Speaker 1: Loud and Quiet Presents Midnight Chats.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to episode thirty five of the Loud
Speaker 2: and Quiet interview podcast Midnight Chats. For this episode, I
Speaker 2: met an extremely famous man, and I probably wasn't quite
Speaker 2: appreciative of how famous he was until I was sat
Speaker 2: in front of him. That man is Billy Corgan, the
Speaker 2: lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. And of course I
Speaker 2: know the Smashing Pumpkins and I know Billy Corgan. I
Speaker 2: know who he is. And I went to do this
Speaker 2: interview and it wasn't until I was actually sat opposite
Speaker 2: him that it kind of clicked. You know, he's an
Speaker 2: iconic looking guy. He's unmistakeably Billy Corgan, and I think
Speaker 2: maybe I just wasn't ready for that. And when I
Speaker 2: was sat down, I was like, oh, yeah, you are
Speaker 2: Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 2: We spoke for about an hour in a hotel in
Speaker 2: West London, in Chelsea, and essentially the reason Billy was
Speaker 2: in town and speaking to me was because he's just
Speaker 2: released his second solo album under his own name. If
Speaker 2: you don't include all the Smashing pumpkins stuff, but Oogi
Speaker 2: Lala is his new album under the name William Patrick Corgan.
Speaker 2: Please enjoy this episode. Thank you for taking the time
Speaker 2: to download it and listen. If you do enjoy it, subscribe, comment,
Speaker 2: do all of those things, and do check back on
Speaker 2: previous episodes. Greg's been holding the fort for the past
Speaker 2: few episodes and doing a great job. I've had some
Speaker 2: really good guests on recently, and we've got a few
Speaker 2: really good ones coming up as well, so please do back.
Speaker 2: That'd be enough one of these in two weeks, but
Speaker 2: for now, please enjoy my conversation with the Billy Coran,
Speaker 2: actual Billy Corgan. Do you listen to podcasts?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: I'm a person who was a self learner, so I
Speaker 3: really appreciate like deep dives. Like there's this guy. He
Speaker 3: has a podcast and a website called the Disney History
Speaker 3: Institute or do it the Disneyland History Institute or Disney
Speaker 3: and he does these super deep dives into Disney's world.
Speaker 3: He created his creative process, the theme parks he didn't build,
Speaker 3: and he's incredibly researched. He has all the contexts in
Speaker 3: the Disney world, access to amazing photo archives, and I
Speaker 3: actually I was so impressed by what he is doing.
Speaker 3: I reached out to him and he said, oh, you
Speaker 3: just made my day. And you know, he said, I
Speaker 3: was listening recently. It's so cool that you found me.
Speaker 3: And he does really great He puts out like a
Speaker 3: blog and then his podcast is sort of he reads
Speaker 3: his blog post, but it's super long in details to
Speaker 3: be like forty five minutes with some music and stuff.
Speaker 3: So it's a little bit of production. But man, you
Speaker 3: learned so much about something you thought you you thought
Speaker 3: you knew about. It's such a weird thing. And this
Speaker 3: is what I love about it. It's like you think
Speaker 3: you know something and then somebody who's willing to take
Speaker 3: the time and they kind of take you there, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's perfect. What I love about podcasts is
Speaker 3: something like you know, you brushing your teeth. It's like
Speaker 3: you could still listen and learn something. I mean, compared
Speaker 3: to music. I mean, I listened to people's podcasts probably
Speaker 3: ten times more than I listen to music. It just
Speaker 3: sort of goes better with life. I can watch my
Speaker 3: kid and I don't know, just I love it.
Speaker 2: So you did you find yesterday?
Speaker 3: I've been in London for a few days. I came
Speaker 3: from Paris and I was in Berlin, and so it's
Speaker 3: I think there's a day eight and then I go
Speaker 3: home to Chicago.
Speaker 2: Cool. What did you watch on the plane on your
Speaker 2: first long haul? I watched.
Speaker 3: A so so movie called It's Frank Sinatra. And who
Speaker 3: was in singing in the Rain? His name escapes me,
Speaker 3: Gene Kelly. Yeah, him and Sinatra in a kind of
Speaker 3: a navy movie, like in the Navy or Anchors Away or.
Speaker 2: Is it the musical?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Something Town, Something something Right, And I think I know
Speaker 2: the one you made. I noticed that planes have started
Speaker 2: to do that more like put old classics on.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Do you when you when you fly? Do you do
Speaker 2: you get into the films?
Speaker 3: I'm not a fan of most new movies. I just can't,
Speaker 3: you know even you know, sometimes the watch in some
Speaker 3: movie and it's like then you got to get the
Speaker 3: we're ruining the Earth message, and it's just like, I
Speaker 3: just want to watch a movie. Man. I don't need
Speaker 3: to be politicized too. It's like the politicization of entertainment.
Speaker 3: At some point it gets I mean it's in you know,
Speaker 3: you're watching a kid's cartoon and you're being lectured about
Speaker 3: the rainforest. It's just like, I got it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm doing the best here. I'm separating my garbage. What
Speaker 3: else you want me to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. And you don't get that with Frank Sinatcha.
Speaker 3: No, you're guaranteed. Yeah, I'm saying you're guaranteed. If you
Speaker 3: watch a movie pre nineteen sixty five, you're pretty much
Speaker 3: guaranteed just to have a laugh. You know, sometimes that's
Speaker 3: not a bad thing. Escapist entertainment is sometimes probably the
Speaker 3: best medicine.
Speaker 2: So is that what you would watch that home? As well?
Speaker 3: I only watch old movies, old films. I probably ninety
Speaker 3: seven percent of the time watch movies before nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of the studio system, even though
Speaker 3: it didn't treat the individual artists too well. I'm a
Speaker 3: big fan of how they just cranked out like quality
Speaker 3: movie after quality movie. And then I do deep dives
Speaker 3: on people I like, like like, I love Barbara Stanwick,
Speaker 3: who was a quintessential American actress, like a beautiful but
Speaker 3: kind of a strange face, kind of a tough I
Speaker 3: think she was from like Pittsburgh, and you know, she's
Speaker 3: the classic. You know, she made good in it in
Speaker 3: Hollywood and was this massive actress, and you know she
Speaker 3: does all these kind of she does everything from the
Speaker 3: rom com to like the serious you know, drama where
Speaker 3: she's the other woman and you know it's just and
Speaker 3: she's always good. She's she's good in every movie. Okay,
Speaker 3: so one movie you'll be a six out of ten,
Speaker 3: and the next will be a seven out of ten,
Speaker 3: and the next will be an eight out of ten.
Speaker 3: But she's always she's always great. And that's why they
Speaker 3: used to have stars like that, because they just crank
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 2: For anyone who's not familiar with her or what would
Speaker 2: be your entry point suggestion.
Speaker 3: Gosh, see, she's one of those weird ones where there's
Speaker 3: there's not that one movie that you that was like
Speaker 3: the big movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, what's her name again.
Speaker 3: Barbara Stanwick. I'm terrible with this stuff. There's one movie
Speaker 3: where it's like her husband has an affair or something.
Speaker 3: It's like but it's like it's like when it kind
Speaker 3: of you're kind of getting into like the film noir,
Speaker 3: like the forties. It's sort of ahead of its time.
Speaker 3: It's sort of really gritty and maybe she murders her husband.
Speaker 3: It's like one of those.
Speaker 2: But I know what you mean, know about those old films,
Speaker 2: because I like, I like when you can tell this
Speaker 2: is this is a really kind of old fashioned boring
Speaker 2: thing to say, But I like when you can see
Speaker 2: the sets of a film, when you can see that
Speaker 2: they've made.
Speaker 3: A oh like made the Street, made the Street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just something about that that and like old
Speaker 2: Disney films, like.
Speaker 3: Or like even like Frankenstein, where they made like the
Speaker 3: Bavarian Village. Yeah, and it's like the idealized, scary Bavarian
Speaker 3: village and then you see it in another movie they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we'll just use the Bavarian village again, like I've or
Speaker 3: they dress up the Bavarian Village for robin Hood or something.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like, isn't that the You can't blame them, right,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: No, like we've made this thing now value for money
Speaker 2: out of this thing. I read recently an I think
Speaker 2: you recently did with Rolling Stone on that side, so
Speaker 2: you know it's true. There was just one thing that
Speaker 2: you said in it that, like talking about films, was
Speaker 2: just a reference to Stanley Kubrick. You were likening kind
Speaker 2: of the way Kubrick would work to the way that
Speaker 2: you work.
Speaker 3: I presaged it by saying, please, don't think I'm comparing
Speaker 3: myself Curbick, and of course he took that part out. Now,
Speaker 3: what I said is Kubrick's methodology is the only artist
Speaker 3: I've ever read that reminds me of mine. Is that
Speaker 3: I do these really deep, immersive dives into things I'm
Speaker 3: fascinated by. I yank out whatever it is I'm interested
Speaker 3: in subconsciously, and somehow it shows up in my work.
Speaker 3: And then I burnt. I literally burned the road to
Speaker 3: where it's like I'm just so done with the subject
Speaker 3: that I just move on to something else. And apparently
Speaker 3: that's sort of the way he worked.
Speaker 2: So I recently saw two thousand and one for the
Speaker 2: first time. I've never seen fantastic and I saw it
Speaker 2: in the in cinema here at the BFI on the
Speaker 2: South Bank, and I mean, it completely fried my mind.
Speaker 3: Well, he's that type of artist, you know. It's funny.
Speaker 3: We used to work with a guy his dad's His
Speaker 3: dad was a Hollywood special effects guy, and his dad's
Speaker 3: claim to fame was he was the guy that designed
Speaker 3: the sequence at the end with the spaceship and the lights,
Speaker 3: So it's pretty kind of a cool. Yeah, we got
Speaker 3: to hear some of the kind of the background stories
Speaker 3: about the making of that stuff, the special effects stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Kubrick's like, to me, there's a special class
Speaker 3: of twenty century artists like Philip K. Dick is another one.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever read Philip K.
Speaker 2: Dick, no, as there's recently been a series here on
Speaker 2: TV of his stories Electric Dreams.
Speaker 3: Well, he wrote what became blade Runner, right do Android's
Speaker 3: dream of Electric Sheep that was that's what became Blade Runner,
Speaker 3: Minority Report. There was Scanner Darkly with Keanu Reeves, which
Speaker 3: I never saw, but it seemed like it was kind
Speaker 3: of a bit of a funky movie. But many of
Speaker 3: his works have been made in But Philip K. Dick
Speaker 3: is that sort of artist where it's like their work
Speaker 3: is beyond the bounds of the medium they're working in, right,
Speaker 3: And it's so deep and it's so layered that it
Speaker 3: takes generations to figure out what even the bigger meta
Speaker 3: message is because cultures tend to reflexively look at a
Speaker 3: piece of art and say, what does this have to
Speaker 3: do with us right now. But a true artist works
Speaker 3: on multi dimensional levels. Hence the Mona Lisa. You can
Speaker 3: still get something out of it four hundred years later
Speaker 3: when you should really shouldn't. So why do you It's
Speaker 3: just a painting of somebody. Yeah, and there's plenty of
Speaker 3: paintings of somebody, you know, And that's oftentimes what gets
Speaker 3: difficult as a as a public person who's an artist
Speaker 3: in the media, because the media is asking you to
Speaker 3: find yourself on their terms in this moment. But if
Speaker 3: you've made real work, you know that the work goes
Speaker 3: outside the bounds of that. So you're asked to be
Speaker 3: sort of reductionist about your own work to sell your work,
Speaker 3: which inhibits what you've actually tried to create, which is
Speaker 3: something sort of beyond the bounds of the time you're in.
Speaker 3: It's a weird I don't want say compromise. It's a
Speaker 3: weird sort of negotiation that goes on forever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like there's those books like, you know, read the
Speaker 3: bad reviews of the most famous classical pieces. Have you
Speaker 3: ever seen that? Yeah, it's like somebody's ripping apart, you know, Stravinsky,
Speaker 3: you know, you know it's like it gives somebody like
Speaker 3: me a little solas, like, well, in a hundred years,
Speaker 3: they're going to understand my fourth album, you know, Thank god,
Speaker 3: you know, I can go to my grave happy because
Speaker 3: some days somebody's going to figure this out.
Speaker 2: Do you genuinely read your right?
Speaker 3: I stopped that about seven ten years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No good can come from that, right, And.
Speaker 3: What's weird is and it's hard for people to understand,
Speaker 3: like I've had a good review come out in one
Speaker 3: of the big magazines here, and of course somebody tries
Speaker 3: to put it under my nose and say, hey, have
Speaker 3: you read this because they're they're excited for me, like
Speaker 3: you got a good review, and it's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: I can't. And they don't understand why because invariably, you know,
Speaker 3: it's critique, right, And I'm not saying I can't be criticized,
Speaker 3: but I don't want to put ideas in my head
Speaker 3: that are going to inhibit my ability to produce more work.
Speaker 3: So something that I consider just fine based on my
Speaker 3: own set of internal data, like oh, you know, that's
Speaker 3: a pretty good song. It could have been better if
Speaker 3: I've done this, this and this, But you know, I
Speaker 3: like the song fine, And then I read a review
Speaker 3: and it's like, and the worst song on the album
Speaker 3: is And suddenly I'm like, now I'm second guessing something
Speaker 3: I wasn't second guessing. But why am I second guessing
Speaker 3: based on one person's opinion? It's a weird again, it's
Speaker 3: a weird negotiation.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, I mean we should say that. The reason
Speaker 2: you're you're over here at the moment is new album's
Speaker 2: coming out, allegedly allegedly coming out? Can you tell me
Speaker 2: what it's called? How to pronounce it? Og lala og lala? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm god.
Speaker 3: It's a made up word, is it? Yeah? I just
Speaker 3: made it up.
Speaker 2: It's just something you came up with.
Speaker 3: Well, it's based on, you know, some etymology and is
Speaker 3: that the word? I always get confused. It's like, is
Speaker 3: etymology the study of bugs or the study of words?
Speaker 3: It's one of those. Yeah, it's a little bit of
Speaker 3: automotopy and a little bit of etymology.
Speaker 2: And yeah, under your own name, it's yours. It's your
Speaker 2: second SIDO record, first in twelve years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first one didn't go so well.
Speaker 2: No, it's a bit of an.
Speaker 3: Unpleasant experience, was it not making it. I love making
Speaker 3: the record. I enjoyed it, and I really actually liked
Speaker 3: the record, but I it was it got such a
Speaker 3: strange reception. It was sort of like, well, it's not
Speaker 3: the pumpkins, and why are you doing electronic music? And
Speaker 3: I was like, don't you remember I had like hit
Speaker 3: songs with I actually had two hit songs in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine and and and the song I And they
Speaker 3: actually can even argue Aviador, which did quite well in Europe.
Speaker 3: So had three singles in the nineties which were electronics.
Speaker 3: So here I am not too in the distant future,
Speaker 3: you know, making more electronic music. Was like, why have
Speaker 3: you given up the guitar? And I was like, no,
Speaker 3: there's guitar on the album. It's like, it was this weird.
Speaker 2: Why do you think people were like that? Was it
Speaker 2: just was it because they loved the Pumpkins so much
Speaker 2: and it was fun. It's two thousand and five, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: It's us right, No, I since we have time to
Speaker 3: take the deeper dive into culture. I think that one
Speaker 3: of the strangest I'm fifty years old, so I've lived
Speaker 3: long enough to sort of see the death of print
Speaker 3: media move into the Bloggi sphere, move into the YouTube
Speaker 3: podcast the dominance of the podcast genre a blitter all comers.
Speaker 3: There's collateral damage, which, of course in any cultural shift
Speaker 3: there's going to be. You know, so this is not
Speaker 3: this is not me crying foul. But one of the
Speaker 3: strangest effects of digital culture was the winnowing down of
Speaker 3: let's call it like what you stand for in essence,
Speaker 3: there's so much data that people don't have enough bandwidth
Speaker 3: go beyond Oh, you're the pumpkin guy and you make
Speaker 3: noisy rock, and no amount of contrary information will change
Speaker 3: that label. It's a weird or you know, my band
Speaker 3: is listed on iTunes under alternative. Who made that decision?
Speaker 3: You know, so forever you're in this box, in some
Speaker 3: digital box, but in a record store, you might have
Speaker 3: been mixed in next to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 3: who are now under rock or classic. You know. So
Speaker 3: it's this weird ghettos and and so I think I
Speaker 3: was sort of hit sideways by this narrowing down of
Speaker 3: like who you are in the culture. And the longer
Speaker 3: you get away from let's call it the moment, the
Speaker 3: narrower the definition becomes. It becomes simplified. And so even though, like,
Speaker 3: let's say, the last electronic hit I had was nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight, and I'm making an album seven years later
Speaker 3: with similar themes and influences, seven years in digital time
Speaker 3: is seven hundred. So what was remembered about me seven
Speaker 3: years later wasn't that I had hits with acoustic guitars
Speaker 3: and strings, and it was You're the Pumpkin Guy, and
Speaker 3: the Pumpkin Guy's angry and sings about rats and cages.
Speaker 3: So this isn't that. And I'm standing there thinking I'm
Speaker 3: on the other timeline, which is the one that actually
Speaker 3: circles around the sun timeline. There are artists that three
Speaker 3: years ago were on the cover of magazines and they're
Speaker 3: gone already. That would have been unheard of in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they would at least had three four more years. People
Speaker 3: rise and fall within twelve eighteen month cycles. They rise
Speaker 3: like a phoenix in crash. There's this acceleration of the cycles,
Speaker 3: is my long winded point here.
Speaker 2: So with that in mind, in terms of the new record,
Speaker 2: which is it's not an electronic record. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: thank god, it's a very stripped back.
Speaker 3: It's a midnight affair.
Speaker 2: It's a midnight affair and it's mostly you and acoustic
Speaker 2: guitar and piano. Yeah, no drums, no drums. How do
Speaker 2: you think in terms of like this idea, if you're
Speaker 2: the pumpkin guy, you're the angry pumpkin rock guy. What
Speaker 2: do you think is going to be the response to
Speaker 2: this record?
Speaker 3: Well, empirically and based on what I just said, you
Speaker 3: would think you're going the wrong way right. The strange,
Speaker 3: strange thing happened about three years ago. I live down
Speaker 3: the road in Chicago from an outdoor venue. It goes
Speaker 3: back to the eighteen hundreds. It's probably something that's all
Speaker 3: over year, but for America it's a little bit rare.
Speaker 3: It's a park where people sit out on the lawn
Speaker 3: and listen to a show. It's meant to be in
Speaker 3: international acts from all the world coming to play. It's
Speaker 3: a storied place. So three years ago, the guy from
Speaker 3: the venue, they must have had an open date or something,
Speaker 3: because it was the last minute thing. The guy called
Speaker 3: and said, would you be willing to come in and
Speaker 3: play a solo gig? And he made a pretty generous
Speaker 3: offer to where you're like, well, it's worth getting up
Speaker 3: off my butt to go do this. So Jeff and
Speaker 3: I from the Pumpkins put together an acoustic show and
Speaker 3: we did some electronics stuff too, and we played it
Speaker 3: loud a little bit, but mostly it was mostly acoustic
Speaker 3: the whole night, and the reception was so positive. Again,
Speaker 3: an organic response to something that we didn't wouldn't have
Speaker 3: expected an organic response from that. Then the next year
Speaker 3: we toured as Smashing Pumpkins. We call it in planes,
Speaker 3: but it was basically Pumpkins acoustic with some electronic and
Speaker 3: it was the other side of the Pumpkins catalog type
Speaker 3: of thing. The response was two or sold out immediately.
Speaker 3: Response was great. So then we did it again the
Speaker 3: next year, bigger places, best reviews I've probably ever gotten ever.
Speaker 3: So somehow we accidentally hit a vein that interests the
Speaker 3: fan base that like that like somehow this approach is
Speaker 3: organically and connected to their understanding of that idea, but
Speaker 3: not in an intellectual way. Don't ask me why.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's like, maybe it's just as basic as the
Speaker 2: fact of a Pumpkins fan from the nineties likes guitars
Speaker 2: and rock guitars and now they're old.
Speaker 3: They're old, and as they're as they're using their walker, you.
Speaker 2: Know, they want something a bit quiet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that little slower pace. We used to walker with him.
Speaker 2: But maybe it's just that they're like the symps and
Speaker 2: electronics is maybe like a bit of a step too far,
Speaker 2: but an acoustic guitar and piano is kind of within
Speaker 2: that kind of vein.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good that's a good assertion, and
Speaker 3: I would they seem to be attracted to the melody
Speaker 3: and the lyric. So in essence, if you were trying
Speaker 3: to take a guess, the lyric, the message still means something,
Speaker 3: and maybe the guitar is that the loud guitar is
Speaker 3: less important as the message. It's something about the messages
Speaker 3: working so shocked me. Honestly, I didn't expect to sort
Speaker 3: of end up here because I kept getting in my
Speaker 3: ear from industry professionals. You know, if only you could
Speaker 3: like Bob Dylan in his book, you know, he's supposed
Speaker 3: to write three, but he only wrote one so far.
Speaker 3: He talks about how people for years would say, can't
Speaker 3: you just go back to the old Bob Dylan, And
Speaker 3: he actually says in the book, I actually wanted to
Speaker 3: give them the old Bob Dylan and I couldn't. So
Speaker 3: I think that's quite astute.
Speaker 2: So you started making this record with that in mind,
Speaker 2: with it to be that.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's it's it's like, well around the podcast,
Speaker 3: I can explain it. So it's like two roads that
Speaker 3: are running alongside each other but don't meet, but ultimately
Speaker 3: meet by accident. That's kind of what happened to me.
Speaker 3: So over here, I'm telling you this sort of organic
Speaker 3: thing is happening with acoustic music for me, but only
Speaker 3: on the live side. I have no intention of doing
Speaker 3: an acoustic album.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: I just didn't. You just think it wasn't in my mind.
Speaker 3: On the other side, I'm trying to figure out a
Speaker 3: way to get the Smashing Pumpkins back into a contemporary frame.
Speaker 3: The easiest way to do this is to have a
Speaker 3: hit record, right, So you're trying to figure out some
Speaker 3: approach that you feel good about that you can aggressively
Speaker 3: approach the market. You know. I don't know, it's not
Speaker 3: worth explaining other than you just want to be aggressive.
Speaker 3: And so I made one record that we put out
Speaker 3: in twenty fourteen called Monuments to an Elegy. It sold dreadfully.
Speaker 3: It seemed to disappear in two seconds, as records can
Speaker 3: these days, which was disappointing. I went back in the
Speaker 3: studio to make a follow up record. I got I
Speaker 3: don't know, about a month or two months into the record,
Speaker 3: and I lost my mind and I quit. I can't
Speaker 3: do this. So then I found myself sitting at home going, okay,
Speaker 3: now what I'm going to do? And in my bummed
Speaker 3: out phase, I picked up an acoustic guitar and I
Speaker 3: started writing acoustic songs. So I suddenly these two roads converged,
Speaker 3: which was funny because I had plenty of empirical information
Speaker 3: to say that the audience is actually interested in me
Speaker 3: doing acoustic music. But my pride was in the way
Speaker 3: because I was over here trying to, like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: rebuild the wall to steal from Roger. Yeah, one more time.
Speaker 2: And that's the first. So that's the first time you've
Speaker 2: sat down and written acoustically.
Speaker 3: Not true. Actually I wrote an acoustic record before the
Speaker 3: electronic solo record.
Speaker 2: Okay, and what happened to that one?
Speaker 3: It's sitting on a shelf. It's quite nice. Actually, it's
Speaker 3: a very stark record about Chicago. It's more folk. I
Speaker 3: guess than this record, the Oji Lala. But I was
Speaker 3: going to put that record out on Warner Brothers in
Speaker 3: two thousand and five, and I sniffed around the record
Speaker 3: company a bit and I got a funny vibe that
Speaker 3: they were just going to bury the record if it
Speaker 3: was going to be acoustic. So I shelved the record
Speaker 3: even though it was finished, and then I made what
Speaker 3: became the first solo record, the Tronic Future Embrace Record,
Speaker 3: which caused all the other problems.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's niceig.
Speaker 3: It's my two thousand zig zagging that sort of led
Speaker 3: me to this this point of like it's like you've
Speaker 3: gone back to the beginning, and it's like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to do the simplest thing possible because maybe somehow the
Speaker 3: directness of that approach will get through to somebody, and
Speaker 3: somehow it seems to be cutting through the fog better
Speaker 3: than a loud electric guitar, which is weird because I
Speaker 3: got cut through the fog the first time with an
Speaker 3: electric guitar, and I'm cutting through the fog with an
Speaker 3: acoustic It's strange, but as long as it's effective, I'm happy.
Speaker 3: Because it's a lot of work to kind of end
Speaker 3: up coming up short, you know, and.
Speaker 2: You wecoded this record with Rick Rubin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was fantastic.
Speaker 2: And is that the first time you've what with him?
Speaker 3: No. I work with Rick in nineteen ninety eight on
Speaker 3: a song call let Me Give the World to You,
Speaker 3: which was left off the Ador album, which later came
Speaker 3: out in one of those kind of reissue deals.
Speaker 2: Sure, and it was his idea to keep the songs
Speaker 2: pretty much as you have them, right, And if you
Speaker 2: had done this record with someone else, would do you
Speaker 2: feel like you would have naturally just build it up
Speaker 2: and made it electric even as a podo.
Speaker 3: Almost hard to say, because I wasn't sure I was
Speaker 3: going to make a record at all, and I'd called
Speaker 3: Rick for advice to recommend a producer, and then that's
Speaker 3: when he said he was interested in doing it, which
Speaker 3: was surprising, and that's how I ended up working with him.
Speaker 3: And then once he endorsed what I was doing was
Speaker 3: obviously okay. Now it's going to head towards a conclusion.
Speaker 3: So it's almost unfathomable because he's so he's so part
Speaker 3: of the process. He encouraged me to keep doing. He
Speaker 3: encouraged me to keep writing and he encouraged me to
Speaker 3: commit to this path. I'm not sure what had the
Speaker 3: courage to do without him.
Speaker 2: This is his shangrilaus Gdi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like, you know, you're on a
Speaker 3: bluff and Malibu overlooking the ocean. You know, you're literally
Speaker 3: one block from the ocean. You're on this you know,
Speaker 3: it's where Bob Dylan recorded, the band recorded, Neil Young
Speaker 3: wrote songs there. I mean, it's crazy history.
Speaker 2: Is that like a like an old bus? Is there
Speaker 2: a bus though?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the legend is that it's Bob dylan touring
Speaker 3: bus from nineteen sixty five or sixty six.
Speaker 2: And was that just because I know that Rick Rubbin
Speaker 2: bought this place kind of fairly recently, right like last
Speaker 2: ten years or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he fixed it all up.
Speaker 2: Was that bus just there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? The bus was part of the property is the seventies?
Speaker 3: I think? Okay, I think it was put there in
Speaker 3: the seventies. But what's Rick what Rick has done? Or
Speaker 3: maybe it was this way when he bought, but it's
Speaker 3: been coverted to into a studio. The bus has yes,
Speaker 3: So when I was there working, Neil was in the bus.
Speaker 3: Neil sorry, Neil Young, Neil, my buddy, Neil. Neil Young
Speaker 3: was in the bus working.
Speaker 2: But that can't be like a very big space.
Speaker 3: That's very small. But they what I from what I know,
Speaker 3: Neil likes working in the.
Speaker 2: Bus, Okay, right right, he likes.
Speaker 3: Well, as everyone knows, Neil loves old cars and he
Speaker 3: restores old cars. Yeah, I'm sure he loves the ambience
Speaker 3: of the bus, you know. I mean it's nice inside.
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like a bus. It's been converted into
Speaker 3: like rooms and stuff. It's not what you would think,
Speaker 3: but it's small.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And do you stay in the bus if you're
Speaker 2: working in the bus? Is it got like a like
Speaker 2: do you stay at shangrilel when you're working at Shango?
Speaker 2: You can?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are places And when I was working with Rick,
Speaker 3: I stayed on the property. But I don't think Neil
Speaker 3: was sleeping in the west that field.
Speaker 2: Here, Neil Young sleeping in a bus. I don't.
Speaker 3: Actually, I think Neil's earned the right to sleep where
Speaker 3: everyone in his own bed. But it's pretty cool. You know,
Speaker 3: you're you know, you pull up and you know you
Speaker 3: got your smoothie, you know, from down the road and
Speaker 3: you walk up and there's Neil sitting there having a latte.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. I mean when you think of the history
Speaker 3: and uh, you know the you know, the you know,
Speaker 3: like one of my favorite Neil Young albums is Zuma,
Speaker 3: you know, which he wrote in that same world that whatever,
Speaker 3: that surf stoner world, which you know, it's very much
Speaker 3: that part of the the country. And so that's awesome that.
Speaker 3: I mean, i'd be lying to say that the history
Speaker 3: of a place doesn't somehow get into you absolutely, but
Speaker 3: you know, Metallic also recorded there with Rick, and so
Speaker 3: that's cool too. You know, you know, you're standing in
Speaker 3: the spot and Rick's telling you about when he got
Speaker 3: Headfield to get out as old you know, his original
Speaker 3: flying v that he used on early Metallic, and just
Speaker 3: to watch Headfield play rhythm guitar. You know, Headfields was
Speaker 3: one of the greatest rhythm guitar players ever. I mean,
Speaker 3: his right hand for a guitar player. It's just like
Speaker 3: like some machine or something. Just the idea that you're
Speaker 3: sort of standing in the spot of some of your heroes.
Speaker 3: This is cool.
Speaker 2: You know. So what would a general how does a
Speaker 2: die at shangrilel pan out? What's the schedule that.
Speaker 3: Rick likes to work about like one to seven. Okay,
Speaker 3: he works a shorter day than you would expect, but
Speaker 3: it's actually actually kind of smart because he gets you
Speaker 3: to really focus those six hours, where if a band's
Speaker 3: working like ten to twelve hours, it's a little bit
Speaker 3: more like you work for a couple hours and then
Speaker 3: he you know, the pace is a little bit more
Speaker 3: laconic or something. He gets you to kind of commit like, Okay,
Speaker 3: for these six hours, we're really gonna work, And I
Speaker 3: think that's actually probably better. Yeah, and when you think
Speaker 3: of all the sixty stuff, I mean, most of those
Speaker 3: sessions were done in four hours. Like the Beatles would
Speaker 3: come in and bang out a song in four hours,
Speaker 3: and we're still listening to them. So maybe there's something
Speaker 3: to it. Yeah, there's something about the spark. You know,
Speaker 3: modern recording has slowed everything down so much into a
Speaker 3: micromanaging And then the worst thing is you work and
Speaker 3: then you sit there and watch some guy on a computer,
Speaker 3: Like you know, it's like, what's what's more rock and
Speaker 3: roll than watching a guy edit on a computer for
Speaker 3: an hour? Let me talk about a vibe killer.
Speaker 2: What interests me is how is those stories of how
Speaker 2: like pop music, like big kind of mainstream pop music
Speaker 2: is now put together kind of by you know, like
Speaker 2: one hundred different people like adding a like one guy,
Speaker 2: add one line, maybe just one line to the whole song,
Speaker 2: and you've.
Speaker 3: Got like it's a factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a factory thing.
Speaker 3: It came out of kpop. For as far as I know,
Speaker 3: really I'm no expert. My my understanding is that's how
Speaker 3: they work in Korea, and that's sort of what's set
Speaker 3: up like the modern version of what we hear on
Speaker 3: the radio. They have like the guitar player from The Pumpkins.
Speaker 3: Jeff Schroeder is half Korean. His mother's Korean, so and
Speaker 3: his partner is full Korean. So she was working over there.
Speaker 3: So he went over to live in Korea for a
Speaker 3: while with her. And so he spent like six months
Speaker 3: living in Korea, and he got to know a lot
Speaker 3: of the K pop people just by hanging out with musicians.
Speaker 3: And he said, there are guys that all they do,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure there's girls do there are guys that
Speaker 3: all they do is they write the choruses. So they
Speaker 3: identify you just write choruses, like you're really a good chorus.
Speaker 3: And there are people who only write verses, So imagine
Speaker 3: writing verses just verse like you know, I love you,
Speaker 3: I love you so much, but but that's all they do.
Speaker 3: And then they hook that up. Then they have like
Speaker 3: a menu of like we can use this chorus, we
Speaker 3: can use this chorus, we can use this chorus, we
Speaker 3: can use this chorus, and then they pick the chorus
Speaker 3: that goes best, and they frankenstein the song together. I
Speaker 3: mean to me as somebody who writes like very organically,
Speaker 3: like I'm cooking a very particular meal that is so alien.
Speaker 2: And that person who writes just the verses, they might
Speaker 2: not be any good at course, and then they might
Speaker 2: be completely foreigncident.
Speaker 3: It's like it reminds me of like a mony python sketch.
Speaker 3: It's like you're the greatest like one foot hopper, please
Speaker 3: welcome Mark, the greatest one foot hopper in the history
Speaker 3: of man. You'd be like, okay, like you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's like it's such a weird.
Speaker 4: Thing, but you gotta figure if you go through the
Speaker 4: gene pool, you're gonna find some kid, you know, she's
Speaker 4: really great at like writing, like the nurse the nursery
Speaker 4: rhyme chorus.
Speaker 3: So when you and by the way they and they work.
Speaker 2: Competitively, yeah, they don't.
Speaker 3: I've seen that in Hollywood too. I've been around a
Speaker 3: few major motion pictures where you go and like one
Speaker 3: time I went to meet a director for something and
Speaker 3: he took me like and he had three different editors
Speaker 3: working on the same scene. And I was like, how
Speaker 3: do you, how do you? How does that work? He said, well,
Speaker 3: they all have three They each have their own chance
Speaker 3: to basically win me over, to impress me. And then
Speaker 3: and then and what the director told me is then
Speaker 3: when the then when he picks like let's say he
Speaker 3: picks option B, then he gives all three option B,
Speaker 3: and they and then they all sick on Option B
Speaker 3: to try to improve try option it and try to
Speaker 3: beat it. So it's like it's like, okay, one of you,
Speaker 3: who's got the right vision that wins. Now all three
Speaker 3: of you have a shot to start from there and
Speaker 3: make it better. It's like such a weird.
Speaker 2: And then at some point he must just decide this
Speaker 2: is as good as I want it to be. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: you are the winner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why they say. With a lot of motion
Speaker 3: pictures these days, the directors are more like they're more
Speaker 3: like a military drill commander or something, because you have
Speaker 3: all these sub units working on you know, have.
Speaker 2: You ever been asked to write for other people in
Speaker 2: a in a way, in a well, in any way,
Speaker 2: but in a way like that, like a collaborative way.
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah, I mean I have. I've, you know, I've
Speaker 3: I've had some success with different artists. But I don't
Speaker 3: write as much as I would have thought through the years.
Speaker 3: I don't know why. I think it's just because I
Speaker 3: don't live in La Sure, I think I lived in
Speaker 3: La I probably would have collaborated on a lot of
Speaker 3: people's records, including pop singers and stuff like that, because
Speaker 3: whenever I meet those people, they're very, very interested because
Speaker 3: they know I know how to do that. You know,
Speaker 3: writing hooks is like a weird skill. But I think
Speaker 3: living in Chicago, it's like I live on another planet.
Speaker 2: You've always been in Chicago, right.
Speaker 3: I've tried to get out many times. I at one
Speaker 3: point I tried to live in Portugal. I've tried. I
Speaker 3: thought about living in Berlin. I've lived in New York,
Speaker 3: and I have lived in Los Angeles, and I've always
Speaker 3: gone back to Chicago, much to my chagrin.
Speaker 2: Really I love Chicago.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a really it's a really cool place
Speaker 3: in a particular way. And it's obviously where I'm from,
Speaker 3: where I was born. I live on the same lake.
Speaker 3: I live, you know, on the same lake that I
Speaker 3: would born on, just twenty five miles up the lake
Speaker 3: kind of thing. So there's all the symbolism is rife there.
Speaker 3: It is, you know, the hometown hero lives in isolation
Speaker 3: or exile, that's probably the better word up the coast,
Speaker 3: but it means less and less and less to me
Speaker 3: by year. The zim Yeah, I just I just don't
Speaker 3: resonate with the town anymore. It's weird. And my friends
Speaker 3: keep saying why don't you move? Like they know I'm
Speaker 3: not happy there, and they you know, hopefully you're younger
Speaker 3: than me, you look great. But my point is is
Speaker 3: your friends, you know, as they should, they say, why
Speaker 3: don't you move somewhere? Will you'd be happier? You know,
Speaker 3: like you don't seem happy here, you know, like, why
Speaker 3: don't you move to I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, what do you say to that? When they said that.
Speaker 3: My only defense at this point is I work best
Speaker 3: in Chicago, right, and because work is so central to
Speaker 3: my life, maybe it's the place I concentrate best. Maybe
Speaker 3: the neutrality of Chicago has something to do with why
Speaker 3: I am able to concentrate there. Better don't ask me.
Speaker 2: With that in mind. The idea of to be able
Speaker 2: to move away, would you need to kind of stop working?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that, ever, being the case where you
Speaker 2: like to move away? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, In fact, I would say I have to. I
Speaker 3: don't mean like you give up your house and you
Speaker 3: never come back, But I really think I need to
Speaker 3: go somewhere. I really do. I think you know. I
Speaker 3: hate I hate this term, so I'm I'm prefacing this
Speaker 3: by saying it. I hate the term bucket list. It's
Speaker 3: very I don't know if you.
Speaker 2: Guys use it over that it's starting to creeping.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's an American thing. It irritates me to no end.
Speaker 3: But on my bucket list, being irritating is having the
Speaker 3: experience of leaving home for good in a very psychological way.
Speaker 3: It's not temporarily move somewhere else and come home, but
Speaker 3: like starting a new life completely well, leave to the
Speaker 3: extent that you actually put roots down somewhere else and
Speaker 3: have a different experience. I think I would die very
Speaker 3: unhappy if I never had really done that. I haven't
Speaker 3: been able to do that, and it's a very strange
Speaker 3: defeat in my mind that I've not been able to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: So you're fifty at the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apologies for forty nine. Next year, forty nine next
Speaker 3: Benjamin Benjamin Button.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you? I mean, I think you look good
Speaker 2: for it. I'll return that compliment.
Speaker 3: God bless you.
Speaker 2: How do you like being fifty?
Speaker 3: It didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
Speaker 2: It's just a number.
Speaker 3: No, it isn't a number. I won't lie.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Does it feel different? Does it fail? Does it feel
Speaker 2: like fifty? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't feel fifty in my mind, but I
Speaker 3: mean my body feels fifty for sure. And you know,
Speaker 3: despite what anybody says, you know, touring is very hard
Speaker 3: on the body. All those years of buses and backstages,
Speaker 3: it really does take a toll. So you have to
Speaker 3: be better about, you know, keeping your stuff together. For me,
Speaker 3: the biggest issue is is if you could go back
Speaker 3: in a time machine and say to me at twenty,
Speaker 3: where would you like to be when you're fifty, I
Speaker 3: would have said, well, I would like to be successful.
Speaker 3: I would like people have heard my music, and I
Speaker 3: would like to still be engaged. Because my father was
Speaker 3: a musician and somewhere in his forties or fifties he
Speaker 3: quit music. He was done with it. It was like
Speaker 3: he was too disappointed and things hadn't turned out. So
Speaker 3: I would hope that I was as interested in music
Speaker 3: at fifty as I was at twenty. So at least
Speaker 3: from my time machine analogy, I'm okay on all three fronts.
Speaker 3: So you know, still engaged, people are still listening and
Speaker 3: still here.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've got I say this all the time,
Speaker 3: and I really I literally have nothing to complain about.
Speaker 3: I can complain all day and I'm good at it,
Speaker 3: but I literally have nothing to complain out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think that's everyone though we can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, yeah, well, of course everyone can have a winch.
Speaker 3: But the point is is, when you look around the world,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people with a lot going on
Speaker 3: and a lot of years I did not appreciate the
Speaker 3: blessings and the gifts and even the love and the
Speaker 3: attention that I was given for my work. You know,
Speaker 3: I oftentimes spent more time quibbling about what wasn't there
Speaker 3: than what was there, and all those sort of unappreciative things.
Speaker 3: And I think I'm really happy to be in a
Speaker 3: place where I can look back and say, Wow, I've
Speaker 3: had a great life. It's been pretty pretty cool overall,
Speaker 3: been treated well, not as well as I would have liked,
Speaker 3: but hey, it's better than digging a ditch and not
Speaker 3: being appreciated for digging a ditch. Because I know a
Speaker 3: lot of people in my family that dug ditches and
Speaker 3: they don't get a medal at the end, or you know,
Speaker 3: they don't get to sit and talk to a podcaster.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the glamour, that's right, that glamor of this. I mean,
Speaker 2: if people could only see once. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you about on the album, is the opening Zowie?
Speaker 2: Would you say Zoe? Would you say Zowey? Why do
Speaker 2: you say bow Remember we used to have that debate
Speaker 2: in the seventies.
Speaker 3: It was it was is it Bowie or Bowie?
Speaker 2: I say Bowie, but he at some point he went
Speaker 2: with Bowie. I think he would change it as well,
Speaker 2: wouldn't he.
Speaker 3: My My understanding is it was a really Zoe Bowie
Speaker 3: with an English accent.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so the first song.
Speaker 3: I call it Zouie.
Speaker 2: Okay, Zoui, Yeah, I think Zowie Bowie. Zowie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Zowie Bowie.
Speaker 2: Zowie sounds better. Let's go with Zoowe. So the first
Speaker 2: song on the record, would you say it is called Zouie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's inspired by David Bowie. Yeah. Absolutely, and you
Speaker 2: because you work with him, right ah.
Speaker 3: At some point, well, we played a TV show with David.
Speaker 3: We I got to do his fiftieth birthday. We shared
Speaker 3: festival bills a bunch of times with him. Fiftieth birthday,
Speaker 3: Madison Square Garden. Okay, yeah, it was. It's actually kind
Speaker 3: of strangely become kind of an iconic thing. He had
Speaker 3: his at Madison Square Garden. He had his fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 3: So it was a sold out concert and on the
Speaker 3: bill it was all David songs, but on the bill
Speaker 3: was myself, lou Reed, Frank Black of the Pixies, Thurston Morris,
Speaker 3: Sonic Youth, Robert Smith of the Cure. I'm sure I'm
Speaker 3: forgetting somebody else, but it was a pretty interesting and
Speaker 3: everyone came out and did David songs. And then he
Speaker 3: would sing, and it was a really cool night. And
Speaker 3: it's one of those things like it's grown in importance
Speaker 3: over time. Y. I mean, I was super honored to
Speaker 3: be asked at the time, but even now looking back,
Speaker 3: and now, of course David's passed away, you know, you
Speaker 3: look back and say, wow, that was a pretty pretty
Speaker 3: cool thing to be involved in, because how many artists
Speaker 3: have that night where it sort of all comes together
Speaker 3: where you can look back and say, Okay, that was important,
Speaker 3: that was important, and that was one of those things
Speaker 3: where it was important.
Speaker 2: Which song did you do?
Speaker 3: I think we did Gene Jeanie and all the young
Speaker 3: Dudes nice And I wish I was giving me exclusive information,
Speaker 3: but I told this story yesterday. I asked David, why
Speaker 3: did you pick? Why did you pick all the young dudes?
Speaker 3: So he chose them face, Yeah, he told me what
Speaker 3: songs he wanted me to sing. I'm sure that involved
Speaker 3: lots of different things, so I don't want to jump
Speaker 3: to any conclusions, but I did ask him why he
Speaker 3: chose all the young dudes for me, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 3: because there's that line in the song about Billy's pulling
Speaker 3: stars off his face and I thought of you, I mean,
Speaker 3: talk about man, that's the moment. I mean, hell, die hello, Hello.
Speaker 3: It's like I'm good, We're good, I'm out right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a mic draft, right. I wish that's the end
Speaker 3: of the podcast right here. So yeah, So I I do,
Speaker 3: I do regret, and I don't say this with any
Speaker 3: sort of I'm not casting any spursions on his character.
Speaker 3: I do wish we'd were together on a go in
Speaker 3: the studio. Never had that opportunity, was never asked, and
Speaker 3: I could never understand why, because I kept throwing it
Speaker 3: out there through the back channels and he never took
Speaker 3: the bait.
Speaker 2: Well he was, you know, I guess he wasn't doing
Speaker 2: that much, was he.
Speaker 3: I guess he did work with Trent and they made
Speaker 3: that song. It was a great song, I'm Afraid of Americans.
Speaker 3: It was great track. You know, maybe maybe you know
Speaker 3: it's as simple as you know. Trent was an artist
Speaker 3: that was more in line with where he was trying
Speaker 3: to go. He was, you know, if you remember, he
Speaker 3: was very focused on technology, the Internet. You know, he
Speaker 3: did the one album that was sort of talking about
Speaker 3: the coming Internet culture. He was certainly he was certainly
Speaker 3: right about where he was. His thinking was, as usual
Speaker 3: kind of spot on, So yeah that I wished we'd
Speaker 3: had to have that opportunity to work together in that capacity.
Speaker 3: So I worked to get you know, in the live
Speaker 3: arena many times, but never behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: I think we're outside, but.
Speaker 3: They're out of Midnight has run out, thanks very much.
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