so someone posted a link to a 14-part recollection of the "original" Smashing Pumpkins final show which was about 10 years ago. crazy, right? they are still one of my favorite bands and are highly influential as to what i do musically and business-wise. i really enjoyed reading it so i put it all together in one place for you to enjoy if you'd like:

first thing that comes to mind is that we only had about 6 days to prepare the about 14 or so extra songs that we added to try to make the show both historic and memorable. normally this much work in such a short time would have been met with resistance, but everyone was in good spirits to have the 11 months of touring finally over.
my original plan was to book the metro out for the whole month of January and make one last album, writing songs and recording them live in rehearsal and then playing them at night at the 'shows'. can't remember how many shows we would have done per week? maybe 3 or 4. Iha + Auf Der Maur hated the idea and said no. a shame, could have been amazing. band was tight at that point and i was motivated to write more.
we had the 2nd to last show at The United Center, and we wanted to film that as well. unfortunately the building wanted to charge us (i could be wrong but...) 50,000$ just for the 'right' to film, not counting the actual costs it would have been to film. so there is no video that i know of. if there is it might be a lone camera. that show was amazing, although we were criticized for opening the show acoustic.
we had been opening with 5 songs acoustic in Europe as a way to set a different tone because each night the audience was thinking they were seeing the band for the last time. there the audiences went with the somber beginning, and so i stupidly assumed that an American audience would go the same way with it. Wrong! once we finally lit it up with 'glass' theme (song 6) the place went nuts.
for the Metro show itself, we found someone to be a clown in between acts, to hold the sign up announcing each of the 3 parts. what most people don't know is that the kid doing it (a total coincidence) was related to Jonathon Melvoin. i found out before the show, but i took it as a sign that his spirit was with us in the building that night so i said i was fine with it.
we played 38 songs i believe, over 4 hours of music. i had never played that long before, nor have i since. i wasn't even sure my voice would hold up that long, but it did. actually it got stronger as the night went on. the first song was 'rocket', which we were supposed to play after the mellon collie theme intro, which was played off a cd. the theme finished, i lit into the opening riff of 'rocket'.
unfortunately, no one turned off the cd, , so as i was playing i heard 'tonight, tonight' come blaring out of the p.a. classic SP fuck-up for trying to be fancy. the show as i remember was fairly good, but incredibly hot and at about 90 min in the crowd was just totally worn out. i thought to myself 'wow, we got a long way to go!'
act 2 honestly felt like a sad funeral, and people started talking. i felt the whole thing slipping away from me, but i realized that it was all part of the journey of death that we were on. life moves on, and when the show was over i too had to move on. i honestly thought that it would be the last time i would play most of these songs, and it felt good to let them go.
act three was designed to bring the energy back up, and it did. the last encore i think was 'silverfuck', which had a lot of improvisation in it. it wasn't all planned out, and i remember thinking of my deceased mother alot. it all came down to 'where was mommy?' in the end of it all, as it begins so does it end. i turned to look at Jimmy and said 'that's it', and it ended without form best as i remember.
i broke down on stage crying but i remember being quite embarassed about it. i've thought about that moment many times, and i wish in hindsight that i'd let myself just have a good cry right then and there, because you won't find yourself in a spot like that many times in your life. after we had a little party, playing dvd bootlegs of the band on a screen on stage.
once it was over, there was a shift, so playing the videos felt like watching a car crash again and again. it was overkill for everyone, including me. pictures and Chopin would have been better. i asked where James was, and someone had said he had left, without saying goodbye to me or Jimmy, a real final fuck you in my eyes. outside of a phone conversation about business in 2001, i haven't seen him since.
one more thing: please stop asking about the show ever coming out (i say this good heartedly). it will come out when the time is right. it should have come out in 2001 but EMI squashed it, and we got the rights back. hopefully it will be put out one day when tall he albums get re-issued. it would make sense for it to come out with the Machina era stuff.
i think as more time goes by we all should look at SP as having 2 totally different eras, 'old school' and 'new school' or whatever. call it what you want, the SP of 2005-2010 and counting has been a different animal, albeit with similar goals set in a different world.
'old' SP ended exactly 10 years ago this night, and it a'int ever coming back. from my vantage point, that's a good thing. that band will never sell out and never grow old gracefully (because honestly it couldn't). long live SP 1987-2000 a great fucking band when it was 'on'. and a nightmare when it was 'off'. thanks for checking out these thoughts/memories, love BC

in the end, i think it's good to hear the humanity in all the mess of the ending of the original SP. it just makes the band more real. i can empathize with that for sure. until then---