September 2022
Coming off their 10 million selling 1995 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, expectations were high for Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins for a follow-up album.
Combined with a statement from guitarist James Iha in late 1996 that “The future is in electronic music. It really seems boring just to play rock music,” and what many were told was a preview of things to come when the band released “The End Is the Beginning Is the End”, an electronica-tinged song with hard-rocking guitars and booming drums played by Matt Walker that appeared on the Batman & Robin soundtrack, some were shocked when Adore was released in 1998.
Instead of something similar, what fans got was a subdued, soft rock, folk and electronica-tinged album. It was a departure from the distorted, guitar-driven hard rock sound that was prominent, although not exclusive, on their previous three albums. The harder-edged songs were mostly gone, replaced by more intimate, reflective and low-key acoustic songs.
Even Corgan’s vocals were softer and quieter; no “Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage” snarling like what was featured on “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
The instrumentation was a mix of synthesizers and drum programming, with acoustic and electric guitars, pianos and acoustic drums, played by Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, session drummer Matt Walker and Joey Waronker of Beck’s band.
In other radical departures from their previous work, the trio of Corgan, Iha and bass guitarist D’arcy Wretzky adopted a gothic-themed look for their visual presentation, although this was later abandoned.
This was a turbulent time for The Smashing Pumpkins. Two years earlier, they had fired founding drummer Jimmy Chamberlin over his drug use and role in the overdose death of touring keyboardist Johnathan Melvin. Corgan’s marriage had also collapsed and he lost his mother to cancer. Sales of Adore were a fraction of the number of Mellon Collie, and Corgan would later characterize Adore as made by “a band falling apart.”
Even the resulting tour, a scaled-back 14-show world tour entitled An Evening with The Smashing Pumpkins, proved to be a challenging experience for Corgan. The drum stool was occupied by former long-time John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff, along with two percussionists, Dan Morris and Stephen Hodges, who helped recreate the sometimes complex, multi-tracked percussion (acoustic and programmed) on the album. As noted in the liner notes on the Adore reissue, Corgan would later express regret that he didn’t just have Aronoff play along with loops from the album. “That drove Kenny up the wall because Kenny has perfect time and one guy played on top and the other behind. I remember Kenny saying, ‘I feel like I’m tripping on LSD’ because he kept hearing things that were not in time, and it drove him crazy.”
Also performing on the tour was veteran session pianist Mike Garson, a frequent David Bowie collaborator since the 1970s whom Corgan noted, “…made a decision 40 years ago that he would live in the intuitive flow of what he was feeling, so he literally cannot play the same thing twice. So we’d have gigs where he’d have that same magic as on Aladdin Sane and the next night he’d come and play the extreme opposite style – like honkytonk. I really respect Mike, but to play with him was always challenging; precisely because he is such a supreme musician.”
Although Chamberlin would return to the band in early 1999, the Pumpkins would never recover from the turmoil of the previous three years. D’arcy abruptly quit in September 1999, after recording their follow-up album, Machina/The Machines of God. In the wake of low sales of Machina, the band broke up at the end of 2000.
Machina II/The Fiends & Enemies of Modern Music, the final album of the first incarnation of the band, was also released in 2000, but this time, only twenty-five vinyl copies were made and distributed to close friends of the band, with instructions to distribute it for free on the internet.
Since its release, the 73-minute long Adore has been a very polarizing album. While it garnered generally positive reviews from many music critics, fans either love it or hate it, although time has slowly changed many of the negative opinions. It has since gained somewhat of a cult following.
Corgan wrote on the band’s website that the album’s title was “misunderstood” and “a joke that no one ever got,” explaining that Adore was meant as a play on “A Door”, meaning the album would offer a new entrance to the band’s career. This was something similar to David Bowie s 1973 album Aladdin Sane, which was a play on “A Lad Insane.”
My Opinion
I absolutely love Adore, which I consider to be a beautiful album and have since the day I bought it in 1998. Billy took a chance with this album, doing something different from what they’d done before, which is something I admire for any musical act. Anyone who truly appreciates music, not just the latest musical fad or trend, should appreciate bands that mix things up occasionally. No, that tactic doesn’t always work, but what’s wrong with trying? It’s called creativity. There is no better example of this than The Beatles. Did everyone want them to keep doing another version of “Love Me Do” or “I Want To Hold Your Hand” over and over again?
I’m glad to hear that Adore has become a cult classic and the harsh criticisms leveled against it have softened somewhat over the 24-years since its release. A remastered version was released in September 2014 as a special edition package, consisting of the original album songs, along with 91 bonus tracks of previously unreleased material, live versions, demos and alternate versions of Adore-era songs, including a remix of “Ava Adore” by hip-hop producer Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs.
A “Puff Daddy” re-mix of “Perfect” was released several years later.
Sources: The Smashing Pumpkins: Adore Album Review | Pitchfork, Adore (album) – Wikipedia, The Smashing Pumpkins – Wikipedia, Machina/The Machines of God – Wikipedia, Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music – Wikipedia.