WEBVTT - Smashing Pumpkins: Billy Corgan and the Shapeshifter 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:16.160 Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:20.800 story about change. It's about a band that changed the 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.079 sound of alternative rock by refusing to sound like alternative rock, 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:30.800 a band that turned isolation into connection, revenge into melody, 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.159 and violence into beauty. It's a story about a Chicago 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:38.760 record store clerk who changed into a rock star, and 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.479 a rock star who was hated as much as he 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:45.240 was loved, a rock star who witnessed his band fall 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.040 into the trap of self destruction, and who also witnessed 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:54.240 a shape shifting transformation that he could not explain. It's 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.480 a story about the Smashing Pumpkins. It's a story about 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.200 great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.399 the top of the show that wasn't great music. That 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.759 was a preset loop from my mellotron called Blink one 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:13.560 eighty few MK one. I played you that loop because 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.280 I can't afford the rights to Fantasy by Mariah Carey. 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.000 And why would I play you that specific slice of 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:25.320 Tom Tom Club sampling cheese? Could I afford it? Because 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.680 that was the number one song in America on October 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.360 twenty third, nineteen ninety five, and that was the day 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.280 that The Smashing Pumpkins released their double album Melancholy and 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:41.000 the Infinite Sadness, an album that silenced their many detractors 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:43.400 when it made them the biggest rock band in the 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:50.200 world right before an overdose and an arrest changed everything forever. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:57.920 On this episode violence, Beauty, Isolation, self destruction, Change and 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:36.600 the Smashing Pumpkins. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace. Lad. So. 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:38.560 I don't know what your life is like with your 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.440 wife or your spouse, your husband and your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whatever. 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.480 But my wife and I send each other reels on 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.840 Instagram back and forth all the time. Maybe you do 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.440 the same. I don't know. There's this one reel that 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:52.040 my wife sent me a while back that I can't 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.640 stop thinking about. Maybe you've seen it. It's a clip 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.320 of Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins talking with Howard 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:03.800 stern Stern Show. And in this clip, Billy Corgan is 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.959 relating this story about a strange encounter that he once had. 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.200 Actually it's two strange encounters that he had with the 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.799 same person, but not just a quote unquote person. As 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:19.600 Billy tells it, this person is a shape shifter. Let's 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:21.720 just say I was with somebody and I saw a 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:26.280 transformation that I can't explain. That's what Billy says to 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.720 Howard Stern. He doesn't identify the shape shifter by name, 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.600 he won't even say if this person was male or female, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.360 but he does say that the shape shifter was naked 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.160 when these encounters took place, and after agreeing to tell 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.840 Howard more details in private, Billy reveals that the story 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:49.120 is even more fantastical than you think. Now, I've heard 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.400 of shape shifters before, and I'm sure you have to. 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:56.040 And I've learned about the skinwalkers of the indigenous American Southwest, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.600 the Selkies of Celtic folklore, and there are of course 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:04.160 the trickster gods of Greek and Norris mythology. But Billy 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.920 Corgan isn't talking about folklore or mythology. He's talking about 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.240 a real experience in the real world, in the here 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.159 and now. So watching this clip, my jaw on the 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.479 floor and my response was that this guy is full 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:23.040 of shit. Maybe it's because Billy Corgan has said a 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.000 lot of crazy things over the years, like how he 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.640 and Kirk Kobaine are the greatest songwriters of their generation 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.640 and everyone else is a quote distant third. But I 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.320 think it's more what Billy's contemporaries have said about him 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.000 and the Smashing Pumpkins that gives me pause when it 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.080 comes to the whole shape shifter thing. Kim Dial the 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:45.160 Pixies once called Billy a self important asshole. Another Kim 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.279 Kim Gordon, a sonic youth, writing in her memoir Girl 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.800 in a Band, referred to Billy Corgan as a cry baby, 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.320 saying his band took themselves too seriously and were in 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.839 no way punk rock. Linda Perry, one of the four 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:02.440 non blondes the greatest pop songwriters of all time, once 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.240 told Billy that he had bad energy as she kicked 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.760 him out of her studio. Legendary indie producer Steve Albini 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.960 described the Smashing Pumpkins as careerists, which, to a caustic 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.919 DIY dude like Steve Albini, was just about the worst 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.039 thing he could say about somebody. And then there's the 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.080 Pavement song range Life, which takes dead aim at Billy's 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.480 band Smashing Pumpkins, after calling out the Pumpkins by name 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:30.080 in one of the verses, Stephen Malcolmus sings, I don't 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:32.960 understand what they mean, and I could really give a fuck. 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.120 Even when the Smashing Pumpkins became one of the biggest 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:39.120 bands on the planet, back when rock and roll could 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.120 still move the needle of popular culture, the Pumpkins' success 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.640 was acknowledged with slight digs from the rock cogniscenting. For example, 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.760 the Pumpkins were crowned Artist of the Year in nineteen 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.200 ninety four by Spin magazine, and in the accompanying feature article, 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.960 Michael Asiurad wrote that the Pumpkins untrendy videos over the time, 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.920 production values, fraught, interviews, do beous, fashion sense, and most 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:08.440 of all, Corgan's soul bearing lyrics all completely bypassed any 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.280 semblance of cool. This is how they were described by 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:17.760 the publication bestowing the year's highest honor onto them. Now, 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.400 depending on what you think of the Smashing Pumpkins, Michael 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.520 Azarai was either right, wrong, or some mix of the two, 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.320 but he did get something undeniably correct about the Smashing Pumpkins. 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.320 He said that Billy Corgan was a quote hero and 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.559 surrogate of a vast audience of kids who were either 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.359 alienated from the indie network or just came to the 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:40.839 party too late, unquote. It was nineteen ninety four and 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:45.159 music was changing fast. In fact, a lot of the 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.960 change had happened already. How else do you describe the 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.840 atmosphere of the so called alternative nation in the immediate 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:55.000 wake of Kurk Comaine's death. But Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins, 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:58.520 they weren't changing for anyone, not yet. At least. The 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:02.080 Smashing Pumpkins were a huge band existing within a big 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.560 culture full of figureheads who hated their bigness. And they 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.520 generated big energy and get Spin Magazine Artist of the 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.640 Year big in return, which is exactly what they had 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:16.960 aspired to since the beginning. In nineteen eighty eight, Billy 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.000 Corgan was working at a record store in Chicago, making 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.520 twelve thousand dollars a year. He was brash and opinionated, 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:25.960 Like I said, the guy was a record store clerk. 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.640 And the first time he met Darcy Retzki was on 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:31.840 the sidewalk outside of a club at night, and Billy 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.480 was in a typically combative mood, and he picked a 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.640 fight with Darcy, a woman he did not know, arguing 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:41.440 that the band playing inside were some record label manufactured crap. 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.520 When he found out that Darcy played bass, he asked 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.200 her to join the band that he was for me, 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:48.920 and this offer contained no guarantee that he would not 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.720 argue with her again. In fact, the tensions between Billy 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.320 and his fellow bandmates would become a defining factor of 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:59.480 their volatile chemistry. But once Billy, Darcy and guitarist James 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.720 Yahu found jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, the Smashing Pumpkins became 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:08.080 official that year in nineteen eighty eight. The people they 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.560 were then definitely the person Billy Corgan was then gave 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.840 zero shits about what a writer at Spin magazine would 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.920 say about them six years later. They just wanted to 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:22.280 be huge, stadium huge. With Billy as their lead songwriter, 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:27.120 they plotted out intricately arranged and meticulously produced music to 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.600 befit their overblown vision of themselves. But where their contemporaries 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:34.840 looked to the rawness of say The Replacements or Huskerdo 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.800 or Bad Brains for inspiration, the Pumpkins chased a wide 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.240 screened polish sound that you could eat off of. Think 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:46.920 Boston's Smoking Queen's Death on Two Legs or led Zeppelin 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.000 at their most arena sized. If you were fronting an 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.920 alternative rock band in the nineteen nineties, you did not 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.439 utter those kinds of musical references. Maybe Zeppelin, but Boston 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:02.080 Queen The Pumpkins, Butch vig produced debut album, Gish, released 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.400 three years after they formed on Caroline Records, may have 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.200 had more in common with the heavy riffage of The 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.040 Stooges or Sabbath, But that heavy riffage was buffed. It 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.599 was waxed, it was polished. It was rooted in the 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:19.080 guitar heroics of classic rock radio, and it quickly became 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.360 the biggest selling indie rock record in history. At that 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:28.760 time the Smashing Pumpkins, Gish was hard rock. It was 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:33.400 psychedelic rock, it was dream rock. Gish was the sound 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:37.360 of change, and that change came four months before Billy 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.400 Corgan's self described songwriting equal, Kirk Cobaine and his band 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.440 Nirvana released never Mind Now. I Don't want to blow 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.760 too much smoke up Billy Corgan's ass. But Billy Corgan 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:49.760 was a major reason why Gish did as well as 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.920 it did. Billy Corgan was not only brash and opinionated, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.640 he had ambition. He was driven by this need to 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.360 be a part of something bigger than himself, the need 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.360 to be connected. And that's because his childhood had been 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.840 marked by isolation and trauma. He was made to feel 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.560 unwanted and unloved, and the abuse he suffered at the 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:14.480 hands of family members was both physical and psychological. Often 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.440 he was merely invisible, sitting off to one side watching 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.200 his own father, a guitar player himself, run drugs and 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:28.160 guns for Chicago organized crime. A bad childhood did a 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.240 lot more than just make Billy Corgan ambitious. Isolation and 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:36.240 trauma can radicalize a person. You can become something ugly, 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.640 something you don't recognize. You claw back at your abusers, 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.319 you act out at your oppressors, and at some point 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:47.600 you come to the realization that the only reasonable response 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:52.720 to violence is more violence. Billy Corgan would get his revenge, 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:55.120 though we did not have to shed any blood to 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.480 do it. He just had to spill some ink out 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:01.000 onto the page. And later he would reveal that the 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.160 Smashing Pumpkin's ballad Disarm from their second album, Siame's Dream, 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.920 was written because he didn't have the guts to murder 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:12.400 his parents. Those are his words he said, I didn't 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:14.439 have the guts to kill my parents, so I thought 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:16.960 I'd get back at them through song. And rather than 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.080 have an angry, angry, angry, violent song, I thought I'd 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.800 write something beautiful and make them realize what tender feelings 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.240 I have in my heart. It make them feel really 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.920 bad for treating me like shit. Disarm is the song 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.440 with the acoustic guitar and the string section and those 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.600 huge bells tolling in the background, you know, the one 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:39.240 with the killer of me is the killer in you line. 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.000 Like pretty much all of Billy Corgan's songs, the lyrics 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:45.480 in this one are a raw nerve and the personal 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.000 nature of smashing pumpkin songs. Second, perhaps only, the Billy's 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:53.600 distinct Naisily Wine is one of the band's constants. You 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:56.800 can point to Jimmy Chamberlain's hyper aggressive drumming style or 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.720 Darcy Retzky's disaffected cool standing there on the but it's 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:06.120 Billy Corgan's band. He is there, Svengali, He's also their asshole. 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.480 He argued with them re recording their parts in the 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.440 studio after they failed to meet his expectations. As he 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:16.240 did Darcy's bass parts and James Zhaw's guitar parts for 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.760 their breakthrough album Siamese Dream And if you could play 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:21.920 the drums, I'm sure he would have re recorded Jimmy 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.240 Timberlain's parts too. But in nineteen ninety four, when Spin 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.440 magazine was crowning the Pumpkins Artist of the Year, Billy 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.200 Corgan was reminding himself why he was leading a band 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:37.000 in the first place, To not be so isolated, to 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.400 be part of something bigger than himself. He was going 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.679 to therapy, and he was being nicer to his fellow bandmates, 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:50.440 and Billy Corgan was trying to change. Perhaps the oddest 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.440 thing about it was that there was no sound, no 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:59.480 elaborate theatrics to announce such an unprecedented transformation. In the movies, 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.320 you'd hear tendons pop and bones expand. Hair would sprout 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.400 so quickly that it would make noise. As it did. 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:08.960 The person going through the sudden physical change would howl 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.120 in the twisted combination of pain, fear and disbelief, like 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:16.520 an American werewolf in London, The Fly or the Thing. 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.400 But this wasn't a movie, and it wasn't a book either, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.360 But it all went down like that Cough a book, 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:26.400 the one about the guy who turns into a buck. 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:31.320 It just happened. One moment this person was themselves, and 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:38.000 the next they were someone else, entirely something else. Billy 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:40.760 Corgan could only imagine what it transpired in the few 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:45.160 seconds that his back was turned, the head swelling in size, 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.720 the mouth contorting into a devilish grin, the eyes going black. 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.679 Now he was facing it, the thing that just moments 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.240 ago was a different person, the thing he could find 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:03.079 no words to explain, the same thing that now refused 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.680 to tell them how or why it had suddenly changed 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:39.760 into its present form, the share shifter. The success of 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.880 the Smashing Pumpkins debut album Gish created an atmosphere of 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:48.600 great anticipation for record number two, so when Sime's Dream 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.760 was released by Caroline Records as parent company Virgin Records 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.920 in July of nineteen ninety three, it debuted at number 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.200 ten on the Billboard Album Chart. Siamese Dream immediately put 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.880 the Smashing pump in the conversation, or perhaps in the 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.200 argument is a better way to put it, seeing as 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.120 how much the sound of the album flew in the 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:11.120 face of grunge, less discerning listeners may have lumped the 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:14.400 Pumpkins in with Nirvana and Alison Chains and Soundgarden and 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.400 all those Seattle bands, but Siame's Dream boosted a much 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.280 more produced sound than was in fashion at the time, 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:24.360 and this was immediately a point of contention with the 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.240 band's peers, which was the whole point as far as 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:31.640 Billy Corgan was concerned, because in his eyes, music was competitive. 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:35.800 This wasn't the nineteen sixties. This wasn't Brian Wilson fan 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.520 boying over Rubber Soul and being inspired to make Pet 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.240 Sounds and then Paul McCartney falling in love with Pet 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.640 Sounds and being inspired to make Sergeant Pepper's. This was 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:47.480 the nineties. This was the age of the East Coast 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.880 West Coast hip hop beef. This was Blur and Oasis 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:54.120 going for the jugular in the press and on the charts, 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.160 and this is us versus them, me versus you. And 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.880 if the less discerning listeners and critics wanted to compare 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.840 the Smashing Pumpkins to Nirvana, let them. Kurt Cobaine was 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.240 a worthy adversary for Billy to square off against. Kurt 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.640 instilled in Billy that fighting spirit that is until Kurt 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.240 took his own life in a room above his garage, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:21.000 and then everything changed again. Billy Corgan slipped on the 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:25.160 plaid lumberjacket. Its muted color palette was a change from 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.200 the candy colored Paisley shirts in his wardrobe. It was 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:32.120 less psychedelic and more down to earth than decidedly northwestern. 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:34.960 Courtney Love had told him that jacket was hers when 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.400 she gave it to him. This was back when the 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:41.800 Smashing Pumpkins played Seattle. But Billy and the Pumpkins weren't 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.240 in Seattle anymore. Tonight. They were on stage at Radio 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.400 City Music Hall in New York City, running through soundcheck 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:53.040 for the MTV Video Music Awards. It was September eighth, 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:57.000 nineteen ninety four. The Smashing Pumpkins were slated to perform 0:16:57.040 --> 0:17:01.280 that evening alongside such fellow ninety four Luminaries, Boys to Men, 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.560 Green Day, Salt and Peppa and the Beastie Boys. But 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:06.439 it was the writer in the room, working on a 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.560 piece for Spin magazine who clocked the jacket. The jacket 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.919 wasn't Courtney's, it belonged to her deceased husband, and the 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:19.920 writer was Michael Azarat. It was Aziad's job to remember 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:25.160 all the little details details like that jacket. The biography 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:27.480 he'd been working on for years about Kirk Kobain and 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:31.560 Nirvana was set to publish the following month. Speaking of months, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:36.160 here are some other months. Five that's how many months 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:40.040 Kirk Cobain had been dead for. So what's with the jacket, Billy? 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.879 This is some hopeful transference of artistic greatness by osmosis 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:49.480 or a ghoulish seizing of the greater cultural moment? Did 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:53.199 he really buy that it was Courtney's jacket? Well, it 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:58.040 was complicated. Before Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love became the 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.080 most argued about rock and roll couples into John and Yoko, 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.760 Courtney's affair with Billy Corgan was the worst kept secret 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:09.119 in alternative rock. In October of ninety one, Courtney hopped 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.400 on a plane to Chicago. She found Billy in his apartment. 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:17.720 He was not alone, and the betrayals stumped Courtney stormed out. 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.000 She used the last ten bucks to her name to 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.280 take a cab to the Metro Club Nirvana just so 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:26.520 happened to be playing. This was weeks after the release 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.920 of never Mind. The show is sold out. Five hundred 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.800 people give her take. It's since gone down in legend. 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.399 But Courtney had no ticket, so she talked her way in, 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.520 still reeling from Billy's infidelity, and she made her move 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:44.200 that night on Kurt Cobaine. Let's roll that back real quick. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.000 Courtney Love went to Chicago that day for the express 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:51.080 purpose to see Billy Corgan, not to see Nirvana. That 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.760 part was happenstance, But he got a wonder. If Billy 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.240 Corgan hadn't been with another woman, then Courtney wouldn't have 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.280 gone to the Metro, and then well, the rest, as 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:04.200 they say, wouldn't be history. History is what was on 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.679 Kurt's mind two and a half years later when he 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.640 was writing a suicide note on Excelsior Hotel letterhead in Rome, 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.359 before he swallowed sixty roofin all pills, Kurt laid his 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.840 feelings bare on little pieces of paper. He suspected that 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.879 Courtney was sleeping with someone else, the same someone else 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.640 who was now wearing Kurt's plaid lumberjacket while warming up 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.240 for the VMEs. Billy has since caught on to the 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.680 jacket's true origins. He had the writer to thank for that, 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:35.800 and the decision was made to not wear it at 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.280 the actual show that night, because to appear before millions 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:42.720 of Americans watching at home wearing that to do so 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:47.240 would be ghoulish, especially on a night that featured a 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.600 heartfelt tribute to Kurt from his ten foot tall bandmate 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:55.200 christ novaselk But before he took the jacket off, however, 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.639 Billy Corgan couldn't help but feel the weight of it 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.840 on his shoulders. It smelled as stale cigarette smoke. Its 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:06.080 texture was somewhere between fuzzy and prickly. It was the 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.400 jacket of a dead man, the jacket of an addict. 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.440 An addiction had already threatened to rip apart the Smashing 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:19.240 Pumpkins to make Siamese Dream. The band had decamped to Marietta, Georgia, 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:23.119 just outside Atlanta. This is a tried and sometimes true 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.800 strategy for bands with junkies and users. Get out of town, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:32.000 go somewhere unfamiliar. You can't score in an unfamiliar place. Well, okay, 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:35.200 if you believe that, then you underestimate the determination of 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:39.080 a drug addict. The Smashing Pumpkins heroin abusing drummer Jimmy 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:43.640 Chamberlain was not particularly tripped up by this geographic relocation. 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.040 He found a source, and he found a fix, and 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.919 strange people began to haunt the studio, and then they 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:54.000 were gone, and then Jimmy was gone too. One day 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.320 turned into more than one day, turned into three, four 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.879 or five days. And someone said they saw Jimmy chim 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:04.560 in Atlanta, so spirits were once again high. Someone else 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:06.280 said he was in a crowd at the forty Watt 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.920 in Athens watching Rim perform. After a week of miss 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.840 studio sessions, Billy Corgan's phone rang and it was his drummer, 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:16.920 Jimmy Chamberlain, and Jimmy said he'd done so much cocaine 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.480 that he'd actually gone blind. It was like that fucking 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:24.640 Sabbath song Snowblind. Reeling, Jimmy Chamberlain promised to get help. 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:27.960 He entered rehab for heroin and alcohol and returned to 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.879 Marietta to finish tracking his drums. But Billy Corgan was 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.560 keen to punish Jimmy Chamberlain for his sins for making 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.840 a very stressful process that much more stressful. Album number 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:43.360 two is no fucking joke. They were all failing him, 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.959 not just Jimmy, but James and Darcy too. Billy had 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.399 gone back and raised a bunch of James's guitar parts 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:53.159 and Darcy's bass tracks and re recorded them himself. Like 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:55.439 I said, he wasn't competent enough a drummer to do 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.760 that with Jimmy's parts. So when Jimmy Chamberlain returned from 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:02.760 his last weekend from the Boondoggle from his Snowblind ram show, 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:07.520 Billy Corgan had Jimmy Chamberlain do take after take after 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:14.560 take again, Jimmy again, Jimmy again. Jimmy Chamberlain kept playing 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:19.040 until he was worn out, until every last illicit substance 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:23.600 dripped from his pores, until his fingers literally bled all 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.320 over the drum kit. The killer in Me is the 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:31.000 Killer in You. Sime's dream was a violent undertaking, as 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:34.120 violent as the Smashing Pumpkins's performance was at the VMAs 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:38.000 on September eighth, nineteen ninety four. The version of Disarm 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:40.600 that they played that night was no longer the tender 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:43.280 aching ballad with strings like it was on the record. 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:48.960 Tonight the song was different tonight. It was attacked. Tonight. 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:53.360 It bled like Jimmy Chamberlain's fingers bled back in Marietta, Georgia. 0:22:54.040 --> 0:23:00.680 Tonight it changed. The Smashing Pumpkins tech Nick Lee did 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:03.600 not win anything at the VMAs in nineteen ninety four. 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:08.360 The award for Best Alternative Video went not to Disarm, 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:13.760 but to Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana. Still, something was happening. 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:16.720 Billy had wrapped himself in the jacket of his songwriting 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:20.399 equal his creative adversary, like a heavyweight wraps himself from 0:23:20.440 --> 0:23:24.160 the belt to the opponent. He's vanquished. And while I'm 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:26.320 not trying to insinuate that Billy Corgan felt he had 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:30.000 defeated Kirk kobein you get the sense that, in this moment, 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:33.480 Billy Corgan understood he suddenly had the world's attention in 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:36.720 a way that he'd never had before. But the world 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:40.840 is a vampire sent to Draine. And when the Smashing 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:43.960 Pumpkins chose this moment to double down on their bigness 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:48.400 and deliver their most ambitious album to date, that's from 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:51.119 the vampires and the shape shifters and the hard to 0:23:51.200 --> 0:24:01.639 Kill Habits all came crawling from the shadows. We'll be 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:12.080 right back after this. We're We're we're looking back. The 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:16.200 music of the nineteen nineties was incredibly rich, and the 0:24:16.280 --> 0:24:19.159 year nineteen ninety five was no exception. That was the 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:22.679 year of radioheads, The Bens and What's the Story Morning 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:25.919 Glory by Oasis. It was the year Alanis Morissett released 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.440 her massive record Jagged Little Pill, and also the year 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:33.840 that Billy Corgan's tormentors Pavement dropped their weird and polarizing 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:38.280 Wowie Zowie. But perhaps the boldest and biggest statement that 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:43.040 year came from Smashing Pumpkins. Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:47.280 had no less than twenty eight songs spread across two CDs. 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:49.840 It clocked in at one hundred and twenty minutes, and 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:52.359 it debuted at number one on the Billboard two hundred 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.280 and sold close to a quarter million copies in its 0:24:55.320 --> 0:25:01.040 first week alone. Melancholy was absolutely meant to be this monumental, 0:25:01.160 --> 0:25:04.480 next level statement. We know because Billy Corgan said so. 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:07.920 He wanted it to be quote the Wall for generation 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:12.119 X unquote the wall as in Pink Floyd's legendary double 0:25:12.160 --> 0:25:15.760 album from sixteen years prior now, when the Beatles made 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:18.560 The Beatles aka the White Album, or when the Rolling 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:21.320 Stones made Exile on Main Street. Two of the greatest 0:25:21.359 --> 0:25:24.000 double albums of all time. Those bands didn't do so 0:25:24.119 --> 0:25:27.360 with the same kind of intention. They weren't name checking 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:30.919 other ambitious albums from the recent past, not that there 0:25:30.960 --> 0:25:33.680 were any. They were just laying down songs in the studio. 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:37.399 Great songs, but too many songs for one album. So 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:40.679 at some point someone Ringo or Mick Taylor or whoever, 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:44.120 was like, yo, this may need to be a double album. 0:25:44.440 --> 0:25:48.520 Billy Corgan's intention here is key, because it was all 0:25:48.560 --> 0:25:52.679 about taking what the Pumpkins were and amplifying it, making 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:58.120 it bolder, underlining it, supersizing it, changing it. So when 0:25:58.119 --> 0:26:00.960 the band went out to tour Melancholy nineteen ninety six, 0:26:01.359 --> 0:26:04.359 they were no longer a quartet. They were now supported 0:26:04.359 --> 0:26:08.520