Corgan: Pumpkins rejecting feedback from “shittiest culture”
November 20th, 2008 by jjbtags: tour, billy corgan, interview, video
Appearing on YouTube today is some very dark fan-shot video from a Q&A session with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan prior to the group’s recent “White Crosses” concert in Boston. (Linking to fan-conducted and -filmed interviews isn’t our #1 choice for most ethical blogging behavior, but sometimes newsworthiness trumps.) If you’re wondering what’s up with the band’s attitude on this tour, here Corgan — speaking while seated next to drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — spells it out:
fan: …integrity as you like strive forward and you know, the need to be creative, how do you, what do draw upon to keep the faith in your own musical output? Your songwriting, your endeavors, how do you keep faith in it, you know, before you get an audience feedback or before you can stamp it out…
Billy Corgan: I would say at this point our faith in our audience has never been lower. We are literally…
fan: I mean your music, not your audience…
BC: No, you have to understand, we’re still making music for people to listen to.
fan: Right.
BC: When we were younger we very much looked to the audience to give us a sense of who we were and what we wanted to do, and then we kind of worked with it and against it. And I think now we’ve become extremely insular. We’re really not listening to anybody anymore. Because, it’s not like we look around and see a tremendous amount of good music and we feel left out of something. We feel like we’re sort of on our own little island, standing for the things that we grew up with: you know, good playing, good singing, good songs. And we feel like somehow that’s working against us in the general culture, which is kind of…to us it’s mind-boggling. That’s like saying, that’s like saying a Major League hitter is better, he’s better if he hits .200 than .300. But that’s the world we live in. It’s a .200-hitting world. You write one weak fucking song that everybody likes, you’re better than a band that’s an excellent band that has a legacy and a history.
fan: So at the end of the day what do you tell yourself to keep going, that you are making good music?
BC: That history shows that cultures have a hard time appreciating certain artists in certain times because they don’t fit the cultural perspective. And you can see it in painting, you can see it in film. We all go to the Best Buy and there’s a film, it’s like, it was totally overlooked and nobody thought it was good at the time and now it’s become like a classic. Well, we think of ourselves as a classic band, and it doesn’t matter if we keep getting overlooked — at some point somebody is going to turn around and realize we’ve just done more better than other people, and we’ll be, we’re willing to be measured on that. But we cannot ride with the culture of this time because this is absolutely the shittiest culture I’ve ever lived in.
[fans laugh, there is a shout of “Amen!” and another of “I agree.”]
BC: The amount of mediocrity is frightening. I lived through disco, I’m old enough to remember disco. [fans laugh] This is worse than disco. This is worse than disco, and that’s nobody’s fault. We’re all sort of in the same boat. So, when you ask a question like that, I mean, you’re looking at the inspiration. We just turn to each other. If he thinks it’s good, and I think it’s good, it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. And we’ve reached that point with each other, where we’re secure in our belief in what we do that if, I mean, you know, bad review, bad fan, bad…you know, whatever — it doesn’t matter anymore. I mean, it doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t really change anything.
(Thanks to HU blogger Andrew for transcribing this!)
November 20th, 2008 at 1:38 am
This is just viral marketing for Best Buy
November 20th, 2008 at 1:54 am
It’s good that this has been transcribed, now it just needs to be translated.
November 20th, 2008 at 5:14 am
“But we cannot ride with the culture of this time because this is absolutely the shittiest culture I’ve ever lived in.”
That’s why he’s in Guitar hero thing, with lots of commercial and popular bands..
that’s why he goes to screaming award, and guitar hero parties…and so glad to be part of Rockwalk in hollywood…
seriously,he is just destroying what he is part of…
But I do agree with his point of view.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I find all of this to be a little lame on both parties behalfs, i support the “shut the fuck up, stop comlaining and just play” party
November 20th, 2008 at 6:32 am
I wish they’d just stop playing the old stuff altogether and focus entirely on the new.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:12 am
don’tcha just love “disaster capitalism” and it’s effect upon the “classic” artists and their audiences in training future little eichmanns - i mean little “disaster capitalists.” it’s the race to the bottom.
(but do not think about these things OR have any meaningful discussions about them. just market, market, market. pay no attention. it’s not “supercapitalist hip” now to engage in such matters as making meaning or envisioning ways through. superapathy and supercynicism are the new “black.” )
November 20th, 2008 at 7:53 am
He keeps saying he doesn’t care what everyone else thinks, when it is so obvious he does.
He keeps complaining about how mediocre our current culture is, yet he still wants so badly to be a part of it.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Ahhh this is my video! Hell yeah! :-D
November 20th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Thanks Elizabeth! But would it have killed you to set up a spot on Billy and Jimmy? ;) Since I listened to this about 40 times while transcribing it last night I’ll point out that it is not a contradiction for Billy to complain about not getting respect in the current “culture” while at the same time participating within it (appearing in Guitar Hero, etc.). If Billy truly wasn’t interested in people’s reaction to his music he and Jimmy could probably hang out in Pumpkinland 2 for the next 15 years challenging and entertaining themselves while living off residual income from the old days. But instead he’s trying to challenge the culture in the hopes of moving it more in a direction to his liking. That being said, I don’t think doing a Don Rickles impersonation on stage helps Billy in any real way.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:01 am
@melanie
Sure he cares what people think; the difference is, he’s not changing who he is to gain those people’s approval.
And what apm said is dead on. He doesn’t want to be a part of this shitty culture but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to try and break in to try and shift it in a less shitty direction.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
“our faith in our audience has never been lower.”
If he’s talking about the general “audience” of the world that may be listening to their music on radio, iPod, whatever, maybe he has a point.
but if he’s talking about the audience that was excited for a 20th Anniversary show, then he’s risking losing the only fans that still care about the Smashing Pumpkins.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
@skullivan: Point taken. I went back and reread the transcription another time and I do see that now, especially in what he says at the end.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am
yeah I get your point too ….but I live (like everyone) in that “shitty” culture (I mean :I can’t avoid it)…it’s doesn’t mean I’m interrested in , it doesn’t mean I don’t know real thing and real music..If I do, most do too,
plus: it’s doesn’t mean real and good things doesn’t exist anymore
Of course for that you don’t have to be stuck only on what’s on TV or Radio..you got to dig a little deeper, and you will see that’s there’re many bands being good and real musicians like the pumpkins…
I’m saying that to conclude that The SP needn’t to be part of that “shitty” culture to show us what’s good …which i find very pretencious from them by the way…
And they needn’t to make this stop neither, there’s not good things without bad ones..
So just leave it alone…
The only thing I understand from him is that this kind of band are quite “rejected” from the music business, for what??—>for shit..
So I understand Billy point it out…but do they really need to be in that business anymore?
–> No ,they know it
November 20th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Wow! That article hits home. Is it really necessary to be understood in this day and age? Are the wave makers leading everyone else to the righteous era? Or, should we all just keep being creative and stop worrying about it all? I feel this so intensely right now as an artist and I am seeking the answer through love and encouragement.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
personnaly, I agree with Corgan, that an artist should simply do what he wants and what he feels..
if you doing things for a wave, or to be liked by some kind of people you will always fail..
So I’m completely agree with the fact he does what he wants..and I even wonder why people still complaining about it…
all depend of what you want :
succes: do what people want
be happy with what you’re doing/freedom: do what you want
Both “succes” and “happyness/freedom”, well do what you want but as good as people can’t say you’re not good..
—>I think it’s what the Pumpkins and particurlaly Billy are/is trying to do
that’s my point of view…maybe i’m wrong
November 20th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
a) Corgan should have decided years ago whether he wanted to be a musician or a critic. The Pete Townshend approach is a waste of energy.
b) sports makes a terrible analogue for “art”.
Also, there is good music out there, I think. They just don’t listen. There was that recent radio interview where Corgan was bragging about all of this obscure vinyl he’s been acquiring but, when asked, couldn’t even name a single one of the records he’d bought. This seemed very, very strange to me.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[…] (4), and “Glorious” (5) rest in silence? Or have things changed, and in the future our bleeping culture will get the chance to embrace a studio […]
November 20th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
benway i totally agree with you on the “obscure vinyl” thing. good call. i could HEAR matt pinfield rolling his eyes. MP gave BC a lob and BC totally swung and missed (sports analogy).
RC - suffragist 35
November 20th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Billy hates naming his influences, though - I think he thinks it becomes distracting and takes over the narrative about the band. You can’t seriously doubt that he’s actually been buying the vinyl though…this isn’t a Sarah Palin what-newspapers-do-you-read deal.
rC: “innocent moving”
November 20th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
No no, I definitely don’t doubt he’s been buying them. I question that he’s listening to them. Also, I wasn’t talking in terms of naming influences. I just don’t think he’s listening anymore, and he defends that by saying there’s nothing worth listening to (which to my ears, is a questionable stance). But he’s not listening, so he wouldn’t know. It’s a paradox worthy of Dr. Emmett Brown.
I’m not sure he hates naming his influences, though. He’s been pretty loose with that the last few years, whether talking about Sabbath or Bowie’s Low, or Echo and the Bunnymen.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Not just a paradox but a copout too.
“The amount of mediocrity is frightening….This is worse than disco, and that’s nobody’s fault. We’re all sort of in the same boat”
What a weird generalization. It’s gotta be someones/things fault. And specifically who or what is he referring to when he says it is worse than disco? Hinder? High School Musical? The Jonas Brothers? Fall Out Boy? That stuff is no worse than the boy/girl bands, post grunge and pop punk music of the late 90’s.
Remember that youtube ask a pumpkin thing, where one kid asked Corgan what he was listening to recently and Corgan got all embarassed, saying something like “Ugh…I don’t know. I don’t know what’s big right now. Ask Jimmy.” Then Jimmy listed a bunch of jazz players Id never heard of. You can’t critcize “all” new music when you’re so out of the loop yourself.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:35 am
lol I was there… I recorded the entire interview, if anyone wants it. Looking back on this, I can see that this entire interview was horribly “performed”. Anyways, later.