Billy Idol and Steve Stevens | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan sits down with icons Billy Idol and Steve Stevens for a conversation about how a genre gets built from scratch—and what it really takes to make something last. Idol and Stevens trace their origin story from a chance meeting in New York to a 40+ year creative partnership that fused punk, dance, and rock before anyone thought it could work. Corgan pushes deeper into the creative decisions behind it all—rejecting “punk purity,” trusting instinct over rules, and using technology as a tool instead of a crutch. They also get into MTV-era fame, excess, and what it’s like building an identity in real time while the culture is both shifting and blowing up around you. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Somehow putting it all together was a hell of a lot of fun. If you're a guitarist and you admire the person you're working with, that's all you need.

• 0:10Billy Corgan?

  You were building a genre of music that didn't exist.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  You can't help but be proud of it.

• 0:15Billy Corgan?

  Rock is such an incredible thing. And you know, it's like a form of playing with fire.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Everybody's got Billy Idol.

• 0:23Billy Corgan?

  Your name was always the headline.

• 0:30Billy Corgan?

  Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I'm very excited. As a longtime fan and admirer, it's awesome to talk to both of you. Because I'm a guitarist, of course, first. So I always start with guitar and then you.

• 0:44Billy Corgan?

  Because back in the eighties, I'm like, what pedal is he using? Oh, and then Billy.

• 0:49Billy Corgan?

  Anyway, congrats, 44-ish years of partnership. Not a perfect partnership, but certainly a perfect partnership in productivity. And obviously, your connection is strong because you're together.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01Billy Corgan?

  And with the documentary just about to come out here.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Right on.

• 1:04Billy Corgan?

  It's exciting. So let's start there. Did somebody put you two together? Was it, was it, you know, was it a producer or a record label? Or how did that?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Well, I had a manager, American manager, Bill O'Coin, who managed Kiss. And he knew Steve. Really, he was, he'd been following Steve's career in New York, around the clubs or whatever.

• 1:30Billy Corgan?

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  The band you were in.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  We sort of had a development deal with, with O'Coin at the time. And he said, I left the band that I was in. We had an ill-fated record that was never released. But I stayed with the O'Coin management. And Bill called me, I don't know, you know, at some point and said, hey, you ever heard of Billy Idol? And by then, Dancing with Myself was being played, you know, five times a night in every club. I went, oh, yeah, Generation X. And he said, well, he's moved to New York. We're managing him. You guys should meet.

• 2:02Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04Billy Corgan?

  So in the after, give me your version of, so is Gen X waning? Or is it breaking up? Or how do you end up in America? Because I mean, there's variations of that story. But of course, I want to hear it from you.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, it's just, yeah, Generation X was sort of falling apart gradually. And

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Then me and me and Tony was sort of, we were carrying on the Gen X. But um. In the meantime, we did get this American manager, Bill O'Coin, who managed Kiss and stuff and.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  He, yeah, I mean, he was, he obviously was really interested in managing us, but I think he really just wanted to manage me, really. Cause uh, you know, um, yeah, anyway.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so uh.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  What started to happen was, you know, Dancing With Myself didn't do Sweet Fall in England, you know, got to number sixty or something when it, we put it out in England and do anything. So it's a little bit like, blimey, I mean, yeah, things are not really happening here at all. And I, I knew kind of somewhere, I knew, you know, if I stay in England and start a solo thing. I'll probably end up propping up a bar and that's about it. Cause in England, things go through really fast. I mean.

• 3:31Billy Corgan?

  It's like this, right? It's up and down.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  A record can be over in three weeks, even if it's quite successful, you know? And a tour can be over in three weeks, you know, it's like, I mean, it depends how big you are, but still.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I could just see that, yeah, I loved what we were trying to do with the Dancing With Myself type music. But it just wasn't happening in England and it just sort of made sense, you know, if I start something in England, it's likely nothing will happen because. They've already felt like they've seen you and it's just happened, basically, you know, I just was on. Top of the pops and punk rock and they really feel like they've, you, they're already on to something, they're already. Getting ready for Frankie Goes to Hollywood or something, you know what I mean? So it just sort of made sense to me like. The best thing I could do if I'm really gonna start a solo career is to go somewhere else and what better place?

• 4:22Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Then New York, where I knew there's likely to be other like minded people, because that's that's what we were following, the CB G B C.

• 4:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  So it just made sense to, you know, go to New York and I'd already been to New York in seventy. I'd lived in America when I was a little child. So I remember New York as a three, three or four year old, you know.

• 4:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  And things like that. So I had a kind of, I wasn't, to a lot of English people, America's daunting because it is fifty, they don't even realize it's fifty countries in a way. But I kind of already, because I'd already lived in America and I li- I liked it, you know. So it was a little bit, for me, it was like going, in a way, going home and to a certain extent. So I was excited to, the idea of starting afresh and maybe the idea would go to America. And then I had no idea that Dancing Myself was, was doing really well in the dance chart, in this, in this new wave dance chart that was kind of going on. I had no idea, but once I got to New York

• 5:26Speaker 00

  after a few months, I started to hang around the clubs and I started to, I started to see that, hey, they're putting on this song that everybody goes crazy to. And then when I listened to what it was, it went me sniff if it isn't Dancing With Myself, you know.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  I don't have to change a thing.

• 5:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  I've already got, I've already got the idea, you know, that was the thing. That was what was great, you know.

• 5:51Billy Corgan?

  Did, did, so, because I'm curious how these things start, because we have the long lens of, of a beautiful partnership. But does Bill O'Coin sort of pitch you on his vision of what he thinks Billy would be?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Well, by then, you know, I went up to the office. Well, first of all, they, they sent over a copy of the, of the Gen X record and there was songs like Revenge on it and John McGee, who had played guitar on it, was doing all this kind of inventive guitar stuff. And I went, I went, oh, he's looking for someone who can really expand on the guitar, create

• 6:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  textures. And, oh, I'm right at home with, if that's what he wants.

• 6:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  I'm your guy.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  It is what I want.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So, so I thought that was really cool. And then I went up to the office and they played me the EP that he had just done with Moni Moni on it, which was like the real, you know, merger of, you know. Guitar hero stuff, but it as well, uh, you know, the dance music thing.

• 6:48Billy Corgan?

  But in many ways, like a, like a cross between America and UK at the time.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:53Billy Corgan?

  It seems obvious to me in hindsight.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  There was all these influences that I could hear. Oh, he must like sweet because the guitar.

• 7:01Billy Corgan?

  Especially as a, somebody from New York, you know, you know, Tommy James is through our generation, Tommy James is amazing, right? So, so like not everybody knows Tommy James, but if you know it, you're like, oh, okay.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

• 7:16Billy Corgan?

  But what did they give you? Do they say, oh, we think this kid's going to be a star? I'm just curious of those types of conversations. I just love that stuff.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, it was, you know.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Well, Bill O'Quinn was telling people, I've watched it, telling people things like that. This guy's a fut- I mean, he's incredible salesman.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  But he wasn't saying that to us. He never tried to inter- interfere with the music. And he never, all he just said was, why didn't you meet Steve? I was already looking around for other people, but uh, I'd already done the EP and then when I met Steve, I, when I saw what Steve could do.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  And plus I had from, I went to high school. I went to the fame school. I was already in Manhattan. I knew every musician in New York at the time. So I kind of said to Billy, hey, you know, if you're looking to put together a band, I know all the musicians and sir, if you'd consider me as the guitarist. So, but, but by that time, you know, we were already, we were auditioning other people and I kind of, you know, kind of, oh, I see what he's looking for. A bit of, you know, it's like a gumbo of guitar things. He wants a bit of, you know, uh, you know, guitar histrionics, but, but, you know, as well as the energy of punk rock.

• 8:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  And, you know, I mean, I'm from Queens, the Ramones and the Dolls are my, my backyard.

• 8:36Billy Corgan?

  That's your DNA.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  So it was like, you know, oh, okay. This, this could really work. Could really be all encompassing.

• 8:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. You know, uh, because you were there at the true genesis of punk in, in the UK.

• 8:53Billy Corgan?

  As often happens, because in my generation it happened with Grunge, people have a way of looking backwards and they kind of, they put a mental framework on it like, oh, you guys wanted this and you thought that. But of course, it doesn't work like that when you're actually doing it. So a lot of, because when, in the nineties, we dealt a lot with like, what I call like punk purists. Like this is punk and punk is like this and, but, but my sense was punk was just about, you should just do what you feel. If you think you could be on the stage, get up there and just do your thing.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  That's it, yeah.

• 9:21Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, find out who you are and be it.

• 9:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So when you came to America and you started to have success on your own terms, did you get any kind of weird punk pushback stuff or does that kind of stuff come later?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, of course. I mean, yeah, I mean, because I was crossing over into this sort of dance mainstream in a way. It was through the dance.

• 9:45Billy Corgan?

  To be fair, I'm sorry, but you, but you were building a genre of music that didn't exist.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  In a way, yeah, we were kind of.

• 9:51Billy Corgan?

  That's right. You were putting together influences that nobody even thought could be commercial.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were trying to put together, yeah, the sort of, I, I, yeah, I got this producer Keith Fawcett, he'd, he'd, he'd worked with Giorgio Moroder. And it was actually another Bill O'Coin. I said to Bill one day in England, before I came to America, what we really need is, for want of a better word, we need a disco producer who knows rock and roll, or a rock and roll producer who knows, I didn't want to say disco.

• 10:25Billy Corgan?

  But there's the vision, but there's the vision.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  There's no dance, and it was disco, you know.

• 10:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  We really want someone who somehow knows both worlds and then Bill got hold of the chap at Casablanca, he knew Giorgio. And he, I think he asked Giorgio if he wanted to do it and he said, I don't think I want to do it. But Keith heard the tape and said, you know, boss, I'd like, I'd like to have a crack at producing this guy for your company. I've never, he'd only done a solo record of his own, he'd never really produced anybody. But that was the great thing about Keith was that we were new and he was kind of new. And it was a bit like. We're just gonna go there together right from the start. That's a little bit what we sort of, without saying anything.

• 11:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  And when we did finish the Gen X album, I went and met Keith after, um, when the night he was leaving to go, and I said to him, I want to work with you again. And then, so when I came to the States and came to do that EP, um, they said, who do you want to work with? And I said, well, I want to work with Keith Fawcett.

• 11:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  And they would go, but you could work with, what? You know?

• 11:35Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  They, they, they tried to get, you know, they tried to talk.

• 11:39Billy Corgan?

  Whoever was the name of.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was a million people and I said, no, th- this is the guy. And, and, and they went with it. So, uh, yeah, we did the EP. And so we already had a bit of a, you know, we already started, we'd already started Billy Idol, really. And that was something Steve, I think, then could see.

• 11:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  A little bit of where, and also we had a great big, we had some big discussions where we said, this isn't just, this is just some, me putting my toe in the woods, because that's the whole point of doing.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just, we, we would go see, I think it was, you know, a, a, a matter of, you know, finding the common ground, you know, li- listen to a lot of records. And I don't think, I don't think you ever played a Sex Pistols record or anything like that. It was all Susie, Su- Susie and Banshees, Lou Reed, all this, uh, uh, and we would go see Suicide. That was a big one.

• 12:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  And The Cramps and all this kind of stuff. And it was like, it was exciting. It was all kind of, and it wasn't about, by then, you know, this is in New York, this is post Van Halen, and you got a bunch of guitar players who are all doing that, right? And this was like, this was totally not about that. So it was like, for me as a guitar player, it was, oh, I could, I could build an identity as a guitar player with him and Keith.

• 12:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I think that was what was so exciting.

• 13:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. One of the great pleasures of doing interviews. Like this is I find myself, I go back to the music, but I'm looking at it differently. Not just a fan who listened when the stuff came out. And I was already a fan of Gen X when you came solo. So I knew that music, which was weird because not a lot of people knew Gen X in America.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:17Billy Corgan?

  So I kind of knew what you were doing, but it seemed so fresh and new, obviously. But one of the great pleasures is like, now I step back and because I love to produce music myself. It's like, I realize now that the three headed monster of you two with Keith Forsy.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:31Billy Corgan?

  It's like, there's the magical thing.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 13:33Billy Corgan?

  Of course, everyone focuses on this singer. That's how it always works, right? But, but, but your partnership, the three of you, that was, is an incredible marriage of ideas, approaches.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  And Keith was, I mean, he was just so great. He was great for me as a guitar player. We went to record the first album and he afforded me the ability to, to at least try. Cause any other producer, uh, because it, the first album ran the gamut. There was a bit of like even Motown guitar things and I didn't know it, you know, it was like that. But any other producer would have been on the phone, you know, after we leave.

• 14:09Billy Corgan?

  Give me the Motown guy, yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Steve Lukather.

• 14:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Let me get the session. Keith never did that. He always afforded me the time to like find my way.

• 14:17Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's obvious too, because, uh, as a guitar player listening to in, in those times, the first thing that struck me was there was such an aggression to the guitar, but it was a different type of aggression.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:29Billy Corgan?

  It was more like sexy, cool, or like, I don't give a.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:33Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean? And then you turn around and play super tasteful, cool stuff.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:37Billy Corgan?

  And nobody was really doing that then. Now there's a ton of people do stuff like that. I mean, you even hear it in Radiohead, you know, there's this idea of like.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Okay, right.

• 14:44Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying is you kind of way ahead of that curve that the guitar didn't have to be this one lane instrument.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, you know, if you, if, you know, if you're a guitarist and you're a, and you admire the person you're working with. That's all you need, you know, just play the song, you know, and and Billy was always really good at, um, you know, first take, warts and all, doesn't matter, keep, keep the energy, keep the, the element of discovering it. Whereas a lot of guitar players, you know, you know, you go, I can do it better, I can do, you know, and, and, and, uh, and it was always like, don't lose that first initial idea. That's

• 15:24Speaker 00

  That's the very first thing Steve, like, is, is incredible for starters. And it's also got all the ideas in it. It's just, yeah, he's gonna probably do, he's gonna work it a little bit more just to, but it's all there somehow in the initial.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  But that flying by the seat of your pants thing, I think people react to that.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And they go, oh, you know, might, might, might not be perfect, but it's got

• 15:48Billy Corgan?

  It's like when I worked with Rick Rubin, he didn't want me to do more than like four vocal takes.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:52Billy Corgan?

  You know, because he thought something happened after that foretake. Like you lose some magical thing. But yeah, you know, we're guitar players are nerds, right? So you let us go, we're just gonna like

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can do it better.

• 16:04Billy Corgan?

  We'll ruin the song, we'll ruin the bars, we'll ruin everything.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Well, this is, you know, we only had a 24, you know, 24 track.

• 16:12Billy Corgan?

  Well, don't forget 23, because one was for Simp.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Simp, that's right. Yeah. So you don't have that much room to, you know,

• 16:18Billy Corgan?

  You gotta

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Better not erase that original.

• 16:20Billy Corgan?

  Well, as we say in wrestling, you gotta get your

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So now it's like you have unlimited tracks and

• 16:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Sometimes

• 16:27Billy Corgan?

  Can you talk about the, the sort of the songwriting partnership? I know there's covers, but, but obviously you guys are working intimately together to kind of build this language.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Just kind of natural. I mean, we just kind of got down to it, you know?

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just decided that, um, I was gonna make Steve my song, songwriting partner. That's really what I just decided when I met Steve and saw what he could do. I just decided this is the guy, we're gonna write songs together. And then we just, that's what we started. That's what we just started doing.

• 16:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And, uh,

• 16:57Billy Corgan?

  That's cool.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And sort of, yeah, both coming with our different

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Ways of approaching music, I suppose.

• 17:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  But.

• 17:08Billy Corgan?

  Was there, because it strikes me that there's, it's weird because at the time I recognized that there was something going on, but now that I'm older and I look at it, there's this beautiful blend of aesthetics, different influences.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 17:21Billy Corgan?

  You know, there's a little bit of Gen X, but there's a little bit like total futurism, like the Giorgio Moroder type Blade Runner thing going on. Did you guys talk about that stuff or did it just kind of just you feel your way forward?

• 17:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, we didn't really. A lot of it was, yeah, we did just sort of somehow or other we were, I mean, there's certain, I mean, Steve's very influenced by science fiction and.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  In fact, the old sort of.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I think also, you know.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Sci fi, the sort of, you know, stuff like that.

• 17:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  We just sort of leant into the things that were, that it gets, you're touching us off, so to speak.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  And also, we never wanted to repeat ourself, you know, as an example, after the success of Rebel Yell, we, we loved all the dance remixes. I remember we, we had Gary Langen from Martin Oates do one and we went, oh, the next record could be a bit more of that stuff. And so it was just, you know, the, I think the ideas were let's utilize the technology as, as much as we can. And I remember when we did Rebel Yell, because I loved the, on the Queen records, it said, no synthesizers, because I loved Brian May.

• 18:33Billy Corgan?

  Which they, which they later went off. When we got the hot space.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  So when we did Rebel Yell, I remember saying, you know, let me try and all the, the role that's, that keyboards would, would take on that record, let me try it with the guitar. If I fail at it, then, then bring those things in. So I think that was, that was part of the sound of that record was experiment.

• 18:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. What, what for, what for you was the, like the holy, we'll say the nice way to say holy cow, but you know, the holy F moment is my kids say. Were you, because in my mind, it was, it was, it was White Wedding. That in America, that felt like, like that's where the bomb went off. Like MTV, you were everywhere. But for you, when was that moment where you were like, holy cow, this is really.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  It was, White Wedding was a big, it was because, yeah, the, the college radio got on it and then MTV gradually expanding.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  It kind of broke through. There was a bit of a, the radio stations where we don't play music has a punk rock image. So uh.

• 19:40Billy Corgan?

  It seems so silly now, right?

• 19:41Speaker 00

  It seems after, you know, but uh, I think a lot of people must have been facing that. And then the platform of college radio MTV just pushed that aside and because fans were calling up the radio stations saying they wanna, they wanna hear this new music. So they soon, that all dropped away with the platform of MTV.

• 20:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, did you feel the effect of that overnight? Like suddenly are you playing bigger places? Was it instant or did it, was it?

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Well, we were really doing clubs and stuff with White Wedding, but obviously what really happened was, it was really Eyes Without a Face, Eyes Without a Face, us doing this mega ballad. Cause we hadn't really, yeah, people were used to the dance with myself, the White Weddings, but they hadn't really heard a killer ballad from us. And um, that went to number four and the album was at number six Rebel Yell. So uh, in a way that broke us to a whole different load of people who weren't even thinking about Billy Idol, I think. I know they used to play on New York radio drive time. They'd do Cars, The Cars Drive. It was paired with Eyes Without a Face. It'd be like 10 minutes of it.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  But uh, yeah, I was just really into Sly. I like reggae. So I really, the low bass, I was into that idea.

• 21:02Billy Corgan?

  Sly Robbie, you're thinking like, yeah, that kind of production?

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, sort of. Yeah. It was a little bit like, but yeah, at the same time, we're not going to play reggae, but we're going to use that basic idea of, of a low bass, really heavy bass, which we had to cut the record a million times to get the needle knot, stuff like that back then.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And we would always have, at that time, you know, 32 bars in the middle where we didn't quite know what we were gonna, didn't know because the dance remixers needed that. So we were gonna, you know, they had 32 bars and I said, well, we don't do ballads. There's gotta be some heavy guitar somewhere.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  It's gonna explode.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'll just play.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  And then it kind of and then Billy came in with the vocal idea. We're just like, it was just like stacking. Let's put that, you know.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Watching all like Grandmaster Flash and African Bombardment, all that was going on. The kids breakdancing on the street.

• 21:59Billy Corgan?

  Well, plus you're in it in New York, right? I mean, you're like in the middle of it.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  It's all going on. So it was fun to just not think I'm gonna rap really. But in a way, put a taste of it, taste of what we're watching. Yeah. And it just fit, you know, you know, when it fits, it's.

• 22:14Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no, yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:17Billy Corgan?

  It strikes me that.

• 22:20Billy Corgan?

  Cause I was trying to kind of do the math in my head. I feel like.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  And then with Rebel Yell, we went from clubs to theaters to arenas. That as, you know, as the, as Rebel Yell did quite well. And then Eyes of Our Face took it further and Flesh of Fantasy even further. But, you know, by the end of the year, we were, we were playing arenas, you know. So, so that's where we really saw, whoa, you know.

• 22:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Anyway, so there's this other tangent. It was like, but thank you for answering my question. Cause it's important because I think most people don't understand how dizzying that feels. You know, you'd had success in England, but you weren't playing arenas. You know what I mean? And then boom, you know.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  And also too, it's just an amazing thing for an English guy to do well in America. It just, it's one of those things to dream about, really.

• 23:11Billy Corgan?

  I mean.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  And there it was happening. I mean, it was like, you know, incredible, really. And, and then I kind of knew, you know, some other people had come from England that hadn't happened. Or they'd broken up or something.

• 23:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Or they'd, you know, but it was, it was really working for us. And it was so exciting. It was really exciting.

• 23:36Billy Corgan?

  I was trying to do the math in my mind because, you know, again, I'm trying to think these things through to talk to you. And I feel like, you know, punk rock fashion is so ubiquitous in American culture now. I mean, you go to Hot Topic, you can, but I think like, it pretty much started with you. I'm not saying it was all your ideas, but you're the sort of, you opened that door to America. Because I can't think of anybody else who kind of brought that stylistic feel into the country.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Well, The Clash and Adamant and that had come.

• 24:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  But in a way, they didn't, they didn't, I don't know why Adamant didn't keep coming to America. It's weird. He's kind of came, the kings of the wild frontier.

• 24:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, he had a big, he had that one kind of two, three years where it was really big and then it just sounded.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then it didn't seem to, it didn't keep coming to America. And then The Clash broke up, sort of.

• 24:27Billy Corgan?

  At the worst time, at the worst time possible.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, the worst time possible, really. But he left a sort of a bit of a void or a clear field, in a way. And then so it made, so it's a, so it looked like that, looked like there I was, kind of with the whole.

• 24:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  British punk rock thing.

• 24:44Billy Corgan?

  Well, was that, in your mind, I'm not saying you didn't have your own personal sense of style, but was it the Westwood influence? Or like, what, what for you?

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was just mixing a load of stuff. In a way, we were kind of, yeah, using some of the Westwood stuff, Vivienne Westwood, but also kind of thinking back to the 50s and 60s, early 60s.

• 25:05Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  50s, you know, the leather jacket.

• 25:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  As opposed to denim, because in the 70s, most people wearing denim was, we sort of.

• 25:13Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I remember.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  We brought leather back.

• 25:14Billy Corgan?

  It was a bad period for that. You had the jean suit.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  But yeah, it was gradually, and then gradually I was developing my own. Own way of, you know, of it being this, because I'm, I was always a bit into glam. So I'm a sort of glam punk rocker.

• 25:34Billy Corgan?

  Who did you, who, who were your glam, uh, give me, cause I'm curious on that. Who, who were the glam guys that you, or girls that you looked up to?

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Well, I love Bowie and of course I love Lou Reed and people like that, you know, I love the Velvet Underground and, and Iggy, I loved Iggy as well. And so just thinking of those and then, but then somewhere I loved, I loved the 50s elders, you know? So there's, I just liked exciting performers, sexy, exciting performers. I like that.

• 26:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, now that we have the hindsight of, of time, you know, people talk about the MTV era because it's, it's still going, but music is no longer part of that equation. So like, let's say earlyish eighties to peak, maybe early two thousands, but, um, you know, obviously people made videos in the UK and that was part of the, the music business. But the art of the video, your, your, your ability to both become kind of, I always call them avatars, you know, it's like you almost create this character. It's like there's Billy Idol in the video and there's Steve Stevens in the video. Did, were you conscious of how, how important that was gonna be at the time? Because at the time it was sort of an emerging thing.

• 26:47Billy Corgan?

  But now people look back very fondly on this idea that there was this marriage of music and video.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  I mean, there always had been, um, because people had made film clips to go along with, you know, forever. But, uh, there was this program in England, the Kenny Everett Video Show, whereas we're in the, it was a comedy program with skits, but in the middle of the pro, it's kind of a call.

• 27:09Billy Corgan?

  But in the middle of- I saw one of these clips where they were kind of joking and then suddenly they went to like a Gen X clip or something.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And in the middle of it, they'd, they would do a, they'd have a musical guest and they'd do a very serious.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  What became a video, because it was Kenny ever video. They did a very serious, uh, you know. Video that basically, uh, which had, they had a dance group that they were kind of using. And they, they just did these kind of very, very sort of interesting, and it kind of was setting the pace.

• 27:38Billy Corgan?

  Uh huh.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  It also, they, you kind of knew there was companies in England already. Doing it like Mallett, MGM Mallett, Mulcahy, and there's a, I never know what the G was. But they, they were like, uh, so, yeah, you know, that's who was doing these. These clips in the middle of, uh, the Kenny video show was, was Russell McKay or. We were, I worked with David Mallett, who has worked with David Bowie, you know?

• 28:04Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  So, uh. So that was very influential and sort of showing you, showing us what was in a way gonna happen.

• 28:14Billy Corgan?

  Ah, I see, I see.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  And then I, I knew really MTV is just a massive extension.

• 28:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Of this Kenny ever video show without the, maybe without the comedic, comedic aspect.

• 28:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  But it was, you kind of knew MTV is gonna be. A million clips of, a million people doing.

• 28:31Billy Corgan?

  You guys, like, looking back, you, you picked the right lane, because a lot of people, their videos don't hold up very well.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:39Billy Corgan?

  I don't know, maybe it was because it was new to them, or they didn't have a sense that, that. The video was an extension of their musical life. You know, we've all done it with the artist, the artist shows up and they don't really want to do the video and they kind of phoned it in, but. At least from, from my perspective, videos was such an important part of who you were.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 28:57Billy Corgan?

  You like, I guess, maybe for lack of better, you really owned. Being in the video.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Well, you had to. You were really involved in.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  We're also coming up with a lot of the, a lot of the ideas with, with say David Mallett, and he would have a guy. You know, a guy, a guy who helps to put it together, but a lot of it was coming from me. I mean, I knew I had to set the pace. At the beginning of all of these things, whether it was the music or the visuals. I knew I had to set the pace because then later on. People would know what a Billy Idol song was, or they'd know what a Billy Idol. Video was, but I knew it had to come from me initially. And that's what you saw in the white wedding video. That's kind of

• 29:38Billy Corgan?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Me taking, you know, sort of, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, yeah. I want, I want this to be like a sort of a graveyard. I want this crazy goth wedding, you know, goth straight edge wedding. But who had actually been to Phil Lynott's wedding of, of, of, um, Phil, Phil Lizzie. And on one side of the aisle, it was, uh, the, the wives, Leslie Crowder, it was comedians, uh, family, and they were very straight edge. And then our side of the aisle was Phil Lynott. It was all us lots. I, I remembered that when we did the video and I put all punks on one side and very straight edge on the other, you know?

• 30:19Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  So it's even silly things like that, but, uh, it was fun coming up with it and you kind of knew you had to set the pace because you just knew it had to come from you. I think, because I suppose Bowie was like that, you know?

• 30:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  And you just, you'd learn from those sort of people.

• 30:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. It's, it's amazing Bowie's influence on so many artists in so many different directions.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:40Billy Corgan?

  With time, it becomes even more obvious, you know, like I recently interviewed a gentleman who was part of the LA early goth scene out here. And Bowie was his inspiration. He took music in a completely different direction than you took it, right? Um, so you have this incredible role here, Rebel Yell, Eyes Without a Face, Flesh for Fantasy, Catch My Fall. Um, I'm not saying Blade Runner was an influence, but there's this, I talked about it before a little bit, like this idea of proto-futurism. How, and you were talking about science fiction, but like, how, how, how much of that was, was, I'm trying to ask a slightly different way to put it, because it seems to be imbued in the, in the musical production. Um, does it make sense, the question I'm asking?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's also embracing technology at the time.

• 31:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, then maybe that's the better way to ask the question.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  So, and, and also, you know, with that album, uh, we were at Electric Lady Studios and as a kid growing up, there was a movie theater next door and I would go to these all night movies and, you know, I was thirteen, fourteen and see, you know, the Who, kids are all right. And, and I'd tell my friends, one day I'm gonna be in that, in that place. So being in there, well, it, it is like a kid in a candy store. There was so much great gear and, you know, it's the house that Jimi Hendrix built. So as a guitar player, I think that was, that was, and also we were embracing lin drums and all of the other elements of that. So.

• 32:08Billy Corgan?

  Yep.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  It was, yeah.

• 32:10Billy Corgan?

  Did you see that as an extension of like the punk philosophy, which is like, you know, it's not, it's not a deconstructionist point of view, but it's like, I'm gonna take these tools and I'm gonna use them for whatever I need to use them for. Is that?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, that's it. And also it's really what was around us. Keith Forsy was a drummer, really. That's what he started out initially doing. So he was incredible with the lin drum. I mean, it's really his feel, you know, it's not.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  A lot of people go, oh, the drum machine, but, but, you know, but Keith could put his feel into it. So, so it's like a, it's, it's the drummer's feel.

• 32:46Billy Corgan?

  Was the, was the, the thing on that was that you guys sort of recorded without a drummer and then it became like the sound of it.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did it all to a lint, just Keith's lin drum, which sounds fantastic, actually.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  But we just knew if we put a real guy doing the same thing on top.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  That energy level would just go up even more. And it did.

• 33:04Billy Corgan?

  I see, yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  And I think also, you know, our, our, because we both love the Beatles and the Beatles records, each song was a little bit different. So we weren't afraid to put, uh, Eyes Without a Face next to Blue Highway or, you know, because the record should, it should be a, a travel, you know? So, so I think we, we were cool with having different feels for each. Each song was its own adventure, kind of.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know. We've grown up with eclectic records. Yeah.

• 33:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Whether it was, yes, maybe it's Steve's, you know, or it would be, I don't know, the underground or whatever, whatever it was. Yeah. We've both grown up with really eclectic records.

• 33:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Where people went all over the map. I mean, even The Clash did. I mean, even if you think about punk rock, even The Clash went all over the map.

• 33:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  And that's kind of what was exciting to me. And then you kind of knew you had to do that. You had to sort of. Yeah, I was trying, yeah, I wanted to expand what this Billy Idol music was. And I was finding out, along with you, the audience, I was finding out what it was too, you know, and, and, and it just. Keith had certain abilities and, and, and, and certain things he liked too, that helped me to expand my music, because he kind of had, he liked R and B. Hmm. So he liked, so we, so we do Hot in the City and we have chick singers and, you know. Yeah. And things like that. So it was like, it was fun for me too, because I like, I like R and B music and sort of putting

• 34:36Speaker 00

  the two things together as well, dance music, R and B, along with rock and roll. Yeah. And punk, somehow putting it all together was, was a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah.

• 34:47Billy Corgan?

  So I don't really do gossip here, but I have to ask because there's a couple of things, but when I first got in the music business in the, in the early nineteen nineties. The tales of, of your excess were legion.

• 35:02Billy Corgan?

  Like, I'm not saying speak to it, but like, it was a period of excess. I think we all know that. But I mean, I kept hearing these stories and I'm sure half of them weren't true, but it always involved excess. Your name was always the headline. Billy Idol did this and this was involved. Uh, you want to speak to that? I'm just, it's, it's curious because legends have a way of growing and they're not always true. You know what I mean?

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Well, I was super living it. I mean, I was, I was, yeah, live, you know, you were living for the moment twenty four seven. So you were doing whatever you thought. You needed to do to make the music happen.

• 35:38Billy Corgan?

  I will hand it to the English. When you guys go there, you go all the way there.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it was just, yeah, also you do, we're just sort of looking for the next idea a lot. And so you're willing to sort of do a load of crazy things to make, make life happen so that you have the experiences to write about them, really.

• 35:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but have you, have you heard, have you had people tell you stories back to you?

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Of course, yeah, there's a lot of stuff I don't remember. Everybody's got Billy Idol stories.

• 36:05Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying. When we first got in the business, it was like you'd hear these Billy Idol stories.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:10Billy Corgan?

  Uh, I went, we worked one time with Roy Thomas Baker, who had produced Queen. And we had heard a crazy story about where he was working with Journey and he was running Steve Perry's voice through a pitch shifter, because Steve Perry has such good pitch. It was a way to make him insane. And we'd heard the story that Roy was in a room doing coke and running Steve's voice through a pitch shifter. And Steve kept singing, I, I don't know how my singing is so bad. And of course I met Roy and I said, is this story true? And he said, no, it's not true at all. So you know what I mean? It's like, it's not so much to answer the myth, it's just to kind of have a laugh about it.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:44Billy Corgan?

  Um, if you don't mind, because I, I didn't know this story until today, but this idea where I, they wanted to use a photo of you on an album and you stole the master tapes and is that, is that a true story?

• 36:55Speaker 00

  They were starting to say, um, we were, we took a little bit of time making Rebel Yell, because, because we, and now we just, we, we did have a few songs written before we went in, but we didn't have the full complement of saying so. We were taking a little bit of time and they were getting near the deadline, you know? And I had this thing, no deadlines, only headlines, you know, and that's what we're really going for. But there was, we'd done this picture for the cover and they, they were sort of, they, this, they were saying they were going to put it out. And I was saying, well, it's not quite, this, you know, it's not quite right. There's something wrong with the picture. Look, the way they've touched it up, have done something.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  And then this guy was sort of starting to tell me, guy doing the album covers was trying to, starting to tell me, well, when you enlarge this, it'll, it'll get less, you know? And I just flipped out, man, because it was like, you don't tell me. You know, you don't bull, you know, bull, I know for starters, you enlarge something, it gets worse. The next minute I had this guy against a wall going, you know,

• 38:01Billy Corgan?

  With the Billy Idol.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  So then they were still, but they were still record company is going, yeah, it's not that bad. And you know, I was going, yeah, but this is a super important record for me. And this is my second. So I went down to the, to the electric lady and whipped in there, went in an off moment. And I got what I thought were the master tapes and gave them to my heroin dealer, James. And then I knew that would frighten him to death.

• 38:28Billy Corgan?

  Cause that's safe.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  And I phoned them up saying, you know, oh, I've given them to my heroin dealer. I wouldn't trust him. You know, they could be bootlegged on the street in a couple of days. You better change that cover. So they, they changed the cover and I don't think I, I think I had some of the master tapes and all of them. But Keith kind of knew, he went, looked and he kind of knew I didn't really have all the master tapes. But, but he, but he was great. He played along and told the guy, he's got, he's got a man that he's gonna bootleg him. He's gonna.

• 39:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  But I think, you know, but there you go. They, they fixed it and it came out. I mean, like for sake, why can't you've just done that? You know, why did we take all that aggro?

• 39:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  To, you know, get that done.

• 39:16Billy Corgan?

  So at the height of this kind of eighties MTV, you know, you're in this pantheon of like, you know, it seemed like Queen was there, Prince was there, Madonna was there.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  For sure, yeah.

• 39:27Billy Corgan?

  Phil Collins, maybe. I don't know. It's just like, um, how did you take, uh, it's a slight different version of the punk question because you came from this DIY, like a truly organic from the streets thing. And you, you've always had that. But now you're sort of up there when these bright lights with that level of intensity. Did that affect you personally? Did it, did it drive you crazy? You were cool with it? I mean, like, looking back now, I mean, how do you see yourself in that moment?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Well, we we did uh we were using drugs and stuff and things like that. We were sort of we were out there for a year on the road with Rebel Yell and stuff. So we're starting to get a little crazy and a sense of overdoing things a bit. But but it was all kind of part of it. And it was all part of the fun of it in a way. I don't know. I think, yeah, I think regardless of all of that, there was a sense of the work ethic, you know, being in the studio. Yeah, there was drugs and all that, but but it was still motivated by the music.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  We were playing hard. And so we were partying hard. But we were playing hard. We were working really hard. I mean, that was the thing. It wasn't, you know, you know, we were we were somehow enabling, we were enabling ourselves to keep working.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  I think I think the drugs sort of worked to an extent during Rebel Yell because we'd work all week and then we'd have a bit of a party on on a Friday and everybody would come in and we'd play this thing because how else you're kind of insular. So you want to get feedback and and you, you know, you want you keep that excitement going. So that party thing was was great. And then you come back in on Monday and ah, it was great, you know, and you'd learn things about playing it for an audience of people. And but then it kind of when it when it became for the next record, it kind of over it was more insular, I felt.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were kind of cut off.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  We did cut ourselves off.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  And we didn't. And it was really down to we were working with a lot of machines. For me, as a guitar player, you can't take a Lindrum out for a beer afterwards, you know, and the technology now you can get drums to fit with a groove or a grid.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  But then we were struggling and drummers.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  It would take two days to get a bass line.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And drummers just weren't used to playing with clicks and things like that. It was really frustr frustrating. So we ended up using Drum Machine on the whole record.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And that was really hard. That was really kind because you're sitting over the Drum Machine or the sequencer and stuff and ah, you know, it's hours and you're trying to keep excited about it. So you'll do a bump or something just to keep going because you don't have a band.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  On that. So.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, we didn't.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  But but.

• 42:21Billy Corgan?

  I mean, you're still one of the most recognizable people. You know what I mean? So is, is, was that isolating too? Like you, when you can't walk down the street like you used to, you can't go to a club like you used to.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Well, that is, that, that is what changed with Rebel Yell, really. I mean, White Wedding, we still. We're, we're, we're getting known, but it was Rebel Yell changed everything. And yeah, then MTV really, really took off by the mid eighties. It was starting to be in most of the homes in America.

• 42:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  And then it started to go around the world in eighty seven, you know, because I think writing to England and things. So, you know, as it grew. Yeah, the more and more our sort of privacy got completely taken away.

• 43:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's a unique feeling when there's all that in, eh, eh, energy coming at you. It, it does different things to different people.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you ended up sort of sheltering in little tiny rooms and space, you know? Because if you stepped outside of the room, you, you walk into this kind of crazy world where everybody goes nuts.

• 43:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Because that was the thing about television. You know, when I first came to New York, it was like, you know, the cool people knew who you were, or, you know, you could get into clubs and. You, but in general, though, you're left alone, you know, like. And then, but then, yeah, by the time the mid eighties, and it wasn't like that at all. And then the ordinary person was watching MTV, not even music fans, if you know what I mean.

• 43:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  You're starting to get TV, people who watch TV recognize you. That's a whole different world. It's that. That's not just cool music people. It was, it changed everything.

• 43:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, when grandma recognizes you, that's when you, you know you're done for, right?

• 43:59Speaker 00

  It's kind of what started to happen. And it meant you kind of sheltered more in, more in little rooms or whatever. And of course, you're kind of doing substances to kind of have fun in, in those tiny spaces.

• 44:12Billy Corgan?

  One of my favorite all time songs is the William Bell, I Forgot to Be Your Lover. And I never knew until today that You've Got to Be a Lover is a variation of that.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I heard it as a reggae song, you know.

• 44:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, you, who, who, who done it?

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Was Ali Scratch Perry, George Faith.

• 44:27Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that version.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  That he did all these kind of, he did Midnight Hour, Diana. Opportunity, he did all these old, eh, Hands of Time, If Only I Could Turn Back, The Hands of Time. It's a fantastic record. And he did a version of To Be a Lover, and which he said he had Lee Scratch Perry, George Faith wrote it, you know, so I just thought, wow, they just wrote this super R and B, and it's super slow as well. So I was kind of playing that album and thinking about, well, I could take this song and speed it up and it it's more like a rockabilly song, you know. Have I told you?

• 45:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  You can't give it in. So I just took it to Keith and then I think we then turned it into kind of a piano boogie synthesizer.

• 45:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Thing that came out fantastic because it did have the rockabilly thing to it, but it wasn't.

• 45:25Billy Corgan?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  It was more, it was completely modern.

• 45:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  And it was a keyboard song in a way.

• 45:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. That's yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  But it came out fantastic. And then I found out, because, you know, by covering it, I started to find out that, oh, it's not a, it's not a George Faith. They didn't write it. Of course they didn't write this. It was this William Bell song from the early sixties. In fact, Steve Cropper had played on it. One night I was at a party at Peter Ackroyd's party he was giving and Steve Cropper was there and he came up to me and said, I loved what you did.

• 46:00Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  With To Be a Lover. And I got a lot of that from, you know, a lot of older.

• 46:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Artists, Who's the Bird in Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks, she loved it. Things like that. You've got a lot of people like that. Suddenly realized who Billy Idol is a bit more. Like I nearly got a Grammy for it. I got, we were up for a Grammy and everything. So that was sort of the fun of it was, yeah, taking these influences. And that's me, it was a reggae song, but yeah, the William Bell version is even slower.

• 46:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Than the reggae. It's good. Have I told you?

• 46:37Billy Corgan?

  Beautiful, yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  This is fantastic. But it was fun what we did with it. And then we do actually do it in our acoustic.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Strip it down now.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Said, yeah, take it from its initial.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  And Steve throws the guitar break from Rock Around the Clock into it, which is.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Which is fantastic.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  That's the first shred guitar break.

• 46:56Billy Corgan?

  It is.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is the first shred guitar break.

• 46:59Billy Corgan?

  So the the move towards more more and more keyboards, I mean, I'm I'm over stating it. Uh, did you like that move? Were you part of that? Or because it it seems right around there, it starts to get. It maybe was the times, but like, it seems like more and more keyboards. Because when I've done it, people hate me.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:18Billy Corgan?

  And I'm a guitar player.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think it's, you know, I've always been cool with whatever works for the song. You know, I've never been one of those guys that waits for the three minute part mark for the guitar solo. You know, it's it's just never been, I grew up on band music, not not, you know, soloist. So whatever worked really and and and it was all new and exciting. And and one of the first concerts, I'm really dating myself. Um, but one of my first concerts I went to was Emerson, Lake and Palmer. And my dad had brought home this record.

• 47:52Billy Corgan?

  Is this brain salad surgery time?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Exactly, quad. And but my dad had brought home this record called Moog. And I thought, wow, what is that sound? That's really like, oh. And and then when I heard the nice and all that stuff. So the key, the the the advance of keyboards kind of went along at the same time.

• 48:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  For me as the guitar thing.

• 48:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  So I I we loved all the new technology and the keyboards and stuff like that. I never thought it was taking play, you know, taking my space.

• 48:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I was just more curious from a from a production standpoint, because there's that.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  I think if it worked or or or I'd have it if I thought I could do it in more in a more individual way on the guitar.

• 48:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  To take that role, I would try. But if the keyboard was working, yeah, they have lives, you know, it's working.

• 48:41Billy Corgan?

  So what was the, again, it's I'm not interested in the gossip thing. I'm more interested in the musical part because it's obvious you guys have a deep musical partnership. What was the, what was the musical part that led you guys to not work together for a while?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, I think Whip Last Smile, you know, throwing a fair amount of drugs, no communication. And Whip Last Smile was not the easiest record to do.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  To play live.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  I had just gotten my first apartment in New York. I still had family. And I was courted by Warner Brothers. I had Ted Templeman sign me to Warner Brothers.

• 49:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  That was a very valuable lesson because they don't give a about our partnership. And, you know, you've got Van Halen's producer saying, oh, you know, if you come over here, you know. And, um, and that was an influence, you know, that was, and we, and, and just in hindsight, we never communicated that, I never communicated that I was unhappy with, with that. And, and consequently, the record that Billy did afterwards was exactly what I wanted to do. You know, John Life is a great record and it's back to the, to the roots of it.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Went back to.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  And, and I heard that and I went, oh.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  It was more B3 and stuff like that.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  He was going, he was going there anyway. So, you know.

• 49:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  But it's great. All those, all those are valuable lessons and, and only contribute to how much, how mu- how much.

• 50:06Billy Corgan?

  What was difficult, if you don't mind me asking, what was difficult about making the record for you that?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Whip Last Smile.

• 50:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, like what, what, what, from a musician to musician, because that's where I get interested.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Guitars, rock guitars love ambience and marrying it with a, with a drum kit somehow glues it together. So a lot of my guitar ideas didn't work against the, the, the starkness of the electronic drums and stuff like that.

• 50:35Billy Corgan?

  And you agreed with that or was it somebody else who sang that?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Well, we tried some real drums on it, but it just didn't work. It just, you know, it was, it had to be tight. It had to be locked in, you know, and also Harold Faltermeyer came in to do keyboards on that. So the keyboards, he's so brilliant.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  The keyboards came to the, to the first, you know, so some of the guitar stuff. But also at the same, I mean, what was great is I had an idea for a West Montgomery style guitar solo in a song and Billy went, yeah, great, do that. So it was never, he, he never said, no, no, you can't do that. Oh, too much guitar. It just, it was a natural.

• 51:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Progression and, um, and I think, yeah, the lack of communication and, uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, and also we lost Bill a coin at that time. So, you know, we lost our manager who was really, is Bill and Keith were really good at, at, at, at work, at, at. Having both our interests, you know, if ever there was, uh, uh, something, uh, you know, I could call Bill a coin and go, hey, I'm having a problem in the studio. You know, and he talked to Billy and we'd get together and we'd work it out. No more a coin and, and, and it was, uh, yeah, lack of communication.

• 51:52Billy Corgan?

  Did you have people in your ear saying you don't need him and this and that? I mean, I don't know.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, Warner Brothers Records. Yeah, basically.

• 52:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I'm saying, did you have people in your ear?

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Uh, not, not, not really, but I think it's just, uh, it wasn't so easy. We were using all this technology, um, in the Whiplash Smile Tour that. A few years later would have been easy, but when we were doing it, it was really difficult. So. It wasn't so easy playing live as it had been in the Rebel Y'all Tour. Yeah. I think that created a lot of, a little bit of tension and then I think we were over, I was overdoing the coke and.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  We were, yeah. Guilty as charged. Yeah. Yeah. This is a classic, it's that classic rocks.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Causes to, I think, fall out, you know?

• 52:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I saw this.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  A little bit, and it wasn't really, it was just a silly, silly falling out. It wasn't really serious in a way, but it, it went on for a couple of years because. Steve did have the solo album and then I carried on.

• 52:56Billy Corgan?

  Well, yeah, I mean.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Going on, uh, doing.

• 52:58Billy Corgan?

  Your, your, your name's on the marquee. There's no getting away from that.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  But really, yeah, I love working with Mike Younger Smith. He was, he was great. He was an interesting, he's more of a southern Texan. So you had that sort of blues sound. It was a whole different sort of thing. It's interesting though, it worked, but, but when it comes down to it, Steve's, Steve's the guy. I mean, that's just, that's really ridiculous.

• 53:23Billy Corgan?

  It's interesting because I, you know, I still play with two of my guys from the original band. And it's just like, at some point you have to just say, there's a reason we work good together.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 53:32Billy Corgan?

  It doesn't matter why. God gave us this chemistry or this communication or it's an understanding.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:40Billy Corgan?

  And maybe at the bottom, like a, a form of love. It's not romantic love, but there's a romance to it.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  And, and respect and.

• 53:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, that's obvious. It's talking to both of you.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  And I sit down at the guitar and, you know, I play it and I got this guy's, his voice in it. It's, I can't get it out, you know, it's just, that's it. You know, I play, you know, two chords and I go, oh, I can imagine Billy might.

• 54:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  It's just there, you know?

• 54:07Billy Corgan?

  I saw this quote and it's sort of around the time with your motorcycle accident. I'm not asking you to necessarily talk about that. I'm sure you've talked about it plenty, but.

• 54:15Billy Corgan?

  You were talking, I think about a record that you made. It's the one with the Cradle of Love, but which obviously was a huge hit, but. You said something about how great life is and, and I've been doing a good job of throwing it away. That kind of stuck out to me and you could speak to it however you want, but you know, it's that kind of moment where you're like, wow, you know, I've, I've had a pretty good run here. I don't know. Speak to it however you want. I just think it's interesting because not all of us understand like what it is to run our heads against the wall. Talking, I'm, I'm with you on the running of my head against the wall. Doesn't make sense the way I'm saying it. Like rock is such an incredible thing and you know, it's, it's like a form of playing with fire, you know?

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, yes, that's right. In a way, yes.

• 54:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I mean, some of the things that I've done in my life that everybody told me at the time was the stupidest thing I could ever done, that's the stuff they want to talk to me about now because it looks better in hindsight. And you know, when you're making those types of records and you're running hard, you're right on the edge of something, it's hard to explain what that is, you know, it's like something out of a, out of a novel, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're the character in your own movie.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Well, that's true, yeah.

• 55:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So if you could just reflect on that, because you know, you, and the reason I even brought up the, you know, the mid eighties with you and Prince and Madonna, it's like, very few artists have hit the high, high, high part of it all, you know what I mean? So if you could just give me a version of that, like looking back now, do you, do you appreciate it? Do you think, wow, I was nuts? I mean, like, what's your sort of take on all that?

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Well, it's, I mean, it was really exciting. It's not so easy staying there. I mean, that's the other thing too. And, um, and also, you know, you can get trapped a little bit by the success. And that's dangerous as well. And

• 56:04Billy Corgan?

  It, it, it hams you in in a weird kind of

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, because then, you know, and people start saying, well, look at this, look at what's being successful.

• 56:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  You should keep on going down that road. And it's a little bit like, we never went down one road.

• 56:18Billy Corgan?

  We weren't even thinking like that.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, no, we weren't. It was more like, well, I just did, like, why did I do Moni Moni? Well, initially, I did this dance version because I was just trying to follow up dancing with myself in this new wave dance chart in nineteen eighty one, whereas then we, so we, we carried on doing it live and then we had this number one.

• 56:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  With Moni Moni, this hard rock version of it, sort of thing. And then, then with Cradle of Love being a sort of number two, and they kind of wanted you to get down this pop. And we'd never gone just down one road, you know, we hadn't, and that, that was a little frightening to feel that, you know, and in a way I rebelled against it by doing cyberpunk in a way, I really, what I should have done is, I should have done, should have followed up Charmed Life, because it was a new record label as well, it was going to Capitol, whatever. I should have followed up. Charmed Life with another Charmed Billy Idol record and then done Cyberpunk, you know what I mean? But that's not what I did, you know, I with this new label.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  I tried this whole other thing that was deliberately wasn't really trying to be successful. It was actually kind of an indie record. I was almost because I'd seen this this Pro Tools machine that was a that Trevor Rabin had that my manager that I now had Tony Dimitriadis managed. Trevor Rabin, who has been given this computer machine, this early version of Pro Tools. So that they they could see how a musician would use it.

• 57:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  So I actually saw this like, wow.

• 57:59Billy Corgan?

  And you were early on that.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  This is gonna be.

• 58:01Billy Corgan?

  Like early nineties.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  Everybody in the world's gonna be able to make music at home.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:06Billy Corgan?

  Well, from a punk ethos point of view, what is more egalitarian than anybody can make music?

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Right, at home and you and to high quality. And so I thought I'm gonna make a whole record using this.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Using this new way of a little bit kind of carrying on a little bit from Whiplash Smile in a way that they're using all that technology. I was now seeing where it was going. And I couldn't help but be excited about that. And then I was sort of listening to a lot of music from England. The early Prodigy, Future Sounds of London, The Orb, I was listening to all this stuff. And so somehow I wanted to somehow put rock and roll and all of that together.

• 58:48Billy Corgan?

  But the funny thing is, is you were right. Your directional antenna was actually very accurate. You were just too early.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just a little bit too early and then we didn't really have a hit single on it, so.

• 59:00Billy Corgan?

  That's the death of it all, you see.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:02Billy Corgan?

  If you had one hit single, they would have said you made a great record, you're a genius again.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:07Billy Corgan?

  But I in doing the research, you know.

• 59:13Billy Corgan?

  Because ninety three is like where my whole thing's taking off. So I didn't really remember the Cyberpunk record. So I'm, you know, I'm doing my research on you and you, of course, and and I come and this is this long thing about the controversy surrounding it. All these people are mad at him because of how dare he call himself a cyberpunk. I was like, I stumbled into this hornet's nest of like opinion and.

• 59:37Billy Corgan?

  But you were, but the funny thing to me is you were right. Like you called it very early on.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  I was the first artist to actually have his internet address on the album cover. I think I was three months ahead of Peter Gabriel. I think he'd.

• 59:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Things like that. It was really good fun.

• 59:53Billy Corgan?

  Were you, were you a William Gibson fan? Uh, because that's he kind of coined that term.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did get in, I did read a lot of Neuromancer and all that sort of stuff and um. But I actually got to know the director of The Lawn Mower Man, um Brett Leonard.

• 1:00:10Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  And uh, I was getting cahoots with him. He was gonna do a Lawn Mower Man two and that was, it was gonna become a franchise and he'd, I was, he'd written this great script, the story, it was fantastic. It was like a love story, but, but LA in the future where people are living on the, are living on the flyovers, you know, they're living on the roads, flyovers and there's this new, there's this internet drug, Mindfire. And so I was gonna, he was gonna do this film, um The Lawn Mower Man two, uh, which is gonna be called Mindfire, all about this drug, this kind of internet drug. And then I was gonna do the music and that's what cyberpunk's supposed to be. It's supposed to be this,

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  this soundtrack to this film that never happened. But what happened is a record, the film company,

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  they decided they didn't want to make this franchise that, that they actually did end up making a Lawn Mower Man two, but it wasn't with Brett, Leonard and it was, it was nothing, it wasn't, it was just cheap. It wasn't really trying to create a franchise. It was his movie would have done it. It was really great. And so that's what I was supposedly doing was a soundtrack. Well, that all got, that kind of got turked. So when it all fell through, I was left with making this record, a Billy Idol record, which was never quite meant to be.

• 1:01:34Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  But uh, but at the same time, I thought, well, I was really excited about, yeah, I was really enjoying this idea that you could, that in the future, everybody's gonna be able to make, they're gonna be using this equipment and that's exactly what happened.

• 1:01:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, cause, cause William Gibson, you know, he talked about like people living on bridges.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Billy Corgan?

  They would repurpose public, you know, projects for housing, designer drugs was part of it. Of course, obviously the ability for people, the ability for people communicate on the internet.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Billy Corgan?

  So that turned out to be very prescient as far as what was coming. And I thought it was really interesting that you were at the very beginning, you're like, look, all this stuff is coming and you just got hammered.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, I did. Walked right into it.

• 1:02:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  But at the same time, I really, I really had a lot of fun doing the record. I really enjoyed it. It was, we made it in my house.

• 1:02:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  For a start, we did the drums and everything because we set up the Pro Tools in my house, an upstairs room in my house. We did everything in my, my house like an indie, indie record, like you would.

• 1:02:37Billy Corgan?

  Did it, did it, did it strike you as ironic when, you know, because at the peak, peak nineties, Gen X grunge, you know, so much of what you'd started was basically now it's, now it's pop. You know, like Green Day is an obvious example, but I'm saying it's like all the things that you'd started in the, in the mid seventies with Generation X is like now it's like total mainstream and now it's even bigger. Now thirty years later, it's even bigger.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's even bigger. Yeah.

• 1:03:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Do you look back and sort of, you feel good about that? Do you think I should have done something different? Like, how does all that register in you? Are you proud? Are you?

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, no, I think, I think I was doing what was right for me and um.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  I wasn't, I wouldn't have gone back to doing what Green Day was doing or, you know, I wouldn't have done that, you know.

• 1:03:26Billy Corgan?

  No, I don't mean it that way. I mean it more as like, you know, you look back and you see your influence and certain contemporaries influence.

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just I knew there is no way I can suddenly, I wasn't going to suddenly try to.

• 1:03:37Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no, I don't mean it.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  No, I know you don't. I know you don't.

• 1:03:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay, great. Thank you. No, I just didn't want you to come out like this.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was going to carry on mining the sort of where I, Billy Idol scene and I was sort of following it really. And um.

• 1:03:52Billy Corgan?

  I, I guess maybe it's a question of credit or, or.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I think the, the, the artists that are influenced by Generation X and what we did in the eighties, they're so cool about it, you know? And, and um, you can't help but be proud of it and go, yeah, you know, if we, if, if we influenced the good stuff. You know, hopefully we didn't influence the crap.

• 1:04:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I think I think that's the cool thing about your partnership. You guys made a lot of great decisions that have held up really well. And they were risky decisions. They weren't decisions of a conservative perspective. That when you started having hits, you actually went further.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Right, that's right.

• 1:04:33Billy Corgan?

  I think that's what most people don't appreciate. It's like when you're actually starting to have success, you're surrounded by people that it would be totally cool with. You just keep doing the same thing.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Billy Corgan?

  To actually risk and roll the dice and keep trying to expand who you are and what you're capable of. That's that's real risk.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, we try not to repeat ourselves.

• 1:04:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Still.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  And learn stuff as you go as well. You want to.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  That's what I felt we did with each album. We kind of, we we we didn't just stay like we said, we didn't just stay copying what we we last did. We sort of deliberately.

• 1:05:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Moved on a little bit and or moved into a different area.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:05:09Billy Corgan?

  OK, so a few more things. Thanks for indulging me. Um, we share someone in common, Jonas Akerland. I work with Jonas back in the day, and I know he's made your new documentary. So at the time we're taping this, it's actually coming out today, but by the time it airs, it'll be out. But you feel good about the documentary. I know you were saying before we started taping that it took a while to make, but you feel good about it. Is it weird to see your life in review? I mean, how do you?

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  It is a little weird to see.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Your life, yeah, you never, it's all these sort of things. You just never imagined any of this when you start out. Because you've no idea, you've no idea if you can even do it. You don't go, you're gonna get anywhere, let alone one day.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  People are gonna encapsulate your life down into two hours.

• 1:05:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  You just never think about that. So so but it's pretty wild to get here. And and then I think the documentary came out really well, and Jonas did a great job.

• 1:06:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  As well as Mark Munro. Came in and I think the two of them really

• 1:06:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  Really brought it home and I think it came out great.

• 1:06:16Billy Corgan?

  How do you feel about it?

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  It's great for me because there's a lot of, lot of stuff that I didn't really know about. I love all the, all this stuff. You know, there's some incredible archival stuff, all the years, the Generation X years. And the interviews are really good. So for me, I was, I was able to like be a fan and watch, watch that.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gotta be a little bit weird.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  But it's so well done. It's so well, you know.

• 1:06:47Billy Corgan?

  Well, Jonas is a great, smart guy.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  And, and if anyone deserves a documentary, it's this guy right here.

• 1:06:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, as you know, I'm sure you've heard it, like AI is the talk of, of the music business at the moment that we're sitting here.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:07:03Billy Corgan?

  So if you want to wade in there, how, how you, how, cause I, the, the joke I'm making is AI feels like a marauding army that's coming. And no one's quite sure what's going to happen when the army shows up, like who's going to live and who's going to die. You know what I mean? It's gonna, it's gonna change a lot of things. I think we all feel that, but I don't. Kind of like you with Cyberpunk, you can see it, but we're not quite sure how it's all gonna shake.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting because my wife is really internet savvy. She grew up in the, in the age of computers and stuff. And she's pointed out songs that she, I'm not going to name names, artists of songs that she believes like ChatGPT has written the lyrics to.

• 1:07:42Billy Corgan?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  And she's shown them to me and I go, oh yeah, I wouldn't have noticed that.

• 1:07:48Billy Corgan?

  A guy, a guy recently told me, cause I asked somebody who works in Nashville. He said, almost every lyric in Nashville is now

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Billy Corgan?

  Has ChatGPT influence.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  That's, that's exactly.

• 1:07:59Billy Corgan?

  They finish the lyric and then they run it through ChatGPT.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  To see what it, yeah, like a word processor.

• 1:08:04Billy Corgan?

  Yes, just like spitting out random.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  See what it, see what it.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  The crazy stuff is though, there's someone that's doing these. Crazy AI versions and they did one of Rebel Yell. And actually it was orchestrated and I thought, oh, we should do an album like that. Cause it was.

• 1:08:22Billy Corgan?

  But that's where it's dangerous though, right? Because.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  The orchestration was so well done. It was operatic and everything. And I thought, oh, we could take our whole catalog and do that.

• 1:08:32Billy Corgan?

  But that's what I, that's like, it's kind of a deal with the devil, right?

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 1:08:35Billy Corgan?

  Cause it was well done. Do I want to use it to write songs? Or what people are doing now, they'll write a song on acoustic and then pump it in there and then do the mariachi version, do the reggae version, do the, do the future version, whatever. I feel that's like, it's like a Faustian bargain, like you open that door. Because we've all, we know how to write songs organically.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:55Billy Corgan?

  No one could take that from us, no matter what happens from here. Do you have any opinion on, I mean, it's, it's obviously it's a wide question, but how do you feel about that? Because as an OG punk, it might ultimately be the most punk thing ever.

• 1:09:10Billy Corgan?

  So I don't want to assume what your opinion would be.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's a little frightening, I suppose, but would we do that? Nah, I just. I don't see myself doing it. As a, as a, as a. Now you're giving me the idea of, I might try. But I think as a, as a group or I think for us, for a, a, a, a solo, solo artist. Maybe it's useful, but we just, we enjoy the collaboration. You know, and I'm sure you get in with your band and it's all, it's all part of it. You know, that's, that's fun, you know, you don't want to take, siphon the fun away from it. I don't know how, how it would apply to what we do.

• 1:09:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  But there's some incredible, have you seen the Elvis movies though? The parody movies, Elvis does, I don't know, he's, he's Night of the Living Dead and Elvis is it? I mean, I gotta admit, it's pretty cool.

• 1:10:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Cause there's this little controversy going on. It's a longer story. So I'll skip it. But, but it's the idea that a gentleman has passed away. So a fan has created an AI. Account and they're posting every day. So if you, if you're a fan of the person, you can watch the AI version. Talk every day and it won't be long, it'll be, you'll be able to call up the AI. John Lennon or something and have a conversation. Because there's enough information that they can feed it into the AI that it can like, talk like them, think like them. And it's only going to get better. So I had this conversation with my wife, which is like, you know, because my wife's a lot younger than I am.

• 1:10:48Billy Corgan?

  So it's not inconceivable at some point she would face the world where. Somebody would be creating an AI version of me. So we almost might have to create an AI version of me now. To almost patent it. And perfect it so that if anything happened to me, we already control the AI version of the business.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  The hologram.

• 1:11:09Billy Corgan?

  Right. So, you know, I mean, it's, you know, like AI Christmas with Billy, you know what I mean? Call you and. Have a great Christmas, but it's AI you, you know what I mean?

• 1:11:20Billy Corgan?

  So what do you think? The OG punks, AI, good or bad? Jury's too soon? Want to take a leap on that one? I think that's a good way to end.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Wow, I don't know.

• 1:11:32Billy Corgan?

  It's wild, right? I mean, it's just, it's so wild.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  Cause yeah, it's not like you don't, you use everything in the, you know, Bowie, the cut up techniques. You use everything.

• 1:11:42Billy Corgan?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  He used the word processor as well. So, so he probably would, he probably would have used chat.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  If the artist is in control of it, great. It's when the labels become in control of it. That's really the danger because as you said, if the, if the label, if the artist is passed on and the label continues.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  That's scary.

• 1:12:04Billy Corgan?

  I think the, uh, since we're all fans of sixties music and fifties, I think what you're gonna see is they're gonna start going back to those catalogs and running it through AI and. Having it come out with different stuff.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Billy Corgan?

  Like, for example, if you could go back to Elvis' Sun recordings with Sam Phillips. Pump it through AI, make it sound like Elvis recorded it yesterday. Would you listen to it? I mean, it's tempting, right? Because once you open that door, how do you, that's it. That's why I think it's this kind of thing that's coming.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  Could you make those Sun Records better? They're, they're perfect.

• 1:12:40Billy Corgan?

  That's, that's, that's the right answer.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Without being perfect.

• 1:12:44Billy Corgan?

  That's the right answer. Yeah. But that's why they're perfect.

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Billy Corgan?

  That's why they're perfect. Thank you both.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Billy Corgan?

  Great talking to you both.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Awesome. Awesome. Great.