The Smashing Pumpkins Work U2 Cover Debut, Rarities & Live Premieres Into Tour Opener

The Smashing Pumpkins launched their The World Is a Vampire Europe Summer 2024 Tour at Utilita Arena Birmingham on Saturday. The Pumpkins debut a U2 cover, delivered rarities, original premieres and more for opening night in the UK.

The Birmingham concert featuring support from Weezer also marked the first show for new Pumpkins touring guitarist Kiki Wong, who joined frontman Billy Corgan and company after emerging from 10,000 applicants in an open audition. Following opener “The Everlasting Gaze” and “Doomsday Clock,” Smashing Pumpkins unveiled a cover of U2’s “Zoo Station” off the Dublin-born band’s 1991 album, Achtung Baby.

Elsewhere in the concert, Pumpkins delivered the first “Thru the Eyes of Ruby,” from their landmark 1995 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, since 2015, as per Setlist.FM stats. All told, the rockers performed six songs off the record including favorites “1979,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Tonight, Tonight” and “Zero.”

The Pumpkins also treated fans to live premieres from their latest album, Atum. Those included “That Which Animates the Spirit” and “Springtimes.” A live debut off the band’s 2020 LP, Cyr, came in the form of “Birch Grove.”

Additionally, the rockers performed “Panopticon,” from 2012’s Oceania, for the first time since 2013, making it the first live performance with James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin as the founding guitarist and drummer respectively were not in the lineup at that time. Additional favorites performed included “Mayonnaise,” “Cherub Rock” and more.

Watch Smashing Pumpkins full Birmingham concert below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4Jpx3-JMiw&ab