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!)

Listen live to WLS here.

2:09pm CT: Hosts and callers are making so-hilarious jokes about a proposal for a gays-only high school in Chicago. (The Pumpkins have yet to appear or be mentioned.)

2:30pm: The hosts are now bantering about an upcoming Chicago performance to be given by…Richard Marx. Somehow this leads into the first mention that the Smashing Pumpkins will be joining them a little later in the show. (Probably around 3:30pm CT.)

3:13pm: So far, fans of “Soul Train” host Don Cornelius have been given more to chew on than we have been.

3:27pm: TV newsman Ron Magers is exiting, with the rockers about to claim their seats in the studio. If you’ve been waiting to tune in, do so now!

3:40pm: An unspecified “mistake” has been made, and as a result the band members are in the “green room” and are “refusing” to enter? The hosts are making light of whatever the situation is…

3:43pm: Roe Conn says, “I’m going to go talk to the Smashing Pumpkins and see if I can convince them…” and then trails off and returns to filling time with a discussion of some unrelated t-shirt deal and, then, the stock market.

3:47pm: “We’ll come right back with your Pumpkins after this.” Cue commercials.

3:52pm: “The Smashing Pumpkins are hiding. They stormed out of the green room…and are refusing to go on before [other guest] Ben Vereen. There was an argument that broke out between the Pumpkins and Ben Vereen. I don’t know what to do about this.” Haha… (Conn is saying this all in good humor, so it’s hard to know what parts or how much of it to take seriously.)

4:01pm: “Billy Corgan in the building! Jimmy Chamberlin also…” but first the news.

4:08pm: They at last kick off the interview with the classic clip of Corgan talking to Homer Simpson, and then the sounds of “Tarantula”. The hosts joke with Jimmy about his playing air-drums to the song.

4:10pm: Billy says his first concert was Asia at the Auditorium Theatre, at age 14, in the “crazy top tier” of seats.

4:13pm: Billy recounts a recent stunt in Tampa, where the band pretended to end the show before an “unwelcome” Billy Sr. came on stage to plug in and blues-rock out.

4:17pm: The hosts lurch from grilling Jimmy about women to asking Billy about his appearance on “Bozo: 40 Years of Fun!”. That’s some local flavor. Billy recounts a story about seeing his favorite Bozo (Bob Bell) on his 11th birthday. Apparently, during the Grand March exit, his tender pre-pubescent ears heard curse words out of the famous clown’s mouth. Jimmy cackles.

4:22pm: Roe Conn pimps the new DVD, asking if it’s available on the website (uh, yes) and promoting the shows this week in Chicago. Presumably, it’s time for the Pumpkins to head to soundcheck for their show tonight.

4:24pm: The clip of Homer Simpson plays: “I’llll miss you Pumpkins.” Show’s over, folks.

4:29pm: …though the hosts did come back after the commercial still talking about the band, spinning “Tribute to Johnny” (!) as transition music and with Conn saying that those who miss James and D’Arcy should “get over it”. Now I will close the streaming-audio player. Blog’s over, folks!

Here is a partial transcript from the “Psalm 131″ chapter of the new Smashing Pumpkins movie If All Goes Wrong:

Billy Corgan: You know, I’m not that picky…I’m okay with everything not always being great and perfect, and even this experience of being at the residencies, it doesn’t have to be this continual high point. You know, sometimes the mundane is just as important as the special. But there’s this immense pressure that everything’s just got to be great all the time, it’s like one big ABBA concert all the time.

fan: I heard a couple of the [newly written] songs, they’re cool, they’re good. You can kind of tell they were written the same day — they don’t sound developed at all, I mean…it usually takes a while for a song to get developed, I mean, months, maybe a year, maybe two.

Corgan: We live in a very results-oriented society. This culture, particularly the American culture of the 2000s, is only obsessed with the absolute cream-of-the-crop, peak-experience moment. It’s like we’re all just stuck on orgasm.

David Wild: We live in a time where even our supposed alternative rockers, whatever the hell that means or whatever it ever meant, are basically very professional careerists who deliver the hits in concert. Delivering the hits is not enough for him.

Corgan: It’s really weird to me that people really don’t, generally speaking, don’t want to hear the work around the great work. I understand the obsession and the attraction to the peak work, because I feel the same thing. But when I find the peak work, no matter who it is, whether it’s Matisse or Bach or whatever, I want to find out the work around it, I want to hear the process and the journey to the peak work. But this culture seems to be only obsessed with the peak work and everything else is discardable…which is why people are still touring on one song.

Less than a week after doing a radio interview with Matt Pinfield on WXRP in New York, Billy and Jimmy entered another radio studio for another extended interview. This time, they paid an “hour plus” visit to Elliot in the Morning show in between the Black Sunshine and White Crosses shows in Washington. No doubt proud of the efforts of their booking staff, the EITM website boasts that their interview is “rare”. Even though I’m not hipstersunited.com’s resident economist, I don’t believe the Pumpkins’ media availability meets the generally accepted definition of a scarce good.

The interview can be heard here in three parts.

• Part 1 Download
• Part 2 Download
• Part 3 Download

As previously reported, Billy and Jimmy appeared on WXRP with Matt Pinfield for an extended interview. WXRP’s website has posted the interview in three parts (mp3, mp3, mp3), so you too can hear their thoughts on…

…young vs. old fans…

Jimmy: Our fans…they like to claim ownership, and everybody has their own version of ownership especially in these days when you are living in the YouTube world and everybody wants their YouTube moment, so I think what used to be an endearing rabid(?) fan has now turned into the entitled “I want what I want and I want it now and I’ve already seen the highlight reel so only play the hits at the concert”. You know it’s a difficult time right now to be a rabid fan.
Billy: The thing that shocked us was that we found from the younger fan a lot more of the curiosity about where we were going and the older fan was the one who was like “can you just play the hits?” So we had this crazy divide where we would go into one city and a very young fanbase for whatever reason would go insane for the concerts and then we would go to the next city and play for an older group of fans and they’d be disappointed because we didn’t play enough hit songs.

…Jimmy’s explanation on why Asheville’s residency was better than San Francisco…

Jimmy: I think it’s kind of interesting to, looking back at both those experiences, I think what’s interesting to me is to see the difference between being in a real kind of geological energy center that really has a consistent resonance, planetary resonance, and being in a place that kind of has a fake manufactured resonance where you have rich hippies with expense accounts.

…the 20th anniverary setlist…

Jimmy: We don’t really look at it in any kind of mathematical way, we just kind of - as far as old songs go - we just kind of pick the ones that are fun to play and the ones that are still resonating with us. But we kind of look at the whole set as a complete painting.
Billy: I think what we’ve figured out in the year and a half since we came back is that what the fans want more than hit songs is excitement. And if the hit song provides that level of excitement then that’s fine but not every hit song provides that level of excitement so we’ve tried to crank up that level of excitement at our concerts and it’s the most excitement we’ve seen come out of the crowds since probably since ‘96.

…plans for future releases…

Billy: We’re trying to figure out a way to release music in a new way, and I don’t mean just like on the internet. Maybe there’s a different way to release music in terms of a pattern in which you release it, more multimedia-related. So maybe an album would come out more over time, and it would come out in pieces and then at some point you assemble it with some other stuff and put it out in a different configuration. Not ask a fan to put all their marbles in one place and then love it or hate it and go away. I think that model is dead.

…plans for future live events…

Billy: We were talking the other day…this is a live thing…thinking about maybe going into a town and going a four day event, so maybe it would be something like the first night would be like a dinner and like a Q&A and then the next day we would play in essence a conventional concert. Maybe the third day it would be more of like a Storytellers thing, and then the fourth day we would play another concert. So a fan could basically buy a four-day experience with us, very intense experience with us, and maybe we could even do multiple ones in the same city so that we could write some new songs while we’re doing this. And if you’re the fan who just wants to go to one show you could buy the one-show ticket, but you also give people the option to go and do the entire experience and by doing so get the level of intimacy. I think there’s lots of new opportunities out there now that we’re getting the major labels and their sort of dogmatic system of how they control things and why they control things out of the way.

…politics…

Matt Pinfield: Did you guys vote?
Billy: I’m not a voter. That’s my controversial position. But I’m very happy.
Jimmy: I’m a voter but I didn’t vote because I’m in the process of moving and have a new address.
Billy: Is it better to be a nonvoter or a voter who didn’t vote?

There’s a lot of interesting stuff there about the band’s relationship with the fans, which Billy likens to a romantic relationship, so you’ll want to listen to the whole thing.

This Thursday, Billy and Jimmy the Smashing Pumpkins will be in the studios of 101.9 FM WRXP in New York to hang out for an hour with DJ Matt Pinfield at 8:00 AM EST (be patient when clicking on the link, the site takes a long time to load).  There are no details on whether the band will be performing, but according to the internet’s bastion of truth: “Talk is limited, for the most part, to interviews with artists, with play of their music emphasized in the interview.”

(Thanks to HU reader JZ for the tip.)

Update: The website does not specify which band members will be appearing, only that “The Smashing Pumpkins” will be hanging out.

From her MySpace page:

Gingger is the creative force behind some of the most daring, exuberant and technically proficient music being made today. Her haunting, angelic vocals and prolific composition and instrumental talents entwine to create a musical experience unlike any other. The artist and composer behind the poignant score of Mel Gibson’s 2004 box office hit The Passion Of The Christ, Gingger has lent her voice and vision to several diverse projects ranging from soundtracks to soulful pop and electronic hip-hop.

An extraordinarily gifted singer, virtuoso violinist, model and songwriter, Gingger was born into one of India’s most acclaimed musical families. As the daughter of a world famous classical singer and granddaughter of a renowned violinist, Gingger’s natural talents were nurtured from birth and flourished as she began to build her own identity in the world of music, embracing all of the genres and creative experiences that have shaped her life as an artist.

Gingger is the only female in the world that has mastered the 10-string Double Violin, an instrument that covers the entire range of the orchestra’s double bass, cello, viola and violin, and of which there are currently only two in existence. Coupled with her voice, which covers five octaves, the sound is unparalleled, unbridled, and unforgettable.

And in a 2004 interview with Gingger and collaborator L. Shankar, Robert Kaye of AbstractLogix.com extracted an answer to the money question:

S&G: Yes, you can play both necks at the same time.

More recently, almost needless to say, she has stepped into a new role:

I am thrilled to announce that I will be guesting with the Smashing Pumpkins on their 20th Anniversary Tour October 26th through December 4th!

(Tip of a big hat to HU reader tcm for the brilliant find. That’s what I’m talking about!)

AOL’s Spinner music-news site — which was also the source for Jimmy Chamberlin’s original suggestion that “the next time the Pumpkins tour, you’ll see a big stage presence with eight to ten people as opposed to just five” — reports today that, indeed, the Smashing Pumpkins are about to hit the road with additional musicians in tow:

“We really treated it as a special one-time event, so we have horns, a violin player and we’re playing a lot of songs we wouldn’t normally play,” [Billy] Corgan says. …

“The two-night format of playing two totally different sets is really challenging because what the hell are you gonna close Night Two with if all the best stuff is in night one?” he says. “We’re really excited about playing the song ‘Sunkissed’ off our EP, ‘American Gothic’ — it’s about a six-minute long song. It’s very gentle and we’re playing with the horns and everything. It sounds great, but it’s the type of thing that’ll totally kill the crowd and everybody starts throwing [shit].”

So is all the best stuff on Night One, Billy? (Not that telling us so would be very informative, really.) And who are the supporting players?!

Corgan also says something about how the next album project will be “a very new media-based way to interrelate a visual and a long song cycle”, which…I mean, sure, maybe, whatever. This is making me think of the “interactive music video” for “The Crying Tree of Mercury” (which is not here), but I was able to ignore that at the time, so, bring it on, I guess.

(Thanks to PistolPete for pointing out the AOL article.)

Want to know what you’re in for at an upcoming two-night stand by the Smashing Pumpkins? (Do you wish you had known before buying tickets?) Upon entering Los Angeles’s Greek Theater for the Spike awards, Billy Corgan told MTV.com:

“Forty-five songs spread out over each set. The first night’s set will be darker and heavier, and the second night will be lighter and transcendental.”

But if you have tickets to the first night and now wish you didn’t, don’t tear all your hair out…leave at least a little for the show:

Corgan said they’ll be playing the new single [”G.L.O.W.”] a lot on this upcoming run, because when they played the track on their last tour, “People tore their hair out.”

Talking to Press Association Ltd. at the Spike awards, Billy Corgan reflected on a time when all went wrong:

It was interesting in a sense that we got a lot of things put on us that we didn’t ask for.

Like we never said reunion, we just said we’re gonna put the band back together and see who wants to do it.

Then it became ‘oh, these aren’t the original members’. Well, we never said it was going to be the original members.

Despite my efforts to avoid the word reunion, it has cropped up on HU from time to time. I think it is an inappropriate term not only because Corgan never used the word but primarily because no one reunited…Corgan and Chamberlin were never apart. Obviously, though, the press has used the word liberally — and even the band’s Wikipedia entry claims that “In April 2006, the band officially announced that it was reuniting”, the seeming inaccuracy of that statement and an effort to correct it not withstanding the one-man wikiocracy of user WesleyDodds:

Yes, it’s still a reunion, even if Corgan didn’t use the word

Smashing Pumpkins Prep New Album, 20th Anniversary Tour
Reunited band breaks out classic tunes for tour; concept disc to follow
DAVID BROWNE
Posted Oct 30, 2008 9:59 AM

For an article that was posted in the future, this one is low on shock value. There are a couple of fun quotes, including Billy Corgan referring to himself as “a guitar hero” (note lowercase!), and a hint that the Schroeder/Reyes Pooley/Harriton combo will be joined by “to-be-determined additional musicians” on the new tour. (Keep that accordion handy, Mr. Pooley.)

Anyone see something else in there we don’t already know?

Time Out Chicago editor Frank Sennett has posted an interview that he conducted with Smashing Pumpkins chief Billy Corgan prior to the band’s early August concert in nearby Hammond, Indiana. Sennett’s questions revolve around his toddlin’ town, and since Corgan is not running for President he feels free to be an elitist express himself:

[Frank Sennett]: Could you be a little more specific about how the values have changed?

Billy Corgan: Having grown up working-class, and around working class people, there was a kind of ‘Icarus’ thing, where it’s like, “Enjoy your time flying close to the sun because eventually you’re going to crash and burn and come home.” In any career there are times when you go up, and other times when you go down, and when we went down it was almost as though there was an inevitability attached to it— people were like, “Yeah, we knew you guys were going to come back down to earth.” Meanwhile, the band is continuing to grow and prosper around the world, but Chicago still seems attached to this idea that we never got back up, which is really strange. I don’t take it personally, I see it more as a working-class type of thing. I think that’s why so many people leave Chicago. They find they can’t get away from that. They almost have to go and create a new fantasy away from it, because in Chicago you’re constantly reminded— through commentary and things people say—that it is a working-class city. Working-class values are interesting in that sense of “work hard” equals struggle, equals you maybe will succeed, but if you succeed there is a time limit to that.

[FS]: They want to remind you that you’re no better than anybody else.

Thank goodness Billy has not taken those “reminders” too seriously… Moving on, Sennett inquired into the fate of material from Corgan’s all-but-forgotten post-Zwan-but-pre- TheFutureEmbrace period:

[FS]: A few years ago you played a solo acoustic show featuring your folk songs about Chicago. What kinds of things were you writing about, and is it still a project you are pursuing? What spurred you to start doing that?

[BC]: I felt very inspired because I had gone through a really serious depression after the break-up of a relationship. I was really in a bad place, and had pretty much moved out of the city. But at one point I had to come home and lick my wounds, and found that the city really embraced me on an emotional level. It wasn’t like the people on the street; I just felt embraced by the place. So this project was my way of honoring what I thought was great about the city. I started writing about stuff I had never though about writing about: the Chicago fire, the Leopold and Loeb case, the Cubs and Sox rivalry. I wrote about fourteen or fifteen Chicago-related songs and I did one performance at the Metro. I had planned on putting it out, but I found that the response to the songs and the direction I was going in was so underwhelming that I just got really disappointed and put it all away.

[FS]: Do you think you’ll revisit that at some point?

[BC]: The plan now is to let it sit for a while, and maybe pick it up and do a part two. To put maybe seven years or so between them, and then maybe make a documentary. I have all the footage from the first cycle. That’s the plan now, and it’s the best-case scenario I can think of.

There you have it, fans of “Black Irish” and “White Lights”: in the best-case scenario you will wait seven years (which at 8% interest is roughly half of forever) to purchase a fine recorded representation of those and others of the (so-called? was this a name Billy gave to them, or did the fans make this up?) ChicagoSongs. Thank goodness Billy changes his mind a lot…

HMM… Actually I read that too quickly, and I apologize. Corgan says he may put seven years “or so” between the recording of part one and the (future) recording of a possible part two. Given that the songs were recorded in 2004, that would put recording of a second set into 2011 (or so), with a release to follow thereafter. Maybe there is only 30% of forever to go!

Thanks to a partnership with Nxtbook Media, EQ Magazine’s October issue — including a massive profile of the Smashing Pumpkins — is available for viewing online. Writer Richard Thomas traces the band’s entire career (sans the interstitial Zwan/solo period), listing gear and recording techniques used in the studio from Gish through “Superchrist” and incorporating interviews with Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, Butch Vig, Flood, Alan Moulder, Bjorn Thorsrud, and Roy Thomas Baker. Here’s but a tiny sample of the extensive historical material:

“Flood felt like the band he would see live wasn’t really captured on record,” says Corgan. “So a lot of Mellon Collie was tracked by the band at deafening volumes. I mean deafening. There was so much SPL [ed. wut?] in the room that it was physically uncomfortable. Your ears, your emotional resistance, would wear down.”

Flood also discovered that Corgan was a much better singer pitch-wise when he didn’t use headphones, so he switched Corgan up to a Shure SM58 and had him sing in front of open speakers.

There are essentially two pieces of forward-looking news, both found near the end of the dozen-plus-page exposition:

“I know the next record is going to be really psychedelic,” says Corgan. “I don’t think the Sabbath influence is going away anytime soon, but I’m thinking more late ’80s/early ’90s English shoegazer mixed with ’60s psychedelia and ’70s funk. I can hear it in my head, but that doesn’t mean it’ll ever get out of my head.”

What, no ’00s or ’50s influences? (And did he say, “funk”? Haha…) The other item:

[P]reparation [is ongoing] for the release of a Gish boxed set, which may include everything from demos and B-sides to revisited versions of old songs. The group also has archived performances of their first 40 shows, warts and all. As they have no label contract in place, the size of the boxed set is to be determined, which is good news for superfans, as Corgan is no stranger to releasing Herculean sets of material. The Pumpkins will also embark on a small-scale tour to support the release, which means Gish songs, Gish gear, and intimate Gish-sized venues. Need more message board fodder? [ed. blog fodder, actually plz] Corgan plans to give each and every Pumpkins album the same treatment. [ed. kthx]

SmashingPumpkins.com writer Supervajra, in a third piece on the Machina band-imitates-band concept, elicits this reminiscence from Billy Corgan:

When the re-formed band agreed to the concept in october of 1998 as a way to bring the band to a close, everyone agreed to “play their part’ all the way down the line. I never envisioned that D’arcy would leave in April of ‘99, and that subsequently the 3 of us would try to finish. This put a stress obviously on the full integrity of the project. Because it was connected to the band not only bringing the music to fruition fully, but also the public component of being in character. I ended up in a broken band with a half-ass enthusiasm towards finishing a project already started…

Being bullheaded I pushed on, underestimating the strain it put on me to try to finish something I was no longer sure of. The songs were all written TO the concept, so what could I do but try to finish. I almost abandoned the entire project half-way thru. It took every fibre of my being to just not quit then and there in the middle of it. Jimmy wasn’t in the best state and James was, well, being James. The only reason I finished it was because I wanted off what had by then become a horrible label. And before anyone cries sell out + $, know that if I had disbanded the group then I would have gotten all the $ on the record and or shelved it and done whatever I wanted to instead music wise. I was the only person who could be held to the deal. James and Jimmy would have walked away free as birds, not only of the group but the contract as well. It was the last record of the deal, and that played into how it all went down.

If that just isn’t enough Machina mystery for you, the Internets will soon yield up Nick Kushner’s “Machina, Alchemy & The Occult”, an “encyclopedic, novel-length mini-site currently in production”. Teaser material for the site can be seen here and here.

After the jump: Our speculative dramatization of an under-his-breath wisecrack that could have gotten James in trouble for, well, being James. [WARNING: Dramatization may be in LOLGATMOG form. I blame Jill…] (more…)

Wayne Drehs of the Worldwide Leader has a feature including interviews with 11 Cubs fans; the gimmick at play here is that one fan was born in each of the last 11 decades. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman holds it down for those born in the 1960s. Here’s his take on what is special about following the Cubs:

If you’re a Cub, it doesn’t matter where you came from — it doesn’t even matter if you’re not even a Cub anymore. You’re always a Cub. Even if you came through and played one year, you’re still a Cub. It’s a weird thing. So you’d say…okay, so, to the guy in Oklahoma, what’s so special about that? What’s special is there’s a real sense of…”appreciation” is not the right word, but you really honor the player. It’s like, this is hallowed ground, and you’re playing for a great organization — even if it’s messed up. Don’t you understand? It’s not about the Tribune Company or Sam Zell or whoever owns the team now, it’s about that fanbase that will take that journey with you every pitch along the way, and that is unique. I don’t think you could point to another organization…some guy in L.A.’s gonna say, “No, I root…” I’m sorry. It ain’t like that in L.A.; it ain’t like that for the Yankees.

Oh, but is it unique? A wag could argue that Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie were like 1907 and 1908, that Melissa auf der Maur is still considered a Pumpkin, and that Lester Cohn “owned the team” during the ChicagoSongs era. But perhaps the proper analogy is to the Dodgers…thus casting Roy Thomas Baker into the Joe Torre role?!

(Thanks to Thomas L. for the tip.)

NewBay Media’s EQ Magazine features the Smashing Pumpkins in its October issue, and its website has posted two teaser stories, one on “Billy Corgan’s notable guitars” and a collection of interview excerpts that won’t appear in the print edition. From the latter piece, here’s Billy on one of his historically less-notable roles — that of Smashing Pumpkins bassist:

I was influenced by mostly new wave people: Simon Gallup from the Cure, Peter Hook. In my emerging adulthood I grew up with a lot of new wave and alternative, so I looked at that bass as “the” cool bass style. So if there’s any personality in my bass playing it’s that Peter Hook, ‘use the weird note’ thing. I always wish my bass playing had more to say, but in my head it all goes together like pieces of a puzzle. I understand how the bass works and doesn’t work with all the other pieces in my head, so it [is] probably the thing that gets the short shrift on certain things. Some ideas could have easily been played on the bass, but they were just more effective on the guitar.

More controversial will be this musing on the pressures from within and without to produce good work:

There are a tremendous amount of opportunities for a free artist, meaning free from a label structure, to do lots of interesting things. I think the danger is when you start playing to the front row of your audience. The audience that’s going to be there no matter what you do. I think it’s going to take a level of sophistication to continue to be progressive, dangerous, experimental, forward-thinking, and at the same time not lose everybody in the haze of non-directed creativity. You’ve got to get out of the Utopian idea of, ‘Now that I’m free I can just do whatever I want to do,’ and I think it splits your mind. I think the middle doesn’t exist anymore. You can be artistic, you can be mainstream, or you can be both, but you can’t exist in the middle. I think there were times that did work for us, but I don’t think it works for us anymore. We’re going to have to consistently prove to people that there’s a reason why we are a unique band. We still have to be able to show up and write a great song.