Billy Corgan says Mike Byrne's split from The Smashing Pumpkins was down to the drummer's boredom.
The Pumpkins mainman hints that the age gap between himself and 24-year-old Byrne was also to blame for his departure from the group. Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee plays drums on one of the Pumpkins’ upcoming albums, Monuments To An Elegy.
In a post on his website, Corgan says: “Mike Byrne has taught me a lot about his generation. And watching the twitch up close, the ADD of it all, I’m starting to understand what he found boring about The Mighty SP. He wasn’t wrong. But he also wasn’t right.
“Because the way to replace something is to best it, not join its shallow-pool ranks. And great musicians like MB are capable – if they are willing to stop looking into the shiny sun and wonder, quite rightly, what lies on the dark side of the moon.”
Corgan also suggests in the post that recording sessions for the second of the two upcoming SP albums – Day For Night – are not going as well as he would like.
He says: “I’d love to tell you the new album, Day For Night, has been going well – it hasn’t. Day For Night, I’ve claimed, is to be something different, advanced somehow in its pop-rock-dark-glory. Good: in theory; hard to execute; and that’s nobody’s fault but my own.”
The Pumpkins announced earlier this year that both albums would be released in 2015 via BMG.
