Despite having revived the Smashing Pumpkins brand with more touring throughout recent years and more albums, the only constant member, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist, Billy Corgan has never approved the commercial success of the band’s ’90s success.

Corgan had to put his ego aside when he accepted the fact a few years ago that the Smashing Pumpkins were simply not the same without James Iha, their original guitarist, one of the founding fathers of the group in 1998, as well as the drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and D’Arcy Wretzky, the group’s bassist.

After some emails sent by Iha and a few dinners, Corgan began to slow bring his band back together. Well almost. The original group in July, minus Wretzky, is set to go on tour with 38 concert dates. Their summer tour is titled Shiny And Oh So Bright.  Although the show happens to fall on their 30th anniversary, they claim that this tour is not a nostalgia trip whatsoever.

Corgan says that this is the happiest time for the Smashing Pumpkins, while the rest are not as excited. Time will tell how fans react to their return after all of Corgans bizarre moves. He remains most conflicted in regaining his public image, and how it has affected his band’s legacy.  He expresses that he knows if he had kept more quiet and had managed to keep his band together, they could be a lot more successful today.

The controversy worked to their favor, but only to a certain point.  The rest of the band fell away, which is something Corgan did not realize would happen. Corgan compares the band reuniting to rekindling a romance nearly two decades later. The love is surely there, but is the magic and the language still there?

The band decided everything was there in the studio,  putting on a demo of 15 songs, hoping to perfect one single with Rubin. He picked eight songs to record.  The band was most pumped up for their new work, but quickly realized that the crowd wants most to hear their most loved songs from back in the day.