#27: "Mayonaise" - Smashing Pumpkins

On a recent bonus episode of Director’s Club (in which I reflect on a year in music with some journalist friends), I don’t think I quite sold how much Siamese Dream meant to me at the time. Part of me wonders if it’s a case of, “well I’m not an angst-ridden teen anymore so it makes sense why listening to it now lacks the same feeling I once experienced back in high school.” But not conveying my love of this song is something I didn’t intend, because “Mayonaise” was another true heartbreaking revelatory moment of music for me in a year full of them.

1993 was when I first decided to form a band with a percussionist, I met in the high school concert band. I tried playing trumpet but decided I wanted to play percussion and xylophone instead. Nathan was one of the best drummers I had ever heard and perhaps that had a lot to do with the fact that he was also in the high school jazz band honing his talent. One thing’s for sure though: him and I loved Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins and a lot of that had to do with the two drummers for Nathan. For me, it was about the guitar sound that Butch Vig captured on both Nevermind and Siamese Dream along with the pop polish gloss on Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend.

When thinking of why Siamese Dream didn’t end up as my favorite record of 1993 in the year 2023, it may be due to the fact that I learned more about the main songwriter over the years or didn’t want to inflate an already overinflated ego. But it should be all about the songs. Billy Corgan also had such intense and unyielding ideas about how he wanted to sound that notoriously, on Siamese Dream, he insisted on playing most of the guitar and bass parts himself. He of course wanted to layer an enormous amount of guitar tracks, inspired by My Bloody Valentine’s approach to noisy dream pop. In the end, he succeeded in a plethora of ways to not only capture that style, but also made it undeniably Billy Corgan. Mellon Collie was the flipside in which some tracks were even played live with all band members present.

Nobody’s going to play drums like Jimmy Chamberlain, so he was irreplaceable and also influenced by jazz drumming. D’Arcy Wretzky and James Iha were largely sidelined due to Corgan’s desire for control. Billy would argue that they failed to rise to the occasion. They’d probably argue that Billy was full of it. Some artists are better at collaboration while others want to do most of the work in the studio and just have an accompanying “band” perform the songs live when the time comes. I admit that it’s interesting that my two favorite songs on Siamese Dream have a co-writer credit for James Iha, someone that will come up again in the future as an influence for me.

Billy Corgan has explained that the ninth track on Siamese Dream was the product of a host of unlikely random inspirations. That intentionally misspelled title? It may have come from the front-man having a rummage around in his fridge. The weird, whistling feedback? A random occurrence when Billy took his fingers off a cheap guitar he’d been fooling around with. The litany of strange lyrical choices such as, ‘Fool enough to almost be it / Cool enough to not quite see it’? Just a series of “weird one-liners” that came together in his head in a stream-of-consciousness fashion to where someone like Courtney Love would declare, “most of the songs on Siamese Dream are about me.”

The arpeggiated intro is beautiful and not overly challenging. It’s just the right feel to start things off - clean, crisp and melancholic. When the strumming kicks in, there is a main chord shape that Iha is using for much of the song. It is this chord shape that is giving most of the chords in the progressions an add9 quality about them. The use of a Big Muff fuzz guitar pedal creates a warm blanket of distortion that is enveloping. The subtle use of Chamberlin’s drums kicking in with a fill only to lead to an explosion of power chords transforms this into a dynamic and atmospheric composition. Like most of the Pumpkins songs from this era, it’s about a bittersweet, darkly romantic mood lending itself to a rich and textured sonic landscape of conflicted emotion.

It’s such a calming song that is also loud and fierce. In 1993, my emotions were bigger than life and this song speaks to that beautifully. Lyrically, "Mayonaise" delves into themes of introspection, isolation, and longing. The lyrics evoke such a sense of emotional vulnerability and introspective exploration, culminating in the perfect takeaway line, “I just want to be me.” The thoughtful, reflective nature of the lyrics adds depth and resonance to the overall sentiment. I can’t help but feel moved once the vocals drop and Corgan’s guitar solo kicks in before briefly diminishing into a pool of 12-string strumming. “Out of hand and out of season / Out of love and out of feeling.” The intensity kicks back in at the precisely right moment.

Billy Corgan's prowess as a guitarist showcases his ability to create memorable and emotionally charged guitar work. Those eerie guitars towards the end after the snare drum collapses with one final sonic boom, sounds a bit like Robert Fripp, serving as a comedown climax that perfectly complements the overall mood. The song ends where it began only this time highlighted by some lead guitar in the background. It also has a perfect fade to where once it concludes, to me it feels like the quintessential Smashing Pumpkins song from this era in a way that always leave me astonished.

Goes to show that a little more research and Wikipedia can go a long way since it did sound a little bit funny to think of Billy Corgan naming the song after having “a rummage around in his fridge.” But song titles don’t really matter - it’s the feeling that you’re left with. Music is the closest thing we have to time travel since I immediately go back to what I was going through when I first bought this CD. I’ve probably written those exact same words in the past. I overplayed Siamese Dream and even recall the CD booklet getting soaked in water to where I had to go out and buy another copy. From that point I was a Pumpkins devotee.

I will admit that I feel more connection and resonance to the Mellon Collie-Adore era and even some of Machina still strikes a chord. Siamese Dream is truly their most consistent work with “Mayonaise” being the perfect summation of what made them such a great band. However, I liked it when this band became less consistent, more experimental and unpredictable. That definitely happened with their follow-up and as stated, that was a far more collaborative effort to where you even hear all the band members sing on the final track, an obvious homage to The Beatles’ “Good Night.”

Perhaps when I talk about a couple of records from the past, I underplay their value to me today because I’m not the same person that I was back in 1993. It certainly took me a long while to get into bands like Pavement, The Afghan Whigs and countless other examples. But the Pumpkins were pretty much instant bruised romantic love for me at the outset, especially since I was first experiencing confusion, longing and rejection as a freshman in high school. “Mayonaise” still moves me in ways that some other songs on Siamese Dream do not these days. But it’s still a remarkable work of art that is rightfully praised as a monumental breakthrough in alternative rock that lead to countless imitators. It makes sense that Corgan felt that Nirvana were there rivals though making music should never be a competition.

I’m grateful for the early days of the Smashing Pumpkins all the way up to the year 2000 where they “broke up” and played a final show at the Metro that I attended. It did feel like the end of an era especially as I was about to try college along with my first year-long relationship with a mutual fan of theirs. The times were changing dramatically. My dad bought a new home, I was about to start working in a library and I’d even have a house party where an unexpected amount of friends all turned up.

The year 2000-2001 was the period where I was the happiest so maybe I just said farewell and goodnight to the Pumpkins that made me dismiss their most important work. I was so focused on the “obscured” B-sides on playlists because I felt they deserved recognition. Everybody knew Siamese Dream so I began to just listen to it less. But I was wrong in not stating its importance for me in 1993 especially hearing a song like “Mayonaise” and wishing I could write something every bit as beautiful & intoxicating as that. We should be so lucky to have a record like Siamese Dream to be there for us at precisely the right time. It spoke to me then and a song like “Mayonaise” still speaks to me now. Oh and that guitar sound - there will never be another record that sounds like disenchanted love filtered through layered fuzz the way the band captured back then. I wouldn’t say the whole record is perfect, but it comes very close to masterpiece status thanks to songs like this one.