Cherub Rock
"It's just an open E with an A flat octave played at the 11th fret", Corgan explains. "But what's funny about it is we've now used it in so many songs that when other bands use it, even if they're not trying to emulate us, people always tell me, 'Oh, they sound like Smashing Pumpkins.' I like the idea of having exclusive claim to one chord."
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GS: Do the overdubs cause problems in recreating those songs live?
CORGAN: Yeah, they create a lot of problems! [laughs] We do what we can, you know. We're long past the notion of getting hung up about it. A song like "Cherub Rock" [Siamese Dream] has some really good, choice overdubs in it, but the song is just as effective live, in a different way. We just try to go with it. Sometimes we try to approximate the studio version, and sometimes we just don't give a fuck.
1996 - Guitar School
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In fact, until now, I myself was a pretty typical Billy Corgan hater. Maybe he's noticed. He meets a lot of my initial questions with a shrug and a half-swallowed "Don't really wanna talk about this..." Finally I'm reduced to complimenting him on the one piece of his musicianship that I know I like, the screaming, strafing guitar solo from the Smashing Pumpkins' breakthrough 1993 single, "Cherub Rock."
"Oh, thanks." Billy smiles graciously. "Tape flange. That's the trick on that one. You copy the solo onto another tape, then you run the two tapes simultaneously and alter the speed of one tape. It's geek shit, you know?"
In other words, I say, you faked it in the studio. Billy smiles acidly. "Of course! You're in Pumpkins World, buddy. Where nothing is as it seems."
1996-Details
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"An example. I wrote 'Cherub Rock' in half an hour. I heard it one day while I was driving up the road and it was one of the last songs I wrote before we did the album. The thing is, there's parts of me that wonder what would have happened if I'd spent four hours writing it, and not done something else. How much better a song would it have been?"
1994 - Cream Magazine
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"Siamese Dream is much more personal, " says Corgan. "Almost every song is about a relationship. 'Cherub Rock' is about my relationship to the indie-world and the media, 'Today' is about my relationship with myself, and 'Quiet' is about my relationship with my parents. Everything was me verses them or me verses me. This album is more about cultural issues: youth, hate."
1995 US Magazine