The Smashing Pumpkins + Jane's Addiction Spirits on Fire tour wrapped on a high note Saturday (11/19) at the Hollywood Bowl with a cameo appearance by Willow Smith.
The finale was glitch-free, which was nice for the rocky tour which experienced a few more incidents than either band bargained for over a 32-date journey.
It all began in early October with the announcement that Jane's guitarist Dave Navarro would be replaced with Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal). The typically bare-chested Navarro is still suffering from Long COVID and was unable to hit the road.
The tour began shortly thereafter in Texas and worked its way up the east coast towards Canada.
A few weeks into it, Jane's frontman Perry Farrell announced that due to a mysterious injury of his, the band would have to cancel five gigs so he could recover.
Canada's Our Lady Peace filled in for the LA legends including a few shows in Quebec and Ontario.
All was well until Portland, where singer Billy Corgan developed laryngitis and the gig had to be canceled. It was especially scary because the tour only had a few more stops left on the West Coast.
But the head Pumpkin healed quickly in San Francisco where the tour restarted and a few days later wrapped at the Hollywood Bowl in LA, where Willow Smith added some rhythm guitar to "Cherub Rock."
With a forthcoming Smashing Pumpkins triple-album receiving a slow-reveal through Corgan's podcast, some had feared the shows later in the tour would favor the newest material.
During the Pumpkins' Spring / Summer tour in 1998, for example, they were known to topload the set with tracks from Adore, which was new at the time. Some concerts included every track on that album leaving just three "hits" for the fans to sing along with.
But on the Spirits of Fire tour, the Pumpkins only revealed four tunes off the soon-to-be released Atum.
"Empires" and "Beguiled" were played at nearly every gig and "Harmageddon" and "Neophyte" got love on half of the dates. The rest of the show included what you'd expect -- crowd pleasers from their two biggest albums (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and Siamese Dream) sprinkled with deep cuts and covers.
Jane's danced with who brought 'em. The band has miraculously enjoyed a successful career from basically two albums. About 75% of their live show on this tour was from material from their first three offerings.
Fans are happy and why shouldn't they be? Those albums were a revolutionary bridge between glam, punk, hair metal, and heroin chic.
Meanwhile, somehow, the members only got more handsome with age and the songs have remained as vital and modern as ever.
While each band is very different in style and substance, at their heart they share a fierce independence and a refusal to end this long, strange trip. But good try: COVID; laryngitis; and whatever you were, mysterious injury.
