From the latest EW:
My favorite quote:
"it wouldn't be what people think it would be. We would be out to destroy you one more time. It wouldn't be nicey-nice lighters in the air."
:ROCK "out to destroy you one more time" is very 1992-1996 SP.
EW: What did you want to accompish with TheFutureEmbrace?
BC: The primary [goal] was not rock, because that sounds like Pumpkins. If I'm going to do Pumpkins, I'm going to do Pumpkins. I know how to do this thing that's very acceptable - loud, guitar-driven alternative rock. I helped create the modern blueprint of it. But there comes a point [when you] say, "I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go over here by myself and figure out something." And it's in those moments where you don't know if anyone is going to give a shit.
EW: How did you get Robert Smith of the cure - whom you grew up worshipping - to appear on a cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"?
BC: We've talked about doing something together. I called him up and said, "Okay, I think I've got the right song for you." "Is it one of yours?" "No, it's a Bee Gees song." And there as this long, wonderful pause on the line, and, in that English accent: "The Bee Gees?" He'd seen a documentary on them recently, and said, "Okay, I'm open to it."
EW: Where do you fit into the music landscape of 2005?
BC: I don't. I'm between the cracks. I am neither a has-been nor incredibly current. Most people are like, "What have you been doing for the past seven years?"
EW: For someone who's defiantly elusive and cryptic, you're now posting some revealing stuff about your life on your MySpace blog - an abusive childhood, a drug-addicted father, a mother in a mental hospital, band problems...
BC: Oh, that's just the beginning. I'm just warming up. I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet. It gets way crazier.
EW: Why are you telling your story now?
BC: It takes energy to hold secrets. I've been carrying some for 30 years. Being an abused child, you become complicit in your abuse by being silent. And that can be very painful. And consequently I engaged in the same sort of things in the bands [the Pumpkins and Zwan] where I was abused, where people took advantage of things. And I sat very silently. Then I was taking abuse from the outside and in some weird loyal double-duty, I was trying to protect the band from the mean, bad world and using myself as the lightning rod to draw attention not only from them but from myself. There comes a point where it's time to dismantle all that architecture. I won't need it anymore.
EW: After the Pumpkins broke up, why did you form Zwan [which featured guitarists David Pajo and Matt Sweeney, bassist Paz Lenchantin, and Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin]? Were you eager - maybe even desperate - to re-create the band feeling?
BC: It's the classic thing where you unconsciously re-create a situation to try to fix it. It was a stupid move with good intentions.
EW: Why did it implode?
BC: Sex and drugs and junk. Tick off the list: heroin; band members having relationships; one of the band members sleeping with the producer's girlfriend while we were making the album and continuing to do so after we made the album. You don't trust the person next to you. I'm on the bus. I send an e-mail to somebdy and I throw my BlackBerry in my little day bag. The next day, my ex-girlfriend calls me screaming. Somebody in the group went into my BlackBerry and forwarded her an e-mail that another girl sent me. I mean, that's the kind of stuff we're dealing with. ["Pretty much everything he said has been exaggerated and blown out of proportion," Pajo responds. "The drug stuff in particular. There was no heroin." Adds Lenchantin, "I believe that we were a really good team. I am moving on and onward. I hope that our paths will meet again in peace." Sweeney declined to comment.]
EW: How quickly did it fall apart?
BC: It was fun up until making the album [Mary Star of the Sea]. Then it was like, "What do you mean the guitar's out of tune? What do you mean I have to be there at 11? What do you mean I want to order $100 of lobster every day? I mean, like, bad. But it was too late. It was already public. The album was going out. So I did what I always did: Try to make the best of a situation and start covering up. Put on a good face. And honestly, I'm glad the thing didn't sell, because if it had sold well it would have been really tough. I would look like I was going to walk away from something that I'd just built.
EW: Aren't you at least proud of the album?
BC: I can't listen to it. It's like a nightmare for me now. It just reminds me of the thousands of lied upon lies upon lies. It's a shame because there's tons of music unreleased that will just sit in a box until I can stomach it.
EW: Which of your two bands is more likely to reunite?
BC: Pumpkins. You'll never see Zwan. I'll never go anywhere near those people. Ever. I mean, I detest them. You can put that in capital letters. Bad people. James and D'Arcy [Pumpkins guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky] are good people. They might be misguided people, but they're good people. I completely believe in them as human beings, no matter what they do, no matter what they say. I stood on stages with them and watched us change the world, change people's thinking, rock fucking big-time. You can't take that away from me. That's locked in my heart.
EW: So those four people will never share a stage again?
BC: Honestly, from my heart, I sincerly doubt it. The relationships are so ruptured. They are really damaged. I was talking to somebody recently who just laughed and said, "Well, it's always a question of money." It was never a question of money. For everyone else, money is enough. Not with that band. That was a spiritual issue and those spiritual issues are really ruptured... So if you ever do see the four Pumpkins on stage, it means some serious healing has gone on.
EW: How much of an appetite is there for a Pumpkins reunion?
BC: The appetite is insane. Crazy. Stunning. It's bigger than ever in some sort of weird way. But even if we saw the [four] Pumpkins on stage, it wouldn't be what people think it would be. We would be out to destroy you one more time. It wouldn't be nicey-nice lighters in the air.
EW: You wound up performing "Today" for some fans in Paris recently. Before that, you hadn't played a Pumpkins song since the final concert in 2000. Not even at home?
BC: No, no.
EW: What was it like doing that for the first time in, what, four years?
BC: Four in a half years. Well, it was a little rusty. I wasn't sure of all the chords. I knew how it started and I knew how it ended, but between there, it was like, Whoa.
EW: So when you tour, is it possible that..
BC: No. I don't play old songs. Zwan didn't play any old songs. I take a very hard line on that. I would only be doing it to make people comfortable ot trick people into coming to see me play or make it so that people don't leave mad. Or. Or. Or. I ask in the most humble of terms, "Please accept me for who I am today. If that's not good enough, I'm cool with you not coming. I'm not offended at all." When I'm a fan, I want to hear those songs too. I'm still mad at Ritchie Blackmore for not playing "Man on a Silver Mountain" when I saw Rainbow in 1982 at Alpine Valley. So I understand completely.
EW: You seem a little more at peace now than when you were battling the press and the public. There was that contentious Q magazine interview a few years ago with the headline...
BC: [Laughs] "The Rudest Man in Rock!" Isn't that great? What a distinguishment!
EW: Do you wish you'd handled it all better?
BC: Of course I have regrets about that. I handled it very poorly. I forgot who I was. I valued things that weren't important, and worst of all, I didn't have fun. To quote John Lennon, I started to hate my rock & roll. Now I'm back to where I feel good about music. That's why I can sit here and say, "Come if you want to come, don't come if you don't want to come." I feel very confident over time that I'll do something that will interest somebody. I'm like a good butcher on the corner. Maybe the guy down the street has got cheaper bologna, but my bologna is a little better tasting.
EW: You're working with Courtney Love again on her new record. Are you a glutton for punishment? The last time you collaborated with her - on Celebrity Skin - your relationship pubically combusted. How did you patch things up?
BC: I love Courtney. She's such an underrated, undervalued artist. We ran into each other at a U2 show [last year]. It's like that thing when you have a beef with somebody and you see them and it goes right out the window. The next thing you know, we were dancing. There was no music, we just danced. Before the dance, there was four years of silence, and after the dance, it was over.
EW: You've weathered the breakups of the Pumpkins and Zwan. Is it possible that you'll eventually have to break up Billy Corgan and go solo from yourself?
BC: That's a good question, actually. If anybody could break up with themselves, it would be me. The next interview we'll have, I'll be talking about how I divorced myself.
EW: It'll be like walking into a room full of mirrors and seeing infinity.
BC: I don't want to see infinite me. I can't even deal with one me.
My favorite quote:
"it wouldn't be what people think it would be. We would be out to destroy you one more time. It wouldn't be nicey-nice lighters in the air."
:ROCK "out to destroy you one more time" is very 1992-1996 SP.
