Stewart Copeland | THe Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

What happens when a rock legend stops being just “the drummer from The Police” and spends decades chasing every other creative obsession? Stewart Copeland and Billy Corgan skip the greatest hits and tumble down the Rumble Fish rabbit hole with Francis Coppola. They revisit the “hell on earth” final Police sessions and unpack why band therapy involved incense and a lot of gazing into each other’s eyes. Also on the menu: a prison-themed song with a very John Waters title, a horse incident (Stewart insists the record be corrected), an opera that got shredded by critics, a night in a Zaire jail, and a German superfan with questionable priorities. Then it gets thoughtful: the strange weight of the rock-star “avatar,” what AI means for the musical middle class, and what happened when Stewart’s son built a digital version of him. 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  People grew up to these songs. People fell in love, fell out of love. The emotional baggage kind of grows, and it's a good thing.

• 1:08Billy Corgan?

  151 shows, $362 million gross.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:12Billy Corgan?

  Not bad.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Our songwriter, Stingo, would reveal his songs on an as-needed basis.

• 1:19Billy Corgan?

  Some people are born to be rock stars. Your lead singer was one of them.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Meal, take it.

• 1:26Billy Corgan?

  You're to blame.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Pay me money. I don't make you happy, I'll make you sad.

• 1:31Billy Corgan?

  Why'd you get thrown in jail?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Uh, nothing sexy.

• 1:34Billy Corgan?

  Don't drop the soap.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Don't drop the soap for anyone else but me.

• 1:39Billy Corgan?

  Stuart Copeland, nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Um, you know, when I talk to someone with your musical history, you know, it's always easy to go towards the shiny lights, but I found myself in preparing to talk to you thinking, I don't know as much about all the other work that you've done. And I started with Rumblefish because I remember when the song came out and I really liked it. And I remember the video was on TV, if that seems right. And I thought, well, let's go down that rabbit hole. So that's mostly what I want to talk about, is all the other stuff. It does, of course, cross-section with your band, but, but, um, so if you don't mind, start Rumblefish.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Wherever you like, yeah.

• 2:18Billy Corgan?

  I know, I know The Police hadn't quite split up yet.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  We were, we had just recorded our last album.

• 2:24Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  And which was Hell on Earth.

• 2:27Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember that title, but...

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Everybody knows what a warm and cozy band The Police was. Um, not. Uh, and just in the depths of the misery of dealing with each other. By the way, we've had therapy since and we now understand what it was all about.

• 2:41Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:42Billy Corgan?

  Did you do group therapy?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Uh, well, duotherapy.

• 2:46Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we learned...

• 2:48Billy Corgan?

  Maybe we should do that in my band, because...

• 2:50Speaker 02

  It's, I totally recommend it. Because music and art in general is very emotional, and it's not like an accountant who's just juggling numbers. No, it's your, it's yourself.

• 3:00Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna ask this question in a different context, but I'll ask it now. I saw a quote where, I believe you said something like, "We got along very well socially."

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Billy Corgan?

  So what, what was it about the musical context that brought out, you know, the sparks and the worst of your personalities?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Very, very simple to comprehend, which we didn't at the time, but do now. Which is that we're on this planet as musicians for a different purpose.

• 3:22Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  We're not on the same mission. I, for me, music is a physical...

• 3:28Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  ...activity. I bang, it's fun to do. I like to bang, I like to bang more things. And that's why I pick up my drumsticks, is because I enjoy the physical sensation. And I regard a song...

• 3:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  ...as being a tool in service of the band to make the band look cool.

• 3:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Now, you might have an opposite point of view as a songwriter, that the band is there to serve the song. And so that's where the conflict lies.

• 3:51Billy Corgan?

  Well, I'm, I'm, I'm probably more on your side of the street than you might imagine, because I play, you know, for many years with Jimmy Chamberlain, who's a very busy drummer.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:00Billy Corgan?

  Um, more jazz-minded, but like a croupa, a lot of business.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  But he's a player guy.

• 4:05Billy Corgan?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  He's not a serve-the-song guy necessarily.

• 4:08Billy Corgan?

  No, he actually, actually, he's really weird in that he loves songs, and he has no problem if you turn around and go, "It's too busy, can you clear it out?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah, no problem." Ego-less with that stuff. So we never had those...

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Well, it's not a matter of ego, which is what we thought at the time. It's a matter of, I'm not here to not play. I'm here to play. And it's not a matter of ego.

• 4:32Billy Corgan?

  I feel like I'm in the therapy session.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And we realized it wasn't that we were not having to deal with the Antichrist.

• 4:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  And that we were not to try to extinguish each other's flame.

• 4:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Shoot each other down from the sky, or any of that.

• 4:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  It was just that we're on different conflicting missions, which was great when we were young and codependent, and that we realized the contrast and the conflict is what made it what it was.

• 4:54Billy Corgan?

  What is a band if not a codependent exercise?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, no, when you probably found...

• 5:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Uh, your first band were probably, you were just one of the guys in the band, and you were probably, when you brought a song in, you were like, "Oh, God, you like my song? Oh, gosh, great," you know?

• 5:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, fast forward.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Whatever you want to do with it, sure, fine. Okay, now you've had a few hits, you know that you're the hit songwriter.

• 5:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  And you're not quite so malleable.

• 5:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's true. Um, but let's go back to Rumblefish, because I really, I really enjoyed that song when it came out. I thought it was such an interesting...

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did that at four, you know, basically Stan was on the road, Stan Ridgway.

• 5:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Then he came down to studio.

• 5:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  And we made it up that day. And that night, I did a 2 o'clock in the morning mix.

• 5:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  And he got back in a plane to rejoin his band who were on the road.

• 5:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  And a little story about that. Um, he wrote to me, and then, then the next day, we mixed it into the film. It was the last thing, and then we mixed it into the film.

• 5:48Billy Corgan?

  One of those, okay.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  And so then I get a call from, saying, "Oh, Stuart, Stuart, Stuart, I can't stand it." Uh, you know, the lyric is just not, you know, I can't live with that lyric. Here's some of the tape, and I'll do something much better." So like an idiot, I've learned, I sent him the two-inch tape. The master tape, which had a couple of tracks available for vocal, which he went over the original vocal that's on the record. So the record that got released is that 4 o'clock in the morning mix that we just, oh, okay, let's just print something, he's gotta get on his plane. That's on the record, that mix.

• 6:20Billy Corgan?

  And the original vocal is long gone.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  And, no, no, the original vocal, that's, I had to go back to that mix to save, to save the original vocal. The master was all screwed up, the vocal was gone on the master. And he had some other song which wasn't as good.

• 6:36Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  That's, that's just a little adventure along the way.

• 6:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, but did you have, was it something like work, it was Francis Ford Coppola, but like working with like, like a great director, did that light something in you? Was that something you wanted to do?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  It was an alien world, I had no idea what it was all about, but Francis taught me.

• 6:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Um, and...

• 6:55Billy Corgan?

  Not a, not a bad teacher.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, the main thing that I learned was that it's not about this cool guitar riff. It's about, okay, we were talking earlier about serving the song. Okay, film, it's all about serving the scene.

• 7:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  And I'm not even playing anything, I'm a composer and I'm making music to serve the scene. Uh, and he taught me that music can provide an alternative set of facts. In fact, that music can negate what your eyes are telling you, your lying eyes. The music can tell you whether to trust this person or to not trust this person. You put a [BLEEP] cord on him, you know he's an [BLEEP], no matter how handsome or beautiful. And so he taught me the language of music interacting with drama, and I've never been the same since.

• 7:35Billy Corgan?

  And it's, it's, you know, there's no judgment in what I'm asking. I'm trying to find the right words, but it's like, if I look at your work outside of The Police, uh, you never, well, I can't say never, but you don't seem particularly focused on popularity. And I don't mean you don't want people to like what you do.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right. Of course I want everyone to love what I do, but...

• 7:56Billy Corgan?

  But you're not a trendy guy, maybe?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Not necessarily, no. Well, for 20 years, as soon as I escaped from the harsh yoke of cruel police world...

• 8:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Uh, um, for 20 years, I was a hired gun. Flit-eyed professional, driving my kids to, you know, suburban dad driving my kids to school, and rock and roll, because when you're a film composer, you don't want to be wearing snake skin pants for, you know, when you're doing basically a job interview with Oliver Stone.

• 8:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  He wants to hire a professional. And so all the crazy wardrobe went out, and I, and I... A film composer is not even an artist. He's a craftsman in service of the director. The director's the artist, but I will submit, I will propound the notion that the film composer has the widest set of music skills of any kind of musician. Okay, he's not writing hits, he's not even an artist, but he knows how to make you happy, sad, or happy, sad. Um, and he can do that in any musical language, from jazz to futuristic, uh, to from, uh, period pieces, because films cover every aspect of the human condition, from happy to sad, to war, to love, to future, to history and everything. So the film composer has to learn these chops.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  And although I hated the industry, you know, working for the rat kingdom, that's Disney to you. Uh, ain't no, ain't no Mickey Mouse, it's, it's a horrible business. But the work, working with directors, is really engrossing. And you really learn how music, you don't have to write a whole song, but you can change the arc of a story with music. And so when I finally escaped from Hollywood, I ended up doing the same job, uh, only for much less pay, and it's called opera.

• 9:39Billy Corgan?

  But were you, I mean, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. It's, you, did you, did you need a job, or did you want a job?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  I wanted a job, I wanted to earn my living, and royalties are cool, but I wanted to earn my living.

• 9:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  And I enjoyed the work. The business drove me nuts after a while.

• 9:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  But I, I really, you know, directors are generally...

• 10:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  You don't get to be a director unless you've got something going on upstairs.

• 10:03Billy Corgan?

  Was there a temptation on your part, or were other people trying to convince you to keep going sort of in the pop?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 10:10Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  I'm sure Stingo had that in spades, but nobody expects the drummer in a band to write another hit. Um, and so I didn't.

• 10:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I was wondering about that, because, um...

• 10:24Billy Corgan?

  In your, cause I, I went out of my way to try to listen to a lot of the filmic work because I would, you know, I was curious. I wanted to see like what you did with it emotionally and temporally. And, uh, and you know, your voice is very much intact and I recognize that having heard your music at a young age. I still see that as a successful way of executing energy, if that makes any sense. It's a bit arty way of saying, it still sounds cool to me. Like, you know, it's not like he went off on some jag. I'm like, what, what is he doing? He's on an art trip. Like even the,

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And by the way, I would support any artist who goes the wrong direction and doesn't give the audience what they want. I would support that notion.

• 11:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But I, but I'm saying your, your, your skillset sounds so benign. I don't know. It's just the way you play the drums. I find attractive, right? So as you, as you took your rhythmic sense and then ultimately your melodic sense into, it wasn't, I didn't feel like I, I lost you in the exchange. Like I could still,

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Well, thank you.

• 11:19Billy Corgan?

  I could still hear you in there. And I thought that was interesting because skillsets don't always apply into a totally different medium. And here you were jumping feet first. I mean, Oliver Stone is, you know, I've spent a few nights with Oliver Stone and he's hardly a wallflower.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I worked with him. I did a couple of films for Oliver. During, he was sober at the time. And probably,

• 11:42Billy Corgan?

  I think the nights I was with him, he was not sober.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And he was not exactly the life of the party. And, um, the opposite character in Francis Coppola.

• 11:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Francis Coppola is a big, he's Italian for God's sake. You know, the food on the set is just the best, you know? And just the warm embrace.

• 12:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  And Oliver is complex and, um, you know, uh, Francis gets people that he has faith in artistically and gives them a lot of rope, which is what he did with me. I didn't know what I was doing, but he sensed that we were on the same wavelength. And he liked what I was doing. And, uh, cause I didn't know how you're supposed to do it. So I was doing something different. But Oliver wants to know the emotional message of every note.

• 12:25Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  And that's how you make great movies by being absolutely on top of every, that note there, is that happy or is that sad? You know, okay, I'm simplifying totally.

• 12:35Billy Corgan?

  I get it though. I understand.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  All the complexity of human emotions.

• 12:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And so that was a very short leash.

• 12:42Billy Corgan?

  I like where he, he called, um, Rumblefish an art film for teens.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Yes. I don't know what the hell he's talking about there. I still,

• 12:50Billy Corgan?

  I kind of got it. Cause I, I, I saw the movie when it came out.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Do you have a big brother?

• 12:54Billy Corgan?

  No, I'm the oldest in my, in the family. But you know, it was that, it was that beautiful time in the eighties where there was sort of, let's call it the Gen X version of the teen movie. You know, we had the John Hughes movies.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:07Billy Corgan?

  And even, uh, uh, Mr. Coppola kind of dipped his toe with outsiders and, you know, it was kind of like, it was again, maybe a new generation grappling with what is the language of youth today, you know?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Well, John Hughes figured it out. I did, I did a film for him too, by the way.

• 13:21Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Uh, she's having a baby.

• 13:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Introducing Kevin Bacon.

• 13:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay. He did all right.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  And then he did, he ended up okay. A lot of, like in Rumblefish, a lot of the kids there, I think pretty much ever, every member of the principal cast has got an Academy Award now.

• 13:36Billy Corgan?

  That cast is like, you look at that cast.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Diane Lane, Matt Dillon, uh, you know, Larry Frisburn, uh, you know, uh, a lot, you know, most of them have had an Academy Award, but they were teenagers at the time.

• 13:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay. I, I, this is just my perverse nature, but you know, I saw, oh, you know, were you and Stan Ridgway worked on another song together? Do you remember the other song?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. And I'm glad you brought it up. That was for John Waters. Is that what you're talking about?

• 14:02Billy Corgan?

  Don't drop the soap.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Don't drop the soap for anyone else but me. A prison, a prison song. Cause John, uh, Mr. Waters is sort of enamored of prison culture. And, uh, and he, he told me it was gaily correct. So I can just sit right here in front of your camera, God and everybody. Don't drop the soap for anyone else but me.

• 14:21Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  The lyric goes something like, uh, there's a guard in the tower. We got just one hour.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Uh, when we meet in the shower. You'll see my love power. Don't, don't drop the soap.

• 14:37Billy Corgan?

  John wrote the lyrics, I believe.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  No, no, I wrote the lyrics.

• 14:39Billy Corgan?

  You wrote the lyrics.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Under his direction. No, but he told me about that scene.

• 14:43Billy Corgan?

  Under his direction.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  You know, in case you ever get thrown in jail, do not take a shower without your underpants on. Cause if you don't wear your underpants in the shower, that means you want it.

• 14:53Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  And it's, there's a little romance in there. Come on.

• 14:59Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's lonely in prison. I, I hear. Um, here's a fun fact. Uh, the last date, you know, 1.0 of the police was March 4th, 1984 in Australia. That

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. Melbourne.

• 15:12Billy Corgan?

  Rings a bell.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  I'm still pulling confetti out of my drum cases. And I, I'm, you know, I, last time I saw my drum cases, there was still confetti in there.

• 15:20Billy Corgan?

  I saw the police at the Rosemont Horizon.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:24Billy Corgan?

  February 19th, 1984. So basically three weeks before you guys.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Where's the Rosemont Horizon?

• 15:30Billy Corgan?

  It's the, now the Allstate Arena. It's the, it's the arena by the airport.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Okay. Here in LA?

• 15:35Billy Corgan?

  No, in Chicago. Sorry.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Chicago, Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I don't think it was called, I remember.

• 15:41Billy Corgan?

  It was called the Rosemont Horizon.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's kind of an old funky old building.

• 15:45Billy Corgan?

  Yes. It's still, they rebranded it. They reskinned it, but now it's called Allstate, but it's still there, still in the city. And it's basically one of those.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Shea Stadium isn't.

• 15:52Billy Corgan?

  It's on the jet, it's on the jet path. So like you'll be watching a concert and a jet will literally fly over the arena while you're listening. And, uh, this is back in the Ticketmaster days. So if we wanted to go to a show and get good tickets, we had to stay out all night to get a good ticket because by the time you got to the ticket window, all the tickets, all the tickets would be gone. And the cops in Rosemont, Illinois were not the friendliest for the kids lining up in the middle of the night. So they would make you stay out all night in the winter to see if you were hardy enough to, so we stood out eight hours.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Everybody in that arena was hardy.

• 16:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, I was in the second row. It just shows you how dedicated I was. So I, I, so the reason I bring all this up is not just a fanboy.

• 16:33Billy Corgan?

  I've been listening, I think since the first record. So I was pretty familiar. I knew the catalog and, uh, songs and, and my enduring memory, and I'm in the second row is I'm watching you guys play and I'm like,

• 16:45Speaker 02

  The headache.

• 16:45Billy Corgan?

  Whatever, whatever is going on here isn't good. The body language was, there were about three times where you kind of like, you know, and a drummer will almost like throw their stick at the snare and let the stick bounce up. There were about three times you kind of did something annoying, you know, like not annoying to me.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Oh, hit a drum like, for instance?

• 17:04Billy Corgan?

  You were, but you were annoyed and kind of walked off.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Really?

• 17:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. It was, the, the body language of the band.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Oh, we had screaming matches on stage all the time, but I don't remember running away.

• 17:13Billy Corgan?

  No, no, no. It was more of like, I, it was like one of those things where it's like, you know, you got a minute, but you're not going to sit there while Derstein talks, you know, you kind of like, kind of stalk off and then that was, I'm just saying as a kid, uh, whatever I was. The vibe was very weird.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  My memory is sort of different. Maybe I've got kind of a glowy memory. Cause on stage, I was always absolutely in awe of my own band. You know, the stuff Andy was doing on the guitar.

• 17:41Billy Corgan?

  Maybe you were having a bad night with the monitors.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Andy had the most crunching rhythm.

• 17:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  That just made it work for me. And old Sting go on the bass. And when we, like in the middle of Roxanne, we'd go off on an improvisation and it would break my heart. And I would be absolutely transported on stage. Cause there's nothing he could do about it. If I start banging my stuff.

• 18:00Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  You know, except for turn around, start yelling at me, which he did frequently. Which is weird because he, he never seemed to pick up on the fact that this is not how you calm me down.

• 18:10Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see. He had a little trampoline. I remember that.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  I remember the trampoline.

• 18:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Whatever. I'm just saying, and I, maybe it's posthumous thinking because you guys did break up after that, but I remember watching and thinking like,

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Oh, you saw the bad thing going on.

• 18:23Billy Corgan?

  Whatever was going on was like,

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Well, you're in the second row.

• 18:25Billy Corgan?

  Well, my father was a musician, as I like to remind every podcast. But, but my point is, is I grew up around musicians and, and I know how musicians act. So I was watching you guys. Huh?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Badly.

• 18:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But I, but I can tell the difference between good night, fake night, putting on a show night, don't give a

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:42Billy Corgan?

  And whatever was going on.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Dying it in night.

• 18:44Billy Corgan?

  Whatever was going on with the three of you was very interesting. It wasn't a bad show. He played great in the band. Anytime you ever hear live recordings, you guys, you sound great. But there was something going on that was, the body language was very weird. Huh?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  I sped up.

• 18:57Billy Corgan?

  I did see that.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Probably. Actually, you know, one time I was in an airport lounge waiting to get my flight and who should be sitting there in the departure lounge, Vinnie Caliuto. Great man. How you doing? How you doing? And I tend to be the agony aunt of all the players who've been in that world. And so we get talking and he says, well, I mean, dealing with the fact that he speeds up. I mean, how did you deal with that? He speeds up? You're kidding. I assumed it was my fault. And I realized that it's the two of us. If the two of us are playing, we're going to speed up. And in the reunion tour, we had to, we had to impose a click for not all the songs, for maybe a third of the songs.

• 19:36Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because, and I didn't mind so much because, um, without that, I would have sped up, you know, world's running down. You, you, you know, if I haven't got some kind of constraint, it, the speed goes so far up that I can't even play it.

• 19:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So I, I didn't mind that. But, um, the speeding up means he's got to garble his lyrics and you know, you gotta cut the guy some slack there. That'll piss him off.

• 19:57Billy Corgan?

  So when the, you know, you need to do the gossip on, on the band ending, but when, when the band was like, okay, this is done. I mean, did you think about what you wanted to do or you just kind of jumped?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  I had already done Rumblefish.

• 20:10Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And was absolutely enamored. I want to do that.

• 20:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Because I went from, uh, police world, which was hell on earth.

• 20:18Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Um, on Monster. We were in paradise. We were on this island. The Emerald Isle, you know, with the waves gently lapping and the trees gently waving. It's just beautiful. The only fly in the ointment was us three. Uh, any had this, this, this horrible atmosphere. At the end of the day, we were very proud of what we produced, but it wasn't fun making it. And then I went from there to the loving, warm embrace of Francis Coppola. I think, oh my God, and I'm back in the studio by myself, like Clark Kent days, playing all the instruments myself, just without any disapproval, without any negotiation. Just like Francis was happy, his crew were happy.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Uh, and just the contrast of the joy, man, I could not wait to just get into that world instead of this world.

• 21:04Billy Corgan?

  For the punters in the crowd, like what, when you guys were in that, so it's called stressful. What, what was the existential argument, my way versus your way?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Up. I'm trying to sing a song here. It's about something.

• 21:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Is it because he was kind of, was he kind of going in a pop direction? Cause obviously you can.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Well, no, um.

• 21:23Billy Corgan?

  Can I, sorry, it's just because as, as somebody who.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Deals with.

• 21:28Billy Corgan?

  Love the band and, and then, but you know, uh, did you ever play this game? Like when, when bands break up, then you, when you listen to the solo stuff, you kind of almost see the puzzle pieces, right?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:37Billy Corgan?

  Cause he, he got more AOR.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the Beatles, you didn't tell who was who until you got to his soul.

• 21:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Also, you know, for instance, I'm, I've, I've become a huge fan of Steven Stills of all people.

• 21:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Because I, you know, when I was in college, you know, um, Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills and Nash and his own solo album. That's when I was a teenager.

• 21:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  And I now realize, listening to all those bands, which voice among them was Steven? And he was the Paul McCartney of that whole world of all those different bands.

• 22:07Billy Corgan?

  If you read anything from Nash and Crosby, they say that Steven would be the one staying up all night.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:13Billy Corgan?

  Working on the tracks, they would just bang off and go hanging with girls or whatever.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And, uh, he actually met him, he was a dad at our school and we, um, I don't know if you have kids in school, but, uh, there's something that, uh, schools do, private, these private west end schools, uh, they have their gala night and any dad who's a musician, they all say, okay, all you musician dads make a band. We call it the, the grateful dad.

• 22:34Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  And so my, this version of grateful dad, I think it was Wildwood School, um, was the, the band was, uh, Gene Simmons, Steve Stills, me, Niles Barkley and Bob Dylan bailed. So that's a hell of a, you know, copacetic lineup there. And actually.

• 22:49Billy Corgan?

  Would have been interesting with Bob on top of that.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gene turns out to be the greatest guy. I'm sorry if I insult anybody by actually thinking.

• 22:57Billy Corgan?

  Gene's a total.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  He's got some attitudes, all right, mostly just to get the party going.

• 23:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  But he is a fun guy, as I discovered that night. Also a student of Old Testament theology. So there's the bass player and Kiss and the drummer and Police backstage arguing Old Testament theology.

• 23:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  But Steven and his guys were like these old codgers and I, you know, this, I think he might've, it sounded, I felt like I was playing in the music of my youth. And he, you know, his voice was still amazing, but now that I've since discovered how, I, I wish I could go back there and say, Mr. Stills. Um, I bow down before thee.

• 23:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh. Interesting. Um.

• 23:38Billy Corgan?

  So you, you're in this thing where, okay, now movie, cause you, cause you end up working, did the two movies with Oliver Stone. So you're, you're a working film composer.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, working stiff. I did, I do Mountain Dew commercials. You pay me money. I'll make you happy, I'll make you sad. If you want happy, sad, I'll fuck you up.

• 23:54Billy Corgan?

  There you go. Um, so what, what brought about the, the, in quotations, the aborted police reunion sort of moment? Cause I kind of, I kind of remember it.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  It was the opposite of aborted. It was extended.

• 24:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay, please, cause there was three shows, right? Uh, charity shows for Amnesty International. Then, then there was the greatest hits or something and you guys went in to record, re-record something.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  One, oh, that was, that's, that was aborted and I have no idea. I've got, I, I keep forgetting to ask.

• 24:23Billy Corgan?

  Well, the story is the story I read.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Might, might be the real story.

• 24:26Billy Corgan?

  You were on a horse, you broke your collarbone.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:29Billy Corgan?

  And then you couldn't play drums.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 24:32Billy Corgan?

  Then your programming.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Well, I have to, I have to reset the myth here. Stuart fell off his horse. I did not fall off my horse. God. The horse fell off the horse. The horse does a somersault, one is obliged to dismount.

• 24:45Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And I landed on my shoulder on a rock hard polo field and broke my collarbone. But, um, why we were re-recording the songs is a mystery to me. I don't know why. And, uh, there's rumor that there's another song that we attempted, but with this one, I had to program my Farlight computer, uh, to play a rhythm and right next to my Farlight computer was Stingo's Sinclair. And it was the battle of the computers and we were arguing over which snare drum sample we will use. Could you believe it? And he, he had some store bought fat back piece of shit. And I had my snare drum and I did sort of consider that, uh, since it's my instrument, I will determine which.

• 25:29Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  You know, sample, and that's how pathetic it was. We were arguing over the sample. Um, but we kissed and made up and everybody hated the record. I liked it actually, cause he did some amazing vocal extrapolations on it that I thought were really cool.

• 25:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um.

• 25:46Billy Corgan?

  Because you, because you're coming from the musical side, I thought to ask you this question. Having worked intimately with great directors like Oliver Stone and Coppola, is there a through line there between guys like that?

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Um.

• 26:00Billy Corgan?

  We don't see those directors like we used to.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  They're very, very different, but the one thing that they do have in common is that they're generally pretty smart.

• 26:07Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  You know, you don't get to those, to play with those kinds of resources, which are expensive, the, the sets, the actors, everything. Unless you got something going on. And so that's, they're so different, but they both have in common, uh, a lot of brain power.

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Is it, cause you know, you hear these kinds of analogies like military commander, you know, running this.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Oh, well, Oliver used to say, I don't, he, he was quoting Hitler.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  I don't want generals who are clever with clever ideas. I want generals who are clever carrying out my ideas.

• 26:40Billy Corgan?

  There you go.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  And he would say that I don't want to be loved. I want to be feared. But like I say, he was sober at the time and somewhat grumpy.

• 26:48Billy Corgan?

  So when the, when the band sort of goes on whatever, this extended hiatus, um, you would have been like, what, like 28 or?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, about, we started in, uh, 76, which would make me 24.

• 27:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Uh, then eight years later would make me 32.

• 27:06Billy Corgan?

  Did you, did you, uh, you know, as you know, because you, you know, you know, rock musicians, um, did you have a hard time sort of being out of that kind of constant glare thing?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Oh no, I love that. I did not. I, I enjoyed the fact of the glare, but I didn't enjoy the actual practice of it.

• 27:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  You know, you've learned, you can't scratch, you know, other people can scratch their ass in public. You can't.

• 27:31Billy Corgan?

  Especially not with cell phones.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:34Billy Corgan?

  Um. I want to talk, cause I, I've, I kind of had.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Well, there's another aspect here and I'm writing a book about this actually.

• 27:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  That you are, must know absolutely is that you find when you've become popular, that your voice has an extra resonance. That your presence fills a room in a, much more than you ever intended it to.

• 27:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Your jokes burn down the house. Your barbs kill people. You, it's your, it's like you're used to driving a car, but now your persona is like driving a truck. And it's complicated and it's top heavy and, you know, living in this world and maneuvering this person, I call it the avatar. And the avatar is really what everybody creates themselves. They have the idea of Billy Corgan is that they, they, they have a picture of you, everything else they supply. And you've sort of, you don't feel that you have to live up to it, but you sort of do feel you have to live up to it. You have to be the man and to be the man, actually strangely does burn calories. It actually is draining to be the living legend.

• 28:37Billy Corgan?

  I use the exact same word, so I'm, I'm pleasantly surprised that you use that same word, cause I call it the avatar. It's like, there's a, there's a person with that name over here.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Who has a career that you can't even control. He's doing things.

• 28:48Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  The, and he's kind of out of your, your direct.

• 28:51Billy Corgan?

  Nothing is weirder than having someone tell you.

• 28:55Billy Corgan?

  Their version of your reality.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  There you go. Exactly.

• 28:59Billy Corgan?

  And, but then you're supposed to kind of work with that.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Billy Corgan?

  And if you're, if you're against it, you're sour.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:05Billy Corgan?

  Uh, I had a thing happen the other day. I was in, um, Portugal and, uh, my wife called and I'm sitting literally on the street on a bench and, and as I'm talking to my wife about some business thing, a gentleman walks by in a suit and kind of starts to interrupt me and I kind of do like I'm on the phone.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:23Billy Corgan?

  But I don't wave him off. I'm just like, you know, I'm just sorry, I can't talk to you right now.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you, thank you.

• 29:29Billy Corgan?

  So, so when I finished the call 10 minutes later, I kind of looked around to see if the guy was still there and he, he wasn't there. So then I started walking and he followed me around the corner. And he, he, he wanted a picture and I was like, I really not in the mood right now, but, but, but I'm happy to talk to you. And he was aware that I was doing this opera production.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Well, because as soon as you do, start doing that, others who are sitting quietly, they come out of the woodwork.

• 29:52Billy Corgan?

  That's the problem.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  And it starts the whole thing and then you're stuck there.

• 29:55Billy Corgan?

  Who is it? Yes. Um, and you know, having no hair, you know, you get lumped in with other famous people with no hair. So suddenly you're, you're somebody else too. Uh, anyway, so the, so the guy, uh, so the guy, uh, he knew that I was doing this opera production and I jokingly said, and I was joking, I said, well, if you were coming to the opera, I'd take a picture with you, you know what I mean? And he got offended.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  And you totally did not mean that.

• 30:19Billy Corgan?

  I, I was.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Of course you didn't mean that.

• 30:21Billy Corgan?

  No, I was solely joking and he got offended and he said, what's it like? Now he's, now he's talking about me being.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the thing. A little brush off. If just, just take, do whatever they want and they'll be happy. You're happy, they're happy. Move on. If you do a little bit of a brush off, suddenly all that love turns to anger and hate and darkness and weirdness. And your day is now ruined and you wish I had just done the selfie.

• 30:45Billy Corgan?

  So, so, so we, so he says, um, you know, I was watching you when you were on the phone and I'm thinking to myself with, but he's got it. He's got an accent.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:57Billy Corgan?

  I'm thinking to myself, what's it like this guy so famous sitting there and no one cares? Like basically saying no one recognized you.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:07Billy Corgan?

  And I said, honestly, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean something and it doesn't not mean anything. It doesn't mean anything because I'm fully aware. You know, if I wore something and sunglasses, somebody would recognize.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  You've been you famous for decades by now.

• 31:21Billy Corgan?

  Just recognize. So, so then, um, so then he said, uh, cause then he needed to reach for another, uh, epithet. So then he goes, well, you know, you used to sell a lot of records in the nineties here.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. You pissed him off. That's pretty clever. Actually you gotta, okay, okay. You got me on that one, dude.

• 31:40Billy Corgan?

  Well, I, I said, this is my, my big comeback. I said, well, I don't sell records here anymore because I'm dead. And then I just walked away.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Cool. Well, that's the thing about the avatar is that.

• 31:52Billy Corgan?

  The avatar is dead.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  You know, we might think that we are kind of gods or demigods, but the problem with that theory is that for one thing, we don't control the weather. Uh, but more importantly, we're gonna die, but the avatar doesn't. In fact, if you shuffle off this mortal coil and perish, your avatar gets a lift. You know, remember when Elvis died, all the crocodiles in the industry said, great career move.

• 32:16Billy Corgan?

  Do you, do you, just as a sideline kind of concept, do you, have you seen, I feel like something's changing that the world that we grew up in, the rock god thing, that's kind of, it's kind of finally running out of steam. And it's going to something else. I don't know.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Well, the grunge thing attempted to, uh, negate that.

• 32:34Billy Corgan?

  Attempted, yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  But you know, Eddie Vedder walks in the room and everybody's, you know, he's Eddie Vedder, you know? And he's, no matter how much he down dresses, no matter how much humility he exudes and Eddie does exude humility. He's still Eddie Vedder.

• 32:54Billy Corgan?

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• 33:25Speaker 04

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• 34:10Speaker 04

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• 34:25Speaker 02

  Actually, opera thing, an opera encounter that might amuse you is that there's one super fan in Germany. He's a cop, believe it or not by coincidence. Then he knows more about my career and my band than I do. He can identify any photograph of the police and he can put a date on it by the T-shirts. He figures out what we're wearing and he can date it and he can get you the, the show, the set list. Totally dedicated fan. And I've gotten to know him because he's actually quite sane. And he's been useful. When I was writing my book, I'd call him up and say, you know, where was I on? Yeah. Anyhow, so, um, I had an opera with the Deutsche National Theater and, you know, the, that's the biggest place in Germany, you know, big deal. And, uh, and he said, I'm a fan. I hate opera, but because it's your opera, I'm going to come and see it.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  And it was in Weimar, the big fancy place. And, and so then he wrote to me later and says, well, I, you know, while I was there, I went to visit the concentration camp because I feel it's my duty as a German to really have my nose rubbed in our history and everything like that. And I went to the opera, but you know, I, I, I saw the first act, but I just not an opera fan. So I kind of, forgive me, but I went home. I go, wait a minute, you prefer to concentration camp to my opera? Thanks a lot, pal.

• 35:33Billy Corgan?

  See? Be careful what you wish.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  There's no dignity in this business.

• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  I, I kind of remember when you did the, is it Rhythmatist? Is that how you say it?

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:41Billy Corgan?

  I kind of remember when you did it, but I totally forgot. And then I came across it through my research. And I think it's, it's a, it's a cool document. Um.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Do you actually see the film?

• 35:50Billy Corgan?

  I watched.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  The film is really dumb.

• 35:52Billy Corgan?

  I watched about 15 minutes of it.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Thank God.

• 35:55Billy Corgan?

  But I, I got the vibe. It's, you know, it's got, kind of got the, the style of the time.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Well, it had some real stupidity. We made it up as we went along. The music I'm very proud of.

• 36:02Billy Corgan?

  The music.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  The adventure was amazing, but the film was a little bit, uh.

• 36:06Billy Corgan?

  But I thought the music, the music holds up really well, um, because you were doing this thing with like, you were taking loops of, of, was it?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  African stuff. Yeah.

• 36:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  They're the early version of a sample.

• 36:15Billy Corgan?

  Zaire, Mozambique.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Zaire, um.

• 36:18Billy Corgan?

  Did you also go to the Outback 2?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Uh, beg your pardon?

• 36:20Billy Corgan?

  Did you go to the Outback 2?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I was, I was out in the sticks. Yeah.

• 36:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Tanzania and Kenya.

• 36:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Um, Burundi, Zaire was the wildest in the Congo. We went way up the Congo River. We got thrown in jail in Zaire.

• 36:36Billy Corgan?

  Pre-GPS too, right? This is.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:38Billy Corgan?

  You're really out there.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  That was a heck of an adventure.

• 36:42Billy Corgan?

  Why'd you get thrown in jail?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Uh, nothing sexy, no gun running or, you know, or human trafficking or anything. It was a visa infraction, you know?

• 36:51Billy Corgan?

  So inglorious.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Really?

• 36:54Billy Corgan?

  But, um, I, I just, I, because, because I'm so focused on, let's call it, you know, the, the, this, the edges of your world, you know? It, I mean, I know it wasn't the edge of your world now, but I mean, like I said, most people are always going to focus on the man. But I find it really fascinating that you got yourself in all these things. So I'm still trying to understand kind of where your head was at. Um.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  I never in a million years dreamed, I wonder if you did, uh, when you first were in the garage with your tuckle buddies there, you know, singing. That you would be treading the boards with the, with the opera lyric, you know?

• 37:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  In Chicago lyric opera.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  You never expect to grow beyond what you're interested in as a teenager, but you do grow.

• 37:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And I'm actually more mystified by those who don't, who are still playing bass 40 years later. How come you haven't learned any other instruments? How come you haven't, you know, gone, expanded your world? And I guess just some people are, they find a niche and they're happy to stay there.

• 37:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, but.

• 38:01Billy Corgan?

  Was poking around, I mean, maybe it's too assumptive a question, but it was like doing documentary stuff. Was there something you were still looking for? Or was it just, these are cool opportunities?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  I love documentaries.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Like Operas, No Way to Earn a Living, but it's a lot of fun.

• 38:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  And I did a couple for the BBC. I did one about drummers. Where I learned some really interesting things.

• 38:22Billy Corgan?

  I did see some of that, yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And it can't play in America because the BBC, gosh darn it, they have special deals with Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and they can, and they make their documentaries using the most expensive music in the world, and they make their documentary with Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and everything. I did another one, which was, what is music for? Why is music?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  And so they can't play in America because we could never in a million years afford the sync licenses for that kind of, you know, that, that kind of music.

• 38:51Billy Corgan?

  So, because at some point, you kind of go back towards, because there was the band,

• 38:58Billy Corgan?

  it was the band with Stanley Clarke.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Animal Logic.

• 39:00Billy Corgan?

  Animal Logic. And I remember that song on MTV2 was, uh, Something Love.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Rose colored glasses.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Spy in the House of Love.

• 39:10Billy Corgan?

  That's it.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  That was a tragedy and more of a travesty than a tragedy.

• 39:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Because Stanley and I both at that time, suddenly, are film composing, both of us, film composing careers kind of took off right then. And there's Debbie Holland, who wrote all these great songs, and a record company was ready to promote it, but the band's gone off to do films. And so, we, that was one instance where the band screwed up.

• 39:37Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And the record company was there, everything was there, but we were distracted.

• 39:41Billy Corgan?

  Did you have any temptation to kind of, I don't know, like you said, people tend to focus on the lead singer. I mean, did you have any?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  That was never a problem for me. I'm the youngest sibling. I just want to be on the team.

• 39:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  I absolutely, and that was, if you're an oldest sibling, such as our singer in our band.

• 39:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  He could not conceive of a non-desire to be the center of attention. And so he assumed that me banging on the drums was because I wanted to draw attention to myself. It wasn't.

• 40:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  You know, I'm happy to be on the team. And by the way, we get in the car, we arrive at the hotel, and there's a mob chasing one member of the band while the other two guys can slip around the side at our convenience and get into our hotel rooms. And, you know, there's a lot of inconvenience with being that visible.

• 40:26Billy Corgan?

  But even when you did something like Animal Logic, and there was some success there, was there any part of you that was sort of interested in saying, I can do this too? Like, I know pop is a reductive idiom, but you, you know, not many people.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  I never thought, well, I did have my first hit, actually, during the police, while the police was starving, my first hit was Clark Kent.

• 40:45Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Where I played all the instruments and even sang the thing, which right there is an insult to, uh, music right there. But had a little, had a little hit. In fact, the first time we were on national TV, the three blonde heads was the Clark Kent backing band. You're all in masks.

• 40:59Billy Corgan?

  But, so I'm just saying, was there any part of you that was sort of like, you were up for the challenge of proving that you could do it too? Or?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Not proving.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Not proving anything. But I did one summer, because I go to Italy almost every summer. I just love it there. I find any excuse to go there. And one summer, I went and had a band.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Where I got to be at the front of the stage, singing the songs, front man, because I just want to try it. And I'm in a band with Adrian Bellou.

• 41:29Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  And, um, and, um, Mark King, English guy from Level 42.

• 41:34Billy Corgan?

  Amazing musician.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  So that was a heck of a band.

• 41:36Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Uh, and I, but I'm at the front of the stage playing power chords while Adrian plays real guitar.

• 41:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  And at one point, I asked Adrian, one of my favorite Adrian Bellou stories is I say, Adrian, you know, and both of them go, you know, you know, I'm not really a singer, but I'm singing. If you got any tips for me, you know, feel free to give me any brotherly advice. Both of your lead singers in your respective, say anything you can show me. And so Adrian's, yeah, yeah, okay, I got one piece of advice for you. If you, if you really want to get good at singing, start 20 years ago.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Thanks. Thanks, pal.

• 42:11Billy Corgan?

  Said like a member of King, Queen, King.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 42:14Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 42:16Billy Corgan?

  I did, I do this thing sometimes where I'll, I'll, I'll listen to a band's

• 42:22Billy Corgan?

  musical output in, in, in a row. So within the last five years, I did that on The Police. Where I start like first song, first album.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 42:31Billy Corgan?

  You know, it usually takes three to four days.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  You got all the way through it?

• 42:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Jeez, I don't think I could even do that.

• 42:35Billy Corgan?

  I listened to them at the time when they were coming out.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Right. Well, they probably have a lot of associations and memories, because that's the cool thing about music, old songs.

• 42:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Is that they build momentum. You know, I'm out on the road doing Police songs with a big bad orchestra, derangements of them. I twist them up, it's barely recognizable, but they are recognizable enough so that the emotional response, people grew up to these songs. People fell in love, fell out of love. The emotion, the emotional baggage kind of grows and is a good thing.

• 43:04Billy Corgan?

  It is a beautiful thing. But I, the reason I brought up this idea of doing a deep dive, is I was struck, so, because what I love about doing it is, there's the memory, right? So I have my 1981 memory of you guys or something, right?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Well, you're halfway listening to what you're listening to and the other half remembering what you were doing then.

• 43:22Billy Corgan?

  And I was really struck, and, and, and, and I thought to ask you this, because

• 43:29Billy Corgan?

  the stuff that you had that was successful was wildly successful. Like the singles, I mean, I mean, you can't go into a store at some point without hearing every breath you take.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:39Billy Corgan?

  It's one of those, right? God bless.

• 43:43Billy Corgan?

  But I was struck that your albums, all of them seem to have these other songs that like, they're almost like, they're not pop.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Filler?

• 43:52Billy Corgan?

  I don't feel like filler to me.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  The second album, which is my favorite album, was Filler. I mean, we had a couple of killer songs.

• 43:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But did you feel it was filler or were?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:02Billy Corgan?

  The question I'm trying to ask is, was there a sentient sense at the time, okay, this is a single and this is a cool song, but it's all good. Like, what was the inner working on how you guys approached that?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  That was exactly it. We, this is the hit. But these other songs are kind of cool too. And are, you know, the old ad age, that you have your whole life to write your first album.

• 44:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  And six months to write your second album. And so we did, had our first album. We went out, we crossed the world. I mean, we're getting somewhere. And then, okay, next album. Nope. We only had like three or four songs, according, three or four songs, Walking on the Moon, Message in a Bottle. That's kind of, you can, you can have, you can hang an album around that. And the rest of it, we just liked scraps of lyrics, lines, you know, Mosoko Tango was literally, well, how many minutes we got, guys? We still need three more minutes. Okay, we walked in the studio and start playing a thing, and he starts babbling nonsense into the microphone. It's actually a really cool track.

• 45:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I remember, speaking of Walking on the Moon, um, my father, like I said, was a musician. So he was always kind of moderating my taste from a kind of a distasteful distance.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:13Billy Corgan?

  I was a heavy metal kid too, so it was a lot of like, what are you doing? But, but I remember playing him that second record. And it wasn't until Walking on the Moon came on. And then he was like, that one. And this is before it became a hit.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Billy Corgan?

  Like he kind of.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Well, good for him. Good ears.

• 45:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but he was like, that one. You know what I mean?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I remember when we were mixing it.

• 45:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  And I had the delay lines.

• 45:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  And it was all about playing off the delay lines. And apparently, there was somebody singing about something also on the record.

• 45:40Billy Corgan?

  Was it, was this Lee Scratch Perry type influencer? You were just?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  No, dub was a thing.

• 45:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Uh, because back in the punk clubs, there was no chill punk. So the DJ, Don Letts, would play dub reggae, which was chill, but suitably hostile.

• 45:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  And so we all started hearing these echo effects and stuff. But I think Andy and I are the first people to do it live.

• 46:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Okay, a little.

• 46:03Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's right. I remember that.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  A little, little story. Uh, 1978, I think, we're in New York City. We get a phone call from London. Okay, lads, the check has dropped. You are now three very wealthy young men. Really? Cool. We took ourselves, I forget, with 47th, 48th Street, Manny's Music Store, which was like this huge, they had everything. We just went in there and bought everything.

• 46:25Billy Corgan?

  That's where Jimi Hendrix shopped.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  That's right. And we went, you know, Andy says, I'll take that Roland Space Echo. I'll have one too. Yeah, I'll have one. We got everything in triplicate, you know? Sting gets a black Stratocaster. I got a blonde Stratocaster. You know, Andy already had 10 Stratocasters. But I mean, we just, anyhow, the, the Echo, that afternoon, we were playing it in a place in Long Island called my father's place. And it was the sound check from hell, because we're all playing with our new toys, you know? And all my new toys were guitar toys. I already had drums. So I put the Echo thing, I mean, give me a, put it, you know, on the snare drum, and I could click the snare, and I discovered that I can create rhythms by bouncing off each other, you know? And between us, Andy and I argue about who discovered the dotted quarter note, uh, dotted eighth note, uh, delay

• 47:09Speaker 02

  line. And I don't know, if you were a guitarist, you know what I was talking about. Your viewers will know.

• 47:12Billy Corgan?

  That's, that's just whole guitar sound is the.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  You know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. And Andy and I are arguing about who came up with that.

• 47:20Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Of course. And then one day I listened to Pink Floyd and those assholes, they beat us to it by about 10 years.

• 47:26Billy Corgan?

  It's on Animals, I think.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Whatever it is. There, there they are. And they're, and it's, it's, you know?

• 47:34Billy Corgan?

  Does this strike you?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  That's not the only thing Pink Floyd, you know, I thought I invented tape loops. Actual when I was doing rumblefish with, you know, uh, actual physical magnetic tape going around the room and then over the head. Uh, they were there 10 years early.

• 47:49Billy Corgan?

  I have a funny story. I, I was dating this woman and, and the mother, American, but the mother was English. And at some point over a dinner conversation, she brought up that she knew Roger Waters back in the day. And at one point her and her girlfriend were busking around Europe and they stayed with Roger and his, his place. And I was like, what year was this? She's like, oh, you know, 1973 or four.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Stayed in his palace at that point.

• 48:13Billy Corgan?

  And, and, and, and the daughter had said something about at one point she had visited Pink Floyd in the studio. So like, um, you know, I'm like, geek. And, uh, and I'm like, so he went, she goes, yeah, yeah. But it was really annoying, you know, because they just were playing with these clocks all day.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, we know, you know.

• 48:32Billy Corgan?

  So she sat there and bored out of her mind because they were just trying to do the, the money tape.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  In the studio with the band, recording the album is like watching paint dry. You hear the same three bars of music again and again and again and again.

• 48:45Billy Corgan?

  Speak, speaking of, uh, rapidity, is, is it, I feel like I heard maybe it was you with Rick Beato, but, but this idea, you did a lot of stuff very fast. Is that accurate?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Well, the Police albums, the first album, we had these songs, we played them all over and then went and recorded them. Sane professional rock bands learn the songs in a rehearsal studio. Then when they're all sounding great, they go into a studio and record them. Not the Police. Um, because our songwriter, Stingo would, would reveal his songs on an as needed basis. And, uh, uh, and by the way, he demanded that Andy and I show up with material too, so that he wasn't the only one at home doing homework. He had no intention of playing our songs. And by the way, even though I brought my favorite, I, I really want this song to be on a Police album. And then he pulls out message in a bottle. Oh, let's play that, you know?

• 49:43Billy Corgan?

  It's such a baller move.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  But wait a minute, you were, what were we talking about?

• 49:47Billy Corgan?

  With the idea of rapidity, like, you know, that.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Okay. The brag I wanted to brag was that from the third album on Zenyatta on, um, we didn't hear the songs until that day. And as long as it takes for Andy to learn the chords and the riff, I'm listening, um, tapping on my knees. Okay, let's do a take. I would go and when we were in Monsterrat, I'd go into a different building up into the dining hall, beautiful wooden cavernous building where the drums sounded amazing, but I'm all there up by myself. I got a television monitor to the other guys who are down in the studio. Uh, and we would do a couple takes. One take was kind of all over the place. The second take was, third take beginning to get stale. And generally all

• 50:32Speaker 02

  of the takes, not every, every track, but mostly for the most part, uh, the, the rule was second or third take. And each take was totally different. Remember I'd only ever heard the song 20 minutes ago for the first time, whatever I came up with in that moment of inspiration. And the combination of them being, uh, impatient and me being lazy. And I'm going, well, one more, that's fine. It's fine. Cause they just wanted to do their overdubs. They could spend the next two months doing the guitars, doing the vocals, but the drums in olden times, the drums, once the drums are down, you build everything. It's there, the Christmas tree and you put all the ornamentation, but you need the Christmas tree first. And so they're all impatient. Come on, it's fine. It's fine. So then we'd go on tour and I'd

• 51:15Speaker 02

  figure out how to get from the chorus back down to the verse. Whereas in the album, I didn't, and he's not really singing anyway. So I don't know what the song's about or what, what the dynamics, what, where is it supposed to be loud? Where is it supposed to? And we just kind of made it. In fact, we would eventually cut the backing tracks to suit whatever the lyric intention was.

• 51:36Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Um, and, uh, you know, one of the, the worst offender was wrapped around your finger. I had no idea where we were. We just, I just go, it's, it's, you know, and cause he wasn't, he was not really singing the songs yet. He was focused on getting the drum track down. And the good news was that they couldn't beat me up no more. Uh, that impatience meant that, um, as dictatorial as they might want to be, their impatience superseded their desire to control everything. Uh, it's fine. And so I'm very proud of the fact, you know, I learned them when we were on tour and I think I should have recorded the album that way. But then again, the album didn't suck.

• 52:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  And I think I, I believe this, um, that, that X factor came from the exploratory environment. The fact that you can, I, there's an X factor to something that isn't wrote, that isn't learned, that isn't being executed.

• 52:31Billy Corgan?

  The journey's being revealed literally as you're listening to it.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so.

• 52:35Billy Corgan?

  There is something to it.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  I think there is something to it.

• 52:37Billy Corgan?

  To put you in good company, I think Yes used to do that to Bill Bruford too.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 52:41Billy Corgan?

  You know, the whole Yes thing is they jam a ton.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:44Billy Corgan?

  And then they would edit the tapes and then re-overdub everything.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, all of those, but Bruford's not re-overdubbed. Those are the drums.

• 52:52Billy Corgan?

  Sitting there saying, well, if you, I knew you're going to play that, I wouldn't have played that.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Exactly. But it didn't suck. At the end of the day, Bill Bruford can relax and think, well, okay, that could have done better. It didn't suck.

• 53:03Billy Corgan?

  Does this strike, I mean, it's, this is my own bias, but does it strike you that you made wildly successful, popular music by playing really radical drums?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Uh, I appreciate that. Um, but.

• 53:17Billy Corgan?

  I'm not saying that's what you were trying to do.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I wasn't trying to do anything.

• 53:20Billy Corgan?

  In the history of pop.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  I see people on the Google machine, you know, and, and I don't know if you do this, and I will share with you that I am a small person and I occasionally, you know, need a little bit of a boost, you know, I'm nothing, I am no one. So I'll go on the Google machine and I'll say.

• 53:33Billy Corgan?

  Just call me staff at Google.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll, I'll dial up, you know, Stuart Copeland's 10 best drum fills. And there they all are analyzing everything and, oh, oh.

• 53:44Billy Corgan?

  With the delay on.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  And mostly they don't, they're wrong, but still I just enjoy the fact that they nerd out on it. And I want to tell them, guys, guys, guys, I just made that up on the spot. There was no strategy or no seeking to reinvent the wheel or whatever happened at that moment.

• 54:01Billy Corgan?

  But it is, I'm, I'm just blabbering a little bit, but it, it, in the history of popular music, if you start with Elvis, that's usually where I start, right? Is rock and roll. And we're still going, right? I mean, there's not much popular music that like literally had top 20 hits with that level of complexity.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Hendrix had hits with Jimmy, with, with.

• 54:23Billy Corgan?

  Mitch Mitchell going eight.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Mitchell going eight. Oh man, I still love those records. That, for me, that is.

• 54:30Billy Corgan?

  By the way, with the kick drum that's this big, you know?

• 54:32Speaker 02

  That, you know, Jimi Hendrix and Mitch Mitchell, that is the, you know, humans are like ducks, you know, and they break out of their shell. The first warm body they see is mama. And humans, when we hit 16, we break out of our shell and want to establish ourselves. The first rock star we see is daddy. And for my wife, it was Gary Glitter.

• 54:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  And for me, it was.

• 54:52Billy Corgan?

  That didn't end well with Gary, unfortunately.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  But I mean, for me, Jimmy, so that for me, everything else radiates out from Jimi Hendrix, you know?

• 55:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. We once recorded, uh, at Lenny Kravitz's studio in New Jersey and Hank, who was his engineer, I can't think Hank's last name, great engineer. We got a speech for an hour about how you're never going to have a better drum sound than Axis Bold as Love in Mono.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Oh my God. I used to complain about the drum sound because it's so compressed. Uh, and I didn't know about compression at the time.

• 55:21Billy Corgan?

  Because we got a speech.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  I'm going to argue with Hank.

• 55:23Billy Corgan?

  By the way, an hour.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Hey, come on, Hank, come on. Oh no, I don't, cause they, I did object to the drum sound. Um, cause it was so compressed, you know, all along the watch track, which I now love every magnetic piece of, you know, I love it, but at the time.

• 55:38Billy Corgan?

  What a glorious recording.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. But at the time it was disastrous mix, you know, and I, I, as I listened to the song again and again and again, bonding with it, I complained about the mix.

• 55:50Billy Corgan?

  There's something.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  But you know, actually kids are much smarter than we think, you know, when I, my, my kids have all grown up and out of the house. And I have seven kids and they're all grown up and out now. Uh, but when I'm driving them to school, my last child, um, she was into Kendrick Lamar.

• 56:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  And Kanye. And that stuff is really sophisticated. That is not pop music.

• 56:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  It is so sophisticated. It's like the soundtrack to a really scary, dark movie. And yet the kids, all of her, you know, 15 year old friends are all grooving and bopping away to it. So kids are pretty smart.

• 56:27Billy Corgan?

  So let's talk a bit about Opera Land, something we now share.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:33Billy Corgan?

  1986 King Lear, San Francisco Ballet.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 56:36Billy Corgan?

  Twenty minutes of music. By the way, I couldn't find it anywhere.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  No, no, it was a disaster.

• 56:40Billy Corgan?

  It was a disaster. Okay, tell me why.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I still, I still have, I was in San Francisco Examiner, the review, Jejun noodling. This shoddy, you know, I, I, I had to go look up Jejun. The guy was just.

• 56:55Billy Corgan?

  I can, I can.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  See his pen quivering as he ripped it to shreds.

• 56:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  And the worst thing about it was that he was kind of right. And.

• 57:05Billy Corgan?

  Was it just an innocent kind of, you did your best and?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  I did my best.

• 57:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  And there were a couple of disasters of the time, but there was four bars that worked, working with the, it was my first working with an orchestra. And mostly it was a disaster, but there were four bars that worked. That's enough. Okay, I'm gonna stick at it. Maybe one day I'll be able to write like eight bars.

• 57:25Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  And so that's, even though it was a disaster, that's where it all began, San Francisco Ballet. And then as a result of that, I got a call from the Cleveland Opera, who said, you know, cause.

• 57:37Billy Corgan?

  Was very esteemed, by the way. I know this from my, my travails.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  That went really great. I outsold Aida, Carmen and La Boheme, the A B C of opera.

• 57:47Billy Corgan?

  Holy Blood and the Crescent.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Holy Blood and Crescent Moon. Very good. Thank you.

• 57:51Billy Corgan?

  Started in eighty seven, finished, debuted in eighty nine.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Okay, good, good, good. Yeah.

• 57:56Billy Corgan?

  And then. It's like, I think the timelines are interesting to me.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I was a film guy and, and just, like I said, I drank the Kool-Aid and got totally immersed in that world and it was just.

• 58:07Billy Corgan?

  It's intoxicating.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  And working with orchestra, I love working with the orcs because they have so much, the orchestra has such vocabulary.

• 58:15Billy Corgan?

  What, uh, I, I wish I knew this, so this is why I'm asking, but what level of, uh, are, on the scale, are you, are you doing your own arrangements? Are you working with somebody who's an arranger? Like, what?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  I do it all.

• 58:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay, wow. Did you go to school for that? Or is that, that's not an easy gig?

• 58:31Speaker 02

  I majored in music in college and then when I joined a rock band, I never saw another sheet of music for twenty years.

• 58:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Cause in rock and roll, we don't do music on the page. In fact, how do you get a guitarist to turn the volume down? Put a sheet of music in front of him. And so, um, but then when rumble, when, uh, in rumblefish, one day Francis turns around and said, this is all, cause I was playing all the instruments myself. So this is really great, great, love it, but we need some warmth here. We need some sentiment. We need some strings. Oh shit. So I call a contractor and say, director wants strings. And he goes, cool, how many?

• 59:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. Strings, plural. Anyhow, so I had to buy some music paper and remember F A C E. And put these notes on the page. It's just footballs and whole notes, real simple, but wow, that's so beautiful and so efficient. You know, cause a guitarist comes in, you spend the whole afternoon trading through all those different amps and different pickups and different pedals and stuff, you know?

• 59:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  But with the orcs, they read it right off and they're done. Wow, that's efficient. And so that's where the whole orchestral thing began was from, from that there, but I hadn't seen, but. I was writing music, um, for strings and stuff, but I had arrangers and then at a certain point. Uh, you know, how come it doesn't sound like John Williams? And I'd be there on the date with the orcs playing and they go da, da, da, da, da, da, da. No, but what I had in mind is da, da, da, da, da, da. Well, you gotta put the accents on there. And so I'm putting more and more pencil on the page as I'm sitting there and getting paid for my music education. And I got a big orchestra in, in, at Paramount or something and, uh, just doing, finally, one day.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  I hired a guy from USA, come over here every Friday and kick my, and teach me the language of scoring. Do you put the accents above the staff or below the staff? Do you, you know, where do you, the dynamics, how, how, how forte, how loud is forte? Or fortissimo or pianissimo, you know?

• 1:00:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  And just the language and it's not a complicated, it's easier to learn than French. And so I learned that vocabulary and I would, at the time I was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony to write a gamelan piece, a long story. And this.

• 1:00:41Billy Corgan?

  I love gamelons.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I got a great gamelan piece for gamelan and Western Symphony.

• 1:00:48Billy Corgan?

  How do you do the tuning with that?

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  They went, these guys in Texas went to Bali and had a bell set made at concert. Now, it's not exactly concert because there's a lot of very intricate detuning involved to give it that.

• 1:01:01Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say, that's why I was like, oh.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  But a C is more or less a C.

• 1:01:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  And so I sampled all there is, anyhow, long story, but, um, the, uh, I forget where, where I was going with that. Uh, you were talking about commission. I was writing this, I was composing this as I was having this guy and I would give him a, you know, some pages of score. And it would come back completely covered in red ink. You can't have your trombones playing for thirty six bars way up there. Their lips are gonna turn to jelly. You can't do this, you know? Where's your, you, you got one note of timpani at the beginning and then he's sitting there for the, you know, just kind of technical, non-creative, non-artistic, mechanical.

• 1:01:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Considerations.

• 1:01:41Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying. It's not an easy gig to just jump into.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I had been working with scores and seeing the result and reading, cause by then I could read my own scores. So sitting there, watching them play and adding pencil and the articulation, a melody isn't da, da, da, da, da, da. It's da, da, da, da, da, da. So you gotta put all that decoration on this. And I got more and more involved with that. So eventually I don't need my teacher no more.

• 1:02:04Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  And I score it all myself. And it's very, very engrossing. I encourage, you know, I have friends of mine who write orchestral music and that. Yeah, I, I, I arrange it myself. I just sing it to the guy and he, and that's not arranging.

• 1:02:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's in my situation recently.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Well, it's very rewarding, you know, and to hear your melody, that's the important thing.

• 1:02:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  You know, realized and to see it on the page is kind of cool and to hear and interpret is, is kind of cool. But I'm just an idiot, so I love getting into that minutia.

• 1:02:33Billy Corgan?

  But you, you, you know that when you see somebody drive an orchestra properly and all that shade and nuance comes out.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's, it's very humbling.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Well, I am very humble. Um, you know, I think I'm pretty clever until I go listen to some Ravel or Debussy or Stravinsky and I, okay, I have nothing, I have no one.

• 1:02:52Billy Corgan?

  Where do you, did you have a big opera background that you could draw from?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  I was raised to be a white, big band jazz drummer.

• 1:03:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  And like I, I like to annoy people. I'll wake up a dinner party by dropping in a statement such as, you know, the problem with jazz musicians is that they all suck. Okay, now everybody's throwing food and you know, now you gotta party, you know? And it's only just to piss people off. And some of my best friends are jazz musicians, but like my buddy Stanley Clark will tell me, dude. You were raised on wrong jazz. Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman and such, you know, and I appreciate, okay, I was raised, but you know, for me, jazz. Is Sunday lunch with my family, safe, secure.

• 1:03:35Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Uh, it's not adventure at all.

• 1:03:38Billy Corgan?

  Well, Stanley was in Return to Forever.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Well, now that, I don't even, I, I like to rattle his cage on that. Come on dudes, you're not jazz. Mahavishnu, weather report. You call yourself jazz musicians? That's just snobbery. Where's the ting ting ti ting? If it ain't got that swing, it don't mean a thing. Now they invented a whole new genre, which I loved and I was a big fan of all three of those bands. Really cool, but that ain't jazz. Come on. You know, jazz goes ting ting ti ting is a bunch of old white guys, you know, with trombones.

• 1:04:06Billy Corgan?

  I, I doubt that Duke or Louis Armstrong was thinking of, you know, merging free rock jazz and medieval influence, like the first Return to Forever.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Mahavishnu, for God's sake.

• 1:04:20Billy Corgan?

  Oh God, that's a whole.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  I've recently rediscovered Billy, you know, people ask, you know, asking who's my favorite drummer? It's always Mitch Mitchell. One day I just landed, you know, on the Spotify, cursed be its name. Uh, I landed on some Mahavishnu. Okay, okay, okay, give it up. Billy, you know, when I saw slipping out all Joey Jordison there, that, oh, oh God. But now I realize that Billy was there first.

• 1:04:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Have you ever seen some of that? Like, there's a, there's like black and white footage of them playing Kent State in like seventy two?

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  I have seen some footage of them.

• 1:04:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's like.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Out of nowhere.

• 1:04:53Billy Corgan?

  It's an afternoon concert.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Billy Corgan?

  You know, John McLaughlin comes out in his white.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Billy Corgan?

  And he says, you know, we'd like to have a moment of silence before we play. You know, and then they go in a meeting of the spirits and Billy just, Billy just goes berserk.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Well, I was the first kid on my block who could play, I think the first cut on the first album.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  That was the first kid on my block who could play that.

• 1:05:20Billy Corgan?

  All right. So let's talk Police Reunion, Gross Capitalism at its finest.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But also, uh, we weren't as good a band because we had grown apart. We weren't in the pocket. We weren't codependent, but the songs were still great. And the atmosphere of those audiences was still great. And so it was a great, great experience, experience. And I, I think we're all really glad we did it, even though we had screaming matches all, you know, and that's why we had therapy. You know, where everyone's having the best tour ever, except for two guys. So we went and we sat there cross-legged and with incense playing and, you know, music, you know? Uh, new age music, massage music playing and putting our hands on each other's hearts and gazing, you know, uh, and it worked. My God, you're not an, after all, I thought, I thought it was because you were an.

• 1:06:08Billy Corgan?

  Hundred fifty one shows, three hundred and sixty two million dollar gross.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:06:13Billy Corgan?

  Not bad.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  For a three piece band?

• 1:06:15Billy Corgan?

  Not bad.

• 1:06:19Billy Corgan?

  This is an esoteric question, so please, I apologize in advance. Every band has a kind of, at least in my estimation, has kind of its own mythology, right? It's like.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Well, it's the Avatar thing.

• 1:06:32Billy Corgan?

  Right, thank you. So, and I thought to ask it in this context. What was, what was the band mythology? Version one and what was the band mythology version two? I mean, like.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  You mean back in the day and reunion?

• 1:06:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because, because I appreciate your honesty in saying we're not, we weren't the same people when we reformed, but we found something that we found kinship on, we made some peace. To me, as somebody who's been in the.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  By the way, after band therapy, we were still shouting, screaming at each other onstage and in sound checks. But, but fortunately.

• 1:07:04Billy Corgan?

  It was from love, yeah.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and but fortunately, both of us have a very shallow reservoir of bile. Neither of us can sustain a tantrum for longer than twenty minutes. And much to Andy's disappointment, after twenty minutes, we're hugging. And just when he thought he was, you know, the kingmaker, there we are hugging again, his little moment of power.

• 1:07:26Billy Corgan?

  So, but okay, maybe a better way to ask it was like, what was the band alchemy? Version one and what was the band alchemy version two? Mythological or reality? I'm just curious because.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  No mythology in version two is very strange. It was very mercantile in a weird way. The emotion of the audience was the big deal. Everything else was weird, you know? Back in the day, we had a drum tech, guitar tech, front of house guy and a tour manager. On the reunion tour, we had two hundred people. And my favorite of those two hundred people was the dressing room ambiance coordinator. Who, we had one huge truck full of our cool stuff, with the lava lamps, pipe and drape, you know what that is? You know.

• 1:08:07Billy Corgan?

  You pay for that too.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  You know, you're playing a stadium, it's a room built for a football team, a breeze block.

• 1:08:12Billy Corgan?

  They put up the black curtain so it doesn't look like a locker room.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, yeah, pipe and drape, the pipes and the drapes, you know, ours wasn't black, it was all, you know, paisley and, you know. We had a really good dressing room ambiance coordinator with lava lamps and mood lighting and everything. In three of them, three separate causebars. And back in the day, we had one dressing room, come on, why are we in three different rooms? Well, I soon realized why we're in three different rooms.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  But the concerts were really uplifting. But we were no longer, it was no longer our band. It used to be the three of us and we decide where we're gonna go, we work it out with Miles, our manager, and what we're gonna do. This, we are now three soldiers in a giant army. And it's not ours anymore. My hands don't belong to me, they belong to the tour. It's like irresponsible and it'll everybody up if I twist my.

• 1:09:07Billy Corgan?

  No more horseback riding.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, no more horseback riding. In fact, specifically. And so you, we were very much subsumed and we're playing those songs. And our rule was to resolve any dispute. The way we did it before is the arbiter. Anyone wants to try something new, if everybody likes it, fine. But if there's dispute, we go back to, you know, the, you know, the resolution was what we did before.

• 1:09:36Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see, okay.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  So, but, you know, it just didn't belong to us anymore. The Police was this huge brand out there with gazillions of people, you know? And it was this machine, it belonged to Live Nation, you know, who actually did us pretty good, you know? I used to say, if they're ripping us off, come on, rip us off some more.

• 1:09:58Billy Corgan?

  Fun fact, we were, my band was supposed to open for you. Somewhere in South America circa two thousand eight.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:06Billy Corgan?

  And we were actually told the date was happening, agreed to the bread and the whole thing. And then we were kicked off. And I.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  I'll bet it was Andy.

• 1:10:14Billy Corgan?

  It was Andy.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  It was, I was joking. Why would Andy have a problem with smashing pumpkins?

• 1:10:19Billy Corgan?

  I have no idea. That's, I was told, a little birdie told me Andy kicked us off.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  I sort of doubt that because.

• 1:10:28Billy Corgan?

  Who knows, it doesn't matter.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Andy can be grumpy and stuff, but he, you know, there were other bands that we really didn't like.

• 1:10:33Billy Corgan?

  What we were told is we were too loud.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  I doubt that Andy ever saw any of the other bands on the thing. None of it, we're in our dressing rooms, we don't know who else is playing.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  The only time we were aware of who's playing was when the Go-Go's were the best opening act ever. Those women had come down, light up the room, so when we walked out, the place was already rocking.

• 1:10:55Billy Corgan?

  We would have put such a death pall over the whole.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Maybe that's it.

• 1:11:00Billy Corgan?

  A little sad on that because I love you guys, but.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I'm sorry, and I would have to stick up for Andy there because I don't think.

• 1:11:05Billy Corgan?

  It's rock and roll, it's, it's, it's, it's so, there's so much silliness that goes on, it's, it's hard to keep.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Well, you know what happened? Was that your manager had a dispute with our manager or some, there was a business dispute. And so it was blamed on, well, it was, it was the band. It was the band, probably Andy.

• 1:11:23Billy Corgan?

  To this, to this day, to this day, I am, I'll meet people and I found out that I was blamed for something that I had nothing to do with. Because it was easier for the manager to lay it on.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Well, they remember your name, but not the other guy's name.

• 1:11:34Billy Corgan?

  No, but I, I have actual, real circumstances where something happened. And the manager at the time, seven managers ago, would blame me.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Billy Corgan?

  So they didn't look like the bad guy.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:11:47Billy Corgan?

  And I was none the wiser, and then twenty seven years later, I'm standing, talking to somebody, finding out there's some issue that I caused.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  That's right, that you didn't even realize.

• 1:11:54Billy Corgan?

  So, yeah. I'm, I'm, look, I.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Well, like we're saying before, the Avatar is bigger than you and not entirely under your control. And that manager used your avatar to solve some problem of his own and threw your avatar under the bus. And here the, the flesh and blood Billy talking at you is a different entity.

• 1:12:12Billy Corgan?

  See, here's the thing. Not only am I a fan, but, but I like The New Animals. And I love that record that he played, Never the Twain Shall Meet.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  The New Animals.

• 1:12:22Billy Corgan?

  Remember he was in The New Animals?

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Who was?

• 1:12:24Billy Corgan?

  Andy.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  You know more about that, that guy than I do.

• 1:12:28Billy Corgan?

  Sixty eight, he was.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I know he's been around from Soft Machine to Neil Sedaka and everything in between.

• 1:12:34Billy Corgan?

  Eric Burden had basically fired the original Animals.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:38Billy Corgan?

  And he started The New Animals. And he released it, an actually fairly credible record card, Never the Twain Shall Meet, sort of like.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Any hits?

• 1:12:46Billy Corgan?

  Maybe San Francisco Nights, one of those, like, was when he was smoking a lot of dope and.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  By the way, who's he?

• 1:12:53Billy Corgan?

  Eric Burden.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Eric, oh, Eric, of course, yeah.

• 1:12:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so, so Andy's on that record.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  What do you know?

• 1:12:59Billy Corgan?

  It's a cool record, if you ever get a chance to listen, so. I'll never get a chance.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  He had already had a whole life. He's ten years older than, than the other two.

• 1:13:07Billy Corgan?

  I, I knew that.

• 1:13:12Billy Corgan?

  I thought to ask this because it's such a unique thing.

• 1:13:18Billy Corgan?

  Some people are born to be rock stars, your, your lead singer was one of them, but. He seemed to be tabbed very early on for something, like when he was in Dune and. Did that, did, I guess what I'm trying to say from the sideline of the thing, did you watch that happening and think that's kind of amusing? That's a good thing?

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  A good thing, because he's our, he's our face.

• 1:13:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  You know, the more women are swooning over him, the richer I'm gonna be. And like I say, I don't, I don't need, I just don't need to be the center of attention. And he loved it, was really good at it, darned handsome. And so his acting career.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  Didn't kind of work out and, and I. It's hard, you know, if you have friends who are actors, you see them on the screen, you don't see the character, you see your friend.

• 1:14:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  And so it was impossible to judge whether he had any talent in that.

• 1:14:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, no, I was just wondering about that because some people, now that I look back, you know, he, you know, whatever how the world works. It seemed, people seemed to pick him out of the lineup pretty early. Obviously, very, very good looking.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  I picked him out of the lineup pretty early.

• 1:14:30Billy Corgan?

  You did.

• 1:14:32Billy Corgan?

  You're to blame.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Meal ticket.

• 1:14:34Billy Corgan?

  You're to blame.

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  And I, and I, doesn't anybody else see this? There's a shaft of celestial light coming down from the heavens. Am I the only person seeing this?

• 1:14:46Billy Corgan?

  Well, at the time, you were.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Billy Corgan?

  Couple of things, and thank you for indulging me.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  And by the way, at that time, we had no idea what was under the hood. We had no idea about that songwriting, we had no idea the.

• 1:15:00Billy Corgan?

  That kind of came, like, it wasn't there at the very beginning.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  The singing as well, you know, I thought we had like, you know, in the verse, it was my song, just basslines with yelling. And, and he was yelling, that's all I ever heard. It wasn't until we played a gig in Germany.

• 1:15:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Andy's last session, and he got Sting and I on it, to play with this German composer, kind of the German Pink Floyd. And during that context, one day, just, he walks up to the microphone and starts improvising.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  I mean, just the, you know, there's, there's three or four people in the, I've ever worked with that just have that musicality. Nothing comes out of them that isn't beautiful.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  And so we had no idea, well, I just thought he was handsome, pretty good bass player, and he had his own amp.

• 1:15:49Billy Corgan?

  I thought to ask you, uh, it's kind of become the running gag on my podcast, but you know, AI, there's a lot of talk about what's going to happen with AI, but I, I thought to ask it within this context of you because you, you've never been someone shy about embracing technology. So are you on the technological embrace it side of AI or?

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  I feel and have empathy for all of the out of work, below the line film musicians, carpenters, um, composers, players, because AI does it better, uh, and more cheaply and without copyright hassles and, and everything. Billie Eilish will always be, we need artists with a unique humanity and they will be fine. But for that Mountain Dew commercial that I used to earn a living from doing, that'll be gone. They don't, you know, the, the, the, the advertising company, you know, they've got a guy, an AI guy who will turn it out, it'll absolutely sell the Mountain Dew. They don't care about individuality. They're not

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  looking for, they just trying to get a bouncy little tune for them to sell whatever they're selling. In fact, I've got a friend of mine, businessman, Lebanese buddy who lives in Dubai. And when the bombs started going off, he discovered and started writing songs. And he sends me these songs and man, it sounds like the Eagles on a good day. That's one of the best guitar solos I've ever heard. And I can't tell if it's his voice or not. You know, it started with his voice and his idea of a lyric, but they're like, I don't know if they're hits, I, you know, but yeah. And so that made me think that it's just so much easier. And so I, I lament that many below the line craftsmen will be out of work.

• 1:17:32Billy Corgan?

  I call it the musical middle class is going to be.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  I think they will be decimated.

• 1:17:35Billy Corgan?

  The indie indie stuff is going to persist because people just want to.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they want that.

• 1:17:39Billy Corgan?

  And God bless, they should. But that kind of musical middle class, you know?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I have, yeah, I'm sorry for them.

• 1:17:45Billy Corgan?

  Even like, somebody needs like a decent string arrangement. If you can feed an AI not have to pay the guy or the girl.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my son is a filmmaker.

• 1:17:54Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I didn't know that.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  One of my sons. And, um, for him, he embraced it totally. And for him, he can make his, his videos for his chuckle buddies in a band and it can be set in Thailand or on the top of the Himalayas.

• 1:18:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Or, and, and he can just flip back and forth. And so it's a force multiplier. It doesn't take away his creativity. It's a force multiplier for his creativity.

• 1:18:19Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Anything he can, he, he doesn't have to go to the man to get a bunch of money to get that shot. He can just conceive of it and it is there for him, available.

• 1:18:27Billy Corgan?

  I have a funny feeling we're going to see in the relative near future, we're going to see like, you know, the Coppola and the Oliver Stone of AI. Somebody's going to figure out how to master.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  It's training.

• 1:18:38Billy Corgan?

  Matt, they're going to figure out how to master the technology and then almost bring up a totally new voice.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  That's what my son wants. In fact, he did something.

• 1:18:44Billy Corgan?

  God bless him, yeah.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  He did something, which is he took Clark Kent, this persona that I had painted green and a secret identity. Uh, and, uh, I wasn't anybody. But, uh, anyhow, so he took that, me aged 28 or something, uh, all the film he could find, all the recordings he could find, interviews to get my syntax. And he, he trained up a version, a 28 version of Clark Kent, uh, 28 years old, with my voice of that period, my, the syntax, the way, everything. It's amazing. And, uh, so he started making these clips, you know, for a while, every drummer in every band was getting fired, you know, from Josh Fries from the Foo Fighters, Primus lost their drummer.

• 1:19:24Billy Corgan?

  That's right.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  One, you know, and there's this like musical chairs of drummers going on. So I did a Clark Kent thing where, and it was all, it was really cool. People on my socials hated it. Well, a lot of people loved it, but I've never seen anger.

• 1:19:37Billy Corgan?

  Because it was AI.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  Because it was, we were flaunting it. We weren't trying to fool anybody.

• 1:19:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  It was blatantly, but people, there was a big negative response. But the other thing was, uh, my next post, I'm just sitting there at my drums answering questions. Why do you use these drumsticks? Cause they're great. That got gazillion viewers. This thing that he spent built this huge thing to create this AI, incredible what it would do. Eh, the minute they spot it's AI, it doesn't work. Just me sitting there talking, got more engagement. And also, you know, once he's got this avatar of me with a green face, uh, he starts talking to, uh, you know, his mom saying, okay, I'm, I'm going to be bringing the kids over, uh, and so, but it's Clark Kent. And he just is, just he's playing with this model that

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  he made. And so my wife shows, shows it to her girlfriends and, and one of her girlfriends, oh yeah, I got that app. No, you don't have that app. There is an app that'll take a still photograph and have you singing some song.

• 1:20:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  You know, and it's cool. But the distinction between this creation that took a lot of work and the app was lost. Oh yeah, I got that app. So.

• 1:20:51Billy Corgan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  All of that production value doesn't add up to a hit, strangely.

• 1:20:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Okay. Last thing. Um, Erga Music War.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Uh huh. That was a fun tour.

• 1:21:06Billy Corgan?

  That was interesting. Cause, cause, well, here, here's the way to voice the question.

• 1:21:12Billy Corgan?

  In middle America in, in that time, Erg came out, what, 81? Does that sound about right?

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Sounds plausible.

• 1:21:19Billy Corgan?

  I should know this, but, um, there was such scant evidence in American culture of what we now would call alternative culture.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:28Billy Corgan?

  You guys were already kind of crossing over into being a mainstream band.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Billy Corgan?

  So even though you were alternative, the public was none the wiser.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Billy Corgan?

  But there was something about, and your, your, uh, I think your brothers were the ones that sort of did the movie, right?

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Billy Corgan?

  Cause it was through IRS. Um, the fact that there was this assemblage of all this interesting alternative talent in one movie. It's, for me, it's like a watershed moment of what's coming.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  Wow. Because all those bands were, that scene fully existed in America.

• 1:21:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  In clubs.

• 1:21:58Billy Corgan?

  But it was something about it of being assembled and presented.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  From Wazmo Nouriz to Oingo Boingo to Wall of Voodoo.

• 1:22:03Billy Corgan?

  OMD and.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  OMD, yeah, exactly. Um, Flock of, you know, all those.

• 1:22:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  They were all going on, but I guess Erg sort of brought that.

• 1:22:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  To the mainstream.

• 1:22:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And, uh, so last little, uh, interesting tidbit, uh, Jim Skaifish, Skaifish.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  I love him. I've got some shots of that band. What a band he had.

• 1:22:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, cool. Uh, so he was from Chicago.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:22:27Billy Corgan?

  So I knew him from the movie.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Billy Corgan?

  Cause I, for some reason it used to play on cable.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  By the way, I've got Super 8 footage of all those performances, because we were on tour for a while.

• 1:22:35Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  And I've got, there's the, the scene where I think during our song, somebody starts shouting, there's a fight in the audience and Sting is shouting at it. Well, I've got my Super 8 camera rolling.

• 1:22:45Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  And I'm, and I had, I could turn it off and on with the microphone, had a switch. I could turn the camera on, on. So anyway, here we are at a police show and a little bit of a bother going on there. And so I've got, I've got the reverse angle of that shot.

• 1:22:57Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's amazing. So, um, so I knew him from the movie and, and he was hanging around Chicago in the, in the late eighties when we were sort of first starting. And so I got to know him a bit and I got to ask him about the movie and stuff. And he was very sweet because he was one of the first people that actually pulled me aside and said, you've got something really important and don't give up.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Good for him.

• 1:23:18Billy Corgan?

  And I think we even played with them one time.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Billy Corgan?

  He opened for us or something. Cause at that point he was kind of become a, like almost an unknown in Chicago, like that generation, the Gen X generation.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  They never busted through.

• 1:23:29Billy Corgan?

  Didn't know who he was.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  They never busted through Skaifish, but they had, uh, incredible drummer, the musicianship in that band.

• 1:23:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  And they were sort of like goth rock before goths were a thing. I don't know what it was, but they, they didn't hit.

• 1:23:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, he's definitely out there. Uh, Sign of the Cross was the song.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've got, I've got Super 8 of them doing that thing.

• 1:23:49Billy Corgan?

  Very good. So thank you. Thank you and your family for that. Cause I, there's these little things that I think Gen X held on to.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Billy Corgan?

  Because it was, there was so, so little information in the public sphere.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Wasn't MTV going by then?

• 1:24:05Billy Corgan?

  It might've been, but it was, I mean, they weren't playing Gary Newman. You know what I mean?

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  Were they not?

• 1:24:11Billy Corgan?

  I don't think so. I could be wrong.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Well, this was before, one day, this is a real travesty. One day, the MTV executives discovered that whenever, you know, they, they started doing like documentaries about music and stuff. And then whenever they would start playing videos, the viewers disappear. And they realized the last thing our MTV viewers want is band videos.

• 1:24:35Billy Corgan?

  That's, that's the death knell of the whole thing.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Billy Corgan?

  But, um, yeah, Erga Music War, if you haven't seen. Anyway, thank you, Stuart.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  Well, cool. This has been fun.

• 1:24:43Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.