For Billy Corgan, the new video for the Smashing Pumpkins' "Try, Try, Try" is a simple love story about a young couple trying to make their way in the world.
It's worth noting, though, that the lovers in question are a heroin-addicted, trick-turning pair of street punks, one of whom overdoses after cooking her dope with dirty toilet water, losing the couple's unborn child.
Needless to say, video channels such as MTV and VH1 (which, like sonicnet.com, are divisions of Viacom Inc.) probably won't be airing the uncut version of the clip any time soon, which is just fine with the Smashing Pumpkins singer.
"We knew from the beginning that we were definitely going to encounter problems [with getting the video aired]," Corgan, 33, said during a break from the band's rehearsals for the Wednesday taping of VH1's "Storytellers" program. "[Director Jonas Akerlund] had an idea that had more to do with edgy ... drug culture underworld ?not like the '70s version, but people who live in that world. I've certainly known people who lived in that world."
MTV, which does not have a standards and practices department, referred calls to their media affairs department, which had not returned calls by press time.
Not Your Old Fashioned Love Song
Corgan said his idea for the video was to focus on a couple, so the compromise the band came to with Akerlund ?director of such controversial clips as the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" ?was a day in the life of a drug-addicted couple.
Realizing that the clip, which features Day-Glo graphic violence and scenes of the street urchins shooting up in a public restroom, would never make it uncut onto video stations, the group recently posted a director's cut on smashingpumpkins.com. The song appears on the band's most recent album, this year's MACHINA/the machines of god.
The sentiment of the song (RealAudio excerpt), a winsome, new-wavey ballad with melancholy lyrics about trying to sustain a fading love ("Try to hold on/ To this heart/ A little bit longer/ Try to hold on") was in some ways in opposition to the images Akerlund came up with, Corgan said.
"It's easy to get caught up in your own clich?s and I think I was initially attracted to what I would call a more 'up' video because it was more of an 'up' song," Corgan explained. But as Akerlund mapped out his vision, Corgan saw a clip that would counter the tempo of the track while still capturing the love story.
Personal Echoes
In addition to revisiting the type of stylized violence and drug references that made Akerlund's "Smack My Bitch Up" clip a lightning rod of controversy, the uncut "Try, Try, Try" clip also makes an unspoken nod to the Pumpkins' own sordid drug history.
Co-founding ex-bassist D'Arcy Wretzky was ordered to attend drug-abuse prevention classes in February rather than face trial on charges of possessing crack cocaine. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was fired from the band in 1996 when he was charged with misdemeanor drug possession after the heroin-overdose death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Chamberlin completed a stay in a drug rehabilitation facility and rejoined the group in 1999.
Corgan's only comment on those parallels, as well as questions about why he is the only band member featured in the video, were cryptic.
"I'd rather not get into the mechanics of that," Corgan said of his solo shots in the video. "We are toying with people's perceptions. People keep jumping on the obvious, and they keep missing the point. We know they're going to jump on the obvious, so we keep tossing up the obvious, and we keep shrugging our shoulders and going 'OK.' I would hope at this point the world would understand that it's just a game that we're playing."
Given the harsh, sometimes bloody scenes in the video, Corgan said the group gladly submitted edited versions to media outlets.
"We talked about it, and I said, if the worst thing is we have to submit edited or censored versions, that's fine," Corgan said. "Because we should know that a) we're making great art and b) we'll be able to put it on the Web site so anybody who wants to see it uncut will be able to, and of course some day when we put [out] some sort of video compilation it will be on there as well."
Final Act
The Pumpkins ?whose lineup also features guitarist James Iha and former Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur ?announced in May that they would be disbanding at year's end after a decade together.
Although no final U.S. tour is planned at this time, Corgan said the group will tour South America, South Africa and Europe this year. Before the Pumpkins release the album they've been working on this summer, Corgan said he plans to reveal the mysterious story behind MACHINA.
"We're still living the story of the album, which hasn't been revealed yet," Corgan said, alluding to the alchemical and numerological clues scattered throughout the album's art, lyrics and Web site.
"I'm thinking about revealing the whole story and the concept maybe around Christmas," he said. "We're thinking about holding a contest to see who could come up with the best version of it based on everything they've deduced."
The director's cut of the video for Try, Try, Try will be available for viewing on 8.17.00 at smashingpumpkins.com.
As Billy Corgan, the Smashing Pumpkins' lead singer and chief songwriter, walks around his empty, Victorian painted lady house in Lake View, he evokes no end of nostalgia.
He recalls the roughly 150 songs and the records that he wrote in the more than 100-year-old home since purchasing it in 1993. He reminisces about the "good luck" and positive energy that he says the house brought him, as his career rose from being a successful alternative rocker in 1993 to a full-out superstar today.
He rues the fact that a house into which he placed so much of his time, effort and money could no longer be a sanctuary for him, because of the attention it drew from fans.
But Corgan, who has just placed the house on the market for $1.05 million, is not just selling his house and moving to a more secluded or secretive residence in Chicago.
Instead, like Nelson Algren and Saul Bellow before him--two artists who opted to pack their bags and move out of the city that embraced them--Corgan is leaving Chicago for good.
To where, he does not know, but one thing he says is clear: if he had planned to return to Chicago to live, he'd be hanging onto the home.
In an exclusive interview on the eve of putting the home up for sale--because of his attachment to the house, he has debated doing so for many months--the affable, bald-headed, 33-year-old rock star talked about his reasons for leaving and described the restoration work he has done to the house.
He also demonstrated a clear appreciation for the original design of the Victorian and a deep desire to sell it to someone who will preserve it as much as possible.
To be sure, in today's hot real estate market, there usually is no shortage of buyers for well-kept single-family homes, particularly in popular neighborhoods like Corgan's, which is near the intersection of Southport Avenue and Addison Street. But Corgan insisted that he feels he "owes" it to a house that brought him so much peace to find a buyer for it who will respect its original design and higher aesthetic.
Like many homes of its vintage, Corgan's house, which sits on a beautifully landscaped double lot at [Billy's Address], has a history shrouded in mystery.
Its exact construction date and architect are unknown, although "as best as they can tell," he said, it was built after the 1893 Columbian Exposition. "The first information we had was that the owner began paying taxes on the home in 1897," Corgan said. "We know that somewhere in the Depression era, it was used as a boarding house.
"It had a kitchen upstairs, and multiple families moved in. The owner at the time made changes to the house to accommodate the multiple families, but these weren't changes that reflected affluence."
Ironically, the house's various owners' lack of wealth might actually have had a hand in preserving the home from modernization, Corgan said.
"There's nothing worse than a house from the 1940s that has been 1970s-ized," he said. "Nobody ever lived here who was affluent.
"Here, they managed not to strip away the original features. It's very rare that you find that. Some houses you'll see today have some quaint sentiment preserved in the corner, but that's all."
Marlene Granacki, who specializes in vintage properties for Re/Max Exclusive Properties and is Corgan's listing agent along with Re/Max's Anna Klocek, noted that the house retains all of its original molding--save for two back bedrooms--all original woodwork and much of its original stained glass.
When Corgan, who grew up in Chicago's suburbs, moved to Lake View in 1986, he always had expected that if he ever achieved financial success, he'd buy a house in the neighborhood.
And when the Pumpkins began to take off commercially with their multi-platinum breakthrough album "Gish" in 1991, Corgan was thrust into the position of homeownership.
"In 1992, I was living in a parking garage and sleeping on a friend's floor, and suddenly, I came into money," Corgan recalled.
"A house like this was a dream come true. It was mind-blowing. I couldn't imagine that someone like me could live in a place like this."
Corgan instantly embraced the house, for reasons both cosmic and practical.
"From the first moment I walked into the house, I saw it as a comfort, as a safety," he said. "Not to be overly metaphysical, but houses have a certain energy in them.
"This house is full of love. I don't think anything ever bad happened in it, and being an artist, I'm sensitive to that."
So Corgan set about restoring the house. He was aided by the fact that its front hall and living room required no restoration whatsoever, adding, "I'm not kidding you when I say that I didn't have to do a thing to these rooms."
On the south wall of the living room are two gorgeous green stained-glass windows that Corgan thinks are original because they are more leaded, rougher and have deeper glass. On the north wall of the house, next to the staircase, are bubble-glass stained-glass windows that are equally attractive.
Corgan placed a grand piano in the front bay window, noting that the light that streams into the house, particularly in the early-morning hours, make that spot especially conducive to songwriting. He was photographed there for a Rolling Stone article several years ago, in fact.
After passing through a second room on the first floor, which could function as a dining room, one reaches a back room, which Corgan used as a TV room and as a retreat for songwriting.
He said it likely was a formal family dining area in the house's early days. Complete with a fireplace and a barrel-vaulted ceiling, the room was the "1910 version of a rec room," Corgan said with a laugh.
Although the home's kitchen is not large, Corgan said he suspects that the actual cooking in the 1910s and 1920s may have been done in the home's full basement, allowing the first-floor kitchen to function as a food staging area.
"You have to put yourself in the mindset of what people were like back then," Corgan said. "The basement was probably more informal, while the kitchen was a more formal room.
"The one concession I could see someone making to the house would be to enlarge the kitchen across the back porch. I don't think that's counterintuitive to the original design of the house."
One of the house's most unusual features is a dark lincrusta wallpaper--an embossed wall covering originating in England that mimics tooled leather--along its principal staircase. Most lincrusta coverings that remain in old homes have been painted over, making Corgan's all the more remarkable.
"I was not crazy about it, but the last thing I would do would be to tear it down," Corgan said of the lincrusta. "It's not my style, but I'm not going to fight the house's aesthetic.
"And details like these showed the incredible original condition that the house was in, and the amount of money that somebody put in to this house back in the 1890s."
Upstairs, Corgan showed his remaining two preferred songwriting venues--on his bed in the master bedroom, and in another bedroom, in which, he self-effacingly notes with a wave of the hand, he wrote "a lot of hits."
The master bedroom overlooks the front and south sides of the house and allowed in so much natural light, he said, that he soon ripped out all the curtains. It also was the room where a serendipitous experience occurred, about a year and a half ago.
"I woke up out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night and immediately went to the window," he remembered. "I saw a fire beginning inside the house just to the south, and I called the fire department.
"Within five minutes the whole place was on fire. They said it was very possible that I saved somebody's life. I have no idea why I got up when I was sound asleep. I'll attribute it to God."
One small upstairs bedroom likely was used as a kitchen when the place was a boarding house, Corgan said. Near the two other back bedrooms is a less formal rear staircase, which Corgan learned was probably used by the children of the house's early inhabitants.
"The house had formal aspects and accommodations, and less formal ones, and you can't fight that," he said. "And as I lived here, I started to use the back staircase more and more regularly, and the front staircase less regularly."
Back on the first floor, Corgan notes the house's natural air flow that comes from keeping the windows open. It keeps the house cool with no need for air conditioning on any but the hottest days, he said.
Corgan also points around to the many first-floor light fixtures that are believed to be original, and notes the difficulty he encountered in trying to find artisans who could restore the interior and exterior of the house.
He considered narrowing the entryway between the first two rooms on the first floor, and putting vintage pocket doors between them.
"Any time I ever talked to anybody about that project, it was like crazy money," Corgan said. "There really aren't a lot of people out there whose primary job is to do that kind of restoration. Contractors told me it'd be cheaper to just tear the house down."
Outside, Corgan painted the house purple with dark purple accents. After doing some research, he and his then-wife discovered that most owners of Victorian painted lady houses use exterior colors that are "a psychedelic nightmare."
"We wanted to find a balance between the true painted lady and the aesthetic of our neighbors, so we would not be an eyesore.
"The guy who originally painted the house for us wanted to paint it green, which was a traditional color, but the colors he wanted were not happening with me. We settled on a deeper purple."
Corgan spent much money and time restoring the house's front porch, replacing its wood and redoing its upstairs railings and capitals.
Behind the house is a brick, detached garage that can hold as many as five cars. Corgan said at one time, he considered completely gutting the now-partitioned garage, soundproofing it and converting into a work space for the Smashing Pumpkins.
In spite of Corgan's instant attachment to the house, his feelings toward it changed not long after he moved in, when Chicago magazine surprised him by publishing a photo of the house in its October 1995 issue.
"To me, it was beyond irresponsible," said Corgan, who to this day grants no interviews to Chicago's staff. "It's hard to estimate today with the Internet, but there was a definite change that was immediate and devastating after the photo was published. I think the picture was the literal difference.
"You can give out an address as 42 Mulberry Lane, for instance, but when you have a picture and you can stand and look at it, it's direct, irrefutable information. To a 15-year-old, this was important information to have."
Since the photo was published, Corgan said there has "literally been one incident per week," often in the middle of the night, in which fans visit the outside of the home and behave inappropriately.
Some incidents required calls to the police, and in an unpleasant but necessary move, Corgan said he had to install a tall iron fence around the property because too many fans were going onto his front porch.
"It's a disservice to my neighbors," he said of fans' attention. "This house brought me peace, but with my crazy life now, it couldn't be a sanctuary to me anymore, and that broke my heart.
"If I could pick up this house and move it onto 15 acres somewhere, I would. But with the trappings of celebrity that exist today, I just can't live in this kind of property now. It literally crossed the line into the impossible.
"I feel I have to move."
Despite all the problems, Corgan said he harbors no animosity toward his fans, taking a kids-will-be-kids attitude toward teenagers. In fact, he said the upside of all the attention indicates that his band's popularity has made a solid impact on its listeners, and that "the energy goes on."
Having been on the receiving end of negative press, he said he felt the article paved the way for the public to reach into his "last refuge."
"I would have left four years sooner if it had not been for the house itself," Corgan said. "If anything, it says that the person who bought a house like this at age 26 didn't want to be a rock star with dogs and gates, locked inside a castle."
Corgan said he's not sure yet where his next permanent residence will be. He's currently living in temporary housing in Chicago--"I wanted to make sure I wanted to leave," he said--while he makes his decision.
He currently owns a home in New York, and there is some speculation that he might move to Los Angeles or even overseas.
No matter what, Chicago is losing its most visible rock musician, the victim of a heavy heart.
Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan appeared at the Peoria, IL. TV taping and took part in an angle. Corgan's aired this past Friday on the "ECW on TNN" show. Corgan, whom one ECW insider described as "the biggest ECW fan ever," said he has been interested in working with ECW since attending last year's "Anarchy Rulz" pay-per-view. Corgan's appearance received a mention on MTV's website. ECW sources say Corgan is willing to appear on future shows, depending on his schedule. He has also recorded music for ECW, including a remake of Smashing Pumpkin's "Cherub Rock," which will be used as Psicosis's entrance music. Corgan also recorded a new song specifically for ECW. That song will be used as C.W. Anderson's entrance music.
The lawsuit between Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan and original Pumpkin drummer Ron Roesing apparently isn't proceeding any further than legal threats.
ChartAttack exclusively reported on Tuesday, June 27 that Corgan was suing the former drummer for supposed copyright violations, after sifting through volumes of legal documents and interviews. Roesing emailed us today to say that he hasn't heard from Corgan's team of lawyers and assumes that the lawsuit has been dismissed or dropped. Although he still hasn't heard from Corgan something he'd like to do is to clear the air.
Fans can now expect to hear Billy, Roesing and Dale Meiners early songs on an album under the band name The Marked. It's doubtful Corgan will have any input on this album. This band was formed in 1984 and was based out of Florida. They returned to Chicago and Meiners quit the band, while Roesing and Corgan brought in James Iha and formed the Smashing Pumpkins.
Rock star Billy Corgan has broken his silence regarding the events that took place last Saturday at the ECW television taping in Peoria, IL. The following is a transcript of his comments on the incident, which was recently covered on MTV, and will air, in its entirety, this Friday during ECW on TNN.
"Let me start by saying that this incident with "Lou E. Imitation" is a complete outrage. For weeks I had been looking forward to singing the national anthem in front of the good people of Peoria, Illinois, an honor bestowed on me by Paul Heyman himself, who had personally invited me to open the show last Saturday night. ECW is my favorite promotion in the world, and never having sung our national anthem in public before, it was an opportunity I just couldn?t say no to.
It started out to be a great night, getting the chance before the show to talk to some of my favorite wrestlers, great guys like Jerry Lynn, Rob Van Dam, The Sandman and Justin Credible. I was nervous about doing a great rendition of the anthem, but looked forward to sitting back after I sang to watch the show. So after the warm reception I received from the crowd when I was announced as a surprise guest, what followed was like a bucket of cold water. Before I could play a note I was attacked by Lou ?I used to be the Sign Guy but the Dudley?s left me behind? Dangerously and his band of reckless thugs, Steve Corino, Scotty Anton, and Jack Victory.
It was, needless to say, a unwarranted intrusion upon my performance, and an insult that won?t be easily forgotten. Lou may be the greatest manager in sports entertainment, but he is a no class individual who should be ashamed to call himself an American. Hopefully the fans will get the chance to judge this entire situation for themselves Friday night on TNN."
Saturday Night, JULY 22, 2000 : ECWWRESTLING.COM has exclusively learned that a major rock star is in attendance tonight in Peoria, Illinois and got into a brawl with ECW performer Lou D'Angeli, professionally known as Lou E Dangerously. The former Sign Guy Dudley, who has been parodying ECW owner Paul Heyman (and his alter ego Paul E. Dangerously), apparently told several ECW staffers he was going to break out of the shadow of the character and really make a name for himself. And tonight in Peoria, he did just that.
Legendary visionary rock performer Billy Corgan, who has rebelled against the glorified "rock star" image so many others embrace, volunteered to perform a rare solo set to open the show tonight. Corgan. lead singer for the Smashing Pumpkins, has been pursued by many to do a solo "unplugged" special, and tonight, as a present to his favorite wrestling promotion, ECW, Corgan was going to do a set for our live and television audience.
But Peoria has had bad luck with ECW and rock and rollers. It was in the very same building that aside from the incident that took place tonight, also saw Steve Corino get into an altercation with Limp Bizkit's lead singer Fred Durst earlier this year.
With Cyrus tending to Network business, Lou E. Dangerously interrupted Corgan's first song, claiming the network didn't like Corgan's style of music. A fight ensued and Corgan ended up smashing a guitar over Lou E's head. Corino, Jack Victory, and Scotty Anton surrounded Corgan but Tommy Dreamer and Jerry Lynn hit the ring.
A Street Fight between the teams of Dreamer/Lynn and Corino/Anton is scheduled to highlight tonight's show, which will include Chilly WIlly getting his first title shot ever as he challenges Rhino for the World TV Title, and Psicosis going one on one against Yoshiro TajirI. More details (and comments from Corgan and Lou E.) will be found in a matter of hours on ECWWRESTLING.COM.
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters are among the guests who'll be heard on the long-awaited first solo album from Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, which is due out on October 10.
A spokesperson for Divine Recordings, the label issuing the LP, told MTV News that "Iommi" will also feature guest shots from Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Henry Rollins, and System Of A Down's Serj Tankian as well as Skin of Skunk Anansie, Peter Steele from Type O Negative, and The Cult's Ian Astbury.
In an interesting twist for Corgan, Divine Recordings is owned by former Pumpkins manager Sharon Osbourne and her husband Ozzy. Ms. Osbourne and Corgan are currently at odds over issues stemming from the demise of their brief relationship in January, which sparked several rounds of verbal sparring. A lawsuit is still pending.
Corgan was well acquainted with Iommi long before signing with Osbourne Management, as he recorded his tracks well over a year ago. The album has been in the works since early 1998.
Piecing together the paper trail, no comments and ancient band lore, ChartAttack.com has learned that Billy Corgan, frontman and founder of The Smashing Pumpkins has initiated a lawsuit against Ron Roesing, former drummer of The Marked. Corgan and Roesing formed the band in 1984/1985 that would later evolve into the Pumpkins 1987. Apparently the lawsuit stems from the release of Hopefulness and Oh So Finite Happiness, a charity double-disc that Roesing supposedly put out that has raised the ire of William Corgan's lawyers.
When ChartAttack.com contacted lawyers Leslie Frank and Jill Berliner from the L.A. law firm King, Purtich, Holmes, Paterno & Berliner to comment on the lawsuit, they flatly refused. Tyson Parker, national media manager for the band's label Virgin Music Canada was unable to respond to questions.
However, we have obtained the paperwork related to the suit, which states: "This firm represents William Corgan. Roesing is illegally exploiting our client's name to promote goods and services, falsely implying that our client has granted him an exclusive license to sell or otherwise exploit phonorecords containing the Masters and Compositions." We spoke to Roesing, who now lives in the United Kingdom, about the lawsuit and early Pumpkin history which he says has been re-written by Corgan.
"What they are supposedly suggesting is that I have this CD, Hopefulness and Oh So Finite Happiness. I haven't sold that CD. I haven't made any profit from that CD. I took samples from Billy," Roesing says about the lawsuit. "They are just sending out a generic threat. They haven't a clue what they are doing."
Both parties won't answer questions directly relating to the suit, but Roesing was able to allude to what the lawsuit stems from: "They are talking about a sample that I put in a song called 'Smugly,' which is my nickname for Billy. They don't know when I put it out [Hopefulness and Oh So Finite Happiness]. If I put it out. They don't know anything. They make all these demands and on the last page [of the legal brief that ChartAttack.com has read] they say they don't know anything."
Granted it's done in legal speak that reads something like this: "Nothing contained herein or omitted herefrom is intended or shall be construed as an admission of any fact... claims or remedies which our client has assert or may assert in connection with this matter." Much of ChartAttack.com's interview with Roesing was conducted off the record, as his lawyers have asked him not to comment on the case.
While Corgan's lawyers continue their fact-finding mission through the courts, Roesing says, "On the album they are suggesting that I used material that belonged to Billy." Essentially this is what the dispute stems from.
Even though the Pumpkins rose to fame after Roesing left the band, he doesn't harbour much ill will towards Corgan or The Pumpkins. In fact he says, "I'm trying to make amends with William. It is my personal belief that this fax and lawsuit was not generated by him. I want the public to be aware that this is how his law firm operates. I want them to know that Billy is suing me, which is pathetic, if we were friends for a very long time [up to Gish], which we were, he wouldn't be suing me. I have been very good about not suing him. Our friend Jonathan [Morrill] sued him for half a million dollars regarding The Marked videos."
According to CDNow.com on May 22 Jonathan Morrill, owner of J.M. Productions filed a lawsuit accusing Corgan of breach of contract, stealing and allowing the commercial release of a video/documentary from 1986 entitled Video Marked. Morrill claims that Corgan stayed with him when the singer lived in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1986. A video documentary was made during this time, of which only two copies were ever made - a master and a backup. Corgan allegedly took the backup with him back to Chicago.
"Billy claims all his stuff got stolen from the early Marked material and early Pumpkin material prior to Jimmy [Chamberlin] joining. I don't know if that is true or not, I read that and people have told me that," Roesing says.
Morrill claims that Vieuphoria, released in 1994 to coincide with the B-side compilation Pisces Iscariot, contained footage that he shot for Video Marked. Interestingly enough he approached Corgan about releasing the documentary and was told that the frontman didn't want to release it, citing poor audio quality as the reason. It wasn't until 1999 that Morill became aware that Vieuphoria contained material from Video Marked. Roesing has contacted the same law firm that is representing Morill to counsel him should Corgan continue to pursue the suit further.
The Pumpkins have added a few new dates to their European tour. Check out the European dates page.
Billy Corgan always believed world conquest was a perfectly reasonable goal for his band, the Smashing Pumpkins, even when they were nobodies. When he and his bandmates climbed the rock summit, circa 1995, riding high on multiplatinum albums such as "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" and selling out shows at Madison Square Garden, he acknowledged that he had sacrificed just about everything to get there. And Corgan always said that when the day came that they couldn't stand on the mountaintop anymore, he'd rather jump than get pushed off.
Does this guy ever do anything that doesn't involve a headache, an ulcer or a platinum record?
The answer came a few days ago when Corgan announced that the Pumpkins, his band of 13 years and 22 million album sales, would break up at year's end. Fans were stunned; one caller wept on the air at Los Angeles rock station KROQ when Corgan made the announcement. Some members of the music media interpreted it as a desperate attempt to goose record and concert-ticket sales. But for Corgan, the announcement was utterly in keeping with the do-or-die ethos that has ruled the band since he, James Iha, D'Arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin first played together in 1988.
After rocketing to fame with three increasingly potent albums that established Corgan as one of the premier songwriters of his generation, the Pumpkins juggernaut began to falter in 1996 when drummer Chamberlin was ousted for drug abuse. Then the artistically ambitious 1998 album, "Adore," failed to sell as impressively as the band's previous releases. Last year, Chamberlin was reinstated, and Corgan insisted during sessions for "MACHINA/The Machines of God" that the album would not have been attempted otherwise. "It was going to be the full band back together or that would have been the end of it," Corgan said in an interview in August.
When "MACHINA" was finally released Feb. 29, its songs were structured like late-night letters to the band's inner-circle of fans, friends and family. "As you might have sensed we won't make it home," Corgan sings on the album's final song, "Age of Innocence." But in interviews, Corgan refused to confirm rumors that the band was breaking up, even though he had told friends months before that was the intention.
The album debuted impressively, but quickly sank down the charts. Though it has sold more than 500,000 copies, "MACHINA" has proven no competition for the pop darlings of the day.
In an interview following the break-up announcement, Corgan said the Pumpkins will continue to tour through early November and will put the finishing touches on an album's worth of unreleased "MACHINA" material this summer, with an unspecified release date. He is already brainstorming with Metro owner Joe Shanahan about some farewell shows at the club. And, for the first time, he talked about life after the Pumpkins.
Tribune - Why did you deny the break-up rumors until now?
Corgan - I didn't want the release of the record to be obscured by this; I wanted the music to be addressed separately from the band's status. Now that all that has calmed down, I felt it was the right time. There is no particular controversy swirling around. Some people are speculating that [a nasty January break-up with manager] Sharon Osbourne was the reason. But you could call her - she knew this was the last record, so did everyone involved in setting it up. I chose to announce it now because we're going into the final stages of tours in Japan and Europe, and I didn't want people ticked off at me around the world that we didn't tell them before we came.
Tribune - You mean that if you had sold 2 million records in the first week you'd still be breaking up?
Corgan - It's God's truth that whether this record sold one copy or 100 million, it wasn't going to change anything. This was the last record. And if you listen to the record, look at the artwork, it's screaming this is the last record. The concept of the record, the story inside the record, is about the band ending. It doesn't mean we won't do more recording - there is stuff we want to do before we break it up, and I talked to Joe [Shanahan] about some different ideas about how to end up at the Metro - but this is the last slide down the mountain, at 100 miles per hour. [He laughs.]
Tribune - what gave you the feeling that this had to be it?
Corgan - A lot of things. I understand why people would want to blame it on [the poor sales of] Adore or the Jimmy [Chamberlin] situation, but it just seemed time in our hearts to complete the circle, bring Jimmy back, make one more Pumpkins album, try to heal and leave on a completed note. It's not a reaction. It has nothing with sales. It was just time.
Tribune - And everyone in the band agreed to this?
Corgan - Oh yeah. Trying to expression the emotion in the literal world of the word, is hard. It's like the athlete who decides to stop playing two years before everyone is telling him to get out. We wanted to make a decision on our own terms, in our time frame, with our own sense of class about it. Being in this band is not the easiest thing, mostly because of our public posture. Our fans feel one way about us, and everyone else feels another way about us, and it wears on us.
Tribune - You put a lot of that on yourself, though.
Corgan - In 1989, when we were playing clubs in Chicago, I came to the conclusion that the only way we were going to be noticed and get out of Chicago was to make people uncomfortable and it sort of wormed its way into the DNA of the band. The concerts we played between 1991 and '94 were very confrontational and ticked a lot of people off, and we're still paying for it. There comes a point where you'd rather just walk away and let the music be on its own, because we seem to ruin the music [he laughs] - my personality, my public personna just seem to cloud the picture all the time.
Tribune - Do you regret that?
Corgan - I take some responsibility for what happened with Jimmy because our schedule was so arduous. I just keep pressing the accelerator faster and faster: more recording, more touring, more everything. At some point you begin to pay for all the burning the candle at both ends.
Tribune - So why not walk away now instead of putting it off till the end of the year?
Corgan - I'm enjoying the concerts much more than I ever have because we can see the end of the road coming. Selfishly, we're just trying to savor it a little bit more. We could have quit after we put the album out. But we're trying to get as much out of it as we can, and leave everybody feeling like they got one more chance to see us.
Tribune - So the idea would've been for all four original band members - you, James, Jimmy and D'Arcy - to go on tour to bring it full circle?
Corgan - Absolutley, but in typical Pumpkins fashion, the best-laid plans didn't work out. We didn't go into this thinking she was gonna leave. We appealed to her very deeply: "You've only got one more year, just stay on the ship." But she just didn't want to. [Former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Mauer has replaced Wretzky for the current tour.]
Tribune - I know you're going to keep making music. The question is, will it be considerably different from what you did in the Pumpkins?
Corgan - Me in the future is not going to be the me people understand now. I'm not going to try and create a second Pumpkins. I know that I need to get out of the loop of whatever is going on right now. I still believe in the idea that the better artists endure. Generation X isn't buying records right now, but they will again at some point, and they will turn to people that they know. And I'll be there, because I'll have lived the same years and been through the same things. People only know me this one way: the button-pushing Pumpkins king. There's plenty of me that hasn't been revealed yet.
Tribune - You started out with the Pumpkins vowing to reach millions of listeners at all costs. Is reaching that big audience still as important for you?
Corgan - No, it isn't. The Pumpkins have always existed on the fine line between commerce and integrity and that friction is what we fed on. But I'm really tired of the game. That doesn't mean I won't continue to be a commercial artist in some form, I just won't go at it in such an aggressive, antagonistic way.
Now that Billy Corgan has announced the demise of the Smashing Pumpkins, which will call it quits after its current national and world tour, fans are wondering "what now?" for the members of one of alt-rock's most successful outfits.
Corgan told Los Angeles fans Tuesday (May 23) listening to radio station KROQ that his immediate plans were to steer clear of music for the moment. "I really need to walk away from music for a while to figure out what I want to do," he said. Corgan, however, did not suggest that he is done with music for good, warning that he might reemerge as a "commercial artist" or a "pain-in-the-ass artist."
Such a future has been on Corgan's mind lately. He recently explained to LAUNCH his thoughts on what could be on his horizon. "The model of rock star-slash-musician-slash-songwriter [and] guy who does soundtracks, I don't think that's the best model for who I am as a person, and I'm seeking out a new model for which to be myself," he said. "If I'm willing to operate outside of the bounds of, say, a normal music business, record-company structure, every time I write a new song I could just put it on the Internet. I could put 85, 90 pieces of work on a site a year; if you're really into it you're gonna listen to all 90. At the end of the year I can have everybody vote and tell me what they think is good, and then I'll release that as a CD."
Corgan further explained, "Ninety percent of the general public wouldn't know about the 90 songs I put on the Internet, so I can exist on all levels as an artist. I can have that immediate feedback and still not have to cover all the miles -- and at the same time, still exist as a commercial artist."
Corgan might also continue to collaborate with other artists, as he did with Hole on their 1998 album, Celebrity Skin, and Natalie Imbruglia and others on the 1999 soundtrack to Stigmata. Corgan recently worked with Lisa Marie Presley and producer Glen Ballard on a song for an album-in-progress by the daughter of the King (LAUNCH, 5/23).
Guitarist James Iha might likely further cultivate a solo career that debuted with his mellow-minded 1998 release, Let It Come Down. On the radio, Corgan hoped that Iha would "get into music that he feels closer to."
As for drummer James Chamberlin, who just rejoined the band for the now-swan-song Machina / The Machines Of God after having been ousted following the 1996 heroin overdose death of keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, his future might be outside of music entirely. Corgan says the drummer is interested in car racing. It remains unclear as to the next move for bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, who departed Hole to join the Pumpkins after the completion of Machina. Auf Der Maur had replaced founding member D'Arcy Wretzky, whose own path in recent weeks has been well-publicized due to her arrest on January 25 for possession of crack cocaine. Just last week, charges were dropped upon her completion of drug-abuse prevention classes.
According to Corgan, the Pumpkins will finish out their American tour, which is scheduled to come to a close on Tuesday (May 30) in Portland, Oregon after dates in Berkeley, California; Boise, Idaho; and Seattle. The band is still planning to play its overseas dates, which include eight dates in Japan in June and July; plus swings through Canada, Europe, and possibly South America. A more formal farewell tour in the States is also a possibility.
The band is scheduled to perform on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in coming weeks. No date has been
confirmed yet. The Pumpkins will also be taping an appearance on VH1's Storytellers in August. An
album of outtakes from Machina is also likely, according to the Pumpkins' leader. Speaking to LAUNCH
recently, Corgan explained his plan. "We're out of our deal with Virgin, so it's sort of like, 'Do we finish it
and try to create a commercial release, or do we just sort of finish it and let it sit in a box until we put out
Machina/The Director's Cut in 10 years?' I don't know. We're going to finish it no matter what. Whether we
just put it in a box and put it out in 10 years or not."
-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles
Lisa Marie Presley, Billy Corgan Collaborating, Producer Says. Smashing Pumpkins frontman co-writing song for her debut album.
Lisa Marie Presley is co-writing a song with Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan for her debut album, according to the LP's producer, Glen Ballard.
The daughter of the King is two-thirds finished with the LP, which Ballard promises will bring "modern-day Memphis" to the pop scene.
"I think it's a wonderful expression from a [woman] who's carving her own identity as an artist while still embracing the format that's in her genes," said the producer, who is best known for his work with Canadian singer Alanis Morissette.
The album falls in "the pop format, with elements of blues, funk, R&B and hip-hop," he said.
Ballard said Elvis' legacy hasn't added a stress factor to the project. "As long as she's not as intimidated by it, I'm not. And I don't think she is."
Presley also has co-written with Ballard and Cliff Magnuss (Kenny Rogers) for the LP. The collaboration with Corgan came out of the two singers' friendship, Ballard said. The album is not expected until late this year at the earliest.
Tuesday (May 23), Corgan announced the Smashing Pumpkins will disband before year's end.
Billy officially announced the breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins on L.A.'s rock radio station KROQ on May 23, 2000. If you didn't hear it and want a transcript of it, go here. Good luck + best wishes to the band in the future.
A wait-and-see policy was voiced by Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. "It's a waste of time to go after (Napster), because you're not going to be able to stop free trade on the Internet. Everybody should stop wringing their hands about it.
"It's going to take two or three years to sort itself out," said Corgan. "It's going to be the future, but we'll eventually have to figure out a system that gives the artist some copyright payment. I believe it's hurting record sales, but it's also doing what it's supposed to do -- building new fans."
[This is an excerpt of the article and the only place where Billy is quoted. Read the entire article here.]
Billy Corgan is deep into an exhaustive analysis of what's wrong with rock, and why his band, the Smashing Pumpkins, is so perpetually misunderstood. He has railed against the radio gods and served up the predictable screed against the anti-Pumpkins "bias" of other industry gatekeepers. But as he gears up for the big summation, his tone softens.
He lapses into flashback: "Imagine standing in a club in 1988, watching Dinosaur Jr and saying, 'If we could one day just be that.' To us that was amazing, that was our dream. Then you do that, and it keeps going, and suddenly you're on MTV every 20 minutes. Boom, there you are. Cover of Rolling Stone. . . . I don't care what anybody says about 'alternative' integrity, you get swayed by the whole ride. And then it sinks in: This is not really what I wanted."
As survivors of the alt-rock boom, Corgan and the three other Pumpkins - who will play the sold-out Electric Factory tomorrow night in an attempt to build buzz by playing relatively small venues - are walking a difficult line. They came up at a time when being an alternative to faceless corporate rock was the coolest thing. But as their ideas took hold, they became the mainstream and were rewarded with lavish contracts, and saddled with equally large expectations.
Now, Corgan says he's torn between two worlds - the small pool of devoted fans who constitute the indie-rock audience and the fake-smiles posturing of MTV rock.
"I feel like we're playing to the same audience we were in the late '80s, which is a very hard-core group of kids," the singer-songwriter-guitarist says in a quiet, considered speaking voice that's miles away from his onstage yowl. "They're paying a lot of attention, even though the media isn't speaking to them and MTV is ignoring them. Our integrity is making that connection. And at the same time, the band is asked to be, expected to be, this big commercial band. Do you turn your back on the one audience that's with you already to chase that brass ring?"
The Pumpkins, whose most recent effort, Machina/the Machines of God, had a big opening eight weeks ago but now resides at 93 on Billboard's 200, are not alone. Many of the other premiere acts of alt-rock - Nine Inch Nails, the Foo Fighters - have discovered that their claim on a large audience is not as solid as they once thought. The explanations for this slippage are everywhere: Rock in general has declined, teen acts rule the media mix, and modern-rock radio is increasingly the province of such rock/hip-hop hybrids as Korn and Limp Bizkit.
"Once we finish this cycle, I don't want anything to do with the mainstream world," Corgan, 33, hisses on the phone from a Dayton, Ohio, hotel. "It's a complete celebration of fakery. I think we can be more effective by operating on a lower level, not trying to reach the big audience every time."
The first change the Great Pumpkin anticipates: No more albums.
"The idea of the album is over. In the current culture, singles and flashy success are 10 times more celebrated. The promise of a Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper is no longer available. I think it's important to try to do things that change the temperature the way albums used to, but when you look at the signals the marketplace is sending, maybe the time for that particular vehicle is up. We're going back to the mentality of the '30s and '40s, when . . . people focused on key performances, and it was not about letting people see everything you've got."
He envisions releasing four lower-key EPs a year, then collecting the best of that material on an EP-sized release, and having "that be our commercial representation." Corgan believes the approach will engender growth: "That way you can make strong choices with what you know will be singles, and pick your spots. Rather than explaining your experiments to the mainstream all the time."
That doesn't mean Corgan will restrict the angsty alt-metal band's overall output. Quite the opposite: "I've reached the opinion that the editing process is inconsequential. Basically the band should put out, in some form, everything it touches. Even amongst the crap there's still something to be heard. That's why I buy bootlegs, or Picasso's sketchbooks. . . . As an artist, I don't want to censor myself. . . . When you get caught up in 'what do they want, what do they expect?' you can guess yourself into the ground."
He points to the band's recent output as an illustration.
After its 1995 commercial breakthrough Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Corgan began exploring more orchestral ideas. Some of those turned up on 1998's thickly layered Adore, an overly long and exceedingly ambitious collection that took a critical drubbing. But Corgan didn't entirely back down when he started writing for the new collection: Machina blends crafty string writing and keyboard textures into the guitar maelstrom generated by Corgan and James Iha. More aggressive rhythmically than Adore, it represents further expansion, and refinement, of the band's sonic approach - there are traces of the trance fusion Mahavishnu Orchestra in the shredded guitar lines of "The Sacred and Profane," and an Eno-like lushness defines "Stand Inside Your Love."
Corgan says those refinements went unnoticed, and the story became about the band going back to more conventional rock.
"I knew that the first question was going to be, 'So, what was your intention for returning to rock?' Which told me that these people were not even paying attention to what was in the music. Our intention? How about: To rock?"
In the past, such slights would have riled the obstreperous Corgan, who says reaction to his singing voice runs the gamut from "God gave you the voice of angels" to "your voice drives me out of my skull."
But these days, as he conceptualizes a creative environment away from the spotlight, he's less pushy about getting his props. There are even signs in the music that he's lightened up: After a particularly devastating, twisting-and-turning guitar solo on the current single "I of the Mourning," Corgan's first words are tongue-in-cheek: "I blew the dust off my guitars."
Some might say he's actually acquired a mellow, sanguine attitude.
"Like anything, the value of what we do will be sort of worked out over time. The production things may take a while for people to get. I think I've been undervalued as a pop writer - "Stand Inside Your Love" is a great song whether it gets on the radio or not. I think people forget that we're not just making records for this generation. There are plenty to come. . . . What's important to us right now is that the band is stronger than ever. Jimmy [Chamberlin, the band's original drummer, who went through a two-year heroin detox after the overdose death of supporting keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin in 1996] is back and healthy, and he and Melissa [Auf Der Maur, the former Hole bassist who joined the Pumpkins this year] are playing great together."
And yet, for all that maturity, Corgan is still capable of making enemies in a messily public fashion. Asked about the public spat with short-tenured manager Sharon Osbourne, which erupted in January, Corgan acknowledges it was not a genius maneuver. She quit, and in an accompanying statement said: "I must resign today due to medical reasons. Billy Corgan was making me sick!" He responded with a lawsuit alleging breach of contract. She characterized the suit as "a routine accounting matter."
"That whole weirdness certainly has had a negative impact on the band," Corgan says. "The hypothetical question of the moment is: What would people think of the band if I'd never said anything? If I'd been straight-up nicey-nicey in interviews? I think the perception of the band would have been higher. The press would have been kinder."
In the next breath, he swears he has no regrets. "When I got into this, I decided to play it full-on. I was going to make full-on music and be a full-on honest person. I mean, can you imagine Iggy Pop wondering whether he should say something? I didn't get into rock and roll to play by somebody's rules."
After making a series of in-store appearances in February and March, the Smashing Pumpkins are currently two weeks into their "Sacred And Profane" tour and have already drawn rave reviews for blistering, two-hour performances in Chicago and New York.
The Pumpkins are all over rock and alternative radio with "Stand Inside Your Love," the second single from its newest album, "Machina/The Machines Of God," which features an Expressionist-styled video shot by acclaimed director Wiz.
Despite the complex clip for "Stand Inside Your Love, the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan recently confided to MTV News that the song was actually rather straightforward and easy to write.
"Well, 'Stand Inside Your Love' is one of those rare songs that seems to write itself really quickly," Corgan said. "It probably only took me about 20 minutes to write the song, but those songs always seem to be the ones that capture something that if I work on it for too long, it sort of messes itself up.
"So, 'Disarm,' 'Today,' 'Drown,' 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings,' '1979,' 'Ava Adore,' those are all the songs that came to me the quickest. As far as the song goes, it's sort of a love song that rocks, which is pretty rare, even for me. And I even got my girlfriend dancing in the video, so it's all a tribute to my girlfriend, I guess."
While "Stand Inside Your Love" continues to impact at radio, Corgan indicated that the Pumpkins are already starting to sort out "Machina" tracks for the group's next few singles.
"Probably 'I Of The Morning' is going to be the next single," he said, "but we're not really sure yet if we're going to make a video for it. We're pretty sure we are going to make a video for what would probably be the next single after that, which is called 'Try, Try, Try.' So we're sort of 'Try'-ing to figure all that out."
The Smashing Pumpkins' "Sacred And Profane" tour will roll into the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia on April 28 and the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts on April 29.
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has more material from the Machina/The Machines Of God sessions sitting in the can waiting to be released. The outspoken artist said that the material includes ballads as well as some tunes that are even heavier than the songs on Machina. Corgan told LAUNCH that the band might use it as an enticement for a new deal with another record label.
"We're out of our deal with Virgin," he explained, "So it's sort of like, do we finish it and try to create a commercial release, or do we just sort of finish it and let it sit in a box until we put out Machina/The Director's Cut in 10 years? I don't know. We're going to finish it no matter what. Whether we just put it in a box and put it out in 10 years or not."
Corgan said the band is in no rush to sign a deal with a new label, though. "Different people have broached the subject," he said. "I want to wait until the band has sort of reached its plateau point on this album before we start getting into what we're going to do. I don't think it's very respectful to the album or to Virgin to sort of be getting into business right now. There's enough going on. And there's no hurry."
Reports of the Smashing Pumpkins' imminent demise - at least after the group's current tour to support MACHINA/the machines of God - are greatly exaggerated, according to frontman Billy Corgan.
Of course, it was Corgan who was cited as making those pronouncements when the album was released. But, he counters, "I've never said to anyone that the band's ending. It's been so oft-quoted in stories that it's become fact. Maybe we'll break up just to prove everyone right."
So that means the Pumpkins do have a future, right? "We definitely have other things planned - although how long and how far, I don't know," says Corgan, who's planning his own move from Chicago, although he doesn't know to where yet. "Everybody wants the dramatic ending or whatever. I think it's sort of missing the point. The band somehow just keeps going. Just when it seems like the whole thing is going to blow up and end, it just keeps going."
To that end, Corgan says the Pumpkins' new tour is going, well, smashingly, and that new bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur "has done an amazing job" of integrating herself into the band during her first tour. For the concerts themselves, he says, the Pumpkins have created shows that he feels are representative of the band's entire body of work rather than just the new album.
"We sort of found a nice balance between older material and newer material," he says. "We've tried to reinterpret the older material through the straw of the new album, as if the old material was written for the new album - if that makes sense. A song like 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings' sounds more like it was written with 'Everlasting Love' than in 1994; it sounds more 1999 than 1994, that's the only way to describe it."
Billy's dad Bill Corgan, Sr. joined the Pumpkins onstage last nite for the band's performance of Blank Page as well as an old blues cover. They dedicated the song "With Every Light" to "those who are no longer with us."
Just thought that was worthy of mentioning. :)
Billy Corgan in a pro wrestling ring? That was the invitation extended to him on Monday (April 3) on the Chicago-based syndicated morning show Mancow's Morning Madhouse. It seems the Smashing Pumpkins frontman is an avid "wrestlemaniac." On hearing this admission, the show's host, Mancow Muller, invited the tall-but-slender singer to join him in the ring for an April 16 WCW pay-per-view bout against Jimmy "Mouth of the South" Hart. The response? Corgan said he would have to "see what he could do with his touring schedule." C'mon, Billy, you mean you'd rather play your Chicago gig than get snapped in two?
There's a long interview with Billy in Real Audio from Rocket 95.3 [The Rock Home of Stockholm] radio station. Click here to listen to it.
Happy birthday to Billy today who turns [a rawkin'] 33 years old! :) Remember to visit Project 33 to find out how you can contribute to Billy's birthday present!
The first line of the first song on the new Smashing Pumpkins album says it all: "You know I'm not dead."
All but written off by many fans and critics in recent years after its last album did not exactly fly off record store shelves, the alternative rock mainstays would like the word to go out that they are very much alive.
The one problem with this thesis is that the opening line is a red herring, placed there by lead Pumpkin Billy Corgan for his own enjoyment, possibly to confuse gullible journalists.
"No, I'm not that shallow. We knew that people were going to read into it like that and we found it amusing," he told Reuters in an interview. This is what makes people love and/or hate the Smashing Pumpkins.
Singer/guitarist Corgan, who turns 33 on March 17, is either a songwriting genius or annoyingly pretentious. The title of the new album, "MACHINA/the machines of God" (Virgin Records), the fifth studio effort since he co-founded the Chicago band in 1988, probably helps the case for the prosecution and Corgan tightens the noose around his neck by refusing to explain what it means.
In his defense, he comes across as a fairly honest player, probably too open for his own good. When he says he does not feel optimistic about his career or his place in rock 'n' roll, one (gullibly?) tends to sympathize with him rather than tag him as just another plaintive millionaire rock star.
CUTTING EDGE
With 1993 major-label debut album "Siamese Dream" and 1995 double opus "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," the Pumpkins put themselves on
rock 'n' roll's cutting edge. Hit singles such as "Cherub Rock" and "Today" from the former and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" and "1979" from the latter
helped the two albums together sell 16.5 million copies worldwide.
The unappreciated "Adore" from 1998 sold about 3 million copies worldwide, doing much better overseas than in the United States. Corgan says fans let him down by overreacting to a deeply personal album about the death of his mother.
This was not his only headache: The album came out two years after the band fired drummer Jimmy Chamberlin following the drug overdose death of tour keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Corgan swore Chamberlin would never rejoin the lineup but the propulsive drummer went into rehab and is back in the band.
The lineup is rounded out by guitarist James Iha and former Hole bass player Melissa Auf Der Maur, who recently replaced D'Arcy Wretzky. Released on Feb. 29 in the United States, "MACHINA" debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. pop album charts, one notch lower than "Adore."
Corgan wrote and co-produced (with Flood) all the songs on the new album and effectively manages the band after their recent split with hard rock titan Ozzy Osbourne's wife/manager Sharon Osbourne after just three months.
In separate interviews with Reuters, she accused Corgan of being "a stupid little boy" and he laughed off the incident, saying she "really hasn't accomplished much of anything."
LAWSUIT
But he has since sued Osbourne for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.
Corgan remains a huge fan of the other Osbourne, saying, "At this point in time that's pretty much what I listen to the most, is '70s and '80s heavy metal." He pays homage to the genre in the new song "Heavy Metal Machine," which includes the curious line "if I were dead, would my records sell."
Again, fans interpret at their risk.
"You can look at it in the obvious, 'Well this is what he's saying,' but at the same time you'd have to think, 'Well, he's smart enough to know that if he writes this people are going to interpret it a certain way.' So that, in and of itself, invites a certain irony because I'm certainly aware of what people are going to read into it," he said.
Corgan, whose shaved head, lanky frame and recent penchant for black dresses makes him resemble Uncle Fester from "The Addams Family," says he is toying with the idea of how people perceive him, and the album can be interpreted many ways.
"It exists on all levels -- the sacred, the profane, the ridiculous, the cartoon, the whatever. You can find in it whatever you want. It's all there and it's all there with kind of a good sense of humor."
On the other hand, Corgan says he would rather hang up his guitar than be perceived as the David Letterman of rock 'n' roll because comedy and rock make an uneasy mix. "Humor is very much a moment kind of thing, where love and hurt and things like that, that seems to linger on. I don't think we try to make transitory records."
The simplest and most personal song on the album is the third track, "Stand Inside Your Love," the next single. "What I like about it so much is it's a love song that rocks, which is pretty hard to do," he said.
In order to make the 73-minute album move along, the first eight tracks, starting with opening track "The Everlasting Gaze," are deliberately "more poppy," he said, while the last five are "more arty."
He started writing the songs in January 1999 and spent the next 10 months in the studio, working 14-hour days that have left him exhausted. So, getting back to that opening line, Corgan has made noises in the past about breaking up the band and some songs hint at finality, but he says he is having so much fun now and cannot imagine walking away from it.
"In my world the end is always near. I think that we've always taken a tragic and fatal position to crank the intensity up in the band," he said. "If you believe that every gig is your last gig, you do play it a little differently. If you believe that every album is your last album, you'll approach it with a certain intensity that you wouldn't have. So we've always lived on that knife edge."
The Smashing Pumpkins will begin a U.S. tour on April 8 in Kansas City.
Well, it looks like Billy took a group of about 30 fans who were waiting in line in Champaigne, IL this morning [February 27th] to breakfast at a local IHOP! He picked up the tab and also reportedly had breakfast consisting of eggs overeasy, pancakes and bacon. :)
Grammy-award winning artists, the Smashing Pumpkins, will perform a song from their next album MACHINA/the machines of God, which is due out on February 29th.
During the live show, MTV will premiere MTV.com's first ever interactive music video -- "The Crying Tree of Mercury" directed by Billy Corgan. The video will be available to online users throughout the week.
Geno Leonardo from Filter says the English press have totally misquoted him after they published him saying the Smashing Pumpkins were about to break up for good.
Various U.K. websites had quoted Geno as the man who announced the breakup of Smashing Pumpkins.
Geno told Undercover News "That is a bunch of shit. Somebody said they quoted me but it was a bunch of shit. If you want to know what's going on with the Pumpkins talk to Billy Corgan because I certainly don't have any secret knowledge. It's bullshit. I'm going to totally knock this down before it gets out of control because it already is.
What do I know about the Pumpkins? I did ask him at a Christmas show in Chicago, the Q101 Twisted Christmas Show, that Jimmy is back in the band and what is happening with D'Arcy. His answer was 'I wanted to bring everybody back and get the real Pumpkin vibe for another great record and conquer the world'.
I think people misunderstood what I said and took it as though he was going to put out one last album.
Listen, Billy is never going to dry out creatively. Whether he makes music by himself or with the Pumpkins, I have no bearing on that. I'm sure he's annoyed hearing that I said that. So sorry, Bill".
The Smashing Pumpkins' leader Billy Corgan tells the Reuters news service that he's out of his deal with the band's record label, Virgin Records.
"I'm out of my deal so I'm no longer an indentured servant," Corgan tells Reuters. "We're free agents now, we're done with our commitment to Virgin." Corgan's comments come on the heels of the proposed merger between Time Warner and EMI, the parent company of Virgin Records. He does add, though, that this doesn't mean that they wouldn't re-sign to the label, according to the story. The Pumpkins and Virgin have been at odds with each other for the past several years.
In October 1997, the band professed that they would no longer render their services, citing the California labor law that prohibits personal contracts from extening over seven years. Virgin countered with a lawsuit filed on Feb. 24, 1998 for failing to deliver four out of the seven records promised to the label (allstar, Feb. 25, 1998). Since then, the Pumpkins delivered Adore in June 1998 and MACHINA/the machines of God is slated for a Feb. 29 release.
When asked to comment, a Virgin spokesperson deferred to the statement made to Reuters: "We think Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins are fabulous artists. We've had a great relationship with them for many years, and we hope to continue that relationship for many years to come."
Meanwhile, the Pumpkins also announced late Friday that drummer Jimmy Chamberlin "has suffered an eye injury" and will be unable to play with the band at their scheduled show Saturday (Feb. 19) at Cat's Cradle in Carlboro, N.C. The show will now be an acoustic performance. The band is generously offering refunds to fans who want them and will be available at the box office on a first-come, first-serve basis.
-- Carrie Borzillo
A year after they mounted a back-to-basics club tour, the Smashing Pumpkins will roll out another guerrilla tour, beginning Monday, bandleader Billy Corgan said Saturday.
"We're going to do surprise shows," Corgan disclosed prior to the band's rehearsal for its planned performance on Sunday night's post-Superbowl edition of the television talk show "Politically Incorrect." "We're doing this promo thing all over the U.S., doing in-stores and surprise club gigs from now ... up until the middle of March," Corgan said.
The in-store appearances and unannounced club shows are scheduled to begin in Kansas on Monday, although Corgan did not reveal any more specifics.
"We're going to do mostly in-stores, but nobody knows where we're going to pop up and play," he said. The Pumpkins ended a European tour in mid-January, cut short after Corgan was said to be suffering from a throat condition.
After the blitz of in-stores and club shows, the group will mount a larger U.S. tour beginning in April, Corgan said.
The 35-date barnstorming tour will coincide with the band's release of its fifth studio album, MACHINA/the machines of God (Feb. 29), a raucous, 15-song return to the band's signature mix of new-wave ballads and hard-rocking tunes.
The album was recorded in the Smashing Pumpkins' hometown of Chicago, prior to the September departure of founding bandmember bassist D'Arcy Wretzky. The disc mixes the guitar-driven fury of the first single, "The Everlasting Gaze" (RealAudio excerpt), with tracks that bear the more downbeat, electronic influence of the group's poorly received 1997 effort, Adore.
The album also marks the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, whose muscular, rapid-fire style can be heard on such tracks as the Black Sabbath-like rocker "Heavy Metal Machine" and on "Sunshowers," which bears the influence of new-wave pop band New Order.
Chamberlin rejoined the group last year after being fired in July 1996 due to his role in the heroin-related death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin; Chamberlin was arrested for heroin possession in connection with Melvoin's death. The drummer pleaded guilty and was ordered to complete a drug-rehabilitation program.
Corgan said he was excited to take the group's new lineup on the road, especially in light of the recent addition of his longtime friend and former Hole bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur.
"We're f---ing rocking [with Melissa in the band]," the bald bandleader said enthusiastically. The group, which also includes guitarist James Iha, debuted the
new lineup in December with a pair of concerts at its old hometown haunt, the Metro club. The shows included such songs as "Cherub Rock" and "Ava Adore".
--Gil Kaufman
The following is a letter written by Billy for the fans in Brussels:
To our dear fans in Brussels we just wanted to write a note to say how sorry we were that we could not finish our show the other night. We were so upset and of course we know you were too, we now wish that we would have at least stayed for an hour to shake everyone's hands and say hello. We've never had to walk off stage like that, so I think the whole thing overwhelmed us. In twelve years we've only cancelled four shows, so its nothing we are used to. We appreciate the effort that everyone went through to come & standing in line and in some cases flying in from other countries. So let me apologise from the bottom of our hearts. We are so sorry and when we come back later this year we will play twice as long.
Love
Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins)
Billy has come down with a throat infection. This has forced the cancellation of the Brussels, BE and Manchester, UK shows. He is currently resting, and is looking forward to performing at the upcoming London, UK show.
Dotmusic can exclusively reveal that Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan intends to split the band following the promotion of their forthcoming album. 'MACHINA/The Machines Of God' is set to be the last studio album by the multi-platinum act when it is released in late February.
Speaking to dotmusic, fellow Chicago rockers, and close friends of the Pumpkins, Filter revealed that it is only a matter time before Billy calls it a day.
"Billy expressed to me that this is it - this is the last time he will go out as the Pumpkins - and he wants to conquer the world, do it one last time and go out with a big boom" says Filter guitarist Geno Lenardo.
Filter singer and one time Nine Inch Nails guitarist Richard Patrick also explained to us the reasons behind D'arcy quitting the group:
"She really, really wanted a break from the whole music industry. She's tired of how competitive it is. She's just like 'hey, I want to be an actress'. She is a very competitive person but she's just tired of the music industry. She's really over it. She just wants to do something new and she should. She should be happy."
Sharon Osbourne sensationally resigned as manager of the Smashing Pumpkins last week 'due to medical reasons'. It seems someone in the band was making her feel sick.
"Billy is a very heavy handed, he knows what he wants. Most genius' or successful men know what they want. It's his way or the highway. You either get it or you don't. He goes through personal assistants like they are underwear. I could see him being pretty authoritative" adds Patrick.
"We know her and we know Ozzy. She is a sweetheart. She embodies what I think makes a great manager. She would take a bullet for the bands she wants to work with".
As a friend of both Corgan and Osbourne, Patrick assures us it isn't a major issue between the two parties, "I'm sure it's not a personal issue but I think it's probably that they couldn't click".
As turmoil surrounds the Smashing Pumpkins' managerial situation, the band has chosen to keep mum on the matter and just press on with business as usual.
To that end, the group plans to travel to London next week to shoot a video for "The Everlasting Gaze" with acclaimed Swedish director Jonas Akerlund. According to a source close to the band, the "Gaze" clip will be a stripped-down, performance-based look at the group's refurbished lineup.
Prior to Akerlund, there was talk that the Smashing Pumpkins might work with the husband-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who also directed the band's videos for "Perfect," "1979," and "Tonight, Tonight." The Pumpkins eventually opted for Akerlund, with whom they had not previously worked.
"The Everlasting Gaze" video is expected to be completed by early February, and the band has now decided to use the track as the first single from its new album, "Machina/The Machines Of God," rather than "Stand Inside Your Love," the song originally intended as the lead single.
The Smashing Pumpkins have already shot part of a chess-themed video to "Stand Inside Your Love" with the director known as Wiz, who also handled Marilyn Manson's "Man That You Fear" video, among others. The band will now wait to finish production on that clip for at least the next few weeks and is still eyeing "Stand Inside Your Love" to be the second single from "Machina."
Earlier this week, former Pumpkins manager Sharon Osbourne severed her ties with the band, citing an inability to work with frontman Billy Corgan.
The group and its reps are still holding to their "no comment" stance on the issue, which they will likely address in greater depth once the band completes the new video and its European promotional tour.
This weekend, the Smashing Pumpkins will play the Coliseum in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Palacio De Congressio in Madrid, Spain.
LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Jan. 11, 2000--Effective immediately Sharon Osbourne has resigned as manager of The Smashing Pumpkins. "It was with great pride and enthusiasm that I took on management of the Pumpkins back in October, but unfortunately I must resign today due to medical reasons - Billy Corgan was making me sick!!!" Osbourne also stated that she is "saddened that she will no longer be working with such great and talented people as James Iha, Melissa Auf Der Maur and Jimmy Chamberlain. I wish them much love."
The Smashing Pumpkins will start a three-week European tour today in Stockholm, Sweden, just weeks after debuting the band's new touring bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur, at a pair of hometown shows in Chicago. As with last month's shows at the Metro, the Smashing Pumpkins are expected to use the short jaunt to road test new songs and material from the band's forthcoming album, "MACHINA/the machines of God."
Auf Der Maur, who officially resigned from her bass-playing duties in Hole back in October, says that hooking up with the Pumpkins has been a gratifying experience so far and adds that her life changed when she saw the band play in her hometown of Montreal in 1990.
"I pretty much found one of the loudest sounds inside myself," Auf Der Maur said, "[as I was listening to] this band. And I felt this thing when I watched this band. I pretty much started playing the bass that year, and Billy would weave in and out of my life giving me a 'thumb's up' or --"
"A kick in the ass," interjected frontman Billy Corgan.
"Absolutely," Auf Der Maur agreed.
Corgan was the one who recommended Auf Der Maur to Hole's Courtney Love when her band was looking for a bassist to replace Kristen M. Pfaff, who died of a drug overdose in 1994.
"MACHINA/the machines of God" is due in record stores on February 29.
-- Kara Manning
Smashing Pumpkins once again showcased the newest version of the band in an exclusive show in Dublin, Ireland on Wednesday (Dec. 29). The group -- now composed of guitarist/singer Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, returning drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and new bassist and former Hole member Melissa Auf Der Maur -- played to 1,000 fans as part of the Miller Genuine Draft Blind Date promotion, including more than 300 American contest winners flown over for the gig.
The set featured hits like "Today," "1979," and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" as well as selections from their upcoming fifth album Machina/The Machines of God, due out on Virgin Records on Feb. 29. The album, produced by Corgan and Flood, does not feature Auf Der Maur, but the playing of former bassist DíArcy Wretzky.
-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles
Taken from the Chicago Sun-Times
Billy Corgan has never been as good as when he's had something to prove.
If author Gail Sheehy were to analyze the Smashing Pumpkins' leader in one of her pop-psych biographies, she might offer an easy hypothesis for his burning ambition: It's rooted in his childhood in northwest suburban Elk Grove Village, where he sought approval from his musician dad by hunkering down in his bedroom while learning to play guitar from records by Black Sabbath and the Cure.
Or she might focus on his Glenbard North high school days, when the tall, awkward teen turned to rock 'n' roll for solace from the usual derision that jocks heap upon self-proclaimed "geeks" (a circumstance that Corgan reports he found again in the early '90s once he entered the realm of cooler-than-thou indie-rock).
Whatever the source of his drive, Corgan finds himself in the role of the underdog once more. And he has risen to the occasion: The band's new album, "Machina/The Machines of God," to be released Feb. 29, is its masterpiece. It will be the focus of sold-out concerts tonight and Tuesday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, the Pumpkins' "psychic home."
The band's introspective and experimental "Adore," released last year, was widely perceived as a flop (though I maintain that it was the Pumpkins' strongest album to that point). It has sold more than a million copies, but that's a fraction of the total that the band's two previous albums racked up. The group's move toward electronica was considered passe and overly genteel by an alternative rock scene that had turned to ultra-aggressive rap-rock.
That drop in popularity was reflected by the empty seats during the Pumpkins' brief tour in the summer of 1998. Fans stayed away, even though the Pumpkins had earmarked all of the tour's proceeds for charity. The group was red-faced that summer when it had to move a show planned for Soldier Field to the New World Music Theatre, when 18 months earlier, it would have filled the larger venue with little problem.
Then came the troubles during the recording sessions for the Pumpkins' next album. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was back in the fold after a three-year exile, during which he sorted out his drug problems. But bassist D'Arcy Wretzky was said to be disaffected and more interested in acting in Los Angeles than recording in Chicago. (That Corgan had often played bass on the albums himself couldn't have helped matters.)
In a terse, six-word statement issued in September, the Pumpkins announced D'Arcy's departure from the band. Three weeks ago, it named her replacement: Melissa Auf Der Maur, whom Corgan had introduced to Courtney Love when Hole needed a bassist. (A bit miffed at losing a musician to her old boyfriend, mentor and rival, Love fired back that she hopes Auf Der Maur is happy in her new role as Corgan's "purse, handbag, accessory.")
Despite these travails, "Machina" was finally completed (advance copies already have been sent out to critics). The Pumpkins are getting an early jump on the disc by heading off on a world tour, which starts Jan. 7 in Sweden.
What's at stake with this album and tour? Corgan and his bandmates need to prove that they are still a relevant force on stage, on radio and on MTV. But most of all, they need to show that they still can rock.
The marketing strategy is obvious. For his band's new manager, Corgan chose Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's wife and the hard-bargaining "Iron Lady" who built the heavy-metal Ozzfest into one of the most successful summer shed tours. In addition to celebrity-oriented, New York-based publicist Annie O'Hayan, the band has hired a small Pennsylvania firm that specializes in promoting underground metal acts.
If Metallica has moved from metal toward alternative, then the Pumpkins want to move from alternative toward metal.
"Let me die, rock 'n' roll/Let me die, to save my soul. . . . Heavy metal/Heavy metal machine," Corgan sings over a massive guitar riff and Chamberlin's thundering drums on the new album.
Sorry, Billy; the Pumpkins never were and never will be a heavy-metal machine, not in the sense that your heroes Black Sabbath were. But "Machina" is an exceedingly impressive and hard-driving record.
"You know I'm not dead," Corgan sings in his distinctive nasal snarl. They're the first words on the album's first song and radio single, "The Everlasting Gaze," and he and the band spend the next 14 songs and 73 minutes showing just how alive they are.
Musically, the band recaptures the tuneful bombast of early efforts like "Gish" via new songs such as "Heavy Metal Machine" and "I of the Mourning," which boasts a fiery guitar solo and a catchy chorus about the rush of hearing a favorite song on the radio.
At the same time, the trademark Pumpkins crunch is married to the more subtle melodic passages, musical experimentation and mature lyrics of "Adore." Witness finely crafted tunes such as "Rain Drops & Sun Showers," "The Sacred and Profane" and "The Imploding Voice" (which was called "Virex" when the band toured last spring but became a different song in the studio, thanks to the input of producer Flood).
"The Everlasting Gaze" sets the tone musically and lyrically for much of the album, contrasting nicely with the ending track, the beautiful ballad "Age of Innocence." After the death of his mother, "Adore" found a 31-year-old Corgan mulling over his place in the universe. Now he's waxing even more philosophical, while abandoning the whining that marred some previous discs.
"We all want to hold in the everlasting gaze/Enchanted in the rapture of his sentimental sway/But under the wheels lie the skulls of every cog/The fickle fascination of an everlasting god," Corgan raps with an impassioned venom on "The Everlasting Gaze."
In other words, the Great Pumpkin is pondering the existence of God and the role of a passionate, feeling human being in an increasingly cold and mechanical society. At the same time he's warning against cheap romantic illusions.
"Into my prayers/I dream alone/A silent speech/To deaf ears/If you want love/You must be love/But if you bleed love/You will die love," he sings in "Age of Innocence." Heavy stuff, and a long way from "Life's a bummer/When you're a hummer," however ironically that was intended.
Ultimately, I hear "Machina" as a celebration of individualism and self-reliance, which has been one of rock's greatest themes from the beginning. And with their backs up against the wall, the Pumpkins are proving anew that they are some of rock's giants.
The official Smashing Pumpkins site is back up after being down for quite a while...they've also got some cool new flash stuff for you to check out that I wish I could do. ;) Visit the site here.
The Smashing Pumpkins will debut their new lineup at two intimate club shows in their hometown. According to the band's Internet fan club, the reharvested Pumpkins, featuring former Holester Melissa Auf Der Maur in place of bassist D'Arcy, will appear at Chicago's Metro nightclub December 20 and 21.
Those planning to catch this pretour peek should stop at the market first. Audience members who bring two high-protein canned food items will receive a special Christmas card autographed by Billy Corgan and the band.
Aside from the card, there's another good reason to catch the band. A persistent rumor has it that the Pumpkins' pending tour may be their last. An unnamed source close to the band says Corgan may be hanging up his touring hat for the rest of the band's career. The band's publicist could not be reached for comment.
The Pumpkins have already announced European dates in support of their forthcoming album "Machina/The Machines of God." Look for details regarding domestic dates soon.
The Pumpkins will be playing two rather intimate shows at Chicago club The Metro on December 20 and 21. Tickets for these shows are $20 and go on sale December 10. ALSO, anyone who brings two canned goods to the show will receive a free autographed gift!
An ultra-secret, exclusive listening party for the new Smashing Pumpkins album was held Friday (Nov. 19) evening at the Whiskey Bar in New York City. In attendance were a number of Virgin Records personnel -- most of whom were hearing the finished album for the first time -- and about 15 key modern rock radio programmers, who were flown in specially by the label for the party. The record -- which has yet to be titled -- was handed in to the label earlier in the week, and comes on the heels of 1998ís disappointing Adore set. A source at the party told allstar that the new album definitely rocks harder than the electronica-tinged Adore with "more guitars and more snarling vocals." The albumís release date is Feb. 29, 2000 (pushed back from its original date of Feb. 15) and the track listing goes as follows:
1."Everlasting Gaze"
2."Raindrops + Sun showers"
3."Stand Inside Your Love" (the first single)
4."I Of The Mourning"
5."The Sacred + Profane"
6."Try, Try, Try"
7."Heavy Metal Machine"
8."This Time"
9."The Imploding Voice"
10."Glass + The Ghost Children"
11."Wound"
12."The Mercury Tree"
13."Blue Skies Bring Tears"
14."With Every Light" 15. "The Age of Innocence"
-- Don Kaye
According to the SPIFC [Smashing Pumpkins Internet Fan Club], the Smashing Pumpkins have already confirmed tour dates for Europe beginning January 7 of the year 2000. Here they are!
The Bridge School Benefit webcast will be held at www.bridgeschool.org. Visit their site for more details and log on October 30 and 31 to watch the performance.
Performances from the Bridge School Benefit concert (including Billy and James' set) will be webcast both October 30 and 31 by a yet unconfirmed host site. Intel will sponsor the webcast.
Taken from launch.com
Smashing Pumpkins are set to release a still-untitled album on Feb. 15. This will come on the heels of news that Ozzy Osbourne's wife, Sharon Osbourne, has taken on the role of managing the Pumpkins.
A spokesperson confirmed that the album was "nearly complete" and that the band is at the mixing stage. The first order of business for Osbourne and the band is shopping around for a publicist.
When LAUNCH asked if the band could confirm rumors that former Hole member Melissa Auf Der Maur has joined the band as its bassist, a spokesperson replied, "No, not yet." Former Pumpkins bassist D'Arcy Wretzky and the band went their separate ways last month.
The band's last album, Adore, was considered to be a commercial disappointment. However, Smashing Pumpkins head Billy Corgan tells LAUNCH that he's not worried that his music will be considered "out" because rap/ metal is in vogue. "I know it's compelling, on a human level, to talk about who's in, who's out, who's up, and who's down, but I have faith that the music we make is not only vital and integral to what's going on at the moment, but I think it will have weight and hold water over time."
On September 19th, Billy attended Extreme Championship Wrestling's Anarchy Rulz pay-per-view special. According to Billy, he says that he's been an ECW wrestling fan for years. Billy was also recently spotted a WWF match in Chicago this August. (Thanks again to A Smashing Pumpkins Haven for the awesome pic of Billy.)
Billy's chat on the soundtrack from Stigmata has been cancelled.
Billy will be chatting with fans about the Stigmata soundtrack September 13th, on America On-Line. Don't miss it!
Taken from metromix.com
August 23, 1999
By Greg Kot
Billy Corgan is in a Chicago studio trying to nail a guitar part for a forthcoming Smashing Pumpkins album and blowing a little smoke. "If I screw it up, it's because you made me rush," he says. He's kidding (I think), but the familiar Corgan intensity is undeniable.
After a tumultuous year, he is doing what he does best: throwing himself into his work like nothing else matters.
On Tuesday, his soundtrack with keyboardist Mike Garson for the movie "Stigmata" will arrive in stores -- a series of eerie instrumentals reflecting influences such as German avant-gardist Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sun Ra and Mike ("Tubular Bells") Oldfield.
And early next year, the new Pumpkins album will surface. Corgan says it's "70 percent done" and that 40 songs have been written for it -- only half of which will make it onto the record. "We did a little club tour a few months ago to play some of the new songs," Corgan says, "and already about half of those have been thrown off because we keep raising the bar." The album reunites Corgan, guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin -- fired in 1996 for drug abuse but recently welcomed back into the fold -- and producer Flood, who last worked with the band on its most successful album, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995).
Corgan knows this next album will be a critical one for the band. With the 1998 "Adore" album, the band retooled its sound to compensate for the absence of Chamberlin's walloping backbeat, veering away from its battle-tested guitar attack toward keyboard-soaked atmospherics. Though it sold 3 million copies worldwide and contained some of the most beautiful and daring music of the band's career, "Adore" never got its due from the Pumpkins faithful, and many industry observers judged it a stiff because it didn't approach the multimillion sales figures of its predecessors.
Insult was followed by injury. The band played a series of charity shows last summer, but its offer to play a free show in Grant Park on the 4th of July was denied by the city. A subsequent concert at the New World Music Theatre in Tinley Park raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a local charity, but the bad taste lingered. The Pumpkins fired their management team, the powerful Q Prime duo of Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein, and pointedly did not play a Chicago date on a brief club tour last spring.
"Stigmata" suggests that Corgan isn't through creating surprises. It's a dark, futuristic head-trip composed in a mere three weeks by the usually methodical Pumpkins auteur and Garson, a former David Bowie accomplice and "Adore" tour keyboardist. "Identify," the only non-instrumental, is sung by Natalie Imbruglia. But Corgan cautions that listeners shouldn't regard it as a prelude to the sound of the new Pumpkins album: "Don't try and outguess us," he says during the course of a wide-ranging interview.
Q--"Stigmata" sounds like a weirder, deeper
exploration of some of the themes on "Adore."
A--It was about making music without having the pressure of making Pumpkins music. It was a freer space. I know it's hard for people to understand, but the Pumpkins as a unit determines the shape of the music. A lot of people think I ram home my agenda, but the music really comes from the heart and soul of the band. Some of this music (on "Stigmata") is closer to my personal taste than some of the Pumpkins music. But the Pumpkins music is what it is. It's not a choice, it just happens.
Q--One of the "Stigmata" tracks refers to Stockhausen -- and here I thought you grew up listening to Black Sabbath and Van Halen.
A--Personally, I've been leaning toward avant-garde music lately. When the band started I was totally anti-pop. I could not stand it. But over time, I got really into pop music, because I thought it was the most subversive thing in the world. So having lived there for about five years, I'm ready to throw up (laughs). The classic song structures aren't what I like to do anymore. I look at the way Dylan broke convention, taking folk-song form and breaking it into something different, more rambling. I'm trying to find a language like that for myself.
Q--Did you feel burned by the way "Adore" was perceived? Word is you fired your management company over it.
A--They (Q Prime) tried to get across the idea they were fired because we didn't sell enough records, which is not true. "Adore" was a record that challenged everyone's truthfulness and integrity. When things are rolling, everybody looks like a genius. A year before I could have spit on a spoon, and they would've rushed it out. But when things get a little funky, that's when you find out who people really are. And it became obvious to me that management was only interested in me as a commercial act. They have no interest in me or the band from an artistic level. And I'm just not interested in that. I think this is a funny time for music, and no one seems to know what the future holds. But when things get crazy, you have to ask yourself, what's really important? So, there were two things for me personally: I wanted to get out of these situations where I feel business is more important than the music, and I wanted to put the band back together, at least put the band back together for this record.
Q--And how's it working out?
A--Pretty good. It's always sitting on a keg of dynamite. But musically I'm really happy, really excited.
Q--How did you come to invite Chamberlin back in the band?
A--I don't want to talk about all that stuff. But I will tell you that we absolutely wanted to make this record with him. It was going to be the full band back together or that would have been the end of it.
Q--You were seriously considering breaking up the band? A--Let me put it this way: I'm glad my band is back together for the moment. How long that is going to last I don't know. But I know it's good now, and everything else is just . . . Everybody was patting me on my back telling me how great I was for five years, long as I kept selling records. Suddenly there is something wrong with me, the band, the band's ideology. Things go up and down. It popped me out of the idea that the world of commerce has any merit in it at all. There is no redemption in that world. And it really brought me back to the alternative root. It's really about good music and playing good shows. The soil of this record is born out of the . . . it's like some girlfriend breaking up with you for the wrong reasons. Why did that happen? It just brings us back to what we do best. The culture of celebrity, the culture of who's in, who's out, after a while you realize it is so boringly predictable. And you realize there is nothing fair about it all. There is no integrity in it at all. I think a lot of people took glee in the supposed fall of the Smashing Pumpkins. But it's the perception, not the reality, because we're doing exactly what we want.
Q--I was struck by the fact that the Pumpkins played charity shows in '98 and were pretty much ignored. Meanwhile, the hot new bands who played Woodstock '99 presided over a festival that ended in rape and pillage.
A--You put together a money festival, and that's what you get. You can't put all these people together, charge them all that money and try to pretend it's all about peace and love. The key bands that were represented, by and large, were not bands that had anything to do with that message. The whole thing was bad news and will go down as a real blight on so-called Generation Y.
Q--What's surprising is how the political correctness -- respect for women, minorities, gays -- championed by the early '90s alternative bands has disappeared so fast.
A--It's sad -- dead and gone. If you had asked me in 1994, I would have said the world was changing and changing for the better. And now I think all we did was swing the pendulum one way so that it could be swung back even harder in the other. It was almost like everything that was good got used against (the movement toward tolerance). The integrity got turned into cunning cynicism. A lot of what the Woodstock bands stand for wouldn't pass the kangaroo court of alternative rock. No one even blinks anymore. Because everyone is bought and sold.
Q--So have you forgiven the mayor yet?
A--(Laughs) I can give you the private answer and I can give you the public answer. I love Chicago. I really do. I think it's a fantastic city. I'm really encouraged by where this city is heading in the last 5-10 years. And that's all I've got to say.
Q--The Grant Park affair could have been handled better, though. Was there a little payback when you didn't schedule Chicago for your club tour last spring?
A--I think the city severely underestimated the reaction when they canceled the show. But listen, any confusion I have about the place of my birth is much deeper than any single event. I think the band brought a lot of good things to the city. And I think people will appreciate our legacy over time.
Kot is the Chicago Tribune rock critic.
Taken from cdnow.com
August 6, 1999
Virgin may have pushed back the release date of the new Smashing Pumpkins album to February 2000, but that doesn't mean Billy Corgan gets a break. The hardworking frontman is currently camped out in an undisclosed Chicago studio, where the band is recording the follow-up to last year's Adore with producer Flood.
"I can't see anything more important for us right now than getting the album done on time and making sure we do the things we need to do to get it across," Corgan tells allstar in an exclusive telephone interview this week.
Asked for the reason behind the as-yet-untitled album's delay, he sighed, "It's my perfectionism at work again. You know, my much rumored-about and stereotyped perfectionism? It takes a lot of time."
Corgan refuses to discuss any particulars regarding the direction or sound of the work-in-progress. "There's no way I'm getting into any of that," he says. "There's a real danger in people trying to read between the lines of what I'm saying." He does, however, mention that he feels some of his early comments about Adore may have contributed to the esoteric album's critical and commercial shortcomings, especially in the wake of the multi-platinum success of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
"Before Adore came out, people said it's an electronic record," Corgan says. "I think I made jokes about it being techno, which became some sort of twisted truth. Adore was no more techno than '1979,' but people had a weird knee-jerk reaction because of what they thought they were hearing.
"Adore is a folk album. It has some electronic textures, but it's a fucking folk album. So I'm not getting into that. If I say it's heavier, then people expect Pantera. I'm just not going to play that game."
Corgan, instead, was more forthcoming on the topic of his work on the Stigmata soundtrack, which Virgin is releasing on Aug. 24. He contributes several new industrial-tinged instrumental compositions to the film's score, as well as an original song which he penned for Natalie Imbruglia, called "Identify."
The album also includes contributions from Massive Attack ("Inertia Creeps"), Bjork ("All Is Full of Love"), Chumbawamba ("Mary Mary"), David Bowie ("The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell"), and the Afro Celt Sound System featuring Sinead O'Connor ("Release").
While Corgan is proud of his own work, he downplayed his role in the disc's final running order. Unlike Trent Reznor's heavy-handed involvement in the Lost Highway soundtrack, Corgan said he merely acted as a filter for the music that ended up on Stigmata.
"That's the best way to put it," he says. "My record label has slightly overstated my involvement in the soundtrack. They certainly have kept me abreast of what they wanted to do. They asked me, 'What kind of soundtrack do you envision?' and I had some radical ideas. I had other ideas of other acts and other ways of doing things, I would have pursued some collaborative efforts and some covers that maybe people wouldn't have envisioned."
He adds: "There are some good album tracks on there, but I would have pursued some fresh new tracks. If you put together a soundtrack and it has brand new songs and the soundtrack music, then it's fresh stuff top to bottom. That, to me, would ultimately be more appealing as a consumer." Corgan explains that he eventually relented to the label's demands. "They started saying, 'Well, this is what we want to do and who we want to use,'" he said. "The list of people that ended up on the thing is all fine by me, but it wasn't like I sat there and picked out the tracks. I can't take credit or blame for it."
A better representation of Corgan's unadulterated creative vision can be found in the premiere issue of the underground arts magazine (t)here, which features a collaboration between the Smashing Pumpkins singer and his Russian girlfriend, photographer Yelena Yemchuk.
"She knows the guy that runs it and he approached her about us doing some collaboration," Corgan explained. "So we did the blatantly obvious -- I wrote four short stories to go with her pictures. It turned out cool."
Is Corgan harboring secret intentions of joining the literary world? "I dream about my future as an author, and putting down my guitar, but that's for the psychologist, I guess," he says. "It's all possible."
-- Aidin Vaziri
Taken from mtv.com
August 3, 1999
So how does it feel to work with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan?
Despite having recorded one of Corgan's songs for the soundtrack to "Stigmata," Natalie Imbruglia still doesn't know.
"We didn't actually work together," the Australian songstress told MTV News on Thursday of the song. Imbruglia says that she worked "very distantly" with Corgan on the track, titled "Identity."
The chief Pumpkin, who handled the score for the upcoming film, sent Imbruglia what the singer calls "an amazing demo" which she took into a London recording studio.
"Being a fan of the Pumpkins, I think that most of the things he does are pretty amazing," Imbruglia admitted of her appraisal of Corgan's work.
The singer describes the result of the sessions (which will be the first single from the "Stigmata" soundtrack) as "atmospheric, intense, almost depressing." Not exactly what fans of her hit "Torn" might be expecting.
"It's a big departure, but a good departure," she said on Thursday. "It's pain beyond pain to the point of being numb.... It's about struggling for connection or response."
Of course, this one-off project isn't the only thing on Imbruglia's plate. The singer has her sights set on a new album, but she admits that things aren't exactly rolling along.
"It's going slowly, but it's going," Imbruglia said. "It's taken a while to get back into the writing process.... I want to be able to give it my 100 percent attention."
But while she knows that new material is a long time coming, she vows that she won't be rushed in putting the new album together. "I want the album to be done," Imbruglia said. "I don't want it to drag out, but I want to have a good album.... You've got to get yourself in the right zone."
She is also optimistic that her work on "Identity" might help get things moving again.
"Being in the studio doing a Billy Corgan song has got to be good for the confidence," she concluded.
The "Stigmata" soundtrack, featuring Imbruglia's work with Corgan as well as tracks from David Bowie, Bjork, Massive Attack, Chumbawamba, and others, hits stores on August 24.
Taken from smashingpumpkins.com
July 28, 1999
The original line-up of The Smashing Pumpkins continue to record their new album, now slated for release in February 2000. Billy Corgan, James Iha, D'arcy and Jimmy Chamberlin are working in a Chicago studio on the follow up to the multi-platinum Adore.
During a career spanning over a decade, The Smashing Pumpkins have received countless accolades from critics and fans including two Grammy Awards, Rolling Stone's 1997 Artist of the Year, Rolling Stone's Reader's Poll 1996 Album of the Year and seven MTV Video Music Awards in 1997. Their most recent release, Adore, has sold over three million copies worldwide and was nominated this year for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album.
Joining the band once again in the studio is producer Flood, who worked with them on their multi-platinum double CD Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Also officially rejoining the band is Jimmy Chamberlin, who recently performed with The Smashing Pumpkins on their spring 1999 The Arising! tour. The surprise club tour garnered rave reviews from critics and adoration from fans who had the chance to see The Smashing Pumpkins' blistering performances in intimate club atmospheres.
The press had some very good things to say:
"The quartet flat out rocked."
--The Los Angeles Times
"Everything went atomic: the song, the crowd and the pumpkins, back in their original lineup, playing clubs in a nine-city road test of fresh Billy Corgan tunes and plainly loving every minute" --Rolling Stone
"The Pumpkins: simply smashing" --The Washington Post
"Bolstered by Chamberlin's return and confident in its new material, it looked and sounded like a band focused on reclaiming its standing as one of modern rock's most potent forces." --Chicago Tribune
If the club performances are any indication of what is to come in the year 2000 from The Smashing Pumpkins, fans across the globe can look forward to another extraordinary release.
Taken from smashingpumpkins.com
(t)here - a new magazine with pictures and words dedicated to collaborations between artists - will feature a collaborative effort between billy corgan + yelena yemchuk in its premiere issue. four stories written by billy will appear alongside their inspiration...four photos shot by yelena. (t)here asks artists to work together on projects that complement their style. the magazine focuses on photography, architecture, writing, fashion, sculpture and painting and the way the various forms interact. the premiere issue will also feature photographs by carter smith, len prince, dah-len and timothy greenfield-sanders;
writing by whitley strieber, tom wheeler and yuko otomo; sculptures by alain kirili; fashion by marithe & francois girbaud and agnes b; also a trip to the canary islands that feels like a short film. guests include quentin crisp, leonard lopate and beatrice dupire. premiere issue hits july 25, 1999 and will be on sale for 3 months in bookstores as well as galleries and coffeehouses.