At the age of nineteen, singer and guitarist Billy Corgan left his native city of Chicago and moved to St. Petersburg, Florida with his gothic rock band The Marked. The band had limited success and quickly broke up. Corgan returned to Chicago, taking a job in a record store. While working there, he met guitarist James Iha. Adorning themselves with paisley and other psychedelic trappings, the two began writing songs together (with the aid of a drum machine) that were heavily influenced by The Cure and New Order. Corgan met bassist D'arcy Wretzky in 1988 after a show by the Dan Reed Network where they argued the merits of the band. After finding out Wretzky played bass, Corgan stated his band's need for a bassist and gave Wretzky his telephone number. Wretzky soon joined the band, and she and Iha later had a short-lived romance. Iha and Wretzky later acknowledged that Corgan's friend Bob English had coined the name "Smashing Pumpkins."
The first performance of The Smashing Pumpkins was on July 9, 1988, at the Polish bar Chicago 21. This performance included only Corgan and Iha with a drum machine. On August 10, 1988, the band played for the first time as a trio at the Avalon Nightclub. After this show, Cabaret Metro owner Joe Shanahan agreed to book the band on the condition that they replace the drum machine with a live drummer. Jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was recruited for the band after a recommendation from a friend of Corgan's. Chamberlin was at first an unlikely match, as he knew nothing of alternative rock at the time. As Corgan recalled of the period, "We were completely into the sad-rock, Cure kind of thing. It took about two or three practices before I realized that the power in his playing was something that enabled us to rock harder than we could ever have imagined." On October 5, 1988, the complete band took the stage for the first time at the Cabaret Metro.
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