It was in 1993 that The Smashing Pumpkins made their big breakthrough with their second album Siamese Dream. It reached the top 10 on the US Billboard 200 and eventually sold in excess of four million copies.
But sudden fame wasn’t easy to handle for the four members of the band – lead vocalist and guitarist Billy Corgan, bassist D'arcy Wretzky, guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. As Chamberlin says: “You have no tools and no skill set how to manage that level of success.”
In a new interview with the Go With Elmo Lovano podcast, Chamberlin looks back on that landmark year and describes his relationship with the most high profile band of that whole era – Nirvana.
Article continues below“We played with Nirvana probably four or five times,” he says. “They were incredible.”
He recalls having a good connection with fellow drummer Dave Grohl. “We became tight. We had a lot of fun back then.”
But he admits that his interaction with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was more problematic.
“You know, I don’t think Kurt really dug me,” Chamberlin says. “I think he kind of stayed away from me back then, because… I was a pretty high octane individual, you know? And I don’t think Kurt really wanted to be around somebody who was resonating at such a high frequency.”
Chamberlin describes Cobain as “very introverted and introspective”.
He adds: “He was always nice to me, and I knew I knew him and Courtney. And we were friendly, but I wouldn’t say we were tight.
“I had a huge respect for him as a musician, and I wanted to be, you know, compassionate – to not be, like, inserting myself into his orbit like everybody else was. Because, honestly, it was like we were all peers. So it wasn’t a big deal.”
The making of Siamese Dream was complicated by difficulties in the personal lives of the four band members, with Chamberlin struggling with substance abuse problems. But this album transformed The Smashing Pumpkins into one of the leading bands of the alternative rock era, with powerful hit songs including Cherub Rock, Disarm, Rocket and Today.
Chamberlin says now that he treated Kurt Cobain with the same respect he afforded to other musicians he admired and toured with, such as Black Francis of the Pixies and J. Masics of Dinosaur Jr.
“There was a lot of people that we held in high regard,” he says, “but they were just in the same circus we were in, right?
“It doesn't matter if you were flying private or you’re taking a van – you’re still in the circus.”
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