Since I’m relatively new to pedals, I really took an open stance on how to approach fusing my style of playing with the Smashing Pumpkins' sound. I wanted to find a series of pedals that allowed me to add those shoegazey-style twinkles and reverb while simultaneously retaining my super-heavy metal roots. It’s really a pedalboard that serves a variety of styles, yet not too complex.

Before I joined the Pumpkins, my pedals were minimal to none. I really only used distortion straight from the amp head, maybe a wah once in a while. Rarely did I ever play on clean. In my previous band, Vigil of War, we ran through Kemper amps, so many of our effects were pre-programmed as well.

Now, I feel like I’ve been exposed to a whole new – yet old school – world of sound design. I really love analog pedals and how tactile it is to adjust your settings on the fly, though doing the “pedal dance” on the downbeat can be a tricky one for some of the more complex Pumpkins songs. It’s really allowed me to tap into my own creativity and expand my songwriting abilities with a wider arsenal of sounds.

I honestly wouldn’t know a fraction of what I know without being in the Pumpkins. Billy [Corgan] has really been an incredible mentor and showed me the ropes of how to dial in tone, and it’s been an honor since he has such a vast knowledge of pedals.

It’s helped me learn to choose sounds that balance frequencies and that add balance to songs and play harmoniously with other band members, rather than just tones that sound cool sitting at home with a library on my computer, which I love to do, but is definitely a different vibe.

Though I’ve spent the last year dialing in pedals, I still have so much to learn. I know that it’ll be a forever learning process, changing with time as my own creativity changes. It’ll probably never be perfect, but that’s sort of the beauty of it.

I don’t think there really is a wrong way to do things with pedals. If you have a sound that works for how you want to voice something, run with it. It’s all about getting to the end result at the end of the day, and if that’s routing your pedalboard differently than others, but it fits your sound and music, then run with it! No judgment here.

My pedalboard is powered by Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 3+ [pedalboard power supply], and the channel switching is done via MIDI to Revv Generator 120 Head signal chain into amp input. I’ve got a Mogami guitar cable with Neutrik gold right-angle silent ends, and then, on the board, I’ve got a Dunlop 95Q wah wah, an Interstellar Audio Octonaut Hyperdrive [overdrive].

And then, I’ve got a Chase Tone Fuzz Fella [fuzz], an Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork [pitch shifter], which is controlled by the Dunlop Volume X Pedal [second from right], an Axxess Electronic Compat/A [Input] Buffer, and an AnalogMan Mini Chorus, and that inputs into the amp. Then, there’s the signal flow in the FX loop.

Starting with the amp send, there’s the Dunlop Volume X Pedal, the Boss TU-3S [Chromatic Tuner], the Walrus Audio Lore [Reverse Soundscape Generator] pedal, and the MXR Joshua [Ambient] Echo pedal with tap control. And then, I’ve got another Axxess Electronic Compat/A [Input] Buffer, with an amp return.

If I had to choose one pedal for a full show:

The Interstellar Audio Octonaut [overdrive]. One, it looks incredible. Two, I love the distortion tone I can get from it. It mixes well with my clean channel and works well as a boost for my distortion.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

After three decades, ’90s alt-rock producer extraordinaire Butch Vig has officially reunited with the Smashing Pumpkins to work on a new single.

“Back in the studio with Butch Vig for the first time in 32 years! James, Jimmy, and I had an awesome time recording this new single,” shared Billy Corgan on social media.

Corgan gave more details during his Substack livestream on May 19, where he teased what happened during the session, as well as what fans can expect from this new single.

“We’ve just recorded one song,” Corgan revealed [transcribed by Rolling Stone].

“It’s for a specific purpose, which I can’t give that part out … I haven’t come up with a title yet, honestly. The plan is the song will be released this year. I can’t say exactly when. There’s reasons for that … The song is really cool. It’s basically done recording. I’d say there’s a couple little things left. I’d say it’s 98 percent done.

“If this isn’t a 10 out of 10 announcement, I don’t know what is,” he continues. “This may be an 11 out of 10 announcement. This news isn’t anywhere. You’re hearing this first.”

However, fans hoping to hear the track live during the band's recently announced Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness anniversary tours in the UK, Europe and the States may be disappointed, as Corgan cautioned it may not be possible due to a “timing issue.”

Vig made history with Corgan and co. when he produced their seminal first two albums, Gish (1991) and Siamese Dreams (1993).

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Corgan revealed that he is “very focused on guitar music,” so the collab reveal bodes well for a potential Pumpkins album following their 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Mei.

“It’s the most motivated I have been to make a guitar record in 20-25 years,” he said. “Part of that is shoegaze music has really come back in the culture, which we’re commonly associated with.

“There came a point in the mid-2000s where it seemed like guitar was totally out of vogue. I’m not a Luddite – if people are not interested in guitar, that’s cool by me, and I’ll try to come at it a different way. But guitar is the thing I understand the most, and where I’ve had the most influence.”

In more recent Smashing Pumpkins news, amp builder Brian Carstens has revealed how he went from being a Corgan superfan to crafting amps for his hero.

When Billy Corgan announced his first-ever signature amp, the Grace, at the height of the pandemic, Brian Carstens became one of the most talked-about amp builders on the planet, seemingly overnight.

“It's like, this is what happens to other people, right? It doesn't happen to you,” he says. “You couldn't make it up. And for him to be genuinely so excited by it that he's like, ‘I want to put my name on it, and this is my first and only signature amp I've ever done’… it’s amazing.”

But like most overnight successes, Carstens’ journey is one of grit, determination and some curious twists of fate.

In fact, Smashing Pumpkins were the band that first inspired Carstens to pick up a guitar as a teenager in Michigan. By the time he moved to Chicago as an adult, he was determined to make it in music.

After a miserable stint at Guitar Center (“the worst job I ever had”), he wound up working at the Music Garage, the city’s premier rehearsal space. Amp repair guru Tim Schroeder hit him up to tech at the attached music store, where Carstens got his first taste of electronics.

“Whenever I had to replace pickups and stuff, I was like, ‘Oh, this is fun.’ Not making the nut or filing frets. And I was like, ‘I think I want to get into more amps.’ Two weeks later he fired the amp tech and said, ‘You’re the amp tech now. There's Wilco’s gear – fix it.’”

Carstens taught himself on the job and was soon hired to repair amps at Chicago Music Exchange. During his seven-and-a-half year stint, he worked on gear from Deftones, Mastodon, Joe Bonamassa – and no fewer than three Dumbles (“one I didn't jive with at all. One was cool. And Jackson Browne’s sounded amazing”).

All the while, he was picking up on what he liked from different circuits. Taking photos. Making notes. He started his own company, Carstens Amps, in 2015.

During this time, he started working on Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder’s gear [no relation]. Then he began fixing up Corgan’s. The pair met briefly backstage at a Pumpkins show. It inspired the builder to reach out.

“I just said, ‘Hey, I was at the show and saw you backstage with my friend Jeff and just wanted to let you know as a fan, thank you for always innovating. That's what art's all about.’

“He wrote me back like a minute later and he said, ‘Thank you. By the way, amazing amps. Used them on the latest Pumpkins. Well done.’”

Carstens offered to build Corgan a custom amp. But it quickly became clear that this would not be a straightforward commission.

“He told me what he didn't want. He didn't want a Marshall. Billy does not like to repeat himself. He wasn't super-descriptive, but he gave me a couple points. I said, ‘OK, give me a few months and I'll come at you with something beautiful.’ And he said, ‘I’ve never played a high-gain amp that I like.’”

No pressure. But Carstens and Corgan align in their quest for high standards. And as someone who had obsessed over the Pumpkins leader’s guitar tone for 30 years, he knew he was the man for the job.

Months later, his creation was ready. He brought it to Corgan in his Chicago studio.

“We go into this room and he's like, ‘Yeah, put it on that cabinet.’ It's a silver Marshall 4x12 from the Mellon Collie tour. He fires it up, starts playing through it. Jimmy's there and we're all just listening and tweaking knobs.

“At one point I was moving one of the controls and he goes, ‘Stop right there.’ He turns and looks at Jimmy, gets this big smile on his face and starts playing Shiva. And he’s like, ‘Can we keep it? I love it.’”

Corgan was so impressed with what he has since dubbed Carstens’ “savant-level understanding of gain and power” that he offered to make the Grace his first-ever signature amp. Yet the 100-watt head’s name was very much Carstens’ vision.

“Most things that have gain get so compressed. They get so narrow. This needed to be the opposite. It needed to be wide and harmonic and open and big. All my amps are that – there's an air around the notes. There's space. And there's a transparency. It allows you to shine.

“I didn't want to name it ‘Hellfire’. I didn't want to name it ‘The Dragonslayer’. I named it Grace. There's nuance to it. It changes your relationship with this piece of gear.”

Carstens invites an intimate relationship between the player and the amp. His creations are resolutely single-channel. He wants players to control the amp with their fingers, with their guitars, rather than rely on channel switching.

“The best amps are the ones that [players] have an interaction with. It's not just ‘click channel one, click channel two, click channel three.’ There's no inspiration with that for me. If I made two-channel amps, I would sell a lot more amps. But it's not about that.”

Instead, Carstens seeks to crystallize the ideal versions of each amp in his head with each subsequent release. The Empire is a modern metal amp designed for extended-range guitars and developed with input from Misha Mansoor. The Cathedral was designed to be “the ultimate clean, chimey, glassy, beautiful clean amplifier”.

His creations have attracted some major-league fans outside of the Pumpkins universe. Tool and Slipknot rave about them, after super-producer Joe Barresi picked one up. Will Putney always has a Grace ready to go in his studio. Greta Van Fleet are messing around with them. And it’s not all rock and metal bands, either.

“My phone rang and it was John Fogerty,” Carstens says. “He’s like, ‘I just played one of your amps at the Vault at Chicago Music Exchange. It wasn't for sale and I’d like to buy one. I’m in the cab right now going to my hotel, but I’ll send you my PayPal. I really, really like it.’”

The Grace, meanwhile, is currently reaching a new group of players as part of Laney’s Supergrace – a pedal amp that bottles Corgan’s live rig: one side Grace, one side Laney Supergroup. But Carstens had his reservations when the iconic British amp firm first proposed the idea.

“I have this thing with pedals. Playing that for an extended period of time, you get ear fatigue – there’s nothing like the tube-rich harmonic character that tubes have. But they did a great, great job with this thing.

“It doesn't replace the real, genuine article, but it allows people to access it at a price point where they can get the idea of what it is and where it comes from.”

Any future affordable collaborations weigh heavy on the Chicago builder’s mind – that tightrope between quality and accessibility. He equates the difference between amps and pedals to vinyl and streaming.

And no wonder: Carstens doesn’t want to make anything he’s not 100 percent happy with. Heck, 99 percent isn’t good enough. And maybe that’s why it took his uncompromising determination to finally unite Billy Corgan with an amp he not only likes but actively endorses.

“I don't want to create an amp to be in the middle somewhere. It's easy to get 90 percent there. To get that extra, it's hard. What separates the good from great? That's what it’s all about. Can I crack the code? If I can, hopefully I can make an amp for it.”

• For more information, head to Carstens Amplification.

Billy Corgan is one of the most recognizable faces flying the flag for ’90s alternative rock, having even recently made a surprise appearance at Coachella during rising indie-alt star Sombr’s set to bash out a Smashing Pumpkins classic.

However, the artist at the helm of the Pumpkins ship revealed that his inimitable guitar style can be traced back to what he calls a “weird decision” to practice guitar for four hours a day... in the dark.

“I was the type of guy who would have a record on eight hours a day,” he says on the And The Writer Is… podcast. “I was literally that guy.”

Listening to records for hour after hour encouraged Corgan to craft his own music.

“I was like, ‘Okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm really going to do it.’ I made this weird decision that day: I'm going to play four hours a day,” he asserts. “I don't know why I picked four hours a day. I would time myself, and I would get up in the middle of night, play it in the middle of the night, in the dark, no light, and just learn how to play the guitar without seeing it.”

Corgan stayed true to himself and played “four hours a day for four years in a row.” So what happened after the four-year mark? “When I hit the four-year anniversary, I was like, ‘I'm good,’” he replies. “I still practiced, but not like it did.”

Corgan doesn't explicitly explain why he decided to take such an unorthodox approach, but one can only assume it had something to do with discipline and familiarity. If you can find your way around a fretboard in the pitch black in your bedroom, chances are you'd fare quite well on a dark arena stage, too.

Back then, Corgan never thought he’d flourish into a songwriter, preferring to occupy the “gunslinger” role, à la “Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes…” instead. “I thought I was [only] going to be a guitar player,” he divulges.

“By junior, senior year in high school, I start conceptually wrapping my head around the idea of writing songs. I had a metal band. We had no lead singer. So I would write riff-based songs like Iron Maiden.”

In an extensive interview with Guitar World, Corgan recently reflected on a tonal journey four decades in the making, and why he’s the most excited he’s been to make a guitar album in 25 years.

Some of the most glorious British guitar music of the ’80s was born under the glowering skies of Manchester. And while the Chameleons never matched the commercial heights of city brethren the Smiths and New Order, those who did discover the band’s third album, Strange Times, were forever marked by the experience.

“I’d forgotten how much this album meant to me,” posted Oasis’ Noel Gallagher on Instagram in 2018. “It came out in ’86, when I was 19. I’ve been listening to it every day since and I have to say it’s blown my mind – again. It must have influenced my early years as a songwriter because I can hear me in it everywhere.”

Fronted by the shamanic vocals of Mark Burgess, with Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding handling guitars, the lineup only had a scattering of embryonic song ideas when they loaded into Jacob’s Studio in Surrey for a five-week session.

But the bonhomie – and perhaps some leftover mojo from the studio’s recent residents – fed into an album that is lusher, dreamier and more melodic than their post-punk debut, 1983’s Script of the Bridge, or its obtusely titled follow-up, 1985’s What Does Anything Mean? Basically.

“The Smiths had just been in doing The Queen Is Dead,” Smithies says. “I’ve got a memory of doing backing vocals with Dave and we couldn’t stop laughing. And I remember a bird getting in the control room – it took us ages to get it out!”

Somewhere amid the merriment, the band – with producer David M. Allen – captured an album that conjures its own unique headspace. While the nuts and bolts have faded in his memory, Smithies believes he used a Gibson SG and a Squier Strat into a rental Mesa/Boogie, with vibes courtesy of Boss delay and chorus pedals, plus the otherworldly repeats of Fielding’s Roland Space Echo.

“We generally wanted the record to have a live feel,” he says. “Dave and I didn’t compete with each other, and it helped that we had different sounds… Dave was and is a much better guitar player than me, but my strength was riffs.”

The synergy is obvious on Mad Jack, Caution and Swamp Thing, with the guitarists weaving hypnotic soundscapes decorated by chiming, delay-soaked arpeggios that at times bleed into feedback and foreboding.

“The pop mainstream back then was just catchy love songs, but we related more to the alternative side,” Smithies says. “We were lumped in with the goth thing, but we did what we wanted. My favorite guitar moment on Strange Times? I’ll Remember. We split up not long after, so it’s an apt song to end the record.”

Thanks to that first parting of ’87, the Chameleons missed the mid-’90s Brit-rock boom they had helped inspire.

But the band’s second reunion since 2021 has stuck, and Smithies still enjoys the patronage of A-listers from Interpol to the Smashing Pumpkins, as well as namechecks from younger guns like Alcest frontman Neige (“The Chameleons were just as good as anyone else in the post-punk scene,” he told Louder).

“I’ve never met Noel Gallagher, but I’ve heard he liked Strange Times,” Smithies says. “I met Billy Corgan briefly when we supported the Mission on a recent U.S. tour. He was talking to Wayne Hussey.

“I was about to go onstage and I got a selfie with him to send to my son, Joe, as he’s a big fan. We also did a gig in Seattle not long ago; Krist Novoselic from Nirvana turned up and bought our 2025 record, Arctic Moon.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Back in the ’90s, Courtney Love and Billy Corgan ran in similar circles and over the years, their bands – Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, respectively – played on the same lineups, traded bassists, and even became musically interlinked through Corgan’s songwriting contributions to Hole’s Celebrity Skin, their most commercially successful record.

“I'm a smitten indie, wannabe rock star, and I've just seen you play, and, if anybody saw you in the first album era, what it lacked in Beatles chords, it made up for in complete, sheer, visceral energy,” Billy Corgan says on his Magnificent Others podcast, as he describes the first time the two met on October 29, 1991, at the Avalon, in Chicago.

To which Love replies, “I mean, if you're gonna go there, that's why I said with the Kim Gordon era, with Pretty on the Inside, like, ‘This is our own. This is the market. All right, I'm going all the way in.’”

Corgan recalls that, from that early Hole show, the two things he remembers are “the cool guitar stuff happening [by way of guitarist Eric Erlandson], and then this just never-ending scream. It was like white-hot rage, and it was performative, yes, but it was sourced from somewhere.”

As for where the so-called “white-hot rage” was coming from, Love recounts how her childhood trauma, which included her “father giving me acid from about three to six” – shaped her and what would eventually become Hole's rage-fueled repertoire.

“I couldn't afford to not understand the politics [of the music industry],” she asserts – an ethos which also extended to her willingness to recruit Kim Gordon, who she describes as “the gatekeeper,” to produce Pretty on the Inside.

“Try doing indie politics. It distracts so much, every musicality, and so, screaming was my only option – it was something I was good at too, and my lyrics were fucking fire, and I knew they were great.”

She continues, “Even though people love Pretty on the Inside, I could fuck with an R.E.M. song. I couldn't write Killing Moon, but I could fuck with the lesser [Echo & the] Bunnyman songs. I had a guitar player who was really good. I mean, at best, I was a reliable rhythmist... But I understood the skill set. I understood the art... the Peter Buck [the co-founder and lead guitarist of R.E.M.] of it all.

“So I understood what I could do with a good band. But I also understood, this is the market right now, and I'm gonna go all the way in and write great lyrics and do noise music.”

And speaking of the link between the two seminal bands, bassist to both, Melissa Auf der Maur, recently opened up about joining Hole amid tragedy and her “Master’s in Music” with the Smashing Pumpkins.

“The drama and chaos of Courtney Love and Hole are infamous, but to me it all felt familiar,” writes Melissa Auf der Maur in her newly released memoir and homage to the ’90s, Even the Good Girls Will Cry.

Like all great memoirs, Auf der Maur vividly encapsulates the pivotal moments that saw her transcend from DIY venues in Canada to joining Love and co. in front of 65,000 people at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1994. It all happened mere weeks after the tragic deaths of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff and Kurt Cobain – and that’s just the first chapter.

“I found comfort in the chaos. My upbringing was the perfect training ground to be in a rock band and immersed in the world of Courtney. Despite how new I was to the band, I fitted right in,” she continues.

Indeed, Auf der Maur's grunge Cinderella story depicts a series of full-circle moments: her encounter with Billy Corgan at a low-lit punk venue in her native Montréal – and her becoming absolutely enthralled with the Smashing Pumpkins' music – led to a recommendation to join Hole, and later, the Pumpkins as their touring bassist, before she plunged into a solo career at the turn of the millennium.

“There's a reason why the introduction to my book, which is the Reading Festival, is [called] ‘Through the Looking Glass,’” Auf der Maur tells Bass Player, as she dials in from a room lined with photos – vignettes from those heady days.

“It was David Lynchian, Alice in Wonderland… I just stepped into another dimension. I went from a tiny town to a global stage with grief and chaos and death and everything.”

In the book, you describe feeling chosen by the bass. What was it about the instrument – its physicality and frequency – that felt like destiny rather than a practical decision?

When I was awarded Female Bass Player of the Year by Gibson, in the limo ride on the way [there], I started writing my acceptance speech, and that's when I came up with [the idea that] the bass is the mother of all instruments. So in my acceptance speech, I described the bass as the glue and the connector.

The bass is the connector that connects the singer to the drummer, to the audience, to the rhythm, and to the melodies, all at the same time… The place in which the bass sits in any music, not just rock music, but especially dance music or even jazz, the bass brings you on a different kind of journey. It brings you on a feeling journey. You fucking feel the bass.

Geddy Lee has a TV show called Are Bass Players Human Too? [and] he came to Hudson [New York, where Auf der Maur currently lives]. At the end of the visit, I was like, well, ‘Bass is so easy. That's why I picked it up.’ And he looked at me, he's like, ‘Well, that's a secret. Don't tell anyone.’ But he also said, ‘Bass isn't easy for everybody.’

I then realized, even during all my years in Hole, when it was clear that I was so young and had only played six concerts in my life, I played the bass, and didn’t make a mistake. When I joined the band, I only had five days to rehearse with them, and people say, like, ‘How did that happen?’ I was like, ‘I don't know. It was easy.’ So I feel my way through a song.

What did bass playing give you that the other art forms didn’t?

It entirely connects me to a deep way of feeling human connection, because the best of bass is when you're playing with a drummer and playing with a band and playing in front of an audience – that is the magic.

Me alone in a room with a bass; it means absolutely nothing to me. It does not please me nor make me feel anything. That’s my relationship to the instrument – it’s to connect with human beings.

How did you come across your first bass?

I had borrowed basses from older men. I was a DJ, a cassette DJ, at the local dive bar where all the older guy musicians worked with me. And I started plugging into their amps with their instruments.

Then, one day, the guys just said, ‘Hey, it’s time to get your own bass. You're turning 21, you've been borrowing all this time. Let's go find you a bass.’ And so they brought me to this second-hand shop. We walked into this giant music room. It just called me. She had the same color as my hair.

I said, ‘What about this? Is this a good one?’ They're like, ‘Oh yeah, you know, vintage Squier Precision, made in Japan, high quality…’ And then I said, ‘Great, my father, I'll just tell him it's my birthday present.’

My father [Canadian journalist and politician Nick Auf der Maur], who is a very adventurous, courageous, weird person, was having lunch, and I said, ‘Can I have $500 for this bass for my birthday? I'm turning 21.’ That was the bass I played in Hole until I was sponsored by Fender.

You joined Hole amidst unimaginable grief. How did you manage to adapt to the circumstances?

A switch flipped, and I was just the exact same person, but in a completely different environment. I was not raised in a suburban, boring family. I was raised by radical people who did radical things.

When I saw the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole play in 1991, when I worked as a ticket girl, and I saw both of them play in front of 20 people, I knew what was happening.

The world was changing, and something huge and magical was happening for my generation. I picked up the bass because I wanted to be part of the movement of radical noise-making for my generation. So I felt at home. I'm like, this is where I belong.

I was not a drug addict [but I was] watching what money and fame did to all these fragile people who were already, for the most part, coming from broken families and didn't have love and support, so their band and their community and their generation and the stage and the audience were their only family. I adapted very quickly because I understood what was happening.

What gear were you using during that time?

I only ever played the same thing, an [Ampeg] SVT tube amp – with the drive knob, not without. I had been playing a vintage one that was one of the boys' back home. I only ever borrowed until I joined Hole, so I knew what I wanted to buy when they bought me my amp – it's an SVT Pro tube head and SVT cabinet. My Fender Precision, Boss tuner pedal… that is it.

I didn’t use any distortion until later, when SansAmp made these cool distortion pedals. I also love phaser and chorus. I didn’t use anything else. [More recently] Geddy gave me all of his [signature] pedals, so I have some Geddy Lee pedals.

How did your sense of rhythm evolve once you locked in with Hole drummer Patty Schemel?

Patty and I played really well together. We [even] had a little side project when Courtney was becoming a Hollywood movie star – it was called Constant Comment. It was harder to adjust to [Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer] Jimmy Chamberlin. Me and Patty were easy.

By the time I was playing with the Pumpkins, it was a much more complicated catalog with a very complex drummer. Jimmy is a jazz-prog drummer. He's crazy cool. The sound of the Pumpkins is so Jimmy. So that was an interesting adaptation because Jimmy, like jazz drummers, does not play to a click. Patty's actually very tight. She's very, very rhythmically solid. Jimmy is like a wild animal.

It's like you're following this wild creature through two-hour sets of changing songs every setlist, and it took so long for me to figure out, ‘How do I keep up with this dynamic band?’ Because Jimmy is also following Billy, and Billy speeds up, and it's like this weird machine.

But when I did Billy's podcast [recently], I learned something about myself musically that I've never learned before. He told me about my specific pocket, which I knew nothing about. I'm on top of the beat. I’m ahead. I'll take it as a compliment, because [Led Zeppelin’s] John Paul Jones and [John] Bonham, who are one of the most famous rhythm sections, Bonham is behind, and Jones is above. I guess I naturally sit on top of the drums.

What are your memories of writing the bassline for Celebrity Skin? It’s unusual for a bassline to follow the vocal melody.

I don't remember anything. I'm very, very proud of my bass playing on that album, because I had so much time, because some of those songs, we'd be playing for hours and hours and hours.

You just play for Courtney to find her lyrics. She's someone who needs to be screaming to find the whole song for like 20 hours, so as a rhythm section, you're sitting there just playing in a loop over and over and over. So I had a lot of time to find melodic licks.

We were brought to see a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal with the producer, Michael Beinhorn [renowned producer who worked with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole, and Ozzy Osbourne]. I was not a Fleetwood Mac fan because I'm more of a heavy, visceral rock fan, but I recognized being in that room watching the drums and bass, [their tracks] could be seen as simple, airy songs, but this is not simple.

What they are doing, the complexity of it when you step back, when you do a melodic line, when you open it up, when you push it… Through just one sitting and watching that rhythm section, it opened my mind to the power of less is more, but also [that] minimal changes make huge impacts on a song.

Billy Corgan famously recommended you to Courtney, and you later joined the Pumpkins. I'm curious how your dynamic with him changed across all these chapters of your life…

Our bond started when we discovered we were both born on St Patrick's Day. We're both pretty tripped-out hippie people that get a little romantic and convoluted and [are all] about the stars and destiny and astrology… He's a trip of a guy, and I am a trip of a girl, I guess, and so I think our relationship reflects this ebb and flow. Sometimes he feels like a soulmate, and then sometimes he's a total stranger.

What did you learn from him about bass playing?

I learned how to be an incredible bass player. Learning that catalog and playing 183 shows with those incredible players totally defined me as a bass player. I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my God… I mean, it changed my level of musicianship forever and opened my repertoire of understanding what my hands can do.

My solo records most certainly were expanded by having to learn that catalog and play it with them. So I always say the Pumpkins was my “Master’s in Music”… just phenomenal music training.

How did that impact on your solo career?

Living in the shadow of my grunge parents, Courtney and Billy, who made me, who found me out of nowhere… it was a complex and exhausting shadow to come out from under.

I made those solo records myself for myself, even though I put one out on Capitol [Records] and one on Roadrunner [Records]. I paid for them myself, because I was not going to let other motherfucking people tell me who I am or what I'm going to do and be.

It was done in protective force fields of independence so that I could explore, authentically, what it is to be me, alone, as the captain of the ship. So those two albums were completely self-exploration.

Especially my first record, being able to work with [Queens of the Stone Age’s] Josh Homme and [record producer] Chris Goss… I got to invite the people I admired the most. John Stanier from Helmet, one of my favorite drummers ever… having my favorite drummers play on my solo record was pretty much the coolest thing a bass player could ever do.

From its title to its content, your book, and, by extension, your career, have a feminist overtone. Did you feel a strong sense of responsibility in that respect when you were playing in Hole and Smashing Pumpkins?

The people from the record industry realized that the money is with the women, the money is with the girl fans. They turned the whole music industry, the pop music industry, into a female-led [industry].

Billie Eilish, I think, is a woman you couldn't even invent in the ’90s, because she's a product of a new world where, actually, women can be empowered and protected from a horrible system. She's a product of a new world, of a very special kind of world that didn't exist for women [before].

My mother, which I write about in the book, she wanted to change the way women were. She raised me, saying over and over, ‘No man should ever define a woman. You have to be your own person. Do not be defined by a man.’ So that's how I was raised, and that's what I did.

I felt a responsibility to continue what my mother had started. I just saw myself as a continuation of new feminism, and it still has to happen right now. I got very nervous in the past 10-20 years watching, well, rock music dying. So then, visceral, strong women kind of died and went more into pop.

It was a rare moment in the ’90s where women were being given a bridge into a very male form of expression, and it was so fucking powerful. [Nowadays] there's Picture Parlour, Wet Leg… of course, there are tons of women playing guitar. Thank God. But there was a dead moment there, between this and that, there weren’t any. When I was putting out my solo records, all of a sudden, I was the only woman on the bill again.

There’s this beautiful description in your book of the bathroom stall at Reading Festival as a liminal space – transitioning pre-fame Melissa into a public-facing bass icon. Looking back at that life-changing moment now, what would you tell 22-year-old Melissa?

I would tell her that she's doing it all right. It is her who has the answer. No-one in the future outside of her has the answer. The greatest thing I learned writing this book is that I already knew what I was and who I wanted to be.

I had all the tools, and I began to realize that my 22-year-old self was a teacher to me now. So I would basically tell her fucking follow your wildest dreams, listen to the craziest ideas you have in your head, and trust yourself.

I've already been everywhere in my life and back, and I'm just trying to ride the right wave to have meaningful experiences and share something of my perspective and my love of life with other people so that I can have good energy in my lifetime.

• Melissa Auf der Maur's memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir, is out now.

Billy Corgan and Melissa Auf der Maur have a relationship that spans decades, and it all started with a $1 Tuesday night show – July 23, 1991 – at a dingy venue in Montréal.

It was precisely that night that their friendship and collaborative connection took flight, snatching Auf der Maur away from her DIY band in Canada to international stages with Courtney Love's Hole and, later, Corgan's Smashing Pumpkins.

Looking back on the time she first met Corgan during one his early gigs, Auf der Maur says on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan podcast, “You were playing for $1 on a Tuesday. I was a ticket girl at that venue [Les Foufounes Électriques in Montréal], and got in for free.

“There was a Sub Pop logo on the flyer. No one had heard of your band. You had that 12-inch, and it was my night off, but I said to my roommates, ‘Some Sub Pop band is playing. Let's go see them.’ I was one of 20 people.”

Corgan, from his end, explains how that show in Montréal would not only lead to his encounter with Auf der Maur, but teach him a lesson in stagecraft – and dealing with hecklers.

“I was playing this solo in one of our songs, so I was intently looking at my guitar, and as I was playing, a beer bottle smashed against my guitar,” he recalls.

“I don't think it broke, but the beer kind of splattered, and I immediately kind of whirled up to see who threw the bottle. There's only 20 people out there – and usually when that happens, people aren't in a big hurry to let you know who threw the bottle.

“But for whatever reason, when I gave the death glare, the people around your roommate – Bruce – seemed to kind of almost say, ‘Not me.’”

He continues, “And as soon as I saw the body language of people going away from Bruce, I threw my guitar off mid-strum, dove into the crowd, and began strangling him to the ground.” Corgan vividly remembers the “look of terror” in Bruce’s eyes, because, despite heckling him, Auf der Maur’s roommate didn’t “seem to want to fight.”

The ordeal aside, the band continued playing because of a rule imposed by Corgan, even in those early days.

“We also had a rule, which you might remember, in the band, which is, no matter what happens, keep playing. So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground, I got back on stage, picked up a guitar, and finished the song.”

As for Auf der Maur, that was the moment that changed everything, as she explains: “That is when you captured my heart. With every song, [it's] as if I've never heard music. It was so much more realized and magnificent than a lot of the other bands.”

However, Bruce wasn’t so impressed. “Halfway through the show, Bruce, who's watching next to me, was like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with these guys?' I looked, [and] I'm like, ‘What?’ He's like, ‘They're so full [of shit]. They're not playing an arena, they're playing a punk club. Why are they acting like this?’”

Auf der Maur recalls that, right after Corgan pinned Bruce to the ground and promptly went back on stage, he played one song that remains one of her favorites.

“You said, ‘Montréal, we have one more for you.’ And you played, I Am One [the band's debut single], and it changed every cell in my body.’”

Auf der Maur's first band, Tinker, would eventually open for the Smashing Pumpkins at a show in 1993 – after which Corgan famously said, “One day, maybe you'll play in my band.”

In an upcoming interview with Bass Player, Auf der Maur also reveals the key lesson she learned from touring with the Pumpkins.

After finding herself thrust into the spotlight as the bass player of Hole in the midst of unimaginable grief – following the deaths of Kurt Cobain, husband of Courtney Love, and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff – Melissa Auf der Maur held down the fort during the Live Through This and Celebrity Skin eras.

Fast forward five years, and Auf der Maur found herself playing alongside Billy Corgan in the Smashing Pumpkins. It was a full circle moment of sorts, as not only did she establish a relationship with Corgan way back in the early ’90s after witnessing the Pumpkins in Montréal, but her first band, Tinker, had opened for them in 1993 – and it was Corgan himself who recommended her to Love.

“When I saw the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole play in 1991, when I worked as a ticket girl, and I saw both of them play in front of 20 people, I knew what was happening,” Auf der Maur tells Bass Player in an upcoming interview in celebration of her memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir.

“The world was changing, and something huge and magical was happening for my generation. I picked up the bass because I wanted to be part of the movement of radical noise-making for my generation.”

As for making the career jump from Hole to the Pumpkins, Auf der Maur describes it in her book as an opportunity to “prove myself as a musician in a man’s world of epic riffs, arena concerts, and more private jets.”

“[From] the Pumpkins I learned how to be an incredible bass player,” she extrapolates in our interview. “Learning that catalog and playing 183 shows with those incredible players totally defines me as a bass player.

“I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my god. I mean, I changed my level of musicianship forever and opened my repertoire of understanding what my hands can do – and my solo records most certainly were expanded based on having to learn that catalog and play it with them.

“I always say the Pumpkins was my master's in music – just phenomenal music training.”

Bass Player's interview with Melissa Auf der Maur will be published in the coming weeks.

Speaking of the Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan recently reflected on a tonal journey four decades in the making and why he’s the most excited he’s been to make a guitar album in 25 years.

Billy Corgan doesn’t often get a chance to talk guitar tone. But capturing that elusive sound in his head has driven him throughout his career. He’s spent his life in pursuit of it. “I don’t know if I ever have found my sound,” he says. “That’s the funny part. I’m always chasing something.”

The Smashing Pumpkins leader has never suffered fools and never been afraid to speak his mind. Accordingly, we’ve heard plenty about the band’s ’90s heyday and the interpersonal dramas that ensued. When I mention that I sent off an audition for the band, Corgan laughs. “Oh, wow. You might have dodged a bullet there!”

His quest for tonal refinement is as much a part of the Pumpkins story as the combative studio sessions and era-defining songwriting. It was Corgan’s discovery of the op amp Big Muff that propelled Siamese Dream to new high-gain planes. The explosive riffs of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were shaped by his tireless preamp and power amp matching, tube swapping, Lace Sensor pickup switching.

And he hasn’t stopped – not just to satisfy his own desires, but also to be part of the changing face of guitars in modern rock.

“The midrange became the focus for guitar music in the 21st century,” he says. “I grew up listening to Hetfield and the scooped tone, and I love that sound. But listen to Metallica’s 2025 guitar sound. The scoop is gone. I don’t love a lot of midrange on guitar, but I’ve had to adjust my ear to make it happen.”

Which brings us to the Supergrace, his pedal amp with British veterans Laney. The two-channel 60W amp in a stompbox was born from his desire to revamp the company’s ubiquitous Supergroup for the 21st century. He suggested they link up with Brian Carstens, builder of Corgan’s signature Grace head, and possessor of “a savant-level understanding of gain and power.”

The resultant Supergrace delivers precision-engineered high-gain sounds alongside woodier vintage tones, essentially bottling Corgan’s live tone in one pedal. He was so confident in the sound that its first road test was in front of 60,000 people in a headline-grabbing guest spot with My Chemical Romance.

“With My Chem, they’re all playing modelers, and they sound great. Having a full rig was complicated. I think that extols the virtue of the pedal.”

This could be just the beginning of a signature relationship with Laney. There’s talk of full-blown tube head collaborations with Carstens down the line. It’s a passion point for the guitarist, who hails the legacy of the family-run company.

“As someone who grew up listening to and being so inspired by this amp, and the man who played it, Tony Iommi, is there anything I can do out of loyalty to help them?”

Testament to his commitment to the brand, Corgan is very giving with his time. We discuss the changing role of tone in rock music, his memories of Ozzy Osbourne’s final show, and why he’s the most excited to make a guitar record in decades.

Like your Reverend and Fender signature guitars, the Supergrace is reasonably priced. Why is making gear affordable to guitar players important to you?

Pretty simple: the guitar that changed my life. I walked into a Guitar Center one day and off the wall I bought an Eric Clapton model ’57 reissue Strat with Lace Sensor pickups. It was affordable enough for me as a touring musician, and that became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound.

[Editor’s note: The Lace Sensor pickups on that guitar, which became known as the Bat Strat, were not stock on ’57 reissues of the day. It may have been pre-modded in store. As Corgan recalls, Guitar Center was using Clapton, who used Lace Sensors at the time, to promote the model.]

I didn’t go out and buy some $4,500 boutique guitar. I bought a production-model guitar, and it became super-valuable in my life. So every time I work with a guitar or amp manufacturer, I always say the same thing: I don’t want this to be out of the price range of anybody.

And in that spirit, the Reverends I play on stage are all production models. I don’t have a special one only for Billy – you know, special neck, special pickup – nothing. They are literally off-the-wall Reverends.

You’ve been meticulous about your tone over the years, and it shows. Can you remember the moment you felt you’d found your sound?

The first revelatory moment was when Jimmy Chamberlin sold me what became known as the Gish Strat, the one that was stolen and later returned. And it wasn’t until I played a Strat through a Marshall that I thought, “Okay, I’m in the neighborhood.” That was the first time I thought, “The way I play, expressed through this instrument and this amp, is close to what I’m chasing – what I want to feel like when I play.”

But as soon as I got there, because I was using a JCM800, there was not enough gain. And that started this whole other thing that led to multiple gain stages and jacking the signal in through the low input and KT88 tubes, and this cabinet and this wiring, and anything to just get more gain, including using shorter cabling.

How important is tone when it comes to guitar playing?

The most important thing with any guitar player is how they attack the guitar, physically. Tony Iommi’s attack vector on a guitar is far different than, say, Eddie Van Halen’s or Brian May’s, but that’s what makes them them. Only they play like that. You can imitate, but you’re never going to replicate.

And then tone: even Eddie went from that “brown sound,” that Marshall Plexi. When I was in 5150 I asked him about it, and there in the corner was the amp. There was the amp I spent thousands of hours in my bedroom trying to replicate – not realizing I’m not Eddie Van Halen! It’s never going to work.

But even he had to update his sound. And every time he would do a new amp collab, it got more modern in terms of gain. I was recently watching a YouTube clip of when Van Halen last toured Japan. I saw some fan was complaining about the sound, saying it’s not what it used to be.

And I thought, “Yes, but I don’t think you understand that Ed was under the same pressure we all were, which is, ‘I can play my old shit, but it sounds old.’

You get put in this weird spot where somebody might sound more exciting with tone, even though you’re a better guitar player. And I think that’s always been the case. Clapton used line drivers. Ritchie Blackmore used line drivers. Tony did. They had to brighten up those dark British amps.

Last time I saw the Pumpkins, I was struck by the fact you were using more modulation on your guitar leads. Does that play into your tonal evolution?

Well, I like the way things animate against each other. I can’t say I love it. I just don’t have a better solution to get that movement behind the notes, especially for lead playing. I don’t play that many leads live anymore, so if I’m only going to play two or three leads live, I’ve got to make my point fairly quickly.

I’m 58 years old, and the kineticism of a lead is what I’m interested in. The notes are less important to me. And that might sound strange, but that’s just the way I feel.

In essence, if you’re going to play a lead in an alternative rock band in 2026, what are you trying to say? No-one’s going to care that you can play good, because there are 50 10-year-olds playing Eruption on YouTube.

There’s nothing actually that impressive about somebody being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore. So I think it’s the expressive quality that makes it interesting. I’m more interested in creating a feeling than showing off.

We’re talking about Laney, founded in Birmingham, where Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show took place. What did it mean to you to perform at that show?

It was honestly one of the greatest experiences I’ve had. The music, and being there in support of the band and Ozzy, meant a lot to me as a fan and as somebody who knows the Osbournes a bit personally.

I think it’ll go down as one of the great days in rock history. Just to be part of that lineup was insane, but it was that incredible moment where so many people pulled together in a common cause to celebrate the band and Oz, and everybody was so graceful about it, the vibe, the performances, the generosity.

I noticed when you got up with your fellow Chicago “metal Yardbirds”, Adam Jones and Tom Morello, you didn’t play guitar. Why not?

[Laughs] Well, originally I was going to play guitar, and then Tom wrote me and said, “Are you cool with us having K.K. up?” And I was like, “I’m getting out of the way on that one!”

I’m a huge K.K. Downing fan. In fact, I own his old number one amp and his pedalboard from the ’70s and ’80s. He put them up for auction. I saw him play that amp and that pedalboard and that V at a racetrack here in Chicago in 1982 when they were on the Screaming for Vengeance tour.

I’m not sure K.K. knows who I am at this point. I tried to talk to him about the gear, and he seemed a bit bewildered, like, “Who’s the fan that wandered in off the street?” But to stand there in Birmingham and play, not only with that great lineup on stage, but also with K.K.

It was deafening on stage. I do prize my hearing, but when he was soloing during Snowblind, I went out of my way to stand in front of that cabinet to just listen to pure K.K. with the wah and the V. And it was like an out-of-body experience.

We’ve spoken about keeping up with guitar trends. When Kiki Wong joined Smashing Pumpkins, you said you were already familiar with her on Instagram. Are there any other social media guitarists you’re a fan of?

I burned out on it, I think. And I don’t mean this as criticism – there are some unbelievable guitar players on social media. Where I get a little lost is I don’t see where a lot of that great playing is converting into popular music, whether it’s in popular metal bands or popular alternative rock bands.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are guitar players that I wouldn’t know that got super-popular on Instagram and now they’re in the biggest metal band in Finland or something.

I guess I’m old-school. I want to see those people on stage. I want to see them making the Metallica songs of tomorrow, or Megadeth or Slayer or something. I want to see that crowd of guitar players convert those incredible abilities into the popular culture.

What if Clapton had just been a guitar influencer and hadn’t been in John Mayall and Cream and Derek and the Dominos? The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player. It’s because he made some of the most popular music of the 20th century – and, oh, by the way, it has incredible guitar.

The last Smashing Pumpkins record, Aghori Mhori Mei, had a great reception. Do you see yourself continuing down a heavier path on your next release?

I’m working on music, and I’m very focused on guitar music. It’s the most motivated I have been to make a guitar record in 20-25 years. Part of that is shoegaze music has really come back in the culture, which we’re commonly associated with.

There came a point in the mid-2000s where it seemed like guitar was totally out of vogue. I’m not a Luddite – if people are not interested in guitar, that’s cool by me, and I’ll try to come at it a different way. But guitar is the thing I understand the most, and where I’ve had the most influence.

So I’m excited to once more dive into the sea of pedals and amps and guitars and see if I can come up with something new to say. And I think, in a good way, the bar is very high right now.

There’s a lot of very interesting guitar bands coming on the scene, and they’re saying lots of new things. Some are familiar – I think, “Well, you’ve definitely listened to me and Swervedriver,” but that’s cool, because we stole from everybody.

It’s just that young people are listening to guitar music, and the young guitar players of today have something new to say. It inspires me to get back on the horse one more time.

What will you change about your playing and your sounds to say something new with the instrument?

That’s a really good question, because I just did the operatic interpretation of Mellon Collie in Chicago at the Lyric Opera. And a lot of the parts that the orchestra was playing were the guitar parts, and they translated quite beautifully. In the band – and I’m not making this up – we used to call it orchestral arranging.

We would look at the wall of guitars as if, “This is the oboe and this is the violin.” So, I’m inspired to go back and once more operatically arrange the way I hear the music, and then use new technology and new approaches to guitar to achieve the polyphony that I would be interested in.

Mellon Collie was the peak of a lot of years of experimentation. But we also made that album thinking, “OK, that’s the end of this. There’s no chapter beyond this. We’ve taken this as far as we can go.” Hence, 46 guitars on Thru the Eyes of Ruby, Jelly Belly – all those crazy overdubs.

So I would like to come at it now down the road, because if Mellon Collie was the summit, Machina [/The Machines of God] was the deconstruction of that approach.

I haven’t really done that Siamese guitar stacking since Oceania in 2012. But I did it knowing I wasn’t that into it. It was like, “I’m getting all this pressure to do this again.” So rather than run away from it or shut my ears, I’ll approach it from the standpoint of, “I’m not sure I have anything new to say, but I’ll try.”

How has your relationship with the guitar changed from the ’90s to now?

I’ve always been fairly rewarded for my guitar playing. But it was not the main thrust of my thing. And I think this is the reason a lot of the guitar magazines went off me in the 2000s – because I was being critical of the guitar. I wasn’t doing like, “The guitar is great and I love my guitar.” I was actually saying something more artistic, which is: “Look, the guitar needs to innovate.”

The guitar needs to be moved forward in terms of technical and mechanical innovation. If you look at the major companies, the Fenders and the Gibsons, they’re basically running museums half the time; their main focus is not innovation. This is why I’m in a relationship with Reverend, because the focus is innovation.

I used to write guitar advice columns for Guitar World. I was totally in that community, and then they just booted me out, because I wasn’t saying the right kind of political things anymore. And what’s even weirder is because of that, those 15-20 years where I wasn’t part of “guitar world,” a lot of young guitar players don’t even know I’m the one playing the guitar! They think it’s James [Iha], because they assume I’m the singer and James is the guitar player.

So even just getting back into the conversation about guitars is a relatively recent thing, and obviously part of it is me making guitar music again. But also I think it’s just I’ve always come at it from a different perspective.

By the time I was 17/18, I could play lightning-fast. And for whatever reason, I just hit the wall. I focused more on innovation and bringing something new to the table, and getting out of the gunslinger wars, and realizing I was never going to be better than Steve Vai or Zakk Wylde – and that was OK.

I feel like I’ve come full circle, where people now understand what I did, what I’ve actually contributed, and I don’t need to play any game about it. I can talk about what I love: the guitar. And I think you can see my passion for the instrument.

• The Laney Supergrace Loudpedal is out now. Head to Laney for more info.

What is it?

Billy Corgan’s Big Muff-drenched wall of sound in the Smashing Pumpkins helped define a generation, a sound countless players have tried to mimic, but never quite matched. Back in the early days of the Pumpkins, he was known for running everything from a KT88-modded Marshall to Mega Boogies and the occasional Orange, turning up the volume and fuzz for those iconic grunge riffs. Fast forward to today, and Corgan’s live rig is a high-gain fortress built around Grace heads, crafted by Brian Carstens, and a Laney Supergroup reissue for those glassier, lighter tones.

If you’ve ever dreamed of recreating Corgan’s current setup, you’d better have deep pockets; it’ll cost you about as much as a small apartment. Even if you somehow snagged all his amps, good luck playing through them anywhere short of a stadium. Luckily, Laney has come to the rescue for us mere mortals with the new Laney Supergrace Loudpedal.

Don’t let its small stomp appearance fool you, the Loudpedal isn’t just another amp-in-a-box overdrive pedal. It’s a full-blown, all-analog 60-watt amplifier, squeezed into a stompbox format. You can drop it straight onto your board and go from bedroom jams to stage volume, no head or cab needed, though it’ll happily drive a cab if you want it to.

As the name suggests, the Supergrace is split into two distinct sections. One side is based on Laney’s Supergroup, which offers both Clean and Dimed modes, while the other delivers the high-gain saturation of a Grace head. Onboard, you get a flexible three-band EQ shared between both sides of the pedal, plus Gain and Volume controls for each section, and a global tone knob for further dialing in your high-end. There’s also an on-board Reverb, which is based on Laney’s award-winning Secret Path pedal – and handily, the Reverb can be activated/deactivated via footswitch.

Now, for a pedal to actually work for modern touring musicians, it needs to slot seamlessly into any rig. On the back, you’ll find a balanced XLR DI out, with cab sim, naturally, so you can go direct to front-of-house or your recording interface. There’s also a standard speaker out, at 8 or 16 ohms, an effects loop, and a headphone jack for those late-night practice sessions. And, as you’d expect, all footswitchable functions are MIDI-controllable.

Inside, it’s all analog signal path, so there’s no digital modeling here. The amp section uses a sturdy Class D power stage, so you get genuine amp punch without the weight and size of a tube amp. The footswitchable boost circuit serves up instant volume and gain for solos, and the rugged metal housing means it’s more than road-ready – I mean, if Billy Corgan can take one on tour, then you can sure take it to your local bar gig without worrying about it not keeping up.

Specs

• Launch price: $629 | £449
• Type: Pedalboard amp
• Controls: Grace: Volume, Gain, Bright, Supergroup: Gain, Volume, Dimed/Clean Shared: 3-band EQ (Bass, Middle, Treble), Tone, Reverb, Boost
• Features: Two footswitchable channels (Grace and Supergroup), digital reverb, boost, USB-C audio interface, DI output, headphone output, and MIDI control
• Connectivity: USB-C audio interface, XLR DI out, 1/4" line out, effects loop (send/return), MIDI in/out, headphone out, speaker out (8-16 ohms)
• Bypass: True bypass
• Power: 60-watt Class D power amp, external 24V DC power supply included
• Dimensions: 67mm x 199mm x 143mm
• Weight: 1.2Kg
• Contact: Laney

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Okay, the first thing I appreciate is how well this pedal is presented. Laney clearly wanted to make you feel like you’re unboxing a high-end product, and I think they’ve nailed it. The Supergrace arrives swaddled in a premium black box, with silver lettering flashing Brian Carstens and Billy Corgan’s names, letting you know this is a pretty special collaboration and one the team at Black Country Customs is very proud of – and rightly so.

Now, once I get my hands on the pedal tucked away inside, I am not disappointed. It’s a tank. Solid, weighty, and so well put together, I half expect it to come with a certificate of indestructibility. Every jack, switch, and knob feels smooth and expertly crafted. Not that I should be surprised. I’ve had my hands on a number of Laney’s Loudpedals now, from the tamer Lionheart and the metal-ready Ironheart, and it’s a format I really like. I love the rugged, no-nonsense design, and better yet, they feel built to survive pedalboard pileups and the occasional beer spill with equal poise.

Now, it is worth noting that, as this is an amplifier, it requires a fairly large power supply. The unit itself runs on 24V, 2.5A, so you won’t be powering this with your standard pedalboard power supply. If you have a fairly large pedalboard, then you’ll most likely be able to tuck it under to keep things neat and tidy, but for those with modest ‘boards, it may be more of an issue.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

If you’ve ever twisted an amp knob, you’ll feel right at home here. The Supergrace is every bit as straightforward to dial in as any more traditional amp, and with it sitting directly on your board, I’d say it's more practical, too.

I honestly love how immediate and tactile it feels to use. With so much going on, it could easily get a little overwhelming, but Laney has gone to great lengths to lay out the unit in an intuitive way, with everything being well labelled and exactly where you’d expect it to be.

Of course, nothing’s perfect, and if I’m going to nitpick, I’d love to see a separate EQ for both the Supergroup and Grace channels. For me, these sides have wildly different personalities, and they deserve their own fine-tuning. Now, I totally understand why this isn’t the case for the Supergrace, not least because it would increase its footprint, but still, I think it would be worth it to have more control over each side separately.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

If I were to describe the Supergrace in a word, it would be versatile. Starting with the Laney side, armed with a Gibson Explorer and running the DI output into an audio interface with Corgan’s LA412 G12H IR loaded, I’m greeted with a sound that’s very British in its makeup. On the Clean setting, the tone is bright and responsive, and it gets a little hairy as you increase the gain. Flicking the Dimed switch introduces more gain to the party and makes the whole thing sound fatter and more in your face. There’s plenty of body to the sound, and it's undeniably Laney. From classic rock riffage to raw lead parts, I’d be perfectly satisfied if this were the only setting in this pedal.

Now, I would love to be able to switch between the Dimed and Clean modes with a footswitch. As it stands, you can’t switch this function with MIDI, either, which is a shame, as it would make the unit even more versatile than it already is.

Next, I stomp on the Grace side, and the gloves come off. It’s face-meltingly fierce, with thick, relentless gain that chews up your riffs and spits them out a whole lot meaner. There’s a sharpness to the top-end too. It’s right on the edge of being a wasp in a jar, but there’s enough note definition in the mid-range that it retains its weight and punch. It’s incredibly fun to play through. Riffs seem to have way more attitude than they probably deserve, and there’s almost infinite sustain for leads.

Now, back to my earlier point about the shared EQ. These two amps are very different beasts, and personally, I find myself wanting to shape their tones differently to get the best out of them. I want more bass and top-end in my clean sound, and I find myself rolling off some of the highs and tweaking the mid-range when I switch over to the Grace side. As it stands, I feel like I’m having to compromise with the EQ to get something that works for both sides, but it's not really giving me 100% of what I need.

The onboard boost is a valuable addition, and even performs well when the Grace side is fully gunned, and you think there's nowhere else your tone can go. I like the reverb, too. Like most players, I find myself too self-conscious to play without a touch of verb, and this one is a top-quality spring reverb that perfectly adds a touch of dimension without getting in the way.

Overall, I love the sound of this unit. There’s clarity where you want it, and a glorious wall of noise when you need it. Whether you’re chasing glassy cleans, classic rock punch, or full-on doom-lord saturation, the Supergrace more than delivers.

Verdict

From the moment you crack open its slick packaging, it’s clear Laney has gone all out with its newest member of the Loudpedal family. This is a feature-packed, well-made, and seriously fun unit backed by one of alt-rock's most prolific tone chasers.

Whether you’re a Smashing Pumpkins fan or not, I think most players would find a sound in the Supergrace to fall in love with. For me, it’s a sonic shape-shifter. The Laney side delivers everything from clean sparkle to crunchy riffage, while the Grace channel unleashes a torrent of gain that’ll make your solos scream. Add in a killer boost and lush reverb, and you’ve got a pedal that’s ready to conquer stadium stages or bedrooms alike. Sure, I wish each channel had its own EQ, but I suppose the shared controls mean you spend less time tweaking and more time playing.

Ultimately, this is a fantastic little unit that has enough useful features to disarm even the most die-hard tube amp fanatic and as a formidable amount of gain to help grunge rats break out of their sonic cages with plenty of rage.

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• Best pedal amps: big sounds in a small package

Billy Corgan is an underrated guitar soloist – and he knows it. His tortured leads on vintage Smashing Pumpkins cuts like Soma and Quiet through to his mid-noughties guitar-hero rebirth on Zeitgeist have largely flown under the radar.

But in recent years, as the Pumpkins have continued their post-reunion renaissance, his approach to guitar solos has changed. He’s pulled back on the faster side of his playing, instead turning to longer, held notes and heavy modulation to cut through.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Corgan shared what prompted his change in style.

“I don’t play that many leads live anymore, so if I’m only going to play like two or three leads live, I’ve got to make my point fairly quickly,” he says. “At this point, I’m 58 years old – the kineticism of a lead is what I’m interested in. The notes are less important to me. And that might sound strange, but that’s just the way I feel.”

Corgan’s desire to constantly reinvent himself – something that both fascinates and infuriates his fanbase – extends not only to his songwriting and aesthetic, but every nuance of his playing. And the rise of technically astonishing social media guitarists has prompted him to reassess the way he tackles solos himself.

“If you’re going to play a lead in an alternative rock band in 2025, what are you trying to say? No-one’s going to care that you can play good, because there’s 50 10-year-olds playing Eruption on YouTube.

“There’s nothing actually that impressive about somebody being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore, so I think it’s the expressive quality that makes it interesting. So I’m more interested in creating a feeling than showing off.”

For Corgan, there’s a missing link between social media and making it in the quote-unquote real world. He burned out on the flashy playing. He wants to see more players make that transition and make their mark on the mainstream.

“I don’t see a lot of that great playing converting into popular music, whether it’s in popular metal bands or popular alternative rock bands.

“I want to see them making the Metallica songs of tomorrow or Megadeth or Slayer or something. I want to see that convert into music. I would wish for that crew of guitar players to convert those incredible abilities into the popular culture.”

The Pumpkins leader is quick to admit that he could be wrong (“Maybe there are guitar players I wouldn’t know that got super-popular on Instagram and now they’re in the biggest metal band in Finland or something”). And certainly, we’ve seen some players make the jump.

Rabea Massaad is writing, recording and touring with alt-metal outfit Vower. Sophie Lloyd got picked up to tour with mgk and released her own solo record. And Mateus Asato has played mega-stages with huge names including Bruno Mars, and is just about to drop his debut album.

It can happen. But as Corgan points out, technicality isn’t what taps into mainstream culture at large; it’s the songs that make the impact.

“It’s like if Clapton had just been a guitar influencer and hadn’t been in John Mayall and Cream and Derek and the Dominos. The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player. It’s because he made some of the most popular music of the 20th century, and, oh, by the way, it has incredible guitar. That’s kind of the point I’m making.”

Billy Corgan’s full interview with Guitar World will be published in the coming weeks, in which he discusses the guitar that changed his life, as well as the Laney Supergrace, the pedal amp that bottles the firebreathing tone of his live Smashing Pumpkins rig.

Billy Corgan’s guitar tone is one of the most emulated on the planet. Whether driven by op-amp Big Muffs or boutique heads, his sounds, both high-gain and clean, are the stuff of legend.

But as the Smashing Pumpkins leader tells Guitar World in a new interview, it all starts with the guitar. Corgan didn’t seek out a special instrument when he was picking out gear to record what would become masterpieces, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. He simply strolled into Guitar Center and found a guitar that spoke to him.

“The guitar that changed my life, at least in terms of my recording, was I walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton [spec] ’57 reissue Strat with Lace Sensor pickups,” he says.

“It was affordable enough for me as a touring musician, and that became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound.”

Lace Sensor pickups are integral to the early Pumpkins tone. Glassy and balanced, they don’t output the same ‘Strat-iness’ that you might expect from a typical Fender, and were Clapton’s pickups of choice for his own signature model.

(NB: Those single coils didn’t come as stock in the ’90s ’57 reissue Strat, but by a twist of fate, they were fitted to the one Corgan picked up off the wall that day. As he recalls, Guitar Center was using Clapton to promote the configuration of his chosen Strat.)

That off-the-wall sunburst Fender would undergo many alterations over the years. To fans, it’s known as the Bat Strat, so-called because of the bat stickers adorning its refinished silver body, and has seen use throughout the Smashing Pumpkins’ discography.

The experience of walking into a guitar store and buying a brand-new instrument that delivered on all counts has stayed with Corgan, and continues to inform his own signature guitars with Reverend today.

“I didn't go out and buy some $4,500 boutique guitar. I bought a production-model guitar off a wall, and it became super-valuable in my life.

“Every time I work with a guitar or amp manufacturer, I always say the same thing: I don't want this to be out of the price range of anybody. All the Reverends I play on stage, they're all production models. I don't have a special one only for Billy – special neck, special pickup – nothing. They are literally off-the-wall Reverends.”

When we talk, the Pumpkins main man revealed he is now seeking out another Strat in the same vein – with, naturally, a few modifications…

“I was on Reverb recently, poking around, looking for that same model. Because I’ve never found a modern Strat that bested that Strat.

“I wouldn’t go back to Lace Sensors, but I was thinking about, what if I bought an off-the-wall ’57 reissue Strat from the early ’90s, but drop my signature Railhammer pickups in, or I could even go to [pickup builder] Joe Naylor and say, ‘Can you make me stacked single coils?’

“I was just getting sentimental for going back to play that guitar a little bit on stage, because I like the way that guitar feels in my hands.”

Billy Corgan’s full interview with Guitar World will be published later this month.

Last month, Corgan announced the Laney Supergrace, a pedal amp that seeks to capture the firebreathing tone of his live Smashing Pumpkins rig.

NAMM 2026: Back in September 2025, Billy Corgan made headlines when he joined My Chemical Romance onstage to perform Smashing Pumpkins classic Bullet With Butterfly Wings. But the alt-rock icon wasn’t plugging into his usual multi-tube amp rig. He was playing through a $629 pedal amp, the Laney Black Country Customs Supergrace.

“With My Chem, they’re all playing modelers, and they sound great. Having a full rig was complicated. I think that extols the virtue of the pedal,” Corgan tells Guitar World.

Announced today, the Supergrace came from a conversation between Corgan and James Laney and a request for a product that could “give the average guitar player the chance to own my live rig. My tone. The tone worth $100,000s”.

Laney collaborated with Chicago amp designer Brian Carstens, who makes the Grace heads that form the core of Corgan’s high-gain live rig, alongside a Laney Supergroup reissue that provides cleaner sounds.

As a result, the 60W Supergrace features two channels. The Grace is the high-definition distorted sound of Corgan’s heaviest riffs – it promises to be hugely responsive to guitar controls, and comes complete with three-position Bright switch.

The Supergroup channel, meanwhile, captures the grit that Tony Iommi used to invent heavy metal with Black Sabbath, but also offers cleaner textures for overdrive pedals via the Dimed/Clean switch. Laney’s ‘Transformer Rub’ sub-note is also present when you dime the gain.

As Corgan tells it, the aim was to update the Supergroup for a new generation of players.

“It shows you what's great about Laney and what’s great about a high-grade gain amp, like the amp that Brian and I did together,” Corgan tells Guitar World. “That's where it gets tricky: how do you bring that classic Laney sound into a tonality that works with a very high-gain, 21st century amp? And that becomes the existential thing that we tried to solve within the pedal.”

The pedal itself is all-analog solid state – in a painstaking process, Laney mapped the topology of both original amps and tuned them to respond like tubes – but it also features a digital IR section, and ships with Corgan’s preferred IRs.

Laney has also equipped the pedal with a Boost based on the Black Country Customs Steelpark circuit, as well as a digital spring reverb. Both are footswitchable. Bass, Middle and Treble controls are shared across the two channels, while an overall Tone control makes for quick tweaks.

There’s also XLR out and USB-C connectivity for recording with DAWs, MIDI integration for pedalboard switchers, and a transformer-isolated effects loop. Auxiliary inputs and headphone outputs make the Supergrace a valuable practice tool, too.

And, of course, it can drive a cab with 60W output (the pedal comes with its own laptop-style 24V 2.5A 60W DC power supply).

Laney lightning first struck Corgan when a Smashing Pumpkins tech sold him a vintage Supergroup. That powered Smashing Pumpkins’ 2014 record Monuments to an Elegy, and has cropped up on every record that followed. A modern reissue has since become an essential part of his live rig alongside three Carstens heads – all of which led to the Supergrace.

“I think we now have enough empirical evidence to suggest that the genius of the Laney design and the genius of the Marshall design set the template for all hard rock that followed,” Corgan says.

“I don’t think Mr. Marshall and Mr. Laney could even imagine where guitar players were going to take that. But whatever they figured out is still very valuable. This is bringing that blueprint into the 21st century.”

The Supergrace is available now for $629/£449/€529. Head to Laney for more information.

2025 was indeed the year Yungblud fully announced himself to the rock scene. His album, Idols, served as a musical love letter to his rock heroes – only for him to find himself performing alongside them.

His rendition of Ozzy Osbourne’s Changes at the Prince of Darkness' final concert, Back to the Beginning, converted even many of the staunchest of old-school rock fans to the idea that, yes, Yungblud is one of the artists leading the charge for rock’s new vanguard.

And, with that nod of approval from Ozzy came a string of collaborations with the likes of Aerosmith and the Smashing Pumpkins. However, despite these projects, Yungblud claims he's far from being coaxed into joining a band.

“No! Fuck no!” he says matter-of-factly in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I am not made to compromise. In the past, when I’ve listened to opinions and almost met someone in the middle, my art’s been shit.

“Watching Steven Tyler and Joe Perry together, the compromise is the fucking magic. But for me, it doesn’t work. It just makes me mad. People don’t realize I’m in control of everything. One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I had everything handed to me by the industry. The industry has told me to fuck myself at every single turn.”

As for the advice he received from the music legends he’s had the chance to work with, he asserts, “It’s funny – it’s all the same advice. Everyone’s like, ‘We were hated. People thought we were posing.’ Aerosmith went through it. After Ozzy left Sabbath, people were like, ‘He’s a pop star.’ He had to really stay true to his fucking self.”

In more Yungblud news, Billy Corgan recently revealed why he decided to collaborate with rock’s hottest ticket.

Yungblud may have been at the center of a somewhat divisive VMAs Ceremony performance last year, but there's no denying his credentials as a bona fide modern rock star – and he's rated highly by some of the biggest names in the business.

Earlier this week, Yungblud continued his strong momentum from 2025 – which included a high-profile collaboration with Aerosmith – by linking up with Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins for a new single.

The singer-guitarist was widely praised last year for his stunning cover of Changes at Back to the Beginning, and notably developed a close bond with the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne.

He later linked up with Nuno Bettencourt and Aerosmith pair Joe Perry and Steven Tyler for an Ozzy tribute medley at the MTV VMAs, but the performance derided by Dan Hawkins as “nauseating”. Hawkins' brother, Justin, further accused Yungblud of “positioning himself as the natural heir to the Ozzy legacy” – an opinion that Yungblud himself hit back at.

Now, in the latest demonstration of Yungblud's pedigree, the Epiphone signature artist has announced his latest big-name collaboration, working with Billy Corgan for a revamp of his Grammy-nominated track, Zombie.

So why did Corgan, who invited Yungblud as a guest on his Magnificent Others podcast last year, agree to the collab?

“Dom [Harrison, Yungblud's name] is a true rock fan,” Corgan says in an Instagram reel posted to his band's account. “It's one thing to be a visionary, but it's another thing to have the gift to pull off the vision.”

Sharing studios with rock giants is no small task. When asked in the clip what that says of Yungblud's attitude, Corgan responds: “He has no fear.”

Corgan, like Aerosmith and so many others out there, was clearly impressed with Yungblud's chops. Here was a singer who wasn't afraid of standing in front of a stadium filled with Ozzy fans and belting out Changes – a rock star for the modern music fan.

Yungblud, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation, then appears at the door, quipping, “My ears were fucking burning!”

“With this song, I could hear no one else,” Yungblud continues of the collaboration. “When I sent the emails, I was like, ‘Yo, this is far out, but I've been channelling you with this record, would you do the honor of remiagning it with me?’”

Corgan's response? “Fuck it, let's go there.” He could see the vision.

The reworking of the track accentuates the song's authentic 1990s alt-rock undercurrent, with the pair sharing vocals, while Kiki Wong and the rest of the band all feature.

The original version of Zombie is up against Nine Inch Nails, Sleep Token, Hayley Williams, and another fast-rising, next-gen rock act in Turnstile for the Best Rock Song Grammy at next month's ceremony.

It's one of three nominations for Yungblud, which sees him also up against heavy hitters like Linkin Park, Deftones, and HAIM in other categories. That shows the scale of his impact on the rock scene.

Elsewhere, Corgan recently reflected on the writing of the Pumpkins' most iconic album, how one of its biggest hits nearly didn't make the cut, and why his bubbling chemistry with Kiki Wong is bringing the band into a new era.

This month on Bought & Sold, Smashing Pumpkins' Kiki Wong checks in to talk about her life in guitar, from first electric guitars to her current touring rig – and also to weigh in on the big questions in life.

We're talking cheap amp and expensive guitar versus expensive amp and cheap guitar, electric guitar pickup preferences, and how to find your ultimate guitar…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

I remember my first guitar was a Slammer by Hamer, which came in a beginner pack that essentially included a Fender 15-watt amp, a few picks, a strap and a whole lot of motivation to practise. I didn’t have a clue about what pickups did or how necks feel; I honestly just wanted to play Metallica and heavy riffs since I had been learning on an acoustic guitar.

Since the internet wasn’t so handy as it is today, I really got my inspiration for gear from guitar magazines and frequent visits to Guitar Center.

That’s where I discovered this stunning Ibanez S series. I still remember the model number S40DXQM because I remember repeating it in my head over and over, knowing that it was the guitar I wanted.

Eventually, I pooled enough cash together with my mom and myself and was able to buy it for my birthday. It was an absolute game-changer since it had a ‘Z Tremolo’ floating bridge that allowed me to poke around with Dimebag [Darrell] divebombs.

It was absolutely my dream guitar in the flesh, and it was such a cool experience overall. Sadly, it was stolen out of my car in Downtown LA in 2015.

What was the last guitar you bought and why?

“The last guitar I purchased was actually a Strandberg Boden Essential guitar for my incredible tech on tour [with the Smashing Pumpkins], Pat Ryan.

He always goes above and beyond to ensure my gear is absolutely pristine on tour. He truly loves his work and he loves guitars, so I wanted to gift him something special that he could take on the road without sacrificing any quality of the instrument.

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?

This is more of an amp story. I remember that I had just joined the She Demons, a female punk-rock supergroup formed by a founding member of The Misfits, [bassist] Jerry Only. We were about to go on tour as direct support across the US and in Canada for a 34-date run. The gear I was using before was a hand-me-down Carvin Amp that I was borrowing, so I knew I had to get my own amp.

With only 500 bucks in my bank account, I was scouring Craigslist for anything that would be up to par for the tour. Someone had listed a Marshall JCM2000 head and cab for $1,500. I definitely didn’t have the cash, so my brother Eric, who is a shredder and metal music fan himself, helped me pay half.

We drove two hours down to Orange County and met up with the seller, who ended up being someone who worked on production for Slash. I told him about my situation and he agreed to sell the stack for 1,000 bucks because he believed in me and what I was doing. He gave me a really nice pep talk. It was really one of the first times I felt like I had really good gear for a show.

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

When I was in high school, I always dreamed of having a Triple Rectifier Mesa/Boogie half-stack. It was clearly obscenely out of my price range. I opted for a Peavey Triple XXX 212 combo amp, which had a lot of juice and power. It wasn’t that the amp wasn’t good enough, I just wished I saved enough money to actually buy the amp I always dreamed of.

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?

I actually have a major issue selling gear in general. I’d like to say that I’ve at least attempted to live my life sort of ‘minimalistically’, trying to consume less. However, all of it is pretty much cancelled out by how many guitars I have! [laughs]

That being said, I do remember when I was in high school, I sold my first guitar ever to my drummer in the little grungy metal band I was playing. He paid me 50 bucks for it, put a bunch of SpongeBob [Squarepants] stickers all over the fret markers, and then lit it on fire! It makes me laugh thinking about it, but it would have been nice, sentimentally, to still have it today.

What’s your best buying tip for anyone looking for their ultimate guitar?

Honestly, get the guitar. There’s something really special, first, about musicianship and instruments. The best creations come from being in the right emotional state.

There’s nothing better than feeling absolutely inspired by the instrument you’re playing, where you feel glued to it, thinking about it during your day-to-day, and looking forward to playing it next. If that’s what drives you to practise, play and create, then get the damn thing! The longer you wait, the more likely it’ll get snatched up.

When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window or browsed online, and what were you looking at?

I’m currently on tour in Asia with the Smashing Pumpkins. We just had our Japan leg of the tour, and someone locally suggested going to check out Guitar Street [Tokyo]. My fiancé and two-year-old son were travelling with me, and my son is absolutely obsessed with musical instruments – almost neurotically, where he can actually name all the instruments in an orchestra type of obsessed [laughs].

We walked along the streets, where they are filled with collector guitars, used guitars, special Japanese guitars, new and old, fancy and functional, the whole nine yards. My son loved it and so did I.

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

I am 1,000 per cent onboard with a great guitar and a cheap amp. Now, this obviously applies to me being home and playing. I’ve been playing out of a Line 6 Spider III 15-watt amp that I purchased in 2007.

I’ve made about half of my TikTok videos with that amp, which is essentially where it got me today. People talk a lot of poo about my tone. But, honestly, it’s what I love and have loved since I was a kid. Now, on tour, it’s definitely a different story – you’ve gotta have all cylinders running. But, overall, I love a great guitar.

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would it be and why?

1,000 per cent humbuckers. Again, it goes off of how much I like the dirty, grungy metal tone. You really can’t achieve it without those humbies.

Kiki’s Go-To Rig

My pedalboard is powered by Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 3 Plus. And here’s the signal chain into the amp input: guitar, Shure Axient wireless, followed by the Dunlop [Cry Baby] 95Q wah-wah, which goes into the Interstellar Audio Octonaut Hyperdrive.

Then we have the Chase Tone Fuzz Fella, which leads into the Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork. And then we’ve got the Axess Electronics Compatt/A [Input] Buffer, leading to the Analog Man Mini Chorus and then the amp input.

The signal flow in the effects loop is: amp send and then it’s the Dunlop Volume Pedal and Boss TU-3S, then the Walrus Audio Lore pedal going into the MXR Joshua echo pedal with tap control, and then we’ve got the Axess Electronics Compatt/A [Input] Buffer and then amp return.

The signal runs into a Revv Generator 120 head going into a Marshall JCM2000 1960A cabinet in an ISO box.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Melissa Auf der Maur – and her inimitable bass lines – was a key force of the ’90s alt-rock movement, and defined the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, two bands she ended up lending her bass chops to.

Speaking about her journey to picking up the instrument, Auf der Maur recounts on Greatest Basslines, “I had begun to notice girl bass players, of course, you know Kim Gordon, obviously, and then Kim Deal from the Pixies – and, like I said, all in one week, I saw the Pumpkins and Hole, and they both had girl bass players who seemed really cool and stoic.

“They're just fucking cool girls who were wallflowers, who just wanted to be in a band,” she continues. “I don't even know if I looked at their fingers. Those women seemed like they could be me, and the moment I discovered what it feels like to teach yourself a fucking riff that you love, I was hooked. Feels like you're riding the universe, like you're in with the magic.”

In last year's interview with Bass Player, Auf der Maur recalled how her stints with the two bands were distinct – yet equally formative.

“Courtney and Billy were both very different,” she divulged. “But I have so much respect for both of them. My time with Hole was more character definition, creating me as a person, and then my crash course in music, one on one, was with the Pumpkins, who refined and defined my musicianship.”

Auf der Maur captures intimate, never-before-told stories of this pivotal decade in music in her upcoming memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir, out in March 2026.

Before Kiki Wong joined the Smashing Pumpkins, she was hustling on the touring circuit as a session player and as a member of She Demons – the punk-rock supergroup formed by Misfits founding member Jerry Only.

It was during that time that she landed her most incredible gear find – an incredible amp bargain, which had loose ties to a rock guitar great.

“We were about to go on tour as direct support across the US and in Canada for a 34-date run,” she tells Guitarist. “The gear I was using before was a hand-me-down Carvin Amp that I was borrowing, so I knew I had to get my own amp.

“With only 500 bucks in my bank account, I was scouring Craigslist for anything that would be up to par for the tour. Someone had listed a Marshall JCM2000 head and cab for $1,500.”

Alas, Wong didn't have the cash, so her brother Eric (who she describes as “a shredder and a metal music fan”) stepped in and helped her pay half.

“We drove two hours down to Orange County and met up with the seller, who ended up being someone who worked on production for Slash. I told him about my situation, and he agreed to sell the stack for 1,000 bucks because he believed in me and what I was doing. He gave me a really nice pep talk.”

Thanks to the mystery Craigslist seller, it was “one of the first times” Wong felt like she had “really good gear for a show”.

In a recent dual Guitar World interview, Wong and her now-bandmate Billy Corgan discussed Smashing Pumpkins' open call for guitarists – and why the band decided to pick Wong from a pool of 10,000.

For more from Wong, plus new interviews with Wolfgang Van Halen and Jared James Nichols, pick up issue 531 of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

Before she beat 10,000 other guitar players to the Smashing Pumpkins gig, Kiki Wong was racking up big stats on TikTok. The amp she used during that period, she’s revealed, is one that would have gear snobs cringing. And she still uses it to this day.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, Wong was asked if she’d rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a high-quality amp. She lands definitively in the former camp.

“Now, this obviously applies to me being at home and playing,” she reasons. “I've been playing out of a Line 6 Spider III 15-watt amp that I purchased in 2007. I've made about half of my TikTok videos with that amp, which is essentially where it got me today.”

As the numbers show, the competition to join Billy Corgan’s alt-rock heavyweights was fierce. Corgan said it took a “herculean effort” to sift through the mountain of applicants – and noted that Wong’s reel-driven reputation had already preceded her.

“I was a fan of Kiki’s before she submitted her name to be considered,” he told Guitar World, “and it’s great that someone of her acumen will be part of our touring family.”

However, not everyone was so keen on her guitar tone, as Wong admits. Regardless, it just shows gear doesn't matter all that much. It's what you do with it that counts. It also shows how far a cheap, widely mocked amp can take you.

“People talk a lot of poo about my tone,” Wong continues. “But, honestly, it's what I love and have loved since I was a kid. Now, on tour, it's definitely a different story – you've gotta have all cylinders running. But, overall, I love a great guitar.”

She’d proudly listed the Spider as a part of her amp collection long before she joined the Smashing Pumpkins, finding it ideal for bedroom riffing, while a Kemper amp modeler did the heavy lifting live. However, she isn’t the only big name to back the Line 6 Spider to the hilt.

Prog rock hero Steve Howe paired one with his vintage Gibson ES-175D for Yes' 2021 album, The Quest. Erra guitarist Jesse Cash also penned most of their records using the tiny modeling combo amp.

Meanwhile, Corgan has dished the details on what it's been like trading riffs with Wong, saying there’s one aspect of her playing that's leagues above his.

Wong’s full interview can be found in the latest issue of Guitarist, which features a cover story on the playing of T Bone Walker.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

To celebrate the Smashing Pumpkins' first Japanese shows in 12 years, Yamaha has brought each member's custom guitar designs to life, offering unique twists on the firm’s best-known instruments.

Among the crop there are two Pacifica models, a Custom BB bass guitar, and, for Kiki Wong, a pretty extravagant Revstar. The quartet of instruments reflects their unique personalities.

“Yamaha Guitars have been proudly working closely with The Smashing Pumpkins for over a decade,” the gear brand explains. “The Rock legends’ announcement that they would be performing in Japan for the first time in twelve years was the perfect opportunity to collaborate once again, this time on unique custom instruments for this special tour.

“Out of the Yamaha Guitar Development Custom Shop in Calabasas, Los Angeles, Yamaha’s Lead Electric Guitar Builder, Rafael Barajas, turned each band member’s concept into reality.”

As such, Yamaha says the PACP12M was the natural starting point for Billy Corgan to base his design, offering an alder body and maple neck/fingerboard tonewood combination.

Its custom sparkling purple finish takes it a little away from his existing Reverend High Tide Blue signature guitar, but tonally, the inclusion of his signature Railhammer Z-One pickups, which are bestowed with a chrome finish and a design that pays tribute to the classic Pumpkins EP The Aeroplane Flies High, gives it some familiarity. Amusingly, Corgan once revealed that the pickups were dressed that way without his permission.

James Iha's Pacifica looks far sleeker, with a black finish and matching pickguard. The PAC611H model provided the template because he prefers hardtail bridges. It also features Anderson Guitarworks high-output humbuckers.

“The body has been repainted in a black finish mixed with iridescent sparkle to reflect stage lights, and the back of the neck has been sprayed with a satin finish for smooth playability up and down the neck,” Yamaha details.

Kiki Wong, who beat 10,000 applicants to the Pumpkins gig, is plenty familiar with Revstars. In fact, she got the new RSP20 Pro Series model just a few months ago, so it's no surprise that she gravitated towards that exact model for this build.

It's hard to look past its extravagant leopard print colorway, but beyond it, there are Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz humbuckers to bring it in line with her other go-to instruments.

Last but not least, Jack Bate's bass is adorned in a crisp white finish and a Rising Sun, as a nod to Japan's flag.

The instruments, which were exclusively played across the band’s recent Japan dates, are now on display in the Yamaha Music Ginza Store in Chūō, Japan. They'll be on display throughout October.

In related news, Kiki Wong has explained how joining the alt-rock giants has made her a better player, while Corgan has detailed the one technique Wong has that's far beyond his skill level.

Wyn Barnum and Ricky Dana, guitarists for New Jersey indie band Phoneboy, are onto something when it comes to crafting memorable leads and fills. “You should ideally be able to sing the guitar solo,” Barnum says, while Dana adds, “You play the part over and you sing something and say, ‘That’s a good melody’.”

Along with bassist James Fusco and vocalist/keyboard player Jordan Torres, recently added as a full-time member, Phoneboy has been steadily gaining fans over the last five years by putting out melodic yet melancholic albums, including their latest, Heartbreak Designer, supported by consistent touring.

“On this album, we pulled heavily from our pop-punk influences growing up,” Dana says. “A lot of Blink-182, some Weezer. We really tapped into what inspired us to start a band in the first place.”

The new album features a more expansive sound than their first two releases, audible on the leadoff track Wayside, which showcases languid, dream-pop fuzz riffs. “No matter what you do, you’re going to have people saying, ‘I miss the old stuff,’” Barnum says. “But if we just release the same-sounding thing on every album, we’re doing our fans a disservice.”

“One big influence for me is Billy Corgan,” Dana says of the alt-icon. “He uses a lot of octaves, just sliding up and down the guitar. The first time I heard the Smashing Pumpkins’ Cherub Rock, I fell in love. He’s playing rhythm, but it’s about so much more than the rhythm. That falls a lot into my playing, especially on the new record.”

The guys have differing preferences when it comes to guitars.

“Live, I use a Japanese Fender Jaguar,” Dana says. “My parents got it for me for Christmas when I was 16, and I still use it. I love the short neck; it’s easy to fly up and down when playing live.”

Barnum takes a more custom approach. “I built my guitar,” he says. “It’s based on the Fender Tom DeLonge Strat. It just has the bridge pickup and one knob. Mine’s got a ShawBucker humbucker.”

Although their current album is still getting a road workout, the band is already looking ahead.

“I’m itching to get back in and start writing again,” Dana says. “This album has been testing out a new dynamic with four people instead of three. There’s so much gas left in the tank; I’m excited for where we go next.”

• Heartbreak Designer is out now via Diamond City.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“We were the first band of our generation that started to grow up,” Billy Corgan says, reflecting on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 grand opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

“The band was coming off a golden moment, which was the grunge explosion. But all movements start to run out of gas, and then the gatekeepers come in and start trying to say what it really means – when they had nothing to do with authoring it.

“In our case, we made the move to grow up before anybody else, and then we were sort of singled out for criticism as far as other people were concerned, either because A) the party needed to continue, or B) growing up was some sort of sellout or something.”

Indeed, the previous two years were a heady time for the Pumpkins. Their 1993 album, Siamese Dream, contained a steady stream of radio and MTV smash hits that drove sales past the four million mark.

The band – which in addition to Corgan, Iha and Chamberlin also included original bassist D’arcy Wretzky – spent much of that year and the next on a relentless touring cycle (they headlined 1994’s Lollapalooza festival), and by the time live commitments wound down, Corgan, championed by some as one of the era’s most creative and vital music makers while lambasted by others as nothing more than headline-seeking megalomaniac, found himself at a personal and creative crossroad.

He decided to go big, and that meant wielding his newfound commercial clout as a form of political capital. The new record would be a double CD, and the material would spread the waters of what was considered “alternative rock” by embracing progressive rock, art rock, orchestral pop, folk and heavy metal.

In place of Butch Vig, who had produced Siamese Dream and the band’s debut, Gish, Corgan enlisted Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails, PJ Harvey) and engineer Alan Moulder (the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine) as co-producers.

Over an eight-month period – “It was essentially four months of preparation and four months of recording, sort of,” Corgan remembers – the band cut upwards of 57 songs, 28 of which ultimately made the final double album that clocked in at just over two hours.

As lavish and ambitious albums go, Mellon Collie ranks alongside the Beatles’ White Album, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk as career-defining masterworks.

Meticulously conceived and rich in every detail, its day-and-night theme contains moments that veer from almost unspeakable beauty (Cupid de Locke, Stumbleine) to ghastly horror (Tales of a Scorched Earth, X.Y.U.), with Corgan channeling a torrent of emotions. One minute he’s frozen in a kind of childlike awe; the next, he’s luxuriating in blissed-out romanticism.

Songs that reveal stark introspection give way to truly frightening sections of raw, unhinged anger in which Corgan – yes, he’s raging in a cage – gnashes his teeth and froths at the mouth. It swoons and spirals, exalts and destroys.

Released in October 1995, the album debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 (it’s the band’s only record to reach the top spot), and thanks to yet another succession of hits (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979, Zero, Tonight, Tonight and Thirty-Three) it stayed on the charts for well over a year. All told, the album sold a staggering 10 million copies, earning diamond certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

While the reviews were generally favorable (most critics hailed the record as a work of art), a few journalists took issue with the album’s length – the word “indulgent” was frequently tossed around.

For Rolling Stone critic Jim DeRogatis, Corgan’s lyrics were a particular sticking point. In his three-star review (which Corgan remembers as two-and-a-half stars), he wrote that the songwriter was "wallowing in his own misery and grousing about everyone and everything not meeting his expectations.”

“But he wasn’t wrong. I'm still there,” Corgan says, before adding, “Jim had a particular bone to pick with me that was personal, and that went on for years. We eventually made our peace, so I laugh at it now, but he was using that as a way to basically kneecap the band before it got out of the gates.

“I’ll say this, though: If the record was indulgent and wallowing in a particular form of misery, well, so were a lot of other people because that’s why the record resonated.

“This is where critics oftentimes mistake things that hit the zeitgeist,” he continues. “If an actor plays a serial killer, no-one really believes the actor's the serial killer. But when rock stars play misanthropes, the critics can help but believe the rock star is the misanthrope.

“Capturing the zeitgeist of a time requires some sublimation of one’s personality. Mellon Collie is not my personality. It’s close to my personality, but it’s not my personality.”

He pauses. “Machina/The Machines of God [2000] is probably much closer to who I am as a real person than Mellon Collie ever was.”

The Beatles disagreed with him, but George Martin famously said that he thought the White Album would’ve been stronger as a single record. Hindsight being 20/20, is there anything about Mellon Collie that you would change today, if given the opportunity?

“I think the only sort of inner regret I have is that it's probably a touch too long. If I had it to do over again, it probably would've been a slightly better record if it was 24 songs instead of 28.”

At the time you were starting to make it, was everybody on board with it being a double album?

“Oh yeah. I’d fought all the political battles internally in the year before that. During the height of Lollapalooza, when we were touring as the headliner and the band was getting really big, I announced on MTV that our next record was going to be a double, and the record label went into a panic.

“They told me I was insane – things like ‘career suicide’ and all that stuff was thrown around. It was seen as a sign of my growing hubris. ‘He’s gone mad’ and that sort of thing. I kept saying it was like our version of The Wall or the White Album, but I never took the time to count how many songs were actually on those records. If I’d done that, you could argue it would be a really strong record if you took the best 18 songs off of Mellon Collie. I mean, that’s a very, very strong record.

“It ended up being about filling those two CDs. So yes, I’d won the battle, and yes, we were going to make a double album. We had a producer who was willing to take the journey into the murky depths of whatever this was going to be.

“Oh, but there was something else I don't think I've ever really spoken about: There was also a sense of ‘Wait… If they’re going to do a double album, they’re going to be off the road for a very long time.’ So there was that pressure – you’re giving up a lot of money by going off-cycle this long, so the record had better be fucking good.”

It’s been reported that when Flood came into the picture, he wanted to change the way the band worked. He wanted you to jam more and record that way, which resulted in a lot of basic tracks.

“His main thrust was, ‘I want to record the band I hear on stage.’ He said he was shocked by the difference between the band he heard on Siamese Dream and the band he saw on stage. It became a process of like, ‘OK, how do we do that?’ The jamming and live take approach actually wasn’t dissimilar from Siamese Dream in that we would record live and then I would erase everything and re-record everything.

“Flood’s idea, however, was that he wanted Jimmy’s drum takes to be representative of the band at full throttle, not go in there and play so as Jimmy gets a good drum take and then we’ll put music on it. No, Jimmy needs to be playing like he does in a concert, which meant the band needed to animate and push Jimmy to the edge of his capability. And then you erase the tracks and then you put music on the top of that.”

How do you actually do that in a recording setting? Because you’re actually not live in concert. You don't have people screaming, and you don’t have that kind of excitement. The band is in a room by themselves. It’s kind of a sterile environment.

“Great question. First of all, we brought in a full P.A. so we would play at full volume. Imagine we’re in a room where it’s easily over 110 decibels. The old Pumpkinland, which is what we called it, had brick walls, a concrete floor with industrial carpeting and a high wood ceiling.

“So now we’ve turned everything up – I’ve got two Marshall half-slant cabinets at full power. James has two at full, and D’arcy’s got two full SVT bass rigs. We have a full P.A., including Jimmy’s drum monitors and our wedges. We’re playing at full concert volume.”

Logic would dictate that yes, that would certainly change the way you played and recorded. It sounds like an overwhelming experience.

“Well, it’s a lot different from putting your amps in a room, wearing headphones and playing along to Jimmy to get the most pristine drum tracks. When you hear, for example, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, that’s the live take of Jimmy playing to the band at full volume. That kind of energy and ambiance could only have been created that way.”

As you mentioned, the band had now become huge, and with that success came a relentless touring schedule. By the time you got in the studio, did that kind of energy and exhilaration give way to burnout?

“I don’t think so. I also think it had a lot to do with the way we recorded. On any given day, we would come in at, say, 11, and we would practice for at least an hour. Whether we were working on an arrangement or a new song, we would practice as we would as if no-one was in the building. Then, if we had something we felt was worth recording, we would go ahead and endeavor to record that, however many takes that might require.

“There would probably be a lunch break, and then we’d go into recording mode. Now, the band’s responsibilities were about one-10th as vast once we were in recording mode as they were when we were tracking. So although they might be in the building, once practice was over, it was mostly me working with Flood on a guitar sound, a guitar part or an arrangement or whatever. I was full-time, and the band were kind of part-time.”

Because you were shouldering so many of the responsibilities, did you ever feel as though you were stretching yourself a little too thin? Did you ever feel as though you were losing your focus?

“Let me answer it this way: first of all, we pushed the record back, which alarmed the record company because they had hard release dates that were involving typical record company stuff.

“It was going to be their big record of the year, so they were really counting on it coming out. It reached a point where there was a hard, fixed date, like, ‘You will turn in this record whether it's done or not. Here’s your hard date out.’”

No pressure, right?

“There’s the pressure of that, sure. By the way, there was a ton of stuff that was unfinished when that verdict came down. Now, we were running two rooms at CRC Recorders, which is now defunct. Alan Moulder was working in one room with other bandmates, and I was working in the main room with Flood and flitting back and forth between the two rooms, depending on what work was going on.

“I remember walking in when James had been working on the guitar parts of Thru the Eyes of Ruby. I might’ve been in a bad mood, but I just didn’t like what was happening. I let Flood know that we were at a stalemate on the song, and he looked at his watch and said, ‘You’ve got four hours to figure it out, because otherwise we’re going to have to kick the song off the record.’ In the next four hours, no joke, I think I put 46 guitar parts on the song, totally on the fly.”

It’s been written that you recorded 70 guitar parts on the song.

“Who knows? There was a lot of layering, so maybe that pads the number of parts. My point is, not only did I have to make up the parts that I didn't have, but I had to record them over a seven-minute song.

“At the end of the four hours, I had to present it all to the producer and have him go, ‘OK, good. Let’s move on.’ That’s the atmosphere this was recorded in, which was like, ‘Go now. No time. Yes or no?’ It’s also worth pointing out that we worked 86 days in a row to finish the record.”

That might cause some burnout.

“Yeah.”

The song 1979 is regarded as a classic. Is it true, however, that Flood initially wanted to drop it from the record?

“No, that’s not true. What happened was, it was tabbed early on as a potential single, which threw a shadow over the song, like, ‘It better be great.’ Well, every time the band tried to do it, it sounded like really bad B-level Rolling Stones. We would go out and play it, and I’d look around like, ‘This just sucks.’ Jimmy would say, ‘OK, what do you want me to play?’ Everybody was convinced that was the beat.

“We had this whiteboard Flood had made – you know, drums, bass, guitars, vocals. He looked at the board, and 1979 had nothing checked off. Then he looked at his schedule, and we were literally two days from the end, and we had to fly to L.A. for mixing.

“He said, ‘OK, tomorrow is the day. If we don’t finish this song, it’s off the record.’ It was the right decision, but I was thinking, ‘How can I drag it out even further?’ I guess I would've made the case that we could have worked on it in L.A. while the mixing was going on.”

So what did you do to save the song and make it more than just B-level Rolling Stones?

“Well, a few things happened. I went home that night knowing I reached this kind of crossroad, and I needed to make up my mind on something. That’s when I reframed the song in my mind and I recorded an acoustic demo. I changed something about the arrangement with the vocal, but I don't remember exactly what it was. I basically finished the song. It was done and it sounded great.

“The next morning, I played Flood that version of the song, which I think we recorded – it was just acoustic and vocal. Flood said, ‘OK, great. Now what are we going to do?’ We all agreed the demo had something, so Flood said, ‘Why don’t we just redo the demo?’

“We had the Alesis drum machine. I recreated the exact beat with the exact same sound, including the click. If you wanted the click in, you’d press some button and it would go on top of the beat. That’s what gave it this kind of drive. We tried it without the click, but it didn’t sound the same.

“OK, we made up our minds – we’re using the drum machine. We had the drum machine, and let’s call it a sketch of me playing the song. Now what the fuck were we going to do? We’d cast our lot into this particular ocean. The next thing was, ‘What's Jimmy going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, what if he came in playing on the chorus?’

“Flood was great at setting up drums really fast, so he threw up a kit and had Jimmy play along to the song, and I would just kind of go, ‘Jump in here and play.’ And then, ‘OK, stop.’ We got the arrangement to where it was like it could work, but when Jimmy would try to track it, he would invariably drift. This was pre-Pro Tools, basically.

“I had Jimmy play for two minutes, and I’d listen to where his beat swung intuitively with the drum machine beat. I took those two bars, dropped it into an Alesis sampler, fucked up the sound, then flew it back in.”

The phrase “chasing the demo” comes to mind.

“Well, the strength of the song is in its simplicity, but the mode we were in was simplicity was the last thing on our mind. What’s funny about it is, it’s become a very influential song. It was recently used by Jessie Reyez in an interpolation, which is a great version. I think it was so modern in its approach, but we weren’t trying to be modern. We were just trying to find a version that sounded good to us. We ended up just letting it be what it was instead of trying to make it something that it wasn’t.”

Fuck You (an Ode to No One) is one of the most bruising songs you ever recorded. Is it true you played the solo till your fingers bled?

“I don’t know if that’s true. I remember we had a B room, this very small production room. I had my cabinet in this really, really small room – it was about the size of a closet. Even when I would sit and play in the control room, the sound from the cabinet was so loud because it was right there.

“Somehow I got the idea that not only did I want to play the solo in front of the cabinet to get the right kind of feedback and resonant things looping through the guitar, but at the end of the solo, I wanted to throw the guitar at the amp to make some sort of statement.”

As one does.

“I would throw the guitar at the cabinet, which would knock it completely out of tune. Then I would go back and listen to the take and think, ‘Oh, that sucks. Do it again.’ I’d tune the guitar, go back in and blast it out.

“I have this memory of killing myself, blasting my head off, and then throwing the guitar at the amp over and over to get the perfect kind of cataclysmic ending. Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember.”

• Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is out now via Virgin.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

During a dual Zoom interview with Guitar World, Billy Corgan remembers he has a bit of pressing musical business to go over with Kiki Wong. “Kiki,” I’m breaking down all these parts, so I’ve got to call you about some guitar stuff,” he says.

“Awesome. Sounds good,” Wong responds cheerfully.

No doubt this has been a constant in her life since the day everything changed for her back in April 2024, when the Phoenix-based guitarist and social media shredder was chosen over 9,999 other hopefuls to join the Smashing Pumpkins following the departure of longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder.

Given just three months to get up to speed (during which time she had to learn some 35 songs that might comprise a Pumpkins setlist on any given night), Wong was thrown in the deep end and made her debut with the band in front of 15,000 British fans at the Birmingham Arena (her second show – at London’s O2 Arena – raised the stakes even higher).

“The second show at the O2 was insane,” Wong says. “But I do remember feeling, when we did get up on stage, that it felt a lot better than in rehearsal. It was so much fun to be a part of it all.”

During rehearsals, Corgan had a strong sense that Wong could handle the gig, but he also recognized that the concert stage would be the true litmus test.

“Some people get the deer-in-headlights thing, particularly when you're up there and suddenly you have to remember 4,000 weird guitar parts,” he says.

“Plus, the band’s loud and we’re playing faster, we’re playing lots of big places… That’s the problem with being in an old band. We can kind of phone it in at rehearsal or just be like, ‘Does everybody know what they're doing?’ No-one’s playing with the level of intensity we’re playing at live. I think Kiki probably experienced that on stage, like, ‘Oh… There’s that other thing that happens with them.’”

That “other thing” – the hurricane-like force of the band in full flight, along with the thunderous roar of the crowd – could break even the most capable and experienced of players. Happily, none of that came to pass.

During those first high-level shows, Corgan recalls glancing at Wong and thinking, “All right, she’s fine. I don't need to pay one ounce of attention to whether or not she’s drowning over there. She’s going to be fine.’”

What’s more, he noticed right away that Wong had a profound – and unexpectedly infectious – impact on the rest of the band (which also includes guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, along with touring bassist Jack Bates and keyboardist Katie Cole).

“Kiki held down her corner of the stage, and something about her personality kind of brought Jack forward,” Corgan says. “Suddenly the band was playing with a lot more aggression and fire.”

Given that the Smashing Pumpkins have had more than a few musicians drift in and out of their ranks over the years (between actual members and touring players, it’s something like 30 different people), Corgan’s assessment of Wong’s influence is not insignificant. Could this be something of a new chapter for the veteran group?

Corgan mulls over the question, then says, “I think when you’re in a situation where you need to bring in an additional musician, there’s a trepidation in the unit because you're wondering how that person’s personality will tip the balance positively or negatively.

“Secondarily, of course, there's how it will work in terms of musicianship. Kiki's such a wonderful person to be around – she’s already made the band better because everybody is in a better mood.”

Wong blushes and smiles as Corgan continues: “Sometimes that’s all it takes. Someone’s enthusiasm and positivity and just good-heartedness can make grumpy musicians realize that the opportunities they have are still important, and not to be looked past or easily waved off if they become inconvenient to obviously a much longer story that doesn’t always involve one gig or one tour.

“We’re very grateful to Kiki, because she’s brought a lot of good vibes and good times, and all those things aside, she’s a great, professional musician.”

At the time of our conversation, Corgan is prepping for a solo tour billed as “Billy Corgan and the Machines of God” for which he’s formed a side band consisting of Wong, drummer Jake Hayden and bassist Kid Tigrr. Soon after, it’s right back to Pumpkins world – the band will tour Europe, then Asia and the Middle East.

“When I do any kind of solo stuff, I know the first thing people assume is there's some issue with the band,” Corgan says. “Everything’s fine. In fact, the band's playing more shows this year than I’m playing solo.”

As for Wong, who will perform new songs and deep cuts on the solo tour before heading back to the Pumpkins, it’s a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of fresh material to digest.

“It’s a lot of work, but I love the work,” she says. “It’s been really challenging; I’ve been so used to my own style, and it’s easy to get very confident, maybe too confident. Suddenly I’m learning a different style, and I’m almost becoming a different musician, so it’s super-fulfilling. I’m deep into this whole new world of music I can tap into and grow from.”

Kiki, from what I understand, at the time that the Pumpkins were holding the open auditions, you were kind of in a down place musically; things weren't quite working out for you. What made you think you had a chance to be considered for the Pumpkins?

Kiki Wong: “Oh, man, it's so funny. My baby was six or seven months old, so it was these super-hardcore months of babyhood.”

Of course, when your baby is that young, you naturally think about trying to join a big band. Everybody knows that.

Wong: [Laughs] “Yeah, right? But you know, my brain is wired in a way that makes me on the verge of being a pessimist – slightly pessimistic but closer to a realist. But there’s always been this thing in my head, like, ‘When am I going to quit the dream and be just a person? How long can I keep hammering at this thing and constantly being let down?’

“Now I had an actual reason to think that way, which was to take care of my kid. I remember pushing the baby around in a stroller – he couldn’t sleep – and while pushing him around in the Arizona desert heat, I kept saying to my boyfriend, ‘What if I become a Pumpkin?’ He said, ‘You’ve got this. You’re going to get it.’ This was before we even heard anything back from anyone. I had just thrown the resume in there, and I was like, ‘There's no way. There’s probably 4,000 people already.’”

You were off by 6,000.

Wong: [Laughs] “But then everything unfolded in such an unbelievable way. Every step of the Zoom call with the band and being invited to L.A. – I remember right before the audition I still didn’t think I was going to get it, but I didn’t care because I knew I was going to play with legends.

“Even if I didn’t get anything, I’ve gained that experience. I remember going into the actual audition and playing, and I forgot what I was doing because I was just looking at the band, thinking, ‘This is fucking awesome!’ I was having so much fun.”

Billy, I have a key question: out of the 10,000 applicants, how many videos did you actually watch till you got to Kiki? And when you got to her, were you like, “Maybe we should stop here?”

Corgan: “I had to give some sort of filter to it because the response was so overwhelming, and that filter was, ‘Send me anybody with a professional resume.’ If they’ve done anything – play a casino show in Vegas, tour with any band that’s got a recording history, anybody who would remotely qualify – send them to me. I would say there were easily, gosh, 500 or 600 of those.

“I had to go through all of those responses and whittle them down. The thing I remember very distinctly, obviously given the result, was when I saw Kiki’s name, I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Wait… I think I follow her on Instagram.’ I went to Instagram to confirm this, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s that person I really like.’”

You had already seen her playing somewhat.

Corgan: “Right. So I had this sense of, ‘Well, I know her and I like her.’ At least I had a positive mental impression. I set her name aside specifically because I knew who she was. It would be like if you called me and said, ‘Hey, at least give my friend Bobby a look because I’ve known him for 20 years and he's somebody you can count on.’ It's like a personal recommendation.

“It helped that I had a positive impression of what she was doing on Instagram. There were a lot of other people who had very impressive resumes. I would go to their Instagrams and look at the way they stood or the way they played or the way they talked about music – even just the pictures they posted. But I kept thinking, ‘This person has no idea what kind of band I'm in.’”

What was the exact moment when you thought, “That’s it! Kiki is the one!”?

Corgan: “The funny thing is, and this was something of a miracle, Kiki’s audition was the first on this one day. Somebody set up the schedule people were traveling in and stuff, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s probably not very good for Kiki,’ because the chance of us hiring the first person we see is probably pretty slim. By the time you get to the eighth or ninth person, you’re going to have a hard time remembering the first person.”

“Kiki came in and played very well. Now, I know how to read Jimmy Chamberlin’s body language pretty well; we’ve played together for over 35 years. I remember looking at Jimmy, and I could tell he was surprised at how well Kiki played. We had this thing at the auditions where we played three or four songs, and then we’d sit down and talk to each person for 15 minutes.

“A lot of people played well, but once we talked to them I thought, ‘They’re not really going to fit into our world.’ We’re a bit of a weird lot. [Laughs] We’re kind of picky in our own way. Maybe every band is, but I know the way we’re picky. Kiki was just who she was. She wasn’t trying to be someone else. She wasn’t trying to be a flatterer.

“She was just herself. And it was like, ‘OK, this person can hang in our world.’ After that, for the next three hours, nobody who followed Kiki could beat her. She was still on my mind, even though we weren’t discussing it internally.”

How many people followed Kiki till you decided on her?

Corgan: “I think there were nine others.”

Kiki, what was the process of you fitting in with the band sonically?

Wong: “It’s interesting, because I've always been afraid to play anything with a clean tone; I still am a little bit. One of the things I loved about our first Zoom call was how we spent a lot of time talking about Dimebag Darrell. Billy is such a huge metal fan, and after listening to the Pumpkins’ music, I realized there's so much variety in it.

“There’s a lot of heavy metal and grit. This made me feel comfortable. I did a deep dive beyond the band’s radio hits, and I felt the kind of energy I get from heavy metal. I felt I could meld my own energy sonically. The band has been super open to that, too. There hasn’t been that ‘No, no, you have to do it this way or that way.’ It’s been sort of an invitation to express myself on top of the stuff that already written.”

You bring up the metal aspect. As you know, there’s been some criticism from fans that you’re “too metal” for the Pumpkins.

Wong: “Honestly, that’s been my life story since I was 13, the whole metal thing. It even got to the point where my girlfriends stopped talking to me. It got a little weird, but now it doesn’t phase me. I go on stage looking like a wrestler in my outfits, but that’s what I like to wear. People are like, ‘You look like you should be in Judas Priest.’ And to that, I say, ‘Thank you.’ Billy’s been totally cool about it – ‘Wear whatever you want. Just be comfortable.’

“Sound-wise, I’ve dialed the heavy metal stuff back a bit, but I’m just trying to find that metal voice and integrate it. I actually think it meshes pretty well. There’s a lot of metal influence and style in the music, but it’s in a truly heavy way, not just this, ‘Oh, my God, that’s making my ears sore. Get that out of here!’”

Corgan: “We’re heavier with Kiki, which is actually to the benefit of the band live. But to the other thing she said, at some point Kiki came to me and said, ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do as far as how I'm going to look on stage?’ I said, ‘I want you to be comfortable. That’s more important to me, and I think it’s more important to James and Jimmy. They wear what they want to wear.’

“If you’re looking across the stage at the Pumpkins, James is wearing a suit. I’m wearing a priest’s dress, Jack is wearing the Manchester outfit of a lumberjack shirt and jeans, and Kiki looks like Rob Halford’s cousin. And I go, ‘Yeah, this is the band.’

“I look out and see audience members who are super goth, super metal. We have a ton of LGBTQ+ fans just being themselves. I think that's really the beautiful message the band sends. You don’t have to be anything to be up here. You could just be yourself.”

Billy, you talked about the impact Kiki has had on the band personally, but let’s drill down into the musical aspect. Specifically, are there some songs you play differently as a guitarist because of the way Kiki plays?

Corgan: “No. I think of it more like an author, which is like, ‘OK, we have these ingredients to play with.’ Having Kiki allows us to do things in a different way, so let’s lean into that. It’s less of an influence as more as an opportunity for me.

“When it gets to the metallic side of the band’s catalog, whether it’s Bullet with Butterfly Wings or something we’re going to play live on the solo tour, like Eden, which is off the new record, that’s the best form of that band with Kiki in it.

“She’s still learning what we would call more of the goth/atmospheric stuff. Sometimes I kind of pull her aside and I’ll show her – ‘I think this is the way psychologically you need to approach this.’ Oftentimes I’ll use references that she might understand, whether it’s a Metallica or a Mercyful Fate or something to sort of say, ‘This is maybe how they would do it.’ She may not understand if I start talking about Bauhaus, for example.”

Kiki, we talked about how many songs you had to learn. Billy, James and Jim know this stuff cold –

Corgan: “Hey, wait! I’m downstairs practicing every night. I’m cursing myself right now for the setlist I picked for this thing. [Laughs] There’s some songs on the Machines of God tour that I’ve never played live. I’m not talking about live in front of a crowd; I mean played live ever.”

Hey, well, you better get to it.

Corgan: “I’m working on it!”

But Kiki, it is true that there’s 35 years of material you’ve had to master in a short period of time. Has it ever felt overwhelming?

Wong: “It’s really interesting because I’ve always kind of taught myself. My parents were like, ‘Piano lessons or bust.’ The problem with that is, I didn’t have a lot of the foundations of music that other people have when they go through the nitty-gritty theory and all of that.

“Billy’s been really understanding, and he knows how to navigate that sort of thing with me. He’ll be like, ‘All right, I’m going to play the chords and then show you how to do it,’ versus ‘I’m going to talk in super-theory jargon,’ which is my weakness. I actually bought four music books I'm going to be reading. This needs to be tackled. It's been almost 20 something years of never going through it, and I should.

“The band has been extremely accommodating in being able to speak my language and sensing how I learn things. It’s really helped. When we did the first tour in Europe, we had five days of rehearsal, and my fear kicked in, like, ‘Fuck!’ It was like the imposter syndrome, where you’re like, ‘I know I can’t do this. If somebody sees that I can’t do this, then it’s not going to work out.’

“My biggest fear was holding me back. Then we just found a way that works in terms of learning, and we were able to get some of the really difficult stuff done in five days. Everything was all good, and I was able to learn things a lot faster.”

Corgan: “There was this time when Kiki was really struggling with how to play a song – I don’t remember which one – and because we believed in her and trusted that she was giving her best, I went over and sort of rejiggered what she was playing. I took on a different responsibility.

“Rather than be like, ‘Oh, you’re hired for this gig and you’re failing,’ it was like, ‘OK, I see where you’re weak over here. Let’s figure out a way we can cover you and not expose you,’ all while knowing it was something she needed to work on. That’s the sort of environment that we have. We don’t expect Kiki to understand everything we do.

“It’s pretty arcane in many ways, and it was developed over many, many years. If you’re playing a song from Mellon Collie, that’s seven years of James and me playing guitar in a very specific way. We’re talking many, many concerts and recording sessions.

“I don’t expect somebody to just parachute in and understand that style. Even when Jeff Schroeder was in the band, it took him probably two years to fully assimilate what people would call the ‘Pumpkins’ guitar style.”

Wong: “I think what makes it difficult, but also inspiring, is that it's a style I’m not used to. Obviously, for the past year or so, I’ve gotten a little bit more acquainted with the Pumpkins’ style, which is different in some ways from where I come from. I’ve been a metalhead for years, just strictly high-distortion and no real dynamics in my playing.

“That’s all changed now. What’s truly great about all this is how it’s allowing me to expand my musicianship. I’m really trying to tap into tone and voicings in a way that’s almost orchestrated with the band, as opposed to just playing a part.”

Billy, what can Kiki do on the guitar that’s just beyond you?

Corgan: “Well, she’s got that Hetfield/Kerry King downstroke thing that I could never do, whatever the fuck that is. [Wong busts up laughing]. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that shit. Trust me, I knew Johnny Ramone and he was a big proponent of this.

“Obviously, Hetfield and Kerry King would tell you the same. So would Mustaine. The only way to play that way is you gotta do all downstrokes. I remember being at Johnny Ramone’s house – [imitates thick New Yorker accent] ‘all downstrokes, all downstrokes.’

“There’s a belief that the attack of the downstroke is better than if you pick up-down, up-down. To me, when I see somebody who can do that with the downstrokes, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I can't do that!’”

Kiki, same question: What does Billy play that’s just beyond you?

Wong: “Oh, my gosh. One of the most jaw-dropping moments on the first tour was just seeing Billy go crazy-shred. We have these times when it’s all improv, and hearing some of the voicings he uses… One of the things you strive for as a musician is developing your own sound, where someone will say, ‘Hey, that’s Kiki Wong!’ or ‘That’s Billy Corgan!’ But more than that, it’s ‘That’s Billy Corgan, and no-one else can be Billy Corgan.’

“When he solos… we have this 10-minute jam on Gossamer, and it’s just insane. Insane! You start to listen to what he’s doing, and he’s speaking and he’s using voices that are from the Smashing Pumpkins. There’s all these hints from other songs, but he’s simultaneously shredding. Then you just look out and people are just like this [she drops her jaw in awe].

“Because if you're a ‘hits’ person, you're not going to find this insanity that comes with the other songs. You just don’t expect the absolute insane shred experience from some of the main hits on the radio.

“But when you go to the show and you hear the hits, and then you hear something like Gossamer with Billy just going in… you hear all of those things, and then the visual experience… you’re blown away. When that happens, I’m like the audience, with my jaw literally wide open. I’m watching the show as I'm playing. It’s incredible.”

• Aghoro Mori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The recording studio is a breeding ground for madcap creativity, and Billy Corgan made full use of that while tracking the charmingly titled Fuck You (an Ode to No One).

It was one of the angrier cuts from Smashing Pumpkins’ sprawling 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Now, speaking to Guitar World, Corgan downplays the rumour that, for its guitar solo, he played until his fingers bled.

However, he did try some rather novel production techniques that Pete Townshend would be proud of.

“I remember I had my cabinet in this really, really small room, it was about the size of a closet,” he remembers in the new issue of Guitar World. “Even when I would sit and play in the control room, the sound from the cabinet was so loud because it was right there.

“Somehow, I got the idea that not only did I want to play the solo in front of the cabinet to get the right kind of feedback and resonant things looping through the guitar, but at the end of the solo, I wanted to throw the guitar at the amp to make some sort of statement.”

Those kinds of antics are typically reserved for the stage. Pete Townshend used to glue his guitars back together so he could destroy them night after night. To do it in the studio is a wildly different tactic.

“I would throw the guitar at the cabinet, which would knock it completely out of tune. Then I would go back and listen to the take and think, ‘Oh, that sucks. Do it again,’” Corgan says.

“I'd tune the guitar, go back in and blast it out. I have this memory of killing myself, blasting my head off, and then throwing the guitar at the amp over and over to get the perfect kind of cataclysmic ending. Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember.”

Corgan was interviewed alongside new Smashing Pumpkins recruit Kiki Wong, who beat 10,000 other players to the gig. During the conversation, Corgan revealed the one technique Wong has that he’s never possessed.

Read Corgan’s new interview in full – alongside chats with Carlos Santana, Zakk Wylde, and more – in the latest issue of Guitar World. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

If there's anything that warrants the term “life-changing,” it's Kiki Wong being handpicked by Billy Corgan and co. – out of more than 10,000 applicants – to join the Smashing Pumpkins.

Turns out, Wong made quite an impression from that very first audition. “Kiki’s audition was the first on this one day,” recalls Corgan in the latest issue of Guitar World.

“Somebody set up the schedule people were traveling in and stuff, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s probably not very good for Kiki,’ because the chance of us hiring the first person we see is probably pretty slim. By the time you get to the eighth or ninth person, you’re going to have a hard time remembering the first person.

“Kiki came in and played very well. Now, I know how to read Jimmy Chamberlin’s body language pretty well; we’ve played together for over 35 years. I remember looking at Jimmy, and I could tell he was surprised at how well Kiki played. We had this thing at the auditions where we played three or four songs, and then we’d sit down and talk to each person for 15 minutes.”

Aside from her stellar playing, what really gave Wong her edge over her competition was her authenticity and down-to-earth demeanor.

“She wasn’t trying to be someone else. She wasn’t trying to be a flatterer. She was just herself. And it was like, ‘OK, this person can hang in our world.’ After that, for the next three hours, nobody who followed Kiki could beat her. She was still on my mind, even though we weren’t discussing it internally.”

As for what Wong can do on guitar that's just beyond Corgan's abilities, according to the Pumpkins frontman himself, there are a few.

For starters, “she’s got that Hetfield/Kerry King downstroke thing that I could never do, whatever the fuck that is. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that shit. Trust me, I knew Johnny Ramone, and he was a big proponent of this.

“Obviously, Hetfield and Kerry King would tell you the same. So would Mustaine. The only way to play that way is you gotta do all downstrokes. I remember being at Johnny Ramone’s house – [imitates thick New Yorker accent] ‘all downstrokes, all downstrokes.’

“There’s a belief that the attack of the downstroke is better than if you pick up-down, up-down. To me, when I see somebody who can do that with the downstrokes, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I can't do that!’” he admits.

Wong is quick to add that, from her end, “one of the most jaw-dropping moments on the first tour was just seeing Billy go crazy-shred.

“We have these times when it’s all improv,” she explains, “and hearing some of the voicings he uses… One of the things you strive for as a musician is developing your own sound, where someone will say, ‘Hey, that’s Kiki Wong!’ or ‘That’s Billy Corgan!’

“But more than that, it’s ‘That’s Billy Corgan, and no one else can be Billy Corgan,’” she asserts.

For more from Kiki Wong and Billy Corgan, plus new interviews with the Sex Pistols and Carlos Santana, pick up issue 595 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Hey, gang. The new October 2025 issue of Guitar World is out and about – and it goes a little something like this...

• Billy Corgan & Kiki Wong: Billy and Kiki – the Smashing Pumpkins' first and latest guitarists, respectively – discuss how bonding over Dimebag Darrell and dressing like "Rob Halford's cousin" helped turn Wong into a Pumpkin overnight – by Joe Bosso
• Billy Corgan's Tales of a Scorched Earth: Corgan looks back on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins' era-defining grand opus, 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – by Joe Bosso
• Sex Pistols Incite Anarchy in the U.S.: O.G. Sex Pistols Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook are about to kick off a rare U.S. tour with Frank Carter – as in, not Johnny Rotten – behind the mic. Says Jones, "For the first time in a long time, I'm really enjoying doing Pistols songs" – by Andrew Daly
• Carlos Santana Is as Supernatural as Ever: Six decades into his career, Carlos Santana remains excited by the very thought of having a guitar in his hands. In this issue, he looks back on the music and gear that's soundtracked his one-of-a-kind life (not to mention his “visitation” from Stevie Ray Vaughan) – by Amit Sharma

Let us not forget this other cool stuff...

• The Gear Hunter checks in with Robert Keeley of Keeley Electonics
• Personalities pays a visit to longtime Beach Boys guitarist Al Jardine, who discusses the lesser-known aspects of Surf's Up and Holland
• Meet Inhaler guitarist Josh Jenkinson
• A tribute to the late, great Rick Derringer (1947-2025)
• Zakk Wylde's life in three guitars

The issue also features new interviews with Khruangbin's Mark Speer and Laura Lee Ochoa, plus Vernon Reid, Ricky Byrd, both guitarists from Momma, both guitarists from Phoneboy and both guitarists from the Voidz, plus Bumblefoot, Ally Venable and Laura Pleasants.

Gear-wise, we explore the history and allure of the Fender Jazzmaster, and we review all this cool stuff:

• Kramer Volante HSGT
• TC Electronic Ditto 2
• ToneWoodAmp2
• Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus plugin
• Jackson Pro Series Misha Mansoor Juggernaut ET6
• Taylor 314ce Studio
• Gibson Marcus King ES-345

Finally, we have new columns by Joe Bonamassa, Jared James Nichols, Sue Foley and Cory Wong, plus transcriptions of Neurogenesis by Intervals & Koan Sound, Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up your copy of the October 2025 Guitar World.

Billy Corgan is a man whose reputation and genius truly precede him. Since forming the Smashing Pumpkins in the late ’80s, the group has sold more than 30 million records, including landmark albums Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and Adore.

It should also be noted that Corgan is one of the most influential guitarists of his generation and quite possibly many generations to follow. Yet there is one element to his success that may not be common knowledge, which is that he has written and recorded the bass guitar tracks on almost every album in the entirety of the Smashing Pumpkins’ history.

While this should greatly warm the hearts of bassists everywhere, it also leads us to question the influence of D’arcy Wretzky, Melissa Auf der Maur, Ginger Pooley, Nicole Fiorentino and now Jack Bates, and the roles they’ve played in the development of the Pumpkins’ unique sound.

Their playing over the years has surely sparked trends in alternative rock bass playing, and their collective stage presence is infinitely powerful.

Yet Corgan was the mastermind fuelling the Pumpkins’ low-end sound. Speaking to Bass Player in 2012, he said, “As a guitar player first, I tend to like bass that doesn’t diminish what I’m playing. I tend to see bass in more of a support-and-enhance type of role that’s best when it makes everything else shine brighter.”

It is not always easy for a guitarist of Corgan’s magnitude to approach the bass as a creative outlet. Often guitar players get stuck writing overly simple lines, or parts that do little to connect with the drums. But for Corgan, who is adept at playing over 10 different instruments, he is able to write, record and play the bass parts, even if he does tend to honour the guitar first.

“At times I can be guilty of creating too much around the guitar part. If there’s any part of creating a bassline that I’m good at, it’s looking for a rhythm hook with some notes that would harmonize or blur with my guitar.

“Bass should be able to disappear and reappear at will, tucking underneath a guitar part and driving the song, and then drawing attention to itself at just the right moment.”

Epic moments in famed Pumpkins songs such as The Everlasting Gaze and Bullet With Butterfly Wings give the bass a piece of the spotlight, but generally Corgan likes to use it as a more supportive tool rather than a standout feature.

“It is not difficult for me to switch to the mentality of a bass player in the sense that as the songwriter, in most cases I know what I’m looking for. That said, I don’t always think like a bass player. I’ve learned a lot of respect for that approach over time, but it doesn’t always come naturally to me.”

While the Pumpkins bass chair has been a veritable revolving door since the departure of D’arcy in 1999, one trait has remained consistent to the position, which is they have all been pick players.

While the grinding, midrange tone of playing with a pick seems a staple of the Pumpkins sound, Corgan enjoys players who let their fingers do the plucking.

“I actually prefer people who play with their fingers. If a bassist is going to use a pick, it has to be used just right to not blunt the guitar attack. It’s a fine balance not to interfere with the tonality of the guitar.”

Corgan’s bass collection is nothing short of spectacular. “Right now I own a 1958 Fender P-Bass, a 1963 Fender Jazz Bass, a 1968 Guild Starfire, a 1968 Höfner violin bass, a ’60s-era Fender Coronado, various ’70s P-Basses, a ’60s Gibson EB-2 and various Reverend basses.”

Any Smashing Pumpkins fan missing the Melissa Auf der Maur era was in for a treat last Friday in Montreal, as the former Pumpkins and Hole bass guitar hero joined Corgan and his new band, the Machines of God, on stage in her hometown.

She joined the band for the encore track The Everlasting Gaze in Montreal, Canada, on June 13 as the newly formed group celebrated the Pumpkins’ turn-of-the-century material.

According to fan footage, the bassist even recalled her first-ever conversation with Corgan.

“Billy, do you remember the first words we ever exchanged, on July 23rd, 1991?” she asked the Pumpkins frontman. “I walk to the side of the stage after you played I Am One, and you were packing up your gear, and do you remember what I said?” He quipped, “I love you, never leave?”

“Very close,” she added with a laugh. “I said, ‘On behalf of Montreal, Canada, I apologize for the broken beer bottle that was thrown at him, and I am Melissa from Montreal and I will follow you ’til the end of time.’”

The band – spearheaded by Auf der Maur – then launched into the final song on the setlist – The Everlasting Gaze from 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God, an apt nod to Auf der Maur’s era with the Pumpkins.

In a video posted to the Pumpkins’ socials, Corgan and his former bandmate share a warm embrace before digging into the song’s hardened groove. Their chemistry is tangible, even in a phone-filmed video.

The former Hole bassist joined Corgan’s crew for one year in 1999. She held down the low-end across the Sacred and Profane tour, and features in a number of music videos from that period. Her time ended when Corgan disbanded the group, which she knew about from the offset.

Speaking to Bass Player last year about her time with two of the bands that defined ’90s rock, she said, “Courtney and Billy were both very different. But I have so much respect for both of them. My time with Hole was more character definition, creating me as a person, and then my crash course in music, one on one, was with the Pumpkins, who refined and defined my musicianship.

“Billy in particular: his level of efficiency and musicianship and his commitment to art was pretty remarkable. He was a real mentor in that way.”

“It was just a very dramatic coincidence. Billy said, ‘You're gonna be in my band!’ And I couldn't say no, because it was a dream come true,” she continues. “It was fulfilling a teenage fantasy but it was also the best music lesson of my life.

“I knew it was only for one year because they told me they were splitting up. And knowing I was going to be taught their back catalog was incredible.”

Corgan, meanwhile, has said his new project is focused on fusing classics with deep cuts. Material from Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, Machina/The Machines of God, and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, as well as 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Me, will feature.

“The A Return to Zero Tour,” he adds, “reintroduces a four-piece, two-guitar lineup in which music from these seminal Pumpkins albums were created.” Now Auf der Maur, who was a key player in the band’s purple patch, has also been reintroduced.

She reprised her spot in the band for, quite possibly, one last time, giving her hometown Pumpkins fans a moment to savor.

Billy Corgan is also set to star in a supergroup with Tom Morello and Tool's Danny Carey at Black Sabbath's Back to the Beginning as heavy metal's forefathers bow out with one hell of a party.

Before securing the gig as a touring guitarist with the Smashing Pumpkins, Kiki Wong had all but given up her dreams of large-scale success with a big-time act. That’s not to say she wasn’t capable; one glance at her millions-strong social media following showed she was certainly up to the task.

But an unruly music business and a devotion to family led her elsewhere. Outsiders called Wong a “social media shredder” and a “bedroom guitarist.” Forget that she was riffing heavy on gnarly guitars in front of millions of viewers; to her detractors, it wasn’t enough.

“My biggest advice is to accept failure like it is your best friend,” Wong tells Guitar World. “Some of your biggest failures will happen early on when you’re just getting started or when you’re in a vulnerable position. Failure sucks. It hurts. It stays with you. And you certainly don’t want to do it again.”

Wong processed the hurt and vulnerability the music biz slung at her and saw her star rise. So high, in fact, that when Billy Corgan held an open audition in the winter of 2024 to replace the departed Jeff Schroeder, he chose Wong for the gig over another 9,999 (seriously) applicants.

Since signing with the Pumpkins, things have gone well for Wong. She’s toured the world with Corgan and James Iha in support of the Pumpkins’ latest record, 2024’s Aghori Mhori Mei, and fans have been welcoming, even if some felt her to be “too metal.” Such is life as a Pumpkin; you can’t make anyone entirely happy.

“Joining the Smashing Pumpkins has helped me become a whole lot more well-rounded player, adding a little alternative music to my style as well, and I am so grateful for that,” she says.

As for what she’d be doing if she didn’t beat out those other 9,999 applicants, Wong says: “Honestly, I’d probably be doing more TikTok and Instagram Reel videos at home and being a mom, which wouldn’t be a terrible life. However, I’m so grateful for having the second chance at fulfilling my dreams and exceeding my expectations of how far I could take my music career. It has been the best thing that’s happened to me, besides, of course, my son being born.”

From indie metal hopeful to social media guitar star to gracing the grandest stages worldwide playing iconic hits of the Nineties alongside one of rock’s most seminal characters (here’s looking at you, Billy), Wong’s journey is an inspiration for anyone hoping to “make it.” She’s seen the bottom, which prepared her for the top.

“If you accept failure as a place for growth, the sky is truly the limit,” Wong says. “I have 1,000 percent failed more than I’ve succeeded, and I truly believe that’s why I’m here today. It allows you to see where you can improve in whatever it is you want to achieve and check your ego if things are going almost too well. That advice still stands to this day.”

You’ve been playing with the Pumpkins since the spring of 2024. How has that changed your life?

“It honestly has been one of the best things I could ever ask for. It still shocks me that I was literally living in the desert – between the masses of desert, almost in the middle of nowhere – and catapulting into a world tour with one of the most influential Nineties rock ’n’ roll bands. I’m forever grateful. Most importantly, it has allowed me to improve as a musician and expand my musical understanding.”

Does that mean you’re a different player now than you were then?

“Absolutely. I have a lot to attribute to Billy. He’s developed a distinct playing style that when you hear it, you go, ‘That’s Billy Corgan,’ which I think is what we all strive to do as musicians. Learning his style was hard, but it helped me play with more feel and vibe. The first week of rehearsal was like a musical boot camp that taught me more than 20 years of playing by myself did.”

You were mostly known as a metal player going into the Pumpkins gig. Do you still consider yourself that type of player?

“I honestly just wanted to play what I liked the most – which is metal – my whole life. It helped keep me super-focused and interested in playing and practicing. However, it did end up making me a one-trick pony, always blasting the dirtiest distortion and not really having a whole lot of dynamics to my playing.”

How has your presence in the Smashing Pumpkins most impacted the live show?

“I was worried at first how well I was going to mesh with the band since I felt like such a noob going into the project. However, the band was so patient and welcoming that it made it easy to find my place. I always say, ‘I might not be the best guitar player out there. In fact, I know I’m not the best guitar player out there. But I guarantee I’ll always give one hell of a show.’ And the Pumpkins have given me space to be myself on stage, which has been so honorable.”

What song was the most challenging to learn, and what songs still give you fits?

“Thru the Eyes of Ruby [from 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness] was one of the more difficult songs for me to learn since there were so many effects and different harmonizing parts.

“The tricky part about Smashing Pumpkins’ music is the arrangements. It’s orchestrated well and almost counterintuitively while still maintaining musical sensibility and mainstream appeal.

“It’s really quite genius, but also hard to learn – and it sounds insane, but sometimes the easiest songs still get me nervous. Like, one note hanging can be more nerve-racking than a whole solo because if you miss that note, you screwed up the whole part. That’s why Today [from 1993’s Siamese Dream] sometimes gets me nervous. [Laughs]”

What have you learned about Billy and James as guitar players that you didn’t know before?

“One thing I love about Billy’s playing is that he plays his own style. When you hear it, you know that’s Billy Corgan. He also taught me how to use my thumb more, which is very Hendrix, and also hearing intervals of fourths in his playing is really amazing. He’s an incredible shredder and has a breadth of guitar understanding that could honestly blow away many modern guitarists.

“James is so inspirational because he understands music and sound as a design, which adds such a cool dynamic to the songs. He’s developed a style that gives the music a vibe and lifts the air of the songs. It’s truly incredible, almost like a foley room artist for theatrical films. I have so much respect for him, and it has influenced me to want to use more effects in my playing as well.”

What is the secret sauce to the Pumpkins guitar sound, and how do you fit into that?

“With Smashing Pumpkins, it’s all about feel, vibe, and following the 'Pumpkins pocket.’ Everything we play is by vibing and following each other. What you hear is exactly what is being played, and the ebb and flow of the pocket is what makes it truly an unmatched experience live.”

Securing the gig the way you did gave hope to players that they could reach their dreams, too. Have you considered the impact and importance this has had on young players – especially young women – who want to break through?

“One of my main goals in starting my TikTok account playing Daily Metal Guitar Riffs was to inspire young people to pick up a guitar again. At the time, some of our favorite guitar brands were filing for bankruptcy, and rock was 'phasing out.' My intention was to do the best I could to rekindle that.

“Now, joining the Smashing Pumpkins through the audition process has allowed me to show that hard work does pay off. It truly fills my heart knowing that people have been inspired by my story. It just helps strengthen my original goal: keeping the metal and rock ’n’ roll alive!”

As you’ve alluded, you’ve done an amazing job of promoting yourself on social media. Do you think you would you be here without that?

“Social media is an extremely tricky topic. A lot of times, musicians don’t want to take part in social media trends, and understandably so, because it can make you feel like you’re selling yourself. But if you embrace that as a tool for you to get yourself out there and connect with other people, it can be the best thing that will catapult your music career.

“At the end of the day, people want to feel connected with something or someone. Social media is a place where that can happen. Without building a following, there is no way I would have been able to connect with so many incredible fans and musicians, as well as have the opportunity to be a part of the Smashing Pumpkins.”

Did you ever feel overlooked or cast aside as just a “social media” or “bedroom” guitar player? Do you feel people take you more seriously now?

“It’s tough because I have TikTok and Instagram to thank for my ‘claim to fame,’ so to speak. But at the same time, I put in the hours and work playing in bands and writing our own music. I’ve played hundreds of shows before I even became popular on social media, good and bad.

“Though there is absolutely nothing wrong with social media influencers and bedroom guitarists, it wasn’t all that was in my repertoire; the positive side is it sheds good light on the fact that dreams can come true for those who are playing at home.”

Can you elaborate on how your thoughts on gear have changed since getting the Pumpkins gig?

“Distortion, distortion, gain and more gain were my digs before I joined the Smashing Pumpkins. However, they’ve introduced me to a whole new world with pedals. Really dialing in [my] tone and voicing has been an interesting journey for me musically. I’m grateful to Billy and James for being such huge mentors in that space.”

Are there any downsides to living life on larger stages? If so, would you trade it?

“It’s hard to call any of it a downside, to be honest. I’ve done so many makeshift tours in the back of vans, asking venues for food since we didn’t have the cash to get it on tour when our wallets were stolen; the whole nine yards.

“The only thing I would say is that when you play to huge audiences, it’s harder to connect with people since they are so far away, especially in stadiums. I do miss occasional eye contact and shoutouts, but it still happens; [you’ve] just gotta squint more. [Laughs]”

At one point, you left music behind, but you’re certainly back now. Beyond the Smashing Pumpkins, what does the future hold for you?

“I gave up on touring with any big act after having my son because I wanted to dedicate my efforts to being a mother. But since the Smashing Pumpkins are so family-oriented and understanding, it’s been a dream come true to be able to perform and be a mother with the help and support of my boyfriend and my parents at home. I’m able to continue my musical dreams, and for that, I will forever be grateful.”

• Aghori Mhori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Billy Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins have been busy of late – but that hasn’t stopped him planning a tour for the summer with his solo band Machines of God. Given his tendency to color outside the lines, he likes to work with equally open-minded bandmates like bassist Jenna Fournier, who, in addition to her band Niights, records under the name Kid Tigrrr.

She describes herself as “a multifaceted working artist,” explaining: “I have the passion that comes from the soul’s abyss and draws from my own experiences. I also do session work, art commissions, and ghostwriting, as well as other projects, to support the work I want to create and the stories I want to tell.”

Corgan’s Return to Zero summer tour – which celebrates Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the Pumpkins' two Machina albums – kicks off in June.

“The focus and memorizing are the hardest part for me personally,” Fournier says of her preparation. “And the newest material from Aghori, is certainly not as easy as pumpkin pie. Pie with a side of metal. My teeth hurt!”

How did you first meet Billy?

“It was after auditioning for a project he was working on. He threw out a sort of casting call to his fans, as he sometimes does, and I sent some clips of my guitar playing and original material. So began a rapport.

“He asked if I’d be interested in trying out on bass for this tour, and the timing was divine. I could pour myself into the music. My audition in LA was our first time playing together.”

Did you grow up with the Pumpkins albums you’ll be playing?

“I once reminded my former label, who felt our album was not cohesive, that the Smashing Pumpkins took over the world with an incredibly dynamic double album that traversed genres.

“I stuck to my guns because Smashing Pumpkins taught me that music doesn’t have to fit neatly into a box with a nice little label on it. The aesthetic and layers of symbolism surrounding these albums have inspired me as a visual artist as well.”

What drew you to the bass?

“I’m more of a guitar player, but I taught myself guitar by playing notes on one string – like a bass would be played – before I learned some chords and then got into pedals.

“The first time I auditioned for a band, it was as a bassist. A friend loaned me one and taught me how to play it. I was 19, living alone in Las Vegas, answering ads in the paper, just trying to get into a project. I do not recommend this!

“It’s been fun moving back onto the bass – it feels like things are coming full circle in a strange way; and the bass feels very natural, albeit a lot heavier. I feel kinda naked without my pedalboard, but I do enjoy standing in front of my cabs and really feeling the bass in my body.”

Has D’Arcy Wretzky been a big influence on you?

“She still empowers me today as I learn all this material, alongside the other women Billy has had on stage over the years. Representation truly matters! D'Arcy was laid back and so intrinsically cool: ‘I am the cucumber; I am the walrus.’”

Tone is important when it comes to the Pumpkins’ music. How will your rig reflect that?

“I’ll be playing the Yamaha BB7, the same model Jack Bates uses in Smashing Pumpkins. We don’t use pedals for this music, so the tone is really sculpted from the bass itself and the amp.”

Has Billy offered any advice on how to tackle the songs?

“He’s provided a few files with the bass cranked. I’m also studying live clips and recordings.”

Have you gotten to talk with Kiki Wong yet?

“Yes, and I already adore her for her work ethic and shining positivity... a very inspiring mega-babe!”

What’s the latest with your music?

“I recently released Stoned + Animald, my debut solo album as Kid Tigrrr, on Billy’s label Martha’s Music. It’s a sort of shoegazey, bedroom dream-pop indie hybrid. I recorded and produced a lot of it from home.

“It’s a new approach after a decade of Niights, which is very collaborative. It’s more experimental and quite personal. I have a lot of songs written and waiting to be recorded – I plan to get back to them after the tour and continue exploring DIY production.”

You aren’t strictly a bassist; how would you describe yourself in full spectrum?

“A lot of my work is about processing and healing from traumatic experiences – ‘exploring the human condition’ type of thing. I think it’s healthy for me to sometimes step away from myself. It keeps me challenged and expands my horizons.

“Sometimes the worlds bleed into each other. Sometimes I obey the whims of the muses; other times I grind away at one project with a sort of tunnel vision. But I’m almost always learning or experimenting or creating.”

Is this a one-off with Billy, or is there potential for more?

“I’m really not sure at this point, but I hope this one will go great and lead to more! After the tour I’ll go back to my little dog and my hermit cave of wonders.”

• Corgan’s Machines of God tour kicks off on June 7. Kid Tigrrr’s Stoned + Animald is on sale now.

After honing her craft with Veruca Salt, Nicole Fiorentino proved herself as a member of the Smashing Pumpkins, replacing Ginger Pooley for an underrated era that included Teargarden by Kaleidyscope and Oceania.

Fiorentino left in 2014 and went on to form Cold and Lovely and Bizou, while also opening a pet-sitting business in Los Angeles. After a period of downtime, Fiorentino joined Louise Post’s touring band in 2023. Recently, it was announced she’d be replacing Pooley once more – this time as part of Garbage’s touring band.

Notably, former Garbage bassist Eric Avery, of Jane’s Addiction fame, has his own Smashing Pumpkins connection. Fiorentino has no idea if it’s anything other than a coincidence. “There are some similarities stylistically – but we run in the same circles as well, so it could just be an access thing,” she says.

Fiorentino didn’t play on Garbage’s upcoming record, but she’s elated to play some of those songs while also digging into the band’s catalog. “I don't like playing it safe and sticking with the same old ways,” she explains.

“It’s exciting for me with Garbage because it’s a whole new way of playing on stage that I’ve not experienced – it’s a good challenge.”

What inspired you to pick up the bass?

“My dad was a musician. When I was little, I used to go down to the basement when he practiced with his bands. I always just wanted to be around the band. It wasn't until my teens when I started getting into bands like Hole, L7, Babes in Toyland, Bikini Kill and Garbage, that I wanted to start an all-girl band.

“My best friend wanted to sing and play guitar, so I decided to try bass. My parents bought me my first bass for Christmas, and from that day on, it’s been all I ever wanted to do.”

What sort of scene were you exposed to?

“I grew up in Ludlow, Massachusetts. People were pretty heavy into hardcore music, ska and metal. My friends and I were more into punk, alternative and riot grrrl. There weren’t really any other girl punk bands in the area, so we ended up being the only girls playing with a sea of hardcore male bands.

“I got used to working within a male-dominated industry pretty early on. I was always desperately trying to find other women to work with.”

What was your bass rig like when you recorded IV with Veruca Salt?

“At that time, I was primarily using Mesa Boogie. I actually didn’t play bass on most of that record – the bass was pretty much done. I mostly did background vocals but I played bass on Innocent and Closer, which were added at the last minute.”

How did you get the gig?

“I met Louise Post through a mutual friend. She had been asking around for female bassists. She had Stephen Fitzpatrick lined up to play guitar and Kellii Scott on drums, and she wanted a girl in the band to sing harmonies.

“Louise and I met at a coffee shop and really hit it off. She asked me to jam with her and the boys at her rehearsal space in Downtown LA, and everything just fell into place from there. Louise and I are still very good friends – I toured for her solo record, Sleepwalker, which came out in 2023. Everyone should check it out!”

How did you join the Smashing Pumpkins?

“I was playing with a band called Light FM from Chicago, who were opening for Billy Corgan’s solo project. He complimented my bass-playing style. A few months later, Ginger Pooley left to have a family. Billy remembered me from that show and had his management find me. The rest is history!”

Was D’Arcy Wretzsky a big influence on you growing up?

“Oh yes – I remember seeing Smashing Pumpkins videos on MTV and thinking, ‘I want to be exactly like that girl!’ She was so badass, with her blue hair in tiny buns and her silver pants.

“I grew up in a male-driven music world; representation really mattered. It’s the most wonderful thing to me when a girl or young woman tells me that I’ve inspired her to play bass. I feel like I’ve given back what has been given to me by women in the industry.”

Can you recall your first gig with the Pumpkins?

“We did a secret warm-up show at the Viper Room in LA before our tour. I think the capacity there is 75 people or something, so it was mostly friends and family. For me, the smaller shows are actually scarier because they’re so intimate.”

Was there pressure to measure up to the band’s earlier era?

“There was some pressure – but we were encouraged to bring our own style to the table. I had big shoes to fill, but I also knew that I had a lot to offer on my own, and I was very confident in that. I think Billy saw that in me, and that’s why I had a lot of creative freedom with the bass on Oceania.”

Oceania was fantastic. You brought a ton of rhythmic heaviness to the table. What was your rig like?

“I’m very proud of my work on that album. I was playing through a Reeves head and cabinet. I can’t remember my pedalboard setup, but it included an EHX Neo Clone chorus pedal and a Subdecay Quasar delay – which is funny because that was a track on the album.”

What led to the end of your time in the Pumpkins?

“It was a complicated ending that I’ve since moved past. I have no bad blood at this point. Everything happens exactly how it’s supposed to.”

Do you have a proudest Smashing Pumpkins moment?

“I think being able to say that I contributed to an album by a legendary rock band is pretty cool. And being able to connect with fans who’ve continued to follow my career has been a beautiful thing.”

You’re playing with Garbage now. How did you get the gig?

“Actually it was quite out of the blue. One morning early this year I woke up to a DM on my Instagram from Shirley Mason, asking if I’d be interested in the gig. We had never met so I was pretty surprised.

“In addition, I got an email from Butch Vig. It was really cool that they both reached out to me personally and didn’t go through management or anything. I got back to them really quickly and said, ‘Absolutely. I’d be honored.’

Was there an audition?

“I had met Butch when he came to see the Smashing Pumpkins, so he had already seen me play. I was also recommended by some mutual friends, including Brian Aubert from Silversun Pickups, who Butch produces. So, I didn't actually have to audition, which was amazing.”

What sort of rig will you be deploying with Garbage?

“I’ll be using Reverend Decision basses, which I used with the Smashing Pumpkins as well. Garbage doesn’t use amps live. Everything is run through their Helix system and we wear in-ear monitors. I don’t have a pedalboard since everything is run through the Helix, making for a very clean stage.

“It took a little getting used to, not being able to feel the vibration of the amps and have the sound beyond the in-ears. But it’s really great for vocalists who want to be sustainable and it’s good for everyone’s ears.”

Do you traditionally prefer tube amps?

“I’ve always used tube amps, but I’ve always been open to modelers as well. I think it's exciting to change things up; to be open to new technologies and ways of doing things. You can always go back to what you did before.”

What Garbage songs are you most excited about playing?

“I really love playing #1Crush. It’s bass-heavy and it’s the sexiest groove. And in When I Grow Up, I sing a lot of harmonies. I adore singing with Miss Shirley. Sex Is Not the Enemy is powerful and really gets the crowd going too. With No Horses, I play keys, so that's a little harder for me as I don’t play keys often.”

What’s your outlook as you move forward?

“I’m having the time of my life; this gig was very unexpected, so I’m just feeling grateful. It’s an incredible band made up of the most genuine and amazing humans. It’s so great to be in a band with such a powerful, opinionated and badass woman. I love backing her up every night.

“I’m looking forward to the release of their new album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, and touring in support of it in the fall.”

• Let All That We Imagine Be the Light arrives on May 30 and it’s available for pre-order now.

Dating back to the late 80s and led by Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins have polarised and galvanized with records such as Gish (1991), Siamese Dream (1993), Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995), and Adore (1998) through an outright refusal to adhere to genre confines, regardless of the success those confines afforded them.

Because of this, and Corgan’s tendency to speak his mind, critics and fans alike have had a field day. But that hasn’t stopped those same pundits from filling seats in arenas, such is life for the Pumpkins – light and shade, as it were.

But things change, as do attitudes, especially when it comes to rock music – and even more so when you’re a Pumpkin. This is never truer than in the case of Aghori Mhori Mei, the Pumpkin’s 13th studio record, which, upon its sudden dropping in August of 2024, has been universally praised by critics and fans alike.

Corgan admits that the process and sound of this new record harkens back to the band’s early days. But don’t mistake this for a nostalgia trip.

“It’s something we argue about behind the scenes,” says Corgan of the band’s approach. “I think if I was being overly simple, or if something feels like, ‘I’ve been there, done that,’ I’d be less interested, even if I like the riff.”

From a guitar perspective, Corgan doesn’t feel he’s returning to the well as much as he’s left his old approach behind long enough that it feels fresh again.

“Our way of making music seems to be very different from other groups,” he says. “There’s a long map there. If you want to bother charting the wins and losses, overall it’s been a singular path, which is something I’m really proud of.”

Monstrous new tracks like Edin, Pentagrams, and Sighommi feature mega riffs, distorted sounds, and some typically searing Corgan solos. Fans should be – and are – happy, yet Corgan sees a trend.

“People get weirdly bent out of shape when I talk about my guitar playing,” he says. “It’s a strange thing that I find really curious. I don’t know what to think about it. The guitar in the last 20 years, in many ways, was highly marginalized in independent music as people went toward electronics and beats and production values. When you get to the issue of me as a player, I’m happy to point out that I’m not a particularly skilled player because I never took lessons.

“It’s interesting to note the number of people who were influenced by how I played and went on to do amazing things,” he adds. “It gets into this weird conversation, where the public has one perception, but that doesn’t always translate in alternative music – especially in a guitar magazine – like metal or even country. I think it’s really more a contrivance of the genre.”

Come what may, Corgan isn’t bothered by any of it.

“You kind of stand up for yourself and say, ‘Hey, how is it that this band is still here, kicking ass so many years later?’ If the way the intelligentsia rates us… does it really sort of hold up against, let’s call it, empirical data? So, by and large, I’m totally fine with whatever people perceive. The fact that young people seem very interested in what we’re doing currently, not just in the past, is really important to us.”

What was your intent as far as guitar sounds going into Aghori Mhori Mei?

“I’ve always tried to find something new every album. I think I wanted something that was a bit clearer and more old-school. That’s somewhat contradictory because our old-school sound wasn’t necessarily clear… but I think I kind of found it in what we did do.”

You’ve never been one to cater to fans in terms of harkening back to old sounds, so why do it now?

“It just seemed to go with the songwriting. It was exciting to play with. I guess in the late 80s and early 90s, we played with Marshall JCM800s, and there was a certain midrange clarity there that I liked. But at some point I went off of it, so it was cool to go back there. To hear the way we used to voice guitars – it wasn’t sentimental as much as it was just trying to find something that felt fresh.”

From a gear perspective, what was the key to finding that voicing?

“I always start by trying to use new equipment in a novel way so that what I’m hearing myself play seems unfamiliar to me. I sort of have to adjust my playing, and then there becomes this relationship between the sound and the way I play.”

What song kicked that process off for you?

“I don’t remember… We went to Nashville somewhere along the way and did about 60 instrumental demos. So it was just a lot of riffs; it was what people would call a ‘riff tape’, I guess. That would have been the start of it, but it also evolved out of the types of riffs that I was writing. Sorry, I’m trying not to be too nerdy because once I go in there, it just goes on forever!”

Be as nerdy as you like! How do you decide what riffs are not only worth pulling out but Smashing Pumpkins-appropriate?

“Well, there really isn’t any ‘Smashing Pumpkins appropriate’. That’s always been part of the public part of the argument because we were able to establish such an identifiable approach.

“It became this hat that we were always supposed to wear. I do feel good now that, over time, people have recognized that there are other kinds of languages that we’ve developed under the umbrella of the Smashing Pumpkins, you know?”

On a deeper level, it seems that no matter what you do, the expectations placed on you and your band are sort of unfair. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“First of all, I don’t mind being held to a high standard, you know? If that standard is somebody’s perception of a standard that we created, that’s even better.

“Certainly, we notice at times where it doesn’t seem that people are held to the same aesthetic and musical standards that we are, but that’s okay. I was – and am – a Rush fan. I held them to a very high standard, so maybe there’s a sort of backward compliment in it. But as far as the rest of it goes, I don’t have a really clear answer.”

It doesn’t hold you back or cloud your vision as a guitarist, then.

“It gets into… this is more of a science dissertation… but I really think it gets a lot into the transition era between pre-social media and post-social media branding of artists.

“There have been artists that have been very successful coming out of the 90s – and I don’t need to say who they are – and they’re more successful than we are by and large, almost without exception, but they’re known for doing one or two things really well. We, of course, moulded ourselves more like Zeppelin or The Beatles, where we wanted to be a band that could play any style we chose. But in the post-social media age, that works against you.”

How so?

“Because, on some level, you’re always pitting people against each other. It was sort of novel in the 90s because, again, very few people were doing it. But now there are more independent artists who do that, and they’re more celebrated as auteurs in a non-commercial sense. It’s the schism between a band that refuses to have one personality and a commercial band that sells a lot of tickets. It creates constant tension.”

Having said that, Aghori Mhori Mei seems to have satisfied a lot of fans.

“For a change! [laughs]”

The opening three tracks, Edin, Pentagrams, and Sighommi, feature killer riffs and great songwriting. Can you give insight into how you put that trio together?

“Thank you for saying that, really. My approach was to do it the way we used to do it. It’s a very effective way of arranging the guitars. Simply put, you try to arrange the guitar parts into a musical composition before the vocals are even involved. So if you just listen to the track, the track itself is very exciting from a guitar, rhythm, and riff perspective. Then you write the vocals and put all the overdubs on top of that.

“It’s very much the way we did the first three albums [Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness].”

Do you still use the vintage valve amps you recorded those albums with?

“I do have some vintage stuff, but lately I’ve been using these custom amps that Brian Carstens out of Chicago makes [Carstens Amplification]. There’s an amp called Grace that he and I did together, and he’s got a new amp called Empire, which is more of a metal amp; I use that one a lot.

“It’s like a mixture of a Laney and maybe a Hiwatt or something. Then he’s got another amp called Cathedral, which is like a Hiwatt/Fender blend and is highly tweakable.”

Are there specific guitar amp characteristics that you know are right for you?

“These days, my sound is more midrange than I would personally go after if I didn’t care about good mixes and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of presence – and I’m trying to get as forward as I can without gimmickry. Meaning raw power, guitar into amp into cabinet, mic’ing, and trying to get that signal as far forward as I can get it.”

Interesting. A lot of people assume your sound is just a Big Muff paired with a Fender Strat.

“That hasn’t been my setup since ’92! [laughs]”

It’s only been 33 years!

“Yeah, I get it, though. It’s such a cool sound. I loved that sound, and I still do. I still use that sound here and there for overdubs because I love the zing of it. But when I sat and watched Eddie Van Halen play 3 feet in front of me in the studio, I learned that it’s about the hands.

“Great guitar players can get the same sound out of any amp; it’s something about the way they play. That’s the beautiful thing, right? And I do play a certain way that’s very strange.”

What’s strange about it?

“I hear it when outside guitar players come into the band, whether it was Jeff Schroeder and now Kiki Wong, you know, they’re kind of like, ‘Oh, there’s this other thing you have to learn how to do…’ It’s not just the sound, like, they’ll say, ‘I always thought it was the sound, but it’s actually the way you play that sound that makes the sound that I’m hearing.’ It’s hard to explain… I have a very busy left hand, which is something I learned from my father.”

You’ve been using Reverend lately, but have you ever broken out your old Strats from the 90s while recording?

“I’ll bring out old gear. I still like using old gear to write. I certainly have gone into some albums where I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going to use this stuff because I just want to. I don’t care what anybody thinks.’ And then, halfway through the process, it just falls to modernity. Like, Joe Naylor with Reverend, his pickups, and these designs that he’s done for me, they’ve just brought the guitar forward. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Where would your modern sound be without that?

“It’s just what’s required today. You know… everybody loves a good soapbar pickup, and I love those old guitars, like Billie Joe [Armstrong] with Green Day plays old Les Paul Specials.

“But if you try to use those old pickups, everybody’s cell phone is coming through them [laughs]. There’s a point where innovation just wins. It’s not sentimental; it’s strictly progress. I had to get out of the way and say, ‘What’s more important? Supreme sound or my personal taste?’ And at the end of the day, sound always wins because it needs to.”

Is it true that your Reverend guitars are off-the-wall, stock guitars?

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give: I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever. That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.”

A lot of artists would spring for a custom guitar. Why don’t you?

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument. That’s really important to me as an independent musician, you know? I’ve certainly played super-expensive guitars – but it’s pretty cool playing a guitar that doesn’t need to be souped up.”

Why do you think Smashing Pumpkins still matter as a guitar band in 2025?

“I don’t know why we matter any more than why we don’t matter, if that makes any sense. When you’re in a band, you have your theories about why people like what you do, but you learn along the way that your version of your band is not the version that the public has of your band or how the public arrives at somewhat of a collective decision about who you are. It’s a very curious thing to me.”

Come what may, does that perception, and the expectations that come along with it, impact you at this stage?

“The simple way I would explain it is, by and large, most people perceive the Pumpkins as a loud alternative rock band, even though that’s not the way we perceive ourselves. That alone is kind of strange to me, right?

“Like, how is it that you’re in a band that you think is different from the band that the public thinks you’re in? That perception, at that level, is an interesting cloud that follows you around.

“It doesn’t mean it’s always raining all the time, but it follows you around whether you want it to or not. So when it gets to issues of relevance and influence, I’m not saying I’m of the mind to let other people make judgments on that; I’m just of the mind that I can accept that other people’s perceptions aren’t mine – and I don’t feel the need to fight for mine, maybe, like I used to.”

• Aghori Mhori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Kiki Wong had to be the best of 10,000 guitarists to earn her spot in the Smashing Pumpkins, after Billy Corgan opened to door to auditions from players all over the world in a bid to find the best candidate.

Eight people were hired full-time to sift through applications, which included one from our very own Editor-in-Chief, Michael Astley-Brown, and though the Jackson Rhoads-touting shredder aced her audition, mastering the alt rock icons' back catalog wasn’t without its challenges.

“It still shocks me that I was literally living in the desert and catapulting into a world tour with one of the most influential '90s rock ’n’ roll bands,” she says in the latest issue of Guitar World. “It has allowed me to improve as a musician and expand my musical understanding.”

She sings the praises of Billy Corgan’s “distinct playing style,” but admits that getting to grips with some of his nuances wasn’t easy.

“Learning his style was hard, but it helped me play with more feel and vibe,” she explains. “The first week of rehearsal was like a musical boot camp that taught me more than 20 years of playing by myself did.”

As to the song that gave her the most trouble, she cites Thru the Eyes of Ruby from 1995's career-high LP, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. But it isn't the song's complexity that left her scratching her head.

“It was one of the more difficult songs for me to learn since there were so many effects and different harmonizing parts. The tricky part about Smashing Pumpkins’ music is the arrangements,” Wong asserts.

“It’s orchestrated well and almost counterintuitively while still maintaining musical sensibility and mainstream appeal. It’s really quite genius, but also hard to learn – and it sounds insane, but sometimes the easiest songs still get me nervous.

“One note hanging can be more nerve-racking than a whole solo because if you miss that note, you screwed up the whole part,” Wong continued. “That’s why Today [from 1993’s Siamese Dream] sometimes gets me nervous [Laughs].”

Speaking to Guitar World previously, Wong said she had given up on the prospect of touring again, but was pushed into applying for the Pumpkins gig by her boyfriend. When the chance of an audition fell before her, it was something she wasn't going to take lightly.

“I practiced those songs in and out like my life depended on it for three weeks, she says. I watched every live video I could find on the internet of those songs from '96 to 2023, trying to analyze every move they made.

“My heart was going 1,000,000 mph [during the audition] because almost the whole OG line-up was there. It was like looking through a glimpse of my teenage years but in real life!”

Wong had earned her stripes playing with Taylor Swift, Usher, and Bret Michaels, alongside writing and performing original material with Nylon Pink, Hellfire Heart, and Vigil of War.

At the time of joining, she had amassed 674K Instagram followers thanks to her talent and character-laced content, and that follower count has seen a healthy bump since she was announced as the band’s latest recruit.

Aside from playing in the Pumpkins proper, Corgan has also called on his new guitarist for a new solo project, Billy Corgan and The Machines of God, formed to celebrate some Pumpkin classics out on the road.

Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy of Guitar World, which also includes new interviews with and contributions from Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Bonamassa, and Cory Wong.

Whereas some guitar greats may favor high-end custom shop electric guitars or sought-after vintage builds, Billy Corgan is more interested in playing accessible six-strings that the majority of guitar fans can afford – and that includes playing off-the-shelf Reverends for all his work.

In the new issue of Guitarist, The Smashing Pumpkins frontman discusses his gear philosophy and, after confirming that rumors of him playing his off-the-shelf signature guitars – as opposed to personally constructed custom builds – are true, goes on to explain why such an approach is so important to him.

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give,” he says when asked if he plays his stock Reverends. “I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever.

“That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.”

For Corgan, that means he routinely takes to the stage and studio armed with any one of his stock signatures, from the five-star rated $1,499 Z-One and Drop Z to the $1,299 regular and Terz models.

It’s a conscious choice, too, and although Corgan has experience with playing “super-expensive guitars”, he prefers playing more affordable alternatives because they can also be played by aspiring musicians.

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument,” he explains.

“That’s really important to me as an independent musician, you know? I’ve certainly played super-expensive guitars – but it’s pretty cool playing a guitar that doesn’t need to be souped up.”

But Corgan’s ethos of playing affordable guitars goes way beyond him using his $1k signatures. As is well-documented, he once used a $65 guitar to record Smashing Pumpkins classic, Mayonaise.

“The origin of the squealing high note was, I bought this guitar for $65, and it was such a cheap guitar that every time I’d stop playing it would make that whistle,” he once said (via Far Out).

“So when we wrote the song, we wrote in these parts that would stop so the whistle became part of the song because every time I would stop it would whistle.”

Corgan is, of course, not alone when it comes to playing more affordable instruments, and is just one of a number of players well-known for using cheap guitars in high-profile situations.

For the full interview with Billy Corgan, pick up the newest issue of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Billy Corgan has announced a new solo project – Billy Corgan and The Machines of God – that will celebrate a string of classic Smashing Pumpkins albums, with a U.S. tour kicking off in June.

The tour, named A Return to Zero, promises to be the ultimate career celebration, with a setlist drawing from Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (1995), the double album Machina/The Machines of God, and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, as well as the 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Me – featuring a mix of highlights and deep cuts. Accompanying Corgan will be the recently recruited Kiki Wong on guitar, drummer Jake Hayden, and bassist Jenna Fournier (also known as Kid Tigrrr).

On top of this announcement, the Pumpkins have revealed details for the remixed and remastered versions of their 2000 concept albums, Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music.

Corgan's Madame Zuzu’s tea shop in Highland Park, Illinois, will exclusively offer this expansive 80-song box set, which includes an impressive 48-track Machina and 32 bonus tracks of demos, outtakes, and live performances. Additionally, the band will be releasing a 16-song reissue of the original Machina/The Machines of God vinyl on August 22.

What’s more, this year will also see the 30th anniversary celebration of the era-defining Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness. In honor of the milestone, Corgan – alongside Chicago’s Lyric Opera – will present A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, a seven-show series taking place between November 21 and 30.

Speaking about this seminal album to Guitar World back in 2005, Corgan said, “I think Mellon Collie illustrates a complete passion for music and for the guitar.

“Almost every track was written on a $60 guitar while sitting on my couch in my living room, watching TV. The album is a love affair with music, the guitar, and the band. And it’s all documented in those tracks, which makes me so happy.”

The artist presale for the upcoming tour runs from April 1 through April 3, with general on-sale beginning on April 4 via Ticketmaster.

Corgan’s recent endeavors also include The Magnificent Others podcast, where he recently discussed his 1996 Guitar World interview with Eddie Van Halen.

After former Smashing Pumpkins member Nicole Fiorentino was announced as Garbage's new touring bassist, keen-eyed fans of the two bands were quick to notice that she's continuing the trend of Pumpkins- and Garbage-adjacent bassists hopping over from one team to the other. Ginger Pooley and Eric Avery both did it – and now, Fiorentino is following in their footsteps as she's currently out on tour with Garbage.

Fiorentino managed to land the gig after a period of downtime – however, in a new Bass Player interview, the bassist confesses that she far from expected this opportunity. As she succinctly puts it, it was "quite out of the blue".

“One Saturday morning early this year, I woke up to a DM on my Instagram from Shirley [Mason] asking if I'd be interested in the gig. We had never met, so I was pretty surprised.

“In addition, I had gotten an email from Butch Vig. I thought it was really cool that they both reached out to me personally and didn't go through management or anything. I got back to them really quickly and said, ‘Absolutely. I'd be honored.’”

Her previous experience with the Pumpkins was also key to her clinching the highly-coveted role.

“I had met Butch before,” she explains. “He had come to see the Smashing Pumpkins when I was in the band, so he had already seen me play. I was also recommended by some mutual friends, including Brian Aubert from Silversun Pickups, who Butch produces. So, I didn't actually have to audition, which was amazing.”

As for what gear she's currently using on tour, Fiorentino reveals that Reverend Decision basses are still her go-to – which she notably wielded in the Pumpkins (yet another throughline between the two bands). However, there's one slight difference when it comes to the rest of her gear.

“Garbage doesn't use amps live. Everything is run through their Helix system, and we wear in-ear monitors. It took a little getting used to not being able to feel the vibration of the amps and have the sound beyond the in-ears.”

Bass Player's full interview with Nicole Fiorentino will be published in the coming weeks.

Billy Corgan and Eddie Van Halen go way back. Heck, he even interviewed EVH back in 1996 for this very publication – a meeting of the minds that saw both guitarists, from different genres, eras, and schools of guitar, delve into the nuts and bolts of what makes Van Halen, well, Van Halen.

Fast-forward 29 years, and Corgan is recreating the infamous Guitar World interview with Van Halen's son, Wolfgang, on his own podcast, The Magnificant Others – and even offers an EVH anecdote or two of his own.

“I saw your dad back in the day [in] ’84, last tour with the original lineup,” he reminisces. “I sat there and studied it all like every other nerd. But when you're like this, as far away as you are [referring to the GW interview], and he's playing, you're like, ‘Holy Mother of God, how do you play like that?’”

However, upon his meeting with Eddie, it was soon Corgan's turn to flex his guitar chops... an experience which he recalls as nothing short of intimidating.

“He's talking and he's smoking and he's making jokes, and he goes, ‘You play, right?’ And I go, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Play.’ And he hands me that guitar or whatever.”

He continues, “[He goes] ‘Play the guitar. Let me see what you got.’ So I'm like, ‘Holy... What am I gonna play him?’ And I'm not gonna play Van Halen.

“So [then] I'm just like, I got nothing to lose, so I just start playing. And he goes, ‘You can play.’ I think he thought I was just some alternative creep! [laughs]”

Corgan discusses how after that encounter, he forever gained the respect of EVH. “After he saw that I could play the guitar, the conversation went totally different yesterday, and now we were talking about music and amps, and so he really opened up.”

EVH has also looked back on the Billy Corgan interview – recalling the moment Corgan tried his rig, and was shocked by the setup.

There seems to be a strong correlation between being a bassist for the Smashing Pumpkins and ultimately joining Garbage… or vice versa. Former Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt bassist Nicole Fiorentino is continuing this trend, after having recently been announced as Garbage’s new touring bassist.

The news was shared via an official statement on the band's social media: “Delighted to announce that former Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt Nicole Fiorentino will be taking over bass guitar tour duties with us this year.

“Hard to believe that rehearsals begin a week from Monday. We begin again. Every time a rebirth. Every time an adventure.” From her end, Fiorentino wrote, “Beyond thrilled to announce I’ll be joining Garbage on bass for their 2025 tour! See you out there!”

In May 2010, Fiorentino was announced as the new Smashing Pumpkins bassist – replacing Ginger Pooley. She contributed to Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, Vol. 3 and Oceania – part of Billy Corgan’s 34-track concept album-style project based on the Tarot, which he launched in 2009 following the departure of original Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin.

Before wielding a bass next to Corgan, Fiorentino was a member of the Chicago alt-rock band Veruca Salt as well as Spinnerette, Light FM, and Twilight Sleep. Post-Pumpkins, she also joined The Cold and Lovely, and formed the Gothic rock outfit Bizou, in addition to touring duties with various bands.

She follows in the footsteps of Ginger Pooley, who, last year also returned to action thanks to Garbage. In a 2024 Guitar World interview, Pooley shared the reasons and life changes that led to her leaving the Pumpkins.

“As soon as I had my daughter, my mom passed away. That was really difficult, and my daughter’s birth had been very difficult; and having a newborn was very difficult. When I realized how much work it is to have a baby, I was like, ‘I can’t even fit in my brain those 250 songs – plus the new ones every day.’ And I wanted to be the kind of mom that was present physically.

“I honestly believe that Billy would have been cool with having the family out on tour, which I thought I’d do. And that was gonna be fine, but it’s so taxing having to raise a newborn.”

She continued, “Nicole Fiorentino was starting to rehearse with them. That was surreal for me: ‘Okay, that was my gig, now that’s not my gig.’ I wouldn’t say there was like, regret – but it was kind of like when you’re seeing your ex get engaged or married! It’s like, ‘Okay, but I got married too, so it’s fine!’”

In 2006, Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery – who played with Garbage from 2005 to 2022 – also had a brief brush with the then-revived Smashing Pumpkins, though he ultimately did not join the lineup. Instead, Corgan ended up playing bass himself on what would later become the 2007 record Zeitgeist.

“In the case of the Pumpkins, at the time, I didn't know Billy Corgan, but I knew he wasn’t the easiest person to work with,” he revealed in a 2024 Guitar World interview. However, he did find Corgan to be “quite an inspiring guy to work with for the two or three weeks that I did.”

Fans can expect to see Fiorentino's live chops with Garbage on their upcoming tour, which kicks off with a South American run in March and April.

The announcement of Ozzy Osbourne's return – and last-ever live performance – on July 5 marks the historic reunion of the original Black Sabbath members for their first show in 20 years.

Dubbed ‘Back to the Beginning’, this homecoming – and, frankly, celebration of a great legacy – takes Sabbath back to where it all began: Birmingham.

However, instead of a traditional headliner-and-support-style show, this event will bring together some of rock’s most influential, generation-spanning talents – a supergroup, if you will, or a “very supergroup,” as Tony Iommi shared with Planet Rock – for what already looks like an event destined for the history books.

Most intriguing among the lineup is a Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Smashing Pumpkins supergroup, teased by Sharon Osbourne, who appears in the same interview.

“Tom Morello is going to be playing with Billy Corgan and you know the drummer from Tool [Danny Carey]. You wouldn't have thought that you would see those three guys together, but they're all from Chicago, so they're all home guys,” says Osbourne.

“Then you’ll see Slash and Duff [McKagan] and whoever they choose to play with,” she elaborates in an interview with NME. “David Draiman [Disturbed] is going to come up and sing, Jonathan [Davis] from KoRn is going to be here and he could be playing with [Red Hot Chili Peppers’] Chad Smith or whoever! Alice In Chains are coming and they’re playing as the band.”

As Osbourne explains, assembling all these big names was no easy feat – but their willingness to commit is a testament to Ozzy’s legacy and, by extension, Black Sabbath’s.

“People are coming in from all over the world – they're all gigging because it's the summer, so everybody's out doing festivals, and somehow, it worked. Bands like Anthrax, we asked them to be a part of it, and they said, ‘Oh, don't even bother to send us a ticket. We're going to be there no matter what.’”

After all, as Osbourne puts it, “This is a celebration – of the genre and the pioneers who started it and passed it on to all these bands. Usually, this thing is done when you’re dead – so it’s nice that these guys can be alive to be appreciated!”

Tickets for the mega-event go on sale on February 14, with proceeds from the show set to be shared equally between Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorn Children’s Hospice.

Visit Live Nation for tickets.

After beating over 10,000 online applicants to the highly coveted role of standing side by side with Billy Corgan in the Smashing Pumpkins, Kiki Wong has had what can only be described as a career-making year. However, she emphasizes that she’s no overnight success, as she has been hustling and trying to make a dent in the cutthroat industry since 2010.

“I’ve failed more times than I’ve succeeded,” she shares frankly with Guitar Player. “I’ve almost become numb to failure. But there’s an upside to it: I’ve learned to look at the benefits of failure.

“I know that sounds strange, but I started to realize that I gained some type of strength or experience from each opportunity I’ve had – even the ones that didn’t pan out.”

She also asserts she doesn't know anyone who has experienced “success after success” without any “stumbles”.

“Nobody’s that lucky. People might look and think that I’m just this TikTok personality. They don’t know that I’ve been playing since 2010 and have done these crazy bootleg tours with three people sleeping in the back of a [truck].

“I’ve played gigs to nobody. There was one show I played where half the audience left. They just took off, yelling, ‘You suck!’ Believe me, I’ve been beat down a lot."

She continues, “But that’s the thing: A lot of people quit when they experience those failures. They’re like, ‘I’m just gonna put the guitar down and do something else.’ I get it – this stuff can be tough. But I think there’s a turning point where failure can eventually lead to success, and that’s when the magic happens.”

Wong had previously opened up about her struggles in the industry in an in-depth interview with Guitar World, saying that she had been in touring bands since she was 20 – and that the failures led to “a love/hate relationship with music – and even a point in my life where I didn't touch my guitars for three years and got a corporate job.

“I fought tooth and nail and stuck to my guns. I always practiced more than one would think was worth it – because I feel like it takes longer for me than others.”

In recent Kiki Wong news, the new Smashing Pumpkins guitarist talked about how she has improved and diversified her playing since joining the esteemed band.

2024 Year in Review: After 16 years with the band, Jeff Schroeder announced his departure from the Smashing Pumpkins late last year, and the iconic alt-rockers soon announced they’d be holding a worldwide open-call audition for a live replacement.

More than 10,000 applicants later, it was decided that Kiki Wong was the right person for the job.

“I never thought little ol’ 15-year-old me playing metal guitar in the bedroom would amount to this moment,” she said not long after the announcement, adding “it goes to show that hard work and perseverance truly pays off if you’re willing to push through the tough stuff.”

The guitarist played her first show alongside co-guitarists Billy Corgan and James Iha in Birmingham, England, in June, with audiences praising how naturally she fit into the legendary Chicago group’s dreamy wall of fuzz.

Billy Corgan has issued a cheeky call-out to James Hetfield while highlighting apparent similarities between a Smashing Pumpkins deep cut and a Metallica song that came out two years later.

On a new episode of the Everblack Podcast, Corgan speaks highly of Metallica’s resident electric guitar riffsmith, and discusses the suspicious sonic resemblance between Tales Of A Scorched Earth from 1995’s Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, and ’Tallica’s Fuel, which arrived on Reload two years later.

“Let me caveat this by saying that I love James Hetfield as a person, [and] I love Metallica,” Corgan stresses. “I saw them in 1984 and all that great stuff. James is probably the greatest riff writer outside of maybe Tony Iommi, James has written some of the greatest, most amazing riffs, and he’s still writing them.

“But,” he goes on, “if you listen to Tales Of A Scorched Earth and you listen to that Metallica song [Fuel], ‘Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.’ See – a little lightbulb went off in your brain… Now, which song came first?”

He has a point. The main riffs of the two songs have plenty in common, but both were timely compositions, replicating the gritty hard rock/metal sound that most bands of the mid-late ’90s were pedaling.

As such, Corgan clearly isn’t accusing Hetfield of stealing from him – unlike how Hammett openly admitted to stealing the Batman riff for 72 Seasons.

“I don’t think James would rip anything off from me,” Corgan expands. “But the first time I heard that song, I was, like, ‘That’s awfully close.’ But I love me some James. And I’d love somebody trying to get a troll headline out of that, some clickbait out of that.” We hear you, Billy.

Corgan adds that similarities between different riffs will always inevitably occur because of the guitar’s basic limitations. Echoing a lesson his father once taught him, he says: “My father used to say, ‘Look, there’s only 12 notes.’ So, that’s the great thing. We all rip each other off, and if it works, great.

“I’ve got no problem with that,” he concludes. “I mean, I’ve certainly ripped Metallica off plenty.”

Corgan has been in fine headline-grabbing form lately. Not too long ago, he bemoaned the “silly lists” compiling the greatest guitar players, saying he's always ranked lower than those “I could play circles around.”

Kiki Wong has opened up on her journey with Smashing Pumpkins so far, revealing that she's improved as an electric guitar player since joining the legendary rock outfit.

When Wong sat down with Guitar World to chat about joining Billy Corgan and co earlier this year, she said it had been a dream come true. Scoring the gig was certainly no mean feat: the band launched a global open audition to help track down their new guitarist, which saw 10,000 guitarists apply, including GW’s Online Editor-in-Chief.

“I never thought little ol’ 15-year-old me playing metal guitar in my bedroom would amount to this moment,” she had said in April.

With bags of talent, over 700k Instagram followers, and a CV that includes performances with Taylor Swift, Usher, and Bret Michaels, Kiki Wong’s suitability for the role is undeniable.

Eight months on from acing her audition, she's now spoken to Revv Amps about how the role has impacted her as a player.

“This band has actually allowed me to diversify my playing 10-fold and more,” she admits. “In the last however many years I've been playing, I would consider myself a one-trick pony prior to joining this band. I just love metal. I love chugs. I love unnecessary shreds, noise, and high-gain shenanigans. I barely played any acoustic guitar.”

Wong, though, has embraced the necessary change of tact, saying: “This band has opened my eyes to a lot of new types of sounds and effects. I didn't use a lot of effects in my own personal musicianship.

“Gosh, having this full pedalboard was like going back to school and learning how to use sounds and be more dynamic rather than focusing on technical ability.”

The transition to becoming part of a band that headlines stadiums has been massive for Wong. Away from the intensity of the performance upgrade, it’s also vastly expanded her gear horizons.

“Coming into this world and being exposed to so much more depth, it's a gift,” she reveals. “I feel like I've just been pigeonholed, it's just [been] me trying to figure out things by myself, and now I've got five people who are all in the music and have different backgrounds and interests.

“It's exposed me to different tones and what makes guitars, amps, and effects good.”

But it isn’t a one-way street of benefits. Wong has brought a metal edge to the band since her debut, thanks in part to her love of shred-friendly Jackson Rhoads guitars.

Wong says she had “given up hope on any future tours” before the Pumpkins opened their doors to the guitar world at the start of the year.

She says she “threw together a resume and sent it in, thinking it probably would get lost”, but it didn't. Her meticulous preparation, which included playing the songs “like my life depended on it”, clearly left an impression.

Less than 24 hours later, she received the life-changing call from the band and hasn't looked back since.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, everything Billy Corgan does or says has been making headlines lately. It comes with the territory of being in a mega band. And while that might sound somewhat frustrating, Corgan doesn’t think so.

“I’m at a point now where I don’t even care,” he tells Guitar World. “I don’t care what people think. I don’t care if they think I’m great; my focus is, I want people to enjoy the band. I want people to listen to our music and see us play.”

People have been coming to see the Pumpkins play. They’ve got a new shredder in guitarist Kiki Wong, who Corgan says has been “putting in the work,” and a new record in Aghori Mhori Mei, which harkens back to the Pumpkins’ iconic ’90s sound. But the metal-leaning (and also headline-making) Wong and a decidedly heavy record hasn’t stopped detractors.

“Our music has always gone from metal to alternative,” Corgan says. “It gave us an advantage, but it caused problems because metal was ‘stupid.’ If you played a solo, it had to be ironic. We didn’t give a shit about any of that; we just wanted to womp you over the head.”

Corgan still aims to womp, and he hopes the fans are up for it. But Aghori Mhori Mei isn’t a nostalgia trip. “Maybe it won’t sound like the music you wrote when you were 25,” Corgan says. “But there’s a lot of people who identify with the message because they see part of themselves in it.”

At 57, Corgan is forever underrated and perpetually used as clickbait. But he’s got a cache of iconic records, and despite the punches thrown, he’s still standing.

“I was the big bad Dracula who wouldn’t let his friends play in the sandbox,” Corgan says. “We were under tremendous pressure. We had a lot of success. Obviously, good or bad, our decisions that we’ve made have worked because we’re still talking about that music, right?”

Right. While the Pumpkins’ last few electronic-leaning records didn’t capture imaginations quite like 1991’s Gish or 1993’s Siamese Dream, neither did 1998’s Adore. Corgan has seen this movie before – and he’s the leading man. But that doesn’t mean he’s okay with his pursuits being taken for granted.

“We should not be so blithe as to assume people who have made great musical contributions – just because they’re at a certain point in their life – are no longer capable,” he says.

“Artists are sensitive people. If they feel a vibe that people aren’t interested in, they think, ‘Why bother?’ I’ve just shut all that noise out. Trust me, I had people tell me, ‘We don’t care about your new music. We don’t care what you do. We’re just not interested. Please play Siamese Dream again.’

“That seems to have finally died away. It’s great; we want to make music for another 20 years if we can. You can judge us however you want; we’re an open book. But you’d be hard-pressed to look at us on stage right now and say, ‘That’s not a real band.’”

How did you avoid the nostalgia trap while putting together Aghori Mhori Mei?

“That’s a fantastic question. I’m not sure I can do it justice, but I’ll give it a quick try…”

I have a feeling you can.

“Thank you for that little bit of praise. When Jimmy [Chamberlin] and I had Zwan, our manager was Elliot Roberts, who famously managed Neil Young. Elliot had very strong opinions on nostalgia. He told us how nostalgia was the trap you could never escape from.

“He instilled in us that our future, if we had any future as musicians, would be navigating nostalgia. We stuck to our guns that it would work out, which was true. But there is another layer, if you want it…"

Hit me with it.

“Here’s the weird thing that you can never anticipate when you’re in your 20s making, let’s say, your seminal work that people will always identify you with. That’s when they get to know you, right? Whether it’s Drown in 1992, Cherub Rock in ’93, Bullet with Butterfly Wings in ’95 or Everlasting Gaze in 2000, you never imagine that someday, you’ll be answering to the shadow you created in your youth.”

You can never live up to that anyway because memory makes things seem grandiose.

“You’ll be standing on stage somewhere, or putting out a record years later, and the person in front of you, or sitting at home listening, has built an impression of you that’s not accurate. It’s accurate in their mind, and they expect you to live up to the accuracy of their impression.

“If I can be overly simplistic, the general impression of the fan is that this band is a guitar band that makes loud, alternative rock. Hence the, ‘Hey, are you the ‘rat in a cage’ [from Bullet with Butterfly Wings] guy?’”

Some would answer to that, but you don’t.

“It doesn’t matter. They have this impression in their mind of who you are. So, in a different generation, you’re expected to live up to the pressure of their impression. Not the reality – but the impression.

“That impression extends down from the media to the fans to radio stations. It doesn’t take a genius to put a finger up in the wind and understand how the wind blows. And trust me – people will sit you down in boardrooms and say it nicely. Sometimes they won’t say it nicely.”

People assume how you might handle that. But how do you handle that?

“They tell you, ‘It’s in your best interest to make the music that is expected of you, not the music you feel.’ You can say, ’It’s never worked for anybody. Show me a band it’s truly worked for.’ I used to say that, and I was right. But in the last 10 years, you can see bands from Gen X that never changed their script, and it does work. But we did [go the other way] in the ’90s, and you kind of can’t go back so readily.”

Why have you dialed back to your ’90s sound with Aghori Mhori Mei?

“That’s why it’s so interesting about Aghori Mhori Mei; we decided – on our terms, in our own time, with a very organic feeling – that it was time to go back to this way of playing guitar and drums, and that we finally did what people wanted of us.

“You can see we’re being rewarded for it, which is great. But it wasn’t in our bones to become a Xerox of who we used to be, which gets down to questions of integrity, self-motivation and why we’re even in this band.”

People make assumptions; they’ll say, “Billy Corgan. He plugs a Strat with Lace Sensor pickups into a Big Muff, and off he goes.” But there must be more; otherwise, why carry on?

“It gets down to a personal thing: my father passed away two-and-a-half years ago; my father was my true idol. He was a really good guitar player; I learned a lot from watching him play. He explained a lot about how he saw music, and I absorbed a lot of that into my philosophical thinking.

“When my father passed away, this curious thing that happened – which anybody who has suffered loss can understand – where part of mourning is you feel things that you can only feel once you lose somebody. The thing that struck me – and I couldn’t have expected it in a million years – was I only picked up guitar in the first place to impress my father.”

So your initial reasons didn’t stem from traditional watershed musical moments.

“I didn’t have a true desire to play guitar in the way that some great guitar players like Joe Bonamassa did. When I look at him or Billy Gibbons, I see pure guitar players; I’m not really a pure guitar player.”

Does that impact the way you view the instrument?

“I’ve had, at different times, a love/hate relationship with the guitar. I didn’t realize until after my father passed away that my father was the reason I wanted to play the guitar. Once he was gone, I thought, ‘Well, gee, do I still even want to play the guitar?’ Because he’s not here anymore to impress, it was a very subliminal recognition.

“It was nothing I’d ever considered. Once I let that run through me, I came out the other side, thinking, ‘Yeah, I still want to play the guitar. This is a great way to continue to honor my father. He gave me the gift of music and playing guitar.’ I got super-motivated to play; it was a strange thing I could never have anticipated, but that’s how I ended up here.”

I understand what you mean when you say you’re not a “pure guitar player,” but you’ve also written riffs and solos that defined a generation.

“Let’s go at it from a couple of different points of view. Most people don’t even recognize my contributions as a guitar player. They don’t even assume I’m the one playing a lot of the guitar.”

Which is crazy to think.

“Well, yes. And then, you have these silly lists that come out about the greatest guitar players; I usually don’t even make those lists. Or they’ll put me behind somebody who I could play circles around. I don’t mean to denigrate the person in front of me or the people in front of me, but come on, you know? I’m enough of a guitar player to know who’s a great guitar player.”

Dig into that for me.

“I’ve played on stage with George Lynch and Uli Jon Roth, two of the greatest guitar players in history. I sat for hours across from Eddie Van Halen at 5150 with my jaw open, watching Eddie play, OK? My father was a great guitar player. I’ve got no problem acknowledging some of the greatest guitar players ever. I would never even put myself in their company.”

EVH comparisons are futile, but there’s no denying you’re underrated.

“Once you go beyond, let’s call it ‘the Zakk Wyldes and Dimebag Darrells and the truly great Randy Rhoadses,’ there’s a lot of people who pretend to play guitar. I certainly have no problem believing I’m better than a lot of them. Originally, I was a guitar player. That’s all I wanted to be. I was sitting at home at 17 trying to play speed runs. I wanted to be Yngwie Malmsteen, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen.”

What changed that?

“I only became a singer because the guy in my first band told me, ‘I’m not singing your songs. If you want to write songs, you’ll have to sing.’ My father rolled his eyes at my singing because my voice was strange. As you can imagine, in those early days, people would plug their ears at my voice, saying, ‘Your voice is way too weird.’ I have a letter from a major record company in my attic saying, ‘This band will never sell records because this guy’s voice is too weird.’”

Tell that to Geddy Lee.

“I wish I could sing as good as Geddy or as high. [Laughs] But I went through this weird – and again, it goes back to my father – almost guilt stage in my development as a musician. As I started to understand that my true gift was in composition, production, lyrics and melody, I almost felt guilty because the guitar took a backseat.”

Again, I go back to the fact that your records are loaded with huge riffs, memorable solos and incredible tones.

“Over time, it’s balanced into what it is. I can be a guitar player when I need to. I can play a lead when I need to. But I’m not somebody who gets up every day and plays the guitar. I’m more likely to play the piano – and I’m totally cool with that. I wish I was a better guitar player than I am. I wish I’d put more time in than I did. But that’s not the way it worked out.”

Is that why people relegate you? Perceived lack of time put in?

“If I’m being frank about it – and maybe this isn’t the best way to do it – but if I’m being frank, people have a hard time understanding that as it pertains to the Smashing Pumpkins, I’m writing the songs, lyrics, melodies, arrangements and playing most of the complicated guitar. And that I’m capable of doing a solo on top of that. I think that’s hard for people to process.”

Why is that?

“I’m saying, ‘Yep, I am,’ and they don’t want to believe one person can do all those things. And a decision we made as a band early in our history, I’m talking before Gish, was not to tell people how we worked. I’ve told the story a few times where it was [producer] Butch Vig who said, ‘Why doesn’t this sound like the demos?’ I said, ‘I’m the one playing on the demos.’

“He said, ‘You’re playing bass, all the guitars and the lead?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’m singing, too.’ Butch said, ‘I want that band,’ and I said, ‘Well, you’re gonna have to tell the other people in the band because they’re not gonna be happy.’ Butch sat the band down and said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be.’ They said, ‘Okay.’”

So people relegate you because they incorrectly feel you’ve relegated your bandmates?

“We knew that was going to be a problem. Eventually, when the story got out, it turned into this other thing: I was the evil guy who wasn’t letting my band play on the records. But somehow, in the process of all that, people understood I was doing most of the work on the records, but they didn’t want to give me credit. Somehow, that persists.”

Sure, you play most of the guitars on the records, but live, you and James Iha create unmistakable sounds. It’s inclusive in that way.

“Let me say something about my guitar mate, James. He and I started the band in my father’s bedroom that he used to sell drugs out of, okay? I can still see us in that bedroom in 1988. James had his Johnny Marr haircut and Fender Telecaster, and somehow, we developed this swirly sound that people call the ‘Pumpkins sound.’ When you hear us play live, you can acutely hear how the way James and I play guitars together has to do with the band’s success.”

Does the public’s perception of the Pumpkins bother you?

“It’s weird because I’m proud of the work that I’ve done. At the same time, you’ll never see me run around saying, ‘The other people didn’t contribute or have anything to do with the success,’ because they had everything to do with it. It’s weird; it is what it is.”

Speaking of the “Pumpkins sound,” as you assembled Aghori Mhori Mei, what were the keys to harnessing that tone?

“When I worked with Tony Iommi in around 1998, I had this epiphany. I was in the studio, and I’m five feet away watching Tony, and I’m looking at his gear, and he sounded like Tony Iommi no matter what amp you’ve got him on. For guitar players, you always go back to the attack. If you look at Eddie Van Halen or Uli Jon Roth’s attack, it’s really in the picking.”

Is gear important?

“The gear is important. But a lot of guitar players place too much stress on the gear and not enough on the pick attack. I think it’s just the way I play. I’ve been using these boutique Carsten amps in the studio, not exclusively, but predominantly. Brian Carstens, an amp builder out of Chicago, built me an amp called the Grace. We’ve since built another, the Empire, which is a metal-based amp.”

You’re still using real tube amps?

“We’re still moving air. Some of the guitar sounds you hear on the new record are us recording on one amp and then running it through the other amp and combining the two signals. I’d say 90 percent of this was straight into the amps, pure power.”

Do you still break out any of your old Strats?

“I’m using my signature Reverend models, the Z-One and the Drop Z. Those aren’t modded guitars; those are off-the-wall, stock guitars. I had a relationship with Joe Naylor, who used to own Reverend and now does development for them. They approached me about doing a signature guitar in 2016, and that guitar [the BC-1] won awards at NAMM.

“Later, they approached me and said, ‘We don’t want to change that guitar; it continues to sell. It does well for us. Can we do a different guitar? Is there anything you want?’ I said, ‘I’d like a guitar that captures my ’90s sound.’

“Joe and I worked on getting what I call the ‘Sabbath note,’ which is a lower octave when you play low riffs, but it’s in the pickup sound. It’s not something you get out of the amp. That guitar [Drop Z], which still has my Railhammer pickups, has been successful; that thing is just vicious, man.”

And you’ve got an album to be proud of. That must be satisfying.

“We’re very encouraged that people are supporting our new music. It’s been a hard case to make – in the music business for the last 10 years – that the band has a future as a recording act. Most of the energy has been focused on the live show because we can go out and sell tickets because of our catalog.”

But you’ve also made headlines letting people know you’re not relying on that catalog live.

“If I had one meeting, I’ve had one hundred where I had to sit in an office and tell people, ‘Look, if I can’t make new music, and I’m not engaged in new music, you’re never going to get me to play these old songs.’ Some people, when they hear that, lose their minds. I got a bunch of clickbait headlines because I dared to say, ‘If I don’t want to play an old song, I just don’t play it.’”

Can you shed light on what you meant?

“I have too much respect for the audience to fake my way through. That turned into, ‘He doesn’t want to play his old songs.’ That’s really stupid because I wrote them. I don’t want to play the songs I wrote. No. I don’t want to play songs I don’t emotionally connect with. I don’t want to turn into that type of artist in front of an audience.”

You want to play the old songs; it just needs to be organic.

“It’s like the reverse [of the headlines]. If you see me playing an old song, I want to play it and share my experience with the audience. That’s the most honorable thing I can think of. I wrote it, and here we are, years later, sharing it. It’s an amazing feeling. I mean… are you kidding me? But we live in this stupid clickbait world.”

So, what’s your outlook?

“If I can’t make new music that people believe in, I’m announcing to the world that I’m a shadow of my former self. I’m not psychologically strong enough to stand up and think, ‘Yeah, I used to be better.’ I don’t get that. Why are you still in the game if you don’t believe in who you are today? Do something else. I still believe in the band and the power of music.”

“When I see fans interacting with our current music, it means we’ve crossed the generational divide. I’m not overstating it – we’ve seen many bands go way past what people assumed was their due date. The next step for the music business to come into the 21st century is to accept that any artist will always be able to contribute culturally with new music.”

• Aghori Mhori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.

Although his chops are often under-appreciated by music fans (something he’s all too aware of) Billy Corgan is a highly robust electric guitar player. As such, he knows a thing or two about technique – and, as evidenced by Smashing Pumpkins, what it takes to develop a truly unique sound.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Corgan takes a deep dive into his wholly individual Smashing Pumpkins style, and names the aspect of guitar playing that he believes holds the greatest sway over shaping a recognizable and personal tone.

He didn’t stumble upon this revelation by accident, though: he came to his conclusion after witnessing a heavy metal hero at work.

“When I worked with Tony Iommi in around 1998, I had this epiphany,” Corgan remembers. “I was in the studio, and I’m five feet away watching Tony, and I’m looking at his gear, and he sounded like Tony Iommi no matter what amp you’ve got him on.

“For guitar players, you always go back to the attack. If you look at Eddie Van Halen or Uli Jon Roth’s attack, it’s really in the picking.”

When asked to expand on whether the gear behind an individual’s tone is important, Corgan confesses it does – but its overall impact is small in comparison to a more important factor: your pick attack. In other words, tone is in the hands.

“The gear is important,” he responds. “But a lot of guitar players place too much stress on the gear and not enough on the pick attack. I think it’s just the way I play.

“I’ve been using these boutique Carsten amps in the studio, not exclusively, but predominantly. Brian Carstens, an amp builder out of Chicago, built me an amp called the Grace. We’ve since built another, the Empire, which is a metal-based amp.”

Over the years, Corgan has (thanks to his attack) been able to develop the ‘Pumpkins sound’. Indeed, he’s almost single-handedly shaped the band’s style – and yet, his guitar playing is still underrated.

“Most people don’t even recognize my contributions as a guitar player,” Corgan argues elsewhere in his Guitar World interview. “They don’t even assume I’m the one playing a lot of the guitar.

“You have these silly lists that come out about the greatest guitar players; I usually don’t even make those lists. Or they’ll put me behind somebody who I could play circles around.”

“I honestly haven't used the [Electro-Harmonix] Big Muff [fuzz pedal] since 1993. For anybody interested, the Big Muff takes square waves and makes the guitar almost sound like a synth. If you want to get that sound without a fuzz, use equipment that gets that square-wave sound, but with more clarity.

“But on 95 percent of what you hear on the [Smashing Pumpkins'} new album [Aghori Mhori Mei], there are no pedals. I only get the pedals out if I need a special effect for a part or if I’m going to play a lead. Then I open the vault and pull stuff out. There are so many manufacturers now. If you want a Klon [overdrive], there’s 800 Klon pedals, you know?

“I don’t use that many pedals anymore, but I use them live to recapture some of the stuff on the records. For octave stuff, I’m using the Behringer Octave Divider, which is based on the old Mu-Tron Octave Divider. I have one of the originals; I stole it from my father, and they’re worth like $1,000 now. [Laughs]

“I’m using a tape flanger, the Catalinbread Zero Point. It does that temporary zero flange, which is unique because you have to step on it to engage the flange. When you step off it, the flange reverses. And I just put an MXR Phase 90 back in my rig; of course, people from Siamese Dream times would recognize the sort of semi-flangy sound we would use on the leads for the Cherub Rock solo.”

“Next is my favorite lead pedal, the Warmdrive by Warm Audio. If you’re [in] a high-gain situation, not every pedal works because it fights against the square waves. You need a certain type of pedal that works with the fuzz of the amp, and the signature Carstens Amplification [Grace] amps I use are super high-gain.

“Because I’m so crazy and hate running my sound through my pedals if I’m playing rhythm, I use this D.Loop pedal by Lehle. It’s the lowest signal degradation out of all the bypass pedals I’ve tried. It’s a bit of a hassle because I have two loops, so I need to decide what my pedal settings are before the song starts.”

“Then, when I go to play whatever part needs the pedal on, I just pop the loop in. My signal will run through the lead sound, and I pop it back out. But for most of the show, when I’m playing rhythm, it’s as close to going straight into the amp as I can get.

“EarthQuaker Devices just put out a pedal called Time Shadows [experimental delay]. I don’t know what the hell it does, but it makes unique sounds that I’ve never heard out of a pedal.

“I also use a Strymon Brigadier [delay], and there’s a guy I’ve been working with out of Greece, the maker of Minotaur Sonic Terrors. He’s probably my favorite pedal maker, and he gave me a pedal – I don’t know if it’s commercially available – but it’s like an old-school fuzz. It’s called the Horned Sage.”

If I had to choose only one pedal for a full show...

“Something just to solo with. Right now, I’d pick that Warm Audio Warmdrive.
I just love it; it’s fantastic.”

• Aghori Mhori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.

He may be most widely known as the creative songwriting force behind Smashing Pumpkins, but Billy Corgan is also a top-tier electric guitar player – a fact that often flies under the radar.

Indeed, Corgan’s guitar chops are routinely under-appreciated by the wider music world, and that’s an injustice that Corgan himself is well aware of.

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman discusses such observations in a new interview with Guitar World, and reflects on how even some of his band’s listeners don’t recognize his “contributions as a guitar player”.

It’s something he’s had to deal with throughout his career, as he's often overlooked in favor of some more conventionally “flashy” players. But it’s not something that sits lightly with him.

“Most people don’t even recognize my contributions as a guitar player,” Corgan argues. “They don’t even assume I’m the one playing a lot of the guitar.

“You have these silly lists that come out about the greatest guitar players; I usually don’t even make those lists. Or they’ll put me behind somebody who I could play circles around. I don’t mean to denigrate the person in front of me or the people in front of me, but come on, you know? I’m enough of a guitar player to know who’s a great guitar player.”

When it is further put to Corgan that his guitar skills are indeed underrated, the Reverend artist adds, “Once you go beyond, let’s call it ‘the Zakk Wyldes and Dimebag Darrells and the truly great Randy Rhoadses,’ there’s a lot of people who pretend to play guitar.

“I certainly have no problem believing I’m better than a lot of them.”

As Corgan explicitly addresses, “Greatest Guitarist” articles are always divisive, none more so than the one Rolling Stone compiled at the back end of last year. And, in line with what Corgan tells Guitar World, his name can’t be found on that particular list.

Though he is included in Guitar World’s own 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list under the ‘Best alternative and indie guitarists’ section, Corgan is clearly unhappy with the lack of representation he’s been given elsewhere in other high-profile rundowns.

As for why he thinks people relegate or downplay his guitar skills, Corgan suggests it has something to do with the fact he’s responsible for every musical aspect of Smashing Pumpkins – and people struggle to comprehend the fact that he can do it all.

“If I’m being frank about it – and maybe this isn’t the best way to do it – but if I’m being frank, people have a hard time understanding that as it pertains to the Smashing Pumpkins, I’m writing the songs, lyrics, melodies, arrangements and playing most of the complicated guitar,” he theorizes.

“And that I’m capable of doing a solo on top of that. I think that’s hard for people to process.”

Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery has never been one to shy away from musical projects. During his long absence from the band he helped co-found, he joined Garbage and Alanis Morissette's backing band, and even auditioned for Metallica.

However, Avery points to his brief brush with the Smashing Pumpkins, specifically Billy Corgan, as a core experience that made him a better musician.

“I didn't know Billy Corgan, but I knew that he wasn't the easiest person to work with. And so, because of my tendency to have trouble not speaking truth to power, if power needs speaking to, I just thought, ‘This isn't going to last, but it'll be interesting. It'll be an interesting week or two.’ And it really was,” says Avery in an upcoming Bass Player interview.

As it turns out, he found “Corgan to be quite an inspiring guy to work with for the two or three weeks that I did.”

“With Corgan, one of the things that he made me see in myself is that all the gadgets, and all the ability to record digitally, and change things up with plugins had really made us lazy,” he explains. “And that creatively, as players, those things became standards for writing parts that you could always fix later with Pro Tools.

“I might have known that before, but working with Corgan, he would go over things over and over and over, and he and Jimmy Chamberlin would be in pre-production for the record they were writing [2007’s Zeitgeist] and say, ‘Okay, let's try it again, but this time with a cymbal crash here.’ By doing that, they worked really hard, and it certainly was about finding the right thing and not stopping until you got it.”

Avery admits that working with Corgan was crucial in helping him become a better and more hard-working player. “It cast a light on how lazy I had been in some of my decision-making. And how a lot of the people I'd worked with were sort of lazy in the same way of being able to stop and fix it up later instead of finding the right part. I found that inspiring.”

Just last month, the original Jane's Addiction lineup of Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins released their first song together, Imminent Redemption, in 34 years. The band is currently in the midst of their North American reunion tour.

Bass Player's full interview with Eric Avery will be published later this month.

Of the all contemporary brand/artist partnerships that are currently in operation, the collaboration between Smashing Pumpkins' mastermind Billy Corgan and Reverend Guitars is by far one of the most notable – and prolific.

Having already joined forces for a range of hugely popular signature guitars, the two have teamed up once again for the Reverend Billy Corgan Signature Drop-Z – a model that both accommodates Corgan’s penchant for crushing drop-tuned riffs, and present fans an opportunity to play a model that has been meticulously engineered for drop tunings.

Stylistically, it takes after Corgan’s Z-One signature model, flashing an alluring double-cutaway design that is composed from alder, and specifically chambered to further enhance the guitar’s tone and resonance. There is also a premium roasted maple neck and fretboard, and locking tuners.

However, there are some key features that set the Drop-Z apart from its predecessors. Namely, this has been specifically designed for drop tunings, with a long-scale neck and a spot-on string tension that results in a tone that is deep and full, as well as punchy and clear.

With a 26.25” scale length and 24 frets, the guitar is factory-tuned to D Standard, but as Guitar World’s Paul Riario’s demo demonstrates, it can handle even lower than that, thanks to its optimized setup.

Tones come from newly voiced Railhammer Billy Corgan Z-One pickups, which offer heightened output and a full range of velvety trebles and throaty lows. Reverend’s Bass Contour circuit is also on hand to help players fine-tune the tone.

“Even if you don’t play Smashing Pumpkins, this guitar is fantastic for drop tunings,” Riario says of the Drop-Z’s broader appeal. “The stability of this guitar is bar none. It just invites a great playing feel.”

“Because of the long neck combined with the scale length, you really get that perfect playability where you’re allowed to play a chord in tune, but also the ability to bend and solo on this, just as you would on a normal guitar. It feels just the same, except in this case we’re in a drop tuning.”

“If you’ve never had a guitar that’s in a drop tuning, this particular signature model from Reverend is just fantastic. It combines the proper string tension with the long-scale neck that’s as comfortable to play as any of your standard scale length guitars.

“You don't have to be a fan of the Smashing Pumpkins to really enjoy this brand new signature guitar from Reverend.”

The Drop-Z is available now for $1,499.

Visit Reverend to find out more.