If you’ve been wondering why The Smashing Pumpkins haven’t announced any Australian tour dates for the near future, frontman Billy Corgan has suggested that Aussie tour promoters are to blame.
It’s currently been almost four years since The Smashing Pumpkins were on Aussie soil, when they toured Australia as part of the 2015 edition of Soundwave.
Of course, as we now know, the festival ended its life cycle later that year as a financial disaster, with The Smashing Pumpkins being owed close to $1.3 million dollars for their appearance.
Since then though, the Aussie music scene looks a little bit different, and with The Smashing Pumpkins currently parading a (mostly) reunited lineup around the world, it’s bound to be Australia’s turn soon, right? Well, not according to Billy Corgan.
Taking to his Instagram story last night, Billy Corgan fielded an array of questions from his dedicated fans in regards to just about anything. However, a bunch of Aussie fans also got involved, asking the rocker when we might end up seeing their ‘Shiny And Oh So Bright’ down under.
“Lots of Australian eager for Shiny tour,” wrote one fan. “You seeing that too?” Corgan was rather concise in his response, noting that “Aussie fans not same as Aussie promoters”.
When another fan asked if the band was ever “stuffed by promoters”, Corgan again responded in kind. “In Australia, actually,” he explained. “Like huge. Like paid nothing on the parking lot tour.”
Another fan soon echoed the general sentiment, stating that Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah “was a disgrace”, and hoped that the band would eventually see what they were owed. “Would only happen thru a lawsuit,” Corgan replied.
After a fan prompted Billy Corgan to “name some promoters for us to contact and heckle”, The Smashing Pumpkins was rather pragmatic in his response.
“Not gonna happen,” he wrote. Sad, but true. No need to hassle.”
“They are business people making business decisions. We can politely disagree. But when you sell as many tickets as we have one wonders why the same math can’t apply elsewhere.”
While it doesn’t look as though The Smashing Pumpkins have any plans to make a trip to Australia in the near future, we can only hope that things might change down the line, and we’ll be able to see some of their new tunes performed live.
Check out The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Solara'”
