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Minion of Satan
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Mojo Interview With Billy Corgan
Somebody transcribed this interview (Mojo UK, new issue)>>>
Quote:
What music did you first connect to and why?
I bought a Meet The Beatles at a street sale because I liked the way the cover looked. I was five years-old, and I would put on the record every day and it would make me want to spin in a circle. I remember really being struck by their voices and thinking, "Wow what is this sound?" It was kind of other-worldly. My father was a musician so it wasn't like I didn't know what music was, but there was something about that sound.
Your father was a blues musician…
No, that's one of those things from an early interview, somebody misquotes you, and he is forever a blues guitar player. He was more of a rock player who played in a blues style, like a /70s version of Steve Ray Vaughan. He loved Al Green and The Stylistics and soul music.
Did the fact that your father was a musician have an impact on you at all?
A huge impact. I had a constant running critique about music: "This good, this is bad. He's a good singer, he's a bad singer. That's a good song, that's a bad song." So before I ever became a musician I had this almost built-in snobbery but from a musicians' perspective.
How did he react to you becoming a musician?
Not into it. In the beginning of the band he was very ambivalent, then when Siamese Dream came out he understood something was happening and become more supportive, but then he became bitter. My father's very talented and it was very hard for him. He almost treated it like it was a gimmick, like I'd gotten lucky. Now he is like my number one fan so we have had this whole journey with him.
Your online diaries from your childhood suggest a sense of isolation…
Music told me there was another world that could be gotten to. I fantasied it into something that was larger than life. I imagined that Jimmy Page had this incredible life and lived in a castle. Bands like Zeppelin and Hendrix provided that fantasy, but then Pink Floyd provided the language; somebody actually gets what I am going through. Just having the sense that somebody out there could relate was so powerful to me because nowhere around me could relate to the depth of feeling that I was having. When my grandmother was dying of cancer when I was 17 I listened to [Floyd's] Wish You Were Here like everyday. That song doesn't have anything to do with [cancer], but it was like, "These people understand me."
In terms of your musical development, what was your first band like?
The first real band I was in was a Rush covers band. I don't remember what we were called, Hemisphere or something like that. It was me, my best mate and a drummer. We'd spend hours obsessively learning every Rush song. I was kicked out of that band with a phone call from my best friend. He said, "You're too intense, you're bumming us out." I was 16 so that isn't something that came later (laughs). I said, "But it's Rush. You can't fuck around with Rush!" Then, I had a band in high school called Hexen which was kind of Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate, that kind of stuff which I loved.
Were you singing?
No, I never wanted to be a singer. I have a high voice now so imagine what my voice was like at 16! I sounded like a per-adolescent girl. I felt very self-conscious. I just wanted to be a guitar player and I was obsessed with being Eddie Van Halen at high school. My first proper alternative band was called The Marked. That was an attempt to synthesize UK alternative Bauhaus with Sabbath which really is what Pumpkins became later
In 1985 The Marked moved from Chicago to Florida. Why?
It is a long involved story it involves a witch. Seriously, it involves a witch and a sense of destiny…
You can't just say, "It involves a witch…" You have to explain that.
Believe me, it is better if I just say it involves a witch…So we packed up and moved to Florida and within a month the girlfriends were gone and we were destitute, just living on a floor like cockroaches, starving. I lost about 30lbs. It was the first time I came into contact with the idea that making music was way harder that I thought. After the band blew up I went back to Chicago and my father was laughing his ass off.
So what happened?
It was very much, It is time to get real, cut your hair, go to school. I had given up a scholarship to be a political scientist to play music. My father was like, "Give up." I actually put my guitar down for about four months. Then one day – and I know this sounds a little bit Hollywood but it's how it happened – I opened up the guitar case and sat there on the edge of the bed, I was like, "Yay or nay?" I decided, "Yay." Then – and this is how my brain works – I asked myself what needed to happen. "Number one you need to learn how to write a song." So I sold all my Black Sabbath records, I sold my distortion pedals. It was me, one Fender guitar, one Fender amp, one chord. I went back to total basics going from the shittiest E Minor to G to D Major. Listen to the Byrds, listen to the Beatles. How do you write a song? I would just sit and analyse. I would listen to Led Zeppelin and say, "Why is John Paul Jones playing that bass line? What is about that bass line that I actually like? Why is he playing that?" I started to break down musical styles.
Smashing Pumpkins started to coalesce in 1988. Was it obvious that you were going to be the band's driving force from day one?
Yeah, I had a very particular vision. When I first met James [Iha] I said, "This is what I want to do, this is how I want to do it, so if you don't want do it this way don't be in the band. We will be friends or something, but don't be in the band." I was very specific because I had had a very negative experience in the other band where we were constantly fighting about direction.
What was the direction you laid out?
I wanted a band that could play any style of music. The Beatles was the model. Why can't you have an alternative band that's The Beatles? Why can't you do the rock'n'roll album then do the acoustic-ish album? If The Beatles can do it, we can do it. Although you could never be as good as The Beatles…
You were playing with James and D'arcy but the arrival of Jimmy Chamberlin changed everything. How?
When Jimmy joined the band we were playing a lot of kind of Cure type songs, very simple beats. Right away I could tell it was almost like he was playing dumb. We had one heavyish song and he was playing it without breaking sweat when any other drummer would have been huffing and puffing, so it wasn't too long before we sold our Jazz Chorus amps – which were the alternative amp of choice – and we got Marshall half-stacks. The louder we played, the louder he played. He was always one step ahead of us. There was nothing Jimmy couldn't do. Jimmy is an incredible emotional interpreter of the song, He would bring these emotional swells, almost like an orchestral swish, to what we were doing.
You've recently remastered the first two Pumpkins records, Gish and Siamese Dream. Was it strange going back to them?
It was because I am really such a different person. I am a person who…I wish there was a character I could think of…Maybe I'm a little bit like Inspector Clouseau or something because when I invest in the moment I am almost oblivious to everything around me. So whatever my hoodoo blues were on Gish I would completely go there. I turned into that guy, dressed like that guy. Then, two years later [on Siamese Dream] I am Siamese, you know; shorter hair, alternative psychedelic shirts, and so on. I have a lot of compassion for what we were trying to do. More than anything, I have to sit back and laugh when we actually pull it off because we were such a mess, you know.
Between 1991 and 1993 you were fiercely competitive with regards to other bands.
I think at that time of my life I needed to drive myself harder, you know. What a young man will do is create enemies that aren't there, and create grudges that aren't necessary. I have a Who bootleg from 1970 and they do Young Man Blues. There's that line, "When a young man walks down the street, they all step back." That's how I felt when I was 23. We'd play a festival and I'd be, "Get the fuck out of my way."
Has that changed?
Yeah, it has. It was necessary to survive. In my case survival was, "Don't send me back to the suburbs, don't send me back to Chicago, don't send me back to that life! I am getting the fuck out of there and if you are in my way get the fuck out of my way."
There was a lot of tension within the band. You thought the other three didn't care enough, didn't understand your drive…
You have got to put yourself in their shoes: you are in your twenties, you are in a successful band, there's chicks, there's dudes, everybody is having a good time, the other band is down at the pub having a party, and you've got to deal with this guy everyday saying, "No! No! No! Harder! Faster! More! Go! Go! Go!" It's like, "How much more 'go' do you want?" You are in the UK, you are playing a sold-out show and everybody is singing along, and you're thinking, "Why is this guy pissed off? What is he pissed off about?" But I saw a lot of things going on. I saw hypocrisy internally, hypocrisy externally. I was dealing with all of these things within myself. You're dealing with record companies who just see you as having a temporary moment in time and I am thinking, "Now that I am through the door you are not getting rid of me so easy. I am a lifer. If I've made it from the bedroom, if I made it from daddy's bedroom, to here, you're not getting rid of me, I didn't have a life, I wasn't raised to have a life, so even when you gave me a million dollars I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't go out and buy myself nice clothes. Why was I wearing a two dollar shirt that I got at the thrift store? It wasn't one of those indie authenticity things. I didn't give a fuck about that. I just didn't know what I was meant to do.
After Siamese Dream you decided to record Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and make it as a double album. How did the label react to that?
They were horror-stricken. They tried to talk me out of it and when they realised they couldn't talk me out of it then they tried to say, "Let's do what Guns N' Roses did and release it as two separate records: Mellon Collie One, Mellon Collie Two." I said absolutely not. In my mind double album meant The White Album. I felt there were only a few people in my generation who had that talent level that I did. Kurt Cobain could have made The White Album. To me he had that talent level. He didn't do it but he could have done it, but we were getting lumped in with people that could never have written Tonight, Tonight or Disarm or even a Today, so I was like, "Fuck all this!" Mellon Collie…was our way of saying, "W are not like those other bands."
Did the band come close to splitting around Mellon Collie…?
No. You have to remember that every time we would reach a crisis point, the band would get bigger so were artificially held together by the circumstance. If Mellon Collie…had come out and been a stiff the band would have probably broken up right then, but Mellon Collie…came out and was bigger than ever. So you have an out-of-control drug addict, what are you going to do? Are you going to kick out one of the greatest drummers in the world who just helped make this massive album? Are you going to kick him out when you are playing this sold-out tour all around the world? It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The crazier it got, the darker it got, the bigger it got, so at what point do you get off the train? You are not going to. It really didn't; stop until somebody died, you know. That was when it was like somebody hit the brakes somewhere in the cosmos and said, "OK you can't do this any more."
On July 12, 1996, your keyboard player Jonathon Melvoin died from a heroin overdoes, Jimmy Chamberlin also overdosed and you had to fire him, and shortly after that your mother died…
And I got a divorce, don't forget that…
Why didn't you get dragged into the whole spiral of destruction?
My father. Watching my father in his own struggles with addiction really made me sensitive to what that meant. It doesn't mean I didn't do anything. I did plenty, but always with one eye on the door.
In 1997 you worked with Ric Ocasek on his Troublizing album. What did that teach you?
Well, Ric is such a talented guy. You are in a situation that I was in with the band, and then suddenly you are in a room with somebody who is you but in another life. Somebody who knows what they're doing, has made bigger records than you, and just wants to make music, so suddenly you are in this nice healthy place.
You also co-wrote parts of Hole's Celebrity Skin with Courtney Love with whom you were having a relationship. How did that work musically?
Well, in that case it was easy because there was a level of intimacy and I was able to understand her language. She's the type of person who would listen to anybody, so she would listen to me because she respected me. I was able to get things done fairly quickly, but she was messed up. She had recently got out of rehab and her memory was so bad that I would play a song from the day before and she'd say, "What song is that?"
It can't have been the healthiest position you could have been in bearing in mind what you'd been through…
Honestly, I really enjoyed working with her during that time. I think that is why the music was good. It was the last…well, that's not true (hesitating)…it was one of the few times we sort of connected about something we both believed in. Of course, she later turned it to shit, like she does everything she touches, but it is actually a good memory for me. We got together everyday for about four hours and just sat around with a cup of tea and worked on these songs. Maybe the best way to answer your question is to say that in the bubble, you feel OK. I mean, we all know the legendary Billy and Courtney bullshit but in the bubble of just two people, two artists writing, then everything is OK. When we were working on those songs she said, "What am I going to say when people ask me about making this record with you, because they already said that Kurt wrote the last one?" I said, "Just say, 'I've just come out of a very difficult time. I reached out to somebody I trust and he helped me make this happen." The first interview she gave was to a guy in Chicago and she literally said, "Billy is full of shit! He thinks he wrote the whole record. He barely did anything at all." Now, here is where it gets funny: I have just been in Europe or wherever just doing a bunch of press that was going to come out later. So I'm still in the positive mindset. They say, "Oh what did you do [on the Hole record]?" "Oh we got together, we wrote these songs." Then her quote comes out in the daily press. A month later when mine comes out every-one thinks, "Oh, what a fucking asshole, taking all the credit again." The funny thing is that time corrects the perception. Now people have had 10 or 13 years to listen to the record and you can hear what I did.
With the Pumpkins you took a more electronic direction on 1998's Adore. Was that a conscious decision?
It was conscious. We had actually discussed it before we did Mellon Collie…Grunge was played out, the bigger sound was already played out and we had completed what we had set out to do. After Mellon Collie…it was like, "OK, now is the time to make the experimental record." I got very pompously stuck on the idea that I needed to prove I was an artist, which is the death knell of any artist."
The title of 2000's Machine/Machines Of God suggests you were on a quest for something higher? Was your faith the thing you wanted to get out there?
That's a really good question because I honestly haven't thought about that, what the fuck was I even trying to say. I was immensely disappointed with where the band had ended up so I went into this Pollyanna-ish fantasy where the band was going to reform, Jimmy was going to come back, we would make one more record and end on a really happy note. The way I was going to deal with all of my feelings and disappointment about the band ending was by writing this concept record which was going to both describe the inner and outer experience of being in the band. So it's ultimately a really deep album about loss filtered through a very fuzzy concept. So you have that, but then the actual dysfunction kicked in, her [D'arcy's] drug addiction kicked in, Jimmy was still fucked up, so behind the scene it spirals out of control…and yet I'm trying to make this happy album about loss. Then it got darker. It's like one of those documentaries where the movie goes wrong but they can't stop making it, like that Werner Herzog movie with the boat, Fitzcarraldo. That's Machina. I couldn't stop making it. I was going to see this psychic at the time and I woke up and I was like, "I have got to quite." I was about half way through the making of Machina. I still have one record to make on my deal and they'd be happy to get a solo album from me instead. So I tell the psychic, "I think I am ready to leave the band, I can't take this anymore." The psychic goes, "Nope, you must finish what you have started." I though, "OK." So I finished the record and did the tour, and rest is history.
The band fractured and ultimately split in May 2000, and you said some pretty terrible things about each other in the press. Do you regret that?
I would say this to you: we were designed to be a band that lived its pathos in public. We lived it musically, we lived it personally, so the fact that we continued to live it publicly is part of the band's design. We are all still in the band, do you understand?
Er, you are still in the band, but they are not…
I know it sounds very strange, but you can't just have an experience like that and just leave it behind. You can't. I know that. Do you know what I mean? They can bitch and moan all they want but we are still in the band.
But they are clearly not…
They are clearly not receiving cheques…
In 2001 you and Jimmy formed Zwan with Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Dave Pajo (Slint/Sterolab) and Paz Lenchantin. What were you trying to achieve?
Jimmy and I had held this myth that if James and D'arcy had been better musicians the Pumpkins would have been bigger. So Zwan was an attempt at getting better musicians. It wasn't designed to be grandiose like the pumpkins, it was the opposite – let's have some fun, let's make a really good record with people we like. We went to Key West and rented a house. WE would sit on the front porch and write songs and play all this kind of groovy stuff. Then, when it got serious the whole thing started to blow up and it was like "Oh my god, I am in the same nightmare again." It was the classic thing where you get out of a bad relationship and you think, "I am never going to do that again," and you go out and get the same kind of girlfriend but worse. That's what I did.
You reformed a version of the Pumpkins in 2007 and again now. Why?
At 19 years-old I'd developed my ultimate band architecture. I wanted to be in a band that could be Black Sabbath one minute, The Beatles the next, The Cure the next. So when I was out of the Pumpkins doing this folksy rootsy rock or whatever the fuck we were doing, I kept thinking I'd just left my ultimate dream to be in a lesser dream, so why did I give up the dream? I gave up the dream because I thought it would be unfair to continue the band without James Iha because we had started the band. Well, James Iha doesn't send me Christmas cards and I haven't talked to him in five years. So I'm not in the Smashing Pumpkins because of some guy who doesn't care about me but I am loyal to him based on an idea formulated 17 years ago? Fuck him and fuck everybody! I want my band back! Fuck this! I want my dream back, basically. The Pumpkins is the dream. Jeff, Nicole and Mike believe in what the Pumpkins represent
You've finished a new album, Oceania, due out next year. What does it sound like?
I wanted to get out of the mentality of the record business. Let's be our own record company. So we have done that for a couple of years and it has been fairly successful in the US. We are working with social media and people see it as cool thing, but giving away the songs for free and being more accessible is meaningless over here. I also found doing one song at a time meant I was over-producing every song. I thought, "Let's make an album old school style, conceptual," and we've done that. People that have heard it say that it takes you on a journey. It is only 60 minutes but you get one of those sit-back-put-on-the-head-phones kind of experiences.
Final question: if you could go back and change something what would it be?
I would have left the band after Jonathon died. I would have gotten the hell out. I mean, come on, what do I sing on the song Zero? "I never let on that I was on a sinking ship"? I was on a fucking sinking ship for years and I kept it up by working harder. It is amazing we were able to accomplish anything. There were a lot of great things but, fucking hell, man, it is like being in a burning building and standing there and watching it burn. I stood there for another four years and fucking watched it burn all the way to the ground. The shame of it is, if I had got out the maybe there would be been a different life for that band. Maybe there would have been the reunion, but the way it all went down made sure nothing was left. It killed it for good. The morning that Jonathon died, that was the end of the Smashing Pumpkins. But like a classic Greek myth it's been reborn. It is easy to have regrets, but this is the happiest I have ever been in a band. I haven't seen this kind of energy for what I am doing since the '90s and I can't complain at all. It is also a generational thing. In '96, when it was all going down, people still believed that alternative music had a future and we were going to change the world. Now you can see it really cynically – it was a dream not meant to succeed.
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Source:
http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/boar...howtopic=18900 |
02-06-2012, 11:40 AM
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