Billy Corgan

"it's just a piece of wood w some metal on it" - Psychopath, on his rifle '96

Οὖτις, otm

"Stereogum: No I think you’re right. The cycles for the way culture operates now are so much shorter. I feel bad — I often will interview a band, say a bunch of British guys who are 20, and it’s their first record, and they’re really excited. And then three years later they’ve put out their second or third album, and no one cares anymore, not necessarily because their album’s terrible but because it isn’t new.

Corgan: That feeds into the narcissistic strain. Why is that narcissistic strain there? Back in the day, I would run into Kim and Thurston backstage at a festival, and Thurston would talk to me about guitars and Kim would walk right past me. Why did Kim Gordon feel the need to walk past me? Why was I such a threat to Kim Gordon? I was a huge Sonic Youth fan. I saw Sonic Youth in ’87 at the Metro. I had every Sonic Youth album. I looked up to Kim Gordon. Why didn’t Kim Gordon walk past me in the hallway and mumble, “Hello?” Because what I represented was some sort of weird threat to their beautiful world that they were able to bubble around in for so many years."

― Nourry, Tuesday, February 3, 2015 4:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kinda heartbreaking, in a "Betty White not being able to grasp why Bea Arthur doesn't like her" way

maybe if Betty White wrote Cherub Rock

maybe if Billy Corgan wrote "Miami Is Nice"

When did Billy Corgan turn into Gollum?

Someone let me know.

idgi

He looks like gollum and is prone to self-pity

http://www.moviefancentral.com/images/pictures/review77597/08a52e8b5e8bea57c3cf2185a8dfcb98.jpg?1352614675

kinda surprised tht Corgan was into SY at all tbh

I seem to remember some MCIS-era Guitar World interview where he's discussing SY tunings.

I think he probably felt a bit like Chris Christie when Bruce Springsteen told him he didn't want to have anything to do with him.

just remembered that both Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins were on a Simpsons episode together as well...

http://www.thrashhits.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/billy_jess02__oPt.jpg

billco has said the riff in "1979" is a nod to Sonic Youth, even though he stole the song from the frogs.

oh many i forgot about billy corgan/jessica simpson. truly a celebrity couple for the ages.

Henry Rollins twerked before twerking existed
Out of the mist I kissed your drug filled lips

man, corgan accusing someone else of being narcissistic is real 'take the plank from your own eye' stuff

also http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/1/3/7/8/6/7/8/1/orig-13786781.jpg

and now let us praise one of Corgan's half-dozen truly eternal & transcendent songs, "Luna":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQBXNLU46Z0

Why do people have this adolescent hang up on how punk or non punk the Pumpkins are or were

Of all the things to legitimately have a go at Corgan, whether or not hes worried about being part of SY's early 90s cool list is another story

Although this is Billy Corgan we're talking about

yeah, it's pretty dumb. i'm glad he took himself and the smashing pumpkins so seriously. they really meant a lot. getting hung up on punk credibility is just a different way of taking yourself too seriously, as opposed to Corgan liking Boston or whatever KG was referring to.

i mean it's really nobody's fault IMO, like billy's just a square and kim's an art person who came up around fluxus and basquiat and philip glass while billy was watching pro wrestling and listening to Rush and eating frozen pizzas and shit, the bizarre world of 90s alt rock just threw them together, it's no mystery why someone like billy would on some level want approval from someone who's just more worldly and cool in a not try-hard way and it's no surprise why kim shouldn't want to be bothered with talking about boring guitar nerd shit w/billy

i don't think it's really an indictment of either one, there's no way it could have been different

& if kim didn't really feel like propping up one more rock dude's ego after being in the band dude world for so long could you blame her?

yeah i'm not blaming or indicting either of them, your analysis of where they came from and how they ended up backstage together is totally OTM

It's not that Billy's a square, it's that he's pretty unsympathetic. It's one thing to be a poseur, which is silly to begin with, but by many accounts he is also an asshole, which makes the former less forgivable. I'm not a fan of the band aside from a few songs, but he puts himself in a pretty untenable position by embracing Rush and Boston (or whatever) but also wanting to be cool, by being a shredder but also wanting to be part of the anti-shred crowd, by tipping his hat to the humility and humanity of Cheap Trick but also aiming for the otherworldly haze My Bloody Valentine. But really, he's just apparently not a very nice guy.

Granted, as a very long time fan of SY, I've always thought Kim and Thurston came off terribly as people in interviews, too. As bad as Corgan but for totally different reasons: snobby, arrogant, pretentious, no fun. But since they're "cool," fewer folks call them on it, especially with an easy target like BC walking around saying "pay attention to me!"

Tbf, Corgan actually teetered on the cusp of personal redemption for a bit. Maybe c. Adore, which was a pretty emotional, accessible album, when the band played that huge free show here for charity. (http://www.mtv.com/news/300010/pumpkins-to-play-huge-hometown-charity-show/). But since the band came back from the dead he's been pretty bitter, sour, as if he's not even trying to be liked anymore.

kinda surprised tht Corgan was into SY at all tbh

― Simon H., Tuesday, February 3, 2015 6:44 PM (Yesterday)

hard to imagine gish & siamese dream arising absent at least second-hand influence from the evol thru daydream run of sy albums

Really? I don't really hear any similarities, beyond the use of guitars.

how exactly is billy an asshole?

Basically - ironically? - by many accounts doing a lot of what he complains about in the Kim tirade: ignoring people, blowing people off, being unfriendly, being rude, abandoning old friends, etc. That might be general default celebrity behavior, but Chicago doesn't usually react well to that kind of stuff.

Maybe he's a sweetheart, but that does not seem to be the take of people I know who have had dealings/run-ins with him, or the times I've personally seen him be a diva.

iirc once heard a story from a guy who got to hear billy have a phone conversation with his girlfriend after a concert in Dayton circa Gish, promising he was going fuck someone that night.

i don't think there's anything unsympathetic about wanting all of those things, and i think he made a convincing case through his music.

the idea that you can't be cool if
-you like a certain band
-you play guitar solos and are obsessed with technical proficiency
-you make music inspired by dozens and dozens of disparate bands and sounds and styles
is bullshit.

but Billy is a huge asshole. smashing pumpkins fans have their reasons why, people that hate Corgan usually have others.

the smashing pumpkins died in 2000. he's been a solo act ever since, no matter the moniker at the time. he's clearly not that happy with how things turned out. his bitterness and delusional/nonsensical comments in interviews is just really sad to me. he knows, or thinks, his best days are behind him. but still i think he'll have a Dylan-esque renaissance as he goes through his fifties and sixties.

actually the anecdote was told in dayton but i dunno if the concert was there xpost

the whole band is a morality play. the smashing pumpkins are an avant garde art rock band and billy corgan is a performance artist. his attitudes and behavior towards women are indefensible. part of the pleasure of being an SP fan is learning from where he got it wrong and where it got it right, in all aspects, from love to indie rock politics.

If Kim comes off as too cool or unfriendly I also think it's worth considering how many weird band dudes, creeps, asshole guys she probably had to deal with living in the rock world.

Think of how many contemptuous stray kittens Billy has had to deal with

Will I!

http://www.more-japan.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/rage.jpg

I'm not a fan of the band aside from a few songs, but he puts himself in a pretty untenable position by embracing Rush and Boston (or whatever)

^I'd rather listen to Rush and Boston than anything by Sonic Youth or any of the "cool" bands you're supposed to like. Ive never understood why liking these bands is "untenable"

as you demonstrate, claiming allegiance to both Rush/Boston AND noiserock Sonic Youth dudes = not something that really comes off as genuine. opposing aesthetics.

that's why it's untenable

lol at the concept of opposing aesthetics generally - aesthetics aren't really ideologies. it's perfectly possible, and in fact very common, to genuinely love both Boston and Sonic Youth, or Rush and the Shaggs, and all manner of music coming from disparate places. the idea of having an aesthetic that makes it "inconsistent" or "untenable" to like one kind of music while also liking another kind of music that proceeds from a different set of assumptions than the first...that's greasy kids' stuff, music is vast and most musicians I know think of it as a giant well of pleasure, not Jets and Sharks

yeah but this was the 90s, there was a war on

(altho I don't think I actually know anybody who likes Rush and the Shaggs tbh - unless that's you)

I mean I agree w you Ray, but lots of people don't listen to music that way and do draw battle lines between aesthetics. It may be stupid, but people do it (Kim Gordon acknowledges as much in her quote). Granted this is less common with musicians.

Maybe BC is the real elitist here thinking listening to Rush/Boston is some kind of maverick thing to do.

Isn't she just using "in no way punk rock" as a synonym for corny here? I mean, maybe Kim Gordon really was viewing the world through a Maximum RocknRoll purity lens at the age of 40, but my guess is that it was more about "This guy is way too thirsty for the validation of rock fame" than "He likes Rush and Boston"

Also UMS totally otm in multiple posts. xp