Song of the day for July 12, 2024
Bullet With Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins is today’s featured song.
In 1996 on this date Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was charged with drug possession after the death of the bands keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin in his New York Hotel room.
Chamberlin made “tons of cash” as a carpenter, before giving up the job to move to Chicago and devote himself to the band. Chamberlin’s entry quickly pushed the band toward a more powerful, intense sound.
During this period Chamberlin struggled with substance abuse. During the recording of 1993’s Siamese Dream in Marietta, Georgia, Chamberlin often disappeared for days at a time into the drug underworld of Atlanta, while the rest of the band feared for his life. He later said of his drug addiction that “It’s pretty textbook […] Guy makes it in rock band, gets very full of himself, starts thinking he’s indestructible, and all of a sudden he destroys himself.”
In the midst of the lengthy world tour supporting 1995’s multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Chamberlin’s father died, and his substance abuse hit a fever pitch. Of this period, Chamberlin later said, “I learned that escapism was better than emotion, and that’s where I hid… It got to the point that I really didn’t care. Life was scary for me.” Prior to shows scheduled July 12, 1996 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Chamberlin and touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on heroin; Melvoin subsequently died, and Chamberlin was kicked out of the band, ostensibly to protect his health. Corgan later told MTV News that Chamberlin had already overdosed on two different occasions during the Mellon Collie tour prior to the July 1996 event, but that the band had managed to keep those situations private.
In October 1998, Corgan convened a band meeting in which Chamberlin was reinstated as the group’s drummer, and the band decided to break up after one more album and tour. The band yielded two albums in 2000, Machina/The Machines of God and the freely distributed Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, before performing a farewell show in Chicago on December 2, 2000.
