Interview with Billy Corgan
bovy_j
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It’s difficult to look away from Billy Corgan’s characteristic onstage stare; it smolders like old embers, charred enough to fit the tenderest of ballads or sharply pierce through big, burly stadium rock notes that can drop jaws. Yet, as commanding as his gape can sometimes be, the front man for Smashing Pumpkins says he is more often inspired when he turns his gaze to a deck of Tarot cards. In a way, every note of the music Smashing Pumpkins has created over the past two decades has been dealt out, perhaps in an effort to caress the very psyche of its listeners, like a deck of cards. It’s as if Corgan is not merely singing to his fans, but giving them a reading, of sorts.
Of the 78 cards in a Tarot deck, Corgan has an affinity for one card in particular. On it is a vibrant sketch of a skinny fellow with a staff slung over his shoulder as he strides confidently toward the edge of a cliff. Below that picture sits two starkly written words: “The Fool,” the title of the only unnumbered card in the deck.
“We are all, in essence, on the fool’s journey,” Corgan said in a recent interview with Local iQ, upon the untraditional release of Smashing Pumpkins’ Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.
“So the inspiration for the (new) album is the story of the fool, which is the story of life as we all struggle towards transcendence.”
Instead of releasing Teargarden as a CD, Corgan said he decided to treat it much like a deck of Tarot cards, dealing out individual songs one at a time. Upon completion, the entire work will be comprised of a total of 44 songs. Since September, the first six tunes have been made available for free download on the band’s website (smashingpumpkins.com), the most recent of which is a gently simmering number called, “Spangled.”
“It’s an open love letter to someone special while at the same time describing exactly why the relationship hasn’t worked,” Corgan said of Teargarden’s latest track. “I see it as a mini-movie, and the lyrics and chords paint a very unique picture that is quite avant-garde.”
Corgan plans to release all of his songs in the same fashion, as he finishes writing and recording the rest of the album — in essence, letting his fans in on the creative process as it unfolds.
“My intention is to use … the public forum to create a unique energy around the album that will inform the process. Or even better, (I could) choose to ignore the feedback and see what the consequences of ignoring the public are,” he said.
It’s a strangely stubborn sort of curiosity that has nabbed Corgan countless headlines over the years. There was the recent tiff over song rights with Courtney Love after the pair collaborated on a pair of songs on Nobody’s Daughter, the latest album by Love’s band, Hole. That was preceded by the equally ill fated reunion between Corgan and former Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin that soured in 2009, because the front man felt his band mate’s only interest was to be an “oldies act,” instead of focusing on new material.
But most infamous of all were the rumors of Corgan’s studio tyranny throughout much of the Pumpkins’ career — reports that he recorded all of the guitar and bass parts for Siamese Dream (the band’s 1993 breakthrough LP), with obsessive compulsive fervor, or his unproven claims that the rest of the Pumpkins (aside from Chamberlin) contributed very little creatively to the band’s entire catalogue.
While the infighting was most highlighted shortly after the Smashing Pumpkins’ first breakup (in 2000), and during the tumultuous recording of its breakthrough albums, that fevered tension had always plagued the band — from Chamberlin’s endless struggles with heroin, to the rocky romance between bassist D’arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha, to the suffocating hold OCD and clinical depression had on Corgan.
Endless tall tales were spun from the Pumpkins’ strained ties, one of the most famous being Iha (who cofounded the Smashing Pumpkins with Corgan in 1988) sitting alone in a bar, watching the band’s MTV video debut, and realizing he could think of no one to call and share the good news or celebrate with.
“I think James Iha should feel alone,” Corgan said. “As far as myself, music wasn’t as popular a thing to do when I started back in 1986 as it is today. You were held up by your family as an object of scorn, because they all said you’d end up on drugs or in jail for playing music. My musical life has isolated me because I am trying to communicate from the most honest parts of my many personalities, and yet I am constantly told that that person cannot possibly belong.”
Yet Corgan keeps foolishly following that path. And there was never really any other direction for him to embark on — that’s more than apparent on all of his early songs, especially “Zero,” one of the Pumpkins’ biggest hits. The fierce 1995 rocker had a riff that sounded like Corgan was wringing his Fender’s neck as he sneered lyrics like “… fashion victims chew their charcoal teeth…” before shrieking, “You blame yourself for what you can’t ignore, you blame yourself for wanting more.”
He’s gone from writing scorching riffs for songs like “Zero,” to meandering melodies on a new album inspired by the unnumbered Tarot card. And just like the fool in that game, pictured standing on a cliff, Corgan hopes to come even closer to the edge while also keeping his peers from pushing him over.
“Everywhere I look I see evidence where my ideas have been appropriated, yet little credit is given,” he said. “It is like serving sentences for crimes you didn’t commit, yet no one remembers that you were sent away and (and they ask), ‘Why do you have a bad attitude?’ The positive effect of all that shows me that I am best in trusting my own journey first and foremost.”
http://www.local-iq.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=54
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