Hallowe'en farewell

Smashing Pumpkins | Wembley Arena London

So farewell then, Smashing Pumpkins. A month from now the most successful American alternative rock band will play their last show in their home town of Chicago. Somehow though, the announcement that their "Sacred and Profane" tour will be their last has already taken the sting out of the news.

So farewell then, Smashing Pumpkins. A month from now the most successful American alternative rock band will play their last show in their home town of Chicago. Somehow though, the announcement that their "Sacred and Profane" tour will be their last has already taken the sting out of the news.

Such manipulation is entirely consistent with frontman Billy Corgan's vision for what has been his baby all along. Corgan, a man so abrasive that even Ozzy Osbourne's wife finds him too obnoxious to manage, has always been driven, frequently seeming like a man set on avenging his unhappy youth, on occasion using the weapon of triple albums.

But not even an appearance on The Simpsons could ever make the Pumpkins cool.

Waylon Smithers, while Homer's comment to him - "My kids think you're the greatest. And thanks to your gloomy music, they stopped dreaming of a future I can't possibly provide," - encapsulated how seriously the grown-up world took the Pumpkins - ie not at all.

Their demise hasn't come a moment too soon. The Pumpkins were once a compact, furious rock outfit, dynamically adept and if somewhat unmelodic at least exciting. Though not as insultingly bad as their graceless Glastonbury set in 1997, only dedication to duty prevented this reviewer from walking out.

Corgan comes on holding an acoustic guitar - always a bad sign. So it proves.

The early part of the set consists of apparently identical pompous ballads. Eventually Corgan and guitarist James Iha leave the stage and suddenly there's an authentic pomp-rock synthesiser solo, followed by a drum solo! The rocked-up section is hardly better.

Singles like "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" are unrecognisable, and the only stand-outs are the knowing "Heavy Metal Machine" and the unreleased set closer "Zeus Rising". Decent songs such as "Tonight" are simply massacred.

In two months, apart from the loyal few thousand, who will remember Smashing Pumpkins? Perhaps someone will make a movie about glum Nineties teenagers, called, say, Cherub Rod, but don't count on it. On this evidence, good riddance.

A version of this review appeared in later editions of Saturday's paper