The Smashing Pumpkins live at the Ovo Hydro, Glasgow, 12th June 2024

I’m here because I didn’t see The Pumpkins first time round, back in the days of grunge, and they are a band on my ‘bucket list’ which I think are still worth seeing live. It’s another drive-train-walk from my workplace on the east coast of Scotland to ‘Glasgae’, ra big city in the west. The stroll from Queen Street station takes in the tunnel under Central Station and the north bank of the Clyde, the quirky shapes of the ‘armadillo’ and the Ovo Hydro looming large over the landscape. For pedestrians, desire lines make dirt tracks in the landscape to the buzz at the entrance, many snaking queues of gig-goers already there. I’m meeting my good friend D, who has travelled further, all the way frae ra northeast.

Tonight’s frontmen – Billy (left) and Rivers (right)

After fuelling at an SEC pitstop and waiting in a slow moving queue, then presenting our physical tickets (yes, printed on paper!), we make it to our seats, up in block 226, and Weezer are already on stage. There was no chance for most to see the opening act, garage band Teen Mortgage, because, sadly for them, the doors only opened about the same time they came on stage, and there were all the queues to wait in…many unhappy punters…I’m not really a Weezer fan, and the pairing on the bill seemed a bit bizarre from when they announced it, but they put on a good performance, in front of a big illuminated ‘W’ logo, and quite a lot of the crowd know the words to their quirky songs. Their image is on the geeky side but they are good musicians, know how to rock out, and Rivers Cuomo plays some fine lead guitar. They finish their set with one of their big hits, ‘Buddy Holly’, accompanied by a crowd singalong.

The big W

The break is only just long enough for us to stand in a slow moving queue for overpriced soft drinks at one of the cashless bars. We’re back inside and sit down just as the stage lights move and the intro music of “Atum’ starts. The Smashing Pumpkins’ take the stage and launch into opener ‘The Everlasting Gaze’ from the MACHINA album. The contrast between Weezer’s jaunty, upbeat sounding pop-rock and the more melancholic grunge/hard/art rock of the Pumpkins seems immediately striking to me. ‘The Doomsday Clock’, from 2007’s ‘Zeitgeist’ album follows. U2’s ‘Zoo Station’ is a strange choice of cover to include in the set – the band seem to enjoy it, but personally I could have done without it.

The Smashing Pumpkins light up the Hydro

Most of the songs I want to hear them play are in the set – ‘Today’, ‘1979’, ‘Tonight Tonight’, ‘Ava Adore’, ‘Disarm’, ‘Rhinoceros’… It’s ‘The World Is A Vampire Summer Europe Tour’ so they had to play my favourite song, ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’, and a rousing version it is too, Billy Corgan still spitting anger ‘like a rat in a cage’. Billy Corgan wears a distinctive black cassock, some kind of high priest of grunge? Having read material online, the singer seems to have a bit of a ‘Marmite’ effect on people, particularly his voice, but that’s one of the components that makes the band’s sound so distinctive. A Scott Weiland, Chris Cornell or Eddie Vedder he ain’t (to draw some grunge-era comparisons). James Iha does some of the talking tonight, in his eloquent manner, and assumes the job of introducing the band: the three original members being singer/guitarist/songwriter/frontman Billy Corgan, drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and himself on guitar, joined by Katie Cole on vocals and acoustic guitar (“all the way from down under, Australia”, says Iha), Jack Bates on bass (“from Manchester, England”) and newcomer Kiki Wong on guitar, “all the way from Texas”. Original bassist D’Arcy Wretzky is conspicuous by her absence, a longer term victim of one of the many interpersonal fallouts the band has suffered over the years…

Smashing…Prismatic Pumpkins on stage at The Hydro

The set is varied and eclectic, bringing us light and shade, the changing dynamics of intimacy and full-blown rock, newer songs and lesser known album tracks interspersed with the band’s ‘greatest hits’. Corgan introduces ‘Mayonaise’ as “back from before you were born…to 1992…this is a song James and I wrote, from the classic ‘Siamese Dream’…” It’s an introspective low key intro which bursts into the layered guitars and shoegaze feel familiar to the band’s sound, with some great lyrics: “Can anybody hear me? I just want to be me” sings Corgan, and that’s exactly what he has done throughout his career. One of the benefits of seeing The Smashing Pumpkins three decades on from their heyday is being treated to newer tracks like ‘Empires’ and ‘Spellbinding’. They finish with a blistering ‘Cherub Rock’ and ‘Zero’, before we disappear into a night approaching midsummer in Glasgow, wandering with the ever decreasing hordes back home.

The Smashing Pumpkins setlist:

Intro music – Atum
The Everlasting Gaze
Doomsday Clock
Zoo Station (U2 cover)
Today
Thru the Eyes of Ruby
Spellbinding
Tonight, Tonight
That Which Animates the Spirit
Ava Adore
Disarm
Springtimes
Mayonaise
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Empires
Beguiled
1979
Birch Grove
Panopticon
Shame (first verse and chorus)
Jellybelly
Rhinoceros
Gossamer(with ‘The Spaniards’ ending)
Cherub Rock
Zero