Billy Corgan: Smashing Pumpkins' Future 'Is Kind of Murky'

Billy Corgan: Smashing Pumpkins' Future 'Is Kind of Murky':

Billy Corgan has given hints recently that Smashing Pumpkins could be coming to an end, saying in a pair of interviews following the release of Monuments to an Elegy that "The next album is like the end, end, end. The trite way to say it is, 'I'm over rock & roll'" and "The mythology [of the Nineties] right now is irrelevant."

While Corgan briefly quieted the retirement talk, the singer admits, now that the band's most recent trek has ended, that "the future of the Smashing Pumpkins is kind of murky."

Speaking to Peru's Radio Oasis prior to a March 17th show in Lima – the same gig where Corgan told fans he prefers to be called "William" over "Billy" – the Siamese Dream singer said, "I've only committed to the idea of the Smashing Pumpkins through, pretty much, the end of this year. After that, I'm gonna see how it goes."

2014's Monuments to an Elegy was the second part of Smashing Pumpkins' Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project, following 2012's Oceania. Corgan previously promised that the third installment, Day for Night, would arrive later this year, but the rocker is becoming disenchanted with his fans' rearview-minded view of his music.

"I feel like I really need to evaluate the musical purpose of the Pumpkins because more and more of the audience is fixated on the past," Corgan said (via NME). "I know a lot of the audience will say, 'Well, I like your music better from the Nineties, than, say, the music you're making today.' But I know they're not listening to the music of today, as much as they were listening to that music… I'm the type of artist that I don't wanna exist in something that is sort of fading like an iceberg into the past."

Corgan initially broke up the Pumpkins in 2000 following the release of the band's Machina: The Machines of God and Machina II. Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain reunited in 2005, a partnering that resulted in 2007's Zeitgeist, before Chamberlain against left the band, resulting in a Pumpkins lineup that has been rotating for eight years.

While 2016 might spell the end of Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan wrote in a February letter to fans that Day for Night is still on target for September and that a summer U.S. tour is currently in the works.

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