Jimmy Chamberlin rejoins Smashing Pumpkins for summer tour

As Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins go on tour this summer with Marilyn Manson, there will be a very familiar guy back in the Pumpkins lineup: original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin.

Corgan reached out to Chamberlin when an arrangement with another drummer fell through and he needed someone capable of handling Chamberlin’s intricate parts on “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Tonight, Tonight,” hits from the Pumpkins’ ’90s heyday.

“You can’t just grab somebody and say, ‘Play drums on this Smashing Pumpkins song,’ ” he told USA Today. “Jimmy’s drum parts are so incredibly technical and nuanced that it’s a very rare class of people that can step in and play.”

Chamberlin, considered one of the best drummers of his generation, played with the Pumpkins from their beginnings in 1988 through 2000, and then again from 2005 to 2009.

After his most recent departure from the band, he blogged, “I can no longer commit all of my energy into something that I don’t fully possess. I won’t pretend I’m into something I’m not. I won’t do it to myself, you the fan, or my former partner.”

Corgan maintained that he had fired Chamberlin, telling Rolling Stone in 2011, “Jimmy is a destructive human being, and people who are destructive break things. I don’t see me reaching the highest levels of my creativity if I’m unhealthy and if I have unhealthy people around me.”

Corgan and Chamberlin also formed the supergroup Zwan, which played together from 2001 to 2003. After Zwan, Chamberlin created both the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex and Skysaw bands.

The Smashing Pumpkins/Marilyn Manson “The End Times” summer tour comes to Chicago nearly at the end of the tour, playing FirstMerit Bank Pavilion on Northerly Island on Aug. 7. The tour ends in Cincinnati the next night.