Translated and transcribed by Gerard de Jong
The Rock & Roll business got itself a new torturer: Billy Corgan, who plays the starring role in the most incredible success story the American guitar section has right now: Smashing Pumpkins. Nearly dead, but the triumph continues and negotiations about Lollapalooza '94 have already started.
Billy: "I'd rather say goodbye to this circus once and for all, but I have no choice, this is my destiny."
During their gigs on the Lowlands festival and Vredenburg, Utrecht, in August and September (1993), there wasn't anything noticeable of internal problems in the band; The Smashing Pumpkins gave strength, solid concerts, singer/guitarist Billy Corgan seemed to have fun, and the other three Pumpkins just did their 'thing', without comments. If this was a band that was on the edge of existence, they were using a really good camouflage.
A couple of months earlier, just before the second Pumpkins-CD Siamese Dream came out, Billy Corgan played his international promotion-songs and with a really good acted dislikelyness (he wants everybody to know) he told how the relations were with the other band members: miserable, irritated and explosive. He, Billy, had done all the work for the cd while the rest of the band was just sleeping in front of the tv. Because of that he even took the power over a little more and he decided what the future of the band would look like:
Billy: On stage and in spirit we're still a close band, but from a musical and recording view it's really getting out of hand." And: "we've been grown apart form each other. The way I look at it now, I don't need the others for the next record."
Where Billy still needs the others, is the world tour following the massive success of Siamese Dream. So he got his last bits of fatalism, tolerance, and self control and along with the courage of despair he went on a triumphal march. And he promised himself not to talk about the Problem Smashing Pumpkins anymore. Not even in Vredenburg, Utrecht, during the one hour he had nothing to do, when the fullgrown antihero (head buried in his shoulders, bent back, feet pointed inside) does want to tell how he's doing at the moment. Sighing and leaning.
Billy: I'll never get used to touring. It's so unnatural. And that has got more to do with me than with the relations in the band. I can hardly get the strength to put my emotions in the same songs night after night after night. To be honest, I feel nothing anymore. I noticed I closed a part of myself. Please understand me, I'm not faking on stage, I'm still me, but the passion is gone. And I don't want to force it, it'd be my undoing. It would kill me. And it's not worth it to let that happen at just a silly rock concert.
CIRCUSFREAK
-Billy, why are you still doing this, still touring ?
Billy: Because I have to. Touring, shooting videos, it's all part of the game. But the only thing I like about it all is writing songs. Playing shows is fun, but everything around it - the boredom, the uselessness - is horrible. It doesn't live. We used to make the best of it, something that seemed to live, but now I know better: it's all so useless. And as crazy as it may sound, I feel more comfortable with it now; I don't have the illusion anymore it's something special, so I don't look at it that way anymore.
-You look at it like a job.
Billy: Yeah. And that doesn't mean I no longer take personal feelings onto the stage with me. Or that the glamour is gone. But if I didn't have to be on tour, I'd start on a new album tomorrow. Ideas and inspiration enough.
-Like: how to survive during a forced tour, among three band members of who you hate their fucking guts ?
Billy (laughs): No. I don't write about those things. And by the way, that's in the past right now. I only use two main themes nowadays. The first one is existentialism, which basically means that life is just one long deformation-process. When you're born you get some idiosyncrasy and some individual qualities, but because of upbringing, your live surroundings and other external factors you almost loose all of them. That fascinates me. I think that a search to your soul, your roots, is the ultimate answer to what you really are. Every human being has, deeply hidden, an instinct that wants to look for your roots. But not everyone gives in to that instinct. In my songs I try to use this theme on me; I'm convinced that my upbringing has made me something that's really far from what I really am. And that automatically brings us to the second writing theme: How rock & roll made me a caricature, how that became a vicious circle and how I must get out of there.
-But a lot of that is already on Siamese Dream, isn't it ?
"Yes, but that's just the top of the iceberg, that's just the beginning. Siamese Dream is mainly about the present. In my new songs I go back to the past a lot more; to things I'd rather not be confronted with, but still... I feel that I have to go there. It's all going to be very direct."
-Don't you feel uncomfortable when you write those things down ?
Billy: No. Nothing is more shameful to me then being fake. What people see of me, are the things I'm absolutely sure of it's me. Right now I'm not at all interested in word games, in turning around the point. I want to be sincere and I am in all the new material.
-The new Smashing Pumpkins album is already in your head ?
Billy: The frames are there. The music isn't there yet, but that doesn't worry me. Making music is very easy to me.
CONVEYOR
-Where does this sudden urge to totally open yourself in your songs come from ? Do you think you will understand it all better when it's on paper ?
Billy: No, I wouldn't go that far. Again, I look at it as my job. It's my task to collect thoughts, ideas and information and to put it all in a package. And then on to the next one. It's really very cold and emotionless, sort of a conveyor: it just goes on and on. After Siamese Dream that conveyor was tired out, broken; I won't even think about doing something like that again. And, the longer i continue, the more overview on the situation I lose. Time takes the overview with him. You just keep storing and the more things you collect, the harder it gets to bring it back to a one hour cd. Siamese Dream could be easily one and a half hour.
-Song structures limit you too of course; it all has to fit in a couple of minutes. If I were you, I'd write a book.
Billy: Funny, yesterday someone just said that to me. But I'm not a writer. I think music would be enough for me. In a lot of songs on Gish people didn't have any idea of what i was singing about, but still they got something of the feeling; they knew where it came from.
-Your plans right now, does that have anything to do with growing up, with becoming a grown-up ?
Billy: Not only that; also with a certain mind, a certain wisdom I didn't have before. Five years ago I only saw the rock & roll-circus from a distance; I didn't look further then the stagelights and the applause. Now I'm in the middle of it, and I hate it. So you could say: just stop it. But I can't, because I have no choice. It's my destiny. And I don't want to stop. So what I do is to take on the challenge, and try to win. And the daily struggle is: being in music-bizz, with business, media, and a lot of other rockstars: and endless line of things that I hate. The trick is to bend everything over to something positives.
-Did you have to change your attitude to do that ?
Billy: Oh, absolutely. I had to re-arrange all my insights. And the thing that bothers me the most is that it destroyed my urge to make music. That childlike, elementary 'I wanna rawk' feeling is destroyed. Because suddenly I realized that we had to play this game on a very high level. We're no indie-band anymore, we don't play for 200 people anymore. And then very different mechanisms are activated. Suddenly you are expected to deal with a lot of people, people with very high standards and a lot for money. Then you notice it's a real tough fight for life and death: who are you, where are you, on what moment, what have you done, what do you want. You'll be unpleasantly surprised with giant highs and lows. And I don't want the lows.
-Can you have influence on that ?
Billy: Hardly. Because the entire music-industry is tied to one thing: the number of records you sell. Money. That's the bottom-line. That's where the power is. Doesn't matter if your so cool, so integreditated (?), if you don't sell records, you're a zero. And mostly that one hit-single is more important then a beautiful album. Just look at Nirvana. I don't want to be childish, but most journalists I talk to insinuate that what I do isn't as important as what Nirvana does, just because I don't write hit- singles. Just because I haven't had a top 10 single. And on moments like that I just don't understand anymore; how can one song be more important then an entire album on which you totally turn yourself inside-out ? When Siamese Dream was finished, the people of the record company immediately wanted to talk about the first-single choice. I wanted Cherub Rock as first single, they wanted Today. I mean, I created a monstrous emotional piece of art of an hour and the only thing people wanted to talk about was a song I wrote in 10 minutes. That has nothing to do with art anymore, or depth or complexity. It has to do with who's on top of the mountain, who decides the 'flavor of the month' and how people should react to that.
-Didn't you know that from the start ?
Billy: Of course. When I was working on the songs for Siamese Dream, I heard that little voice in my head plenty of times: just write that one fucking world hit ! But I thought it was foolish; I tried it for a little while, but I gave it up quick enough. I just didn't care anymore, not even if every song would last 7 minutes. Because then it would at least come from the source, not from a commercial point of view.
HOTHEADED
-Aren't you afraid that the media - as soon as they notice that your making yourself more and more vulnerable in your lyrics - will dig in your private life, just like what happened to Nirvana ?
Billy: Well, it would be kewl if I was in the tabloids for like one week. Not too long, because I know myself: I'd tolerate it for a week, and then it would annoy the hell out of me. But I think that we are too boring as a band. We miss that typical punk attitude, that Nirvana does have. Or ideology is exactly the opposite: I'd like to be subversive, but on a subtle way, a bit of sneaky way. By shouting you'll never get something done. Look, you can - just like Sonic Youth and Nirvana - tell everyone punkrock changed the world, but the only thing americans remember of punk are the safety-pins, ripped clothes and ugly haircuts. Bands like R.E.M. and U2 changed the world in a much bigger and more important way. They didn't have the nihilistic basics of punk, they had humanly point- of-views and were much more understandable. If you have that, you'll achieve a lot more, especially in America. Americans don't want to change the world. They just want a good life: a family, a good house, a good job. Family values. Those are their roots and that means a lot to them. I simple don't feel attracted to that punk life style.
-You're somewhere in between ?
Billy:Yeah. I'm a moderate rebel. Nevertheless, I caused a lot of problems in school, but on a different way. There was always some guy who caused trouble by cussing, shouting and vandalism, the stupid things. My way to bully teachers was much more subtle. First I tried to find out everything about them, to attack them from the inside. Play with their weak sides, their weird things and characteristics, their short-comings. That was much more effective. If I think of politic-activists, I always see people who bang on pots and pans to shove their opinion up our asses. But the activists who influenced me the most were the ones that said: think, let your feelings enter and trust your instincts. And that's last thing is something music can do, too: to tell people to do something with their lives in stead of watching tv all day and doing nothing.
-You just talked about how you intimidated teachers. Do you still handle people that way ?
Billy:Sure, why not ? I did it from since I was a kid, and the kid in me is still alive... Deep inside there's still that hotheaded little guy that's smarter then is good for him and who refuses to grow up. But I don't know if I should worry about that. Scholars once said that you are not grown up until you have found peace with the inner child. Well, obviously I haven't found that peace. They also said that grown-ups are nothing more then cars driven by kids. If that's true, the kids who drive me totally lost control of the steering wheel.