1979

Shakedown 1979, Cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet
Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never seen an end to it all
And I don't even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Double cross the vacant and the bored
They're not sure just what we have in store
Morphine city slippin dues down to see

That we don't even care as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below
Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we'd thought we'd go
Beneath the sound of hope

Justine never knew the rules
Hung down with the freaks and ghouls
No apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it

To see that we don't care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

The street heats the urgency of sound
As you can see there's no one around

Available on: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness(CD/CS) Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness(12") 1979 Single The Aeroplane Flies High 1979 Mixes(CD/12") 1979 Mixes(2 track CD) Bullet with Butterfly Wings/1979 7" promo 1997 Grammy Compilation Time Life:Gold and Platinum(Box Set) The Smashing Pumpkins 1991-1998 promo Rotten Apples (US Version) Rotten Apples (UK Version) Rotten Apples w/ Judas 0 (US Version) Rotten Apples w/ Judas 0 (UK Version)

Video Info: Directed by John Dayton and Valerie Farris. The second video directed by them. Probably the biggest Pumpkins song ever. Won Best Alternative Video at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. Was nominated at the 1997 Grammys for: Best Record, and Best Rock Performance by duo or group.

I think this section of an article describes the video and the ideas behind perfectly: For three days, Corgan, Iha, Chamberlin and D'Arcy shot the video with dozens of teenage extras and actors. The video's plot line will be familiar to anyone who has seen "American Graffiti" or one of John Hughes' coming-of-age movies like "Sixteen Candles," with a group of youngsters cruising the suburban streets in a car, first attending a party at which the Pumpkins are the house band, then invading and trashing a convenience store. Iha plays an oblivious clerk and Chamberlin drops in as a doughnut-scarfing cop.

While Corgan tends to take the lead decision-making role in video shoots, the other band members often contribute solid ideas---a division of labor not unlike that on Mellon Collie, for which Corgan wrote the majority of the songs, but then took them to Iha, D'Arcy and Chamberlin to chisel into band arrangements. While the singer initiates many ideas, he's open to suggestions: the directors proposed a pool-party scene that made the final cut in "1979," and it was Flood who suggested that Chamberlin play a policeman. "If it requires group participation to convey something, than everyone gets more involved," Corgan says of the video decision-making. "If it's more an aesthetic idea, then there's usually less involvement."

It's rare for Corgan to be swayed on a key aesthetic issue, but for the climactic scene of "1979," he was. Corgan wanted the kids to completely level the store, but Dayton and Faris talked him out of it. "Their kinder, gentler tone is the right one," Corgan now says of the $350,000 production. "What I like is that it turned out to be about the spirit of the song, a good piece of representative art and not one of these horrific Aerosmith million-dollar commercials. It's more in the spirit of the early pop-music videos, a little more rag-tag, with a hand-held video camera, like watching a home movie."

What Billy has to Say about 1979: The song is central to the theme of the Mellon Collie album, which Corgan describes as "a farewell to my youth." At age 28, he acknowledges, "I'm on the edge of losing my connection to youth, but I wanted to communicate from the edge of it, an echo back to the generation that's coming, to sum up all the things I felt as a youth but was never able to voice articulately." For "1979," Corgan drew on a specific high school-age memory for inspiration: "I remember being about 17, 18, this weird feeling of having a job and a car, and I could go anywhere I wanted, but I still had the tethers to home, to school. It's kind of a restless period with a lot of sexual energy and you're stuck in fucking nowhere. That's the feeling I had writing the song. Why "1979?" I have no idea, I had to call it something. Much of the song is more intuitive than literal. I trust my intuition way more than I trust my conscious mind."

Other Info: When MCIS recording was winding down 1979, it was merely a "couple of chord changes and a snippet of a melody without words". Flood said it was "Not Good Enough" and Corgan took it as challenge. He rewrote the song in 4 hours and Flood said "It's on the album". Billy says that he was meaning to do 1979 on previous albums but he was hesistant because it wasn't a kind of song Pumpkins are used to doing, and he was worried he wouldn't do it justice.

The original shooting of the party scene was lost when one of the video assistants put it on top of his car and drove away. The tapes(in a box) fell off the car somewhere. Corgan says this,"They actually found the box, but the tapes had been removed. And they found an off-duty cop who saw an old Mexican man take the tapes out of the box, but they never could find the man. They offered rewards on Spanish stations, rock stations, everywhere. It just wasn't meant to be."

Song Secrets: 1979 (CD version) -2:07 you may hear what sounds like a helicopter. a DJ says the echoing is a burp that is reversed and then screwed around with. -The infamous drum beat at the beginning and the end. -Also, at 1:03, you may hear a jingle of a bell or something. -At 4:08 there's some beeping or something -SPKristy@aol.com -There is a "whistling" noise in the background at 2:55-2:58 (left channel). -Benoit The Sad Wizard. -At 2:05-2:08 you can hear different drum beat. -Mikey