The Smashing Pumpkins Mark 30 Years of Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness With Deluxe Reissue

The Smashing Pumpkins are celebrating 30 years of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness with a deluxe reissue featuring unreleased tour audio, tarot cards, and liner notes from Billy Corgan.

The Smashing Pumpkins are celebrating three decades of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness with a massive deluxe anniversary reissue.

Released on October 24, 1995, the double album quickly became a defining work of the decade (described by the band themselves as their “magnum opus”), spawning classics like ‘1979’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Zero’, and ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’. The record went on to earn seven Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, and was later certified diamond by the RIAA.

On November 21, The Smashing Pumpkins will drop expanded editions of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. Multiple versions are coming: a 4CD package, a 4CD SHM-CD package, and a super deluxe six-LP limited-edition vinyl box set. Pre-orders for the Super Deluxe edition are available now.

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The Super Deluxe box set features newly written liner notes from Billy Corgan, along with more than 80 minutes of unreleased recordings from The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1996 Infinite Sadness tour that were only recently uncovered. The box set goes even further, including a tarot card deck, seven lithographs, a hardbound book, and a velvet slipcase with a cloth carrying bag.

Corgan reflected on the discovery of the live tapes, saying: “Unearthing these live recordings from the original lineup’s true, last large-scale tour was a labor of love, and for me certainly a bittersweet as once we blew apart in 1996, we were never quite the same: be it emotionally, or spiritually.”

The celebration doesn’t stop with the music. In late November, Corgan will team up with the Lyric Opera of Chicago for A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness. Running for seven performances, the shows will present new orchestrations of tracks from The Smashing Pumpkins album, with Corgan joined by soprano Sydney Mancasola, mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams, tenor Dominick Chenes, and baritone Edward Parks. Costumes come courtesy of House of Gilles, adding another layer to what’s billed as an immersive mix of rock, opera, and performance art.

Thirty years on, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness continues to loom large as a groundbreaking album – part of The Smashing Pumpkins’ long list of other standout works.