Expert: Jason Musgrove - 11/5/2003

Question
How did they come up with "The Smashing Pumpkins"? I've heard many crazy things.... for instance that peanuts episode "the great pumpkin" but they couldn't have it because of copyright or something, and smashing because Britian lingo smashing is cool. laters on

              -Vicki

Answer
Hi Vicki,

Yeah, Ive heard just as many crazy stories myself.  Its mainly because Billy's always been vague when asked about the name, sometimes people will come up with stuff just to have an answer.  If you watch Vieuphoria, he tells the Japanese TV host that he got the name "from God", that its "God's joke".  I bought a book about the Pumpkins shortly after Siamese Dream came out that says that Billy had said that the word 'Pumpkins' "could have been any vegetable".  Fortunately however, during the Sacred and Profane tour, Billy made many stops at radio stations to answer fans' questions.  Audio clips of those sessions were released.  In one of the sessions, a fan asked Billy about the name.  He finally came clean with the information.

Billy told them that when he was younger, he heard a friend say during Halloween that he was going out and would be 'smashing pumpkins'. Billy just thought that it was a cool name for a band. He even told friends that he was in a band called Smashing Pumpkins long before he was ever in one.  Finally Billy started his own band, which of course, he called 'Smashing Pumpkins'. After the band became famous, however, Billy realized that the fans were bringing pumpkins to the shows and were literally smashing them everywhere. So he decided to add 'The' to the band name, so that 'Smashing' would be read like the British adjective, as he had intended it to be.

Thats it.  There was really nothing fancy about it.

Hope this helps!
Jason