"The positive reaction to what we're doing right now musically and the emotion coming off the stage has just lit a fire back up," says Billy Corgan — guitarist, vocalist and sole remaining original member of alternative titans The Smashing Pumpkins. "I haven't seen a reaction to the band like this probably since the mid-'90s."
History has once again begun to shed a favorable light on the recently re-formed Chicago band, who rocketed to fame during the alternative-music boom of the 1990s and topped charts worldwide before imploding at the turn of the millennium.
"The diverse amount of the band's material attracts different fans for different reasons," muses Corgan, now 43 and based between Chicago and Los Angeles, as we speak on the phone. "As they mature, they go, 'Oh, maybe I'll listen to that album that I didn't like before,' and the band seems to have more depth. And that seems to be adding up."