How a Song on Siamese Dream Saved Billy Corgan's Life
If you've ever hit rock bottom, you know how hopeless things can be. Billy Corgan was there in 1992. This is the story of the song that saved his life.
Today — pun intended — it’s time to look at what appears to be most positive and upbeat song about hitting rock bottom. It’s time to revisit one of my most formative bands, The Smashing Pumpkins, and explore the heartbreaking story behind their hit 1993 song… “Today.”
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The Impact of Today
This is FensePost and this is Poetic Wax. Poetic Wax is a weekly YouTube series (and now podcast) where I bring you stories from the history of bands, albums, and songs within my record collection.
Today, I’m pulling out my original pressing of Siamese Dream, the sophomore album by The Smashing Pumpkins, to explore the song that started it all for me. And for that, we have to get a little personal.
I often credit The Smashing Pumpkins with igniting my passion for discovering new music. See, back in 1993, my exposure to music was pretty much limited to what my parents played. I hadn’t really strayed out to find what I liked. That changed when my late friend Justin, who sadly succumbed to cancer last fall, introduced me to a song during my Freshman year of high school. That song was “Today” and that band was The Smashing Pumpkins.
This is the history of that song, and the story of how it came from a dark place.
If you've ever hit rock bottom, you know how hopeless things can be. Billy Corgan was there in 1992. This is the story of the song that saved his life.
Watch the video on my YouTube Channel below.
Gish
In late May of 1991, The Smashing Pumpkins released Gish. It was their debut album, produced by Butch Vig, who within a year would work on Nirvana’s Nevermind and a few years later join Scottish singer Shirley Manson to form the band Garbage.
The album would help bridge the gap between the then mostly underground alt rock scene and mainstream rock, though the majority of that nod needs to go to Nevermind. Regardless, Gish would certainly ride its coattails as alt rock exploded into massive cultural relevance.
Gish wasn’t an immediate commercial success, but it was certainly a step up from where the band was prior to its release. No surprise, given it was their first album. Prior to Gish, they’d really only toured briefly — maybe going a month on the road or so.
But after its release, The Smashing Pumpkins toured for about 14 months, opening for acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam. It was a grueling experience much different than hitting the road today, which honestly can still be quite grueling.
September 24, 1991
In the midst of their tour, something was happening in rock music, and it all came to a head on September 24, 1991.
That day saw the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind. The same day as Nevermind’s release saw two other pivotal albums hit: Badmotofinger by Soundgarden, and Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers. A week earlier, there was Use Your Illusion I and II by Guns ’N Roses. And one month before that, in mid to late August was Metallica’s self titled album, often referred to as The Black Album, and Ten, the debut album by Pearl Jam.
So there was incredible momentum within the sphere of alt rock, and in rock music in general.
The pressure was on to deliver. Corgan and crew needed a follow up that could surpass the success of Gish and meet the acclaim of everything else that was hitting the mainstream.
Despite releasing Gish four moths prior to that date, The Smashing Pumpkins were often being touted as “the next Nirvana.”
Hitting Rock Bottom
Returning to Chicago from the extensive tour, having generated buzz and momentum around Gish, and under immense pressure, the band very nearly imploded.
Bassist D’arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha, who had been dating, were in the process of breaking up. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was at the beginning of his well publicized drug addictions, and frontman Billy Corgan slipped into what he often refers to as one of the worst songwriting slumps of his life.
The months wore on. One, two… seven, eight.
Struggling with writers block, a small but growing public persona, the pressure to meet the demand from a growing presence of mainstream alt rock, Corgan was also experiencing a tumultuous personal crisis. Experiences and feelings that he had repressed from childhood began surfacing:
“I had locked everything away, thinking I’ll never have to deal with that again,” Corgan would recount about these experiences on VH1 Storytellers. “And suddenly I found myself confronted with all these demons I thought I locked away. And I entered into this very horrible period of my life.”
Removing the songwriter from him had stripped away his passion and purpose. Things were out of control, and he was at a breaking point. Add to that a split from his girlfriend of the time, and he was suddenly homeless, sleeping on D’Arcy’s floor at one point and living in a parking garage for a bit.
“I lost the ability to function,” Corgan would recount. “I didn’t want to go outside. I was eating like a pig and gaining weight. I couldn’t write songs.”
He became obsessed with ending it all.
This was Billy Corgan’s rock bottom.
Writing Today
“Out of the depths of this despair, I sort of bottomed out, and it literally came down to a simple decision, at least in my mind at that time,” Corgan would say in 2000.
On one hand, he could pack it in and call it a day. And you know what that means. On the other, he could get used to it. As he would say “work and live and be happy.”
He would go on to joke, “As you can see, I chose another form of death, which is rock and roll.”
Most people, myself included, hyperfocus on the positive aspects of the song. “Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known.” But dig deeper into the lyrics, and it gets dark. Fast. “Can’t live for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s much too long. I’ll burn my eyes out.”
“At this point in my life, it is a positive song,” Corgan says. “It’s about survival.”
In a now archived article on Blender, Corgan stated, “I just thought it was funny to write a song that said today is the greatest day of your life because it can’t get any worse.”
Listen to the demo for today and what you hear is quite different. It jumps straight into the that powerful opening riff. In the studio, he felt it needed a little something extra at the beginning—something before the song exploded with noise—it needed a powerful opening hook.
“At that point, we just started the song with the verse-chord progression, which itself is pretty catchy because of the melody,” noted Corgan in a piece for Guitar World. “I knew I had to come up with some sort of opening riff. Then, out of the blue, I heard the opening lick note for note in my head.” That gentle guitar chime was the turning point for the track: “Suddenly, I had a song that was starting out quiet and then got very loud. I could hear the shifts in the song as it progressed.”
Siamese Dream
“The tension within the band was what gave them an edge,” Butch Vig would say. “It’s this volatile thing where they could explode at any minute.”
Corgan the control freak was in full force during the recording of Siamese Dream. Chamberlain was either too drugged out to perform when he showed up … if he showed up at all. And Wretzky might need 20 or more takes to get a part recorded where Corgan needed just three.
This certainly didn’t help the temperament within the band.
When I think of Siamese Dream, one of the first songs I gravitate toward is Today. It’s what drew me to the band originally, and it was that powerful track that sparked my obsession with seeking out music.
I’m not alone there. Virgin Records, The Smashing Pumpkins’ label at the time, was obsessed with it as well. They felt it should be the first single. Corgan, on the other hand, felt otherwise. “I wanted ‘Cherub Rock’ as the first single; they wanted ‘Today.’ I mean, I created a monstrous, emotional piece of art an hour long, and the only thing people wanted to talk about was a song I wrote in 10 minutes.”
Corgan got his way, but only in the UK. When it was released in the States in October of 1993, it completely flopped. “Today,” though, entered the Billboard chart on Christmas, and a lot had to do with MTV, thanks to repeated plays of the music video, which featured an ice cream truck in the desert.
It’s what propelled the band to stardom.
The Smashing Pumpkins is one of those bands I cover every so often on my YouTube Channel and on the Poetic Wax Podcast — about once every 4 months or so — I’d love to know what story YOU’D love for me to cover next by the band…