BILLY CORGAN IS A ROCK GOD BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S NOT

Billy Corgan is a weirdo, and he has been quite busy lately. The oddest renaissance man of all time just released a new double-album “Aegea” in a limited edition vinyl which has already sold-out. He describes the solo effort as being “experimental in nature, and comes across as more a soundtrack to some lost foreign film than the kind of music I’m usually associated with…it has qualities that are both meditative and alien; but not alienating.” The plan for 2015 is to release two new Smashing Pumpkins albums, one entitled “Monuments to an Elegy” and the other being called “Day for Night.” Corgan has said on those “guitars, guitars, guitars, and more guitars…but more so on the epic side of things than, say, grossly metallic.” Earlier this year Corgan produced an album for Sierra Swan. In September of 2012 he opened a tea shop in Highland Park, IL called Madame ZuZu’s. He has recently performed twice at the small venue, creating an electronic meditative music experience inspired by the 1922 novel “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse and another inspired by the poetry of Rumi the Sufi mystic. He recently created a new wrestling promotion called Resistance Pro which AMC just gave the green light to feature in a behind the scenes docu-series. In 2004 he released a book of poetry called “Blinking with Fists.” This is the same guy the indie scene labeled a phony and a fame-whore in the early ’90’s and expected to disappear as quick as the alt-rock trend.

The Smashing Pumpkins originated in Chicago, and were the counterculture of the counterculture. Circa 1988, the underground scene in Chicago was all about a kind of hardcore/post punk. The underground scene everywhere was full of bands who went up on stage and played music like they didn’t give a fuck. Didn’t give a fuck how they looked or sounded – just came, rocked, left. Then along came a song called “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and all of a sudden we had a grunge “movement”, there was now “alternative rock.” With everyone so desperate to make cooler (better?) music than the permed and puffy haired, makeup and sequined-tight-leather-pant-wearing “rock” stars of the ’80’s, the Pumpkins instead used it as an influence, and yet they made music that sounded nothing like the 80’s or the underground post punk movements. A battle of who or what is underground or indie or alt or cool or a sell out – was about to be waged.

When the Smashing Pumpkins released their debut album “Gish” in 1991 it was acclaimed by some, hated by others. It became at the time the highest grossing independent album ever (eventually eclipsed by the Offspring offering “Smash”) and blended psychedelic guitar sounds with a weird Cure/New Order influence. To some it remains their greatest work, others booed them off the stage at Lalapalooza. The indie scene rejected them and concluded they were and would always be an insignificant knock-off of the grunge “movement.” After the release of their second album the haters multiplied. Steve Albini, in a letter to the Chicago Reader entitled “Three Pandering Sluts and Their Music-Press Stooge” compared them to REO Speedwagon complaining they were “by, of, and for the mainstream.”

In 1993 the Pumpkins burst into the mainstream with the release of their aforementioned second album – the alt-rock classic “Siamese Dream” – in which Corgan addressed his critics in the opening track “Cherub Rock.” He played all the instruments on the album save drums just as he had done on “Gish” leading to his reputation as a sort of tyrannical attention whore, which broke up the band after their first tour off of “Gish” – in which they opened for the likes of Jane’s Addiction, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns ‘n Roses – and would eventually break them up again years later. Guitarist James Iha and bassist Darcy Wretzky would argue he was impossible to work with. Corgan has said he became depressed over his bandmates (especially drummer Jimmy Chamberlain) proclivity to value heroin and alcohol over focusing on the band. After they broke up following their first tour, Corgan wrote the songs for “Siamese Dream” and told them he was making the album with or without them.

Siamese Dream was so successful that Virgin Records decided to release the songs that were essentially cut from the album. In a money grab similar to “Incesticide” by Nirvana and Metallica’s “Garage Inc.” the group released “Pisces Iscariot” which in my opinion is every bit as good as “Siamese Dream” and serves as a sort of part 2 of that album. It was official now to the haters however – they had (gasp!) released art exclusively for profit, they had “sold-out.”

“Sold-out arenas all over the world for 18 months” as Billy Corgan would say about the epic tour after the release of their most successful album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” in 1995 – a double album that has been certified diamond (10 million units sold.) This record has a little something for everyone, each avenue of rock ‘n roll being explored – Corgan’s version of The Wall meets Sgt. Peppers at Madame ZuZu’s. Six songs from the album garnered regular radio play. From Chicago’s neo-punk scene, a band that made it through the underground by going against the grain of what was considered cool by the underground was winning every MTV award in sight. The counterculture of the counterculture was becoming the culture.

It was from there William Patrick Corgan went off the deep end and made the album “Adore.” An indescribable eerie mixture of sounds, that happened to sound nothing like any of their previous efforts. An album that sounded nothing like a Smashing Pumpkins album. Just an artist not wanting to regurgitate his successes, an artist pushing the envelope. Critics hated it as usual. And that’s why I love the Smashing Pumpkins.

Ever since that odd 1996 album, you just don’t know what to expect next from the weird bald guy with the uniquely droning voice. Each album a different flavor of sonic guitars, in which Corgan rails some of the best guitar solos in the last quarter century of rock. They break up, they make up. They shuffle band members, they change their sound. In a dying music industry over-populated by plastic people with plastic tits and plastic shades, singing songs written for them to music from a computer, Billy Corgan – like it or not – is one of the few real artists left. Yes there is some great music from contemporary rock artists, I personally loved “AM” from the Arctic Monkeys last year, but no one can argue rock is in better shape today than it was in the 60’s, 70’s, 90’s, or even during whatever was happening in the 80’s. Similarly, no one in 1994 would have imagined that 20 years later Billy Corgan would be on a short list of survivors of the grunge “movement” that includes Pearl Jam, Chris Cornell, Dave Grohl, and Tom Morello – who all kick ass. I’d bet most people would’ve agreed in 1994 that all the others on that list were going down in rock history, everyone but Billy Corgan. And that’s the point, the true artist doesn’t want your adulation, the artist simply does what he or she is inspired to do, and the more you hate it the more important an expression it becomes. Billy Corgan is to music what Duchamp’s “Fountain” is to art. Counterculture becoming culture and then becoming something else entirely – whatever you say it’s not.

Article By: Anthony Schiano