Billy Corgan [ tickets ] ushered in his debut solo album by announcing that he'd rather be fronting the Smashing Pumpkins [ tickets ] again, and that he plans to revive the group.

"For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep," he wrote in a full-page ad in Tuesday's (6/21) Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. "But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams."

Corgan did not specify which of the original band members, if any, would be part of the group's future.

Early last year, in a message posted at his official website, Corgan blamed the Pumpkins' demise on guitarist James Iha.

"The truth is that James Iha broke up the Smashing Pumpkins," he wrote at the time. "Not me, not [drummer Jimmy Chamberlin], but James. Did it help that [bassist D'arcy Wretzky] was fired for being a mean-spirited drug addict who refused to get help? No, that didn't help keep the band together, not at all.

"...The Smashing Pumpkins were essentially my entire life ... a dream I still believe in," he continued. "Many friends at the time suggested letting James leave so Jimmy and I could continue on under the name, but I was too loyal to the man I had started the whole thing with, and I protected him until the very end, right up until he left [the last Smashing Pumpkins' show] without saying goodbye to the two people he had won and lost and traveled the world with. So I won't be protecting him anymore."

The Smashing Pumpkins announced in May of 2000 that they were breaking up at the end of that year. The band's final show took place Dec. 2, 2000 at Chicago's Metro, an 1,100-person-capacity club where the group played many shows during its early years.

Corgan went on to form a quartet dubbed Zwan--whose lineup included Chamberlin--but pulled the plug on the group after just one album, 2003's "Mary Star of the Sea."

Corgan's solo debut, titled "TheFutureEmbrace," is in stores today (6/21).

"'TheFutureEmbrace' represents a new beginning, not an ending," Corgan wrote in his Tuesday newspaper ad. "It picks up the thread of the as-yet-unfinished work and charter of the Smashing Pumpkins."

Corgan plans to celebrate the album's release with a Tuesday night (6/21) cocktail party at Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Admission is free with a purchased copy of "TheFutureEmbrace." More information is available at his website.