Billy Corgan: BILLBOARD + TORONTO STAR interviews 11-2018

[Corgan's Bluff]

Smashing Pumpkins March On: Billy Corgan Talks Getting to a Good Place With James Iha
https://www.billboard.com/articles/c...kins-2018-tour

11/15/2018 by Gary Graff

Billy Corgan thought the Smashing Pumpkins would be recording one song, not an entire album, earlier this year. But he promises that this week's release of Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1/LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. is the beginning of more to come -- and sooner rather than later.

"The hope is to get another record out in the same time frame next year," Corgan tells Billboard. "We've sort of set aside a similar window, late winter/early spring, to (record). I really don't want to wait much longer. I'd be happy if at least we could put out something every year. I think that would be good for everyone involved."

Shiny and Oh So Bright is the Pumpkins' first new album in four years but, most importantly, its first in 18 years to ******* original guitarist James Iha (founding drummer Jimmy Chamberlin rejoined the band in 2015). The set began life as a song; "That's all anybody really agreed to, 'Oh, we'll get together and just do one song,'" Corgan says. But when producer Rick Rubin heard the 16 songs the Pumpkins demoed he suggested a full album. "I think we set aside two weeks, and suddenly we're doing eight songs all at once -- like, 'Huh?'" Corgan says. "We were totally not prepared at all."

Nevertheless, the album -- which weighs in at a compact half-hour and also includes guitarist Jeff Schroeder, who's been a Pumpkin since 2007 -- as well as this year's Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour demonstrates that all is well, or at least as good as it's been in quite some time, in the Pumpkins' world.

"Going in, I wanted it to be a positive experience for James and Jimmy," explains Corgan, who hadn't spoken with Iha for nearly 17 years before the reunion. "I don't look at it like, 'As long as it's positive for me, who cares?' I was like, 'I really want this to be a positive for everybody involved.' I don't want to go through any more weird negativity.

"It's been very healing. When I'm down at the pool and my son's in the pool with James' kids and they're playing, you think, 'Wow this is a crazy journey we're on. To go from, 'Hey, can't talk to him on the phone' to the kids playing together and you're talking about child-rearing, it's pretty wild. That there we were again...all the way back to Elk Grove and Glendale Heights, two nerds listening to the Smiths. It's pretty amazing."

Smashing Pumpkins will be playing seven special 30th anniversary shows starting Nov. 28 in Madison, Wisc., which Corgan says will be considerably shorter than the three-hour epics it performed this year. Meanwhile, he's starting to think about what the group's next album will be, and whether it will be another straightforward song collection like Shiny and Oh So Bright or carry a bit more conceptual weight like 1995's Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

"There's a conceptual thing I'm after that I'm still trying to figure out if I want to do," says Corgan, who took one of the new album's songs, "Alienation," from a project called Day For Night that he was working on "when I gave up on being in the Smashing Pumpkins, right before James and I started talking again." The conundrum, he adds, is that "nobody wants the 10-month slog in the studio again. That was always the greatest point of stress for us." But Corgan also feels the potential for a more ambitious statement from the band.

"I don't know if we'll get there, but I'd like to see if the band has the ability to do a wider work again, something that has a wider conceptual base," Corgan explains. "I think it's fine to do a collection of songs, and it certainly seems to jibe with the modern pace, but I think I seem to be at my best when I'm challenged on a creative level. Pop music, for me, is fine but it's not really what gets me up in the morning. So we'll see; I'm not announcing anything yet because I don't want to weigh the band down with a set of expectations that it doesn't need at the moment."

Corgan is still indulging his conceptual jones with a return to the group's 2000 Machina/The Machines of God, which became a victim of the group's deteriorating relationship with Virgin Records at the time. Corgan plans to create "a big deluxe reissue package" sequencing Machina and its Internet-released sequel Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music as he originally intended and maybe including a graphic novel to accompany the project. "I never explained the story to the fans, so the fans were wondering through the years, 'What's this thing even about?'" Corgan notes. "That's the last major conceptual work I think I've done with the Pumpkins, and here I am still working on it 20 years later." There's no firm timetable for the release, but Corgan does predict "there’ll probably be a little bit of new recording" by the band for it.

The only cloud among the Pumpkins' current situation remains the fractured relationship with original bassist D'arcy Wretzky, who has not been part of the reunion despite, Corgan maintains, many offers and discussions. He feels Wretzky's public comments, which began during February, "a betrayal" of their private discussions before then, and while the band has moved on he still feels some residual rancor.

"Y'know, we couldn't get her in a room," Corgan says. "The other three original Smashing Pumpkins members have not been a room with her for 19 years. She hasn't been on a stage in nearly 20 years. It's a complex series of events and...was very frustrating. There's nowhere to go with that. We finally said, 'Let's put our heads down and just play. Jimmy in particular said, 'Look, the music will take care of the rest of the equation. Don't respond. Don't fight. Don't get into the mud. Just march forward.' That was sage advice, and that's what we've done. And here we are -- new record, very successful tour, dates being announced for next year. Marching on, in essence."

[amoergosum]

In a new Billboard interview, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan described Jimmy Chamberlin’s reaction to D’arcy Wretzky’s feud with the band earlier this year.

Corgan feels Wretzky’s public comments, which began during February, “a betrayal” of their private discussions before then, and while the band has moved on he still feels some residual rancor.

“Y’know, we couldn’t get her in a room,” Corgan says. “The other three original Smashing Pumpkins members have not been a room with her for 19 years. She hasn’t been on a stage in nearly 20 years. It’s a complex series of events and…was very frustrating. There’s nowhere to go with that. We finally said, ‘Let’s put our heads down and just play. Jimmy in particular said, ‘Look, the music will take care of the rest of the equation. Don’t respond. Don’t fight. Don’t get into the mud. Just march forward.’ That was sage advice, and that’s what we’ve done. And here we are — new record, very successful tour, dates being announced for next year. Marching on, in essence.”

https://www.alternativenation.net/ji...ud-dont-fight/


Flashback:

I still don’t understand, why didn’t Billy, you, or somebody say if we’re going to do this reunion, say maybe we should all four talk together? Talk on the phone at least, or meet together, why was that idea never posed? It seems that having text message conversations about this muddied up a lot of water.

Well no, it really didn’t. I would have really loved to. At one point Billy said that Jimmy was going to come over to his house and write some stuff. I always said, ‘I’d really love to do that too.’ He would never invite me, but he told me that it didn’t happen. He said that I was invited to do all of this stuff, and that I said later, later, later. There was only one thing that was later, later, later, that I had invited him to come out to my farm. He never invited me to his house ever to meet his girlfriend or his son, nothing.

https://www.alternativenation.net/sm...w-in-20-years/

[Corgan's Bluff]

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan on reunion: 'Making peace was long overdue'
https://torontosun.com/entertainment...s-long-overdue

Mark Daniell

November 15, 2018

Billy Corgan thought he was done with the Smashing Pumpkins. Sure he’d continued on as the mainstay as the ’90s Chicago-rooted grunge rockers went through a revolving lineup, but after 2014’s Monuments to an Elegy, the frontman says he’d grown weary using the Pumpkins moniker.

“I think I had worn the idea out in my own mind,” Corgan says in a phone interview.

The 51-year-old released 2017’s Ogilala under the name “William Patrick Corgan,” but in the process of recording he found himself reunited with guitarist James Iha, with whom he had co-founded the Pumpkins 30 years ago.

Iha, along with bassist D’Arcy Wretzky, left the Pumpkins after 2000’s Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music. The band dissolved shortly afterwards before Corgan revived the Pumpkins in 2007 with a new lineup.

“There was so much acrimony over the years, but when James and I were able to mend that bridge and get to a place where we could sit down and have a meal and talk, the idea of playing together again grew out of reconnecting as friends. We never went in thinking we’d repair the relationship so we could start playing music. It had nothing to do with it. It grew naturally out of making peace and it was long overdue.”

Iha and Corgan, joined by original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder, got together to record one song with legendary producer Rick Rubin, and before they knew it they had enough songs for a full-length album that rekindles the band’s classic sound — Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1.

“What I really like about the new LP is it has a way of touching on where we came from, but we’re not trying to recreate anything and I’m very proud of that.”


A follow-up LP will be released next year, and Corgan says this second coming of the Pumpkins is one that is built to last.

“We’re already making plans,” Corgan says with a laugh.

On a break from rehearsals for an upcoming string of U.S. dates, Corgan rang up from Chicago to speak about the band’s past, mending fences and staying true to himself.

This is only a partial reunion. Why did D’Arcy opt not to come back?

We tried to inklude her, and it just didn’t work out. As far as I’m concerned, we gave her the option to be involved and she chose not to be and that’s that. That part of the story is done.

What was it that made you not want to continue as Smashing Pumpkins the way you had been for the past decade or so?

I always felt good about the music. But I think I grew weary over time of shouldering the burden of the band on my own. We live in a social society where perception and judgement is part and parcel of how people operate. That led to me releasing music as a solo musician. I had given up on the Smashing Pumpkins because the weight of it was just heavier than I was willing to take on. It wasn’t a bitter thing, it was more, “I did my best and things happen and it is what is.” James and I mending our relationship opened the door to something that I thought was closed.

Was it easy to recapture that magic between you and James?

So much about the way I think about music was influenced by James and his thoughts and his ideas. Being back in his good graces was easy and it was fun.

Did you worry that there might not have been musical sparks between you all again after so many years apart?

We never lacked confidence in what we do musically. This was as easy a situation as it gets. We had a great producer, Rick Rubin, and we had three of the original four progenitors of the band in the room.

The Pumpkins achieved tremendous success in the early ‘90s with Gish and then Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Did you have people in the music business trying to change you as you gained fame?

There’s no shortage of advice in the music business. As one music exec once told me, “It’s called the music business for a reason.” That’s a quote by the way. When you create something that is at its heart anarchic and it succeeds it’s pretty interesting who tries to tell you if you tone down the anarchy 2% you’ll see a greater yield in your harvest. You learn over time that the bean counters are wrong. The greats that I idolize refused to let anybody from their friends to their bandmates to their wife tell them how they should do their thing. That’s the one thing I’ve learned. We’re here because we still truly represent something that’s pretty rare, and that’s why I don’t have a problem if people don’t like what we do because to me that’s like saying, “I don’t like that restaurant.” That’s cool. Just go to another restaurant.


Is this the best incarnation of the Pumpkins we’re seeing live?

I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I think musically, right now we’re very proficient. But I think it’s hard to dismiss what the band had in those other years because we could play a 45-minute improvisational song every night. There’s a lot of things that band could do that this band can’t. I think what this band represents well is every period of the band’s music with great articulation and grace. We’re able to play everything from the smouldering ballads to the ferocious rockers. I think that’s pretty cool and I don’t think the old band could do that.


You formed the band 30 years ago with James. How did your rock star dreams live up to the reality of where you ended up?

When we started out, our aspirations were to be working musicians that put out albums. Then we got swept up in this MTV phenomenon where we were selling records and getting recognized in airports. That maybe took us on a journey that we weren’t necessarily prepared for. Looking back over 30 years, I’m proud we were able to produce so much music in the time we were together in that first decade or so. And I’m proud that the music still matters and we can still play and we still have something to say. I think if you could go back in a time machine and tell us, “Look, it’s not going to work out quite how you wanted, but at the end of the day there will be peace between three of you and you’ll still get together and play music and celebrate your accomplishments and still make new music,” we’d be OK with that.

[eviltimeban]

We all know why D'arcy didn't come back, press people. You need to start asking will she ever be considered in the future?

[Corgan's Bluff]

Billy Corgan: HUFFINGTON POST interview 11-2018

Time For A Warmer, More ‘Cuddly’ Smashing Pumpkins

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...3?guccounter=1

The rockers return with familiar faces. Frontman Billy Corgan calls the reunion a “triumph.”

By ****** Moraski

“The blessing is that we were able to make good music,” Billy Corgan said about the new Smashing Pumpkins album.

For years, Billy Corgan had song ideas swirling around his head in case of the off chance Smashing Pumpkins reunited with some of the original band members.
And this past year, he was able to tap into a few of them. For the first time in 18 years Corgan recorded a new album with founding Pumpkins members James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlain.

“Most of the work happened on the fly,” Corgan told HuffPost. “Very commensurate to the way we worked circa ’92 to ’94. Come in with, hey, I’ve got an idea, I’ve got a lick, I’ve got a part and you just kind of wing it on the fly. And you let the group inform the direction in the congealing state of the idea.”

Called “Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1/ LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun,” the new album ― released on Friday ― also features longtime Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder. It coincides with a 30th-anniversary tour that kicks off Nov. 28. For the outing, Smashing Pumpkins will dive into their entire catalog, tapping into new material, as well as the hit ’90s albums released before their split, including “Siamese Dream” and “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.”
Corgan called it a “triumph” that they’re even back together. “The fact that we were just able to get in a room and make music is the victory in and of itself,” he said.
Prior to the album release, we caught up with Corgan via phone about repairing old wounds, making new music and what’s next.

So, it’s just a week or so ahead of the new album release. Is that something that’s old hat to you at this point, or do you still get the jitters or excitement around it?

It’s always a bit nervy because the reaction is never what you think it’s going to be, even if you think you know what you think it’s going to be. There’s always some wrinkle in there that surprises you, you know?

How are you feeling about this album, having reunited with some of the guys and everything?

I mean, from an internal point of view, it feels great just to make music with them again, and it was such a relaxed environment because of all the years, the work that we had done, we just kind of went right back into that so that was a really pleasant time, and rewarding. You know, we’d managed to do something that we thought would never happen. The response has been really positive, and I just always raised a little bit of an eyebrow because when people start talking about what it reminds them of past or present, I always get like, eh, you know. I know that’s an inaccurate read. But you’re oftentimes put in a position of sort of having to answer for a perceptional thing that you don’t agree upon.

For you, what does it represent to you, the new album?

I think it’s a triumph that we were able to get in the room, as maybe grandiose as that sounds. I mean, the fact that we were just able to get in a room and make music is the victory in and of itself. The blessing is that we were able to make good music. And I think the thing that I did that was good was I just let it happen. I didn’t try to say it has to be like this, or it can’t be like this. I just let the music that we make together be what it is.
I didn’t try to elevate it or weigh it down under some conceptual artifice. I just let it be, and that’s where [producer] Rick [Rubin] really comes into play. He picked great songs and emphasized making sure that those songs came through clearly in terms of their messaging and the musical sort of statement behind them. And I know this isn’t a great word for rock and roll, but it just feels really relaxed to me. Which is the opposite of what you would think, you know, after all these years, and at this point.

What did Rick Rubin bring to the fold?

Well I mean, the biggest thing is, we thought we were just going to do one song and he wanted to do eight. So, we suddenly found ourselves sort of thrown into a deeper kind of thing than we had expected. And the first thing that hits you is like, wait, we haven’t worked under this kind of stress. ... We haven’t been in this kind of stress in the recording studio since 1999.
Suddenly, you’re kind of like, wait, I’m not sure we necessarily want to jump into the deep end of the pool so quick. We just managed to put this thing back together to tour, which is a fragile thing in and of itself. And now we want to suddenly be in the studio for the long days sort of picking songs and everybody, of course, has a seat at the table. ... There was no stress. It was weird. It was just like we just kind of rolled our sleeves up and said, “Fine, OK.” And we just went to work. ... We released so much music in the decade-plus that we were together that we just reverted back to our old kind of job descriptions.

What do you think it was about this time, this year, that made it happen for you guys to come together?

That’s hard to say because for two years, James and I had been kind of reconnecting and speaking again and just to rebuild the personal relationship to where you could talk about business and it wasn’t this kind of anxiety thing of, “Oh, if I say the wrong thing, this is going to blow up.” Get it back to a place, the family, where you can kind of be your messy self and it’s OK. I think that’s a two-way street, you know what I mean? Nobody’s perfect in the room here. The process of just kind of repairing the personal relationships to where they could sustain a long tour and actually talking about a plan beyond four months. ... Sitting at a table with your bandmates is saying, “OK, what do we really want to accomplish here?”

James came out recently in an interview and said he didn’t think new music was necessary. If you read that the wrong way, it almost sounds dismissive, but that’s not reflective of his attitude. His attitude is more kind of like, “Yeah, I’m cool if you guys want to do music and I’m cool if you didn’t want to do music. You know I’m kind of cool with however way this is going to go.” For me, it has to be about new music or I just don’t see why you would call it a band. Then it’s more like one of those shows where they put the same cast together, like “Murphy Brown” or something. I’m really not interested in that, even though I realize we’re in a culture that sort of celebrates those things.

At the same time, there is that nostalgia aspect to a band that’s been on and off for some 30 years. What’s your relationship like with that part of your history?

I fought it for many years and I lost. What do you get in my surrender? A, I accepted the public’s expectation without complaint. Then B, from my Piscean brain, it gets into, OK if that’s the way that it is, is there a way that you can embrace this that feels good and positive? And not grumbling under your breath like, well, this is the way I’ve gotta do it. Once I was able to accept it, I got on with the business of, well how would I approach this in a way that I feel really positive about. What I really found, particularly with the live side, was creating a staging and a narrative form around the music that allowed me to express my ideas in the present without having to compromise the music of the past.

And finding that balance point. Honestly, it was Roger Waters, both professionally in the way that he staged Pink Floyd’s music, but also talking to him privately a few times. He really helped me kind of see his visions. I was able to kind of adapt some of that to myself and, in my way, feel like I was breathing new life into something.

At the same time, you’ve continued to put out new music. You have your solo record. Different band members. To what do you owe your longevity in the business? A lot of people just give up or move on.

Well, I almost gave up many, many times. This might sound like an odd answer but it’s really thinking a lot about my ancestors. I came from really poor people. Immigrant people. If I was to sit at a table with them, I mean, they’re long departed, and tell them, “Yeah, I’m just going to blow all this off because I just don’t like the way it feels.” They would laugh at me, you know? They were a tougher breed of people than I am. And I’ve oftentimes tried to think through their eyes how they would view the opportunity. If you’re going to throw away an opportunity, fine, but at least know what opportunity you’re throwing away. And I think when I really examined the opportunity, and I realized there was still a lot of good to be done, including helping bring my band back together, and really heal a wound that really needs to be healed. Not just for us, but even for a lot of fans.
I just had to grow up and really appreciate, really only in America could you have this wild life that I’ve had.Billy Corgan

They felt very grieved by the situation. ... But if they look up to you and you can’t do the thing that they’re asked to do all the time in their own lives, which is, you know, mend fences and move forward, particularly within a family, it’s very painful for them. Because on some sort of ****-level, they see you as part of their family. When you can’t put your family back together, it’s aggrieving to them. It’s like, how is this possible? You guys just can’t get in a room and just kind of get over it?
There’s a lot of dreamy stuff in there, but the point being, I just had to grow up and really appreciate, really only in America could you have this wild life that I’ve had. And live this crazy dream and also be willing to throw it away, jump up and down on it. It still survives, you know? There’s something pretty magical about that.

It is wild, just looking at your career. I can’t even imagine what it was like. The rise to fame, what kind of toll or excitement did that bring to you, looking back on it now, 20, 30 years later?

Well, I mean, just to give you context, ’92 we were playing a solo club, and four years later we’re playing Madison Square Garden, sold out. There is no way to prepare yourself for that kind of rise. And certainly our family backgrounds weren’t much help. Broken homes. Although James came from a two-parent home, so I don’t want to throw him under that bus. When you start off and your aspiration is to sell out the local club and then you find yourself on MTV and there’s tabloid articles about you dating supermodels and it’s all kind of like, wow, this is pretty wild. This is right at the dawn of the digital age. We found ourselves stumbling into this new technology, not really understanding not only how it would change the way people interacted and saw one another, but also change the music business and send it on a downward spiral for about 15 years.

It’s kind of like riding the crest of a massive wave and it is the wave of your generation. As anybody who accomplishes something in a particular generation, they get the benefit of that wave. When that wave crests and starts to come down, it didn’t just come down to its natural place to make way for the next generation, it crashed even further because of the changes in technology and streaming. File sharing. We found ourselves on the back end of a lot of weird stuff. Suddenly, from a lot of resources to not a lot, because the music business was bottoming out.

What’s the vibe being on the road together again?

I think that the best way I can describe it is, it was such a long winter for all of us that it feels nice just to be in the sunshine a bit. ... I think for the three of us just to be in the room and it to be very warm and have the sense that the 30 years has added up to something, that the music has endured. To see a lot of young people coming to shows is like, that’s the ultimate compliment. And certainly our, not to be too insidery, but we look at our Spotify numbers and stuff and it’s crazy. Like, the younger generation is almost equal to the older generation that listens to the band. Which is wild. Because we’re like, wow, you know, this means there’s a future, you know? It’s not just this diminishing set of returns for an audience that, as we all do as we get older and have kids and stuff ― music is less of a centerpiece of our focus. So it’s great. It just feels really nice. Not words you would normally associate with Smashing Pumpkins, “warm and nice.” It’s a cuddly period, let’s put it that way.

Do you think this period will continue and for how long? I know it’s hard to predict, but do you think the momentum will continue?

I think, ultimately, there’s the choice that needs to be made. It doesn’t necessarily need to be made tomorrow. You can be that band that people would like you to be for a very long time. There’s plenty of indication now in the culture that people are willing to see bands all the way into their 70s. So you could chart a path forward and say, well, as long as we keep playing these songs in these ways for as long as we can, we’re able, there’s the path there.
I’m much more interested in whether or not we can once more tap a deeper vein, creatively, and come up with work that is not only as contemporaneously received well, but we actually start to lean our influence back into the culture and have something more to say than, like, oh, I like your new album and that’s cool. You know? In essence, we go to being received to having an influence.


The interview has been edited and condensed.

[Corgan's Bluff]

Billy and his rooms:

Y'know, we couldn't get her in a room. The other three original Smashing Pumpkins members have not been a room with her for 19 years.

I think it’s a triumph that we were able to get in the room, as maybe grandiose as that sounds.

The fact that we were just able to get in a room and make music is the victory in and of itself.

Nobody’s perfect in the room here.

You guys just can’t get in a room and just kind of get over it?

I think for the three of us just to be in the room and it to be very warm and have the sense that the 30 years has added up to something, that the music has endured.

[Corgan's Bluff]

Billy the starred chef:

The greats that I idolize refused to let anybody from their friends to their bandmates to their wife tell them how they should do their thing. That’s the one thing I’ve learned.

I don’t have a problem if people don’t like what we do because to me that’s like saying, “I don’t like that restaurant.” That’s cool. Just go to another restaurant.

[VoxUpDoc]

Alienation... another D4N track. Who was it who said they weren’t leftovers? Fuzzy? ForgottenChild?

I’d put money on this entire album being D4N outtakes and anything Bill says to the contrary is PR bull like the whole we-only-wanted-one-song-Rubin-wanted-eight. I mean you have 16 songs and the rest are sat there until next Nov.

[Corgan's Bluff]

He already told to put another 8 tracks on the next album...

[Corgan's Bluff]

Billy & James:

There was so much acrimony over the years, but when James and I were able to mend that bridge and get to a place where we could sit down and have a meal and talk, the idea of playing together again grew out of reconnecting as friends.
We never went in thinking we’d repair the relationship so we could start playing music. It had nothing to do with it. It grew naturally out of making peace and it was long overdue.

For two years, James and I had been kind of reconnecting and speaking again and just to rebuild the personal relationship to where you could talk about business and it wasn’t this kind of anxiety thing of, “where you could talk about business and it wasn’t this kind of anxiety thing[/i] of, “Oh, if I say the wrong thing, this is going to blow up.”
Oh, if I say the wrong thing, this is going to blow up.”

It's been very healing. When I'm down at the pool and my son's in the pool with James' kids and they're playing, you think, 'Wow this is a crazy journey we're on. To go from, 'Hey, can't talk to him on the phone' to the kids playing together and you're talking about child-rearing, it's pretty wild. That there we were again...all the way back to Elk Grove and Glendale Heights, two nerds listening to the Smiths. It's pretty amazing.

Much about the way I think about music was influenced by James and his thoughts and his ideas.

James came out recently in an interview and said he didn’t think new music was necessary. If you read that the wrong way, it almost sounds dismissive, but that’s not reflective of his attitude. His attitude is more kind of like, “Yeah, I’m cool if you guys want to do music and I’m cool if you didn’t want to do music. You know I’m kind of cool with however way this is going to go.”
For me, it has to be about new music or I just don’t see why you would call it a band. Then it’s more like one of those shows where they put the same cast together, like “Murphy Brown” or something. I’m really not interested in that, even though I realize we’re in a culture that sort of celebrates those things.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HePBJYme9H...allstars26.jpg

[MonumentsRocks]

" it has to be about new music or I just don’t see why you would call it a band... I realize we’re in a culture that sort of celebrates those things"

I think he got it right with the SosB tour; make new songs, if you feel you must, but unless the songs chart, or are become fan favorites, relegate them to the encore of the show, if you must play them at all. It seems that a Billy who needs money is suddenly a very pragmatic Billy.

[Corgan's Bluff]

Billy had still enough money for building a statue as a joke on D'arcy's Billy the Messiah comments.
And to hire a model for celebrating her drug addictions and her worldweariness in tour visuals.

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by Woody

Alienation... another D4N track. Who was it who said they weren’t leftovers? Fuzzy? ForgottenChild?

I’d put money on this entire album being D4N outtakes and anything Bill says to the contrary is PR bull like the whole we-only-wanted-one-song-Rubin-wanted-eight. I mean you have 16 songs and the rest are sat there until next Nov.

So that's Solara, Alienation, and with Travels having that "See Day From Night" lyric there's no way in hell it's not too. It's not an unfair assumption, though I tend to think Marchin' On might be an exception.

[houseofglass11]

James “I’m cool with whatever bullshit Billy wants to do as long as I get my check” Iha

[Mals Marola]

Originally Posted by houseofglass11

James “I’m cool with whatever bullshit Billy wants to do as long as I get my check” Iha

one of very few consistencies in the project, even when he was out of the band

[Crepe]

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

So that's Solara, Alienation, and with Travels having that "See Day From Night" lyric there's no way in hell it's not too. It's not an unfair assumption, though I tend to think Marchin' On might be an exception.

There was a song called Body + Soul in the TBK era...just saying