onstage with visuals like the tour we just did [on the current ‘Shiny Oh So Bright’ tour]. You could enact it theatrically, which probably isn’t the optimal way to do it, because the band sort of needs to be part of the show.”

Corgan continued: “Or you could turn it into a musical movie, like Tommy or The Wall or something like that. Hopefully this will set the stage for that someday being released. With that said, ‘Mellon Collie’ was sort of written as a musical, but it was never explored publicly. We still are hopeful that as we go along we will be able to create similar shows around those albums [including Machina], in the way that we created a show around the Shiny tour.”

The 28 track ‘Mellon Collie…’ is widely regarded as one of the most influential albums of the ’90s, selling over 10million copies and featuring the likes of ‘1979’, ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and ‘Zero’.

This week saw the band announce ‘Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun’ – the first album to feature founding Pumpkins members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin since 2000. This will be the 10th official Pumpkins’ studio album, produced by Rick Rubin and due to arrive on November 16 via Napalm Records.

The current line-up consists of Corgan, Iha, Chamberlain, longtime collaborator and guitarist Jeff Schroeder and touring bassist Jack Bates – son of Joy Division and New Order legend Peter Hook.

Meanwhile, the band are also planning to reissue their albums ‘Machina I and II‘ as ‘originally conceived’ – as a box set with both of the records together.

The band will return to the UK to play London’s SSE Wembley Arena on October 16. They’ll also be playing a show in Bologna, Italy on October 18.