Swiss exclusivity

The arrival of the Smashing Pumpkins – one of the most ferocious, audacious and cult bands of the nineties – is exceptional in more ways than one. Eleven years since their last concert in Switzerland, the Chicago band will be performing exclusively in Switzerland and at the Montreux Jazz Festival for the first time. Creators of truly generational anthems such as ‘Today’, ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’, ‘1979’, ‘Cherub Rock’ and ‘Tonight, Tonight’, Billy Corgan and his cohort not only helped forge the sound of the 1990s, they reinvented it several times over. The Smashing Pumpkins have always been an almost unnaturally disruptive force, refusing to be simply characterised as having the brute force of alternative rock or the expansiveness of progressive rock. With their sonic experimentation, grandiose orchestrations, epic solos and long concept albums, the Smashing Pumpkins have always thought big. Hosting Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin in the majestic setting of a stage on the lake seems like an appropriate welcome to Montreux.