Uncertainty in Pumpkin's patch
During a phone interview, the phrase James Iha utters the most is, "I don't know." Seriously, he says it about 50 times.
He's neither dumb nor immature, just a bit shell-shocked. You would be, too, if the band you spent nearly 12 years of your life with was breaking up. Iha plays guitar for the Smashing Pumpkins, which does its last local show (until the big reunion, of course) at Summersault 2000, Sunday in Commonwealth Stadium. Singer Billy Corgan made the announcement in May. After this tour, it's over.
I ask Iha: Do you know what you're going to do?
"I don't know."
Billy said there might be another new album in the works. Is this true?
"I don't know."
What about a box set retrospective?
"I don't know," Iha laughs. "The band hasn't even broken up yet. A box set retrospective? I don't know. I don't know."
He says more than that, of course. On the breakup and the "dramatic fashion" in which Corgan wants to go out, Iha is "perfectly fine with it."
He'd be fine with continuing, too, but "I think I'd need a substantial break. Just in announcing it, people ask me, 'blah, blah blah, how does it feel?' I'm like, well, you know, it's sad and weird and all that. But the big thing I was thinking about is that I've been in the band 11 years and about nine to 10 months out of every year, I do the band 24-7. I don't know. I just don't want to do that for the rest of my life. It sounds depressing. I mean, rock 'n' roll is great, but in some sort of grand, immortal sense, I don't want to look back and be this old rock 'n' roll codger. I think there's more to life than rock 'n' roll."
Fans need not worry about there being a pall on the show. If anything, the Pumpkins' set may be more intense than ever because the band doesn't have anything left to lose. Iha says he's just going to do what he always does.
"I can't really play much better or more passionately. I'm aware how some of our fans feel and that's sad, but I guess it doesn't change it for me, because I always try to play good shows. Most of our concerts have been pretty over the top anyway. Unless we start screaming things incoherently over Allen Ginsberg's Howl or something, I don't know how much further we can go."
As with all such major rock band break-ups, there have been the usual pronouncements about the "death of rock." Some point to the less-than-spectacular sales of the Pumpkins' latest album, Machina/The Machines of God. It has nothing to do with the "Britneys of the world," as Corgan put it. It's that old devil time.
"If you're struggling to keep some monolith sales thing together, I think it's really hard to compete with time, more so than any pop band that comes along," Iha says. "You're dealing more with time. People just move on. It doesn't matter what it is.
"I think everybody wishes we had sold more records like our past. I guess when people point it out and they make it sound like your failure, what are you going to say? If you think the music's good, which I think it is, and it's a good record, which I think it is, I don't know what else you can do. It's ridiculous to try to fight the press or fight people's opinions other than just go out there and play concerts. You can't change the way the world works or the way time works."
He really doesn't know if there's going to be another album before the band packs it in. Corgan apparently posts his thoughts on the band's Web site before consulting with his bandmates. What Iha does know is that he won't have to worry about keeping busy into 2001 and beyond. He says he'll "probably" do another solo album, open a studio in New York with two of his friends and will enjoy "doing things on my own, more stuff that I create myself, rather than doing it by committee."
But won't he miss the rock superstar lifestyle? "I guess I won't know until two years from now and I'm like, 'Oh, I really wanna go on tour and rock.' I don't know. I'm sure that will happen. Whatever."
By MIKE ROSS
Edmonton Sun
