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Smashing Pumpkins music biography continued...

singer/songwriter/guitarist Billy Corrigan and his friend, guitarist James Iha and the two played various gigs with the aid of a drum machine. Corrigan met D'Arcy Wretzky at a club show and she soon joined the group as a bassist. Soon, the band had gained a dedicated local following, including the head of a local club who booked them to open for Jane's Addiction. Before the pivotal concert, the band hired Jimmy Chamberlin, a former jazz musician, as their full-time drummer.
The Smashing Pumpkins broke into the musical mainstream with their second album, 1993's Siamese Dream, which came on the heels of mainstream success from grunge rockers Pearl Jam and Nirvana. The Pumpkins built their audience with extensive touring and their follow-up, 1995's double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. It contained such hit Smashing Pumpkins songs as "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight", and "Thirty-Three."—all of which went gold. In their next outing, however, the band veered away from guitar oriented rock and toward electronica. Following that, internal fighting, drug use, and diminishing sales hampered the band and led to a 2000 break-up. But in April 2006, the Pumpkins officially announced that they were reuniting and recording a new album. Returning members Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin were joined by new additions Jeff Schroeder (guitar/vocals), Ginger Reyes (bass/vocals), and Lisa Harriton (keyboard/vocals) in 2007 to tour in support of their new release, Zeitgeist.
With approximately 18.3 million albums sold in the United States alone as of 2006, the Smashing Pumpkins were one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands of the 1990s. Many of the songs Corrigan wrote for the Pumpkins during their heyday were cathartic expressions of emotion, full of personal musings and strong indictments of himself and those close to him. More than anything his lyrics are what resonated with the fans and helped put the band on top.