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Smashing Pumpkins celebrated their 30th anniversary Thursday with a guest-filled concert that featured Courtney Love joining the band onstage for four songs.
Love led Billy Corgan and company on a pair of Hole songs, “Celebrity Skin” and “Malibu” – both co-written by Corgan – and remained onstage to assist the Smashing Pumpkins on “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” (“Only the chorus on this, right?” Love asked, admitting she didn’t know the rest of the song’s lyrics.) Love also took part in the set-ending rendition of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” alongside Peter Hook and AFI’s Davey Havok.
“I do remember the day we met this young lady. She was in this band called Hole. They had a few minor indie hits and then just faded into obscurity. I jest,” Corgan told the crowd during one of the concert’s trips down memory lane.
“One of my favorite people in the world. We’ve made love, we’ve not made love, we’ve made up, we’ve broken up, but we’re back together again, like George and Tammy.”
Love called Corgan her “nemesis, best friend, lover – and what a lover, I asked for permission to say that – worst friend, best friend, protector, career maker.”
Other guests at the Smashing Pumpkins’ 30th anniversary gig in Holmdel, New Jersey included Deftones’ Chino Moreno, the Killers’ Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer and Sugar Ray‘s Mark McGrath, who performed his band’s hit “Fly” alongside the reunited Pumpkins lineup. The unlikely tandem also covered Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law”:
