Billy Corgan

Mon 11th Oct, 2010 in Features

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Since Billy Corgan last visited us in 2008 to play at the V Festival he has declared that there won’t be any more Smashing Pumpkins albums; recruited 20-year-old drummer Mike Byrne; found new muses in Jessica Simpson and The Veronicas’ Jess Origliasso; held open auditions for new bandmates; and inducted former Veruca Salt and Spinnerette bassist Nicole Fiorentino into the latest incarnation of the Smashing Pumpkins.

With the new lineup Corgan is currently writing and releasing 44-song series Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, with tracks being issued free online one at a time – the seventh song in the series The Fellowship is due for release this week.

He’s certainly been keeping busy and with an Australian tour set to kick off tomorrow in Perth, Corgan took a moment to chat to FasterLouder about the new songs, the classic Pumpkins sound and been taken home to meet his new girlfriend’s parents.

I’m fascinated now with how you’re recording and releasing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. I mean, I know we grew up listening to an album from start to finish and it was an experience but the iPod age means people are picking the best songs and making a playlist of their own. Is that what prompted the new format?
Well, I started to notice that people weren’t listening the way they’d always listened in my life, and that puts you in a really weird position as an artist because, okay, let’s say you’re doing the standard album – twelve songs – you’re going, “Well, I’m gonna do twelve songs and I’m gonna put my heart and soul into twelve songs,” and then people are just gonna pick the three catchy ones and leave the other nine on the floor.

And what’s even more interesting, is even if you take a classic album like Siamese Dream, we’ll play some deeper album songs from that album, and the new fans, the new kids are coming to shows, they don’t know those songs because they’re doing the same thing with those albums too.

So, why am I gonna put all my energy into these ones that aren’t even going to be listened to?

So, do you think that this new release concept – for this collection of songs – is going to give you more concentrated attention per song?
Yes. And that’s been effective.

So, there are six out now?
And the seventh, The Fellowship, is just about to come out on the Vampire Diaries soundtrack, which is a American TV show.

Oh. Vampires. What’s with all the vampires at the moment?
Yeah, it’s all about vampires.

What sort of sounds and ideas are in the new song?
I’m really excited about that because we’re starting to find what’s the future sound of the band. Which is sort of like classic Pumpkins big choruses and maybe using more electronics, but in a sparse, almost 80s, way, so I’m really liking that.

So, are you making video clips? What other media do you see attached to these songs? What life do you see for them?
You know, I would like to work more with video. I think the difficulty is, you know, it’s called “investment for return.” You can make a video that many people will watch on YouTube but that doesn’t actually mean that people are going to listen to your band or come to see a concert.

This is a big problem with this YouTube/Google business model: you’re generating all this interest and this traffic but it doesn’t necessarily translate into business. And, since I’ve gone independent – outside of a record company – my business runs completely on just whether or not I’m successful within my parameters, not somebody elses.

Speaking to someone like yourself, who has seen such changes in the industry – when you first started it was a big deal just to commit something to acetate – who now has a million and one options… a lot of bands of a certain age freaked out about that. They don’t understand the technology and seem happy to leave it to someone else. You seem to have moved with the culture and are willing to explore it and embrace it a little more.
I feel that’s what the band’s always been about [but] it’s a little bit strange, because this thing creeps in once you hit forty, like, okay, maybe it’s just time to cash your cheques. And I’m really comfortable with that.

I mean, even big mouth bands like Pavement, who used to take me to task about the way I ran my musical career, they’re out playing their twenty-year-old album.

So, I looked at it like, “How can I continue to maintain a high standard of music, a high level of motivation and at the same time not put myself in a position where I’m beating my head against a wall chasing sixteen-year-olds who have to choose between me and a video game.”

Have you found that Twitter and Facebook and other media networking sites have allowed you to engage with your fans? Do you do that?
I’m not on any social media sites other than Twitter, and I don’t use it to read what people write me, it’s more like a mini soapbox. I don’t necessarily use it as a business thing – although occasionally I’ll say, “We’ve got a new song coming out.” For the most part it’s just focused on me as a human being.

Do you find it difficult to keep your soapbox vents to 140 characters?
The amount of times I sit there on Twitter losing a sentence so I can get it in that little box. And you gotta wonder at this point, don’t you think they should just go a little bit bigger? [laughs] Standard [mobile phone] text [field] is like 160 characters but Twitter only goes to 140 or whatever it is.

No! Come on, that defeats the purpose!
Hey, it’s not easy to just say what you wanna say. Sometimes when I get on a roll I think, “Oh God, anybody who is subscribing to me [on Twitter] is just totally hating me right now. The eighth Tweet from me in one day. But then, I look at other people and they are literally Tweeting fifty times a day.

John Mayer got himself in a bit of trouble there. I think he shut himself down in the end. It’s actually as though people don’t realise Twitter is going out live to the public.
Yeah. Who knows? I don’t know. Honestly, I think all this kind of stuff is temporary. I think that we’re going to be going toward more sophisticated versions of that, whether it’s video…

Like when you’re writing texts – and we’ve all had that – where someone things you’re being mean and you’re not, it just reads that way in text. Imagine if somebody could listen to your Twitter and go, “Oh, they’re just joking!”

City Riots are supporting your Australian dates. I saw a presser or something this week that said you had handpicked them. Is that true? You’ve heard them before?
Yeah. The relationship is that this guy I work with a lot, Bjorn Thorsrud – he’s a producer [who’s worked with Dandy Warhols, Iggy Pop, Whitesnake] who produced them and he reached out to me when he heard we were going there [Australia] and asked me if there was any way they could support.

Will you have time to do some R&R while you’re down here – is that on the cards?
No. I’ve talked to “me girl” Jess [Origliasso, of The Veronicas] about coming back from New Zealand to spend a few days in Brisbane before I have to go back to America but because the tour’s sort of last second, and because of the size of the venues, we’re basically just sprinting through the country.

So, you don’t get to be taken home to meet the parents.
Oh, I’ve met the parents. Believe me. I’ve met the parents.

“What are your intentions with our daughter?”
[laughs] I’m old fashioned, so I don’t set off all the alarm bells I think all the other partners did.

Well, I think Australian’s have a pretty good bullshit detector so I’m sure it would have been, “Well, you seem like a nice fellow, so as long as you’re good to Our Jess, let’s have a beer.”
You’re right.

I read an interview of yours last week where you repeatedly referred to the gelling of the band “as a unit.” Are you talking about in terms of writing?
I haven’t found that’s necessarily the case with the writing aspect – it’s more how the band interprets my writing. I am, generally speaking, more comfortable with that.

There’s a lot of war stories from the old band about why I am that way, because the old band used to, like, somebody would make a suggestion over a cup of tea and then a year later somebody would want me to give them fifty percent of my song.

I’m a bit damaged from all that. The new band around me is really beautiful, in that there’s no weirdness on that level.

What a nice position to be in.
Seriously, I’m shocked that I’m in a happy band that loves to play, works hard, doesn’t complain. It’s like a dream come true.

FasterLouder presents The Smashing Pumpkins tour:

Tuesday 12 October – Riverside Theatre, Perth
Wednesday 13 October – The Theatre, Adelaide
Friday 15 October – Festival Hall, Melbourne
Saturday 16 October – Big Top, Sydney
Sunday 17 October – The Tivoli, Brisbane