The Smashing Pumpkins kick off “The World Is A Vampire” Tour in Las Vegas

AUGUST 4TH 2023 | by EMMA SCHOORS

PHOTOS BY EMMA SCHOORS

What happens at a Vegas Smashing Pumpkins show stays at a Vegas Smashing Pumpkins show. Unless you’re a music journalist, in which case you giddily jot down every minute detail for all to read.

Located on the third floor of The Cosmopolitan hotel, The Chelsea is a relatively quaint venue featuring a GA floor, seated balcony, and VIP side tables. Once you’ve either choked down the valet price tag or self-parked, finding it involves twisting through a few rowdy corridors and a lively sea of slot machines steeped in cigarette smoke. Once you do it’s awfully quiet, a welcome reprieve from the neon ‘never sleeps’ energy Sin City is cloaked in. On July 28th, the hallways are wrapped around with freaks and ghouls sporting ZERO T-shirts and attire of the like.

Stone Temple Pilots, Interpol and Rival Sons are locked and loaded for much of the rest of the tour, but tonight, there’s no opener. A few minutes after 8 o’clock, the band waltzes onstage, diving into Machina / The Machines of God single “The Everlasting Gaze,” lights beaming a bright green to match the track’s music video. “Doomsday Clock” follows, its first appearance since 2008 and first performance with guitarist James Iha. Rarities are a pattern tonight. Later in the set, “The Celestials” makes its triumphant comeback after ten years of not being played. “Never let the summer catch you down, never let your thoughts run free,” frontman Billy Corgan sings. “Even when their numbers draw you out, everything I want is free.” The song’s appearance is an anomaly. I was listening to it on repeat earlier in the day, completely sure I’d go my entire life never hearing it live due to its lukewarm critical reception. 

The biggest shock of the night comes when Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness track “Jellybelly”  is performed for the first time since 1997, but the set is stacked with a smartly curated assortment of songs from a variety of albums. Adore’s “Perfect” is revived, its first time since 2015, along with select tracks off of the band’s new record ATUM. Machina lovers (a rare but loyal breed of Pumpkins fan) will be pleased to know “This Time” is back in rotation, its first full-band performance since 2000. Last time I saw the band was their 2022 Santa Barbara show, and “Hummer” was unfortunately cut from the set because of the venue’s curfew, making its appearance tonight that much sweeter. Just a day after Siamese Dream’s 30th anniversary, fan favorites “Disarm,” “Today” and “Cherub Rock” pay homage to the career-defining album. 

“In between the demonic riffs and the howling vocals, I’m like, having some thoughts,” Corgan says in-between songs, hands waving wildly around him. “Okay, sure,” Iha laughs. “I’m thinking, things change, times change, we change,” he continues, pointing between the two of them and recalling his stirring up of controversy over the years for being an androgynous lead vocalist in a gender role-conforming industry. “Now I’m just a space vampire,” he laughs, flapping his hands in the shape of bat wings. “The cowboy and the space vampire.” While Corgan drones on, Iha says, “Shouldn’t we be talking about this backstage, instead of on the mic?” but Corgan is in a good mood, and not about to have his stream of consciousness interrupted. “James, just let me finish my story… see that smoke? That’s weed smoke.”

Inches from the stage and struggling to consolidate that fact, my face is frozen in adoration for the duration of the show. “Stand Inside Your Love” has been one of my most played songs for seven consecutive years. I have a shitty “Thirty-Three” stick n’ poke that I did on myself at 15. To the annoyance of my friends and family, I’ve clocked thousands of hours listening to this band during every phase of my life since. Standing here with an unobstructed view of drummer Jimmy Chamberlain’s countless-piece set feels too good to be true. Corgan looks over at me a few times while scanning the crowd, and as he smiles into the blazing Nevada night, my body ingrains the moment as especially important. Something to appreciate both as it happens, and as I look back on it years from now. 

Waiting in The Cosmopolitan’s mostly desolate, very hot valet area, I strike up a conversation with another fan. This show marks her 6th, having seen them in Illinois, Oregon, and now Nevada. We geek over Corgan’s tea shop Madame Zuzu’s and how cute his kids are, and our shared love of going to shows alone. By the time our cars arrive, I realize there’s an aura of excitement that finds you when you truly love a band, and we recognized it in each other. It’s like an invisible string. We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts and poured cement! Damn, I should’ve known there’s a Pumpkins lyric for everything.

The first time I saw The Smashing Pumpkins was from the nosebleeds at The Forum in Los Angeles in 2018, after years of loving them. That night, the band played a rigorous 3-hour set consisting of everything from “Try, Try, Try” to “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” to “Muzzle.” The set design was one of their most daring, and that tour is still considered one of their best in recent memory. But there’s a simple beauty to this incarnation of the Pumpkins, unafraid to play tracks from any and every era. Exiting the show into the blistering 106° evening acts as a rebirth, and it’s not until I shut the door behind me and curl up into a freezing hotel bed that I come back down from its distinct high.

In a recent interview with Rick Beato, Corgan said something succinct yet so profound: “There’s stuff that John Lennon does that nobody ever taught John Lennon, and that’s the difference. As a songwriter I can take credit, and ego, and ‘It’s mine,’ and I’m not trying to be, ‘It comes from above.’ All I’m telling you is it just works somehow. (...) When I was 18, 19 writing songs, I thought my songs were terrible, and now I go back and listen and I hear the roots of that sophistication even then, and I had no musical training. Zero.” 

What sets him, and the entire band apart, is something instinctual. It’s something spiritual. It comes from a place where there’s no barrier between intent and the conveyance of that intent. It’s a lot like love; a secret language that exists miles above any way you could ever attempt to describe it. Where talent and technical ability end, feeling begins. That’s where the Pumpkins live. That’s where something like “Set The Ray To Jerry” or the last 1:30 of “I Of The Mourning” lives. That’s where a tour like this lives. 

There are nights you look back on as unexpectedly memorable, and then there are nights you’re keenly aware will live on in your mind for decades to come. Nights so good you grasp at every detail, unwilling to forget the way the air feels surrounding you, or the sound of guitars ringing in real time through your unprotected ears. If there’s one thing The Smashing Pumpkins know how to do it’s put on a fantastic show, and The World Is A Vampire tour is without a doubt their best yet. 

Check out Spotify’s official “This Is Smashing Pumpkins” playlist below.