How Ron Dante Became the Voice of a Generation | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan welcomes Ron Dante, the unmistakable voice behind the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” for a fascinating look at the hidden machinery of classic pop music. Dante recalls starting as a 17-year-old demo singer, auditioning for the Monkees, and becoming the anonymous voice of two Top 10 hits at the same time. He reveals how “Sugar, Sugar” became a worldwide phenomenon, why he never resented the “bubblegum rock” label, and how elite New York session musicians powered a cartoon band. Billy also shares his own emotional connection to the song. From anonymous singer to hit producer, Dante takes Billy inside the making of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” and shares the difficult decision that helped clear the way for Pat Benatar’s rise to stardom. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  What I liked was singing. Singing in studios, singing other people's songs, my songs. It didn't matter. I was just on a joyride.

• 1:17Billy Corgan?

  Your voice has a lot of, you can sing, of course, but, but you're, there's a personality to your voice that's, I, I, I think only you have that personality.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  That Dick Charles comes out and he looks at me and goes, "You don't record very well." There'll be somebody trying to say, "You shouldn't do it like that," right? And whenever they say that, I do, I do it.

• 1:38Billy Corgan?

  I can't think of anybody that's similar to your story.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  A little different.

• 1:42Billy Corgan?

  I'm onstage and I don't know what to play. And I started playing Sugar.

• 1:50Billy Corgan?

  Ron Dante, thank you very much for being here on my podcast. It's so cool and fun and exciting to talk to you. You ready to jump in?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I'm ready to jump in, Billy. So happy to be here.

• 2:01Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. Okay. Gypsy Be Mine.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 2:05Billy Corgan?

  Absence of Lisa.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 2:08Billy Corgan?

  Ronnie Dante. Or is it Dante or Dante?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Dante.

• 2:12Billy Corgan?

  Dante, okay. Dot, April of 1967. I would only been one month old now, not to date myself, but, but, um, I, I, I found this record and there's that voice, your voice, which is, there's only one person who sings like you. But I thought it was cool because I was like, it got me thinking like, what were you, what were you hoping to do as a recording artist? Did you want to be a soloist? Did you want to have a band? Like, because I know back then in the record business, there was a lot of stuff going on. It depended who had a contract. I'll give you, I'll let you put out a single. He comes sing on the session. So can you walk me through that part of your life?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  I was a studio singer, background singer, demo singer. I sang for other people. I did their demos. I, I worked in an office where the, the writers in the office were Goffin and King, Carole King, Jerry Goffin, right?

• 3:02Billy Corgan?

  They did, they did okay.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  They did okay. Um, first day I walked into this office, I got a job as a demo maker. I was only 17. And who was in there but Tony Orlando, Neil Sedak, and Carole King. So I got to sing background on their records. And I was a journeyman singer. I would go to studio dates and do demos for people. And some of those demos would become singles. And they would put them out under different names. And I'd say, "Great. If one of them hits, we'll do an album."

• 3:31Billy Corgan?

  So were you okay with that? Because it takes, seems to be, it takes a certain psychology to be okay with not having it always be about you.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  My ego was very submerged. I, I didn't have a big ego. I had a drive to succeed and, and, and do well and get my voice out there. I knew that some of these things might turn into great opportunities for me as a solo artist, but I wasn't in a hurry.

• 3:55Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I wasn't in a hurry.

• 3:58Billy Corgan?

  Little Lollipop, 1964?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  My first single. Yes, that was.

• 4:06Billy Corgan?

  But what's amazing to me is, as somebody who loves your voice, is, is the voice is there already. Like, there it is.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It was formed. It was formed, it was formed at 14, when I started my first band. I, I, I had that voice.

• 4:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  And I came from a certain part of New York City that had this accent that worked with lyrics.

• 4:26Billy Corgan?

  Interesting, right? Kind of like how sometimes people with English accents, they sound a certain way when they sing, I guess, American songs?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:34Billy Corgan?

  Or American rock and roll. Um, who were the, who'd you idolize from, in your generation? Who did you look up as, as a singer and think, "Oh, I wish I could sing like that?" Or who'd you really look up to?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Well, as a, as a very young man, 10 years old, I idolized Elvis. And then 11 or 12, I idolized the Everly Brothers. And there were other acts that came along during those years that I just loved their songs and I loved their sounds.

• 5:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  My sound really didn't hit its, um, prime and perfect spot until The Beatles came out and Four Seasons came out and the Beach Boys came out. And those were the, those were the ones.

• 5:12Billy Corgan?

  64, 65?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yes, I really, really felt, "Oh, this is it. This is where the vocals should be."

• 5:18Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see. Okay. Um, did you ever meet Phil and Don?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I met, I met a Phil.

• 5:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, Phil was cool. I knew Phil a little bit.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  What a wonderful guy. He signed.

• 5:28Billy Corgan?

  Total sweetheart.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  A pick for me and strings. He was selling strings at a convention downtown.

• 5:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I saw them play once in Australia and they were so good. It was frightening.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  It was frightening. They made.

• 5:40Billy Corgan?

  Their pitch and their.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  And the choice of harmonies.

• 5:44Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Not always thirds, not always.

• 5:46Billy Corgan?

  That bluegrass, like sad, Louven Brothers, you know, there's a lot of influence on those guys.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:51Billy Corgan?

  Do you know the Louven Brothers?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I don't know of them, no.

• 5:53Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I think you'd really like it. If you, I think what you might enjoy is if you listen to some of the best of the Louven Brothers, think 50s, I think they were on Capitol.

• 6:03Billy Corgan?

  You basically hear the Byrds and those Crosby, Stills, Nash harmonies, but like 10 years before. They were the first one that were doing these kind of, I don't know, like parallel fourths and whatever that, those type of harmonies are. So when you hear the Louven Brothers, you're like, "Oh, that's where they all got it from."

• 6:18Speaker 01

  That's, well, we always take what, what comes before.

• 6:22Billy Corgan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  And we build on it. You built on what came before.

• 6:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  And made it your own.

• 6:25Billy Corgan?

  And then I stomped on it.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You stomped on it. You did, you did great, though.

• 6:29Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  To fill those coliseums.

• 6:31Billy Corgan?

  You're so sweet. Um, when did you start working for Don Kershner? I mean, was it, was it a business relationship or was he just some, one of the people that would hire you under given circumstances? Were you, were you an employee?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was an employee. Uh, I walked into his office at 17 and the songwriters there listened to my songs and listened to me sing. And they said, "We're going to take you in to see Donny." So they took me in to see Mr. Kershner. He had a giant, great white piano with jelly beans in the sides of it. And he just was the nicest guy. And I, I, I said, "I'm going to sing for you." I sang for him. He said, "Okay, kid, you've got a job. I want you to be our staff demo maker and I'm signing you to a songwriting contract."

• 7:12Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  So that was the beginning of my relationship with him.

• 7:15Billy Corgan?

  Had you written songs before that?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  A couple, a couple. I was, I was already thinking about, uh, what could I play for people?

• 7:22Billy Corgan?

  What heady company to be around. Is this Brill Building or is this?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  It was across the street.

• 7:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Brill Building. I did work there at one point for Bobby Darin.

• 7:30Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  And his publishing company later on.

• 7:32Billy Corgan?

  Talk about Bobby Darin, because I, Bobby Darin's, what an incredible talent.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  He had a publishing company in the Brill Building called TM Music. I was looking for a job after I left Kershner. I was on my own. And his music supervisor signed me. So, uh, once a month or every couple of months, Bobby would come in and listen to you. And he'd give you a little critique. He'd say, "I might want to record that song." He said, "But here's some tickets. Come see me at the Copacabana." I got to see him at the Copa. I was only like 18 or 19. It was unbelievable. He was a really nice guy. One day he'd come in in a tuxedo, next day he'd come in in jeans and a t-shirt. He had many different personalities.

• 8:12Billy Corgan?

  You know, obviously, my generation knew who Bobby Darin was because he'd be on TV. But he was trying to recast himself more as a singer-songwriter type. But the, the rep, the rep on Bobby Darin was he was like kind of this, you know, five-tool Mr. Showbiz, like an entertainer in a way that we don't have entertainers anymore. Can you at least talk about that a little bit?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Sure. I, I think he took his, uh, key from Sinatra. I think a lot of his motions onstage, his movements, his vocals, way he approached vocals and songs, Mac the Knife. That was his training ground.

• 8:46Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So he came, came from an older school of thought. And he used that, and it didn't work. At a certain point, it started to not work because of 60s.

• 8:55Billy Corgan?

  Because he wasn't cool.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  It wasn't cool. So he grew his hair longer and he put on jeans, a t-shirt, and started to write.

• 9:00Billy Corgan?

  Did you ever hear, you ever hear Bobby's version of If I Were a Carpenter?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  No, I haven't heard that.

• 9:04Billy Corgan?

  It's so good. Because again, he has that incredible vocal ability, but he's trying to recast himself almost like a Neil Diamond, like one of those type of guys.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:14Billy Corgan?

  So he's like walking that line, but it's beautiful.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  He could change. He was a chameleon. He could really change. Even from his first record, Splish Splash, that was like an R&B vocal.

• 9:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  If you listen to that. And it went from Splish Splash to Dream Lover. It kind of changed a bit. And then Mac the Knife, completely different person vocally.

• 9:36Billy Corgan?

  Of course, growing up in the 70s, you know, we knew Don Kershner because it was Don Kershner's rock concert. So he'd be in his, "I'm Don Kushner," you know? Can you talk about the real Don Kershner a little bit? I know you said he was a nice guy, but can you take me behind the scenes? Because he, you know, he was a real mogul in the publishing, New York publishing world.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  He certainly was. He was the biggest thing to hit New York City in years with his idea to have a stable of writers, young writers, teams of writers. So he had like cubicles in the offices, like eight of them. And there'd be a, a little piano in each one. And you could hear people banging out songs in one and doing one like that. But he was like, I always describe him as your favorite uncle, who would visit you on Sunday and slip you five bucks and say, "Don't tell your dad." He was, he was the nicest. Fairest guy I ever worked with.

• 10:24Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  After about three, four months working with him, my guitar was stolen out of my car. A beautiful Gretsch, one of those acoustic, and it was worth like 300 bucks. So I went to Donny, I said, Donny, somebody stole my guitar. He said, no problem, kid. He said, check, go buy another guitar.

• 10:41Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So about three months later, they stole that one.

• 10:46Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I had a convertible. I should have gotten rid of that convertible. So I said, oh, I can't go back to Donny. And so, but I finally.

• 10:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I said, Donny, they stole it again. He said, no problem, kid. There's another check, go buy another guitar. We need you. That's the way he treated me.

• 11:02Billy Corgan?

  Wow. Can you, I'm obsessed with old, I guess, old studios because I wasn't there. Excuse me. I'm obsessed with old studios because I wasn't there. Can you walk me through like what a typical session in the 1960s would have been? And where would you have been recording? Was there, did he have his own demo studio or were you going into like a typical?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  With Kirschner's publishing company, there was a little demo studio called Associated, which was very reasonably priced and not very high tech, but good.

• 11:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And they would steer us to that studio, a hundred dollars an hour, whatever. 25 for each musician, you'd get three musicians. And it was just a kind of a funky studio with old fashioned mics and some old fashioned players who had been around quite a long time. One, the bass player had just gone to electric bass. He was playing upright bass in the 60s.

• 12:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  And now then it became the Fender bass. And it was just very easy to do, but we would record and then we'd bounce to more tracks because there was only like four tracks.

• 12:11Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  And we'd bounce vocals back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And each time we would add his.

• 12:18Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  By the time we had.

• 12:19Billy Corgan?

  And compression though, which is kind of part of the magic of the thing.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And we would put it on and sound like frying eggs. It would put it, you'd find, but it sounded great.

• 12:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Because I got to do like many voices, backgrounds I could do, I could harmonize with myself. So that was the session.

• 12:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  The guys would help us out, the older musicians would help out the young writers. They would say, no, no, you, you can't play this chord to this melody and they would help us.

• 12:42Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  And it was, it was, it was, it was a beautiful thing at that time.

• 12:46Billy Corgan?

  How'd you, how'd you learn how to do harmonies? Because that's, that's usually a gift that people have. Was it something that came naturally to you or?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Uh, kind of, I, I used to, um, bringing up the Everly Brothers, I used to try to find the note in between their notes.

• 12:58Billy Corgan?

  To sing with them?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I, what?

• 13:00Billy Corgan?

  To sing, almost like sing with them?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I would sing with them. So I'd learn Bird Dog or Dream, any of those things. And I'd hear where the hole was and I'd plug the hole vocally.

• 13:09Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  And sing along with them. And of course I did doo-wop at first, at first, I was, you know, 16, 15 years old. I would sing in bathrooms at, at school.

• 13:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Or at the ferry terminal.

• 13:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And so I would, I would learn the, what notes go where.

• 13:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And, and it did, it did come naturally to me though, because I grew up in a family where people did sing, an Italian American family where a lot of people sang. My dad liked to sing, my uncles, nobody did professionally. I was the only one who got out.

• 13:38Billy Corgan?

  Who, who's the first person that ever pulled you aside and said, something, your voice has something unique? Did?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was had to be Kirschner.

• 13:47Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  It had to be him because he, he would, he would constantly try to get me a record deal on the demos that we were.

• 13:53Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  We were doing. When I was 14, I went into a recording studio in New York City, Dick Charles Recording Studio, it was a big demo studio. And Dick Charles was the engineer. And so I'm singing some song that I'm, my dad wants me to sing, so I'm singing it. And Dick Charles comes out and he looks at me and goes, you don't record very well.

• 14:14Billy Corgan?

  What does that even mean?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  I know. He says, your voice doesn't like the microphone, something like that. And even at 14, I knew he was out of line and that he was wrong.

• 14:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Because I heard the playback and I said, that records just fine. I have to, I have to get my voice better.

• 14:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  But, so that's what they try to do to you. Every once in a while you'll get a positive, but that there'll be somebody trying to say, you shouldn't do it like that.

• 14:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And whenever they say that, I do, I do it.

• 14:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I think what's interesting is that, um, there's a lot of people who sing really good. But not everybody can sing with personality, which is an interesting gift, you know? And as has been seen by your musical life, your voice has a lot of, you can sing, of course, but, but you're, there's a personality to your voice that's, I, I, I think only you have that personality. Does it make sense the way?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I used to do commercials. I sang commercials for years. I was a jingle singer and I would work with different people coming up. Michael Bolton would be coming up, Luther Vandross, Valerie Simpson. They would be coming up the same way and they'd be on the side of me.

• 15:25Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And I remember Valerie leaning over to me one day and saying, I hate your happy voice.

• 15:33Billy Corgan?

  That's kind of what I was after.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  It's a, it's so.

• 15:35Billy Corgan?

  There's a happiness in your voice.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  It's so happy and I couldn't help it. It would just, you know, I love singing. To this day, I love singing like you love to do what you do, right?

• 15:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, um, it's well known, of course, the, the Monkees history with Kirschner and, and that, you know, they, they sort of rebelled at some point, you know? There's this incredible story where in, in the beginning it's Boyce and Hart. They think they have the gig, then Kirschner kind of muscles in. The Monkees end up kind of pushing Kirschner out. And then Boyce and Hart kind of had a year for a while. And I think Kirschner ended up kind of coming back in towards the end. Were you, were you around for any of that, that machinations? Because eventually it does have to do with you.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  I was, I was at Screen Gems Columbia Music, which Don Kirschner was the president of. And he had me audition along with everybody else on the staff, young who could sing and do videos and send them out to the coast.

• 16:30Billy Corgan?

  So you actually auditioned?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  I auditioned for the Monkees. Yeah. They, they were considering me for the Davy Jones, uh, part, but Davy really deserved it. He was, he was so great. People loved him and his English accent.

• 16:43Billy Corgan?

  The charisma of the four of them together.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it worked. I remember thinking, um, Don Kirschner really wanted to funnel in great songs to them. He knew they would, or a TV group.

• 16:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Right? Made up to be a group. So he would get them the best songs, I'm a Believer.

• 16:59Billy Corgan?

  Oh, so many great songs.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Produced by the same guy, Jeff Barry, who produced Sugar Sugar.

• 17:04Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  So I remember that time and Donny was very upset that they didn't like his approach, not letting them play on the records, not letting them write the songs.

• 17:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  And he was very despondent about that. And the Monkees were so popular and so strong that, that he was fired.

• 17:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  It just fired from Screen Gems Columbia Music. It made them hundreds of millions.

• 17:26Billy Corgan?

  Oh, he got fired from the job?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:28Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  He got fired from the job. And he said, someday I'll come back with another company that will be as big. And he did, he came back years later. And he did, he found Kansas, he found the Arches and stuff.

• 17:40Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, as the story goes, of course, correct me, is that he offered Sugar Sugar to the Monkees and they turned it down because it was too sweet?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  That's what I heard. And even Mickey Dolan's told me, uh, that's what happened.

• 17:53Billy Corgan?

  Because I, I went back and listened to Sugar Sugar today, knowing I was going to talk to you and you can, you can almost hear Mickey singing it.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Easily. Good singer.

• 18:04Billy Corgan?

  Great singer.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:05Billy Corgan?

  But what I'm saying is, is like, if you just listened to the song, you can hear it was literally written for Mickey. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's got Mickey's rhythm in it.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  They would have had a number one record of that song. That song was destined to be a big hit.

• 18:17Billy Corgan?

  So did you just cut the demo and they released the demo or they said, okay, now you're going to do the song? Or because how does it end up? It's the Arches and?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  The Arches were doing, going on TV and they needed music. And Jeff Barry was brought in to write, produce it. Kirschner was music supervisor. And I heard they were putting music here, they didn't have a lead singer. So a friend of mine in the band said, you should come over, we're at RCA Studios. And I went over, I said, Donny knew me, so did Jeff. I had, I had worked for both of them.

• 18:44Billy Corgan?

  Is this here or in New York?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  In New York City.

• 18:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  RCA Studio, big, beautiful studio. And they said, well, try this song. I did a song called Bang Shangalang, became the first single. And I was signed that day to be the voice for the next three years.

• 18:57Billy Corgan?

  And wasn't part of the backstory was that because of his upset with the Monkees that he made sure that he was in total control of the Arches thing, right? Is that?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  I don't know about that.

• 19:07Billy Corgan?

  I don't know, I'm asking.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think that was it.

• 19:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I think he took the job as music supervisor for the TV show and it just happened to have the Arches as a band.

• 19:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And he was fine. He would, again, he would come to the sessions and cheer us on, make suggestions to, to the producer, Jeff Barry, who was genius at pop music.

• 19:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  I mean, Jeff had written with his wife, Ellie, Be My Baby, Do Do Ran Ran, Hanky Panky, Then He Kissed Me. I mean, he, he got up once at a BMI Awards 16 times for, for the year. I mean, so he, having him on the project, I, I was, I, I knew it would be a successful project.

• 19:44Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 19:46Billy Corgan?

  There was a lot of talk, I don't know if you heard it at the time, but there was a lot of talk about the Monkees are not real, this is not real music. I mean, what was your general impression of that sort of thinking at the time?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  My impression was that they are, they were real. They were good, they were all musicians. They were performers. Mickey had been in show business since he was a kid.

• 20:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Davy Jones, since he was a kid as the Artful Dodger and, you know, Oliver, I mean, and the other two guys were good musicians. I, I understood they wanted their own piece of it. They wanted to control some, and they did very well.

• 20:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But I guess I'm talking more about the cultural conversation, which even to this day continues, but in other forms because of the rise of autotune and pop music and this idea of like, where does organic stop and where does artificiality begin? And it becomes part of your life story because obviously the Arches is a completely fictional band.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yes. Now, at the time, there was a lot of talk that they were manufactured and they had to prove them wrong. I think the, the success was so monumental and so worldwide, they, they had to become the group.

• 20:56Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's almost like the, the, the illusion had to become real.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  It real, it had to become real.

• 21:03Billy Corgan?

  I see. But how did you, how did you feel about, uh, did you have any compunction about basically fronting an artificial band or, I, I know it was a job, but I'm saying is, especially when you start having success, did you, did you feel any kind of reservation? Were you just so happy that what you were doing was successful?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I was so happy.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I knew.

• 21:25Billy Corgan?

  Selling six million records.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Really? And being on TV every Saturday morning for a million children.

• 21:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  That grew up to be rock and roll fans.

• 21:32Billy Corgan?

  Well.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  It was a gift at the time.

• 21:34Billy Corgan?

  I was listening.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  And it was a gift at the time and I knew it. And I was grateful. I was very grateful at the time. I understood that this is a real opportunity to maybe move on with my career into solo or production.

• 21:48Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So for you, it was just like, wow, this is an incredible wave to ride and.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, biggest songs, uh, uh, Sugar Sugar of 1969, the biggest song in the world, not just the biggest song, the biggest song in the world.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  That was astounding. My mom and dad took a trip to Africa, a cruise. She was in a, a, a market and there was a lady selling trinkets. And my, my mom said to the lady, do you know my son's song, Sugar Sugar? And the lady sang it back to her. It was like Zaire or somewhere. And I, I went to London, Paris and Rome on tours and it was being played.

• 22:24Billy Corgan?

  So you actually did Archie's tour.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  I actually went out and promoted my solo album after that.

• 22:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So I didn't go on Archie tours. The Archie's never toured.

• 22:32Billy Corgan?

  I'm surprised they never even tried to put a band together.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  No, the cartoon people who won the copyright wanted to keep it animated. In fact, when it went number one, my mom called me and said, oh, the Archie's going to be on Ed Sullivan tonight. So I turned it on and they were playing the cartoon.

• 22:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  So I said, well, my voice made it to the.

• 22:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, my voice is there.

• 22:54Billy Corgan?

  I have to tell you a quick story I thought to tell you. It's, it's such a weird story, but I, I had a, before my band, The Smashing Pumpkins, I had a band called The Marked. I always have to spell it because people can never, uh, it's M A R K E D, The Marked, not a great name. And, uh, we, we played for a while in Florida in, in, uh, 1985, 1986. And the band started to break up. And so we decided to kind of do this last show, but we weren't really sure we were going to break up. So I was feeling a lot of emotions and, and I'm standing on stage at this club called Act Four in Tampa, Florida in 1986. As my band, I'm having my first kind of real band breakup in my life and I'm on stage and I don't know what to play. And I started playing Sugar.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:40Billy Corgan?

  True story.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 23:42Billy Corgan?

  And then after that, after we did the gig, um, we well, went in the parking lot and that was it. The band broke up, but that's the band that led to me starting The Smashing Pumpkins. So you're forever going to have a place, a place in my heart and history.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 23:55Billy Corgan?

  Cause I didn't know, I was so sad. I didn't know what to play. And I thought, what can I play that's going to lift my spirit?

• 24:05Billy Corgan?

  I, I think I even have a recording of it somewhere.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  How cool is that? So it's got a place in your heart.

• 24:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, thank you. Um, with this, uh, that period of time, go, please, do you have something you wanted to add? I'm sorry.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  No, I'm fine.

• 24:19Billy Corgan?

  With this period of time, uh, uh, it seemed to usher in, let's call it a different sensibility. Like, oh, if we can have success with cartoon bands, monkey bands, it seemed to usher in this other sort of sensibility in the music business. Then you had the 1910 Fruit Gump companies and.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Ohio Express.

• 24:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so it seemed to usher in all this other stuff.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:39Billy Corgan?

  Um, and then of course you, you started singing for other, uh, I guess they were bands, but they weren't bands in, in, in reality.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:48Billy Corgan?

  Um, I, I mean, how did you take all that? You know what I mean? Did you keep, were you thinking this is all great because eventually I'm going to be able to make it about me or, you know, I'm saying it's surprising to me that you didn't, I'm not saying you didn't have a solo life because you did, but I'm saying is not everybody could handle it gracefully maybe, and you seemed to handle it gracefully.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was okay with it. I, I kind of, uh, looked on it as every opportunity came around, I said, yes. Try this, sing this song. This will be a group. This will not be a group.

• 25:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  I just, I just thought it was the most fun in the world.

• 25:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Because what I liked was singing, singing in studios, singing other people's songs, my songs. It didn't matter. I was just on a joy ride.

• 25:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  It was, it was, everything came my way and I took it on, you know? I figured one of them may stick.

• 25:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  One of these groups may do better than the Archies.

• 25:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, back then, was it union? Was it, were there union times or what was the normal length of a session, a recording session?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it was, uh, three hours.

• 25:50Billy Corgan?

  Three hours.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  No, no longer. As you go, five minutes over.

• 25:54Billy Corgan?

  Was it a union thing?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Um, most of my things were, uh, not union.

• 25:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Probably, probably not. I don't remember contracts being sent into the unions. But then again, it was, it was the Wild West. It was really, really, I mean, think about, I, I, I fronted and they put out maybe two dozen groups with my voice on it. I mean, it's just like different songs, different types, uh, and, and nobody called me. No unions called me, no, no official.

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see. Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I, I guess when it hits, uh, people love success.

• 26:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, they, what's the famous saying, success has many masters, um, but, uh, failure has but one.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 26:38Billy Corgan?

  Um, I saw this thing and I thought it was really curious. Uh, when you had the hit, uh, Tracy for The Cuff Links, um, you had two hits on the charts, both with your voice, but they were with anonymous groups.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  That was heady. Uh, I remember the day that Tracy hit number nine and Sugar was still number one. And I was anonymous, but I, I was gleeful.

• 27:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, great, great. Uh, there, there was a radio station in New York City, W A B C, that played hits one and the same hits every hour.

• 27:11Billy Corgan?

  So you're on the, you're on the radio.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  So I was on the radio twice an hour, plus maybe one of the commercials I sang for Dr. Pepper or Coca-Cola.

• 27:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was, it was a really, uh, great time and it was, it was fine with me. I was, I was happy.

• 27:25Billy Corgan?

  Now with these types of things where you're like with the Archies where you're the singer, are you, are you, I assume there's no royalties. You kind of just get paid and that's it? Or do you have a royalty deal in those situations?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I, I, I had a flat fee at the time. And, uh, over the years it has developed into a royalty situation because of the new rules that come along.

• 27:44Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  That lead singers are supposed to get paid for, for the plays and sales or streams.

• 27:51Billy Corgan?

  So when you put out, uh, Ron, Dante, uh, it's, it's brings you up. Sorry. Cause that's the title, the song, uh, is it going to bring you up or?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  It's just, um, let me bring you up.

• 28:04Billy Corgan?

  Let me bring you up. Yes. But that's, the title is the similar, yeah. Um, uh, what were your hopes then? Cause now this is really like your first, like you've got success. Everybody knows who you are.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 28:14Billy Corgan?

  What was the, what was the thinking at that moment?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  They thought they would take advantage of all the success that come, had come before. The Archies especially, The Cuff Links. And, uh, Don Kershner's label was, it was Kershner Records and it was distributed by RCA worldwide.

• 28:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So I knew it would get a great shot. I, I toured a little bit, went overseas, did some, excuse me, did some radio shows. And, uh, it was, it was a fun ride at the time. It didn't seem to take. People wanted the sound of the Archies and my solo record was a little more mature.

• 28:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  It was a little more, I was a married man. Uh, I, I had different things in my mind for the songwriting and stuff. So they, they wanted the younger version, I think.

• 29:01Billy Corgan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So it wasn't a big success. Didn't, it just, one, one flop does not change a career. I figured that my, I was going in a certain direction anyway, towards production. So, uh, I knew that if this worked, okay, I'd, I'd, I'd do a solo for three years.

• 29:15Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  But, uh, it was, it was, it was an interesting time. I had great expectations.

• 29:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  It did not work. I was a little depressed for a while, but I, I bounced back.

• 29:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it would seem, it's got to be a kind of a weird feeling to, to be seen and not seen at the same time. It's like, here I am. You know, you know who I am, but you don't know who I am, right?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:38Billy Corgan?

  Um, was there, was there something that you saw with the media where they, they were skeptical or, you know, cause how media, they try to make a story out of it. So what was the story they tried to make?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think the story, it just, the, the radio, uh, DJs were in charge of it. When they got the album, they heard the single, they either loved it or they didn't.

• 29:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And I don't, I don't think a lot of them loved it.

• 30:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I, I, I wasn't familiar with the first single on the record and I, I thought it was very strong.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  It was a strong song. It was a Jeff Barry and Andy Kim song.

• 30:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Who had originally written Sugar Sugar.

• 30:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  So I figured we had a winning team, had a winning song. Uh, it could have been, uh, the drug times. Uh, DJs were a little afraid of Let Me Take You Higher and Higher. It was a.

• 30:24Billy Corgan?

  Ah, I see.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  It was around those times, uh, Woodstock was coming around, but it was before Woodstock, I think.

• 30:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it was also the kind of the coming of the singer songwriter, the James Taylors and that whole world.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 30:37Billy Corgan?

  I mean, I don't even know how to ask this question. It's a weird question to ask, but it's like, well, what we now call, commonly called bubble gum pop or sunshine pop, or what do you call that period of music?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Bubble gum rock.

• 30:50Billy Corgan?

  Bubble gum rock.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was rock and roll.

• 30:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  And it was rock and roll for very young people.

• 30:55Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  It was never meant to compete with Led Zeppelin or the Stones or any of it.

• 30:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Never. It was, it was meant for nine to 13 year olds who chew bubble gum, bubble gum at the time.

• 31:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  And eat cereal in the morning. That's why they put Sugar Sugar on the back of Sugar Pops. 10 million boxes went out with a cardboard record that you could cut out and play like 21 times.

• 31:19Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yes, and it was very successful.

• 31:22Billy Corgan?

  I'm sure.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And it had four songs on it.

• 31:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  So a lot of kids, six, seven, eight years old, were eating breakfast. They'd say, what is that? Oh, let's cut that out and play it. So it was some of the first rock and roll they ever heard. I was never offended by the term bubble gum. I thought, I said, they should know who's playing on these records.

• 31:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  The greatest New York studio musicians played on the Arches records. Hugh McCracken, David Spinosa, two of these guys were on the Arches records. When, when Paul McCartney came to town to do Ram, who did he hire? Hugh McCracken and David Spinosa. Come on. So, and we had great drummers. We had great bass players and they played on all the hits. So it wasn't like a little kid band over here making young music. It was grownups making young music.

• 32:09Billy Corgan?

  I see. Who, who would you cite were the, the chief architects of the bubble gum sort of rock movement?

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a company called Kamisutra.

• 32:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  That had the, I think the Ohio Expresso, 1910 Fruit Gum, 1910 Fruit Gum Company was real. I think that was the key phrase, Fruit Gum Company. There's bubble gum for you.

• 32:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And they had One, Two, Three Red Lights, Simon Says, very young.

• 32:34Billy Corgan?

  Lemon, Lemon Pipers?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Lemon Pipers were on that label. That's right.

• 32:37Billy Corgan?

  Green Tambourine, what a great single that is.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Okay, great tambourine sound.

• 32:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, right.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. And that's where it came from. And, and I, I just got caught up in it.

• 32:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Because we were on a Saturday morning cartoon show.

• 32:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  What better group to lump it in there? But good artists, really, top artists like Tommy Rowe with Dizzy or Tommy James.

• 33:01Billy Corgan?

  Tommy James, great.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Both of those were kind of lumped into that at one point.

• 33:05Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Because they were appealing to that group also.

• 33:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Because it strikes me that it's, it's, it's almost anachronistic to everything that was going on in the 60s at the time. You know, the Beatles had gone like, kind of back to blues, back to basics. Of course, you had the rise of hard rock, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple. And here in the midst of all of this is this, this kind of beautiful pop music that has aged very, very well.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  It still sounds good.

• 33:36Billy Corgan?

  Sounds.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Sounds good. The songs still resonate.

• 33:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  You hear them in commercials, TV shows, movies.

• 33:43Billy Corgan?

  My kids were in the car two months ago singing Sugar Sugar.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 33:49Billy Corgan?

  I got, I got young kids, 10 and 7.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Perfect. They would love it.

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• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  So, but is it, sorry, because I love my rock history, so excuse me for going one question too deep, but was there, was there a, was it strictly a commercial philosophy, like you said, to appeal to young listeners and the Arches were part of that? Or was there a sort of, did somebody have a greater intellectual overlay there about, like, like this almost like pure pop against what was happening in music?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I don't think that was the mindset of the people in charge.

• 36:07Billy Corgan?

  Just commerce and.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was, especially for the Arches, it was a Saturday morning cartoon show. The music, we broke barriers with our music.

• 36:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Because it was pretty good rock and roll. If you listen to the.

• 36:21Billy Corgan?

  A lot better than what they're playing now for kids on TV.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Terrible right now. So I think that was the mindset, was keep it young and appeal to that. So Jeff Barry and Andy Kim and Bobby Bloom was another writer who wrote songs for us. They, they came up with themes and songs that were appropriate to that.

• 36:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  We didn't, they didn't dive deep into lyrics, but they dove deep into pockets on those records. The grooves were great.

• 36:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  And I remember Jeff Barry working very hard on Sugar Sugar, making sure that the drums and the bass played what he wanted. It took an hour and a half or two hours to get the pocket. And then I came out and after the track was laid and did my vocal.

• 37:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Which people say, who, who did you think about when you were singing Sugar Sugar? And I said, I was thinking about Donovan, Mellow Yellow. They call me Mellow Yellow. Quite right. I did, sugar, ah, honey, honey. I thought I was Donovan. I wasn't. I was, I was just me.

• 37:22Billy Corgan?

  Does Donovan know that?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  No, he does not know that.

• 37:24Billy Corgan?

  He knows now.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he knows. They'll come back for royalties. I know.

• 37:33Billy Corgan?

  Were there, were there, I don't want to say accusations, but I just know how music critics are. When that music became as popular as it became, what we call bubble gum rock, right? Was there, was there a pushback from that, the snobby crowd about what it was? Because it's so, it's so crassly commercial.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yes. I don't remember much of a pushback.

• 37:52Billy Corgan?

  Or they just ignore it?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  They kind of ignored it. They, they.

• 37:55Billy Corgan?

  That's even better if you think about it.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  It was much better. I never saw articles in Rolling Stone saying, well, this is crap.

• 38:01Billy Corgan?

  That would be beneath them.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Right. So they never touched us and they left us alone in our area, which grew.

• 38:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, I might, I mean, Sugar Sugar is probably getting played somewhere on this planet right now.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Right now. It's true. I went, I went to Amish country to do a show and I went to a farm with an Amish farmer and he showed me around the farm. And my girlfriend asked him, do you know my boyfriend's song, Sugar Sugar? Pulled out his phone and it was his ringtone.

• 38:33Billy Corgan?

  In Amish country.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  So we got around.

• 38:36Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 38:39Billy Corgan?

  I'm, I'm probably asking the most obvious question in the world, but it seemed to me,

• 38:45Billy Corgan?

  and maybe it's a testament to you, that when I hear you sing those songs, and I love the, it's, it's called Ron Dante's Funhouse. It's a compilation of all your work in this, in this area. It's like basically two CDs worth of music. It's on Spotify. At least that's where I found it. And I love that it was all, because I didn't have to go searching for all these things. It was all kind of compiled. And the thing that strikes me is, is you brought such a joy and a passion to the, to this work. It never feels like you're just phoning it in.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Every, every vocal session is a new session to me. And I'm a little anxious before the vocal session, just a little. I'm a pro. I've done it a long time. But when I, when I was doing those things, I wanted to bring my best and enjoy it. Because we used to do commercials and the, the account executive would say, you're singing about McDonald's fries and, you know, mayonnaise, but smile, smile when you're singing that. And I would go, okay. But I'd always thought in my vocals, I was smiling for my, my pop stuff.

• 39:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I always had, you know, and I said, it was, it was always, I always cheated as fresh. This is the first time I'm singing this.

• 39:58Billy Corgan?

  Well, I think that's part of the, the endurance of the music, right?

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Could be, could be. It's authentic.

• 40:04Billy Corgan?

  Because now that we know what it was all about, it doesn't take away the joy that's in the music.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  I would think so. It still makes people smile.

• 40:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  You know?

• 40:11Billy Corgan?

  I think it's interesting because.

• 40:15Billy Corgan?

  Almost all the ink spilled on the 60s going into the 70s is about, you know, Dylan going electric and, you know, all these things that really do matter. The Beatles breaking up and all these types of things. But hiding in plain sight is this other branch of popular music that's almost totally diametrically opposed to, I'm in my feelings. You know what I mean?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  The world is burning.

• 40:39Billy Corgan?

  I'm coming off of heroin or whatever. And you guys are over here writing pure pop. And, you know, I think I maybe, maybe what I'm after is that maybe because we've had such pop hegemony over the last 20 years and certainly the rise of Taylor Swift and like this other.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Bruno Mars and things.

• 40:56Billy Corgan?

  Bruno, all right, I mean, global pop artists that are, that are overtly pop. Like they're not even playing necessarily games about credibility in the way that we would normally voice it in the rock community. They're like, I want to have a great song and I'm just going to do whatever I got to do to do it. Maybe in some way that's casts a better light because coming out of the 60s and I, when I had Mickey Dolan's in that exact chair, talking to him about the Monkees movie Head and how it was kind of a riff on, you know, this, this overt idea of making something popular or plastic, you know? Do you ever see that Monkees movie Head? Oh, you never saw that movie? No. It's a very strange movie. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and it's kind of the Monkees are breaking up. So they almost make a movie about the end of the Monkees.

• 41:40Billy Corgan?

  So it's interesting if you're bored sometime. It's, it's, it's like, it's like a surreal take on what it means to be fake and real at the same time. So you might find something interesting in it. But, um, I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe more so than we realize, looking back at the, at the, at the, at the cultural nadir of the 1960s going into the 70s, that the, that the, the, the, the rise of bubblegum pop is just as potent as the rise of singer songwriter, you know, the artists making and producing their own records. That the, the 60s doesn't just usher in a different type of artist. It ushers in the, the, the, the, the very obvious moment of saying, but we're also going to make purely commercial pop music.

• 42:24Billy Corgan?

  We're not going to try to pretend that it's anything other than what it is. Because I know that was a long speech.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  That's quite right.

• 42:30Billy Corgan?

  Does that make sense?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  It makes sense. It makes sense. It, it has its place. Yeah. The, the pop charts when I was growing up had all types of different music. R and B, country.

• 42:42Billy Corgan?

  Well, I don't know what happened to that.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Singing nuns.

• 42:44Billy Corgan?

  They, they got, they got rid of rock now for 25 years.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  I hate that. And there's no keeping it down. They can try.

• 42:50Billy Corgan?

  Well, rock's about to have a massive comeback and everybody sees that.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Everybody sees it. I see, we just added to our Happy Together tour that I'm on. Jason Chef, the lead singer from Chicago.

• 43:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  For 16 years, great singer. He goes out and does a heavy rock thing at one point. And the audience goes crazy.

• 43:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  You know, it, it was something we hadn't had and now we have it on, on the tour. So wonderful.

• 43:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  But you're right, rock will always come back. It will always be something very important. Live, it's, it's, it's filling places.

• 43:23Billy Corgan?

  I saw that you'd produced the, the last Archie's album.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  I did.

• 43:28Billy Corgan?

  Did you have a sense? I mean, maybe I'm being too, too arty on the thing, but do you have a sense that, that, that thing was coming to an end?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  No. I thought this was just one in the, in, in.

• 43:39Billy Corgan?

  It would just keep going, yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  We'll just keep going as long as the TV show is on.

• 43:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  The TV show went off.

• 43:45Billy Corgan?

  And that was it?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  And I figured that was the end of that, that group.

• 43:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  It was the end of the, you know, the popularity. It was a three or four year popularity on CBS.

• 43:54Billy Corgan?

  Did you want to be a producer? Was that something of interest to you?

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I, I did it because I wanted my vocals to sound good. I wanted my vocals to be what I wanted.

• 44:03Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Not what the producer thought he should put, the microphone he should put on my voice. So it started with, I was a singer trying to get my voice recorded properly and the arrangement, I wanted the arrangement to surround the voice so that it, it was, it was a cushion for the voice.

• 44:19Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  And, and it would, and that's the way I got into productions. I liked producing because it was like a big, uh, was it, um, Orson Welles once said, directing is like a big train set that you have complete control over and you can build anything on it.

• 44:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  And I think producing records is very similar to that because you have a control over everything.

• 44:40Billy Corgan?

  That's, that's, that's, to me, that's the secret power of music is, is, is actually being at the board, making those decisions.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Right at the end, who has the total final cut?

• 44:49Billy Corgan?

  This is, this is always, you know, an argument I would have with my band is, is, you know, everybody wants to hear their instrument louder or whatever, you know? And I get that. But the thing is, if you're not in there at that board, making those decisions, you know what I mean?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  That's right. No, no, it's, I love the final cut. It's wonderful to have that because I, I, I did, I did, I, I had the final cut on all the productions I was involved with.

• 45:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  And it was the most fun and it turned out

• 45:20Speaker 01

  good things came from it.

• 45:21Billy Corgan?

  So let me ask you a nerd question then. So, uh, what's your favorite vocal mic then?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Uh, AK47, I don't know. It's Sony, there's a Sony mic I like.

• 45:32Billy Corgan?

  Is it that crazy one that's like?

• 45:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that one.

• 45:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  It depends on the singer's voice. When I, when I would.

• 45:41Billy Corgan?

  I guess I'm asking for you though.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, AK47. It'd be.

• 45:45Billy Corgan?

  Really? Okay.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  One of those old mics that I liked.

• 45:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  But, um.

• 45:48Billy Corgan?

  Do you like a mic that like works with you or do you like it like as clear as possible? You know?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  I like it works with me.

• 45:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  I think everything should be, I don't know, my production technique is everything should be enhanced.

• 45:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  We should enhance the bass. The drum, we should work for it. And I, I listen to your stuff. It's very earthy and

• 46:10Speaker 01

  I noticed you don't enhance that much because you, you're going for the truth in the track, I think.

• 46:15Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Mine is to fabricate a better track.

• 46:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  And make it, and make it spectacular.

• 46:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I sort of believe in, in, in something that not everyone agrees with, which is like, let's call it like a tonal density. Where if you, if you put a lot of things together in a particular jigsaw way, it creates this other sort of overarching harmonic. The problem with it is it takes forever to do.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Does take a long time.

• 46:40Billy Corgan?

  And it's a very dependent on the guitar. I'm a guitar player first, so you can, you can see where that.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  I can see where it's going.

• 46:46Billy Corgan?

  That bread gets buttered.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  I have to tell you, they, both these theories work. Because there's nothing, nothing to say, well, you can't do that.

• 46:52Billy Corgan?

  No, that's the thing. No, no, that's the beautiful thing about music. There really is no one way of doing it. And everybody's, um, I used to have this producer used to say, uh, it's a weird, he's, it was, he's English.

• 47:06Billy Corgan?

  One man's snare drum is an, one man's meat is another man's snare drum. Very English.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  That's perfect though.

• 47:16Billy Corgan?

  I, I am a, I'm a Barry Manilow fan going way back and the, the record I fell in love with was Mandy, which I know you were involved with. So I had to bring that up because Barry, obviously great songwriter and, and has had an incredible sustained career. So let's start there. I mean, knowing Barry all these years, I mean, you must sort of marvel at his, his sustained talent, a guy, right?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  It, it just, right, right from the beginning, I knew he would have a career. The, the first songs he ever played me when we first met.

• 47:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  To get together and he wanted me to produce him.

• 47:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Was, uh, Could It Be Magic?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Beethoven. I said, wow, this is a wonderful way to go. He played me some of his other songs. I Am Your Child, different things. And I knew that he had something. And I saw his first live show and his first live show is so alike his live show today. He was building a dramatic show that had peaks and valleys that covered jazz, pop, Broadway, all kinds, and of course, the hits. And, uh, so I'm amazed that it's, it's gone on 50 years.

• 48:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  But he, he loves what he does.

• 48:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  He loves it. He would not do it if he didn't genuinely love being on stage.

• 48:33Billy Corgan?

  It's interesting because if you think about it,

• 48:37Billy Corgan?

  there aren't many of that, that guard left that, that connect us to like the old Hollywood and the old way of doing it.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 48:44Billy Corgan?

  Barry Manilow is one, Liza's another, where it's this beautiful connection to the old Tin Pan Alley songwriters, the Harry Warrens and the Cole Porters and the, the Irving Berlins, but then that beautiful bridge all the way to like, you know, uh, you know, Rogers and Hammerstein and then into, into 70s pop.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:03Billy Corgan?

  There's this beautiful kind of bridge there and you have to, you almost have to be a lover of song to really appreciate how magical that is because it's, it takes a certain art of understanding. And then obviously there's a great empathy for the performers. Barry being one of those, he'd take, his audience like loves him. That's just part of it.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  They, they call it my Barry.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  They do. It's my Barry. He speaks to each individual one. And that has resonated throughout the years and developed new fans.

• 49:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So talk a little about Mandy since I, since I, okay, so imagine, you know, whatever I was seven years old, I'm listening to the 45. So, so take me back into the session.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Well, it was an incredible session. We had one album out.

• 49:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  And it was not a hit. So we were going in for our second album.

• 49:55Billy Corgan?

  Was there any, do you remember who the label was?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Ariston Records.

• 49:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So is this Clive Davis?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:01Billy Corgan?

  So was Clive putting pressure on you? Better come up with the hit?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Well, he just, he wanted, he wanted to funnel in his songs that he liked.

• 50:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  And bless his soul, he had a good ear and he funneled in some beautiful songs. And Brandy was one of them.

• 50:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  And as we were recording it, we realized we can't call it Brandy.

• 50:21Billy Corgan?

  Cause of the Looking Glass hit.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yes. So Barry came up with an arrangement. It was too fast. He went out and he started to play it as a ballad. And that's the one that we caught that night. It was, it was just a bass drum piano, live vocal and.

• 50:38Billy Corgan?

  That's a live vocal?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Live vocal.

• 50:40Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. We punched in maybe one or two lines, tops. So it's the live vocal. That's why it's so emotional. Cause our president was in the booth with us, the man who pays for everything and promotes everything. So there was a lot of pressure that night to do well. And Barry went out and knocked it out, knocked it out of the ballpark, sang Mandy beautifully. And I said, as a producer, don't screw it up. Don't overdo it.

• 51:08Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Don't get carried away with guitars and this and that. I brought in a couple of arrangers who worked with Barry on, on some oboes or string parts.

• 51:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Very tasteful.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  And then Barry and I did all the backgrounds.

• 51:20Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  He did all the Oz in the big sections. And I remember during, during the mix, I kind of accidentally hit the echo pot on the snare and it went and everybody said, that's it. So I used it every two and four. And that's the key change. We put the key change in and that was.

• 51:38Billy Corgan?

  Now I gotta go back and listen.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Listen to it. You'll hear, it's a, it's a special sound on the drum, the snare especially. It was the beginning of the rock ballad. People don't realize that other groups kind of picked that up and all of a sudden you're hearing.

• 51:50Billy Corgan?

  You know what? It's funny you mention, I can't, I can't think of a record before that, that does what it becomes the rock ballad.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was, it was a rock ballad from the key change on with as much as we could put into it.

• 52:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And this was like 74?

• 52:05Speaker 01

  74, we recorded it. It was number one, January 75.

• 52:09Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  And we knew we had something that night. Cause I'd been in tons of sessions since the sixties.

• 52:15Billy Corgan?

  Well, you would know.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  I heard it. Clive heard it. Barry heard it. We all, oh, the playback. Okay. This is something we must handle with kid gloves, take good care of.

• 52:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Let's get it out. And I got calls the day it was played on the radio from people in Nashville, from California, from all over the place going, I just heard you, Mandy on the radio. I, I pulled off the road. I almost crashed. It was so good.

• 52:41Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  And it went number one. That was the first number one production.

• 52:45Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. But we knew we had something. We had to follow it up with some good stuff.

• 52:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And we followed with, it's a miracle. It's up tempo, which was unusual, but that was what we had.

• 52:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And that went top 10. And then it was iffy, what's going to happen next with his career, right? So I did an edit on Could It Be Magic? Cause it was originally seven minutes long.

• 53:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And I made it 360 or 359. And that edited version came out and kind of solidified his career.

• 53:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  I would think at the time.

• 53:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. He's unusual in that he's, at some point he became kind of,

• 53:25Billy Corgan?

  certain, certain singers reach a point where it's like hits are nice, but they're, it's, they're not, they're not, they're no longer subservient to trend.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 53:36Billy Corgan?

  Once Barry found his audience, they've never left him. And he's had this incredible run that wasn't dependent on whether or not he was in or out, or he had a moment or a song or, and you think about it, there's very few singers have ever been able to pull that off.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  It's, it's unbelievable, a career.

• 53:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  And it has a lot to do with his live show and who he appealed to.

• 53:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  The way he, he also is very vulnerable on stage.

• 54:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  He, he doesn't get out there and he's a big star. He makes fun of himself. He pulls out his accordion and he plays his accordion. He sings with his grandfather in an old clip.

• 54:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  This, his grandfather telling him to sing it, Barry, sing it. Which was one of the first things Barry ever played for me was like that, the quarter machine on Times Square, you could go in for a quarter.

• 54:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And record your voice. And his grandfather took him in as six and recorded him, tried to get him to sing Happy Birthday. And Barry wouldn't sing. So the grandfather's going, sing it. The money's going, sing it. And Barry goes, no, no, no. And we put that right on the opening cut of his first album.

• 54:39Billy Corgan?

  As someone who knows him and worked with him and, and was such a part of his success, like,

• 54:45Billy Corgan?

  what, what, I always find this interesting because all singers and you know, like there's a personality and, and an image that comes across in an entertainer. But like, what's something about Barry that we, we wouldn't understand? Like, is it, is it his songwriting that's the key or like, just give me something that's sort of illustrates him a little bit more, if you don't mind?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Well, he's a very private person. And he's happy alone, I, I feel, knowing him over the years. He likes to read great books and do crossword puzzles. And he's a background musician. He was the guy in the band. He was the keyboardist that played for all the aspiring Broadway girls that were trying to get auditions. He would back them up.

• 55:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  And he would help them. He'd give them a key. He'd help them with the song. He'd help them get the job maybe. So he must've done hundreds of those things over the years. He was the Marvin Hamlish, after Marvin Hamlish.

• 55:41Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Marvin did the same thing.

• 55:43Billy Corgan?

  Right. For Liza.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Right. So that's, that's the kind of guy he is. He, he was not ready to be the front man. Actually his first session, he said, well, you're going to sing it, right, Ron? And I said, no, no, you're going to sing it. They're your songs. I'm producing you. We're working together. So he said, oh, okay. I'm not sure about being the front man. And then he even says it in his interviews, that we kind of pushed him out in front.

• 56:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  So he's a private guy and he, he loves his fans and he's, he's one of us.

• 56:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  He's one of the musicians that, you know, they took it to the front.

• 56:20Billy Corgan?

  That does explain something to me. Cause you know, a lot of singers are sociopathic, let's face it. You know what I mean?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Join the group.

• 56:31Billy Corgan?

  There's something that, that, that, that I don't quite understand in myself of why I feel the need to stand there behind that microphone and sing to thousands of people. I don't really understand it.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:42Billy Corgan?

  There's a part of it that makes sense, like all are, all the eyes are on you and it's your song. And you know, in my case, I'm usually singing my song and there's an ego to all that. And that's something beautiful about that because if people enjoy it, well, then it's not a bad thing.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:56Billy Corgan?

  But there's still this other part that's like, wow, why do I want to be up there so bad?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Do I have to be up there tonight? You know?

• 57:03Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Maybe I'd like to go see somebody else sing, right? But that, that's part of us. I mean, none of us, Frank Sinatra would get nervous before going on stage.

• 57:13Billy Corgan?

  Amazing, right?

• 57:13Speaker 01

  He even said, he said, I'm nervous about the voice tonight. I'm not sure it's going to be there, right? Man who'd been in the business 60 years and did everything.

• 57:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  So we're, we're part of that, you know, we're just human.

• 57:28Billy Corgan?

  Just give me a little bit of a snapshot because you know, you'd come from this, you're a demo guy and you work your way up. You have hit records. You, you, you do try to do a solo career where it's about you and your name. And it seems like once you kind of get into the seventies, I, my term for it is the hustle, but you really start working like, I mean, you could do everything from being involved with Broadway shows to your, I mean, you famously sang the, the Coke, like to teach the whole world to sing. I mean, you're like, you're kind of everywhere at the same time.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  It was.

• 58:01Billy Corgan?

  Can you kind of give me a snapshot of your life in the seventies?

• 58:03Speaker 01

  It was get up in the morning, pick up the phone messages, see what's, there was a thing called registry that would book singers. And they would call me and they, they, they handled all the jingle houses. They were the central place. They had all the singers' names. They would call me and say, be at A and R recording studio at four o'clock. You're doing a Dr. Pepper commercial. And so that would be the start of my day. Then I'd, I'd look into other things that were happening, you know, people I knew.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  It was, it was a, a time to say yes. And I knew that it, it was a certain window that would happen. So I made sure I was available for the, the things that came along on the phone. People meet me at parties, say, would you like to be involved in a Broadway show? I said, let me read the script. I read the script. It was a thing called Ain't Nispie Haven. I went right in. I said, I'm in.

• 58:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I always wanted to do something like this. I used to work in that area. The Brill Building is right in the middle of Broadway.

• 59:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  So that would be my.

• 59:05Billy Corgan?

  That's the Fats Waller story, is that?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And it won the Tony for best musical.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  It won three Tonys that year. It was an amazing show and I loved it. It was music.

• 59:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Cause I got to supervise the recording RCA did a cast recordings. I was part of that. I made that deal. And it just, I kept, I kept saying, this has to stop at some point. And, and things kept coming my way and I, I was ready for it. I was prepared for it. I already had the experience. I, I had also the ambition to do things. I, I didn't want to just be stuck as the demo singer.

• 59:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  The singer songwriter, the, the artist. I knew what it felt like to be an artist. So that's why when I produce people, I know what they're going through.

• 59:49Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  And I, I make, I make it comfortable for them.

• 59:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  I, I deal with their minds, not just their vocals.

• 59:56Billy Corgan?

  Is there, is then, because you sang on so many successful records, is there, is there a perfect pop formula?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 1:00:06Billy Corgan?

  Is it, is it right song, right performer, right key, right? Is it?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  It's just good fortune overlays the, the session.

• 1:00:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Or the thing that you're working on and it happened to be the right bass player, the right guitarist, the right engineer.

• 1:00:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Important and the songs, songs are the key without songs. As Paul Anka just said in an interview, without the songs, the, the artists are not there.

• 1:00:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Yeah. So that's what blows my mind with somebody like Mr. Anka is like, you know, incredible musical life, was a teen idol, the whole thing, but behind it all is the songwriter.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Songwriter and he wrote some great songs. His first teenage songs were monstrous.

• 1:00:49Billy Corgan?

  The best is he bought all his publishing back in like.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Smart move.

• 1:00:53Billy Corgan?

  He bought, he bought by the, by the early sixties, when his kind of teen idol thing was running out. I think he was on ABC Paramount or something. He went and bought back all his publishing from them in like 1963.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:01:10Billy Corgan?

  He, he basically took all the money he had at the time, which was about, I think he said it was about $350,000. In 1963 money.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:01:19Billy Corgan?

  And he bought all his publishing back and he still got his publishing.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Very, he was very smart.

• 1:01:24Billy Corgan?

  Very smart guy.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Very smart and a great singer and great performer.

• 1:01:28Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, I didn't know this until today, so I'm not claiming any deep knowledge, but, uh, I did, interview Pat Benatar and her husband Neil. Obviously they've had this incredible 45 plus year musical partnership, but I didn't know you were at the beginning of that particular story.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I was.

• 1:01:47Billy Corgan?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  It was very cool.

• 1:01:49Billy Corgan?

  What did you, what did you see in her early?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  I was a friend of mine in New York City, Jim Kerr, local DJ who's still on radio. Uh, he's called me up, he said, Chris, this is interested in this girl singer. She's in a club downtown. Why don't you go down and see her?

• 1:02:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  They need a producer. So I went down to see her. She sang, uh, Cryin', Roy Orbison's Cryin'.

• 1:02:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  She sang You Better Run, uh, by The Old Rascals, right? And, and, and the minute she hit You Better Run, I heard.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  I said, that's it. Cause I always loved that record to begin with. I said, we can make a kicking record with her. I said, she could do that. She sang it great.

• 1:02:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  She got a review in one of the papers, but there were lines around the block for her before she signed a deal.

• 1:02:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  So I, I, I took her into the studio, uh, signed a deal with Chris List to do three sides. That was it. Cause I was busy with other things.

• 1:02:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  But I really believed that she was the, she had an attitude that was really different than most of the girls around. The girl singers were not quite like Pat. She.

• 1:03:00Billy Corgan?

  Very strong personality.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  She's a, a small package, but a huge power. And I, I, I saw it right away. I said, she's first of all, she's so cute. She was so adorable. I said, what a great looking girl. She, she gets, if she gets a good hit, she will have a huge success.

• 1:03:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And I, I just adored her. And, uh, I took her into the studio with, uh, my friend, Paul Schaefer, who did the arrangements. He did, we did Heartbreaker and You Better Run and Cryin'. That was the three songs I chose. And we did a kick arrangement. We had a guitarist named Elliot Randall, who had played on him. He was with, uh, Steely Dan for a while, played solos on their stuff.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  And the sessions were unbelievable. When we got to her vocals, I noticed she was a little apprehensive. She had been singing in clubs, not in recording studios with phones on.

• 1:03:52Billy Corgan?

  It takes, it takes time, yeah.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  It takes, you know? So I, I, I built a little stage in the studio with a spotlight, put the mic and stand on top of the stage. And I let her, I invited some people and her mother came and they were in the booth. So we did the vocals as a performance and she knocked it, she was like, I said, this is it. I heard her do You Better Run or Heartbreaker or even Cryin'. Nobody's ever heard Cryin'. They never released it.

• 1:04:19Billy Corgan?

  I wonder why they never put it out.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's, maybe it's the wrong direction because it's a sparse arrangement.

• 1:04:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  But it shows off her vocal ability a hundred percent. So, uh, that was it. Uh, the, the A and R guy, Jeff Aldrich, real nice guy. I sent him the, the pre-mix. I said, okay, this is, I'm going to put an extra guitar on this stuff, but here's the pre-mix. He showed it to the, uh, showed it to the, uh, presidents and the guy is in charge of the thing. And I think what happened was they thought, no, Ron's a middle of the road producer. He's had the Arches, okay, but he's had Barry Manilow with some big hits for five or six years.

• 1:05:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  And that's a whole different area than we're going to put Pat. So what they did was they, uh, they cloned my records. They cloned my arrangements, they recut them all with Mike Chapman, beautiful producer, great guy.

• 1:05:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  But those are my arrangements. Me, Paul and I worked on this day and night before we got to the studio. I worked on the vocal arrangements, the breakdowns. I'm singing on them with her. And, uh, so she called me one night and she said, she was, she was crying at the time. She said, they want to take me away from you.

• 1:05:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Right? And she didn't want to leave. And I as the, not as the producer, but the artist in me said, you must tell her the truth. That if she fights them over me, she could hurt her career.

• 1:05:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, she could lose.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  She could lose.

• 1:05:48Billy Corgan?

  You'll be, you'll be fine, but she might get hurt.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I told her that. I said, you have to go with them.

• 1:05:54Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Whatever they want you to do, you go with it. You're going to be a big star. But this is your time to make that decision. And I did it and that's, that's the honest truth. That's what happened.

• 1:06:05Billy Corgan?

  I believe you.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  And, uh, I, I love it to this day. I'm so proud of her career and she was the MTV girl for a while with those great videos. And she went on and her and Neil created great records.

• 1:06:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Wow. Those situations are tough. I've had a few of those myself.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Of course, and you have to roll with it.

• 1:06:24Billy Corgan?

  Well,

• 1:06:27Billy Corgan?

  it's not, it's not so much, uh, you, you can't win them all. It's, there's just times when you just got to get out of the way. And I, I, I give you big props for getting out of the way on that one. That, that couldn't have been easy.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  It wasn't. I knew she was going to be a big star because at the minute we recorded those records, I said, this is, these are hits. We had to put all three of them out at the same time.

• 1:06:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay, we're almost done. Thank you for indulging me. Um, you know, there's not a ton of information on you on the, on the internets to quote George Bush. But I saw this and I, this piqued my interest. Paris Review from 1978 to 1985. Now, was it George Plimpton was your neighbor?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  He was my neighbor and my best friend.

• 1:07:10Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, we met over a fire. He had the brownstone next to mine. His wife was on the second floor and one night I come out with my wife and there's fire coming out of the second floor.

• 1:07:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  So we rush in and we help George's wife, Freddie, get the baby out. She had been waxing her eyebrows and set the whole window on fire. So we got them out and George and I met that night. And he said, oh, what do you do? You seem to have a car to pick you up every day.

• 1:07:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I said, well, I'm in the music business. I produce things and stuff. He said, he said, he invited me over for dinner. Then he started, he had a pool table. We started to play pool. And we're having fun every Friday night. We play pool, then go to Elaine's. It was like a dream come true for a kid from Staten Island. And, uh, one, one night he said, we're losing our publisher. And he said, would you be interested in publishing the magazine? I said, I love the magazine. You've had, you had the first interview with Hemingway. You've had the best interviews with the greatest writers of all times. You, you put, you give new writers a chance every, I said, I'd love to. I said, but you have to beat me at pool. And he did. He, he ran the table for, for like two roles. And I said, you didn't have to do that, George.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  I'd love to become the publisher.

• 1:08:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  And so I was involved in the covers that we did. Now we, you know, I, I meet the people he'd invite over to his apartment for, through the greatest parties. But that was a beautiful time because I met a whole different type of people.

• 1:08:40Billy Corgan?

  I'm sure.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  I came out of the music business where sometimes you have to check your wallet.

• 1:08:45Billy Corgan?

  Full of, full of scoundrels.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yes. Sometimes you check your wallet. Other ti, in this business, it's, it's, it's different. You know, they're gentlemen about it. So that was my involvement in it and it led to great things.

• 1:08:56Billy Corgan?

  Wow. Speaking of George Plimpton, recently I met the gentleman who he wrote the fictional baseball article on.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:09:04Billy Corgan?

  Remember that where he wrote about a fictional baseball player?

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:09:07Billy Corgan?

  I can't remember, but it's a very famous article. I met the gentleman.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:09:11Billy Corgan?

  That's in the, pictured in the article and to this day he still gets recognized.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  I'll bet. George made lots of people famous and he was famous for being the amateur. He was an amateur fighter, amateur hockey man, amateur, uh, uh, boxing and hockey and basketball.

• 1:09:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  I mean, he, he wrote about, he loves sports. He was, he was one of those great people that you just love and talk to. You know, they have great stories.

• 1:09:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Two more things.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:40Billy Corgan?

  Given your success and given your life, which is really in many ways, I can't, I can't think of anybody that's similar to your story.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  So different.

• 1:09:51Billy Corgan?

  It is different, uh, but cool, certainly cool.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:09:56Billy Corgan?

  Where do you fall? And maybe there's no way, maybe it's just a silly question to ask, but where do you fall on art versus commerce? Does, does the question make sense the way?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  It does.

• 1:10:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  It does. And I understand that.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  I would love to say art. It's pure art. I always think of, but in the, in my base, in my depths, it's commerce and art. It's like, you're a Picasso. I'm Andy Warhol.

• 1:10:26Billy Corgan?

  I get it, yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  You know, that's what I feel about you.

• 1:10:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  No, no, you, you, you truly believe what you did and did it well and broke ground and suffered for it sometimes, but you did it, right? Mine is more like, uh, pop art.

• 1:10:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  You know, and I always, I always, I have to think, I came from a poor family. I, I, we didn't have much. And, uh, I, I always thought about, well, is there some way to monetize this? And that, that's what I do. So I, I combine commerce and art equally. I do not favor one or the other and the art comes. If you work hard enough, you know, if you, if you feel deeply, I felt deeply about things that didn't work.

• 1:11:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  But I was proud of them.

• 1:11:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  And I, I do it again. So that's where, that's kind of where I fall. Does that explain it?

• 1:11:17Billy Corgan?

  Well, I think, I think what I get listening to you is because, you know, when you work in the music business and it, and as somebody once said to me, it's called the music business for a reason.

• 1:11:29Billy Corgan?

  But, but you know, uh,

• 1:11:35Billy Corgan?

  I've done, I've done many indulgent things and I like a lot of indulgent music. But when pop is done at the highest level, it is unmistakable that it is its own form of art. It stands. And if you look at the two most traded artists in the world to this day, it's Picasso and Andy Warhol. So that tells you on some level, the public recognizes that the greatest creative expression without much commercial oversight, although Picasso had plenty of commercial oversight, but that's a story for another day. He was very aware of how much he was selling. There's plenty of documentation of that.

• 1:12:15Billy Corgan?

  So he wasn't just living in a cave, some painting, painting the Madonna. But if you look at that, if you look at the two greatest artistic movements of the 20th century, at least visually, well, there you go. And even if you want to go into Hollywood, whatever, you can talk about the great films of Fellini, but you can also talk about, you know, the great, you know, the great commercial success of John Ford.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's the artwork of the 20th century, film in particular to me. It's great art. The Godfather is, is, is a work of great art.

• 1:12:48Billy Corgan?

  So, yeah, I didn't mean to stop.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  That's right. No, no. And, and some of the more pop stuff is also great art.

• 1:12:56Billy Corgan?

  I, uh, where do you fall personally? Like, what, what is most attractive to you? Is it, is it art that achieves a great clarity and commercial success? Or is it great pop music that has an artistic bent?

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Good question.

• 1:13:12Billy Corgan?

  Cause the great songs of Gothic King, which were obviously, you know, they were written in those times. To me, that's high art.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely.

• 1:13:19Billy Corgan?

  But they were trying to write hits. It's not like they were sitting there trying to be arty.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  But they were artists.

• 1:13:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  They were creating something.

• 1:13:26Billy Corgan?

  So where do you fall on that personally?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  I'm kind of, what, pop art, that side of it.

• 1:13:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  I would fall on.

• 1:13:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yes, cause I enjoy it. You see, I'm not severely depressed.

• 1:13:38Billy Corgan?

  There's no way to top that.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Okay. Thank you. I've enjoyed you very much. I've enjoyed this interview.

• 1:13:47Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.