The Smashing Pumpkins played a pre-Lollapalooza show in Chicago recently, and brought out their former bassist Melissa Auf der Maur and The Brady Bunch’s Barry Williams as special guests.
The gig took place on Wednesday night (July 29), as the ‘90s alt icons took to the stage at Riviera Theatre ahead of their set at Lollapalooza 2026 tonight (Friday July 31).
For the set, Billy Corgan and co. broke out some more deep cuts than usual – playing ‘Dorian’ for the first time since 2015, ‘Thirty-Three’ for the first time since 2018, and breaking out ‘Aghori Mhori Mei’ track ‘War Dreams of Itself’ for the first time ever.
After kicking off the show with ‘1979’, ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ and ‘Edin’, the band broke out other fan favourites including ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Jellybelly’ and ‘Disarm’, before mixing things up by welcoming Barry Williams to the stage.
Williams is best known for playing Greg Brady on the classic sitcom The Brady Bunch, and came out to perform a cover of ‘It’s a Sunshine Day’ with Corgan – a song originally performed by the Brady kids on the show.
The collaboration came following the actor making an appearance on Corgan’s own podcast The Magnificent Others earlier this year, and the cover of ‘It’s a Sunshine Day’ in Chicago was pretty unconventional, with the backing singers joyously waving their arms along with the music as the frontman sang it in his long black leather coat.
There was another special guest on the night too, as former Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur came out to close the show with the band as they performed ‘The Everlasting Gaze’.
The reunion came just over 12 months after the Hole member reunited with the band in Montreal – which marked their first performance together since 2000.
When The Smashing Pumpkins return to Lollapalooza tonight, it will mark their first set at the festival in 32 years. Fans who aren’t attending the set in person can catch it in full as part of Lollapalooza’s 2026 livestream on Hulu and Disney+.
The pre-Lollapalooza show in Chicago comes after Corgan held a “requiem” show for his character ‘Zero’ – the persona he took on during the time of ‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’s release – and also confirmed he would be bringing his operatic reimagining of the hit 1995 record with a 60-piece orchestra to the UK later in 2026.
As for Auf Der Maur, the musician has recently dug into her archive and put together her first new album in 16 years, featuring songs she wrote during her time in Pumpkins and Hole.
Source:
www.nme.com
