Is the New Smashing Pumpkins Bassist on the Cover Of 'Siamese Dream'?

The Smashing Pumpkins' 1993 'Siamese Dream' album cover, and Nicole Fiorentino in 2010.

Michael Loccisano/Getty

Last night Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan posted something absolutely stunning on Twitter: "Just found out our new bass player Nicole [Fiorentino] just admitted she is one of the girls on the cover of Siamese Dream, he wrote. "She said she didn't want us to know because she thought maybe we wouldn't let her in the band."

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One of the two young girls on the iconic 1993 Siamese Dream cover photo does bear a strong resemblance to Fiorentino. That said, Corgan seems to be fucking with his fans. An assistant to the cover photographer Melodie McDaniel says he's pretty sure the photo was shot specifically for the cover. Fiorentino was around 14 years old when the picture was taken, but both girls appear to be around seven years old. It's quite possible that Corgan noticed how similar Fiorentino looked to one of the girls on the cover and decided to pull a Twitter prank.

In the off chance this is true, it would be one of the most bizarre stories in rock history. It would be like Blind Melon finding out their newest member was Heather "Bee Girl" DeLoach nearly a year after she joined the band, or Jeremy from the Pearl Jam video joining Pearl Jam — or even Spencer "Naked Baby" Elden from the cover of Nevermind joining a new incarnation of Nirvana.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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