This should be fun for Smashing Pumpkins die-hards. Let me just say, I was the biggest Pumpkins fan between the Lull EP and MCIS and saw them a half dozen times back then. The Pumpkins’ double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness just turned 30, and seeing the talk about it made me remember how I used to think the album’s debut single, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” the “Despite all my rage” riffs reminded me so much of another song I loved that came out a year earlier: “Delivery” (released as “Basketcase” in the U.K.) by the Irish alternative rock band Compulsion. The song appears on their album Comforter, released in March 1994. I believe Corgan got the phrasing and spirit of the Bullet chorus riff from the main riff that propels Compulsion’s entire song.
Billy Corgan said in a January 1997 Guitar World feature titled “King B’s” that he wrote that quiet (“The world is a vampire…”) opening riff in 1993 and finished the ‘Despite all my rage…’ chorus “a year and a half later in London during the ‘Landslide’ recording sessions,” which means he is suggesting the “Despite all my rage…” riff was written sometime in early 1994.
The thing is, “Landslide” was recorded in September 1993 at BBC London, not in 1994.
I wondered, since Billy had the timeline confused, was it possible the Pumpkins were in London, or somehow heard Compulsions track in early ‘94?
Lo and behold, on February 26, 1994, they played the London Astoria… and Compulsion opened for them! I was not expecting that.
Compulsion had been playing “Delivery” on their tour all year. The song’s main riff has a strikingly similar feel to the later “Despite all my rage” chorus. Even the breakdown section before “Tell me I’m the only one…” in Bullet — the timing and phrasing are different, obviously, but that whole section totally echoes the breakdown in “Delivery.” Particularly, the repeated outro “And I still believe that I can not be saved” riffage sounds just like the “Time will never destroy your heart” outro in “Delivery.”
I believe Corgan heard “Delivery” in London in February 1994, and that’s what he sub*consciously used when completing those parts of “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” - and it’s what he’s referring to when he suggests he finished the rest of the chorus in London early 1994.
Bullet With Butterfly Wings was, in part, inspired by “Delivery” by the band Compulsion.
