What You're Looking For?
Though I wouldn't consider myself to be a 'gearhead' by any
means, you are looking dead into the centre of a guitar amp
and stack sound that inspired a universal audience in a
completely groundbreaking way. Above is the amp/stack that
Billy so lovingly refers to as 'old soul' - the dirty, grindy &
smegmatic guitar sound that infused the creations of the
earliest Pumpkins albums 'Gish' and 'Siamese Dream'. Billy
commented, in a recent interview, that when he bought the
amp off some stoner dude in '89, he was just excited to be
playing through a Marshall system. Once he took it home,
though, he was unsatisfied with the sound and took it to a
friend to get it modified. The old tubes were switched out and
and some ever-sonorous VT88's were tagged in.
Billy and his buddy made a sound creation that would
alter the spacey, warbly face of rock music. They had
designed a sound landscape - a garden of sonic ambivalence.
I can only hope that 'old soul' is resurrected for the new
albums - but if it isn't, it has done its work.
Old Billy is still sorting through applications for a new
bassist and keyboardist (after recently recruiting a 19 year
old drummer named Mike Byrne to try and fill Jimmy
Chamberlin's shoes.)
Keep your fingers crossed for their new bassist - I hear he
might be a Canadian, born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario.
