Dolly Interviews Billy & D'Arcy
July 1998
The Smashing Pumpkins are back on the charts with their new album ADORE.
Dolly chats to Billy and D'arcy about lif, love, dogs and Marilyn
Manson.......
*YOUR new album Adore is pretty different from Mellon Collie.
Billy: Hopefully, yes! Why should we record an album to fulfil anybody's expectations? What a bore. We consider our music to be art- it's the only way to have freedom to do as we please. The Pumpkins have never been a band that wrote nice little pop songs for the masses- well, I mean, not intentionally. That's why there are basically two reactions- love or hate.
*IT'S been said that you're pretty difficult to work with. Is this true?
B: (laughs) Yeah, no doubt about it. I'm a perfectionist, getting on everybody's nerves till I have things done my way. But hell, that's my job!
*YOU'VE been quoted as saying, "In this band you have to suffer in order to create big art".
D'arcy: Absolutely! To make good music you have to suffer. And if you play in a band like the Pumpkins you suffer double. (laughs)
B: This album is a stocktaking of the band- on one hand it reflects our insecurity, on the other hand it shows our momentary fondness of the romantic.
*DOES Adore stand for something threatening, dark and beautiful?
B: No, no! You have to change the pronunciation- it's actually ' A door'. It stands for our attempt to enter a different room or plane. However, Adore is much more beautiful than 'A door'. It somehow sounds more...mystical.
*HAVE your lives changed for the better over the last couple of years?
B: OF course. I'm feeling much better these days, compared to, let's say, three years ago. But I can't enjoy everything I have because there all these responsibilities and there's this constant pressure that doesn't let me calm down. And everytime you think everything's fine, something horrible happens- like that thing with Jimmy Chamberlin.