And so we come to the last of my alternatives of the first four Smashing Pumpkins albums. Considering the dramas that had plagued the band as they recorded their first two albums, they paled into what happened on the Mellon Collie tour. Both dummer Jimmy Chamberlain and touring keyboard player, Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on heroin. Melvoin unfortunately died. Chamberlain survived but was fired form the group.
Corgan had also felt that he had taken guitar driven rock as far as he could so he decided that the next album would be a very different beast. This proved to be the case with more electronica and acoustic guitar were used a lot more. The first evidence of this being the song ‘Eye’, which featured on the soundtrack to the David Lynch movie, ‘Lost Highway’. After contributing a song to the ‘Batman & Robin’ movie (called ‘The End Is the Beginning Is the End’), mains songwriter Billy Corgan suggested that this songs electronic/guitar hybrid was the future sound of the band. However, their next album which was called ‘Adore’ did not sound like this single at all.
The album had a more somber feel to it compared to the Pumpkins albums that came before it. This could be attributed to the death of Morgan’s mother and divorce from his then wife. The change of direction was praised by the critics but it affected sales with this being the first Pumpkins record not to outsell its predecessor. The hard rock guitar sound would return for their fifth album, ‘Machina/The Machines Of God’ which came out in 2000.
What I did not realise when I bought ‘Adore’ on vinyl back in 1998 was that this mix was in mono. The clues were there in that the record label was red, the same as the Decca Record label would do for their mono releases back in the 1960s. Stereo releases on Decca at the same time had blue labels. I should have been able to work it out with my ears as well but it was only with the release of the deluxe edition 2014 that I realised there were two different mixes. I have followed the same track listing as the vinyl with one difference. The original vinyl came as a three sided affair, so for my version, the fourth side it comes with a selection of B-Sides which are all the original versions of these songs.
Side A
- To Shelia – Early Banjo Version (Adore Deluxe)
- Ava Adore – Puffy Combs Remix 1998 (Adore Deluxe)
- Perfect – Nellie Hooper Mix (Rarities & B-Sides)
- Daphne Descends – Live: Sao Paulo Session (Adore Deluxe)
- Once Upon A Time – Sadlands Demo (Adore Deluxe)
Side B
- Tear – From Digital Transfer (Adore Deluxe)
- Crestfallen – Matt Walker Realigned 2014 (Adore Deluxe)
- Appels + Oranjes (Adore Deluxe)
- Pug – Matt Walker Reimagined (Adore Deluxe)
- The Tale Of Dusty & Pistol Pete – Sandlands Demo (Adore Deluxe)
Side C
- Annie-Dog – Take 10/CRC Demo (Adore Deluxe)
- Shame – Take 1 (Adore Deluxe)
- Behold! The Night Mare – Alternative Vocal (Adore Deluxe)
- For Martha – Take 1/CRC Demo (Adore Deluxe)
- Blank Page – Early Version (Adore Deluxe)
Side D
- Daphne Descends – Kerry B. Mix (Perfect Single B-Side)
- Summer – Perfect (Single B-Side)
- Once In A While (Ava Adore Single B-Side)
- Czarina (Ava Adore Single B-Side)
- Call Out Hook (Crestfallen/To Shelia Single Bonus Track)