The Smashing Pumpkins are celebrating 30 years of “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” with an extensive tour to mark the occasion.
The Rats In A Cage Tour will feature the band playing two distinct sets: one celebrating the album that produced hits such as “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” “1979,” “Zero,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Muzzle,” and “Thirty-Three,” and another that spans nearly four decades’ worth of other hits, deep cuts, and fan-favorites.
The tour kicks off in September and will wrap with a Los Angeles stop at Kia Forum on Thursday, Nov. 12, before the group headlines the Darker Waves Festival in Huntington Beach on Saturday, Nov. 14 alongside Morrissey.
“Staging a Mellon Collie-themed show is something we’ve discussed for over a decade, and finally the stars have aligned, and exactly on the terms I’d set, which was to build a special night around its most enduring aspirations and ideas,” frontman Billy Corgan said in a news release. “With set 1 of the Rats In A Cage tour exclusively featuring Mellon Collie songs in a highly theatrical setting, and set 2 drawing from the rest of our canon so that there’s a decent amount of variance as to what songs we’ll play from night to night: from our first in ‘Gish’ to our last in ‘Aghori Mhori Mei’.”
Tickets will be available for Citi and Verizon presales starting at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 19. For complete presale details, visit citientertainment.com and myAccess in the My Verizon app.
Additional presales will run throughout the week, with the general on-sale beginning at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 21, at smashingpumpkins.com. Fans who are part of the band’s official fan club, VIZ CLUB, or who sign up on the group’s website will have access to an exclusive presale from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20.
VIP ticket packages will include a special pre-show acoustic performance and Q&A with the band, VIP lounge access, memorabilia, exclusive VIP merchandise, and priority merchandise shopping.
On May 17, the band hosted a Requiem For ZERO at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. In this intimate and invite-only show, 300 guests witnessed the funeral for ZERO, the alter ego Corgan first inhabited 30 years ago on “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.”
Before the tour opens in September in Columbus, Ohio, and makes its way through America’s cities and Canada, the Smashing Pumpkins will headline their hometown’s famed Lollapalooza on July 31 for the first time in over 30 years, marking their long-awaited return to the festival since its touring iteration in 1994.