Guitarist JEFF SCHROEDER Quits SMASHING PUMPKINS

Longtime SMASHING PUMPKINS guitarist Jeff Schroeder has announced his departure from the band.

Earlier today, the 49-year-old musician, who has played with SMASHING PUMPKINS for the past 16 years, released the following statement via the band's social media: "It's easy to say now that when I joined THE SMASHING PUMPKINS in 2007 I had no idea what I was getting into. The opportunity seemed to have come out of nowhere. I was at UCLA working on my doctorate in comparative Literature when a close friend messaged me and said THE SMASHING PUMPKINS were looking for a guitar player. Being a huge fan of the band, the audition was something I threw myself into. It was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. The amount of incredible memories created over the last 16 years with the band are almost too numerous to quantify.

"Although it was a very difficult decision to make, I've decided to leave the band to make some space to explore a slightly different path.

"I want to thank Billy, Jimmy, James, and Jack for being both wonderful bandmates and even better friends. I will absolutely miss sharing the stage with you. I wish the band all the success in the future. I will be watching and listening."

Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin commented on Schroeder's departure in a separate statement, writing: "We thank Jeff for his ceaseless dedication to the band and our great fans. Words can not express our gratitude and appreciation for the friend he is, and being there for SP in the good times and the tough times, too."

As stated above, Schroeder had been touring and recording with the SMASHING PUMPKINS since 2006 when a friend texted him that the PUMPKINS were looking for new band members and he quickly abandoned the grad school program he was pursuing at UCLA after landing the gig. Playing in SMASHING PUMPKINS all these years has inspired Schroeder to become "a better technical guitar player," he previously said. "There's things that I hear in my head that I want to be able to play, and so when you reach the kind of technical frontier where you're like, 'Okay, there's certain limitations here,' I just decided, 'Okay, I want to be able to play some things in my head that I can't technically do.'" In recent years, he's also taken jazz guitar lessons during a time when SMASHING PUMPKINS was off the road, and contributed to albums by the shoegaze band RINGO DEATHSTARR and electro-pop act NIGHT DREAMER.

Schroeder released his debut solo single, "Haenim", in July 2021. A fuzzed-out shoegaze-pop cover featuring Korean American vocalist Heeya So, the song was written by Shin Joong Hyun, an influential Korean rock 'n' roll guitarist, and initially appeared on 1973's "Now", a psych-folk LP released by a teenager named Kim Jung Mi.

Photo courtesy of MAD Ink PR