Why was Drummer Mike Byrne sacked from the Smashing Pumpkins?
Guitarists and singer Billy Corgan announced the departure of drummer Mike Byrne from the Smashing Pumpkins. At the time, Corgan implied that Byrne, who was 19 years old when he joined the Pumpkins in 2010, required too much “hand-holding,” and Corgan opted instead to work with seasoned drummer Tommy Lee for the recording of the band’s next studio album.
In a new blog on the Smashing Pumpkins’ Nexus website, Corgan expanded on Byrne’s split from the band. The long-winded post is quintessential Corgan, a diatribe of adjectives and proverbs incoherently strung together. But as best I can tell, Corgan blames Byrne, who he describes as a “twitch” with ADD, for stifling the recording of the Pumpkins’ second of two new albums, Day For Night. Corgan seems to imply that Byrne found his ideas boring, which Corgan takes to be indicative of an entire generation’s mindset. Corgan writes,
Mike Byrne has taught me a lot about his generation. And watching the twitch up close, the ADD of it all, I’m starting to understand what he found boring about The Mighty SP. He wasn’t wrong. But he also wasn’t right, too. Because the way to replace something is to best it, not join it’s shallow-pool ranks. And great musicians like MB are capable; if they are willing to stop looking into the shiny sun and wonder, quite rightly, what lies on the dark side of the moon.
Imagine this: was the deco world of the 30’s any less bright to that generation? Great art movements came, but also too the set-up for world war. How so? Light meets shadow. See? Or shadow meets light.
And where there is glittering, yet false *illumination, we (the collective We) must destroy it by being more real, more true, more-more. It works every time IF you can pass the muster of your own oblivion; or yawn. Mix that with kinetic, electric, hyperbolic punk rock I-don’t give-a-fuck-how-you-do-it and maybe, just maybe, someone wakes the fuck up from that coma they’re in.
Of course, Corgan was able to successfully complete the first of the Pumpkins’ new albums, Monuments to an Elegy, which will see release on December 9th. He’s already previewed the album with “Being Beige”, and today, he shared another track in the form of “One and All”.