Has anyone here been a fan long enough to remember the shaving of the head?

[slunken]

Plus billy would never ever take his shirt off

[FoolofaTook]

True Billy, TSP 1 Billy, badass Billy on molly and in zero would never have bare his.pale breasts to the cruel spotlight.

But this bElly imposter motherfucker....

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by slunken

Plus billy would never ever take his shirt off

that is actually a good point. SP members take their shirts off live at a really low rate compared to other bands

I know Jimmy did once on Vieuphoria in London but that's all literally it

[fuzzyroes]

They really did fit perfectly into the alt-rock/grunge niche and mentality that was going on at the time. It was a perfect storm really.

[dreams of glass]

I already posted about this in another thread

I had been waiting all day to see the Pumpkins on SNL, and I saw Billy's bald ass head

I was like WHAT THE FUCK, DOOD NOO

then I got over it

[FlamingGlobes]

Originally Posted by T&T

at the time I assumed he'd just grow it back eventually after he was done with the character. But come Adore in 1998, it seemed clear that he was going to keep it that way, and there was enough talk about him going/being bald that it seemed like the reasonable thing to do - I guess.

his hair was super thin
http://i.imgur.com/nXkrg.jpg

Man, she was so hot back in those days. I hope Tobey Maguire got to hit that.

[october]

I never knew his hair that well when it passed so it wasn't that big of a deal for me when I saw the snl 95 performance. As I grew older and more into the band, I started to get to know the head of hair of yesteryear and think "huh, he just up and shaved it for good. Alright then."

[FoolofaTook]

This other 65th posting of yours leaves something to be desired.

Try again. You can do it!!!

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by october

I never knew his hair that well when it passed

chuckle. moment of silence for the hair.

[amoergosum]

I just stumbled upon this video:


The host of the show actually said (at 4:24):

"...with Billy Corgan sporting his brand-new Uncle Fester look..."

[T&T]

the guitars sound great.

[Grox]

I never understood the speculation that he was high during the SNL performance. His voice is pretty shot, the band plays pretty good, but he certainly doesn't seem "off" or out of it like he does in the 1997 Conan O'Brien appearance (especially during the interview). Or the Rio show...

[T&T]

Billy's been on so many drugs, we don't even know what 'off drugs' looks like anymore
classic addict
blames everyone but himself

[Shadaloo]

Honestly, the previously posted stills from the Reading performance kind of make me appreciate how much work he put into trying to hide it for like the entire year prior.

http://i.imgur.com/CfXnnBk.png

http://i.imgur.com/CjN4PnB.png

I don't blame him for going cueball, he made the right call. It was getting worse and worse.

[ilikeplanets]

hide the balding or the rampant drug use? could be referring to either in those pics

[houseofglass11]

Originally Posted by Grox

I never understood the speculation that he was high during the SNL performance. His voice is pretty shot, the band plays pretty good, but he certainly doesn't seem "off" or out of it like he does in the 1997 Conan O'Brien appearance (especially during the interview). Or the Rio show...

I always thought he looked high on SNL. It seemed like he was possibly on x or coked up. He just seems to act weird like someone on drugs during the performance.

[T&T]

it's the eye makeup and the eye acting that made him "Look" high on drugs.
which is a poor indicator,
playing for TV is the worst, you get 4 mins, no warm up, and have to be 110% from the first second. I'm not surprised that he's over acting with his face. it's necessary for those situations. It's a false positive on confirming the drug use.

but he was probably high.

[Corgan's Bluff]

D'ARCY said, she took cocaine only against her stage fright.

[T&T]

I only take heroin to help me with my over exothermic body.

[srt4b]

I liked it. May have been done because he was going bald but served as a break from the Seattle style.

[cork_soaker]

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

I don't blame him for going cueball, he made the right call. It was getting worse and worse.

plus, it served the music from mcis forward; a sleek evil to compliment the newfound darkness

[T&T]

he should have evolved to wigs by now and the wonders that they allow
too bad he's stuck in the past.

[Corgan's Bluff]

BILLY should take piano lessons at ELTON JOHN and get some good advises for specialists for hair transplantation.
The problem might be in his age now to get enough hair follicles from body parts that fit...

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by cork_soaker

plus, it served the music from mcis forward; a sleek evil to compliment the newfound darkness

I'll say

https://assets.radiox.co.uk/2015/43/...handheld-0.png

Motherfucker was a more than passable Nosferatu.

[Mals Marola]

the reverse effect (first exposure being things like the Everlasting Gaze, Ava, & Zero vids) of going from late 90s/early 00s "vampire" Bill to seeing something like the video for "Rocket" was pretty fuckin crazy as well - seeing Bill & co looking more like "normal humans" actually changed how I preceived the music from that point onward

[Shallowed]

I thought Billy looked the way he did on SNL because he was nervous/embarrassed about his new shaved head look.

[Grox]

Originally Posted by Mals Marola

the reverse effect (first exposure being things like the Everlasting Gaze, Ava, & Zero vids) of going from late 90s/early 00s "vampire" Bill to seeing something like the video for "Rocket" was pretty fuckin crazy as well - seeing Bill & co looking more like "normal humans" actually changed how I preceived the music from that point onward

oh totally - i had the same experience looking around a Tower Records in late 2001 when I saw the recently released Rotten Apples comp. not only did it shock me how different they all looked (but especially Billy), I remember it made me really sad, just that road sign that says "END" above them, somehow I intuited that they had broken up too soon, it wasn't supposed to happen.

Billy's said he's never done "the three C's: cocaine, coffee, cigarettes." I believe him- for one, his stepmother chain-smoked in the kitchen and drank coffee, ZuZus doesn't even sell coffee, and while he definitely did his share of amphetamine pills, I can't see him doing coke.

[Shadaloo]

I was a Bullet kid who was introduced with the Simpsons and the BWBW video. Soon after that I saw Disarm and Today because I would watch muchmusic non-stop. So the 1979 video was the first time I saw him bald after maybe a few months of knowing him with hair.

The psychedelic shirts and really long gish era hair were just bizarre to me when I eventually dug deeper. It still feels weird to me looking at pics from that period and before.

At least all those horrible Christmas sweaters make more sense in retrospect.

And yeah, looking back it's easy for me to see now the later career turns would have alienated a bunch of the old fanbase. For the most part I looked at SP as "that band that does half space-metal and half really miserable songs".

[Grox]

the change from each album turned a lot of people off, i think. from Gish to SD to MCIS, the image and personalities and the music are pretty different

[FoolofaTook]

Not if you're the sort of fan that likes changes. That's one of the coolest things about tsp: the eras and style shifts