Smashing Pumpkins: Zero's "funeral" streamed live, plus a tour marking 30 years of "Mellon Collie"

The Smashing Pumpkins kicked off the celebrations for the thirtieth anniversary of “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” with an event straight out of the Billy Corgan playbook: a symbolic funeral broadcast via livestream, built around the “death” of Zero, the central figure in the band's visual imagery throughout the Nineties.
Dubbed “Requiem For Zero”, the performance was conceived more as a theatrical ceremony than a straightforward concert. On stage, a coffin placed centre stage, minimal lighting and deliberately austere staging accompanied a narrative built as the symbolic close of an era. The whole operation served mainly to mark the transition into the new celebratory phase dedicated to the band's landmark 1995 double album.
Zero, the aesthetic alter ego born during the “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” cycle, was never really a proper narrative character, but rather a projection of the band's emotional and visual identity. With this event, Corgan turned that figure into a narrative device: “killing” Zero in order to reopen the Smashing Pumpkins' historic catalogue from a different perspective.

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The show opened with a visual sequence depicting the character's “awakening”, followed by the coffin's entrance on stage and a set that alternated live songs with spoken segments. During the ceremony, Corgan described the farewell to Zero as a necessary step for the band's future evolution.

A few hours before the event, Smashing Pumpkins had put out an introductory message: “Zero is dead. In the crisp, intoxicating autumn of 1995, Zero appeared without warning: as mirror, wound, joke, threat, prayer, and then, a reflection in glass”. In the text, the band also highlighted the special bond between the character and the fans who have kept its legacy alive over the years.

Attendees were handed a booklet with the ceremony's program, laid out like an actual funeral rite: from the “Invocation by the Honorable Tommy Sykes” to reflections by Jill Kargman, passing through a performance of “In The Arms Of Sleep” by Gas Farwell, up to remarks from Dr. Christopher Nowinski and Chloe Mendel.

The setlist alternated classics with songs rarely played live:

• 1979
• Bullet With Butterfly Wings
• Edin
• Lina
• Here Is No Why (performed live for the first time since 1997)
• Porcelina Of Vast Oceans
• Jellybelly
• Bodies
• Tonight, Tonight
• Cherub Rock
• Zero
• The Everlasting Gaze

The central moment of the livestream came at the end, with the official announcement of the celebratory tour marking the thirtieth anniversary of “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness”. The tour, titled “Rat In A Cage Tour”, will be built entirely around the album that defined the band's most popular era. According to early details, the tour will include 27 dates across North America: kicking off on September 30, 2026 at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, and wrapping up on November 12 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California. No European dates have been confirmed at this time.

Each show will be split into two parts: in the first, Smashing Pumpkins will perform “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” in full; the second will instead be devoted to a selection of songs spanning nearly forty years of the band's career, mixing classic hits with lesser-played deep cuts.

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