On the same day Billy Corgan released his first solo album, TheFutureEmbrace, he announced that he wants to reunite his band, The Smashing Pumpkins.
"For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep," Chicago resident Corgan, 38, wrote in a full-page ads published Tuesday in his hometown newspapers.
"But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams," he wrote.
After a bumpy 13-year run together, The Smashing Pumpkins, a leader in the early 1990s alternative rock revolution, broke up five years ago after winning two Grammys and selling millions of albums. Corgan's next project, Zwan, dissolved after only one album.
Pumpkins included drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky, who left after the final album's recording and was replaced by former Hole bassist Melissa auf der Maur on the subsequent tour.
No telling whether his old bandmates would like to join him for the reunion. While Chamberlin remains a close collaborator with Corgan, Iha and Wretzky have had a strained relationship with their former frontman.
"That band has a soul," Corgan told the Chicago Tribune. "I don't care who's in it."
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