The Smashing Pumpkins Tear Through ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ Live in France
Fans of the Smashing Pumpkins‘ first incarnation will be taken with this stellar live rendition of their classic single “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” Lifted from a performance at Malsaucy Lake in Belford, France back on July 4th, 1997, this exclusive clip comes courtesy of a DVD that accompanies the new, expanded reissue of their 1996 box set The Aeroplane Flies High.
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The project was remastered by Bob Ludwig and has been expanded from its original 33 recordings into 104 tracks, including 90 audio and 14 audiovisual numbers. Boasting unreleased demos, alternative versions and live recordings, the set also includes a 46-page book with track-by-track notes from frontman Billy Corgan and liner notes by Rolling Stone‘s own David Wild.
“What I like about The Aeroplane Flies High is that it’s almost the existential backwater of the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album,” Corgan writes. “Listening to the music gathered here is a little bit like seeing what goes on behind the walls of Disneyland. I’ve always been fascinated with places that are very well constructed, and finding out what’s really going on just over the fence. You look over that gate and notice that things on the other side are not well painted – or maybe you spot that guy dressed as some character sneaking a smoke on his break. At least for me, the behind-the-scenes feel heard on The Aeroplane Flies High represents something revealing not found on the main album. In retrospect, it’s a nice document of how we arrived at the apex of Mellon Collie – and also what standing on that apex did to us personally.”