'I Understand the Pressures' - Billy Corgan Opens Up on Being an Interviewer Now, Deep Cut Tours + 'Punk Rock Guilt'

In this interview, Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan opens up on what it's like being an interviewer now that he hosts his own podcast. He also speaks to the notion of having "punk rock guilt" and dives into the reasoning behind his solo tour exploring the deep cuts within the Pumpkins' catalog.

Back in the ‘90s, Corgan, like many of his alt-rock peers, struggled with “punk rock guilt” – the idea that being massively commercially successful represented "selling out."

In Corgan’s case, this manifested itself in what drummer Jimmy Chamberlin referred to as the “art breakdown,” where he would tear into the audience who had paid to be there to watch him perform. If you went to Lollapalooza in the summer of 1993, you know what I’m talking about.

Growing up sucks sometimes, without a doubt. But if you’re lucky, you figure out some of the things that drove you nuts in your 20s and learn to move on. Corgan is a good example of that. He’s just kicked off a “solo” tour that will focus on playing music from two specific Smashing Pumpkins eras: 1995’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God, and 2000’s Machina II/The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music. It’s not just a look back: he’s also playing material from last year’s Aghori Mhori Mei.

This summer, the Smashing Pumpkins will go on a more traditional tour of Europe and Asia. And in November, Corgan will collaborate with the Lyric Opera of Chicago for a special seven-night engagement of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

He also has a somewhat new venture: in February, he launched his podcast, The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan.

It's a show that has seen him interviewing his peers (Tom Morello and Stone Temple Pilots’ Dean and Robert DeLeo), his heroes (Gene Simmons, Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons), industry heavyweights (Sharon Osbourne), some unexpected musicians (pop songwriter Diane Warren, Carnie Wilson of Wilson Phillips) and some surprising showbiz names (Carrot Top, Corey Feldman, Brady Bunch star Susan Olsen). His interviews feel like they come from a different era: there are no “gotcha” moments; as he tells us, he is not looking for clickbait.

We talked about all of the above in a wide-ranging interview. But first, I needed to ask him about a massive concert he’s going to perform at in Birmingham in a few weeks.

We’ve got a lot to talk about, but first I have to ask you: what does it mean to be a part of the “Back To The Beginning” show? It seems like this is likely to be Ozzy’s final performance; it’s the last time we’ll ever see Black Sabbath.

The invitation actually came from Sharon when she was on my podcast.

She asked me after the interview; the news was not out yet. She told me about it and said, “I’d really like you to be a part of this, and I know how much it would mean for Ozzy for you to be a part of this.”

It’s very humbling to be a part of it. There are things in life that you do that are very meaningful and this is one of those for me. It’s amazing how many people have stopped me on the street and say, “It’s amazing that you’re doing this.” This event means a lot.

Given your choice, what songs would you want to perform?

I don’t want to say, because Tom [Morello, the concert's musical director] has put the whole thing together.

At one point, there was a Sabbath song I was going to sing and Tom called me and said, “Tony Iommi reached out to me and asked if you’d be okay if they did that one?” (Laughs) What I will say is that the one Sabbath song that I know I’m doing is one of my favorite songs ever. It feels like a bit of kismet because it was one of the songs that I first connected to.

So tell me about the Machines of God tour: you’re celebrating specific Smashing Pumpkins eras, but it’s a solo tour.

When you're a band with this level of history, the setlist can get narrower over time, as the band has gotten big again, and that brings in a general crowd. Then there’s pressure to do what would commonly be called a “greatest hits” set. We do play deep cuts and some covers [with the Smashing Pumpkins]; it doesn’t feel compromised to me.

But there’s a lot of songs that I want to play that we just don’t have time for. And I've been pushing, behind the scenes to the band, for probably five years, saying that we should go out and do these… let’s call them “deeper cut” tours.

There’s been a difference of opinion behind the scenes of what the value of that would be. So I just reached a point where I just said, “I’m going to do this because it���s something that I feel very strongly about.”

This is the kind of show that the hardcore Pumpkins fans wish we would play more often. And I’m trying to meet that demand. But it’s also a set that I want to play more often.

But look: when you’re opening for Green Day for 50,000 people, you’re happy that you have a bunch of hits to play. It’s kind of what keeps people engaged. But when you go out on your own, there’s different opportunities, so I feel that playing these types of shows are just as valuable in a smaller room as playing something more general to a “greatest hits” crowd. I feel like there’s room for everybody at that.

In the 2000s, I went through [struggling with] the notion of “Whose band is it?” I felt like the band that I was in was being taken from me and I ended up being in a band that I didn’t necessarily ask to be in.

When I made peace with all of that, which took me many years, everything kind of lightened up, and the shows got better, and fans were a lot happier. I’m at peace with that. But I will say that playing these deeper cuts, it connects me more to the reason why I started the band. Emotionally, I feel a lot more balanced now.

Kiki Wong is playing guitar both with the Pumpkins and your solo band. I think a lot of us discovered her guitar videos on social media during COVID. I recently spoke to Les Claypool of Primus; they recently hired drummer John Hoffman, who has a similar story. He went from being in a bunch of bands and doing social media videos to playing in a fairly big band. Les Claypool told me that watching him experience that is really endearing. Has that been your experience with Kiki?

Kiki has brought a tremendous amount of positive energy into the group and her enthusiasm is infectious. She is genuinely the person that you see. And I followed her on Instagram as well during that period, so when I saw her name pop up among the people trying for the audition, I was like, “Oh great, I know who this person is.”

And she really is that person. She’s a genuinely sweet person: she is very enthusiastic and she’s definitely a woodshedder. She practices hour after hour. I love musicians that you don’t have to wind up and motivate and Kiki’s one of them.

I’ve got kids, James [Iha] has kids, Jimmy has kids and Kiki has a son.

When Jimmy and I first talked to Kiki, when we met her on a Zoom call, I said, “I want to let you know: your family is welcome.”

I know with many women in the music business, they struggle to find the balance between their career aspirations and their personal loyalty to their family. I feel very happy that we have that balance so she’s totally focused on the band, because she feels supported. So there’s no compromise for her.

After both of those tours, in the fall, you’re teaming up with the Lyric Opera of Chicago for “A Night Of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.” How did that come about?

A friend who knows both parties said, “I think they’d want to work with you,” and I thought, “There’s no way.” They’re doing Mozart and Bach and Wagner… but he said, “Just let me set up a meeting.” And we just hit it off and we realized we have the same goals.

My goal was, “How can I help you get younger people into the opera house?” And I’m a regular patron, I love the Lyric Opera. And by extension, I asked, “How can you help me to bring my music to life in a way that would be like a dream?”

This is a full orchestra and a full choir! And these are songs that I wrote when I was in my 20s, and they have endured. It’s like something out of a fantasy. And by the way, this is in my own hometown! This is the town that I wrote these songs in.

They committed to doing seven shows, which equates to about 24,000 tickets. It’s a big leap of faith for them to hope that my audience shows up. And the response has been unbelievable. I’ll be in great hands. I feel very comfortable. I’m not singing for the whole night, I’m just singing a few songs. I’m just as much looking forward to hearing it as being part of it.

Let’s talk about your podcast. I read an interview with you where you said that you don’t like to view your guests as “prey.” I imagine you kind of know what you do and don’t like about interviews at this point.

I told the people at Bill Maher’s [Club Random Studios] at the very beginning that I really want this to be a positive experience for everyone involved, and if that means that it won’t work [for them], then I can accept that.

You know it, and I know it, there are moments in an interview where someone starts to go down a road and you can just see the headlines spinning in the air. But it really comes down to a sense of moral clarity, which is, “What am I really after here?” I really believe that the success of the podcast has to do with the fact that it’s not clickbait. And I love it when there’s something that gets quoted. Like Sharon told the story about how Ozzy was up for the role in Pirates of the Caribbean. That got a ton of headlines: great!

Of course, I want people to listen and to be interested. And it was very generous of Sharon to give me something that she knew she’d never given to anybody previously. That was really Sharon doing me a favor. But thank God it was that, and not that she said a wrong word and it’s suddenly a controversy.

She’s been there, I’ve been there, and to me, that’s the greatest nightmare. I want nothing to do with that world. I believe that the world has, in many ways, destroyed the journalism business because it has become the mouse hitting the cocaine button.

I understand it; I understand the pressures. I’m 58 years old, I’ve been around the media long enough to understand all of that. “Look, we have to sell records, we have to sell magazines, we have to get clicks.” But when it gets to the point where it blows up the joy and it becomes this other thing, it makes me so nauseous.

And it doesn’t last, it’s like fast food. It doesn’t endure. It doesn’t leave anything lasting. If you take all of the clickbait that’s ever been written about me versus everything I’ve accomplished as a musician, there’s no comparison. But there’s been plenty of ink spilled over my silly mouth.

I enjoy and respect your technique. Sometimes you’re trying to get at something but you’re not sure how to phrase the question and you’ll say something like “What I’m trying to get at is…” Or, “Did that question land for you?” How did you come to that method? It’s very authentic. I’ve often felt, as an interviewer, like every question needs to be perfectly worded and that’s really not the case.

I’ve been the beneficiary of many behind-the-scenes conversations with famous people. Because of their experiences, there’s a lot of complexity there. But then when you look at the way they portray themselves in the media, or how the media portrays them, there’s a reductionist thing that happens. I found through the years — and not everybody is the same — but if you were respectful and intelligent about it, they would be willing to let you in a little further to show you stuff that maybe illustrates that there’s a lot more going on inside than would have normally been portrayed.

People have been asking me, “Who is your dream podcast guest?” It’s Paul McCartney. To me, Mr. McCartney is someone who has been interviewed a thousand times and he’s obviously very savvy, but as someone who has listened to him obsessively throughout my whole life, I don’t feel that I know him as well as I know John Lennon. Which is surprising because he’s been in the media spotlight for 60 years.

There’s no way you wrote “Eleanor Rigby” and there’s not a much deeper personality in there. There’s no way someone has gone through what he’s gone through and doesn’t have a deeper set of emotional things going on. So I think, ultimately, it’s kind of a crime that one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century, we don’t really know as much about his inner world as we should.

We’re oftentimes reliant on books [based on] speculation, and I really like the idea that maybe there’s a forum that I can provide that allows us, as fans, to look a little further and to understand him a little better. I think you learn so much about life and creativity when you talk to a great artist.

Did you see Rick Rubin’s Paul McCartney interview [McCartney 3,2,1]?

That’s about as close as I’ve ever felt that I’ve gotten to know him. For me as a musician, it was like a masterclass. If you just take the Beatles stuff — and obviously he had a huge amount of success afterwards — that was seven years of his life, before he was even 30!

It’s unbelievable.

That’s fascinating to me as an artist. It’s like when you read about Mozart touring the capitals of Europe when he was a kid, you think, “How did that work?” I’m looking at my kid at six years old, she just did a piano recital the other day and she did quite well, but she’s not ready to tour the capitals of Europe.

I guess I'm an autodidact.

Sitting the other day with Zakk Wylde, it was interesting to see how Zakk thinks, because I know he really is a great technician. He plays so well, and so consistently. But you talk to him and he’s like, “Brother Bill! I’m a lot sloppier of a player than you’re thinkin’ I am,” and I’m like, “No, you’re not. I know you’ve put in your hours. There’s no way you can play like that without having done your time.”

I think most people will be familiar with most of your guests. But I was not familiar with Mark Laita and his Soft White Underbelly Instagram account, where he profiles people on the fringes of society. I learned a lot from that episode.

I loved that episode. We have a gentleman���s agreement where I’m going to go on Soft White Underbelly at some point. Which would be a real honor for me: put me next to the pimps and the prostitutes and the drug dealers, in honor of my father. I was really happy with that episode. I started with the assumption that most people don’t know who he is, so I had to spend a bit of time explaining. And I learned a lot.

The most interesting part of the interview was when I asked, “How do you navigate it when you’re hearing these stories about people who have experienced all of this horrible stuff?”

He’s taken almost a kind of clinician's perspective, which is, “I can’t get too emotionally involved.” And then, to his credit, he illustrated instances where he had gotten emotionally involved and he got really burned.

I think he’s very valuable because I think he’s identified that there’s this part of the world that’s sort of being ignored and overlooked and there’s a lot of tragedy going on there, especially with fentanyl. We do a very good job in American culture at looking the other way when we feel like it.

I also loved the Tom Morello episode. I think it’s always good to put a name to something that is bothering you and when Tom mentioned the term “punk rock guilt,” it really resonated with me and I know it did with you.

He has always had a clearer view of that thing than I did.

I’m not saying that him and Gene Simmons are similar as people, but they both have a sort of moral clarity that is uncomfortable for a lot of people.

In Gene’s case, he’ll call it like it is. He’ll say, “Look, at the end of the day, it’s all about money.”

And Tom’s always willing to call out the powers that be, and that makes people uncomfortable as well. But Tom had this kind of clarity: “We’re all kind of under this cloud of what we’re supposed to be doing, or not doing, based on a bunch of precepts.”

And, honestly, those precepts don’t really mean anything anymore. That’s all been eradicated by the pop takeover.

You mentioned in one of your episodes that you had just interviewed the great soul singer Sam Moore [of Sam & Dave, who passed away in January]. How was that, and who else do you have coming up?

Sam’s the only one that I did remotely, and that was because of his health. I’m not sure if it was the last interview he ever did. I think it might have been. It was really incredible to talk to him. I’m such a fan.

It was interesting because he would get lost in something, and his wife [Joyce] would sort of chime in from off-camera. And finally, I said, “Is she from Chicago?” I know that accent! And then she came on camera and was somewhat part of the interview. And that opened it up: they talked about their relationship and how she helped him through his years of addiction. It wasn’t a particularly long interview, but I feel really blessed.

Of all the people I've interviewed, I know my father would be most proud of the fact that I interviewed Sam Moore.

I have a two-parter with Paul Stanley. He was so gracious. I’ve known Paul for a few years. What I think people will really enjoy in the interview is now that… Paul isn’t "out" of KISS, they’re still doing things, but he’s kind of away from it all, he’s put down a bit of the "Starchild" thing and he’s more back to being Paul Stanley.

You really get the warmth of Paul as a person in the interview. I was really touched by that.

With Gene, everyone focuses on the band’s ambition, but when you talk to Paul, you really see the relationship that is there between the two of them. You see the brotherhood and why they were so successful for so long. They really did overcome a lot of adversity that I think a lot of people would have a hard time understanding.

Behind the scenes, it was really quite difficult for them. And when he talks about some of the struggles with some of the band members, when they came back in the late ‘90s, we talked a lot about how he was feeling with how he just couldn’t understand how they couldn't understand how great everything was and why they weren’t embracing it. You really understand that it really hurt him.

Thanks to Billy Corgan for the interview. Follow Smashing Pumpkins on Instagram, X and Facebook and visit the band's website to see all upcoming tour dates.

Tune into The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan podcast each Wednesday wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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