Headlights Pointed At The Dawn

For this Friday Night Video, we’re going back a way, to the mid-nineties. Smashing Pumpkins had released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness a fittingly grandiose title for an ambitious and widely varied double-album. At the time, I heard the first single, the “rat in cage” song, and I thought this latest effort wasn’t for me. I actually went out and sold my Smashing Pumpkins CDs, which I had been collecting since shortly after the release of their debut, Gish.

It wasn’t until later that I found out there were some strong tracks on the third official record from the band. “1979” is a well-loved classic. Even Pavement covered the song, and they had their own song with the lyrics, “I don’t understand what they mean, and I could really give a f**k,” referring to SP.

Billy Corgan’s voice on studio recordings can sound as sweet as honey, but rarely comes off the same way live. It can be a bit shocking. I remember Smashing Pumpkins performance on SNL after the release of Siamese Dream. As soon as the vocals came in on “Cherub Rock,” I found myself thinking I had somehow been deceived by the uncanny magic of studio wizards.¹ The delivery had an abrasiveness that, while not absent in the official album recordings, was placed more deliberately in certain spots. Compare the studio version of “1979” from the video to this fairly recent performance of the song on the Howard Stern show.

The video for the song features teenagers in their element — living bundles of chaotic energy, pure recklessness, unconstrained lust and spontaneous violence. Corgan, sporting a wispy mustache, surveys the scene from a car, with a mixture of delight and passive detachment.

The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (YouTube)

1. In this case, Butch Vig. ↩︎