[article is from chicagotribune, written by Mark Caro]
The Smashing Pumpkins’ benefit show at Metro Tuesday night was triumphant and tearful, inspiring and rousing, open-hearted and generous—as well as a stark reminder that sometimes it takes a village to get a crime victim adequate health care.
Matthew Leone was just trying to do the right thing in the early hours of June 29 when he intervened to stop a man from beating his wife on W. Ohio Street only to be attacked by the man and left with severe brain trauma that still has him hospitalized and in need of further surgery. Leone, bassist for the local band Madina Lake, did not have an up-to-date health insurance policy, so the music community has rallied around him, with Billy Corgan bringing the Pumpkins to Metro as a fundraiser.
The last time the band played Metro, its unofficial headquarters during its ascendancy as Chicago‘s most successful rock band, was a 4-hour-plus farewell gig in 2000. A decade later Corgan was surrounded by new faces, including his bandmates: 20-year-old drummer Mike Byrne, who replaced original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin last year; bassist Nicole Fiorentino; and guitarist Jeff Schroeder, the only other current member present even during the Pumpkins’ late-2008 Chicago residency.
Corgan also doesn’t usually share the stage with Gov. Pat Quinn, who arrived from a ceremony in Elgin wearing a charcoal suit and red tie to proclaim Tuesday “Matthew Leone Day” in Illinois. “We have a true American hero right here in Matthew Leone,” the governor said after Kill Hannah’s opening set to a far warmer reception than politicians usually receive at rock shows.
Then there was Nathan Leone, Matthew’s twin brother, who teared up while thanking the band and audience for supporting his brother. Metro owner Joe Shanahan also choked up while discussing Matthew, whose parents sat visibly moved at the front of the balcony.
The crowd responded not only by participating in the show’s creative ticket scheme—general admission tickets were distributed via $10 raffle tickets; balcony VIP tickets went for $100 apiece, and $500 got you admission to soundcheck and a chance to meet the band—but also by bidding up items auctioned off before the Pumpkins’ set: $1,600 for a bag of collectible Pumpkins memorabilia, $2,500 for a signed event poster and $4,000 to meet Corgan after the show.
The audience also responded to the music unambivalently despite some lingering ambivalence over Corgan’s relaunch of the band minus two and now three original members. At times Corgan has gotten testy and defensive on stage, but on Tuesday the happy leader let the music do the talking, and it did so loudly and convincingly.
“Astral Planes,” from the first of 11 four-song EPs the band is distributing online for free under the title “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope,” proved a soaring opener while “Ava Adore,” its studio electronics replaced with crunching guitars, stomped like a funky Godzilla. “Eye” also eclipsed its more electronic origins, swimming in thick, dreamy guitar effects, though “Perfect” just wound up sounding more ragged.
Corgan, who hunches over his guitar but then pops up on his tiptoes to sing, brought a “Stairway to Heaven”-like majesty to the new “Song for a Son” and engaged in some Allman Brothers-like interplay with Schroeder on “Hummer.” Meanwhile, Fiorentino would lean back on her high heels and made her bass rumble like a train.
The boyish Byrne proved to be a real find and received the loudest ovation. Chamberlin’s jackhammer attack is not easily replaced, and Byrne doesn’t challenge the guitars for lead-instrument status the way his predecessor did, but he’s fierce nonetheless; his rolls on “Tonight, Tonight” made you feel like you were being stampeded by horses.
“We’re a good-time band,” Corgan declared before offering the twinkling intro to “Today,” and when the rest of the band roared in, the leader’s face lit up as if to say, “Whoa!”
After a celebratory encore of “1979,” in which Shanahan, Nathan Leone and about a dozen others joined the band on stage, Corgan auctioned off the black Stratocaster he’d been playing and raised another $10,000. It’s a hell of a way to pay someone’s medical bills.
“I couldn’t believe how wonderful Billy Corgan was,” Giulio Leone, Matthew’s father, said after the two-hours-plus show. “It was a wonderful evening. It’s sort of the positive ending to a very negative situation.”
The final scene was the crowd applauding the band, and Corgan applauding the crowd. Both gestures were fitting.
