Smashing Pumpkins Drop Management Team
The Smashing Pumpkins have left Q
Prime management, and the band is now searching for a new
handler to guide its career, which in 1998 ran a bit off track.
Q Prime spokeswoman Gayle Fine confirmed the
band’s departure, but offered no comment. According to Jill
Berliner, attorney for the Smashing Pumpkins, the
relationship between Q Prime and the band had been “strained for
some time,” and that “the band’s vision differed with management’s
vision.” The Pumpkins joined Q Prime’s all-star roster almost
exactly three years ago, on the eve of the release of Mellon
Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That double-CD quickly went
multiplatinum and dominated rock, and even pop, radio for much of
1996, with hits such as “Tonight Tonight” and “1979.”
The Pumpkins’ latest album, Adore, released six months
ago, has to be considered a commercial disappointment. To date it
has sold 840,000 copies, according to SoundScan, making it the
sixty-eighth best-selling album of the year. In this week’s
Billboard, Adore drops from No. 148 to
No.183.
Q Prime, run by Cliff Burnstein and Peter
Mensch, is one of the music industry’s best-known and
successful management companies and counts on its current roster
Hole, Madonna (which Q-Prime co-manages),
Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Def Leppard
and Bruce Hornsby. Recently, the company has
expanded, purchasing half of Volcano Records (home
of Matthew Sweet and Tool), and
entered the amphitheater business.
Sources speculate that Pumpkin band members (and Billy
Corgan in particular) may have felt the band was not
getting enough attention from Q Prime.
As for where the band may land next, industry insiders are pointing
to the emerging, as yet unnamed, management/record label company
being formed by Gary Gersh and John
Silva. Gersh resigned as president of Capitol
Records last spring, and Silva has been co-president of
Gold Mountain management, where he’s worked with
Beastie Boys, the Foo Fighters, Beck and
Sonic Youth. Silva is leaving Gold Mountain and
taking his all-star acts — and possibly the Smashing Pumpkins, too
— with him and teaming up with Gersh to form a new entertainment
company. (All of those acts, though, would maintain their existing
record label contracts.) Berliner confirms the band is talking with
Gersh and Silva, “among others.”
As for the band’s next move career-wise, one major label VP offers
some unsolicited advice: “They need to go away for awhile — just
hide completely and not even let Billy have his picture taken.”
The Pumpkins apparently disagree. According to Berliner, the band
is expected to enter the studio soon, with a release due out in
’99.