Smashing Pumpkins Enlist ‘Brady Bunch’ Actor for ‘It’s a Sunshine Day’

A Lollapalooza aftershow Wednesday produced what will likely be the oddest collaboration at the Chicago fest this year as the Smashing Pumpkins brought out actor Barry Williams — Greg Brady from The Brady Bunch — to perform the sitcom family’s Seventies hit “It’s a Sunshine Day.”

During the band’s concert at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre Thursday, amid a career-spanning setlist that focused on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Billy Corgan and company took a major detour by welcoming Williams and a quartet of background singers for “It’s a Sunshine Day,” a Steve McCarthy-penned bubblegum pop song made famous by the Brady Bunch in 1972:

While the collaboration might seem bizarre on paper and even stranger in execution, listeners of Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast perhaps weren’t as surprised, as the pair sat down for an 80-minute interview in May in the famed Brady Bunch house.

During the interview, Corgan and Williams talked about how they first met, and how when they were out on the street together, a fan came up to the actor and said “Hey Greg,” which upset Corgan more than Williams. “I was so impressed that you had sort of made peace with the whole thing,” Corgan said.

Williams spoke extensively about coming to terms with being identified in real life as his TV character — “There’s a privilege in that, if you have a good attitude about it. Because it’s like having friends everywhere you go,” he said — and that was evident Wednesday as he slipped back into his Brady persona once again at the Smashing Pumpkins concert.

The band, which will perform at Lollapalooza itself on Friday, also brought out former Hole bassist (and short-lived Smashing Pumpkins member) Melissa Auf der Maur to perform Machina/The Machines of God’s “The Everlasting Gaze” with the band, as she did when she was a touring member of the group in 2000: