DISGRACELAND - Smashing Pumpkins: Billy Corgan and the Shapeshifter

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

This is the story about how a drug-related death led to the fracturing of the ‘90s alt-rock giants, how competing narratives amongst band members complicated their legacy, and what Billy Corgan’s strange interaction with a shapeshifter has to do with it all. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan GroupSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Elvis. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories. From threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities.

Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to dole out advice. Guests like Tiffany Haddish. Kind of slide into people's DMs.

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Listen to Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's me, Anna Sinfield, the host of The Girlfriends. I'm back with more one-off interviews with some truly kick-ass women on the Girlfriend's Spotlight. I'm going to climb this. It's badness hereditary. Let's see how we can stop killing. I'm not too intimidated by her. What are you talking about?

Listen to the Girlfriend Spotlight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about change. It's about a band that changed the sound of alternative rock by refusing to sound like alternative. of rock, a band that turned isolation into connection, revenge into melody, and violence into beauty. It's a story about a Chicago record store clerk who changed into a rock star and a rock star who was hated as much as he was loved, a rock star who witnessed his band fall into the trap of self-destruction, and who also witnessed a shapeshifting transformation that he could not explain.

It's a story about the smashing pumpkins. It's a story about great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Blank 182MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Fantasy by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that specific slice of TomTom Club sampling cheese? cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 23, 1995.

And that was the day that the Smashing Pumpkins released their double album, Melancholy, in the Infinite Sadness, an album that silenced their many detractors when it made them the biggest rock band in the world. Right before an overdose and an arrest changed everything forever. On this episode, violence. beauty, isolation, self-destruction, change, and the smashing pumpkins. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is this Graceland. So, I don't know what your life is like with your wife or your spouse, your husband, your

girlfriend, your boyfriend, whatever. But my wife and I send each other reels on Instagram back and forth all the time. Maybe you do the same. I don't know. There's this one reel that my wife sent to me a while back that I can't stop thinking about. Maybe you've seen it. It's a clip of Billy Corgan from The Smash and Pumpkins talking with Howard Stern on Stern Show.

And in this clip, Billy Corgan is relating this story about a strange encounter that he once had. Actually, it's two strange encounters that he had with the same person, but not just a quote-unquote person. As Billy tells it, this person is a shapeshifter. Let's just say I was with somebody and I saw a transformation that I can't explain. That's what Billy says to Howard Stern. He doesn't identify the shapeshifter by name. He won't even say if this person was male or female. But he does say that the shapeshifter was naked when these encounters took place.

And after agreeing to tell Howard more details in private, Billy reveals that the story is even more fantastical than you think. Now, I've heard of shapeshifters before and I'm sure you have too. And I've learned about the skin walkers of the in the innings. Indigenous American Southwest, the Selkees of Celtic folklore, and there are, of course, the trickster gods of Greek and Norse mythology. But Billy Corgan isn't talking about folklore or mythology. He's talking about a real experience in the real world, in the here and now.

So watching this clip, my jaw on the floor, and my response was that this guy is full of shit. Maybe it's because Billy Corgan has said a lot of crazy things over the years, like how he and Kurt Cobain are the greatest songwriters of their generation, and everyone else is a, quote, distant third. But I think it's more what Billy's contemporaries have said about him and the Smashing Pumpkins that gives me pause when it comes to the whole shapeshifter thing. Kim Diehl of the Pixies once called Billy a self-important asshole.

Another Kim, Kim, Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth, writing in her memoir, Girl in a Band, referred to Billy Corgan as a crybaby, saying his band took themselves too seriously. and were in no way punk rock. Linda Perry, one of the four non-blons, one of the greatest pop song writers of all time, once told Billy that he had bad energy as she kicked him out of her studio. Legendary indie producer, Steve Albini,

described the Smashing Pumpkins as careerists, which to a caustic DIY dude like Steve Albini was just about the worst thing he could say about somebody. And then there's the pavement song, Range Life, which takes dead aim at Billy's band, Smashing Pumpkins. after calling out the pumpkins by name in one of the verses. Stephen Malcolm says,

I don't understand what they mean and I can really give a fuck. Even when the Smashing Pumpkins became one of the biggest bands on the planet, back when rock and roll could still move the needle of popular culture, the pumpkin's success was acknowledged with slight digs from the rock cognoscenti. For example, the pumpkins were crowned Artist of the Year in 1994 by Spin Magazine And in the accompanying feature article, Michael Azurad wrote that the pumpkin's untrendy videos, over-the-top production values, fraught interviews, dubious fashion sense, and most of all, Corgan's soul-bearing lyrics all completely bypass any semblance of cool.

This is how they were described by the publication bestowing the year's highest honor onto them. Now, depending on what you think of the smashing pumpkins, Michael Azari was either right, wrong, or some mix of the two. But he did get something undeniably correct about the smashing pumpkins. He said that Billy Corgan was a, quote, hero and surrogate of a vast audience of kids who were either alienated from the indie network or just came to the party too late, unquote.

It was 1994 and music was changing fast. In fact, a lot of the change had happened already. How else do you describe the atmosphere of the so-called alternative nation in the immediate wake of Kirk Covain's death? But Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins, they weren't changing for anyone, not yet at least. The Smashing Pumpkins were a huge band, existing within a big culture full of figureheads who hated their bigness. They generated big energy and got Spin Magazine Artist of the Year big in return, which is exactly what they had aspired to since the beginning.

In 1988, Billy Corgan was working at a record store in Chicago, making $12,000 a year. He was brash and opinionated. Like I said, the guy was a record store clerk. The first time he met Darcy Retsky was on the sidewalk outside of a club at night. And Billy was in a typically combative mood. And he picked a fight with Darcy, a woman he did not know, arguing that the band playing inside were some record label manufactured crap. When he found out that Darcy played bass, he asked her to join the band that he was forming. And this offer contained no guarantee that he would not argue with her again.

In fact, the tensions between Billy and his fellow bandmates would become a defining factor of their volatile chemistry. But once, Billy, Darcy, and guitarist James Iha found jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, the Smatching Pumpkins became official that year in 1988. The people they were then, definitely the person Billy Corgan was then, gave zero shits about what a writer at Spin Magazine would say about them six years later. But they just wanted to be huge, stadium huge. With Billy as their lead songwriter, they plotted out intricately arranged and meticulously produced music to befit their overblown vision of themselves.

Where their contemporaries look to the rawness of, say, the replacements or Husker Doe or Bad Brains for inspiration, the pumpkins chased a widescreened, polished sound that you could eat off of. Think Boston smoking. Queens, death on two legs, or Led Zeppelin at their most arena-sized. If you were fronting an alternative rock band in the 1990s, he did not utter those kinds of musical references, maybe Zeppelin, but Boston, Queen. The Pumpkins' Butch Vig produced debut album, Gish, released three years after they formed on Caroline Records.

May have had more in common with the heavy riffage of the Stooges or Sabbath, but that heavy riffage was buffed, it was waxed, it was polished, it was rooted in the guitar heroics of classic rock radio, and it quickly became the biggest selling indie rock record in history at that time. The Smashing Pumpkin's Gish was hard rock, it was psychedelic rock, it was dream rock. Gish was the sound of change. And that change came four months before Billy Corgan's self-described songwriting equal Kirk Cobain and his band Nirvana released Nevermind.

Now, I don't want to blow too much smoke up Billy Corgan's ass, but Billy Corgan was a major reason why Gish did as well as it did. Billy Corgan was not only brash and opinionated, he had ambition. He was driven by this need to be a part of something bigger than himself, the need to be connected. And that's because his childhood had been marked by isolation and trauma. He was made to feel unwanted and unloved. And the abuse he suffered at the hands of family members was both physical and psychological. Often, he was merely invisible, sitting off to one side, watching his own father, a guitar player himself, run drugs and guns for Chicago organized crime.

A bad childhood did a lot more than just make Billy Corgan ambitious. Isolation and trauma can radicalize a person. You can become something ugly, something you don't recognize. You claw back at your abusers. You act out at your oppressors. And at some point, you come to the realization that the only reasonable response to violence is more violence.

Billy Corgan would get his revenge, though we did not have to shed any blood to do it. He just had to spill some ink out onto the page. And later, he would reveal that the Smashing Pumpkin's Ballad disarmed from their second album, Siamese Dream, was written because he didn't have the guts to murder his parents. Those are his words. He said, I didn't have the guts to kill my parents,

so I thought I'd get back at them through song. And rather than have an angry, angry, angry, violent song, I thought I'd write something beautiful and make them realize what tender feelings I have in my heart and make them feel really bad for treating me like shit. Disarms the song with the acoustic guitar and the string section and those huge bells tolling in the background. You know, the one with the killer of me is the killer in you line. Like pretty much all of Billy Corgan's songs, the lyrics in this one are a raw nerve.

And the personal nature of Smashing Pumpkin Songs, second perhaps only to Billy's distinct nasly wine, is one of the band's constants. You can point to Jimmy Chamberlain's hyper-aggressive drumming style or Darcy Retsky's disaffected Cool standing there on the bass, but it's Billy Corgan's band. He is their Svengali. He's also their asshole. He argued with them, re-recording their parts in the studio after they failed to meet his expectations as he did Darcy's bass parts.

and James Iha's guitar parts for their breakthrough album, Sinbese Dream. And if he could play the drums, I'm sure he would have re-recorded Jimmy Timberland's parts, too. But in 1994, when Spinn Magazine was crowning the Pumpkins' Artist of the Year,

Billy Corgan was reminding himself why he was leading a band in the first place, to not be so isolated, to be part of something bigger than himself. He was going to therapy, and he was being nicer to his fellow bandmates. and Billy Corgan was trying to change. Perhaps the oddest thing about it was that there was no sound.

No elaborate theatrics to announce such an unprecedented transformation. In the movies, you'd hear tendons pop and bones expand. Hair would sprout so quickly that it would make noise as it did. The person going through the sudden physical change would howl in the twisted combination of pain, fear, and disbelief. Like an American werewolf in London, the fly. or the thing. But this wasn't a movie, and it wasn't a book either, but it all went down like that Kafka book,

the one about the guy who turns into a buck. It just happened. One moment this person was themselves, and the next they were someone else entirely. Something else. Billy Corgan could only imagine what it transpired in the few seconds that his back was turned. The head swelling in size,

The mouth contorting into a devilish grin, the eyes going black. Now he was facing it. The thing that just moments ago was a different person. The thing he could find no words to explain. The same thing that now refused to tell him how or why. And it had suddenly changed into its present form. The shapeshifter. Knights in Nashville.

To see Carmen Wickcombe at the legendary Riemann Auditorium. Plus a $1,000 spending cash. Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day on the free IHard radio app, and you're in to win. Cameron Wickham. Stream the new single, Kingdom of Fear. Available now. In the middle of the night, Soskia awoke in a haze.

Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately. The mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.

Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Brennan. And on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood story. icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died

again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died. The third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The success of the Smashing Pumpkins debut album, Gish, created an atmosphere of great anticipation for record number two.

So when Siamese Dream was released by Caroline Records's parent company, Virgin Records, in July of 1993, it debuted at number 10 on the Billboard album chart. Siamese Dream immediately put the smashing pumpkins in the conversation, or perhaps in the argument is a better way to put it, seeing as how much the sound of the album flew in the face of grunge. Less discerning listeners may have lumped the pumpkins in with Nirvana and Allison Chains and Soundgarden and all those Seattle bands,

but Siamese Dream boosted a much more produced sound than was in fashion at the time. And this was immediately a point. to contention with the band's peers, which was the whole point as far as Billy Corgan was concerned, because in his eyes, music was competitive. This wasn't the 1960s. This wasn't Brian Wilson fanboying over rubber soul and being inspired to make pet sounds, and then Paul McCartney falling in love with pet sounds and being inspired to make Sergeant Peppers. This was the 90s. This was the age of the East Coast West Coast hip-hop beef. This was blur and oasis going for the jugular. in the press and on the charts.

And this is us versus them, me versus you. And if the less discerning listeners and critics wanted to compare the smashing pumpkins to Nirvana, let them. Kurt Cobain was a worthy adversary for Billy to square off against. Kurt instilled in Billy that fighting spirit.

That is, until Kurt took his own life in a room above his garage. And then everything changed again. Billy Corgan slipped on the plaid lumber jacket. It's muted. color palette was a change from the candy color paisley shirts in his wardrobe. It was less psychedelic and more down to earth than decidedly Northwestern. Courtney Love had told him the jacket was hers when she gave it to him.

This was back when the Smashing Pumpkins played Seattle. But Billy and the Pumpkins weren't in Seattle anymore. Tonight they were on stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, running through Sound Check for the MTV Video Music Awards. It was September 8, 1994. The Smatching Pumpkins were slated to perform that evening alongside such fellow 94 luminaries as boys to men, Green Day, Salt and Peppa, and the Beastie Boys. But it was the writer in the room working on a piece for Spin Magazine who clocked the jacket.

The jacket wasn't Courtney's. It belonged to her deceased husband, and the writer was Michael Azarad. It was Azarad's job to remember all the lollors. little details. Details like that jacket. The biography he'd been working on for years about Kirk Cobain and Nirvana was set to publish the following month. Speaking of months, here are some other months. Five, that's how many months Kirk Cobain have been dead for. So what's with the jacket, Billy? This is some hopeful transference of artistic greatness by osmosis, or a ghoulish seizing of the greater cultural moment. Did he really buy that it?

it was Courtney's jacket. Well, it was complicated. Before Kirk Cobain and Courtney Love became the most argued about rock and roll couple since John and Yoko, Courtney's affair with Billy Corrigan was the worst kept secret in alternative rock. In October of 91, Courtney hopped on a plane to Chicago. She found Billy in his apartment. He was not alone. The betrayal stunk. Courtney stormed out. She used the last ten bucks to her name to take a cab. to the Metro Club. Nirvana just so happened to be playing. This was weeks after the release of Nevermind. The show is sold out. 500 people, give her take, it's since gone down in legend. But Courtney had no ticket, so she talked her way in, still reeling from Billy's infidelity,

and she made her move that night on Kurt Cobain. Let's roll that back real quick. Courtney Love went to Chicago that day for the express purpose to see Billy Corgan, not to see Nirvana. That part was happenstance, but you got to wonder, if Billy Corgan hadn't been with another woman, then Courtney wouldn't have gone to the metro, and then, well, the rest as they say, wouldn't be history. History is what was on Kurt's mind two and a half years later when he was writing a suicide note on Excelsior Hotel Letterhead in Rome. Before he swallowed 60 ruffinol pills, Kurt laid his feelings bare on little pieces of paper. He suspected that Courtney was sleeping with someone else.

The same someone else who was now wearing Kurt's plaid lumber jacket while warming up for the VMEs. Billy had since caught on to the jacket's true origins. He had the writer to thank for that, and the decision was made to not wear it at the actual show that night. Because to appear before millions of Americans watching at home wearing that, to do so would be ghoulish. Especially on a night that featured a heartfelt tribute to Kurt from his 10-foot-tall bandmate. Nate Christ Novicellick. But before we took the jacket off, however, Billy Corrigan couldn't help but feel the weight of it on his shoulders.

It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Its texture was somewhere between fuzzy and prickly. It was the jacket of a dead man, the jacket of an addict. An addiction had already threatened to rip apart the smashing pumpkins. To make Siamese dream, the band had decamped to Marietta, Georgia, just outside Atlanta.

This is a tried and sometimes true strategy for bands with junkies and users. Get out of town. Go somewhere unfamiliar. You can't score in an unfamiliar place. Okay, if you believe that, then you underestimate the determination of a drug addict. The Smashing Pumpkin's heroin-abusing drummer, Jimmy Chamberlain,

was not particularly tripped up by this geographic relocation. He found a source, and he found a fix. Strange people began to haunt the studio. Then they were gone, and then Jimmy was gone too. One day turned into more than one day, turned into three, four, five days. Someone said they saw Jimmy Chamberlain in Atlanta, so spirits were once again high. Someone else said he was in a crowd at the 40-watt in Athens watching REM perform. After a week of Miss Studio sessions, Billy Corgan's phone rang.

It was his drummer, Jimmy Chamberlain. And Jimmy said he'd done so much cocaine that he'd actually gone blind. It was like that fucking Sabbath song, Snowblind. Reeling, Jimmy Chamberlain promised to get help. He entered rehab for heroin and alcohol and returned to Marietta to finish tracking his drums. But Billy Corgan was keen to punish Jimmy Chamberlain for his sins. They're making a very stressful process that much more stressful.

Album number two is no fucking joke. They were all failing them. Not just Jimmy, but James and Darcy, too. Billy had gone back and erased a bunch of James' guitar parts and Darcy's bass tracks and re-recorded them himself. Like I said, he wasn't competent enough a drummer to do that with Jimmy's parts. So when Jimmy Chamberlain returned from his lost weekend, from his boondoggle, from his snow-blind R-E-M show,

Billy Cornyn had Jimmy Chamberlain do take after take after take. Again, Jimmy, again, Jimmy, again. Jimmy Chamehapelan kept playing until he was worn up. until every last illicit substance dripped from his pores, until his fingers literally bled all over the drum kit. The killer in me is the killer in you. Siamese dream was a violent undertaking, as violent as the Smashing Pumpkins' performance was at the VMAs on September 8th, 1994.

The version of Disarmed that they played that night was no longer the tender, aching ballad with strings like it was on the record. Tonight, the song was different. Tonight, it was attacked. Tonight, it bled like Jimmy Chamberlain's fingers bled back in Marietta, Georgia. Tonight, it changed. The Smashing Pumpkins technically did not win anything at the VMAs in 1994. The award for Best Alternative Video went not to disarm, but to heart-shaped box by Nirvana.

Still, something was happening. Billy had wrapped himself in the jacket of his songwriting equal, his creative adversary, like a heavyweight wraps himself in the belt to the opponent he's vanquished. And while I'm not trying to insinuate that Billy Corgan felt he had defeated Kirk Cobain, you get the sense that in this moment, Billy Corgan understood he suddenly had the world's attention in a way that he'd never had before. But the world is a vampire sent to drain. And when the Smashing Pumpkins chose this moment to double down on their bigness

and deliver their most ambitious album to date. That's from the vampires and the shapeshifters and the hard-to-kill habits, all came crawling from the shadows. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. With Cameron Wickham. Live at the Rhyman. It's in two nights in Nashville.

To see Cameron Wickcombe at the legendary Riemann Auditorium. Plus a thousand-dollar spending gas. Just listen to Pure Country for 10. Ten minutes a day on the free IHart Radio app, and you're in to win. Cameron Wickham. Stream the new single, Kingdom of Fear. Available now. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze.

Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her. Her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died.

Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame means, media obsession and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking back, the music of the 1990s was incredibly rich. And the year 1995 was no exception.

That was the year of Radioheads, The Ben's, and What's the Story, Morning Glory, by Oasis? It was the year Alonis Morissette released her massive record, Jagged Little Pill, and also the year that Billy Corgan's tormentors, pavement, dropped the last. they're weird and polarizing wau-e-zowie. But perhaps the boldest and biggest statement that year came from smashing pumpkins. Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness had no less than 28 songs spread across two CDs.

It clocked in at 120 minutes, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold close to a quarter million copies in its first week alone. Melancholy was absolutely meant to be this monumental next-level statement. We know because Billy Corgan said so. He wanted it to be, quote, The Wall for Generation X, unquote.

The Wall, as in Pink Floyd's legendary double album from 16 years prior. Now, when the Beatles made The Beatles, aka the White album, or when the Rolling Stones made Exile on Main Street, two of the greatest double albums of all time, those bands didn't do so with the same kind of intention. They weren't name-checking other ambitious albums from the recent past. Not that there were any.

They were just laying down songs in the studio, great songs. But too many songs for one album. So at some point, someone, Ringo or Mick Taylor, whoever was like, yo, this may need to be a double album. Billy Corgan's intention here is key because it was all about taking what the pumpkins were and amplifying it, making it bolder, underlining it, supersizing it, changing it. So when the band went out to tour Melancholy in 1996, they were no longer a quartet. They were now supported by a fifth member,

the keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Now, Melvoin was the brother of Wendy Melvoin, who you may know as a member of The Revolution, the band that made Purple Rain with Prince. And he was also a member of the family, a band that Prince assembled in which featured Jonathan's

other sister in Wendy's twins, Susanna. And though Jonathan's musical pedigree was well known to Billy and To others, his predilection for hard drugs was not. But a few months on the road changes everything. By the evening of July 11, 1996, six months into the tour, Jonathan Melvoin and Jimmy Chamberlain had both OD'd at least one time. When confronted by Billy, the two offered up the standard junkie bullshit that they'd gone

too far. They'd seen the error of their ways, and it wouldn't happen again. But on July 11th, it happened again. At 11 p.m. that night in a room at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City, Jimmy and Jonathan were shooting heroin. Everything went black. When Jimmy came to around 3.30 a.m. the following morning, July 12th, he was shocked to see that Jonathan was still unconscious.

Jimmy tried to shake him awake, but Jonathan was out cold. A phone call was placed to the Pumpkin's security manager. And minutes later, the security manager was in the hotel room, dragging Jonathan's body into the shower where cold water rained down. No response. At 4.02 a.m., a call was placed to 911. At 4.15 a.m., paramedics arrived at the hotel room. And around the time, Jonathan Melvoin was declared dead,

Jimmy Chamberlain was taken into police custody and placed under arrest. The death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin happened at a time when being a rock star was synonymous with being into hard drugs. Just weeks earlier, Bradley Knoll of Sublime had died from a heroin overdose. In Depeche modes, Dave Gahn, had been dramatically brought back to life after a speedball nearly killed him. Shannon Houn of Blind Mellon was dead, and Kristen Paff, of Hole, she was also dead. Stone Temple Pilots Scott Weilin was back in rehab.

But the smashing pumpkins were eager to distance themselves from what the media was making out to be an epidemic. So the first thing Billy, Darcy, and James did after they were hauled down to the 19th precinct and questioned on the morning of their drummer's arrest was to fire their drummer, Jimmy Chamberlain. It was a time of transition, a time in which their founding member, now their former drummer, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and began as court-ordered drug treatment. The time in which the melancholy tour at last resumed after a month of canceled dates, with filters Matt Walker behind the kit and the frogs as Dennis Flemmian on Keys.

It was the time in which Billy Corgan shaved off his thinning hair. His shiny bald head signaled the start of something new, and the aesthetic was minimal and the emotions were stark. The contrast was high, pale white skin, black eyeliner, black fingernail, fingernail polish, clothing also black. In just two years' time, the Smashing Pumpkins would rebrand themselves as the ultimate alternative outsiders, as Goths who had emerged from under a cloak of paisley shirts,

plaid lumber jackets, and big, polished, Boston-sized riffs. The transformation would be complete. Ever since he revealed his strange experience with the shapeshifter to the public, he wondered if perhaps he had hallucinated the whole thing, but he'd been sober at the time. Did people hallucinate while they were sober?

Surely it was possible. That was the whole point. of the shapeshifter, though, wasn't it? That anything was possible? Hallucination or not, it didn't change what he saw. This was his reality, not someone else's. And they weren't there. They didn't bear witness.

Perhaps one had to be open to the experience in order to have it. But there had to be a reason that he had been shown this profound and inexplicable thing. Just like there had to be a reason why the United States government had invited him to a closed door off-the-record meeting. Wait, what? That's right. The United States government had invited Billy Corgan to a closed door off-the-record meeting. Something about cultural influence, disclosure.

He didn't know why he'd been singled out. But then the abductee has no clue why the aliens picked them to poke and prod. Do they? Billy wasn't expecting to see it a second time, but he should have. These things are bound to recur. Once your eyes have been opened, it's tough to close them. And they were alone again. naked body just as he'd remembered it before the turn. He took in the contours of the flesh,

the slope of the hips and the arch at the back. It was hypnotizing. The spell had been cast, and so the change began. The lights became darker, and the darks became light. And the form was now fluid. The body rearranging itself as every other point of focus in the room faded away in time ground to a halt. He realized that his heart was pounding. His head was spinning, and unless his eyes were deceiving him, he was the subject of the gaze of the shapeshifter yet again. Change is inevitable. People change and bands change. And after three records of inthemic, cathartic guitar rock, the smashing pumpkins changed dramatically for the first time. Isolation. The thing that had motivated. to Billy Corgan to start a band in the first place was bearing down hard. Billy's mother was dying and his marriage was coming to an end. Jimmy Chamberlain was still persona non grata and so drum machines

were becoming more commonplace. Billy for one wasn't sure what the new record was going to be but he knew he wanted to make it together with James and Darcy with the people that kept him from being isolated like he did as a child. So we rented a house in Los Angeles. They could all live there and record there, just like the Red Hot Chili Peppers did with Blood Sugar Sex Magic. But James needed space. James went to his own house every night after the sessions. And so here comes isolation and here comes change. The Smashing Pumpkin's fourth album, Adore, was released in June of 1998. It was quieter and gloomier than the band's previous albums, and it locked onto the

Electronica Zykeyes by incorporating more loops and machines than the band had ever done before. And the critics dug it. The public, not so much. After performing well upon its release, Ador quickly fell off the charts. For the first time in his career, Billy Corgan was not leveling up. And thus, he felt more isolated than he had in years. Maybe the change was too much, too fast. In the video for the album's first single, Ava Adore, Billy James, and Darcy have gone full goth gauh. Billy's head and face are so white and his long gown is so black that he looks like Nosferatu. It's kind of a shock, actually, but perhaps not as shocking as what went down just one and a half years later. January 25, 2000, the south side of Chicago, late.

Darcy Retsky exited the building on West Grand Avenue and made a B-line to the car parked alongside the curb. She slipped into the passenger seat while the driver, Tony Young, settled in behind the wheel. The three bags of cracked cocaine Darcy had just purchased were safely hidden inside Tony's pocket. Darcy was unaware that she was being watched. Across the street, undercover cops sat in an unmarked vehicle. They had seen Darcy and Tony walk in and out of the building. And while they didn't witness the deal go down on the inside, they knew it had gone down all the same. Now they just needed to wait for a reason to pull the car over, any reason to nail the prodigal daughter.

Darcy wasn't even supposed to be here. Four months earlier, in September of 1999, she quit the Smashing Pumpkins and left Chicago for Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. The decision was shocking at the time, especially because Jimmy Chamberlain had finally rejoined the band that soon. spring. What should have been this triumphant, redemptive moment was suddenly sour, and the pumpkins had only been whole for less than a year before they splintered apart again. Darcy gave no public comment. She went deep into civilian life, and then in January she quietly returned to Chicago. Much had changed since the last time she'd been here. Back in 96, when Jimmy was fired, Garcy had gone on MTV with Billy and James. They all told Tabitha Saurin about,

about how they didn't tolerate hard drugs in the band, that they were breaking with the stereotype of the live, fast, die, rock and roller. They weren't the ones that were burn out. Instead, they would fade away. And now in Chicago in the year 2000, the Darcy of 96 was fading away fast as she became the thing she once spoken about.

Tony turned the key of the ignition and put the car and drive. He pulled away into the darkness without the car's headlights on. offense number one. He made an illegal U-turn and then another. Offense numbers two and three. The flash of blue lights and the wall of the siren came next.

And Tony Young pulled the car over. Cops flanked either side. Tony and Darcy were searched and the cops found the crack easy. Tony said it wasn't his. He said Darcy gave it to him to hold. And Darcy may have been a hypocrite, but she wasn't a liar.

She confirmed Tony's story. and she was arrested and charged with possession. And while Darcy began an arduous legal process, her former band, with a clean Jimmy Chamberlain, put the finishing touches on their newest record. Darcy had played on the Pumpkin's fifth album, Macana and the Machines of God. But it was Melissa Off de Marr, formerly of Hole,

who was going out on tour as her replacement. Whether it's the pixies or the police or the Smiths or even the Beatles, the stories of clashing egos and controlling taskmasters are often the driving force behind a band breakup. In the case of Darcy's breakup with the smashing pumpkins, it was years before anyone said anything about what had happened. Darcy's arrest for cracked cocaine suddenly put her in a different light.

And so when Billy Corrigan later said that Darcy didn't quit, but that she was fired for being a mean-spirited drug addict to refuse to get help, you had to admit that that kind of tracked. Darcy, on the other hand, offered up her own point of view, and it too seemed to be legit. In 2018, nearly two decades since she'd spoken to the press, she gave an interview to alternative nation. She referred to her past relationship with Billy as incredibly abusive, saying that he loved to humiliate people and shame people in front of other people. She described the fights and arguments as constant and left because she didn't have the energy

to fight anymore. She even included a dig at Billy's unbelievable shapeshifter story, adding, I honestly think he may have a brain tumor. And so we've come full circle. Back to the shapeshifter thing. Did that actually happen? Do I think Billy Corgan saw someone transform in front of him not once but twice? Do I think Darcy was fired because she broke the cardinal rule of the band by using hard drugs?

Or do I think she quit because, as Kim Deal and Kim Gordy, and pavement have previously stated, Billy Corgan is an asshole. What I believe, and what you believe, is all subject to change. Perspectives are always changing, just like the music and just like the smashing pumpkins. Because people are always changing.

The goal is to steer clear of any change that turns you from someone who makes great music into a total disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this. is disgrace land. All right guys, thanks for checking out this episode of Disgraceland. Question of the week, an obvious one. Do you think Billy Corgan actually saw somebody turn into,

I don't know, whatever the hell he says he saw them turn into? Do you think he saw a shapeshifter not once or twice? And if the answer is no, I want to know why. Same with if the answer is yes. 617-9066638 voicemail and text. Call me with your answer, and you might hear yourself on the next bonus episode of Disgraceland, the after party coming up right after this. All right, here comes some credits.

Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and IHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgraceland Pod. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgraceland

Pod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod. Rockerola. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities.

Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to dole out advice. Guests like Tiffany Haddish. Kind of slide into people's DMs. I like Bumble.

Also, girl, Farmers Only.com. Estate sales, funerals, auctions are usually good. There's a lot of good men there. Grocery stores near gyms. Darcy Cardin. Sherry O'Terry, Anna Farris, Dave Franco, Madeline Klein, Adam Scott, T.S. Madison, and more. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's me, Anna Sinfield. host of The Girlfriends. I'm back with more one-off interviews with some truly kick-ass women on The Girlfriend's Spotlight. I'm going to climb this. Is Badness Hereditary? Let's see how we can stop killing. I'm not too intimidated by her. What are you talking about? Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.