![]() The liner notes offered the listeners the option to mail a dollar to the band, and recieve a lyric sheet (a one page, two-sided sheet). The problem with this format is that the lyrics became unreadable. ![]() The pictures were reduced in size drastically, and a four page foldout format was adopted. Original issues of the album had a 20 page booklet, with one page devoted to each song/picture, but Corgan eventually felt unhappy with the way the artwork looked, and the packaging was changed. They selected pictures (mostly of people from Corgan's family) and wrote the lyrics to the album over them. The artwork for the release was originally intended to be done by some outside artist, but to save money (at least according to reports), Corgan ended up putting together the artwork with the ex-girlfriend/future wife that many of the songs on the album are about. Eventually Corgan had a meltdown about Chamberlin's behavior, and laid down the law one day he forced Chamberlin to record the drum parts for "Cherub Rock" until they were perfect, which ended up being until his hands were bleeding from the effort. The only member of the band besides Corgan to completely record all their own parts for the album was drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who was battling a heroine addiction at the time, and would disappear for days at a time. Hours would be spent on 45-second segments of songs, countless overdubs would be done for each song (producer Butch Vig claims that almost 100 guitar tracks would be compressed into a single song), Corgan would even re-record many parts that were intended to be played by guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky. For this reason, an obsession with absolute sonic perfection overtook him, and tensions with other band members were exacerbated. ![]() ![]() This pressure as well as a recent break up with his girlfriend (and future wife), caused Corgan to have a nervous breakdown of sorts. Virgin Records executives were not blind to this, and started promoting Smashing Pumpkins as "the next Nirvana", and put a lot of pressure on songwriter Billy Corgan to deliver with a breakout album for their next release. Although the latter album stunted sales for Gish, it set the stage for alternative rock to inherit mainstream dominance for several years. Smashing Pumpkins' first album, Gish, was well recieved by the critics, but was ultimately overshadowed by another Butch Vig produced album, Nirvana's Nevermind. ![]()
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