In a new interview with Revv Amps on YouTube, Smashing Pumpkins’ Kiki Wong clarified she’s more than a TikTok influencer.
“I threw my hat. I put my audition in and I got a call that said ‘There’s a Zoom call.’ Got on the Zoom call with the band and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, is this real?'” the guitarist recalled his audition with Smashing Pumpkins. “And ended up talking with Billy a lot about Dimebag Darrell. I was like, ‘This is so cool.'”
She added, “There are like so many metal routes and then I got another call saying that you’ll be going to LA. Showed up to LA and at that point, I was just like, I’m just excited to be here to jam even if I just get to jam with them. I don’t even care. The fact that I get to like play with legends. It’s so cool.”
“I just played the audition, did my thing, and literally got a call the next day. It happened so fast. I really didn’t like… A lot of people don’t realize this about me, too. They see that I’ve been on social media. They think like, ‘Oh she’s just like a Tik Tok influencer’ but I’ve been doing music since 2010, playing real holes,” the rocker explained.
Wong further said, “Playing gigs to no one. There was no one there sometimes and you’re still playing your heart out. It’s a full show. So, I’m 35 now. I have a baby, a one-year-old so I was like, ‘There’s no touring, it is not going to be in the books for me’ but having this opportunity… Everyone pulled through. My family pulled through, my boyfriend pulled through. He was so supportive and was like you have to do this.”
In April 2024, Wong was chosen from 10,000 applicants to be the Smashing Pumpkins’ live guitarist. Billy Corgan later said he was already a fan before she applied.
“The truth is that it was a long, arduous road getting here,” Kiki previously said of her journey to the group. “I’ve experienced far more failures than successes, thousands of rejections for and handful of ‘we’ll sees,’ and even a point where I just gave up and didn’t even touch a guitar for almost three years. Hell, I even gave up on ever touring again, yet here I am.”
In June, Smashing Pumpkins started their UK tour with Weezer in Birmingham. It was Wong’s first full show with the band.
