Nov 1997-Mar 1998 – Sunset Sound

## Nov 1997-Mar 1998 - Sunset Sound, California

Produced by Billy Corgan; Engineered by Neil Perry; Mixed by Flood

* Appels + Oranjes
* Blissed and Gone
* Blissed and Gone (drone version)
* Because You Are
* Cash Car Star
* Crestfallen
* Cross
* Czarina
* Do You Close Your Eyes?
* For Martha
* It’s Alright
* Once Upon A Time
* Perfect
* Perfect (no strings)
* Perfect (acoustic demo)
* Pug
* Saturnine
* Saturnine (piano/voice)
* Shame
* Shame (take 1)
* Soot and Stars
* Summer (instrumental)
* The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete
* Waiting
* Winterlong
* 17
* *Tear (remakes)*

The second session for Adore, after relocating to Studio 2 at Sunset Sound. After months of aimless recording, Flood was brought in to sift through the 40-odd songs and assess what needed to be done to make an album out of the mountain of recordings. The final Adore album was a patchwork that drew from these sessions as well as the failed Chicago Brad Wood Sessions, the live CRC sessions and even some home recordings at Sadlands.

“It was a total crap shoot,” says Corgan, who soon relocated to L.A.
to refocus his energy. “I was out of depth. There was no process, there
was no system, and there was no go-to piece of gear. There was nothing. I
 learned a tremendous amount, but I couldn’t tell you what the hell I
did.”

 Billy
 reached out to Nitzer Ebb’s Bon Harris, who contributed additional
programming and sound design with the aid of his Nord Modular, Oberheim
Xpander, and massive Roland System 100M. But the songs didn’t come into
full focus until Corgan reconnected with Flood, whose experience with
bands like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails made him the perfect
candidate to help actualize Adore’s hybrid vision.

The dissonance
was evident to Flood upon arrival. The mix of disparate Pro Tools
sessions and oneinch tape created a textured canvas that proved
difficult to homogenize, and the tension between band members was
palpable. The band worked at Sunset Sound until reoccurring technical
difficulties with the Neve console forced them to complete the project
at the Village Recorder in Santa Monica. To further Adore’s maudlin,
Goth-tech spirit, Corgan assumed a Max Schreck-like persona, emphasizing
 his shaved head with lighting and make-up and donning long, flowing
garb that accented his 6-foot 4-inch frame.

“I did go around and
proclaim rock to be dead,” Corgan laughs, “which was probably the
stupidest thing I ever did. I was in my Adore personality saying Adore
personality things like ‘F\*\*k the electric guitar!’ And of course 12
months later I’m playing ‘The Everlasting Gaze.’”

Many fans
attributed Adore’s stylistic shift directly to Chamberlin’s lack of
participation, and contrary to favorable reviews and another Grammy
nomination for Best Alternative Music Album, Corgan insists “nobody got
the record.” “To Sheila” pumped blood through its mechanized heart, “Ava
 Adore” flashed her crooked teeth, but the bite wasn’t as strong.
Chamberlin’s raw power was replaced by reverberating, distorted 808
kicks. Shuffle and swing turned into quantized grooves and fills.
Predictable ticks marched along in place of glittering cymbal
embellishments.

“I don’t feel excluded from Adore,” says
Chamberlin. “When I listen to that record, I hear decisions that I
totally influenced because I wasn’t there.”

“I think Billy
 felt very much on his own,” adds Flood. “It’s difficult when you’re the
 artist, the producer, the sound person . . . and suddenly you’re left
high and dry.

"It could have been more of an acoustic record," Iha says of Adore.
"It could have been more electronic. Or it could have been done
live, with more of a band sound. This album is just an amalagamation
of those things."

 "I explored every possible avenue one could explore," Corgan
declares, taking a breather one night before tackling vocal overdubs.
"But it all adds up in your resolve and your understanding of what
you're trying to accomplish.

 "What's amazing about James and D'arcy," he notes with bona fide
pride, "is that they almost never question what I want to do. I
don't think there's one song on that album I've been questioned about.
In fact, the questions usually come about the songs I don't want to
put out. There are three songs that D'arcy really likes that probably
won't make the album. She thinks I'm a fucking idiot for not putting
them out."

 "It took letting go of the concept of bass, two guitars and drums to
actually move forward," claims Corgan. "We're literally back to where
we started, which was me, James, D'arcy and a drum machine. We played
gigs like that. The strangest things was, as soon as we stopped playing
with Matt [Walker] and started playing with a drum machine, we started
to play like ourselves again."

 Iha points out that one song, "Pug" was initially recorded with Cameron
as "a minor-key death march. Then Billy put it up on the computer, got
a good drum-machine program going, put on synths, and I did maybe three
guitar overdubs on it. It doesn't sound like anything you can quite put
your finger on. It just sounds cool."

 "Shame" also features a drum machine but was actually recorded live.
"I was feeling really sad one morning," Corgan explains. "I got up,
wrote the song. We went in that day and did it in three hours. What
you're hearing is what I felt that day."

 Strangely enough, Coran says a pivotal, if unlikely, inspiration for
the sound and quirky immediacy of Adore was the early-1950's Sun recordings
of Howlin' Wolf: "I was really blown away by the visceral energy.
There's other things I was listening to: Son House, Muddy Waters. But
I wasn't attracted to the song form per se. I was attracted to the
spirit in the music. It seemed more rock & roll to me than any other
rock & roll I could listen to." Corgan was so taken with the notion of
a roots 'n' groove Pumpkins record that at one point he talked to both
Daniel Lanois and T-Bone Burnett about producing Adore.

 "If I played all these songs for you on piano or on acoustic guitar, it
would make more sense," Corgan continues. "But I didn't feel comfortable
in that skin. I wasn't offering anything new until I took it into my own
space and colored it with my own crayons."

 The Pumpkins are just starting to confront the issue of touring as a
trio,
especially behind an album as offbeat as Adore. There is talk of limiting
road work to two months - the band did fourteen months on behalf of Mellon
Collie - and of using extra musicians in lieu of tapes and samplers.
Corgan
says he also wants to do a solo acoustic tour this year as an outlet for
all
the new songs that didn't make Adore: "I'm not even going to release them
as B sides. The idea is to start working on a solo acoustic record over
time."

 But, Corgan insists, "the energy around the new record is going to
dictate
what happens. Fuck, everybody might hate it. I don't know. I'd be lying
if
I said, 'The record company hates it, the fans hate it - right, I'm going
to
go out on tour.' I'll just stay home."

**Flood:** Billy was really frustrated, because what he
was hearing in his head wasn't seeming to translate. It was a lot of
technical issues, where they'd tried to do things in a certain way and
it hadn't worked. When you've got such a major part of your band dynamic
 missing, it was a bit like everybody was unsure of how to move forward.
 I came into it cold. I hadn't heard any of the songs; I just started
going through them, and it was obvious that it was such an intensely
personal record. It was going to be a solo record, but still had
something about the Pumpkins in it.

**Billy Corgan:** I was a bit of a hot gambler. Every
production decision I made seemed to pay off, and so, for me, – in that
period of my life – the production style was intrinsic to the
songwriting, and the songwriting was intrinsic to the production style.
Nobody had really made a record like "Adore," up to that point.

**Billy Corgan**: "Appels + Oranges" is probably a good example of a case where the band
created a perfectly valid arrangement, but then I ended up completely
scrapping everybody's parts and changing the song from the bottom up.
And while that might seem disrespectful, I fully acknowledge that I
probably wouldn't have arrived at the final arrangement unless I had
their original parts as a jump-off point. Even the tracks that weren't
used then were important to the overall development of the album. Adore
was like a ball that went back and forth. There are some songs where
James probably created five different guitar parts for five different
versions of the same tune. Or I took some four-bar part that he played
off the cuff and made that the guitar part. It was like digging in dirt.
 You're just trying to mine something new. It's a rather tedious
process. I mean, you may spend four or five hours just sitting there,
thinking with a texture or a tone. Often, I went home at the end of the
day with just a bass line and a loop, and that was my 12-hour day. It
can seem a little wasteful, but…

**Billy Corgan**: We are recording at Sunset Sound, a famed studio on Sunset Boulevard
where the Doors recorded their first album (a huge influence on me, so I
 take this to be a good sign)…the room we are in every day is where Van
Halen did their first 3 records (another good sign)…I am now the
de-facto producer, so it’s me, Bjorn on pro-tools, and an engineer from
L.A., Howard, who will man the board, etc…Howard, though a bit
conservative (he doesn’t like Led Zeppelin!!!) turns out to be a good
guy, and a friend in the end, so he and Bjorn form a sort of support
team…(they believe in what I am doing, and encourage me a lot in the
months to come)…the band sets up work on a song that will ultimately be
called “once upon a time”…the band is in a circle (which is how we
usually work), with me facing the drums…right away, I zero in on Matt…I
want him to be “Jimmy”, and lift this song higher…he is capable of doing
 this on his own (in his own way), but unfortunately I want him to be
Jimmy, to play just how Jimmy would play…this creates an impossible
dynamic…without realizing it before, or admitting it openly (even to
myself), I want Jimmy to come back…but I have stubbornly backed myself
into a corner…when we (the band) fired Jimmy, just days after the
fateful overdose that left him facing prosecution (and Jonathon dead),
we had talked amongst ourselves that it would only be a temporary
thing…I said “let him sit and clean himself up for 6 months, and then he
 can come back”…James and D’arcy both agreed this was the best idea…the
plan was never, ever to fire him FOREVER…the honest reason we had taken
such a hard stand publicly is we wanted and needed Jimmy to believe that
 there was no coming back…this way (we figured) he wouldn’t just stall
for time, or tell us what we wanted to hear like all the times before
(hence the dramatic interviews and quotes of “never, never,
ever”-essentially we lied to the whole world!)…we figured that he would
clean himself up (rehab, therapy), call us up to apologize, ask to come
back, and then the door would swing open and we would be there with open
 arms… but sadly that didn’t happen…as we toured without Jimmy to finish
 the remaining Mellon Collie dates, our own bitterness set in (as did
his for being abandoned), and of course, he never called (looking now,
why would he?)…he did, unknown to me for the most part, stay in touch
with Gooch the whole time…if I had once found the courage to tell him
the “truth/lie” of his firing, (which was more like a suspension) this
all could have been averted, and he would have been sitting in front of
me listening to me blab on about the arrangement of this song, etc…I
missed him badly now, and needed his guidance to make this record, but
couldn’t bring my pride around to admit that the situation could have
been handled a lot better by us (not to mention letting him know that
from my heart, he was forgiven)…Matt had done a very admirable job
filling in, and now, out of nowhere, I was turning on him for a
situation he had no part of (we had even gone so far as to ask him to be
 a part of the band, figuring at this point Jimmy really wasn’t coming
back)…everything that Matt did was suddenly “wrong” in my eyes, and like
 someone who wants to break up with somebody but doesn’t have the
courage to just say ‘I’m done’, I made the situation so miserable for
him and me that it became a certain inevitability that he would go…he
truly did his best, but I had already made up my heart…and so, within
just a few days, maybe a week of starting in L.A., Matt was on a plane
back to Chicago…

So far, I had blamed the co-producer, the
drummer, my hometown, of course James and D’arcy, and even Jimmy to a
certain extent for putting me in this fucked position… I was losing the
ability to just keep chewing up ground without paying any kind of toll… I
 refuse to really see what I am really doing to myself, the band, and
everyone around me…the studio becomes a fortress, where I just shut the
door for 12 hours and close the world out…all of this stress, and a
rising conflict about where we were now headed, starts to bleed heavily
into my relationship with my partner…we start fighting all the time,
usually when I come home at night… I am trapped, but I refuse to give
up…the very act of making this record (and writing these sad songs) is
really one of the most painful experiences of my life…on the other side
 of me (and the album) was all of the “thems theys”, which turned out to
 be whoever didn’t understand or agree with what I am trying to do…what I
 really need is help, not on the album, but for me…I drew the circle
around me, and pushed everyone out…

So we find ourselves back to
where it had essentially begun in 1988, which was the 3 of us and a drum
 machine… before Jimmy had ever joined the band, we had played about
12-15 shows as a 3 piece (with drums I programmed to sound like a “real”
 drummer)…so I try to put a positive spin and say “great, let’s just go
back to the way we used to work in the old days”…it doesn’t feel that
unnatural, as everyone sorta falls into their old roles… I think that
maybe this truly is a return to our roots, not just sonically, but
emotionally as well…James and D’arcy seem fine with the idea, and no
talk of Jimmy coming back is ever raised during the remainder of the
sessions…

The first song we tackle (post-Matt) is one I had just
written, first thing in the morning…by the time we finish recording it,
the song will not yet be 3 hours old…I get to the studio, and program a
very basic beat into my drum machine (the same lucky beatbox we used on
‘1979’)… the 3 of us play live out in the room as I sing the frosty,
ghost vocals into a mike that is usually used for recording guitars…the
song is called “shame”, and I repeat this word over and over again,
stuttering (ala “Changes” by Bowie or “My Generation” by The Who)…we
only play the song 2 times for practice (not even all the way thru), and
 I yell “roll it”, wait for the signal (a thumbs up from Howard, we’re
rolling) and press ‘start’ on the drum machine…\*ba-ba boom, ba-ba
boom\*…D’arcy’s bass starts out first, and is immediately out of tune…I
wait, and then my guitar slowly chimes in, loaded with delays as James
uses a device that makes his guitar sustain forever (like a violin)…I am
 playing a rare maple-necked Jaguar, and the sound is thin and achy…I am
 singing for my life, so raw is my being now that goose bumps cover my
whole body…it is fear and ecstasy all rolled together, and it engulfs
me…the band of 3 feel unified, molten, rides the vision slow…this is the
 sound you can only get when you have played for so many years together
that you play a sort of “in time, out of time” feel…if you were to
isolate each instrument on it’s own, you would probably say that no one
is playing particularly well at all…but somehow together, we create a
flying alchemical sound of transformation, and we think little of it as
this magic trick has happened so many times… the lyrics are a sketch,
scrawled on a piece of loose paper, and I am not even sure what I am
singing about as I voice them, but I reach for each word like a prayer…
it is like a watching a movie that you have created but you do not know
how it will all end…the music, the song seems to go on forever, and you
hope silently that you do not make a mistake that will break the
spell…and then, fade, it’s over…there is uncomfortable silence between
us as the ghost leaves the room…everyone unknowingly returns to the role
 they are supposed to play in this story…but in that moment gone, we are
 one…

**Billy Corgan**: The sessions are generally slow paced and technical (we work 6 days a
week, by the end 7)…most of my time is spent figuring out how to get new
 sounds out of old equipment…I have purposely brought none of my usual
gear, denying myself access to my most trusted equipment and thereby
forcing me to have to work in unfamiliar territory…the amps are old,
vintage tube amps, not designed for massive walls of sound…there are
almost no guitar pedals to speak of, certainly none that make the guitar
 distort…I have backed myself into a corner with the hope that I would
care enough to fight my way out…the control room we work in is very
cramped, which makes it hard for anyone beyond the 3 principals (me,
Bjorn, Howard) to hang out leisurely…as is often the case during
recording, if they are not needed, James and D’arcy tend to hang out in
the lounge, where they can watch T.V…the only problem is this lounge is
really small and cramped, so it makes even hanging in there
uncomfortable…I tell D’arcy that I really would like her to come and
spend the days with me working, that at the worst she can help guide the
 direction the album is taking (a request I have not made before)…I tell
 her I need her guidance (she always had a good sense of what is
‘good’), and even though the space is tight, would really appreciate her
 support…she gets angry and spits at me, “why would I want to sit in
there all day with you? It’s so fucking boring!!”…James mostly sits
outside in the courtyard and talks on his cell phone…it is a difficult
time for everyone…they are used to me working on my own, and any attempt
 I now make to engage them either doesn’t go so well, or is met with
emotional disinterest…things only seem to click if we all play at the
same time, but this does not always work for every song, nor is the
playing level high enough (on their part) to justify this kind of
recording for the whole record…it turns into a case by case, song by
song basis, where each song must claw it’s way to a direction, and then
based on what I determine is best for a particular tune, set a course
that brings the various dysfunctional band dynamics into play…for
example, if they aren’t really needed on a song in a fundamental way,
they don’t seem to care at all how it turns out …if I ask them to play
on a certain idea because I feel their contribution is important (i.e.
“why don’t you try out some bass/guitar on this one) our communication
is so poor now that if it doesn’t go well fairly quickly, I don’t know
how to ‘work’ with them, nor do
they feel comfortable enough to put
out their best, most committed effort…sometimes things click, like
D’arcy’s 6 string bass ideas on the song “waiting”, but more often than
not they offer little and less as the days tick by…the situation is just
 too damaged, and seems essentially beyond repair…having sold myself on
the idea of using drum machines and/or samples instead of a “live”
drummer, I quickly discover this is not as easy or as exciting a way to
work as I had envisioned…so the drums become a source of frustration and
 concern, and we start thinking that some songs (though not all) would
benefit from the use of a real drummer…

We reach out to Joey,
from Beck’s group, to fill in…his style is basically reminiscent of
Jimmy’s playing, so this is an easy fit…work with him goes fairly
quickly…mostly, I just have him play to tracks that are already somewhat
 recorded, and his timing is so solid it is a breeze, saving lots of
time and effort…(a month later, I ask him if he would like to do the
tour---he immediately says yes, and one week later quits without
explanation)…the other drummer we work with is Matt, from the now
disbanded Soundgarden…Matt is one of the few drummers I have ever felt
rivaled Jimmy in the chops department, and we ask him to come in and
record live with us…although his style is different than Jimmy’s, he,
like Jimmy, takes the songs to a new level of dynamic…the highlight of
our work with him is the song I have written for my mother, “for
Martha”, a 7 minute or so opus with lots of parts, stops and starts, and
 even tempo changes…I play the piano live in an “iso” room, while James
and D’arcy are out on the floor with him in the main…we do many, many
takes to get the whole piece just right (so the master can be just one
whole piece), and it turns out beautifully as everyone plays with a lot
of passion and soul (a real highlight of the record)…

After so
many months of pressure, the contrast of these incredible moments of
grace set against the mundane pursuit of the smallest details start to
drive me crazy…the album, and it’s concepts, are now sprawling out of
control…there are some 30 songs that are half-finished, and I can’t even
 say I know what it is I am looking for…it’s not acoustic, and it’s not
electronic, it is more of a sad, lost feeling with beams of hope shining
 thru…band, no band, drummer, no drummer…I am there in person, but not
really in spirit…I work, speak, but feel disconnected from all of it…as
the writer, it is an odd thing to also be the performer…I enjoy the
writing immensely, but am very disappointed in myself as “the
artist”…and looming in the background are all the events that brought me
 here, still unresolved…I haven’t even taken a moments pause to mourn my
 mom…it is all so painful that I cannot bear to hold the entire truth,
so I just break it into smaller and smaller pieces that are easy to
digest on a day to day basis…but there is no longer a point on the
horizon I am marching towards anymore…I have achieved the greatest of
success and tasted the stupidity of my own hubris…the old dreams are
dead, and now my life becomes more a trudge of survival, and in some
messed up way, as long as I keep working I am o.k….there is a part of me
 that does not want it to end, because I am afraid of what is waiting
for me on the other side…

Return to Adore

1. ↑ Richard Thomas, "Signal To Noise: The Sonic Diary Of The Smashing Pumpkins", Electronic Musician, October 1st, 2008
2. ↑ David Fricke, "The Soft Parade", Rolling Stone, March 1998
3. ↑ Jake Brown, "Smashing Pumpkins: A Studio History", Tape-Op, Sept/Oct 2016
4. ↑ Billy Corgan, Guitar World, June 1998
5. ↑ Billy Corgan, "Way Out in Outpost Canyon", livejournal, April 13th, 2005
6. ↑ Billy Corgan, "Coming Down The Mountain", livejournal, April 14th, 2005