Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: In the thirty plus years since Billy Corgan hit it
Speaker 2: big as the lead singer songwriter of the Smashing Pumpkins,
Speaker 2: He's become many things. The owner of the National Wrestling
Speaker 2: Alliance NWA, a father and a husband, and an outspoken
Speaker 2: advocate of free speech through appearances on divisive podcasts hosted
Speaker 2: by Alex Jones, Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, proving to
Speaker 2: be both eloquent and controversial. Corgan is now hosting his
Speaker 2: own long form interview podcast called The Magnificent Others, where
Speaker 2: he interviews music industry heavyweights like Tom Morello, Sharon Osbourne,
Speaker 2: and Gene Simmons. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to
Speaker 2: Billy Corgan about his approach to interviewing, why he rejected
Speaker 2: the alternative music ethos in the nineties, and the subset
Speaker 2: of his fan base that he calls Siamese zombies. This
Speaker 2: is broken Record musicians, real conversations. Here's Leah Rose with
Speaker 2: Billy Corgan. You can see the full video of this
Speaker 2: interview on our YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 2: Record Podcast.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking about this is actually a really
Speaker 3: exciting time to talk to you because I'm super interested
Speaker 3: about your approach to your podcast, and it's especially interesting
Speaker 3: for me because this is actually something I can relate to.
Speaker 3: And you know, I feel like when I talk to musicians,
Speaker 3: I find what they do absolutely extraordinary because I cannot
Speaker 3: do any of it. But this I can sort of, like,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of understand how you might be feeling
Speaker 3: around these things. So I'm really curious about your approach
Speaker 3: to interviewing because you've been interviewed for over thirty years now,
Speaker 3: So when you decided to take on this project, how
Speaker 3: did you approach it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the simplest version is I just try
Speaker 1: to have the same type of conversation I would have
Speaker 1: with somebody behind the scenes, and of course you're where
Speaker 1: there's a camera and you're of course you're ware of
Speaker 1: the concept of time. But I've seen in some comments.
Speaker 1: I don't really read comments, but people will send me
Speaker 1: things and you get a sense of what's happening. The
Speaker 1: people who do like the format that the show is
Speaker 1: in appreciate that it has a deeper dive sort of feel,
Speaker 1: which I would point to That's the kind of conversation
Speaker 1: I would have with a Diane Warren if we were
Speaker 1: sitting privately somewhere I would be asking the same types
Speaker 1: of questions with the same type of kind of back
Speaker 1: and forth thing. For people who don't understand it, they
Speaker 1: seem to be confused that I'm just after what would
Speaker 1: be called a normal interview format where some of his
Speaker 1: erudite you asked me a question. I just bloviate on
Speaker 1: for four minutes, and some people take the back and
Speaker 1: forth patois the thing is disrespect. It's the complete opposite.
Speaker 1: I really feel that there's so much that gets lost
Speaker 1: in the translation of conversation because I've been interviewed for
Speaker 1: thirty five years now that I'm really after something that's
Speaker 1: almost indefinable. And that's not to say I'm better at
Speaker 1: it than anybody else. In fact, I'm not very skilled
Speaker 1: at it at all. But I have an intuitive sense
Speaker 1: of the way an artist mind works, Yes, even if
Speaker 1: it's not mine, and that's born out over now over
Speaker 1: I think twenty five interviews, there's a commonality in the
Speaker 1: sense of an inner and an outer experience most interviews,
Speaker 1: and it's no disrespect to you or anybody else. They
Speaker 1: focus on the outer experience because that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: readily apparent it's sort of in evidence. The inner life
Speaker 1: of an artist is oft less explode but is the
Speaker 1: thing that I find utterly fascinating. For example, on this
Speaker 1: interview that I just did with Diane Warren and for
Speaker 1: people don't know, one of the greatest songwriters ever, nine
Speaker 1: number one hit songs, thirty three top ten songs, and
Speaker 1: the list of people who've recorded her songs, I mean
Speaker 1: is a who's who are the greatest vocalists of all time.
Speaker 1: It's really a stunning set of accomplishments. And yet if
Speaker 1: you look at the interview record, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: about this woman's interior life.
Speaker 3: Yes, and her interior life is what's fueling her songwriting.
Speaker 1: It's everything. Because she would tell you, as a personality
Speaker 1: in the world that there's nothing particularly remarkable about her,
Speaker 1: I think utterly remarkable. But she even sort of downplays
Speaker 1: who she is. But yet the evidence, which is in
Speaker 1: plain sight, fifteen hundred songs in counting, and by the way,
Speaker 1: no sign of letting up. She oh no, heeddle to
Speaker 1: the metal as an artist in in residence. Yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 1: give me even just a kernel of what goes on
Speaker 1: in there that allows this diamond mind of your spirit
Speaker 1: to continually produce works that are not only at the
Speaker 1: top of their particular field, but speak universally yes in
Speaker 1: a way that I've rarely approached as an artist. That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I could do nineteen hours on that. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would bore the hell out of the audience and it
Speaker 1: would probably bore the hell out of Diane. For me,
Speaker 1: this is everything.
Speaker 3: Do you think as an interviewer. I've heard Terry Gross
Speaker 3: talk about this that in every interview she does, she's
Speaker 3: motivated by learning something new about herself. Do you find
Speaker 3: that through these conversations you're trying to learn about yourself
Speaker 3: or are you truly trying to learn about that specific person,
Speaker 3: The person in front of you's inner life and you
Speaker 3: know their creative process.
Speaker 1: One of my great weaknesses is I like to be right.
Speaker 1: It's probably my greatest weakness. So much of the interview
Speaker 1: is me trying to confirm of whether my internal assumptions
Speaker 1: about a set of things is accurate. But the charm
Speaker 1: there because I'm I'm okay with being wrong, because in
Speaker 1: this case I have the subject right in front of
Speaker 1: me to tell me, no, you're wrong, you got that
Speaker 1: totally wrong. It's like, okay, great, because I really do
Speaker 1: want to know that that is the supreme effort is knowledge.
Speaker 1: If anybody knows enneagrams, I'm a five and fives are
Speaker 1: all about collecting information. That's how we feel safe in
Speaker 1: the world. So the more I can kind of confirm
Speaker 1: my worldview, and in this case with you know, people
Speaker 1: of world class talent and ability or life story in
Speaker 1: a weird kind of way, it confirms that my read
Speaker 1: on the world is actually fairly accurate. And as an
Speaker 1: artist type, I've been told my whole life that my
Speaker 1: perspective on the world is either wrong, overly dramatic, overwrought,
Speaker 1: you know, just calm down and just kind of get
Speaker 1: in line type of stuff. But I think has been
Speaker 1: born out over the last twenty or thirty years with
Speaker 1: social media that people's interior lives are actually a lot
Speaker 1: more complex than we would have previously thought in prior societies.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was always indication of it, and of
Speaker 1: course what people would read, whether it would be Hemiway
Speaker 1: or Dickens or you know, Jane Austen or something. You know,
Speaker 1: there's obviously rich interior lives, but now it lives on
Speaker 1: continual display Yeah, and maybe we're entering in age now
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe you know the Age of Aquarius
Speaker 1: or something, but we're entering an age now where maybe
Speaker 1: there's going to be more introspection on people's actual internal
Speaker 1: lives or interior lives and how they actually play into
Speaker 1: their behavior.
Speaker 3: That would be nice, I would hope, because I would skeptical,
Speaker 3: but that would be nice.
Speaker 1: Well, God blessed, But I would like to make the
Speaker 1: simple argument that the more people's interior lives are readily
Speaker 1: available to them, the less violent a planet we would
Speaker 1: live on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Have you had the experience yet of someone who
Speaker 3: cannot be drawn out, someone who doesn't know how to
Speaker 3: explain their inner life, someone who, I know a lot
Speaker 3: of artists express their inner lives through their art. Have
Speaker 3: you had and you're very eloquent, and you're very eloquent
Speaker 3: about your creative process. Have you sat across from someone
Speaker 3: who just does not know how to explain it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I think that's totally fine, because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, their perspective trump's mind. I'm really
Speaker 1: in service to tell their story, and that's where people
Speaker 1: misunderstand what I'm after. I asked a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who knows me pretty well. Do you think I'm talking
Speaker 1: too much? Or you think I'm talking too much about myself?
Speaker 1: And they said, no, No, that's how you are in life,
Speaker 1: and what you do is you create kind of commonality.
Speaker 1: And what you're doing is you're sharing because you're trying
Speaker 1: to say I think I understand is what I'm sharing
Speaker 1: relate to what you're saying. That made me feel better
Speaker 1: about it, because at times it does feel to me
Speaker 1: like I'm talking too much, but I'm really after this
Speaker 1: interior life. Like I said, I find it utterly fascinating.
Speaker 1: And let's use Diane Warren as an example. Diane says
Speaker 1: in the interview, like I don't really think about a
Speaker 1: lot of the steps that you're asking me. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there were about two or three instances in the interview,
Speaker 1: which is about an hour long, where she initially kind
Speaker 1: of gives me an answer which says I don't really
Speaker 1: think about that or that's not really I say something,
Speaker 1: and then she goes, oh, and then she'll give me
Speaker 1: something that wasn't previously there. To me, that's the AGA
Speaker 1: pay moment of like, Okay, that's exactly what I'm after.
Speaker 1: I'm not asking somebody who doesn't really know me in
Speaker 1: the case Diane, we had met before. But I'm not
Speaker 1: asking someone to walk into a st and throw open
Speaker 1: the door to everything. I don't I think that's really fair.
Speaker 1: But if they're willing to just crack that door open
Speaker 1: a little bit here and there, I think. I know
Speaker 1: I gained such immense respect for artists that I already admire. Yes,
Speaker 1: because the ability to look and see that beautiful engine.
Speaker 1: And I know not everybody believes in God, but as
Speaker 1: somebody who does believe in God, I'm oftentimes taken with
Speaker 1: the magisterial aspect of the human soul and how different
Speaker 1: every soul on this planet is. That I would include
Speaker 1: that even into our pets, which is even feels like
Speaker 1: a like an unfair word. You know, in our house
Speaker 1: we have three cats and a dog and two fish.
Speaker 1: And if you spend any time with animals in your home,
Speaker 1: of course you see that they have very different personalities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're hardwired in really unique ways. People come to
Speaker 1: our house and they'll say, all your cats are like dogs.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, so, where does that come from? Anyway?
Speaker 1: I think you understand the point of making.
Speaker 3: Totally Yeah, I was curious, So since in your past
Speaker 3: with press you sort of like fucked with media. In
Speaker 3: the beginning of The Pumpkins, I've heard you say that
Speaker 3: it was sort of a performance art project, and a
Speaker 3: lot of times the band would make things up in interviews.
Speaker 3: I'm curious where you stand about sort of like digging
Speaker 3: and creating viral moments to help your show blow up.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like a very easy thing. It's a
Speaker 3: cheap thing that you could You could probably do like that.
Speaker 3: What's your take on that.
Speaker 1: I can think of about two or three instances where
Speaker 1: I went down a particular road with an interview subject
Speaker 1: on my show and it was like I played baseball
Speaker 1: as a kid. It was like they threw me a
Speaker 1: spinning curveball and all I had to do was hit it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was instant clickbait.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us who?
Speaker 1: I can't remember, honestly, it's just it's just it's an
Speaker 1: internal feel of like, oops, there it is, and all
Speaker 1: I gotta do is ask the follow up question or
Speaker 1: hit this spinning ball in front of my face and
Speaker 1: there's a viral moment totally, And it's like in all
Speaker 1: three instances, I was like Nope. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be on that type of show. Yeah, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that to my guests. I'm a firm believer,
Speaker 1: and of course the numbers are still out on this,
Speaker 1: but I'm a firm believer that we are capable of
Speaker 1: creating a new type of dialogue in American culture. I
Speaker 1: know it won't be for everybody, because we're dealing with
Speaker 1: a massive people who are dopamine addicted, but I do
Speaker 1: believe there's a different type of conversation that can be had. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's the twenty first century version of it, but I
Speaker 1: remember being entranced by conversations when I was a kid
Speaker 1: on TBS where they would just go on for hours
Speaker 1: about really wonky stuff. But if you allow yourself to
Speaker 1: be drawn in, it's this becunded atmosphere of like, wow,
Speaker 1: not everything is yes or no, black or white, win
Speaker 1: loup yes. And I think we live in such a
Speaker 1: bifurcated society right now, where is that tends to be
Speaker 1: the common metric? Yes, so and so on so and
Speaker 1: so lost. A moment that really stands out starkly in
Speaker 1: my mind in American life was I watched one of
Speaker 1: the presidential debates in the last twenty years, and they
Speaker 1: went to the you know, the roundtable. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what network, but they went to the roundtable afterwards, and
Speaker 1: they were talking about one of the candidate's debate performances.
Speaker 1: And in the course of the analysis, the person said,
Speaker 1: I knew they were lying to me, but they did
Speaker 1: such a good job of lying. And I'd have to say,
Speaker 1: they did a great job tonight. And I thought, there's like,
Speaker 1: there's a lightning bolk. I was like, that's it. We
Speaker 1: live in a society now where you're no longer punished
Speaker 1: for openly lying. You're rewarded for the artifice of your
Speaker 1: capability to lie. And in a post truth world. And
Speaker 1: we've got tremendous artists who've created these avatars that are
Speaker 1: that are world class avatars. I don't need to name
Speaker 1: the names. Mostly they tend to reside in pop stars,
Speaker 1: but they've created these world class avatars that sell perfume
Speaker 1: and shoes and dresses and albums and you know, stadiums
Speaker 1: full of people. But I also talked to a lot
Speaker 1: of young kids who are really kind of almost stung
Speaker 1: by it all. It's not even that they dislike the artists.
Speaker 1: But they're almost saying to me, like to quote the
Speaker 1: Peggy League, is that all there is like is me
Speaker 1: as I am, disqualify me from the thing that I
Speaker 1: might want to become. And I went through a very
Speaker 1: similar thing. And that goes back to us messing with
Speaker 1: the media. I felt very early on Circuit nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine ninety that who I was was not going to work.
Speaker 1: That personality was being rejected. So I created an avatar
Speaker 1: of myself, not to become more attractive, actually to become
Speaker 1: more repulsive. I turned that avatar into a weapon. And
Speaker 1: what's really sort of interesting is that fifty seven years old,
Speaker 1: people are still convinced I'm the avatar, not the person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the person is. I'm not saying I'm not a prickly pair,
Speaker 1: but I'm a well rounded human being, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's family or charity work and a tea house and
Speaker 1: a wrestling company. There's other sides to me besides this
Speaker 1: rock conteur no pun intended, But people are really in
Speaker 1: love with the avatar because it sells stuff, even if
Speaker 1: it's negative clicks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does the avatar have anything to do with wrestling?
Speaker 3: I always saw that as you sort of adopting that
Speaker 3: same wrestling entertainment ethos where it's just totally over the top,
Speaker 3: it's shock value. Does it come from that at all?
Speaker 1: It came later from that between from the late eighties
Speaker 1: up until the late nineties, I didn't consciously know that
Speaker 1: that's what I was doing.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: And I was at a wrestling show one night and
Speaker 1: I and I've talked to a young man for the
Speaker 1: show who was getting an opportunity, and he was very nervous,
Speaker 1: and I watched him go out and sort of in
Speaker 1: a moment of feelty, I wanted to watch and see
Speaker 1: how he did. And the crowd was mercilessly mean to him,
Speaker 1: booed and yelled and through stuff. And so when he
Speaker 1: came back to the curtain, I see empathy, was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I felt bad for him. And he walked through the curtain.
Speaker 1: I said, how do you feel? He said, I feel great,
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't understand. He said, I did
Speaker 1: my job. They hated me, And it was like this
Speaker 1: light bulb went off in my head. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what I do. I'm actually by engendering a response
Speaker 1: because I used to say the opposite of love is
Speaker 1: not hate, his apathy.
Speaker 3: But as someone who feels a lot, doesn't the hate
Speaker 3: denigrate you? And I mean that's got to hurt your soul.
Speaker 1: Totally toxic. Yeah, totally a pyrrhic approach. It's not I
Speaker 1: do not recommend it for the same thing. But I
Speaker 1: made my point. The problem is is I've raised my
Speaker 1: hand in different decades and say, okay, I'm done making
Speaker 1: my point. I just want to go back to being
Speaker 1: Bill from Glendale Heights and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: You're in it now, you are this, and so at
Speaker 1: some point you become your avatar, want to be or not.
Speaker 1: And I always start every sentence involving that with I
Speaker 1: created it. It's my responsibility. I know why I created it.
Speaker 1: I can blame the media or I can blame the
Speaker 1: teacher in fourth grade, but I did it. So I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that part of it. But it does get
Speaker 1: toxic when you literally see and we of course we
Speaker 1: live in a hyper politicized society. You literally see where
Speaker 1: people cannot get out of the like no fact will
Speaker 1: change their opinion, there's no You become kind of part
Speaker 1: of something that's that's almost inexplicable. It's like they need
Speaker 1: someone to boo. Yeah, and once you're kind of in
Speaker 1: the in the in the heel section of the booing,
Speaker 1: they don't want you to come out of it because
Speaker 1: you're a really good heel. They did, they eat somebody
Speaker 1: to be angry at or or or heat on or.
Speaker 1: Like I told Joe Rogan in this interview that we
Speaker 1: just did you know about about how at some point
Speaker 1: I was I felt like I was being made to
Speaker 1: pay for the sins of the of the generational figures
Speaker 1: that had left the planet. Yeah, And he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand that. I was like, I'm expected
Speaker 1: to carry a flag for people who aren't even here
Speaker 1: for this amorphous concept of gen X, Yeah, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, I didn't even I didn't even agree with
Speaker 1: all those values either. Yeah. And I said it at
Speaker 1: the time, irrelevant. It's like a like a judge out
Speaker 1: of a Pink Floyd movie. Irrelevant. You were there, you
Speaker 1: were there, you were on MTV. You carry this flag
Speaker 1: whether you want to or not, you know, And that's.
Speaker 3: Like they didn't even accept me. Oh no, no, I'm
Speaker 3: the spokesperson.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I mean the classic example I always give is the
Speaker 1: Pumpkins album's got horrible reviews in the in the decade.
Speaker 1: Now they're all considered classics. But I'm melancholie. I got
Speaker 1: two and a half stars in Rolling Stone.
Speaker 3: Wow, what was the reason? What was the argument?
Speaker 1: I said, it was a piece of shit, an over
Speaker 1: ambitious piece of shit. Over ambitious, Yeah, I was that's yes,
Speaker 1: that that was a bad thing to be back then.
Speaker 3: Yes. So speaking of gen X, I thought it was
Speaker 3: so interesting and I saw you sort of have an
Speaker 3: AHA moment during your Tom Morello interview where he was
Speaker 3: explaining his theory why there was sort of a rejection
Speaker 3: of fame during the nineties, and I saw it sort
Speaker 3: of click for you, and I thought it was really
Speaker 3: interesting and I wanted to hear more from you about it.
Speaker 3: But basically he was saying a lot of the artists
Speaker 3: who ended up getting big in the nineties sort of
Speaker 3: like came up worshiping two different camps of music. A
Speaker 3: lot of them were like super and hardcore punk rock.
Speaker 3: They were into like Fat Brains, Fugazi, Minor Threat, but
Speaker 3: they were also into Sabbath and Judas Priest and there's
Speaker 3: sort of like a conflict in values. Is that something
Speaker 3: that you and and so when some of those artists
Speaker 3: like Rage, like Nirvana, like Pearl Jam started to get
Speaker 3: super big, they felt really guilty and horrible about it.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think Tom's point was then they projected
Speaker 1: that discomfort out into the world the next problems. In
Speaker 1: my case, I didn't. I wasn't uncomfortable with it. I
Speaker 1: was uncomfortable with the projection from the alternative community, particularly
Speaker 1: from snobs like Kim Gordon, that I was supposed to
Speaker 1: behave a certain way because in the rules of alternative music,
Speaker 1: you had to have a punk rock ethos therefore, or
Speaker 1: you did not belong. I mean, there is a quote
Speaker 1: in Kim Gordon's book where she literally says I wasn't
Speaker 1: punk rocks, Like what the fuck does that mean? And
Speaker 1: by the way, Kim Gordon's father was a professor in
Speaker 1: a university that is an upper middle class position, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Kids who come from actual fewers
Speaker 1: don't care about ethos. They care about survival. So I
Speaker 1: had no problem with being successful. I had a problem
Speaker 1: with people like that projecting on me their ethos of
Speaker 1: like it's okay to be ambitious as long as you
Speaker 1: wear the right T shirt, which is all this complete
Speaker 1: bullshit malarkey. To quote Biden, it's a total bullshit. Again,
Speaker 1: there's that concept of ambition. I was too ambitious, ambitious
Speaker 1: for what my future was working at a record store
Speaker 1: or being on MTV. You choose. Being on MTV looked
Speaker 1: a lot more attractive to me because it man, I
Speaker 1: could do what I want to do, and I could
Speaker 1: go where I want to go. Didn't have a professor father.
Speaker 1: My father was in a house in Chicago dealing drugs
Speaker 1: and guns. So for me, it was survival. It's like
Speaker 1: the choices were stark and simple. So I agreed with
Speaker 1: Tom that that was definitely at the heart of a
Speaker 1: lot of those things. But again I think those were
Speaker 1: in many cases put upon ethics that I did not
Speaker 1: care for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when did you start talking about your early childhood?
Speaker 3: When did that come into your story? When did you
Speaker 3: start making that public? Because that does sort of change
Speaker 3: the way that maybe people perceive you.
Speaker 1: Well ninety three when the Simeuse Dream album came out,
Speaker 1: because people wanted to understand the subtextual language, and then
Speaker 1: there was this kind of rise of Latzki kids who
Speaker 1: suddenly were interested in what I was saying. And part
Speaker 1: of that lyrical change had a lot to do with Courtney,
Speaker 1: because Courtney chided me for my Hippie LSD inspired lyrics
Speaker 1: on our first album, and she said something and I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: which went like, why can't the person I talked to
Speaker 1: on the phone write the lyrics for the next record
Speaker 1: or something? So I was like, Okay, I'll take that
Speaker 1: on his challenge. But when I opened the door, I
Speaker 1: found a lot of pain and a lot of denial
Speaker 1: and a lot of a lot of stuff in there.
Speaker 1: And the book The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron really
Speaker 1: helped me to claim this voice in there that was
Speaker 1: sort of screaming to get out. But I was terrified
Speaker 1: because I knew I would be attacked and dot dot
Speaker 1: I was, including people accusing me of making up my childhood.
Speaker 1: I would routinely be asked in introdews to qualify my abuse,
Speaker 1: which is insane, like on a scale of one ten,
Speaker 1: how much were you beaten? And It's like, what is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm not even making I'm not even close
Speaker 1: to dramatizing them. I was asked at least forty or
Speaker 1: fifty times in the nineties to qualify my abuse. Wow,
Speaker 1: And I found a line eventually which kind of worked
Speaker 1: as which was like, am I in the Abuse Olympics? Like,
Speaker 1: do I have to like qualify to have agency to
Speaker 1: talk about being abused? Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I was
Speaker 1: being poked on by my family for talking about the
Speaker 1: family secrets. Oh yeah, So I was getting it from
Speaker 1: both ways. On one hand, I wasn't authentic enough and
Speaker 1: the other side, the family side, they were mad for
Speaker 1: me talking about what had happened because you don't talk
Speaker 1: about that stuff in public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll be back with more from Billy Corgan after
Speaker 2: the break.
Speaker 3: From an artist's perspective, the way that you started writing
Speaker 3: lyrics where I imagine when you start out it's common
Speaker 3: to take on a character and then you hear someone
Speaker 3: like Courtney say, look like I want you to write
Speaker 3: from your heart. I want you to write from you.
Speaker 3: That seems like a really really big jump. How long
Speaker 3: did that actually take? And like, how long was that process?
Speaker 3: How many albums did that last?
Speaker 1: Well, it's strangely coincided with the need for us to
Speaker 1: make a successful record. I'm the type of person where
Speaker 1: I couldn't stand being successful if I wasn't authentic, which
Speaker 1: sounds strange because we're talking about avatars, But most fans
Speaker 1: of my work know that the voice in the music
Speaker 1: is very authentic. All the character stuff all around it
Speaker 1: is a bunch of smoke, but the voice singing is
Speaker 1: pretty on point. So yeah, it was like, Okay, you've
Speaker 1: got to make a really successful record. You've got to
Speaker 1: live up to the success of these new grunge bands
Speaker 1: which have sort of exploded on the world scene. It's
Speaker 1: your major label debut. Oh, by the way, you have
Speaker 1: to write pop songs which go on the radio. Somehow
Speaker 1: put all those pieces together and get back to me later.
Speaker 1: The only thing I found that resonated deeply with me,
Speaker 1: that I was willing to kind of die for was
Speaker 1: to speak with an authentic voice. And it went on
Speaker 1: for about eight months where I just, you know, would
Speaker 1: you I am painting an analogy, but you know, you
Speaker 1: put pen to paper and you're just too afraid to
Speaker 1: write what you want to say. That went on for
Speaker 1: eight months, almost killed myself repeatedly, ended up living in
Speaker 1: a parking garage. I mean, it was a very haunting time.
Speaker 1: It sounds kind of strangely dramatic, in hindsight at the time,
Speaker 1: it was like it was very peramine and I was
Speaker 1: sober most of it too. I was not, I mean
Speaker 1: I was. I was dealing with it full, full frontal, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I reached the point where I made up my
Speaker 1: mind that I couldn't deal with the pressure anymore. I
Speaker 1: was going to kill myself. So I started giving everything away.
Speaker 1: I started doing all the things you're not supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I started planning my own suicide. I started envisioning what
Speaker 1: people would look like standing around my casket. I went
Speaker 1: through the whole mental ideation, and I got to the
Speaker 1: point where I made up my mind, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill myself on Friday, and I set the date and
Speaker 1: I counted the days down four three, two one, and
Speaker 1: I got up. I got up the day where I
Speaker 1: was going to kill myself, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: really don't want to kill myself, but I kind of
Speaker 1: made up my mind to do this, and something broke
Speaker 1: in me, and I'm not making this part up. I
Speaker 1: literally was like, well, if you're not gonna kill yourself,
Speaker 1: then you need to be honest. And within the next
Speaker 1: twenty four to forty eight hours, I wrote two of
Speaker 1: the most famous songs that we ever had, which was
Speaker 1: today in Disarm and out came tumbling this this unafraid voice.
Speaker 1: It was pretty shocking and I still can't even explain
Speaker 1: it to this day. It was like the door finally
Speaker 1: broke and I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna be me.
Speaker 3: What do you attribute that to?
Speaker 1: I think it's like, if you face your greatest fear,
Speaker 1: you become kind of unafraid. Yeah, I don't. That's I'm
Speaker 1: not being artful in how I'm explaining it, but it's
Speaker 1: like you've kind of faced it down. Yeah, you face
Speaker 1: the final boss at the level or something, you know.
Speaker 1: And what I would say, and I'm not a person
Speaker 1: asked for public empathy, but I will say, for the
Speaker 1: point of illustration, if anybody knows anything about me, that
Speaker 1: has been a calamitous decision. Being myself in public has
Speaker 1: not been a joy ride. Yeah, it's been a very complicated,
Speaker 1: oftentimes confusing to me way to go through business. But
Speaker 1: as an artist, I'm fine to stand by it because
Speaker 1: the work is there. What it's done in my life,
Speaker 1: what it's done to my personal relationships, what it's done
Speaker 1: to the band, that's all for books and a wonderful
Speaker 1: podcast like yours. But I stand by the artistic version
Speaker 1: of it because I don't know any other way. That's
Speaker 1: all I know, and that's without training. Again, not asking
Speaker 1: for anything, just illustrate the point. I didn't go to college.
Speaker 1: I had no artistic training, I had no mentor, I
Speaker 1: hadn't nobody to sit me down and say this is
Speaker 1: how you write a song, this is how you play guitar.
Speaker 1: I had none of that. Everything is completely self taught.
Speaker 1: And if I'm a suicidal personality in terms of how
Speaker 1: I attacked the public sphere, well I think you can
Speaker 1: understand where the root of that comes from because that's
Speaker 1: the way I did it, and that's the way I
Speaker 1: broke through. So why wouldn't I keep doing it? Because
Speaker 1: I don't know any other way. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Have you had any other moments in your life that
Speaker 3: were that rock bottom?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah? Yeah, early two thousands, there were some periods
Speaker 1: that were really, really rough.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's why I'd be willing to talk
Speaker 1: publicly about I guess you would call it suicide prevention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: many private conversations with people who are going through it,
Speaker 1: because I understand that once you're in it. It's like
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's like one of those Star Trek things
Speaker 1: where they lock on the ship and the ship gets
Speaker 1: pulled in and there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That's how it felt me, like I just couldn't escape
Speaker 1: the gravity. But I did, and I did multiple times,
Speaker 1: and I don't wear it like a badger pride. I'm
Speaker 1: almost kind of ashamed that I had to get to
Speaker 1: that point, but I can also talk proudly that I
Speaker 1: was able to do something with it alchemically, like lead
Speaker 1: into gold stuff.
Speaker 3: So around the year two thousand, that would be the
Speaker 3: Machina album, which just turned twenty five in February, so
Speaker 3: about a month ago. So is that is that a period?
Speaker 3: I know that was a really hard period for the band.
Speaker 3: How do you think about that that period now that
Speaker 3: you have some distance.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when when Jimmy chamber Lit left the
Speaker 1: Pumpkins in ninety six and my mother died, I made
Speaker 1: the decision to record the Ador album, which was basically
Speaker 1: career suicide. And I was told at the time it
Speaker 1: grew suicide, and I persisted, and it basically was career suicide.
Speaker 1: Now it's considered a really, really a warmly thought of record.
Speaker 1: Machina was the response to the negativity around the door.
Speaker 1: It was like, we have one more record on our
Speaker 1: album contract. We signed it together, let's reform is for
Speaker 1: and let's just kind of do a record, give our
Speaker 1: best college effort, like the Beatles did, make one more
Speaker 1: record and go out on a fiery ball of glory.
Speaker 1: And it didn't work out that way. We didn't make
Speaker 1: it through the entire period without our basis Darcy leaving.
Speaker 1: And then you know, there were a multitude of problems
Speaker 1: in making the record and also promoting the record, including
Speaker 1: the record company completely abandoning us. But the funny part
Speaker 1: was towards the end of it, I announced that the
Speaker 1: band was going to break up, which was always part
Speaker 1: of the plan. We threw on the internet. In a
Speaker 1: moment of I guess I was just kind of pissed
Speaker 1: off at the record company. I threw out another record,
Speaker 1: which is commonly known as Machina two for Friends and
Speaker 1: Enemies of Modern music, and the fans love that record.
Speaker 1: I went back to the record company and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I know this sounds crazy, and I know
Speaker 1: we're leaving, but fans really like this record. Why don't
Speaker 1: we put the two records together it's an intact unit
Speaker 1: and put it back on the market, and I think
Speaker 1: you'll get your money back and we'll be in a
Speaker 1: good place. And they told me to fuck off. But
Speaker 1: they asked for CD copies that they could hand out,
Speaker 1: so they still help market Machina two behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: but they wanted nothing to do with it publicly or commercially.
Speaker 1: So when I made the reissue deal with what was
Speaker 1: then EMI Records. Now our catalog is absorbed into Universal,
Speaker 1: but at the time I made a deal, I said,
Speaker 1: because they wanted all the albums reissued with box sets.
Speaker 1: I said, I only make this deal if I'm allowed
Speaker 1: to put Machina one and Machina two together into an
Speaker 1: intact unit. So we're prepping that now. Oh nice, And
Speaker 1: so Machina one in Machina two will be reunited as
Speaker 1: they were written into one. Crazy. Uh, It's it's somewhere
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of fifty songs. Wow, Like it's like
Speaker 1: a Wagner It's no, it's it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: Wagner song cycle or something. It's like the Ringe cycle.
Speaker 1: It goes on forever. But it really is the story
Speaker 1: of a band disintegrating and by extension, my personality disintegrating
Speaker 1: into some sort of spiritual uh being who trundles on
Speaker 1: post two thousand. So it's hard to talk about that period,
Speaker 1: but contextually, I think to your question, I look back
Speaker 1: on it more fondly now than I did at the time.
Speaker 3: Have you thought about selling the catalog?
Speaker 1: I've been approached many times and I've said no every time.
Speaker 3: Do you think it'll ever come to a point where
Speaker 3: you will?
Speaker 1: I don't know my lawyer, whose name I will leave
Speaker 1: out of this for his his own his own sense
Speaker 1: of sanity, but he's one of the top catalog guys
Speaker 1: in the world. Wow, So I'm lucky in that. My guy,
Speaker 1: you knows the business. So when we first sat together
Speaker 1: with the idea that we were going to work together,
Speaker 1: and he's a huge fan from way back. He talks
Speaker 1: about buying Siamese Dream the day he came out, So
Speaker 1: he's a he's a convert. He believes in what I do.
Speaker 1: So the first time that we really sat down to
Speaker 1: have a conversation about Okay, we're going to work together,
Speaker 1: what does this really mean? The first question out of
Speaker 1: his mouth was do you want to sell your catalog?
Speaker 1: And he was asking more strategically than to encourage me
Speaker 1: to do that, and I said no, And he said
Speaker 1: why and I said, because it's undervalued. That I completely agree.
Speaker 1: So until the catalog is that it's true value, it's
Speaker 1: not even worth entertaining. It would be very, very very
Speaker 1: hard for me to sell my catalog there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear all the arguments, and there's fiscal arguments, and
Speaker 1: there's hey, there's still your songs, you know, And but
Speaker 1: for me, this has been my ticket to sanity. So
Speaker 1: I have an incredibly close emotional attachment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as I like to say, for the thirty that
Speaker 1: people like to listen to, and I'm blessed to even
Speaker 1: have that many, there's still another three hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: sitting there that don't really get listened too much. So
Speaker 1: I'm more on the Irving Berlin Diane Warren tip, which
Speaker 1: is you're gonna hear all my songs eventually, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to do what I gotta do to So handing
Speaker 1: them over to somebody and figuring that they're going to
Speaker 1: take care of my other children in this euphemistic case,
Speaker 1: is hard for me. To believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. How now it's totally acceptable. People don't
Speaker 3: bat an eye when they hear you know, so and
Speaker 3: so institutional artists sold their catalog. It's just sort of
Speaker 3: you know, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't describe any anything to those things, because
Speaker 1: everybody should make decisions based on what's best for them
Speaker 1: and their family. But it's sometimes when you see people
Speaker 1: you truly respect and that have always been held up
Speaker 1: as paragons of virtue or independence. Yes, kind of quote
Speaker 1: unquote sell out to the man. And there may come
Speaker 1: a day where I too will sell out to the man.
Speaker 1: But let me add one other thing. And I have
Speaker 1: thrown this out there and people always look at me
Speaker 1: with this really puzzled, puzzled look, and then they realize
Speaker 1: that I'm serious. Both my children have some musical ability,
Speaker 1: but I would never push them into into music if
Speaker 1: they didn't want it. There's no there's no uh, this
Speaker 1: isn't the Brady Bunch or something, right. But but I
Speaker 1: do not rule out that that the brand of the
Speaker 1: Smashing Pumpkins will continue, not just past me, but it
Speaker 1: will it would continue because it's set up as an
Speaker 1: artistic institution. I see it as being completely possible that
Speaker 1: my children would take over the Smashing Pumpkins at one
Speaker 1: point but play their own songs and not even necessarily
Speaker 1: play mine. It's like it's like being in the Flying
Speaker 1: will lend As or something. Yeah, it's not a Hank
Speaker 1: Williams junior situation where he had to play his father's songs.
Speaker 1: I could see a scenario and my children would take
Speaker 1: over the brand but not even feel the need to
Speaker 1: play my music.
Speaker 3: Are you careful that you're not putting pressure on them? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much so. Yeah. My son on his kolee
Speaker 1: on his own, has asked for a guitar, ukulele and
Speaker 1: a bass and he plays the ukulele pretty well for
Speaker 1: a kid who doesn't practice much. So. And my daughter
Speaker 1: has found some program where you sing along with songs
Speaker 1: and analyzes your pitch. Oh wow, she's only six years old.
Speaker 1: So the other day my wife sent me a clip
Speaker 1: of my daughter in bed singing Sweet Dreams by the Arrhythmics.
Speaker 3: Oh so, both of them showing Jenny Lennox.
Speaker 1: Sure, but I would never push them into it because
Speaker 1: the one thing my father said that did resonate over
Speaker 1: time was he didn't want me to go to the
Speaker 1: music business because in his estimation and it was a
Speaker 1: shit business. So I understand what he means. Wrong, No,
Speaker 1: it's a shit business. Yeah No, but I've said publicly
Speaker 1: and I'll say it to you. It's a rapacious business.
Speaker 1: It still is anti artists, which is sure believable after
Speaker 1: one hundred years of business. It's still holy anti artists,
Speaker 1: which which is why you still see those contentious types
Speaker 1: of relationships between artists and labels or artists in their handlers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you really get behind the scenes and you talk
Speaker 1: to people who truly run the music business, they'll tell
Speaker 1: you that they're and I think it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a rationalization, but they'll tell you that part of their
Speaker 1: logic is artists don't last. Most are lucky to have
Speaker 1: three or four years. So they're oriented around the concept,
Speaker 1: which is, I don't really have to worry about your
Speaker 1: future because it's not my future.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I find that completely shocking, because if you have a
Speaker 1: Billie Eilish or you know, Bob Marley, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you don't go, My goodness, this is such a
Speaker 1: rare flower. Yeah, we really got to do everything in
Speaker 1: our power to nurture and let this artist fly with
Speaker 1: the biggest wings possible because by the way we make
Speaker 1: more money, they go into this other mode, which is like, uh,
Speaker 1: we better be careful, We're going to lose control. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really interesting your conversation with Sharon
Speaker 3: Osborne on your podcast, because she has been in the
Speaker 3: music industry since she as she started working with her
Speaker 3: dad when officially working with her dad when she was fifteen,
Speaker 3: and back then the music industry was so much more
Speaker 3: upfront about just being ruthless. There were no protections in
Speaker 3: place for our So that was just interesting to hear
Speaker 3: that whole lineage. And I was curious in your interview
Speaker 3: with Sharon, you seemed like you were giving her a
Speaker 3: lot more room to talk, whereas the Tom Morello you
Speaker 3: were so excited. You were like, you know, jumping in
Speaker 3: and I'm sorry for interrupting you, but you had you
Speaker 3: were like, so, you know, like excited about it because
Speaker 3: there's just a lot of commonality, I think. But with
Speaker 3: the interview with Sharon, is there a reason you had
Speaker 3: a different approach? Did it have anything to do with
Speaker 3: your past with Sharon?
Speaker 1: A little bit? A little bit Sharon and I made
Speaker 1: up behind the scenes, I mean easily over fifteen years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think there's a sweetness and an affection there
Speaker 1: that we have naturally, and I wanted to be careful
Speaker 1: in getting her to talk about stuff that maybe she
Speaker 1: would normally talk about in a way that would make
Speaker 1: her feel safe. And I think that was also an
Speaker 1: understanding that if I wasn't careful, it might come off
Speaker 1: that I still had a bone to pick, given you know,
Speaker 1: our our very public falling out circa around machine. Actually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean I know that I know that Sharon
Speaker 1: and I are cool, and she knows that I'm cool
Speaker 1: with her. But at the same time, I could see
Speaker 1: where maybe people would be misinterpreting my approach. So if
Speaker 1: you see any nervousness there, it's not between Sharon and I.
Speaker 1: It's it's because I want to make sure that nobody
Speaker 1: misreads what's going on, because, like I said, this is
Speaker 1: this is a long ago healed thing between us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you end up? Well, how did the
Speaker 3: avatar eventually break down? And was that in the Machina era?
Speaker 1: Uh? I think I rationalized that once I was out
Speaker 1: of it with the Pumpkins, it was like, Okay, that
Speaker 1: was a contrivance of that. I'm thirty three years old,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on my own now, and I'm
Speaker 1: to get a new record deal. I'm going a soldier
Speaker 1: on as quote unquote Billy Corgan, whoever that is. And
Speaker 1: I genuinely tried in the band that followed The Pumpkins,
Speaker 1: which was uan to just be a member of the band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you a funny thing that happened. Zwan
Speaker 1: was very much put together as a kind of an
Speaker 1: equal ensemble. All front members of the band could sing,
Speaker 1: and two of the male members had sung for their
Speaker 1: own bands or in their own situations, and pause the
Speaker 1: bass player could sing well too, So I was trying
Speaker 1: to find something that had a little bit more balanced
Speaker 1: to it than say, The Pumpkins, at least on paper.
Speaker 1: And I kind of got comfortable with not being the
Speaker 1: front guy, even though I was the front guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I read a review of us back when I
Speaker 1: read reviews that chastised the show as being boring and
Speaker 1: chastise me for sort of laying back or something. So
Speaker 1: in a moment of peak, I, uh, if that's the
Speaker 1: way you pronounced that word, I decided the next night
Speaker 1: that I was going to go out there and put
Speaker 1: on an old fashioned show in the way that I
Speaker 1: knew how to do in the pumpkins, and so I
Speaker 1: was jumping all over and I had a great time,
Speaker 1: and the show was great, and it was really well received.
Speaker 1: I had no idea none that that night there was
Speaker 1: a there was a critic for Rolling Stone in the audience,
Speaker 1: as only they would have it. I had no idea
Speaker 1: there was a reviewer there, because you wait, somebody will
Speaker 1: come back and tell you so and so is in
Speaker 1: the house or something. You're on the guest. So imagine
Speaker 1: that I've done this whole tour where I really kind
Speaker 1: of laid back, and then then this one night I
Speaker 1: decided to be my machine, a self or something. And
Speaker 1: then this review comes out and the reviewer chastises me
Speaker 1: for making the show about me. I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: damned if you do, damned if you don't. So in
Speaker 1: my in my brain that that equals, well, if I'm damned,
Speaker 1: if I'm if I do, I'm going to do it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it worse. So that's set into emotion
Speaker 1: a whole nother round of various versions of whatever this is,
Speaker 1: and it gets it gets a awfully disassociative at times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm interested, I guess, so that's my excuse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not healthy.
Speaker 3: It works though it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how it I'm sure personally, emotionally,
Speaker 3: it's extremely hard. Publicly entertainment wise, it works.
Speaker 1: Let me take a let me take a a philosophical leap.
Speaker 1: A child that's abused or a child that feels neglected
Speaker 1: that changes its personality to gain attention or love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ultimately no. As an Alice Miller talks about this in
Speaker 1: the great book The Dramas, It gets a child that
Speaker 1: the child is aware that's inauthentic. So there's a sorrow
Speaker 1: attached to the personality because the personality is the device
Speaker 1: by which they're removed from their own the love that
Speaker 1: they really want, which is self acceptance or the acceptance
Speaker 1: of the parents or whatever. So to persist at fifty
Speaker 1: seven with this disassociative set of characters, it means on
Speaker 1: some level, I'm still not getting the love that I
Speaker 1: would like to get. There's a sadness to that, you know.
Speaker 1: And to illustrate this example, again not asking for any
Speaker 1: empathy or sympathy I will be walking through an airport
Speaker 1: and that's usually where people can get to me because
Speaker 1: I'm in the world at a catch a plane. And
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times people have come
Speaker 1: up and talked to me as if I'm the agent
Speaker 1: for the person that wrote all the songs.
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 1: They talk to me like, I'm not Billy Corgan the artist,
Speaker 1: talk to me like I'm Billy Corgan the human being.
Speaker 1: Who can can Billy corgyan the human being talked to
Speaker 1: the person they're really interested in. I know it sounds strange,
Speaker 1: but I'm telling you this is a common experience.
Speaker 3: Like can you have a meeting with that guy because
Speaker 3: something's going on with him that obviously isn't right.
Speaker 1: Yes, Like don you talk to your twin.
Speaker 3: Because they see you in the world and they see, oh,
Speaker 3: he's a guy, but.
Speaker 1: They don't want that guy. They're not interested in that guy.
Speaker 1: So it's weird because you're constantly in this position of
Speaker 1: almost being put down. Yeah, but they're putting you down
Speaker 1: with you. I know it sounds very strange and it's
Speaker 1: hard to translate, but I've had this experience many, many times.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, in my will we call them Siamese zombies.
Speaker 1: They're people who are in love with Siamese Dream and
Speaker 1: there's no other record for them in the Pumpkins Cannon,
Speaker 1: and that's all they want to talk about, and they'll
Speaker 1: talk about it for hours, and if you even remotely
Speaker 1: go off the subject, their eyes glaze over in the
Speaker 1: get bored. I call them siem zombies, right, because it's
Speaker 1: literally talking to a zombie. Yeah, okay. They will talk
Speaker 1: to me and say, you know, it would be really
Speaker 1: nice if you could talk to the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: those songs, because I would like more of those songs. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm the guy who wrote those songs. And
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, but if you were really the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote those songs, you would write more of them.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, I'm the guy who wrote those
Speaker 1: songs and I choose not to write more songs like that.
Speaker 1: And they're like no, no, no, no, no, there's something wrong in
Speaker 1: this exchange. It's like, I'm not even there. I know
Speaker 1: it's super this is real, but again I think it's
Speaker 1: it speaks to the disassociated nature for a culture. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's little avatars, real avatars, real human beings, real human
Speaker 1: beings and the digital currency culture are inconvenient because they cry,
Speaker 1: they bleed, they sigh, they yawn, they they look away.
Speaker 1: It's inconvenient to this digital ogapay that needs to go on.
Speaker 1: And the pop stars have become very skilled at nurturing
Speaker 1: this digital aga pay, so they're so everybody else seems
Speaker 1: like they're moving slow.
Speaker 3: That also seems like it's a product of the nature
Speaker 3: of your job, which is pouring all of your emotional
Speaker 3: life into something that becomes a product that people consume.
Speaker 1: I'm okay with that, And that's crazy, it sounds I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. What I'm not okay with is is
Speaker 1: that's the wrong set of pouring emotions. Can you pour
Speaker 1: a different set of emotions? Yeah, as if there's a choice.
Speaker 1: So that's a weird weird like it's like saying to
Speaker 1: your partner, you're loving me wrong? Yeah, can you tuk
Speaker 1: you this other way? And they're like, no, I'm loving
Speaker 1: you the way I love this is all I know.
Speaker 1: I'm giving you everything I got none And I saw
Speaker 1: this TV show Can you love me like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's it really is this embrace of and inauthentic world. Yes,
Speaker 1: And what's even more frightening is that nobody seems to care.
Speaker 1: And when I say nobody, I'm being hyperbolic, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't hear this big hue and cry in the culture.
Speaker 1: What happened to our authentic culture? I think because people
Speaker 1: are entertained bread and circus, So as long as they're entertained,
Speaker 1: they're pick with the inauthenticity. And I think the rising
Speaker 1: suicide rates with young people are some small indication and
Speaker 1: they're through the roof that something is a miss. But
Speaker 1: nobody want to hit the pause button and even do
Speaker 1: any kind of deep dive study on how this associative
Speaker 1: culture is influent young people. And again I go back
Speaker 1: to the analogy I made. I think they look down
Speaker 1: the pike and they say, there's no room for me
Speaker 1: to be me.
Speaker 2: We have to take one more break and we'll be
Speaker 2: back with Leo Rose and Billy Corgan.
Speaker 3: Do you really think, with everything that's going on in
Speaker 3: how fast things escalate in media, that people will get
Speaker 3: to a point where authenticity will make a comeback? Do
Speaker 3: you really think that's possible?
Speaker 1: I do, but I'm going to paint it in a
Speaker 1: bleique cynical way. Yeah, I think you will end up
Speaker 1: with a culture which is eighty to ninety percent inauthentic,
Speaker 1: in a bifurcated culture which celebrates the ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty percent remaining, and they will set up their
Speaker 1: own economy and celebrate their for lack of better word, authenticity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to get to the point where you're gonna
Speaker 1: have artists say they will say on their records, there's
Speaker 1: no auto tune on this record, you know, like the
Speaker 1: performance you hear we actually recorded. Yeah, you know this
Speaker 1: this photo is not airbrushed. And you see little glimmers
Speaker 1: of that, like when famous actresses will post pictures with
Speaker 1: no makeup. Yes, there's some.
Speaker 3: There's Sam Anderson no makeup tour.
Speaker 1: Sure, there's some acknowledgment of it all. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's going to end in end up in a
Speaker 1: bifurcating type of thing. Yeah, crasslely, it'll become a business model.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that the real people will point at
Speaker 1: the non real people and say they're not real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the non real people will say, we're having a
Speaker 1: lot more fun over here. Enjoy your no makeup and
Speaker 1: enjoy your no auto tune. So we're over here having
Speaker 1: a great party. And oh, by the way, we're on
Speaker 1: all the major media platforms because it's all about clicks.
Speaker 1: So as long as we get clicks, we don't care
Speaker 1: what you think, because clicks are the new cast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the cynic in me. But I do feel
Speaker 1: and make one last grand prognostication, which is, I do
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see the old media system visa the
Speaker 1: how it interlaces with entertainment. Pick your poison, Grammys, Oscars, Emmys,
Speaker 1: MTV Awards. I'm not just talking about ratings. I think
Speaker 1: that whole system of elites basically picking and choosing winners
Speaker 1: or losers is about to explode. Yeah, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's going to vanish, but I think it's about to explode.
Speaker 1: I think we've reached the tolerance point for the deception
Speaker 1: of it only. And I'm not saying that people don't
Speaker 1: win awards. I want awards. I'm proud to say I've
Speaker 1: won a couple Grammys. Yeah, but that system has become
Speaker 1: so burdened by the weight of artifice that it can't
Speaker 1: longer sustain itself.
Speaker 3: What markers will we use? Though, As if you put
Speaker 3: yourself in a journalist's seat. A lot of the times
Speaker 3: when we write the intros for this show, we'll say,
Speaker 3: you know, so and so artists three time Grammy Award winner,
Speaker 3: Like when you were talking about Diane Warren, you listed
Speaker 3: off her many awards. If those shows, those old institutions
Speaker 3: blow up and disappear, and they're already you know, irrelevant,
Speaker 3: very close to it, and there's no more platinum albums
Speaker 3: like you know, eminem comes out in two thousand and
Speaker 3: three and goes like triple platinum on the day that's gone.
Speaker 3: So what will be the markers of success?
Speaker 1: I know it's a hard thing because I think you're
Speaker 1: asking a great question, but I think you'll ultimately you
Speaker 1: I guess I'm personalizing it. I think you look, you
Speaker 1: would survey the landscape, and you will see who has influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Using myself as an example, right under the old system,
Speaker 1: I was told repeatedly for fifteen to twenty years of
Speaker 1: my life, my influence was gone, my value was severely diminished.
Speaker 1: What value I had was in the past, and so
Speaker 1: my only value in the present was to reap the past.
Speaker 1: I was told this repeatedly by some of the most
Speaker 1: famous and influential people in the music business. No joke
Speaker 1: in boardrooms where they just looked at me and said,
Speaker 1: here's where you are, take it or leave it. I refuse.
Speaker 1: I thought I stuck my crazy foot in the ground,
Speaker 1: and I think now you see that I do have
Speaker 1: more influence than they would have given me credit for.
Speaker 1: It's hard to quantify what that influence is. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the old guard it would have been well so and
Speaker 1: so mentioned you in an interview or your outu the
Speaker 1: number number four most influential alternative record of nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: No one gives a shit about any of that anymore.
Speaker 1: So it's you almost have to do a daily read
Speaker 1: of who actually can put their thumb on the scale
Speaker 1: and move something. And I'll bring it back selfishly to
Speaker 1: the podcast. My voice in the podcast is important, not
Speaker 1: because it's me, but because I have the authority to
Speaker 1: stand there and have these conversations. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to like my music, buy my music, care about me
Speaker 1: as an artist, care that I'm a father and an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: but you cannot deny that I've spent thirty five years
Speaker 1: in the game. Yeah, okay, I know the game really well,
Speaker 1: and by the way, I'm on the record speaking of
Speaker 1: about the game for thirty five years.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So just the ability to stand in that forest and
Speaker 1: say I know what I'm talking about. You can disagree
Speaker 1: with me, in fact, go ahead, but at least I
Speaker 1: have a right to stand here. That's a different type
Speaker 1: of authority. Has nothing to do with record sales. It
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with whether my saw on the
Speaker 1: chart that is the yes. But I'm what I'm after
Speaker 1: is this is where the legacy media is so flat
Speaker 1: footed because they're so reliant on the New York Times
Speaker 1: system on down that has existed in our entire lifetimes.
Speaker 1: The New York Times was like the Pope, and then
Speaker 1: everything flowed down from the Pope. That shit has gone
Speaker 1: and doesn't matter your political stripe or social stripes. You
Speaker 1: can easily jump on YouTube or Twitter. I still call
Speaker 1: it Twitter me too, Okay, God bless You can pretty
Speaker 1: much figure out who can put their thumb on a
Speaker 1: scale and actually move stuff. This is a new economy
Speaker 1: that it's very unprecedented, and you can see the legacy
Speaker 1: media is completely looking around saying what happened? They burned
Speaker 1: out all the eastwards, They burned out all the cancel culture.
Speaker 1: They lost that game, and now there's this whole new
Speaker 1: rise of people and everyone's going, who the hell are
Speaker 1: these people and why are they eating three hundred thousand views,
Speaker 1: sixty thousand views, three in views? Who are these people
Speaker 1: in that economy? I'm actually quite valuable. So that's weird
Speaker 1: because again I'm speaking again personally. I was told for
Speaker 1: twenty years you have no value unless you ring the
Speaker 1: bell of nineteen seventy nine into eternity. And to be fair,
Speaker 1: even people in my personal life that know me, that
Speaker 1: have known me for twenty thirty years, they don't understand
Speaker 1: it because they're told by their family or their friends
Speaker 1: or their workbates that their assessment of my value. These
Speaker 1: are people in mind, they don't even get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they think I'm crazy, because I'm like, no, you'd understand.
Speaker 1: It's like, who can walk in a room and actually
Speaker 1: say something that has any meeting in a world that
Speaker 1: has very little meaning anymore because it's all been so gamed.
Speaker 1: It's like the whole world's Disneyland now right, It's not funny.
Speaker 1: At some point it gets a little. It's like I
Speaker 1: used to I was rummer. He went to Disneyland one
Speaker 1: time four days in a row, and I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I love Disneyland. But four days in a row,
Speaker 1: I start to lose my mind with It's a small world. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what had to me. It's like we're all in
Speaker 1: Disneyland day after day after date, like and we can't
Speaker 1: get out of it. The screaming headlines, the hyper politicization
Speaker 1: of every facet of our society. It doesn't matter your politics,
Speaker 1: we're just all sort of hired. So at some point
Speaker 1: you look around and go, I just want a quiet
Speaker 1: song and a quiet hymn or or a treat to
Speaker 1: sit under. Yes, So of course in the digital landscape
Speaker 1: we're going to find those voices and those people, which
Speaker 1: is why anachronistically doing a podcast which feels more like
Speaker 1: a PBS special from nineteen seventy two than twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five is gaining really good traction because totally it feels
Speaker 1: like just a nice, quiet poem where two people can
Speaker 1: have a conversation about stuff that is important. And now
Speaker 1: you know how I know it's important because I know
Speaker 1: it's important. It's life. It's like read Sanskrit. It's like
Speaker 1: it's there all the way back, four thousand years life, Love, Ambition,
Speaker 1: you know, Blue, too close to the Sun. This shit's
Speaker 1: never going to get old.
Speaker 3: No, you're so right. For me, it seemed like a
Speaker 3: big turning point was your twenty seventeen appearance on Rogan.
Speaker 3: I feel like that really showed all of us this
Speaker 3: like really thoughtful, eloquent the elder statesman within the business.
Speaker 3: It showed us a new side of Billy Corgan. That
Speaker 3: was my experience. I don't know if everyone had that experience,
Speaker 3: but I was watching it with my husband the other
Speaker 3: night and he's like, damn, this guy's like smart, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know, it's crazy and he's got like
Speaker 3: these crazy stories. So what was a turning point for
Speaker 3: you where you were like, I want to do this.
Speaker 3: I want to get into the whole podcasting thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't. Honestly, I didn't particularly have any yen for it, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good word. I did a podcast a few
Speaker 1: years back, built around our album Autumn at thirty three songs.
Speaker 1: I did the podcast. Nobody cared. Nobody was ringing me
Speaker 1: up to do a podcast deal, so I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just not for me. Although I enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: was very intrigued with what Rick Deiato does. Yes, and
Speaker 1: he's pivoted a couple times, and he's even pivoting again.
Speaker 1: Very smart guy, very capable of musician and musical mind
Speaker 1: as well. And both Jimmy and I from the Pumpkins
Speaker 1: have had the honor of being interviewed by Rick.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: But I think what Rick showed is there are a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians out there who just want to hear
Speaker 1: about music, not through the prism of the drama and
Speaker 1: and tell us a good tour story, Motley Crue one
Speaker 1: more time, tell us how you actually recorded that bass sound,
Speaker 1: because people are still talking about that bass sound forty
Speaker 1: years later. And I thought, Okay, if there's a market
Speaker 1: there for what Rick's after on the deep dive kind of,
Speaker 1: let's call it the nerd side of the equation, which
Speaker 1: I love. There's no distance sing nerd. Then I know
Speaker 1: there's this other side of the conversation, which more gets
Speaker 1: into the interior life of a writer and by extension,
Speaker 1: the interior life of an actor or a scientist. And
Speaker 1: so that's my ultimate ambition is to broaden the scope
Speaker 1: past even past the arts where you can talk to anybody,
Speaker 1: whether there's a successful podcast or a successful race car driver,
Speaker 1: because I think that interior life discussion is something that's
Speaker 1: really fresh. If you can do it in a non
Speaker 1: click baity way, then I think we all benefit from that.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the whole setup. And then
Speaker 1: the other part of the story is I had no
Speaker 1: plans in doing it, and then I was on Bill
Speaker 1: Maher's show Club Random.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did the appearance. They pulled me aside and said
Speaker 1: we'd like you to be a host on his new
Speaker 1: podcast network he's doing.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And one thing that struck me right away, and
Speaker 1: I've known Bill Frover twenty five years, is Bill, you know,
Speaker 1: is very much a free speech guy. Yes, and I'm
Speaker 1: a free speech I'm not a free speech absolutist, but
Speaker 1: I'm very much a free speech person. I think our
Speaker 1: society ultimately benefits from open dialogue, however, uncomfortable that we
Speaker 1: always come out on the better if we just are
Speaker 1: willing to have the dialogue. Like I hear you and
Speaker 1: I agree, but I disagree. But yeah, anyway, sorry over explainings.
Speaker 1: But and even just as a sidelong illustration of that.
Speaker 1: You know, I just did the appearance on Rogan and
Speaker 1: a new One. Yeah, and he's done very very well.
Speaker 1: You know, in the economy of podcasting, you know, lots
Speaker 1: of people watched have watched it. But within twelve hours
Speaker 1: of my appearance on there here come the fans who
Speaker 1: are mad at me for being on Rogan's podcast. Yes,
Speaker 1: we didn't talk politics at all in two hours and
Speaker 1: forty five minutes and going back to being you know
Speaker 1: why I wanted to work with Bill and Bill's stance
Speaker 1: on free speech. There's no politics in my podcast. There's
Speaker 1: no politics at all. I mean, we talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about it with Tom Morello, but even then it's yeah,
Speaker 1: more philosophical than antipicating on current events. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: want the artistic sphere, and I'm going to extend that
Speaker 1: to scientists as well. I don't want the artistic sphere
Speaker 1: that I'm after to be poisoned by people's polemic need
Speaker 1: to pick winners and losers. I want us all to win.
Speaker 1: That's why I want That's why I called it what
Speaker 1: it is. I really think these are magnificent people that
Speaker 1: I want to share with the audience. From my perspective, okay,
Speaker 1: but when you see people trying to go after you
Speaker 1: because quote unquote, you know, I love these buzzwords, disinformation
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. I mean, it's unbelievable to me.
Speaker 1: First off, Joe's number one podcast host in the world
Speaker 1: for years, for many years. Second of all, Joe's been
Speaker 1: a public person for thirty going on thirty five years.
Speaker 1: So I'm not supposed to go on somebody's podcast because
Speaker 1: a percentage, it could be fifty percent, it could be
Speaker 1: one hundred. I don't care. A percentage of the US
Speaker 1: population has an issue with the man's politic and somehow,
Speaker 1: by being on his podcast and talking about nothing about politics,
Speaker 1: I'm somehow endorsing his position. Joe doesn't even know what
Speaker 1: my political position is. He didn't even ask me. There
Speaker 1: was no qualification of do you agree with me or
Speaker 1: you disagree with me. Let's just come on and talk
Speaker 1: about whatever we're going to talk about. That to me
Speaker 1: is not a society I want to be part of.
Speaker 1: And I would say we've had about seven to ten
Speaker 1: years of a society and it's not working. It's not working,
Speaker 1: So why people persist is beyond me. But they're going
Speaker 1: to persist. I acknowledge that let them persist, but I
Speaker 1: think they're going to find it's a losing strategy.
Speaker 3: Do you seem very aware which I appreciate of how
Speaker 3: each outlet, each podcast is different and the host approaches
Speaker 3: it differently. So for Rick Biatto, you sit down and
Speaker 3: you know you're going to get like a really intense
Speaker 3: technical conversation about choices you've made artistically, and you seem
Speaker 3: prepared for that and up for it too, which is great.
Speaker 3: With Bill Maher, what's it like being in his little club? Random?
Speaker 3: Like he's like smoking blunts, which is so crazy, and
Speaker 3: like doing shots, Like, what's it like being right there?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, my father was a weed smoker and
Speaker 1: smoked continuously, so it's been a while since I had
Speaker 1: a good contact high. So as Bill smoke in a way,
Speaker 1: I start to get a little bit buzzed, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then thinking, like, you know, I'm pretty much sober person
Speaker 1: in life, So I'm standing there thinking, am I about
Speaker 1: to do something stoned? Which I'm not used to being stoned?
Speaker 1: Am I about to do something is gonna get me,
Speaker 1: you know, blown up here in public? So there were
Speaker 1: times where I was kind of like, as long as
Speaker 1: I was afraid to say something. I was afraid to
Speaker 1: say it wrong. Yes, but I, like I said, I've
Speaker 1: known Bill for a long time, and and Bill's a
Speaker 1: very interesting mind in that, like all great professional comedians,
Speaker 1: you're never quite sure where they're gonna go. H It's
Speaker 1: not that they're always after the joke, but they're kind
Speaker 1: of after the bit. Yeah, take me to the bit.
Speaker 1: So we started talking about Gilligan and masturbation and it
Speaker 1: was interesting. Yeah, it got pretty interesting, but it reminded
Speaker 1: me of about eight thousand other stoner conversations I've had.
Speaker 3: So yeah, which is kind of perfect for a podcast.
Speaker 1: Sure, I think that that's fun. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: brilliant that Bill's got this super serious side on his
Speaker 1: age Oh show, and then there's the other side that
Speaker 1: it wants to have a laugh and be amused and
Speaker 1: or irritated, which he's really good at being irritated totally.
Speaker 3: And then going on, Howard, what's that been like for you?
Speaker 3: Are you nervous before these appearances or you seem very
Speaker 3: much at ease, but are you in your head about
Speaker 3: it to where you're thinking about the audience and you're
Speaker 3: thinking about the number of people.
Speaker 1: Watching No, not at all. No, I if I could
Speaker 1: give any insight. When you're with the highly skilled interviewer,
Speaker 1: you learn to just let them lead you where they
Speaker 1: want to go. Most interviewers are not that skilled, and
Speaker 1: so you learn in your media years to kind of
Speaker 1: push it where you want it to go. Yes, great
Speaker 1: interviewers have a way of leading you, and you just
Speaker 1: let them lead you. Yeah, you have to trust that
Speaker 1: they're not going to try to pull a gotcha. So
Speaker 1: with somebody like Howard, I trust Howard and I'll tell
Speaker 1: things Howard. I'll tell things to Howard. I wouldn't say anybody.
Speaker 3: Why to me that thinks Okay, hey, he knows how
Speaker 3: many people are listening, and he knows this is going
Speaker 3: to get a lot of airplay.
Speaker 1: No, no, I know he's not going to ask me
Speaker 1: to fuck up follow up question. Oh what do you
Speaker 1: mean he's not going to ask me the clickbait question
Speaker 1: that would follow the revelation. Huh that It's just call
Speaker 1: it a certain type of trust. Yeah, I do remember.
Speaker 1: Like when I was on Joe's show Last Time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: seven years ago, I told him a story about finding
Speaker 1: a sawed off shotgun under my father's bed, which my
Speaker 1: father heard and had had a funny response to. But
Speaker 1: that's not a story I would ever told. But I
Speaker 1: also felt I could tell it. Joe, Yeah, and he laughed.
Speaker 1: Oh calculus in my mind like, oh, this will be good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Let me put he say this way. If I really
Speaker 1: wanted attention, just imagine the things that I know that
Speaker 1: I have never said.
Speaker 3: Right, what you're saving for the book.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about things I know about famous people that
Speaker 1: I've never said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I want to know. Well, I got
Speaker 3: to ask all that, So are you actually writing a book?
Speaker 3: Is that something you're actively working on?
Speaker 1: In fact, in fact, just before I came out with you,
Speaker 1: I was working on my book. I was fixing the
Speaker 1: whole batch of really poor writing. But yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: working on my book, and my hope is to finish
Speaker 1: this year a book basically between the ages of zero
Speaker 1: and nineteen wow, before I would take some time off
Speaker 1: and then start, you know, nineteen onto whatever.
Speaker 3: How are you remembering things? And do you trust your memory?
Speaker 1: I have an insane memory. I do. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's inborn, but I just do. I think part
Speaker 1: of it was wanting to remember all these things that
Speaker 1: had been done to me in some sort of need
Speaker 1: to catalog I don't know, like the Man in the
Speaker 1: Iron Mask or something. I felt like I needed to
Speaker 1: write it all down. Yeah, so I did in my
Speaker 1: brain and I've kept it. Even my wife recently said,
Speaker 1: it'll be good if you finish this so you can
Speaker 1: finally let these things go.
Speaker 3: Do you think that'll happen.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, because I think it's
Speaker 1: the act of putting something out in public that creates
Speaker 1: the alchemy for that. As long as it's private, it
Speaker 1: sort of remains kind of a secret. And having done
Speaker 1: it before publicly, like we were talking about with the
Speaker 1: album side of These Dream I do know that there's
Speaker 1: something that happens.
Speaker 3: It's yea.
Speaker 1: It puts an electrical charge in the air, and if
Speaker 1: it's true, it puts a really interesting electrical charge in
Speaker 1: the air because again it's authentic. Yeah, I know. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I assume or I feel that
Speaker 1: when people do read my book or books, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have a hard time believing a lot of what they
Speaker 1: they'll read. But I know that this stuff happened, so
Speaker 1: that's all I know. But there are times when I'm
Speaker 1: writing it, and i'll read it back. I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that this act stuff actually happened.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I'll read my wife passages and I'll like
Speaker 1: and I'll I'll kind of get her reaction and I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's crazy that this actually happens. She's like, I know,
Speaker 1: you've had a crazy life. Like there it is, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is there anything else you want to talk about
Speaker 3: as far as the show about your process?
Speaker 1: I really the depth of this discussion. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, and yeah, I hope people enjoy the show
Speaker 1: if they see it. It's a unique entity, and I
Speaker 1: think it's very much like my music. It'll win if
Speaker 1: it's unique, and it'll lose because it's too unique or something,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'm okay with that because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to do it any other way, I think, is
Speaker 1: what I'm after.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fun. It seems like you're having a lot
Speaker 3: of fun, and it seems like you're comfortable. I like
Speaker 3: your cue cards.
Speaker 1: I'd like to ditch the Q cards as possible, but
Speaker 1: also I also I don't want to take my eyes
Speaker 1: off the guests. You know, they're rude about looking away.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I don't know how. I haven't
Speaker 1: figured out how to sort that out.
Speaker 3: It's a lot. It's like, you know, you're balancing a
Speaker 3: lot because you're trying to, Like you said, expert interviewers
Speaker 3: can lead the guest in a way that they felt
Speaker 3: all held and comfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I go back to my own experiences
Speaker 1: where I would walk out and everything, well that was intense,
Speaker 1: but I enjoyed it, you know, kind of like this interview.
Speaker 1: It's like it's all good. I don't mind. I don't
Speaker 1: mind walking up to certain lines if I feel like
Speaker 1: the intention is to get to something fresh, you know.
Speaker 1: The other the other experience of being held up as
Speaker 1: clickbait is a weird, weird thing. And I'll give you
Speaker 1: one little inside hint on that I've learned to stop
Speaker 1: saying people's names. Yeah, I just don't say people's names
Speaker 1: because if I say their name, it's going to get
Speaker 1: clickbaited totally because they need the name for the clickbait.
Speaker 1: So I just don't say the name anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They just made me a better I don't want to
Speaker 1: say liar, but they've just made a better Evaid, you know,
Speaker 1: I've just become more evasive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I get that, but it's smart. I would
Speaker 3: do the same thing. I wouldn't tell anyone anything I
Speaker 3: would like.
Speaker 1: I kind of like the public running into the wall
Speaker 1: part of it. It doesn't that part doesn't bother me.
Speaker 1: It's when it disinterpreted into something that it isn't right.
Speaker 3: Would you ever have anybody on the show and just
Speaker 3: like maybe somebody who you had beef with in the past,
Speaker 3: or maybe still have some sort of issue with, would
Speaker 3: you ever have them on and just like argue with them?
Speaker 1: It would depend on the subject. For example, it would
Speaker 1: be really interesting to have a discussion with Tom Morello
Speaker 1: about politics, but only if we lived in a society
Speaker 1: that would welcome the discussion and not penalize either one
Speaker 1: of us for having the discussion. Yes, well, pro believe
Speaker 1: in that society. So Tom and I can only have
Speaker 1: that discussion in private. And I think for somebody who
Speaker 1: had rolled their eyes and say, why do I want
Speaker 1: to listen to musicians talk about politics, I think that's
Speaker 1: a fair point. But musicians understand what it's like to
Speaker 1: stand behind the wizard's curtain. Musicians have access to a
Speaker 1: lot of information that most people would not know that
Speaker 1: musicians have access to. Tom even talks in his interview
Speaker 1: about how he worked for a sitting US senator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's an uncommon experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh. I know some really highly placed people in the
Speaker 1: political sphere, and I know a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't talk about because it's private information. But it
Speaker 1: certainly gives me a perspective on maybe the political world
Speaker 1: that most people wouldn't have. But when I ever discussed
Speaker 1: that in public, no fucking way. Yeah, because we don't
Speaker 1: live in a society that can maturely sit by and
Speaker 1: listen to two people talk about political perspectives in an
Speaker 1: open way that you go, okay, I hear you. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. Good, I learned something. No, it's like, oh
Speaker 1: you're good, You're bad. Yeah, And again back to the
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan thing. It's like, I mean when I see
Speaker 1: when I see my own fans writing words like misinformation,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's straight out of the CIA, buddy, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's like I do buzzwords for
Speaker 1: a living. You know, rat in a cage, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like you can't play meme word
Speaker 1: games with somebody like me. That's what I do for
Speaker 1: a living. This idea that you're going to use words
Speaker 1: against me, like like the vague word of misinformation, It's like,
Speaker 1: what does that mean. It's a perfect word because nobody
Speaker 1: knows what it means, but everybody knows what it means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I I would love it. So I would have
Speaker 1: to be to the spirit of your question. It would
Speaker 1: have to be something that has of no consequence, like
Speaker 1: arguing over what's the better Judas priestylbum.
Speaker 3: Or something that'd be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, Is that a business model? I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much Billy for coming on. I
Speaker 3: love talking to you. God bless and I can't wait
Speaker 3: for more of your episodes. Can't wait to see where
Speaker 3: you go as an interviewer.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, God bless you. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Billy Corgan for speaking his mind and opening
Speaker 2: up about his difficult history. You can listen to Corgan's
Speaker 2: new podcast, The Magnificent Others now on YouTube and all
Speaker 2: podcast platforms, and you can hear our favorite songs from
Speaker 2: Corgan and the Special Pumpkins on a playlist at Broken
Speaker 2: record podcast dot com. You see the video version of
Speaker 2: this episode. Visit YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 2: and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the
Speaker 2: Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at
Speaker 2: broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose,
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Speaker 2: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.