SMASHING PUMPKINS' BILLY CORGAN Looks Back On 'Adore' Album

SMASHING PUMPKINS mainman Billy Corgan recently took some time to reflect and share some thoughts in regards to the 10th anniversary of the band's "Adore" album.

He writes on the band's web site, "I was surprised when someone mentioned to me that today was the 10th anniversary of the 'Adore' album...my first thought was surprise that it had been that long since, and how quickly time passes...it seems like a long time ago and yet, in some strange ways, not that far back either...

"Recently, when we went in to record 'Superchrist', it was the first time I had been back to Sunset Sound studios since the completion of the 'Adore' album. Some of the same people still work there, and spoke very kindly to me of the time spent making that album. We were working in another room for 'Superchrist', but I did ask to go to peek inside the other room where many of the songs were cut, and it's funny how time can play tricks with your mind as far as the proportion of things. The tracking room was full of amps and guitars back then, and so empty it looked quite large. I could see in my mind's eye the three of us sitting in a small circle recording 'Shame', a song I had just written that morning...and playing take after take after take of 'For Martha', the band in the main room and me at the piano in the isolation booth, trying to reach them through glass...

"The reaction at the time of the album's release, if memory serves me correctly, was overwhelming negative. It was a very nave thing to try to do, to make an album that sounded little like the one before, and which spoke very openly about mourning and loss. D'Arcy [Wretzky, former bassist] in particular was very critical at the time of the decision to even call it a PUMPKINS album, saying that it really should have been my first solo album. Then I didn't know what to think, because the hopes I placed on the album, mistaken as they were (that the band could be seen in a more open light that had more to do with artistry),were dashed in all the talk of what it didn't sound like and how it was a failure through and through...and secretly yearned that the embrace of it would heal some of the wounds of my mother's death and probably honestly the death of the band as well...but none of that worked, none of it came true, and it has been a circuitous journey ever since. It does seem to be the demarcation point of what was, and what became, and what might be. Te fact that after 10 years the album has found it's warmer place here and there shows that its birth and death and re-birth are very much in line with the themes of the album...which is one of hope, and taking a chance that the moment lived properly is ultimately more important than in what gets written down later.

"I lived that album quite deeply, and maybe that's why I still can't listen to it... and I can no longer blame anyone if they don't either. It's one of 'those,' an 'other,' something apart...and the pun of the title, crude as it is, serves quite simply:

"Q: When is a door not a door?
A: When it is a jar.

...see, bad joke...

Q: When is an album not an album?
A: When it is a-dore."