Smashing Pumpkins Tickets

In the early 90s heyday of grunge rockers Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, the Smashing Pumpkins sophomore album Siamese Dream arrived as an alternative to the alternative, stealing fans and airplay with tracks like Cherub Rock, Rocket, Today and Disarm. Smashing Pumpkins tour dates sold out in record time.

Now, almost 20 years and several personnel changes later, the Smashing Pumpkins are back on tour and working on a new Smashing Pumpkins album. Lead singer Billy Corgan, the brains behind Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness and the Pumpkins more recent output like Zeitgeist and Teargarden by Kaleidyscope has re-established creative control and is experimenting with alternative means of distribution.

Tour dates for Smashing Pumpkins concerts are popping up all over the country, don’t mis your chance to hear the classics as well as the new material with Smashing Pumpkins concert tickets!

Billy Corgan was nineteen years old when he left Chicago, Illinois, moving to St. Petersburg, Florida with his band The Marked. The Goth band disintegrated following a run of less than mediocre commercial success, and Corgan returned to Chicago. While working in a record store there, he met James Iha and they started writing imaginative but often dark songs together that had a distinct tinge of The Cure and New Order about them.

Corgan met D'arcy Wretzky at a concert in 1988. Upon discovering Wretzky was a bass player, Corgan informed D'arcy that his outfit needed a bassist and Wretzky joined the band. The Smashing Pumpkins debuted on July 9, 1988, at the Polish bar Chicago 21, a performance involving just Corgan and Iha with a drum machine. After a show at the Avalon Nightclub when the band appeared as a trio, jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlin joined the band due to a friend of Corgan's speaking of his drumming prowess. Chamberlin's jazz-style drumming lent a unique ring and solidity to the band lacking in other alternative rock outfits, and this was quickly noted in musical circles. In fact, Chamberlin knew little if anything of alternative rock, and this seemed to drive the band in an awesome new direction.

The band set off on their rock 'n' roll journey, on a tour in which they supported legendary rockers Guns 'n' Roses. This might sound odd to those not familiar with the Pumpkins earlier phase, but it makes sense that people who seek good rocking Led Zepplin tickets, for instance, are the very same who seek Smashing Pumpkins tickets. Credibility is eternal. At this time, inner problems began to surface, and Iha and Wretzky (who'd been romantically linked for a while) underwent a ill-tempered breakup. Chamberlin became addicted to narcotics and alcohol, and Corgan became depressed, as things seemed about to fall apart for the Smashing Pumpkins.

The emergence of grunge in the American mainstream in the form of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, meant the Smashing Pumpkins were suddenly perched on the brink of a goldmine. They had the talent and the originality to make it big in this blooming new musical genre. Their 1991 debut album Gish was followed by the 1993 album, Siamese Dream, which went straight into the Billboard charts at number ten and sold over four million copies in the U.S. alone. Corgan dated Courtney Love, the band battled to keep Chamberlin off and away from drugs, and ran the gauntlet of a barrage of negative reviews from the alternative rock press and fellow musicians. In 1994, Virgin released the rare tracks compilation Pisces Iscariot which bettered Siamese Dream on the Billboard charts, making the Number 4 spot. At this time a video was released entitled Vieuphoria, featuring an interesting mixture of concerts and attendant behind-the-scenes footage. After headlining on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour and at the1995Reading Festival, the band disappeared to create their next album, which proved to be a worldbeater.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a double album containing twenty-eight tracks over two hours in length. The songs were arranged to symbolize the cycle of life and death. Mellon Collie was certified an amazing nine times platinum in the USA and enjoys the title of best-selling double album of that decade to date. It also received seven 1996 Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year. The Pumpkins had truly arrived.

The band were now involved in a number of unsavory incidents, as they went out and toured to support the fantastic new album. A fan was crushed to death in Dublin, and two months later in New York City, touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and Chamberlin both overdosed on heroin. Melvoin died, and Chamberlin was fired from the band, which continued to play the tour using subsititutes, a decision Corgan went on to admit was a bad one. After this, the Pumpkins began to make statements to the effect that music was "stale" and that electronica would become the only viable route for bands to follow in the future.

1998's Adore represented a significant change of style from the Pumpkins' previous guitar-based rock, veering into the much fabled electronica, and more personnel rearrangements occurred during the release of the next album Machina/The Machines of God. On December 2, 2000, The Smashing Pumpkins played a farewell four-hour-long show at The Metro, the same Chicago club where their career had begun twelve years earlier. Since the there have been reunions by Corgan and Chamberlin, and refusals to reunite from Iha. The band has played some shows since then with new members, released an album Zeitgeist, in 2007 and embarked on a massive Smashing Pumpkins tour in 2008 with Smashing Pumpkins tickets selling out for each date.

In the interim the current Smashing Pumpkins lineup has been solidfied with frontman Billy Corgan, drummer Mike Byrne, guitarist Jeff Schroeder and bassist Nicole Fiorentino. Starting in December 2009 Smashing Pumpkins released new tracks off their eigth studio album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope one by one with a total of 44 anticipated tracks released in succession over the coming months. The album, which is available on their site for free, will also be released in eleven CD/EP Box sets with accompanying art. Teargarden by Kaleidyscope has received mostly positive reviews and with fans waiting for each track to come out it's only natural that the Smashing Pumpkins would play some of their new stuff at Smashing Pumpkins concerts. Maybe the band will play some unreleased songs! There's only one way to find out - pick up your Smashing Pumpkins tickets here and listen for yourself!

Smashing Pumpkins fans, particularly James Iha fans, have a soft spot for his side project - A Perfect Circle. Led by Tool's Maynard James Keenan along with guitarist Billy Howerdel, guitarist James Iha of The Smashing Pumpkins, bassist Matt McJunkins and drummer Josh Freese A Perfect Circle has kept alt-rock in the spotlight. The band has released three chart-topping studio albums. They went on hiatus in 2004 to work on their own projects and fans have been waiting to buy A Perfect Circle tickets this whole time. For West Coasters the wait is over. A Perfect Circle will play each album in each city (with the exception of Las Vegas) per night. To see Mer De Noms, Thirteenth Step and eMOTIVe performed live, head on over to the A Perfect Circle tickets page!