| Billy Corgan's Mean Street Interview |
| July 20, 2005, 4:10 pm |
Source: Mean Street Billy Corgan Mean Street. July 2005. Melissa Bobbit  "In my case, the biggest pro was that there was no drama." Despite all his rage, Billy Corgan is busting out of his alternarock cage. He’s paying a long overdue visit to Solo Project Land with the June release of The Future Embrace. Instead of adhering to the gargantuan guitar swells and nascent nihilism his Smashing Pumpkins were noted for, Corgan trades Black Sabbath influence for synth-pop sovereignty. “Mina Loy (M.O.H.)” thumps with New Order nuances. “A100” could be the best song Trent Reznor overlooked for With Teeth, with its whip-crack beats and luridly dark keyboards. And the dynamite first single “Walking Shade” combines the theatrics of the Pumpkins’ final album Machina with an electroclash lure. We caught up with The Great Pumpkin at a Beverly Hills hotel in May to chat about his first foray into solo artistry, working with Courtney Love (and living to tell about it) and the beguiling nature of the Bee Gees. Corgan last month told a Chicago newspaper about his desire to reunite the Smashing Pumpkins. When you began to write the album, was it a conscious decision to make it more electronic than rock? It doesn’t bother me that people say that but I disagree. I think it is rock. It’s not rock in the dumb, riffy sense but it’s rock like My Bloody Valentine. It’s closer to shoegazer rock. I think it’s kind of a trick. I do these things where it’s like, I rub your tummy while I’m stealing your wallet. I kind of like tricking people into comfortable sound, warm familiar sound — The Joy Division sound, the Interpol sound. It’s my way of drawing you to my spider’s web and getting you to listen to what I want to listen to. What have you found to be the pros and cons of being a solo artist as opposed to a front man? In my case, the biggest pro was that there was no drama. And I didn’t have to pretend that I wasn’t doing most everything to keep people’s egos happy. The con is that you don’t have that immediate response, i.e. a band, to come and say, “I’ve got a new song, let’s try it” and right away you know if it’s good or not. Any plans to start another band? I can see a situation where [myself] and Robert Smith decide to put out an album under the name The Miserable Fuckheads or something. But as for a band, like ever having another band like [post-Pumpkins project] Zwan, I’ll never do it. It’s Pumpkins or Billy. I wanted to ask you about the [album’s] Robert Smith collaboration on a Bee Gees song, of all things! How did you choose that cover song? I just loved the song [“To Love Somebody”] and I asked Robert to sing that song, not for any particularly twisted reason, although it did occur to me that it sounded kind of funny to ask him to sing on a Bee Gees song. On the press release for your album, you talk about Courtney Love staying at your house during the writing process. How have you two remained friends over the years despite such public feuds, and will you be working on her new solo album? I wrote a bunch of songs for her new album, so we’ll see how that turns out. As far as our relationship, I think that goes back to [us being] a couple at a time when nobody knew who we were. Of course, when anyone thinks of us now, they think of all the shit that’s happened and who we are now. But I think when you bond with somebody at a younger age — you’ve only got five bucks in your pocket, how are you going to get across town and those sort of things — they don’t lose that. Credit: Melissa Bobbit |