‘Beautiful’ Indeed: Watch The Smashing Pumpkins Perform ‘Mellon Collie’ Ballad For 1st Time In Over 25 Years

The Smashing Pumpkins will headline the large BottleRock festival tonight and bring their The World Is A Vampire Tour to amphitheaters across North America this summer. The group played in front of a much smaller crowd last night as they performed a BottleRock warmup gig at the 700-capacity JaM Cellars Ballroom in Napa, California, where they had a huge surprise in store for attendees.

Billy Corgan led his bandmates through “Beautiful” off Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness towards the end of Thursday’s concert. The performance marked The Smashing Pumpkins’ first take on the lovely ballad since 1996 as per Setlist.FM’s stats.

“Beautiful” came 17 songs into The Pumpkins’ 19-song show last night. The ballad is one of 28 tracks the band put out on Mellon Collie, their third studio album, in 1995. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness scored The Smashing Pumpkins a top slot on the US Billboard 200 chart and seven Grammy Award nominations. While cuts like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “1979,” “Muzzle,” and “X.Y.U.” are among 26 of the album’s tracks played at least 50 times over the years, “Beautiful” disappeared from the band’s repertoire after a mere 22 performances between February 20, 1995 and November 19, 1996.

Corgan harmonized with vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Katie Cole on “Beautiful.” Guitarist Jeff Schroeder took a powerful solo towards the end of the song. The Smashing Pumpkins went on to cap the night with classics “Cherub Rock” and “Zero.”

Watch fan-shot video featuring the return of “Beautiful” below:

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Setlist

Source: JamBase.com